| "Brielle, it's nice to finally meet you," Glenn said, walking up to the new assistant coach as she was tugging her hockey bag out of the trunk of her rental car. The brunette spun around in surprise at the sound of her superior's voice. Glenn came out of nowhere to startle her, she was parked in front of the arena. "Oh, um, yes, it's nice to meet you too," Brielle said, shaking his extended hand. "Tell me something, is it always this cold around here?" she asked, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. Glenn laughed. "It's warm out today. You'll get used to it. I forgot you're from California, how was your flight?" "It was okay," Brielle said, following Glenn into the arena. "I'm not that fond of flying, and the turbulance was pretty bad at points. I'm just glad I'm on solid ground again." "We're glad you got here in one piece," Glenn said with a laugh, opening the door for her and following her inside. Once inside, they took an elevator to the lower level. "You can park at the North end of the arena for practices and games, I'll show you where after practice tonight," Glenn said as the elevator doors opened. "The locker room is through this hallway, I'll show you your office, it's right through here-" "Army, if you put Ben Gay in my cup one more time, I swear to God I'm gonna take that stick and shove it right up your-" "It wasn't me this time, I swear!" "Well then who was it, huh?" Brielle stood next to Glenn, watching an argument develop between Eric Meloche and Colby Armstrong. She leaned toward him and asked under her breath, "Do they do things like this often?" "Yeah, they do. They didn't in the WCHL?" "Oddly enough, no," Brielle replied while Eric got Colby in a headlock. The rest of the team, sitting on random benches throughout the locker room, was unable to contain themselves and were laughing hysterically while Colby's face turned colors. None of them seemed to notice their coaches standing in the doorway, Glenn with an embarassed look on his face and Brielle with an amused one. "It's so nice to meet my new team," Brielle said loudly, announcing her presence in the room right as Eric was beginning to give Colby a noogie. The team stopped laughing at the same time and looked up. Colby couldn't, the only thing he saw was the ground because of Eric. "Meloche, let go, I didn't do it this time, I can't breath too well down here!" Colby choked out before Eric realized what he was still doing and let go. "Sorry man," Eric muttered, walking back to his spot on the bench. "Well, now that that's settled, I'd like you all to meet your new assistant coach, Brielle Rucchin. She's gonna be with us for a while, so I want you all to make her feel welcome. I shouldn't have to give you this speech, but since you're on the practical joke streak, I'm gonna make it a point to tell you to leave her alone. Brielle, did you wanna say anything?" "Yes, thank you Glenn." She turned to the team. "Like he said, I am Brielle Rucchin, you can call me Ellie or Bri if you so choose, so long as you don't call me 'hey you.' I'm twenty-five and I've been playing hockey for twenty-three years, I've been skating since I could walk. My brother plays for the Ducks, my dad played hockey, his dad played hockey, and so on and so forth, and I picked it up whether I wanted to or not. I've seen tapes of your games and you're all very talented players. But, I'm sure your coach has gone through this before, it's been evident that we need some help in a few areas. And hopefully I can help you with that, because that's why I was hired. I'd like to think of myself as a good coach, generally I'm a nice person but if you piss me off, I turn into a bitch quite quickly. And if I hear any jokes about PMS, heaven help you." She paused and looked around the room. "I'm sure that you're not too pleased with having a girl for your assistant coach, but I'm all you got right now, so I'm asking you to please trust my opinions and listen to me. I hope we get off on the right foot, so... Let's go out there and you can show me what you really got." ~*~*~ "I have died and gone to heaven," Colby said, skating up next to Eric during practice. He was barely paying attention to what he was doing, or what anyone else around him was doing - his attention was focused on Brielle. "She really isn't that cute," Eric muttered, playing with the puck on the end of his stick. "She's only like, five foot five, how did she play hockey for all these years?" Colby snorted. "I don't know who you're looking at, but I'm looking at a goddess, she's fucking gorgeous. I'm gonna enjoy taking orders from her, she can make me do whatever she wants me to do." Eric looked over at his younger friend. The rookie was obviously smitten, he had been since the second he laid eyes on her. Eric was a bit different, he wasn't swayed by a pretty face as easily as Colby was. He didn't like the idea of a girl being his assistant coach, and from the second he met her, he wasn't completely sure why but he didn't like her. There was just something about her that irked the hell out of him, and he couldn't put his finger on it for the life of him. "You have problems, Army," Eric said, shaking his head. "You do realize that you can't do the nasty with our coach, I'm pretty sure that's against some rule." He paused. "Not to mention it's just plain weird." "How is getting it on with a hot girl weird?" "Think about it Army, you'll be banging our coach. That just doesn't sound good." "Are you kidding me? Banging our coach sounds pretty damn good when our coach looks like that. Besides, she went out with one of her old players, Chris Peyton," Colby said, taking a halfhearted shot on net. "Apparently he didn't like her being the coach anymore, and they broke up. But see, that's the thing - she can tell me what to do all she wants, I'll do it." "Armstrong! Can you come over here for a second?" Brielle yelled, looking from a clipboard to where Colby was standing. Colby grinned. "Sure thing," he said, giving Eric a wink before skating over to the bench, where Brielle began going over a new play that he was the center of. Eric watched the smitten twenty year old, wondering why it pissed him off so much when Brielle laughed at something Colby said and playfully smacked him in the arm. "Meloche, watch it!" Toby Peterson, one of the team's centers yelled, trying to get out of Eric's way as he skated toward the net blindly, not paying any attention to where he was going. Toby yelled too late, and Eric crashed directly into him, body checking him hard. They were both down on the ice before Eric realized what had happened. "Holy shit, Toby, I didn't mean-" "Peterson, you alright?" Brielle asked, skating over to where the players were sitting. "Yea, I'm fine," Toby replied from his spot on the ice. "He got my ribs though, he checked me pretty hard." "Meloche, what the hell were you watching?" Brielle asked, irritated. "He could be seriously hurt, we need him next week when we play Binghamton. Pay attention where to you're going when you're skating that hard. You don't check the guys that are on your own scrimmage team." Eric's temper flared. He was about to say something he'd regret, instead he got up and skated off the ice and into the locker room, where he threw off his gloves and began punching a punching bag. He would've loved to let the girl have it, but hell if he was gonna jeopordize his chances of getting back to the NHL. He was playing well lately, and he was a heartbeat away from getting called up. And the sooner he got called up, the sooner he got to get away from Brielle Rucchin, the girl that had managed to drive him completely insane within the first three hours of him knowing her. |
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