The Pilot and the Puck-Up: A Hockey / One Night Stand / Virgin Romantic Comedy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue

  Pippa Grant’s Complete Book List

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The Pilot and the Puck-Up

  Pippa Grant

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Pippa Grant’s Complete Book List

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Introduction

  The Pilot and the Puck-Up

  A Hockey / One Night Stand / Virgin Romance

  He’s the biggest, baddest, most spider-fearing motherpucker on the ice…

  When you’re named after the king of the gods, the world expects certain things of you.

  Tough? Damn right.

  Smart? Don’t let the hockey uniform fool you.

  Large and in charge? Honey, I’m the biggest, baddest, mother pucking-est machine to ever own the ice. I shoot. I score. In and out of the rink. I don’t come early, but I come often, if you know what I mean. And I always leave the ladies wanting more.

  Until that chick last night.

  I’m no one-thrust wonder, and you’re damn right I’m going to prove to her I can do better. But every time I think I’m finally on my way back into her pants, she one-ups and out-balls me.

  I should cut my losses, lick my wounds, and walk away.

  But Zeus Berger doesn’t walk away from anything.

  Especially when she might be the only woman in the world who can handle me.

  The Pilot and the Puck-Up is a standalone romantic comedy featuring a hockey player whose ego is the only thing bigger than his shoe size, the most badass woman to ever fly a plane, rubber chockey (don't ask), and no cheating or cliffhangers.

  Keep in touch with Pippa Grant!

  Join the Pipsquad

  Get the Pipster Report

  Friend Pippa

  Like Pippa

  Hang with Pippa on Goodreads

  Follow Pippa on BookBub

  Books by Pippa Grant

  Mister McHottie (Chase & Ambrosia)

  Stud in the Stacks (Parker & Knox)

  The Pilot and the Puck-Up (Zeus and Joey)

  Royally Pucked (Manning and Gracie)

  Exes and Ho Ho Hos (Jake and Kaitlyn)

  And more…

  1

  Zeus Berger (aka the biggest, baddest, most spider-fearing mother pucker to ever play in the NHL)

  Coconuts are itchy. I should’ve gone for the watermelons.

  But it was a bitch and a half getting that last-minute private fitting at Madame Cosette’s anyway, and the woman probably would’ve had to stitch three bras together and then nail the damn contraption to my shoulders to get it to hold without losing a melon, so coconuts it is.

  Besides, it’s the heels that are gonna be the bigger problem. Damn good thing I have ankles of fucking steel.

  And my minidress is stretched to max capacity over the coconuts anyway. It’s also in danger of showing my other coconuts, if you catch my drift. And there’s definitely a drift—or is that a draft?—on my other coconuts.

  A wolf whistle echoes through the swanky private clubhouse where I’m strolling in with my twin brother on my left and my brother from another mother on my right. A passing server drops a tray of champagne. Conversation stops. And a bunch of stuffy golf pricks gape at us like we’re a mutant alien circus freak show crashing their million-dollar wedding reception.

  We’re three dudes who have more money than God, more muscles than all the Kardashians’ bodyguards combined, and more fun than cotton candy and roller coasters.

  And this is no wedding reception. It’s a chance for pretentious rich asses to brag to each other about who gave more money to the foundation benefitting from this celebrity golf tournament tomorrow.

  Ares is scowling, squinting around the room like he’s looking for the dumbass prince who was stupid enough to bet me ten grand I wouldn’t show up tonight dressed like a chick. Chase is on his phone, snickering like he’s not half a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than me.

  I swipe his phone from him and shove it between my coconuts. “Quit sexting my sister in public.”

  “I was posting that picture of you getting dressed to Facebook,” he replies. “Ares, fetch the phone.”

  Ares grunts. “Shut your face,” he tells Chase.

  I slap my brother on the shoulder. “Lighten up. I make this shit look good.”

  “Hate to break it to you,” Chase says, “but your sister actually makes a better woman.”

  “You saying you wouldn’t tap this?”

  “Saying she gives a better blow job.”

  He easily ducks my fist, because the fucker’s known me too long. Plus, my heart isn’t in taking him out. Chase is good for my sister, and he’s a damn good friend to boot. Not that I’ll ever tell him that to his face. Again.

  Ares quits scowling enough to snicker too. “Girls don’t hit,” he tells me.

  “You gonna let him talk about Ambrosia like that?”

  “I know where he sleeps.”

  People think Ares is dumb because he doesn’t talk in big words. But he’s one of the smartest fuckers I know, in his own way.

  Only dude in the world as big as me too, but in these heels—special ordered Mablanoks something or others—I’ve got him by four inches. Air’s thin up here at over seven feet tall, but that ain’t gonna stop me from having a hell of a fun time tonight.

  “Gentlemen.” A half-British, half-ice king voice intrudes on our private party before we reach the food table. The prince extends a hand to Chase and Ares before set
tling his grin on me. “And… I’m sorry, madam, it seems I’ve missed your name.”

  Never met the dude in person before—all our shit-talking happened over the phone—but I’ve seen his picture, read his hockey stats, and I know his stepsister. Like Chase, he’s tall and beefy enough for a regular human—comes from some friggin’ cold northern Atlantic nation with enough sheep for his own harem—but Ares and I are towering over him too.

  “This is Ambrosia,” Chase offers. “I have terrible taste in women.”

  “Lick my tits,” I say to Chase before I grab the fucker and rub his face between my coconuts.

  Ares grins.

  Chase pinches my ass and I let him go. Two more servers do an about-face and scurry away with their trays of little bread bites that are smaller than my pinky and apparently pass as food at these things.

  “You can call me The Goddess,” I tell the prince.

  Manning Frey’s royal features split into a wider grin as he rocks back on his heels. Where I’m in a girdle, size 18 fuck-me shoes and a medieval torture device that’s holding up my coconuts, he’s in some tan suit and white shirt getup that was probably picked for him by a royal ninny. “Overselling ourselves, are we?”

  I like the fucker already. Not because he owes me ten grand, but because I’ve got a feeling he’d be a good companion in his own coconut bra and minidress if we wanted to crash another snooty function tonight. “Not if a pansy-ass like you passes as a prince. I’m still taking home the hottest girl here tonight.”

  He juts his chin up. If he keeps grinning wider like that, his smile’s gonna eat his whole face before long. “You’re going to get a woman. While you’re dressed like that.”

  Yeah, I know what it looks like. Me and Ares, we’re the biggest mother puckers to ever strap on skates and wield sticks in the NHL. I’m sprouting a five o’clock shadow before I’m done shaving every morning. Each of my thighs is the size of one of those European sissy cars. Solid muscle too. My ma calls us big-boned. My sister calls us overgrown apes. I make one ugly-ass woman.

  “Damn fucking right,” I tell Prince Manning anyway. Because you don’t get to be the biggest, hairiest, most feared badass on the ice by owning up to your shortcomings. No, I bear my teeth at those fuckers and take them down. If you ain’t got your balls, you ain’t got nothing. “I’m gonna make her switch sides, then when we get back to my hotel room, I’m gonna make her switch back, and I’m gonna rock her fucking world.”

  “As completely wrong as that sounds, I’ve seen him do it before,” Chase says.

  Ares grunts an agreement, even though both of them know I’m full of shit and I know they’re each looking forward to watching me fail. I share a look with my twin.

  You’re such a fucking dumbass, his says, because he knows it’s biologically impossible for any woman in this stuffy, exclusive clubhouse to seriously be attracted to me like this. I flunked biology—the classroom part, I mean, because obviously I know what I’m doing with the biology in my briefs—and I still know it too.

  Two words, my look replies. Endorsement. Dollars.

  I don’t give two shits if I score a chick tonight. I score plenty, on and off the ice.

  Also?

  Zeus Berger doesn’t back down from a challenge. Even a challenge I can’t win. And I smell a challenge coming on.

  “Care to put some money on that?” Manning says, right on time.

  “Double or nothing,” I reply. Win or lose, no man will ever say I didn’t put my heart in it. And I’ve got my winning personality on my side. I might be ugly, but I’m not out. Far from it.

  Ares snickers again.

  “Go on and pick the girl,” I tell Manning. “Wouldn’t want you to think I planned this.”

  He rubs a hand over his beard while he scans the room. “I’m beginning to see why Willow speaks so ambiguously of you.”

  “That means she only half-likes us,” I translate for Ares. “Probably intimidated by our awesomeness.”

  “Or the fact that you threatened her fiancé with a ten-pound wheel of moldy cheddar,” Chase muses.

  “Fucker needs to put his foot down with his mother on all those wedding plans.”

  “On that, we’re in complete agreement,” Manning says crisply. He stops and nods toward the wall of windows overlooking the lake on the course’s eighteenth hole with the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west. “Her.”

  I squint, because that half of the room is backlit by the light glaring in. “The chick who just shoved her finger into Levi Wilson’s beer bottle?”

  Ares perks up. “Boy band Levi?”

  “Aw, shit, Bro’s gonna be pissed she missed this,” Chase mutters.

  That’s right—my sister is a boy band ho. Got a thing for Levi’s old band, Bro Code—which she swears is a total coincidence, considering Chase has called her Bro since we were kids, a nickname she claimed to hate until she realized how much she liked Chase a couple months back.

  “Not the beverage assaulter,” Manning says. “The woman with her.”

  I shift my attention from the woman trying to shake a beer bottle off her finger while obviously stuttering apologies to the world’s reigning pop rock god, and a familiar beat takes up residence in my pulse.

  Long, dark hair. Tall. She’s built—not heavy, but not turn-sideways-and-she’d-disappear skinny either. She’s in pants that accentuate her curves and a no-nonsense blouse that can’t hide her rack. Even in the backlight, there’s a feline grace to her movements as she efficiently grabs her companion’s arm, neatly twists the stuck bottle off her friend’s finger, and hands it back to Levi Wilson.

  I do love me some feline grace.

  And even though she has the bearing of a woman much smarter than my usual type, there’s some stirring over my southern coconuts that suggests I might be about to start a bigger scene.

  These rich mofos would shit a brick if I popped a boner in this dress.

  Heh.

  But while I’m damn proud of my Neanderthal heritage—gets me a big paycheck on the ice every year, and sponsorships for everything from deodorant to car jacks off the ice, probably girdles before tonight’s over too—even I know the quickest way into a lady’s pants isn’t always showing her the goods. So I tell Jupiter to cool it down there—what? You’re damn right both me and my junk are named after kings of the gods—and nod to Manning. “You’re on.”

  2

  Joey Diamonte (aka Fireball)

  The last time I stood in for my business partner at a schmooze fest, I drank three overgrown frat boys under the table, won six grand sharking a day trading asshole in pool, and interrupted a congressman while his wife’s yoga instructor was kissing a booboo on his dick.

  Not my business, but when you have resting bitch face, one of the top ten badass jobs on the planet, and a special talent for ignoring social cues—like I was really going to marvel at the size of his dick? Come on. I have pencils bigger than that—well, let’s just say people jump to the wrong conclusions.

  And I don’t take too kindly to being threatened.

  So me being here tonight, surrounded by rich, famous snotbuckets? You know it wasn’t by choice, and we didn’t have any other options.

  At least Peach—that’s my business partner, and yes, that’s her real name—had the presence of mind to call my sister in to babysit this time. Not like any of us are happy about any part of this situation.

  Except maybe Gracie.

  Who’s apparently in utter heaven. And unexpectedly klutzy.

  One minute, my sister’s about to faint over meeting Levi Wilson, and the next she’s talking with her hands again and accidentally shoving a finger down the neck of his beer bottle.

  “Gracie’s been on four flights with me and never once tossed her cookies,” I tell Levi as I pass his bottle back to him.

  “You’re the rock star here,” Levi tells her. “Joey made me puke six times while we were shooting my video in her plane.”

  “Ohmydog, I love you,�
� Gracie squeaks. Her hands go up again. Levi smoothly passes the beer bottle to a bodyguard impressively disguised as a snooty rich dude while Gracie once again does what she does best. “I used to kiss your poster every night before I went to bed. Joey always said I’d get herpes from it, but I was too young to know what herpes was. Now, she’d prefer I stay a virgin until I’m eighty. Not that I’m a virgin. Or easy. If that’s what you’re thinking. I do have standards.”

  That’s Gracie.

  I raised her well, if I do say so myself. Because Levi Wilson, who’s basically been named the hottest, sexiest, studliest creature on earth by every magazine, blog, and woman under the age of forty pretty much every year for the last ten years, has put his bedroom eyes away and is now instead giving her the patient smile he probably uses with seven-year-olds.

  He twists so he’s at Gracie’s side, slipping an arm around her shoulders, well above any danger zones, so I don’t have to throat-punch him. “You want a selfie? Here, hand me your phone.”

  I pass him my phone, because Gracie—yes, verbal diarrhea Gracie, my pride and joy—has gone catatonic. He snaps a few photos and hands it back.

  “Get any ideas and I will slice your dick off and feed it to street rats,” I murmur to him as I line up to take some better shots.

  He grins. “Already understood, Fireball.”

  “You are such a beaver blocker,” Gracie hisses.

  I give her the yeah, what’s your point? cheek-and-lip curl.

  She replies with a classic you are NEVER going to be an aunt humph.