Page 25 of Offside

The room was loud enough that individual conversations bled into each other. Metal tongs struck grill plates. Smoke rose into the vents. Somebody ordered another round.

Declan sat with Zoe and Vicki two tables over. I knew where he was without looking. I'd known since I walked in.

Garrett stopped talking and glanced at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing." He reached for the mushrooms without looking away from me.

Eriksson leaned over the grill to move a mushroom out of the hottest section.

"My grandmother says a man who watches food burn while discussing hockey deserves the food he gets."

"Your grandmother has opinions about Korean barbecue?" Hayes moved a mushroom onto his own plate.

"She has opinions about men and heat. The location is irrelevant."

"She's right." Abbott nodded.

Across the room, Declan laughed.

The sound reached me through the scrape of chairs and the fans over the grills. I knew it before I turned. Not the short, professional laugh. The real one, open from his chest.

I found him through the smoke. He was already looking at me.

The laugh left his mouth. The warmth of it didn't. We held each other's eyes across two tables, Volkov's moving tongs, and the whole room that hadn't noticed yet.

Then Abbott noticed. He sat back beside Hayes and looked from me to Declan. His expression didn't change, but his eyes did. He'd spent too many years watching a game from the bench to miss a turn that happened away from the puck.

He looked down at his plate without saying anything, and I went back to Garrett's story.

When the last plates were cleared, I found the server near the register and handed her my card.

"All of it," I said.

"The full party?" She looked toward the tables.

"Everybody," I confirmed.

She glanced at the screen. "They already split it by table."

"Put it back together. I'll cover the whole thing."

She stared at me for a second, then took the card.

Garrett appeared at my shoulder while she ran it. "You know Hayes organized this. He'll argue."

I watched the server feed my card into the reader. "Too late," I said, fighting a grin.

Garrett looked past me toward the tables. Declan was pulling on his coat.

I signed the receipt before Hayes discovered what I'd done. By the time he reached the register, the server had already closed the check.

"Bishop," Hayes said. "This was my dinner."

I turned the receipt facedown on the counter. "Still is. You got everybody here."

He looked at the receipt and back at me. He wasn't going to win the argument.