The flirtatious gleam in his eye sizzled over her skin. “No thanks,” she said with a smile and a shake of her head.

“Damn.”

“Logan, she’s Jason’s friend,” Laura scolded. He grinned and kissed his mom’s forehead as he scooted past her and then bounded up the stairs to the concourse two at a time with his long legs.

“I’ll go with him,” Matt said.

“No beer,” Doug said.

“Dad! I’m legal at home.”

Doug rolled his eyes as if he knew he didn’t have a hope of controlling his son. “It’s true,” he said, shaking his head ruefully as he and Remi and Laura sat down again.

Laura shifted in her seat so she could talk to both her husband and Remi. “Jase is playing well,” she said. “He won every face-off.”

How had she noticed that?

“Yup,” Doug agreed. “Maybe Tag’s going easy on him.”

“He would never do that.”

Doug grinned. “Probably not.”

“But they’re going to have to do more forechecking,” Laura said.

A little lost, Remi listened to them analyze the game. God, Laura knew so much about the game, she sounded like a television commentator. After watching four sons grow up playing hockey their whole lives, she supposed Laura probably knew as much about it as they did. Remi sighed.

Jason scored a goal in the second period and the Wolves went into the third period with the score tied one-all. But despite intense pressure and a lot of end-to-end action, the Wolves could not put the puck in the net. The crowd was up and down with each opportunity, cheering, groaning, booing missed penalties.

“They need to change their lines up,” Doug muttered. “Put Jase with Daviduk and Lalonde.”

There were only three minutes left in the game.

“What happens if it’s a tie?” Remi asked.

“They play five minutes of four-on-four overtime, and then if it’s still tied, they have a shootout.”

“They have to win,” she murmured. Tension gripped her, every muscle tight, her stomach in knots. She was getting a headache from biting her lips, her hands ached from clapping and her throat was raw from cheering.

And then the Stars took a penalty. The crowd went crazy.

“Damn,” Laura muttered. “I mean, oh great.”

Remi turned to her. “Tag just took a stupid penalty,” Laura said. “The Stars play a man short now, with him in the penalty box.” Her brow creased. “So for two minutes the Wolves have a power play—a man advantage.”

Remi nodded. “That’s good, though, right?”

“It’s a great chance for them to score.”

“Oh, hell,” Doug sad. “They’re gonna pull their goalie.”

He nodded to the bench where the Wolves’ goaltender had skated over to talk to the coach. The coach gestured wildly and the goalie nodded, squirted water into his mask, then skated back to the net.

“He’s going back,” Remi said.

“He’ll come out when they get the puck down in the Phoenix end.” Doug explained. “Goddammit, that’s risky. Why the hell is he doing that? They’ve already got a man advantage.”

They all sat forward to watch Jason take the face-off and, damn, this time he lost. The Stars got the puck and immediately headed toward the Wolves net, tossing it back and forth with neat passes, the puck cracking against their sticks. But the Wolves defense knocked the puck away from Jason as he crossed the blue line. He and a Star raced into the corner and fought for the puck along the boards and Remi cringed at the bashing and crashing that went on, a vision of Jason bleeding on the ice flashing through her memory. She shivered.

Finally the puck came loose, but a Star slashed at it and sent it spinning down the ice.

“Icing!” Remi cried.

“Uh…no.” Laura patted her hand. “They have a penalty so it’s not icing.”

Remi frowned. Jesus. She wasn’t used to feeling so stupid and uninformed. She wanted to slide under the seat. This game was more complicated than she’d realized. But then Jason swooped in and picked up the puck. The crowd screamed. Remi gripped her hands tightly together. Go, go, go, Jason! She sucked on her bottom lip as he deked around a defenseman, came to a fast stop in a shower of ice in front of another and slid around him too, and then he was on his own, racing toward the Detroit net.

“Go!” Remi screamed with the crowd, the noise in the arena so loud it hurt her ears. She surged to her feet along with everyone else. “Go, Jase!”

He lifted his stick, took a swing and blasted the puck at the net. Remi tensed, waiting for the red light—please, please—but the goalie snagged it in his glove and fell to the ice. The whistle blew and the play halted.

“Damn!” Remi realized she was clutching Laura’s arm and hastily released it. “Sorry.” She sagged and dropped into her seat.

“That’s okay!” Laura flashed her a smile. “That was so close!”

Jason skated off the ice and another player prepared to take the face-off.

Remi glanced at the clock. Only thirty-two seconds left in their power play. Only a minute and six seconds left in the game.

Do or die.

She so wanted this for Jase. She twisted her fingers together, gnawing her bottom lip again.

She looked down the ice. The goaltender was out of his net.

“He’s out,” she said to Doug and he nodded. “Why’d they do that? Isn’t that just asking for Phoenix to score a goal on them? How can they play with no goaltender?”

Doug grinned. “They put another player on in his place. That means they have a two-man advantage.”

“But an empty net!” That seemed crazy dangerous.

Her heart leaping, fingers clasped so tightly they hurt, she watched as the puck was dropped. Wolves got the puck. Lalonde circled behind the net and paused. And waited.

“What’s he waiting for?” Remi cried. She vibrated with tension.

“They’re getting set up. Look at the players on the blue line.”

Lalonde shot the puck from behind the net to one of his teammates, and the Wolves played with the puck like it was a pinball, passing it from one player to another, to another, and back again, back and forth, up and down, while the Stars whirled around in front of them, lunging with their sticks, trying desperately to get the puck.

“They need to shoot at the net!” Remi said, eyes darting back and forth to follow the puck.

“They will,” Doug said, patting her shoulder. “Just…wait…now!”

Finally, the opening they’d wanted and Daviduk didn’t even stop the puck, just slapped at it as it shot past him on the ice, directing it into the net.

“Yeah!”

The red light flashed, the horn blasted and the entire crowd in the Metro Center went wild. Remi pumped a fist in the air. She turned to Laura and they hugged, swaying back and forth.

Laura drew back, her smile wide and jubilant, and Remi collected herself. Dear God, she’d just hugged Jason’s mom and she didn’t even know her.

But the bubbly feeling inside her couldn’t be repressed. Amid the noise of the still-cheering crowd, Jason took the next face-off and won it and the Wolves toyed with the puck while the clock ticked down the last seconds of the game. Then the roof nearly rose off the Metro Center as the game ended—the Wolves in the playoffs.

“The puck had fucking eyes, man!”

“No shit! With that traffic in front of the net, I couldn’t believe it went in! You had horseshoes up your ass tonight!”

Jason grinned. His only goal of the game hadn’t been pretty, but what the hell.

His brothers had greeted him as he walked into the lounge at the downtown hotel where they and his parents were staying, but although he accepted their back-slaps and congratulations, his gaze slid past them to Remi. She rose from her seat, her smile so sweet and generous, and he pushed by Matt and Logan and held out his arms.

She flew into them and he held her tight, lifting her feet off the floor as usual.

“Congratulations!” she whispered and then he kissed her, a long, hard, jubilant kiss. “I knew you’d do it.”