Body Check (19 page)

“So you want her life to be a living hell?” Jack Cowley asked. “You want her to go through all this public humiliation and pain.”

“Of course I don't!” Janna shouted in frustration. God, she hated his weasly guts. “But I don't think it's right to try to talk Theresa out of this just to make our lives easier. If I thought it possible she was exaggerating or didn't understand what bringing charges against him entailed, then maybe I'd think about dissuading her from going forward with this. But I know Theresa. If she said this happened, it did. And I am not selling her out.”

“Aren't you noble,” Cowley sniffed sarcastically under his breath.

“Go to hell,” Janna snapped. She turned to Lou. “Up until now I've done everything you've asked, and more. But please don't ask me to do this. Please.”

Lou sighed. “Go down to the locker room, then, and tell 'em Corporate loves and supports Lubov. Tell 'em to keep their mouths shut and not to talk to the press. When you're done with that, set up a press conference for late this afternoon. See if you can get Gallagher to sit there with you. It'll look good if the public sees the team's captain standing by one of his players.”

Janna blanched. “You want
me
to do the press conference?”

“Goddamn right I want you to do the press conference. Having a woman come out there to say Kidco supports Lubov is the best PR move we can make.”

“But—”

“It's your job, MacNeil,” Lou growled. “No buts.”

Janna rose unsteadily as the feeling of being underwater returned. “Then I guess I better go do it.”

 

 

The cold metal
wall of the bathroom stall felt soothing against her cheek. She had fled to the Ladies Room as soon as the press conference ended, wanting nothing more than to hide. She knew now that if she ever had to switch careers, she could probably make it as an actress. She'd given two Academy Award-caliber performances today: one in front of the media minutes before, the other in the locker room earlier in the day, both involving carefully crafted scripts. Pretending. And for Janna, outright lying, because she didn't support Lex, she didn't stand behind him, she wanted him to rot in jail, to suffer, to pay. And as good as her performance in the locker room was, she knew damn well that every player in there aware of her relationship to Theresa
had
to know she didn't believe a word coming out of her own mouth.

She wondered about that. Wondered how they viewed her in light of it. Did they see her as a hypocrite? Someone just doing her job? Did they think she was a traitor as far as Theresa was concerned? Or did they stupidly, mistakenly, think
she
thought Lubov
was
innocent? The thought killed her, that anyone could think she, of all people, didn't believe Theresa's story.
How many of them believed it?
she wondered. Ty did, she was pretty sure of that. Kevin Gill, too, although she hadn't had a chance to speak with either of them. But the rest of the team? She wasn't so sure. She'd caught some of the sympathetic glances the guys shot Lubov while she was speaking. She also noticed how a few them walked past him and squeezed his shoulder in a gesture of unmistakable solidarity. It had made Janna sick when she'd seen that. Made her sick even to be in the same room with Lubov. Her impulse had been to stare him down, challenge him, but she couldn't. Her actions had to match her words as much as possible. And so, she simply avoided eye contact with him even while she acted her guts out for the rest of the team, carefully meeting the gaze of each and every one of them as she always did, her voice strong and unwavering. She could honestly say she hated her job today, and the place it had brought her to. She had no integrity.

The word made her laugh, a hollow sound that echoed off the tiled walls of the empty bathroom. Integrity. What planet was
she
on?! Doing PR could be the antithesis of having integrity, especially if you believed the age-old adage that there was no such thing as bad publicity. Plastic surgery, public drunkenness, divorce, adultery, attempted rape—all of it was grist for the PR mill. So what if the actor in question purchased five thousand dollars worth of crack from an undercover cop, or the rising young hockey star sexually assaulted a woman? As long as the PR machine ensured that their actions didn't aversely affect their ability to make money at the box office or for their employers, what did it matter? The offense was incidental; what was important was remaining in the public eye. That was the career path she'd chosen to pursue.

She exited the stall and went to the nearest sink, dampening a paper towel that she pressed to the back of her neck. Not surprisingly, her skin felt clammy, almost as if she was coming down with a flu. She glanced at her face in the mirror. She looked pale and tired, like she'd been through an ordeal, which of course she had.
Poor little me,
she mocked her reflection. It crossed Janna's mind that when she got home, she would have to let Theresa know that she gave a press conference, if her lawyer hadn't told her already.
Great
. She knew Theresa would understand she'd been forced to do it, but she could also imagine Theresa telling her that if the situation were reversed,
she
would have quit.
Maybe that's what I should do,
Janna thought.
Quit
.

The door to the Ladies Room quietly creaked open. Janna looked in the mirror; reflected there was the image of Lex Lubov creeping inside. She whirled to face him.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” Fear overtook her in the form of a cold sweat. Did anyone else know she was in here?

“Janna, please, I must speak with you.”

“Give me one good reason why I should listen to
anything
that comes out of your lying mouth.”

“Because I am human being, human being like you.” He held his hands out in front of him in supplication. “Please, two minutes.”

Janna's eyes traveled the length of his arms, to the bandage carefully wrapped around his right hand. The buzzing in her head started again, low but insistent. “What happened to your hand, Alexei?”

His eyes briefly flickered down to his wound, then back up to her face. “I hurt in practice.”

“Liar.”

“Janna, please.”

“What?”

“Your friend, what she say is not true, it did not happen that way.”

“Oh?” Janna could barely keep the contempt out of her voice. “What happened?”

“Your friend, she want to have fun very badly. Very much, she was saying, ‘Kiss me, touch me.' So I kiss, I touch.”

“And then she asked you to stop, but you wouldn't.”

“No.
No
. I keep on and she saying, ‘More, more,' so I give her more and then I am stopping because I am respecting her and she goes crazy, she is mad I am not loving her, she goes crazy on me. I swear to you this is the truth.”

Janna was incredulous. “You expect me to believe this? You expect me to believe
you
and not her? Why would I do that?”

“Because I am telling the truth!” he exclaimed. His face was turning red with obvious frustration. “Why you do not believe me?!”

“Why?!
Because I know for a fact you're lying, Lex!! I live with Theresa! I saw the shape she was in after she managed to get the hell out of your apartment! You tried to rape her!”

Lex was stubbornly shaking his head. “No. No. I did not do this thing. No.”

“Yes! You! Did!” Janna yelled. She took a deep breath, trying to regain control of herself. “Fine, let's say you didn't, Lex. Why come to me? What do you want from me?”

“Talk to that girl, tell her not to do this thing.”

“What? Haul your ass into court? Forget it.”

“This could hurt my career!”

“You should have thought of that before you attacked an innocent woman.”

“Tell her,” Lex demanded. “She will listen to you. Tell her.”

“No!”

Janna had had enough. She picked up her briefcase, and moved to walk out the door. But Lex blocked her way.

“Get the hell out of my way, Lex.”

“Tell her not to do this thing!” he repeated angrily. Glaring, he grabbed Janna's arm. “Tell her, goddammit!”

Livid, Janna twisted out of his grasp. “If you ever lay a hand on me again, you SOB, you're going to have another assault case on your hands, you got it?!”

With that, Lex laughed. A low, threatening laugh. “Fine. Go back to your whore friend. Tell her she will be sorry, eh? She will not succeed! I am great hockey player! I have many friends, lots of money! She will not succeed! Tell her! Or else!”

Janna responded with a laugh that was just as ominous, if not more so. “You stupid, little jackass! Don't you
dare
threaten me! Don't you understand what I
do
for a living? One phone call from me to the newspapers and your career is sunk! Or don't you realize that?”

“You would not do such a thing.”

“Try me,” Janna growled. “Now
get out of my way
unless you want to wake up tomorrow morning to headlines about your embarrassing drug problem!”

“But that is a lie!”

“Just like your saying you didn't hurt Theresa,” Janna countered sweetly, pushing past him.

She started down the hall; a second later, she heard the bathroom door swing open. She glanced over her shoulder just in time to see Lubov storming away in the opposite direction. It wasn't until he was well out of sight that she realized she was shaking. Tears of relief formed in her eyes, and she let her briefcase drop to the ground as she leaned up against the wall, breathless. The confrontation with Lubov terrified her, but she'd risen to the occasion and held her own. She had, as Ty had said to her that night in the Chapter House, felt the fear and did it anyway. And that made her feel proud.

Even so, she couldn't help thinking about Theresa, who also knew what it was like to fight her way out from under Lubov's glare. Theresa who'd had to struggle beneath those hands. . . . She had to find Ty, make him realize what an animal they were dealing with here.

She had to find Ty.

 

 

 

 

Ty was lying on the couch staring at Janna, who stood halfway across his immense living room glaring at him, nostrils flaring, steam coming from her small, perfectly shaped ears. For the past ten minutes, she'd been raving—no, ranting, raving implied lunacy whereas ranting implied seething anger, so he'd go with ranting—about Lubov.

It had been one helluva day, right from the moment he woke up to see that disgusting headline in the paper. Practice was a bust, which he knew it would be; the whole team understood what was about to go down and no one could concentrate worth a damn. Before he'd even had a chance to talk to them, Janna had come from Corporate and given her little speech, which ticked him off but he let it go, because after all this was a “crisis,” right?

Next thing he knew, he was sitting next to her at a press conference feeling like a total schmuck because he'd been told not to say anything, just sit there in a supporting role. He'd complied, but before he could grab a minute to talk to Janna she'd disappeared, only to reappear ten minutes later when he was in Coach Matthias's office with a look in her eyes that screamed “I need to talk to you
now
.” He raised his left hand in the “Gimme five” gesture, and as soon as he wrapped up with Tubs, he had tracked her down in the players' lounge, where she'd growled at him that they couldn't talk there.

And so, two separate cab rides later, here they were at his place, with him lying on the couch trying to listen while resting after a physically punishing game the night before, and her ranting.

“Just try to relax, all right?” He tried to keep his voice calm without being patronizing. Janna's blue eyes flared again as if she were gearing up for a rebuttal, but then her shoulders seemed to drop in what he took to be sheer physical exhaustion. She sunk down into one of the huge, overstuffed armchairs opposite the couch, her small stocking-clad feet dangling over one of the plump arms, business suit be damned.

Ty laid his head back down and sighed, amazed that this was the same woman who less than two hours before had been the very picture of crisp, corporate professionalism. Watching her in the locker room as she addressed his team about how Kidco was behind Alexei, he'd been awestruck at how in control she was, especially in light of the subject matter. He knew that deep down she had to be choking on every word. But you'd have never known it to see her: her voice was steady, her face a mask of perfect neutrality. It had impressed him. No one knew better than he did what it was to rise to the occasion to get a job done, especially when every fiber in your body railed against it.

He flicked his eyes to hers, aware of her watching him. Her gaze was expectant. She wanted a response to the tale she had just laid bare for him, starting with the night she'd come back from his place to find Theresa a devastated mess, to Lubov cornering her in the bathroom earlier in the day. That part of the story had provoked a fury in him so deep he dreamed of breaking Lubov's neck at the next practice. Yet he was reluctant to get into it with her for reasons he thought should be obvious to both of them.

“What would you like me to say?” he asked.

Janna just stared. “Hel-
lo,
have you heard a word I've said?!”

“Of course I have.”

“So doesn't it bother you that he grabbed me?” she demanded. She was in terrier mode; she wasn't going to let it go. He braced himself.