Centuria Books · Man Advantage 6
Man Advantage 6 — Read the First Chapter
Four kittens are crying behind a college rink. The man stalking Imogen Wren has one hand on their carrier. Two professional hockey stars are about to teach him what a bad advantage really costs.
Chapter 1
The box cried.
Imogen stopped beside the service-road dumpster. One earbud came out while wind shoved dry snow across her boots. The rink wall rose to her left in gray block and dented steel, and a delivery truck coughed far down the lane.
Another thin, hoarse cry.
Not a bird.
She dropped her backpack and followed the cry behind a stack of broken pallets. A green produce box sat on the frozen ground, completely wrapped in brown tape. Six holes had been punched through the lid with a ballpoint tip.
Movement inside the box.
“Oh, you rotten bastard.”
She knelt as cold soaked through both knees of her jeans, then set her phone on the pallet and started a video. Slowly, she showed the road, the rink door, the dumpster, and the sealed box.
“Four thirty-eight,” she said. “Service lane behind Norvale rink, where a taped-shut box holds at least one kitten.”
She quickly took trauma shears from her backpack because the campus clinic made students count every tool before and after a shift. She had bought her own pair after a dog swallowed half a roll of gauze during her first month.
The first tape strip, neatly cut.
“There you are.”
Brant Rutland’s voice scraped harder than the wind. Still, she kept the shears under the tape and said, “Stay back.”
“I’ve been waiting twenty minutes.”
“Your kitchen light went dark at one twelve,” he said. “I knew you’d be tired.”
The shears remained under the tape because Imogen had never told him which window belonged to her.
“That is not a fact you should know.”
“I pay attention.”
“That sounds like a choice you made.”
His clean skates knocked together as he walked with them slung over one shoulder. His green Norvale jacket looked new. Fresh white paper around the roses in his fist.
The kittens cried again as he deliberately stopped close enough for his shadow to cover the box. “I brought you something.”
“Move your foot.”
“You didn’t answer my last message.”
“I answered the first nine.” She cut the second strip. “No stayed no.”
“You never gave me a fair chance.”
She looked up at sandy hair, hazel eyes, and a long nose pink from the cold. He smiled as if the two of them shared a joke.
She steadily pointed the shears at the pallet’s edge. “Back up because you’re blocking the light.”
His smile pulled tight. He said, “You dress like that and then act shocked when a guy thinks you want attention.”
Her patched jacket covered a black sweater and two clinic pens, while her boots bore white salt scars from the sidewalks. Dark lipstick wasn’t a request. No invitation in the violet strip under her black hair.
“I’m not shocked; I’m bored,” she said.
She turned back to the box as the tape peeled with a jagged rip and a black paw shot through the gap to catch her glove.
“Good grip, but poor judgment,” she murmured.
Carefully, Imogen widened the opening and found four small bodies on a soaking dish towel. The black kitten hissed, a cream one cried, and yellow crust ringed the tortoiseshell’s eyes. The orange tabby didn’t stir, but two fingers against his chest found a fast heart and shallow breath.
“I need my carrier,” she said.
He laughed and asked, “You’re doing this now?”
“Yes.”
“We have dinner.”
“We haven’t.” She slid her jacket off and made a padded nest with the lining turned in. “My navy canvas carrier is in the clinic’s front supply room, so tell Mara at the desk I sent you.”
He stared at her bare black sweater and said, “Come eat with me first.”
“No.”
“One hour.”
“No.”
“You owe me after last week.”
She tucked the orange kitten against her stomach under the jacket. “I owe you a report number if you keep standing there.”
He angrily dropped the roses, scattering white petals over gray snow. “I’ve tried nice.”
“Try leaving.”
His hand closed around the canvas strap of her backpack, and he dragged it out of reach.
She carefully stood with the kitten against her chest, five feet from the truck lane and eight from the rink door. The clinic entrance sat too far away for anyone at the desk to hear, though her phone still recorded from the pallet.
“Put it down,” she said.
“After you listen.”
“Put it down, Brant.”
“You like making me look stupid.”
“You came prepared.”
His face changed as the easy campus smile vanished, and he tossed the backpack against the dumpster before reaching for the jacket around the kitten.
She sharply turned her body, but his fingers caught the empty carrier strap sewn across the back; he pulled, and the orange kitten slid against her ribs. She drove her heel down on Brant’s polished shoe. He swore and yanked harder until the jacket opened.
The kitten fell, but a massive hand caught him six inches above the pavement.
She caught black wool, taped knuckles, and an orange tail curled over one thick wrist as a second man moved past her.
He hit the delivery truck with a heavy metal boom.
The man holding him didn’t punch. One forearm across Brant’s chest kept his boots down. He stood half a head taller and twice as broad, with dark blond hair swept from a severe face and a thin scar through his right brow.
“Take your hand off her things,” he said.
His fingers opened while the other man held the orange kitten in both palms. Dark curls brushed his Mammoths jacket, his nose had been bent once, and brown eyes checked the kitten, Imogen, then the man at the truck.
“Conrad, he let go.”
He eased the pressure by one exact inch.
He noisily sucked in air before saying, “You can’t touch me.”
He said, “I’m touching your coat.”
“Get off.”
“When she says you can leave.”
She pulled her jacket straight.
Useful work for shaking hands.
“The orange one is cold,” she told the curly-haired man. “Put him inside your jacket. Against your shirt if you can stand the claws.”
His mouth bent. “I can stand the claws.”
He immediately opened his coat, revealing a soft gray shirt stretched over a chest wide enough to block the wind. Gently, he set the kitten inside with his bare hand curved around the tiny body.
He said, “Cormac.”
“Warm and breathing, love.”
Old ease in that one word.
Not teammates, then, or not only that.
She studied Conrad again because the Mammoths defenseman was hard to miss, even for a woman who hated hockey. Six feet five, shoulders like a locked gate, blue-gray eyes fixed on Brant with a calm worse than shouting.
Cormac was broader: power forward, penalty minutes, and a grin that sold tickets. Yet he held one cold kitten to his skin as if the league could wait.
Low heat in Imogen’s stomach.
Bad timing, though painfully accurate.
She retrieved her phone and stopped the video. “Brant, you’re going to walk to the main road. You’re not going to the clinic. You’re not waiting by my car. If I see you again today, I call campus police and city police.”
“They attacked me.”
“I recorded you pulling a kitten out of my arms.”
His gaze snapped to the phone, and Conrad tightened his hold first.
He said, “Look at me.”
Brant did.
“She told you where to walk.”
“You think because you play pro—”
Inside his coat, the kitten made a fragile sound while he quietly stepped closer.
“I think you made a tiny thing hit the air because a woman said no.” His grin had gone. “Walk while my man is still being polite.”
Conrad released him cleanly.
He lurched forward, caught himself, and glared at Imogen. “My father built half this campus.”
“He should have spent more on doors,” she said. “You keep missing the exit.”
Cormac laughed, but Conrad only moved one corner of his mouth.
But he reddened visibly, grabbed his skates, and left the roses in the snow.
She watched him leave, then knelt beside the box and gripped her phone until one sudden tremor passed.
The video had saved. She sent it to Leona and to the folder holding Brant’s messages: eleven screenshots, three unwanted gifts, two waits by her car, one admitted watch on her kitchen window, and now this. A pattern stayed real even when campus staff called each piece a mistake.
“Do you need police?” Conrad asked while he watched the end of the lane.
“I need the kittens warm first, and then I make the report.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Imogen watched him. “He left. I have his face and voice on video. I have two witnesses who are difficult to lose in a crowd.”
He gently rubbed one finger over the orange kitten’s head.
Beside one damp ear, one thick finger.
“We’re distinctive.”
“You’re built like a courthouse with worse manners.”
“That’s Conrad. I’m built like a friendly public house.”
He gave Cormac a flat look, but the other smiled because the ease between them held no doubt and no performance. He knew where Conrad would stand before Conrad moved. He knew which joke meant Cormac was worried.
She wanted to see that ease with the doors locked, but she put the thought away with the same care she used for sharp tools.
“I’ll report him,” she said. “My order matters: kittens, vet, police. If he comes back before we leave, the order changes.”
So he quietly accepted that.
She called the emergency clinic and gave the technician four weights she could only estimate, the exposure risk, the eye discharge, and the orange kitten’s weak movement; after listening carefully, she repeated the instructions and made Cormac close his jacket another inch.
“Not over his face.”
“I know where his face is.”
“He is the size of your thumb. Forgive my lack of faith.”
“You may inspect my thumb.”
He said, “Cormac.”
“Professional concern, love.”
She ended the call before the clinic tech heard her laugh and said, “I need a carrier, warm towels, and the emergency clinic, not the campus desk. These four need more than we have here.”
He smoothly crouched; wool stretched across his heavy thighs. “My truck is running.”
“Good. He keeps the orange one against his chest while you take the box flat without tilting it.”
So neither man argued; their quiet obedience aroused her beyond size alone.
He carefully slid his hands under the cardboard while the black kitten attacked his thumb through the gap, then studied the tiny teeth in his glove.
She said, “He likes you.”
“That’s not what this means.”
“You can tell him because he seems open to feedback.”
And Cormac laughed warmly before saying, “She has you measured already.”
“She has four patients,” Conrad said as he steadily lifted the box. “Open the truck.”
Cormac said, “You heard the boss.” He offered Imogen her backpack one-handed. Up close, he smelled like cold air, clean sweat, and sharp soap from an arena shower, and the kitten’s head showed above his half-zipped coat.
She took the bag. “I’m the boss until they have a veterinarian.”
He asked, “What happens after?”
“I become difficult again.”
Conrad’s gaze traveled slowly from her boots to the violet strip in her hair before he looked at Cormac. They held each other’s eyes for one beat as familiar want moved between them first, then both looked back at her and widened its shape.
Her pulse kicked as she tucked her shears away and said, “If you two plan to stare at me like that, carry the kittens while you do it.”
At the truck, Cormac opened the rear door and said, “Yes, boss.”
He carried the crying box toward her and said, “Tell me where.”
A question in his voice.
Better than an order.
Chapter 2
Conrad had carried bleeding men off the ice, but the crying box on his lap frightened him more.
Every thin sound slipped through the cardboard and struck beneath his ribs while he held the box flat as Cormac drove. Beside Conrad in the back seat, Imogen kept two fingers under the cream kitten’s jaw and counted each shallow breath against the truck clock.
The heater blew hard across their boots.
“Not hotter,” she said when Cormac touched the dial, “because warming them too fast creates another problem.”
He returned his hand to the wheel while a small lump moved inside his shirt, directly above his heart.
“Bossy,” he said.
She answered, “Alive.”
Conrad studied her bare arms because she had wrapped her jacket around the box again. Her black sweater had a run at one cuff, and a narrow silver ring circled her right thumb.
“Take my coat.”
“The kittens need it more.”
“I have another.”
“In the truck?”
“At home.”
That earned him a dry look. “Useful.”
From the front seat, Cormac laughed and said, “She has your number.”
After ignoring him, Conrad said, “You’re cold.”
“I’m working.”
Not an answer, but a wall all the same. He knew walls, and he knew what happened when a man tested one before he knew the load it held. Quietly, he shifted nearer the door and blocked the draft leaking around its seal.
She noticed without thanking him.
Good.
The emergency clinic occupied a brick building beside an all-night grocery store, its red awning bright against the snow. Cormac had barely stopped the truck beneath it when two techs hurried through the glass doors with warm towels and a wheeled unit.
She took command of the handoff.
“Four kittens, about seven weeks old, found outside in a taped box. A wet towel was underneath them. The orange male was lowest and least responsive, while the tortie has discharge in both eyes. No food or water given. Slow warming only.”
The taller tech repeated every fact as her partner lifted the lid, and the black kitten attacked a gloved finger at once.
“Good,” Imogen said. “That one remains angry.”
They wheeled the box through the double doors while Cormac opened his shirt and gave up the orange kitten last, exposing red claw tracks over his broad chest.
Then the treatment doors closed.
Conrad had spent his career waiting inside rooms where delay meant a line change, a penalty review, or a doctor deciding whether someone could return. When the waiting belonged to him, he could stand it all night.
This didn’t.
At the intake desk, Imogen asked for a written time, the techs’ names, and proof that nobody would throw out the taped box. She took a picture of the wet towel through its clear evidence bag, then sent it with the city report before anyone could call it trash.
Cormac asked, “You think the box matters?”
“Someone sealed living animals inside it.”
“Brant?”
“I don’t know.”
No softened guess. No false claim. She kept proof apart from anger more cleanly than men twice her age did in league hearings.
A tech returned with four bands and the first weights. Imogen copied each number while the woman said the orange kitten was coldest. The tortoiseshell needed an eye test, the black male had bitten a thermometer cover, and the cream female had tried to eat hers.
Conrad asked, “Are those good signs?”
“Fighting takes energy, so it’s better than no response,” Imogen said. “It’s not the same as safe.”
“Exactly,” the technician agreed.
He didn’t demand to know when they would be safe. That answer would come through warmth, water, blood sugar, and the next exam—not through his skill at bullying doubt.
Cormac settled beside him, and the scratches across his chest had already begun to rise. She pointed at the red tracks: “You need those cleaned.”
“The kitten was frightened.”
“Fright doesn’t sterilize claws.”
She found a cleaning wipe but handed it over rather than touching him without leave. He obeyed, then hissed loudly when the liquid found one deeper track.
“Very brave,” she said.
“Cruel nurse.”
“I’m not a nurse.”
“Cruel future veterinary professional.”
That fix pleased her more than his joke, and Conrad kept the fact with all the others.
He wanted all four kittens in a locked room with a doctor he trusted and no spoiled boy in green for miles.
But wanting didn’t make the room his.
At the desk, Imogen completed every line in neat block letters, including her birth date.
Nineteen.
He had guessed college age, yet the number landed with real weight. She didn’t look younger, but every year between them kept his hands firmly behind his back until she chose otherwise.
The clerk turned the clipboard and asked, “Who will pay the first bill?”
“I will,” Conrad and Imogen said together.
With one hip against the desk, Cormac said, “Good. We’ve reached our first fight.”
She tapped the form and said, “I found them, the rescue has an emergency fund, and I can cover the gap.”
He said, “You don’t know the gap.”
“Neither do you.”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
Her gray-green eyes sharpened. “It matters to me.”
Wrong shape. To Conrad, money didn’t matter meant it couldn’t frighten him, but she had heard that her contribution didn’t count.
He fixed the mistake in plain words: “Name the help you’ll accept.”
After studying him, she said, “The first bill for tonight only. I see the full cost before anything else.”
“Done.”
The clerk ran his card while Imogen watched the number for both.
“If the rescue reimburses it, I’ll repay you.”
“No.”
“Then it becomes a donation to the kittens, not a favor to me.”
Cormac folded his arms. “You may as well agree, love, because she will put it on a receipt and staple it to your forehead.”
“A forehead is not a filing surface.”
Her mouth curved. “His might be square.”
In the waiting room, six blue chairs faced a dead ficus and a humming vending machine that drowned out the television. She perched on one chair, so Conrad took the next while Cormac bought two coffees, a cocoa, three broth cups, and one pastry sealed in plastic.
He held out the broth and pastry. “Eat.”
“You two do know other verbs.”
“Several, though most are unsuitable for this waiting room.”
Conrad gave him a warning look, so of course Cormac handed her the broth and said, “He pretends that works on me.”
“Does it?”
“Only when I want it to.”
Above her head, their eyes met while Cormac offered laughter, heat, and a hard question that Conrad couldn’t safely answer yet.
She opened the broth and said, “You’re together.”
Not a question.
He said, “Eight years next spring.”
“Seven years and ten months,” Conrad corrected.