I’ll
be frank—I was disappointed in “Rejoice: A Burden”. It wasn’t well-written
enough to be good, and it wasn’t weird enough to be interesting. So I thought
I’d look for another novella. There are actually a surprising number of
Christmas-themed hockey romance novellas. I ruled several out for being what
appeared to be fan-service style stories that don’t do much by themselves
except check in on previously-established characters from long-running series.
 |
| Nickolai seems to be having some trouble with his laces |
Then
I found Nickolai’s Noel. It appears
to be part of a series of stories that take place in Beauford Bend, Tennessee,
written by author Alicia Hunter Pace (actually the pen name of collaborating
authors.) Beauford Bend is super-idyllic, full of businesses with cutesy names
(the heroine’s quilt shop is called “Piece by Piece”, for example), nurturing
of artisans yet small enough that everyone knows each other by name, and in
which the descendants of the town founders still live. (Said descendent is
Jackson Beauford, apparently the hero of one of the other books. Also, he’s a country music super star. And
one of his brothers plays in the NFL. Another is a professional bull rider. And
another is a war hero.) This town is also apparently close to Nashville, in
which the hockey team the Nashville Sound plays. This is sort of an odd choice,
however, since Nashville has an actual NHL team (the Nashville Predators), yet
this tale uses other actual NHL teams in it (specifically mentioning the
Coyotes, in fact, as well as the Sharks and, I think the Wild.)
Chapter One:
 |
| I kind of want the hat | |
|
Our
heroine, Noel, owns, as I mentioned above, a quilt shop. She is, in fact, such
an amazingly fabulous quilter that she has made a baby quilt for Nicole Kidman
and been featured in an article in Garden
& Gun magazine about the artisans of Beauford. (I checked with someone
who lives in Alabama and works in a bookstore—this is a real magazine. Its
website calls it “the soul of the South”.) Noel is from Louisville, KY, where
her family still lives and where they want her to move back to. Her mother is a
widowed southern belle who is utterly helpless in the face of real life and
counts on Noel for everything, from ordering things online to making Christmas
dinner. Her older sister, Paige, had been given a debutante season and college
tuition, and had joined the Phi Mu sorority, just like her mother and
grandmother, with the expectation that she marry into old money who could then
afford to send Noel to college. Unfortunately, Paige married someone who was
also looking for someone rich and thus no money was infused into the family.
Paige is just about as helpless as their mother, too. This family pull on Noel provides
most (although not all) of the tension in this story.
Noel
is also a huge hockey fan, although she came to love the game as an adult.
But, merciful heavens, she loved the
chaos, the fast pace, the noise, and – if she were going to be honest—the
fights. Noel knew these were odd things for a quiet, mild-mannered woman to
love, especially one who spent her days patiently fitting pieces of fabric
together with perfect precision and the tiniest of stitches to paint a picture
meant to last several lifetimes (6-7).
Meh.
I’m a knitter, crocheter, spinner, and academic and I think most people would
refer to me as mild mannered as well, and I
love hockey, so I fail to see why Noel-the-quilter can’t.
The
novella opens when Nickolai Glaznov, who plays center for the Nashville Sound,
comes into Noel’s shop with his girlfriend, Tewanda, because it’s her birthday
and she wants a quilt, having seen the aforementioned magazine article.
Tewanda
is a caricature. I mean, romance novel characters, especially secondary ones,
often are, but wow is Tewanda.
Dressed in gold shorts, a black tank
with a wide, jeweled, gold belt, and really high platform sandals, she was tall
and very beautiful with skin the color of milk chocolate, and cheekbones that
looked like they could cut glass….
Tewanda’s plethora of gold bracelets jangled when she placed her hand on
a jutted-out hip (8).
She’s
not just a caricature in looks but actions, too. She’s demanding and when she
finds out how long it takes to get a custom-made quilt settles for an
already-made one—choosing based entirely on the highest price.
While
Tewanda is choosing, Nickolai spots a quilt called Lazy Morning—designed to look like an unmade bed. Nickolai thinks
it’s charming and enjoys all the details. Tewanda scoffs at it, thinking he
only likes it because it’s cheaper than other quilts in the store.
“You won’t believe how cheap he is.
Do you know who he is?” She didn’t wait for Noel to answer.
“Nickolai-freaking-Glazov. The Nashville Sound signed him to a twelve-year,
ninety-two million dollar contract. That’s not even counting what he gets paid
for trotting out Gatorade, underwear, vodka, and Campbell’s Soup. He played in
the Olympics! … And he bought a used Jeep! That’s how cheap he is!”
Tewanda railed on (12, emphasis original).
Wow.
Who does that? So everyone’s tense and Nickolai explains he’s not cheap, he
just likes value. And quilts are art, so he’s happy to spend the money on the expensive
one, which he helps Noel take down off the wall. After Noel boxes up the quilt,
Nickolai and Tewanda walk out of her life and she never expects to see the
Nashville forward again (other than on television.)
Chapter Two:
BUT!
Six months later! It’s Christmas Eve and Noel stops by the house of the
aforementioned Jackson Beauford, because it’s also now the home of her best
friend Emory, his fiancée, and Noel has finished a quilt that’s to be a present
for Jackson (from Emory.) Noel is on her way to Louisville for the holiday, her
car full of stuff. She’s even wearing a silly Santa Claus sweater with which to
amuse her niece.
Chapter Three:
Naturally,
because this is a romance novella, the highway gets closed due to snow and she
is convinced to spend the evening with the Beaufords, who have a guest—I’m sure
you’re shocked to discover said guest is Nickolai. He and Tewanda have broken
up, and he is delighted to see Noel again. He’s been thinking about her, not
because she’s beautiful (although of course she is) but because her shop seemed
so homey and cozy. And, you see, Nickolai has no family, raised in a Russian
orphanage until his talent for hockey was discovered. (And holy crap, I
recommend you do not google “Russian
orphanage” if you feel like staying in a good mood.)
 |
| I genuinely have no idea what these are. |
Dinner
with the Beauford family is, of course, charming, and Noel and Nickolai end up
seated next to each other. They bond over their mutual love of Goo-Goo
Clusters, which Nickolai gets at Cracker Barrel, where he eats pretty much
every day.
Chapter Four:
Noel
spends the night at the Beaufords’ as well, because even the surface roads
become conveniently impassable, but wakes up at 2am hungry because once she
realized she was stuck at a family get-together with a family that wasn’t hers
(she felt she was intruding), she lost her appetite. (Also, because her mother
and sister were calling her every 10 minutes in their desperate attempts to
guilt her into traveling despite the closed highway and demands that she try to
explain how to cook, decorate, clean, and create everything she normally does
for them but from a long distance.) So she goes looking for cookies at 2am, and
finds Nickolai watching the Yule log, since Emory decided the family NEEDED a
Yule log, and you can’t put out a Yule log without having bad luck, but they
couldn’t let it burn by itself since the Beauford brothers’ parents and baby
sister died in a fire, so fire is a Bad Thing in their family. (In other words,
it’s all something of a contrivance to get Noel and Nickolai alone together.)
There’s
tons of adorable flirting and cookie-eating. They bond over not wanting to be
intruding on the family Christmas, and Nickolai offers to drive Noel back to
her home.
“You want to go? I feel the same. I can drive on much worse than this. I
am Russian. I lived in Canada. And I have a Jeep.” (33
emphasis original).
Nickolai
always talks like this, in kind of stereotypical not-perfect English (or
rather, generally grammatically correct, as above, but stilted). But it doesn’t
get irritating—it’s just adorable. (Or
adorkable, as I’ve come to think of this novella). There’s more flirting and
discussion of their histories (Nickolai’s in an orphanage vs. Noel’s with her
southern belle grandmother, mother, and sister). And then there is kissing.
He tasted like gingerbread, cider,
and power (35).
Yeah…
Well, could be worse, I suppose.
After
much kissing, Nickolai convinces Noel to sleep beside him (as he watches the
Yule log) and whispers endearments to her in Russian.
Chapter Five:
…Noel was difficult to wake. She had
kept snuggling back into him and closing her eyes again. Somehow, that had made
him feel more powerful than he ever had with a hockey stick in his hand (38).
At
dawn he takes her back to her shop/apartment, and it’s pretty much a foregone
conclusion that they’ll be having sex. This bit is from Nickolai’s perspective,
so upon returning to the quilt shop, he thinks of Tewanda, since that had been
the only time he’d been there before.
Tewanda didn’t seem to want to
believe he had meant it when he broke up with her, even after he changed his
cell phone number. Though she had stopped coming to Sound games, she often
turned up where he was—the practice arena, Cracker Barrel, the grocery store,
even his condo, though he refused to allow her inside. His agent kept urging
him to get a restraining order, but he didn’t need the government to keep a woman
away from him. She was an annoyance, not a danger
(38).
Well
hello there, Heavy Foreshadowing! How are you? Having a merry Christmas?
(Also,
the Cracker Barrel reference is not a typo or a one-off. It’s Nickolai’s
favorite restaurant, to which he goes every day before practice and sometimes
again afterward. Also, his favorite waitress there has been teaching him
Southern-isms.)
Nickolai
is delighted to discover that Noel actually likes hockey, but less pleased to
learn that while she has a jersey it does not have his number on it.
“You like the sweater number of
goaltender Emile Giroux more than twelve?”
“No. It was the only one in the
Beauford Arts Council silent auction. If you
had donated one, I would have bid on it” (39 emphasis
original).
Nickolai
promises her a jersey) and tickets to games. And Noel goes along with all this,
flirting, agreeing to future plans, but all the while she assumes this is a
one-off, that she’ll never see Nickolai again after this day. She calls it her
snow globe, a moment out of time.
Nickolai
likes Noel’s apartment, calling it cozy and describing her bedroom as happy and
soft, “a room that holds its arms out to lovers” (43). He asks about what she
does where, such as sewing in a chair in her bedroom.
“Yes. Tiny project.” Unlike his
“project”—the one that still seemed to be growing against her (42).
Hello,
Enormous Penis Trope, and how are you holidays?
They
undress each other, and Nickolai is delighted that under her frumpy clothes
(which he also continuously praises, actually), Noel wears sexy underthings.
Chapter Six:
For
some reason, when Noel makes breakfast for Nickolai, she’s intense about making
it decorative.
…she’d salvaged a few things from the
shop to make a pretty table. After all, it was Christmas, Nickolai was a guest,
and she had promised him breakfast. She’d spread the table with the length of
red and green plaid she’d cut from a bolt downstairs. Then she’d thrown some
cedar, pinecones, and berry-studded holly into a copper bowl and mixed in the
antique glass ornaments she’d pulled off the tree. There had been no time to
hem the makeshift tablecloth, but she’d clipped the edges with pinking shears.
With her plain white dishes and hunter green linen napkins on the plates, it
was good enough. At the last minute she placed candy canes—also stolen from the
shop tree—on top of the napkins (48).
I…
just… wow. If I had an unexpected Christmas guest, we’d be having bagels
straight from the toaster and he’d have to work the coffee maker himself since
I don’t drink it. Napkins would be folded paper towels. The coffee/tea mugs
would be mismatched. This attention to decorating is in-character for
Noel—after all, she’s the one who puts everything together for her family—but
it still seems weirdly out of place here. (And later, Nickolai does comment on
candy canes at breakfast.)
There’s
more kissing at breakfast, and suddenly Noel’s “naughty bits sat up and begged
for attention” (50). There’s a whole italicized conversation with them. And
later, they show up several more times. (I mean, I assume Noel keeps her
naughty bits with her at all times, but the anthropomorphizing of them is only
occasional.)
Chapter Seven:
Noel
assumes that Nickolai will want to leave as soon as the roads are passable so
he can get back to Nashville, but he wants to spend the day—and night—with her,
which she and her naughty bits are more than happy with. They spend the day
making love, talking about their pasts, and dozing off/sewing in front of the
24-hour run of A Christmas Story.
Chapter Eight:
Unfortunately,
Noel’s little snow globe of contentment, which she knows will be fleeting,
shatters when the doorbell rings.
And there stood Tewanda wearing boots
with four-inch heels and a calf-length, white fur coat. It looked like mink,
maybe fake but probably not. …. Then she slinked over to where Nickolai stood.
“Merry Christmas, baby.”
And she opened her coat to reveal
that she was wearing nothing but a big red satin bow and emerald green
underwear that made Noel’s look like Pollyanna’s pinafore
(61-62).
Nickolai
responds in angry Russian, to which Tewanda chides him with “English, dearest.
I’ve told you a hundred times” (62). Apparently she’d gone to his condo, having
made a copy of his key when he asked for it back at their break up (certain
that he “didn’t really mean it”) and waited in his bed, but was upset that the
“big, bad storm kept” Nickolai from home. (Apparently Tewanda figured out where
Nickolai was by reading Gabriel Beauford’s tweets. Twitter is dangerous.)
Conveniently,
Tewanda also wrecked her car on the way to Noel’s house, so she declares that
either Nickolai take her home or she hangs out with them until someone comes to
get her. Noel politely invites her in, but Nickolai declares that Tewanda
should not get Noel’s hospitality and says he’ll take her to Nashville.
Chapter Nine:
Noel
assumes she’ll never see him again, but of course she can’t help but hope.
She’s miserable all the next day while she’s working, until Nickolai does show
up at closing time, sporting a black eye.
“Is nothing—an accident in practice.
I collided with my teammate’s stick. It makes me look tough and desirable, no?”
(67).
This
book is so adorable. On the other hand, Nickolai should wear a visor (he says
he doesn’t like the weight and it cuts down on visibility. But you know what
else cuts down on visibility? Losing and eye. Wear a visor, Nickolai.)
He
comes bearing gifts—a beach towel with the Nashville Sound logo since he was a
little jealous that she’d had a towel from Gabriel (the NFL player), a whole
bunch of other Sound-logo-emblazoned goodies, and his old jersey. Awwww.
He pointed to a tear and a dark brown
stain. “I’m not allowed to wear this anymore because of the rip and the blood
that left a stain.”
“Blood?” she said with some alarm.
“Sure. I got a bloody nose from a
high-sticking Vancouver Canuck. I didn’t hit him back. He went to the penalty
box, and I scored on the power play. The stain is how you know this sweater is
authentic. Some women—they might buy a sweater
to fool people into thinking they have a Sound boyfriend. But it doesn’t fool
smart people. I have never given away a sweater before,” he said proudly.
 |
| Pictured: The state of contemporary romance... |
They
then go to Cracker Barrel for dinner. I hope Cracker Barrel gave these authors
some money for all the advertising!! And Nickolai adorably asks if Noel will
give him hospitality for the night as well.
Chapter Ten:
The
novella then skips ahead by three months. Nickolai is off to a weekend of away
games, and Noel is headed to Louisville to visit family (including fitting an
Easter dress for her niece before she can hem it and doing other odds and ends
for her helpless kinfolk.)
Noel
has gone to every home game since Christmas and the two of them even have a
ritual where an hour and seven minutes before every puck drop, she texts
Nickolai “Good luck, my darling!!!” because the first time she’d done that he’d
scored the winning goal. Since then, Nickolai has scored at least once in every
game. Damn, that is impressive streak, and it includes two hat tricks.
As
Nickolai is leaving the quilt shop, they look at the Lazy Morning quilt again.
He looked from the quilt to her sweet
smiling face. “Maybe…” Should he say it? Did he dare? “Maybe one day, we will
sleep under it. Together. In our own home, no?” (76).
So
clearly things are moving right along (and Noel’s response of “Maybe” is not as
tepid as it might seem.) He tells her then for the first time that he loves her
and she responds in kind. It’s very sweet. And since there are 60 pages left,
you know it also signals some kind of Big Bad coming soon.
Chapter Eleven:
Back
in Louisville, Noel is berated for not coming around enough and for insisting
on watching a hockey game while home. Apparently, Noel has not told her family
anything about Nickolai. Unfortunately for Noel, the whole family joins her as
she watches the game in her brother-in-law’s den, not to watch the game but to
talk over it and general be annoying.
Apparently
the Sound is playing so well that even though it’s only mid-March, if they win
this game they will clinch a spot in the playoffs, regardless of what happens
in all future regular season games. Nickolai gets a hat trick, his third of the
season, and the Sound wins. The post-game show includes an interview with
Nickolai since he’d scored 3 out of the 4 goals the Sound had.
“One more question for you, Nickolai,
and then I’ll let you go. You’ve been performing well all season, but since the
beginning of the year, you’ve been a man on fire. How do you account for that?”
He laughed and let his face settle
into a smile. “I’m a happy man.” Then he looked away from the reporter and
straight into the camera. “Hello to my Noel. She’s with her family in Kentucky,
watching on TV. I share this moment with you, zvedzda moya. Vot moe serce. Ono polno lubvi” (83).
The
reporters manage a translation (since Nickolai won’t), and it’s “I share this
moment with you, my star. Here is my heart. It is full of love” (84). Adorable,
no? But this of course creates a bit of a crisis back in Louisville as Noel’s
family demands to know all and informs her that she’s not worldly enough for a
professional athlete and that she’s going to get hurt by him (according to her
sister) or that he’s not good enough for them and he’s a stray (her mother and
grandmother). Fortunately, her brother-in-law helps smooth everything over,
since he understands hockey and that it’s not like Noel is about to move to
Russia (as her mother fears) but nor will he move to Louisville to play in a
minor league team in Lexington. (Note: There hasn’t been a minor league team in
Lexington since 2001, but there used to be and it was called the Kentucky
Thoroughblades. Because of course it was. They were the San Jose Sharks’ AHL
affiliate.) Unfortunately, once everyone realizes just how successful Nickolai
is, they jump on the side of Noel’s sister, saying that there must be something
more going on.
“And he’s dating you, Noel?” Deborah said. “There must be more to it” (88,
emphasis original).
Deborah
is Noel’s mother. And apparently a bitch. Because what the hell?
Unfortunately,
this plays into Noel’s actual insecurities about herself and the relationship.
Worse, the TV is still on, and she spies Tewanda at this away game, behind the
reporter, wearing a Sound jersey, with Nickolai’s number on it. This leads to
some Facebook stalking of Tewanda, where Noel discovers a ton of recent photos
of things the team has done and a bunch of couples photos of Tewanda and
Nickolai. A photo from just the day before of Nickolai playing street hockey with
some kids even has the caption “I caught this one of my guy being sweet. But then he always is!” (89).
Maybe
I’m a cynic (well, yes.) Maybe I know too many hockey-obsessed people who think
they have more going on with players than they do (also, yes, actually.) But to
me this whole bit of the book is broadcast just a little too much. Why in the
world would Noel jump to the conclusions that she does—that Tewanda and
Nickolai are still together and having a laugh over Nickolai also being with
Noel? Noel has been with the wives and girlfriends at the home games. And how
can she not know that you can go to any team shop and get a jersey—an authentic
one, even—and get any player’s name put on it? Yes, in the next chapter the
whole Facebook stalking thing gets elaborated on and we learn that Tewanda
posts daily about her relationship with Nickolai, including photos and away
games and such. But rather than assume that Nickolai, the man she’s in love
with, is juggling two women and lying to her, why wouldn’t Noel assume
that Tewanda is unstable (as Nickolai
has said and as Noel has witnessed) and is making it all up? Surely there are
no photos of her and Nickolai in a demonstrably current situation on the
Facebook page.
Chapter Twelve:
Noel
packs to leave Louisville ahead of schedule and ignores the phone call she
receives from Nickolai. When she gets back to her shop, she’s pondering
multiple questions, including why she hadn’t seen this coming since “men like
Nickolai did not fall for mousy little quilters” (92) and why she’d not seen
the signs, since Tewanda’s Christmas visit clearly indicated that she was very
certain of Nickolai. (Well, yes. But not correctly
certain.)
She
does point out that she and Nickolai had never done anything connected with the
team, including going to the restaurant where the team tended to hang out
postgame. And they’d never stayed at his condo, only ever at Noel’s place.
These two points are actually good points, rational ones, and I wish they’d
been brought up much sooner into the Facebook stalking.
Regardless,
Noel decides it’s time for a confrontation and heads for Nickolai’s condo
(apparently he’ll be back from his away game in New Jersey already?) bringing
with her everything he’d left at her place (which is quite a few things. Which
is another indication, in my opinion, that this is a real relationship).
Chapter Thirteen:
Nickolai
is delighted by the surprise of Noel on his doorstep but is confused by her
coldness. He (adorably!!) saved his hat trick puck for her but she doesn’t take
it. When she finally gets around to explaining herself, it’s in that very
romance-novel passive-aggressive way of “you know what you did” which I can
understand when you’re super angry and super sure of yourself, but she really
has no proof and is really only just confusing Nickolai. Fortunately, he gets a
little angry, enough to say that he prefers that she explain herself.
Nickolai
explains away everything, pointing
out that Tewanda is a stalker and that she could buy a jersey. But Noel
stubbornly refuses to believe any of it.
“I have done nothing to deserve your
distrust, so I guess I can do nothing to deserve your trust” (100).
He
tells her that he loves her and then lets her leave. Nickolai is so my hero and
right now I kind of want to scream at Noel. I totally understand her
insecurity, don’t get me wrong. But he literally has done nothing to deserve
her anger, not even something that was harmless but seemed wrong. It’s entirely
Tewanda’s doing.
Chapter Fourteen:
It
turns out that Nickolai has not been playing well since the breakup, to the
point of being threatened with being sent to a sports psychologist. Team unity
is also a problem, thanks to Nickolai, and now the press is wondering if the
team deserves a place in the playoffs, even though they’d already earned it.
Noel
sends her ritual text message for the first time since the breakup, but when
questioned, says she’s only sending it for his sake, that she doesn’t mean that
he’s her darling. This causes Nickolai to throw the phone across the locker
room and swear (I assume, since it’s in Russian). The team applauds him.
Chapter Fifteen:
Although
it’s a home game against the Kings, Noel is watching on TV. Nickolai is playing
in anger, fiercely but still badly, and ends up beneath a pileup. (This seems
odd, because it’s not football, but okay.) Nickolai is left face down on the
ice, and there’s blood, and they brought a stretcher to get him. The text
assures us that this means something is Very Bad, and indeed, that is true. You
never ever want to see a stretcher because ordinarily a hockey player will do
everything he can to get off the ice under his own power.
Realizing
she might lose him in a very permanent way, Noel heads for the hospital,
stopping only in the shop to grab the quilt Lazy
Morning and a handful of scrap fabric. At the hospital, she claims to be
Nickolai’s wife, only to be disbelieved and to find out that Tewanda had beaten
here there (although security got rid of her). Noel’s refused admittance until
Gabe Beauford finds her, because he just happened to have been at the arena
during the game and come to the hospital with Nickolai. It’s one of those awfully convenient moments that romance
novels tend to have too many of, but it’s one of very few missteps in this
book, so I’ll allow it. Besides, it was set up that Gabe was a friend of
Nickolai’s way back in the beginning, so it’s not as bad as it could have been.
Gabe
gets Noel past the nurses by telling them she’s Nickolai’s girlfriend and that
he’d been asking for her (before he was knocked out with drugs.) Once they’re
at Nickolai’s bedside, Noel points out that she and Nickolai have broken up,
and Gabe admits he wasn’t actually asking for her, either. But since she showed
up in concern, and since Nickolai, when he thought he was dying, had told Gabe
to tell Noel that he loves her, Gabe is pretty sure that when Nickolai wakes up
they’ll be back together.
Noel
covers Nickolai with the Lazy Morning quilt,
and while he sleeps, she adds to the quilt—a hockey puck and a pin cushion,
symbols of the two of them, even though there wasn’t much logic to putting those
two items onto a bed, since ouch.
Nickolai
wakes up while Noel is on the phone with her mother, saying that even if
Nickolai can no longer play hockey and choose to drive a garbage truck, or if
he gets traded to anywhere, including Russia (and she points out that no, he
can’t actually be traded to Russia), she won’t leave Nickolai as long as he
wants her. Since he overhears all this, he’s overjoyed, and once he can get her
attention (and some water), he asks if she means it. She says yes and
apologizes for her behavior. He accepts and apologizes for not telling her that
Tewanda had been stalking him.
Nickolai
asks if the quilt is a present for him and she says it’s a trade—the quilt for
the hat trick puck. But he threw away the hat trick puck, but promises to get
her another. And he asks her to lie with him under the quilt, after admiring
her additions (although she declines but the team wants to see him before he
drifts out again.) He makes her promise she’ll come back and of course she
does.
Epilogue
While
the epilogue is indeed a party set in a wedding grove, it’s not a wedding and
thus it’s merely an epilogue party and not an epilogue wedding. The Nashville
Sound has won the Stanley Cup and for Nickolai’s day with it, he’s having a
party at the Beauford Bend Planation (the same place where Nickolai and Noel
unexpectedly spent Christmas Eve). Apparently, during the playoffs Nickolai got
seven more hat tricks (and thus pucks
to give to Noel.) Holy crap. There are players, good players, who never get a hat trick in their entire NHL
careers. Wayne Gretzky, you know, the one they call The Great One?, had 50 hat
trick or better games in his entire career, the record for any player. He also
had the most hat trick or better games in a single season. How many was that?
10. I don’t know if that also counts post-season. But this makes 10 hat tricks
for Nickolai this year, which basically makes Nickolai a Russian Wayne Gretzky…
(There are only 2 other players in the
NHL’s history who have 9 hat trick seasons. We are halfway through the
2014-2015 season and there have been fewer than 25 hat tricks scored so far in
the entire NHL. Only two of the players on that list have more than one of
those hat tricks. I’m just trying to illustrate how incredibly unlikely it is,
and thus what an outstanding player Nickolai must be.)
Before
the party starts, Nickolai and Noel are with the cup in the wedding grove,
alone (except for the Keeper of the Cup), and he tells her to look inside it.
There’s a bag from Cracker Barrel, so Noel assumes its Goo-Goo Clusters and she’s
touched that Nickolai had thought of her even amidst the chaos of preparing for
the party. But he tells her to look inside and of course she finds a small box
from Cartier. She’s not surprised that Nickolai is proposing, since they’d
pretty much been planning marriage since they’d gotten back together, but
because he’d bought her such an expensive, over the top ring (platinum, blue diamond,
high quality, etc.) She loves it but tells him she doesn’t need a ring, any
ring, let alone such an expensive one but he says it’s high quality, like her,
and it nourishes his spirit to give her such a gift. Noel is worried that this
will overshadow his day with the Cup, but he says he’d bought the ring a few
weeks previous in the hopes that he could give it to her on a day with the Cup
because that makes the day perfect.
Awwwwwww.
And
the novella ends with the grove filling with people who are happy to spend the
day celebrating Nickolai, and he observes that it feels like home.
All
together now—awwwwwwww.
I
highly recommend this book. Yes, it’s a bit sappy. Yes, Noel acts incredibly
irritatingly when she thinks Nickolai is cheating on her. Yes, some of it’s
over the top (like Noel’s family.) But overall, it’s charming and sweet but
with enough of a sense of humor to keep it from being treacly. It was a perfect
holiday treat.
