Page 172 of Top Shelf

This has been our relationship for at least the last forty-eight hours. I got home after midnight on Saturday to find him asleep on top of the covers, an arm stretched across my side of the bed and a plate covered in foil on the kitchen counter. Yesterday morning, he left for training while I was still half asleep, kissed somewhere near my eyebrow and texted me three hours later to ask if I’d eaten the breakfast he left for me. I lied. He knew.

Last night, I came home late enough that he was already asleep again, exhausted from training, but he still reached for me the second I slid under the covers. His heavy arm wrapped around my waist, his face buried against my neck and pulling me into the warmth of him without properly waking.

So this morning, after finding my pistachio pastry, I stuck a note to his water bottle telling him I love him and that his ass looks excellent in training shorts. Romance.

What I really wanted to do was crawl back into bed, but my phone buzzed with a message from Zoe that said Pulse wants numbers by noon, and I remembered I’m a founder with a launch date, a sponsor wobble, and absolutely no time to climb my husband like a tree.

“Okay,” Mila says, still filming. “Now walk through the space like you’re arriving for the first time.”

“I am arriving for the eleventy billionth time.”

“So pretend!”

“I’m not an actor.”

Zoe finally looks up. “You’re married to a hockey player. Pretending is part of your brand.”

The words land harder than she means them to, and Mila lowers the phone slightly.

Zoe’s face drops. “Heid—”

“It’s fine,” I say too quickly, waving my hand.

It’s also not fine, because my marriage contract expires soon, and Viktor and I keep walking around the conversation like it’s old furniture we haven’t got around to moving yet. But on my list of to-do’s, it’s the last thing I have time to deal with.

Zoe spent the weekend building a sponsor deck, and Mila has pulled together rehearsal clips, equipment setup videos, behind-the-scenes footage, and a series of posts that make the studio look like it’s already existed for months. So today, the least I can do is focus and walk through the damn door pretending to welcome all of social media to my studio.

I step toward the door, preparing for Mila to film me walking in, but it opens, and an enormous man with dark hair and broad shoulders pokes his head through. His grin is at odds with the sheer size of him, which looks as though he collides with other large men for a living.

Mila lowers the phone, and I straighten, realizing it’s one of the last minute athletes we called in for a testimonial.

“Rhys Morgan?”

“That’s me.” His Irish accent is low and dry, and his gaze moves from me to the machines and back again. “You’re Dr. Grant?”

“Heidi is fine.” I hold out my hand. “Thanks for coming on short notice.”

“Carina said you needed a quick testimonial.” He looks around again. “Something about athlete demand and corporate people needing proof water is wet.”

“I like him,” Mila says, chuckling from her chair.

Rhys looks up at her, and Mila looks down. For half a second, they simply stare at each other, until Rhys points at the chair she’s standing on. “Is that safe?”

“For me,” Mila says.

His brows lift. “That doesn’t answer the question.”

I glance between them, my brain briefly taking a detour from sponsor panic to file away the little spark that has just snapped across my unopened studio.

Interesting. Deeply inconvenient timing, but interesting.

“He’s rehabbing a minor adductor strain,” I tell Mila. “Rugby. Good candidate for performance transition content.”

Rhys frowns faintly. “I was told this was a testimonial, not a tiny dancer diagnosing my groin on camera.”

Mila leaps down from the chair with a controlled grace that looks easy —but I catch the tiny guard through her right hip. “Relax, my dude. If I diagnosed your groin, you’d know about it.”

Zoe’s mouth twitches, and Rhys looks at me. “Is she serious?”