Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) Read Online Free

was that he wouldn’t stop talking to the other sledge players around the room. All of a sudden, my best friend was everybody’s best friend.
    That wasn’t fair of me. He’d always been the friendlier one of us, the popular guy in the locker room. Our wreck had only left me more sullen than ever, but if anything, Sergei had come further out of his shell. He tended to be the life of the party.
    The room was full to bursting, not only with those who’d played in today’s game but with their friends and family, too. Zee and Dana had brought in all three of their kids to help celebrate Dana’s coaching win, even the baby, Patrick. Most of the sledge players had parents or siblings with them, and a couple of the guys’ girlfriends had dropped in. London’s corner was overflowing, with a man and woman, plus four kids of varying ages. The other woman held a baby on her lap, which made me wish Hunter and Tallie had come and brought Harper. If Harper were here, she could rip out a few of my beard hairs and help me forget my frustrations.
    My focus went straight to London, though. Now that she didn’t have all her hockey gear on and I could see her face, I recognized her. She’d been in the news a few years back after an accident in a women’s hockey game. Her story had struck a chord with me, and once they’d started raising money for her treatment, I’d badgered my teammates at the time to give me money so I could make an anonymous donation.
    With her family surrounding her, she was all smiles and laughter. Her face lit up the room when she leaned over to tickle one of the children. This was a very different side of her than what she’d shown out on the ice today. Not only that, but she might as well be my polar opposite.
    I sat in my stall, brooding and wishing I were anywhere else. My only consolation came from the amount of money we’d raised for the Para-Pythons—something in the range of twenty-five thousand dollars. The Thunderbirds had promised to match everything we’d brought in, and they were organizing an auction for the signed, game-worn jerseys to raise even more. With all of that and what I’d haggled out of my teammates, we could possibly write them a check for close to a hundred grand. That money would go a long way toward meeting their expenses this year.
    Viktoriya Chambers came in, cautiously scanning the room for her husband. Razor was deep in conversation with Sergei, so I thought I’d go over and talk to her for a few minutes. She was at least Russian, even if she wasn’t family. I needed to make sure Razor was still treating her right, anyway. It’d been a week or so since I’d checked in with her.
    I hadn’t even made it halfway across the locker room when London Hawke wheeled into my path and glared up at me.
    “Can I help?” I asked when she neither moved nor spoke. I didn’t want to help her. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her, because every time she stared at me, I felt like she could see all the way into my soul.
    Most likely, she knew every detail about what had happened that night so many years ago. Seemed like everyone did. Maybe she had figured out that I was the son of a bitch who’d caused Sergei to lose his leg, and yet I was still playing in the NHL when he couldn’t. Hell, maybe she wanted to take out her own injury on me. Whatever it was, I wished she would just cuss me out so we could move on, both of us knowing exactly where the other stood.
    “Yeah, you can help me.” Her eyes roved over me, up and down, before stopping on my face. Or really, my beard. She stared at it a long time before moving back up to my eyes. “You can buy me coffee,” she finally said.
    That didn’t make any sense at all. “Why you want me to buy coffee?”
    She raised a single brow, not wavering in the least. “Because I do. You ready? I’ll drive.”
    I got the sense that she was determined to have her way, whether I liked it or not.
    “I don’t want to have coffee.