Page 20 of Playing His Game

“Could get messy, dating the owner’s kid. Especially for you,” he said at last in an undertone.

Adam couldn’t say he knew where he stood with Smitty. The guy was hard to read. But he hadn’t expected this kind of concern from him. “Yeah. Why we were keeping quiet. Lawyers and reps and paperwork’s involved now.”

Smitty nodded. “Good. Just ’cause you’re Adam Murphy doesn’t mean you can’t be taken advantage of.”

Well. That was… weird.

Adam put it out of his mind and focused on hockey—that had always come easy to him. Fortunately, this distraction with Mo couldn’t change that. If he got a little vicious practicing face-offs with Picks, well, the kid would never learn if everyone went easy on him.

Besides, it had been a short practice since they had back-to-back home games tomorrow and the day after. Picks would have lots of time to recover.

“No, that’s too far. The refs’re gonna see that. See the lights? The shadow’s making it more obvious. Great for me, though, because I can take advantage.”

“Murph! Stop teaching the kid algebra. Can’t you see it’s nap time?”

Picks looked up. “Cap’s teaching me how to cheat at face-offs.”

“It’s not cheating if the refs don’t catch you,” Jorts said, at the same time Adam said, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.”

Picks blinked at them, then looked back and forth. “You know, actually, I do think I’m kind of tired. I’m just gonna—yeah,” and then he skated off toward the bench.

Fuck.

Jorts’s hand landed heavy on Adam’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Go shower and I’ll take you to lunch.”

Adam knew where this was going. Jorts might not have ambushed him by text message, but he’d only held off so he could catch Adam in person, where he couldn’t put the phone on silent and pretend he’d been napping.

Which meant he had ten minutes at the outside to figure out how to get through this conversation without Jorts catching him in a lie. Maybe twenty, if Jorts let him drive separately to the restaurant.

By some miracle, he got until they’d been left alone in a booth at one of their favorite lunch spots before Jorts tugged his menu out of his hands and laid it on the table. “So. Moritz Du Pont.”

At least Adam had a ready answer for that. “It’s Mo.”

“Of course it is.”

Adam got another brief reprieve when their server stopped by to take their orders, but she just asked, “The usuals?” with a cheerful smile, and unfortunately, Adam was a hockey player so hedidwant the usual, and then he was right back into the fire.

“And how long has he been Mo?”

Adam poked the circle of condensation that had appeared under his water glass. What a nightmare. He felt shitty for having to lie, and shitty that Jorts thought he’d been hiding something when he hadn’t. “I mean, since he was old enough to pick, I think.” Adam remembered that from his draft day, even.

His sidestep didn’t deter Jorts. “Cute. Good to know.” He sipped his water. “And how long have you and Mo been playing five-hole on the down-low?”

Bristling, Adam hunched his shoulders. Which was stupid. He wasn’t even dating Mo for real; he had no reason to be upset with Jorts for making their fake relationship sound trivial. “Really?”

Jorts must’ve readsomethingin his expression—God knew what—because he backed off with his hands raised. “Sorry. Just… not that it’s not like you to be private, but this is kind of a big deal. The owners’ son and all. Besides, I thought you two didn’t get on. Like a pair of wet cats when you’re in the same room. I’ve never seen anyone get under your skin like he does.” He wasn’t wrong. No matter how many times Adam promised himself the next time would be different, that he wouldn’t let Mo needle him into an argument, it never held.

At least Jorts—and Chels—had provided him with a built-in excuse. “Guess all that tension wasn’t dislike. Something just… shifted. And we couldn’t exactly advertise it until, like, the ethics commission signed off or whatever.” He was pretty sure that wasn’t what it was called, but Jorts wouldn’t care.

“You could’ve toldme,” Jorts pointed out.

What a clusterfuck. “I wanted to,” Adam said. It wasn’t even a lie. He was dying to tell someone the truth. “But it didn’t seem fair until Mo could talk about it too.”

Jorts relented, and for a few minutes, the conversation was almost comfortable. Their food arrived. Adam tucked into his burger.

They had almost finished their plates when Jorts wiped his fingers on a napkin and said, “So what’s he like?”

They’d been talking about their upcoming game against Dallas—one of the toughest in the league—and before that, Jorts’s oldest’s science project on the life cycle of the frog—so Adam thought he could be forgiven for not making the conversational jump. “What’s who like?”