Body Check (38 page)

He responded with silence. When Janna dared to look back at him, he was staring down at the floor again.

“I should go.” She put her cup of Coke on the table beside the chair, and rose. Ty did the same. Together they walked to the door.

“I guess I'll see you at practice tomorrow,” Janna said lamely.

Ty barely nodded.

She turned to the door, went to open it.

“Janna?”

She closed her eyes for a moment.
Please
, she thought.
Please
. Hand still gripping the doorknob, she turned around to face him.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

The strain in his voice said it all.

“You're welcome.”

He took a step toward her, then halted. She waited, breath held, body poised.
Please Ty
, she silently pleaded,
do what your heart is telling you to do. Build a bridge to me with all the unsaid words here between us, and cross over it. Please
.

But he couldn't, so she did it for him. She went to him, and standing on her tiptoes, softly kissed him on the cheek.

“Try to get some sleep tonight,” she urged. Then she was gone, out the door and down the hall, her heart lighter for the gift she felt she'd given him.
I've done what I needed to do
, she told him in her head.
Now it's your turn
.

 

 

A man possessed
. That's the cliché all the sports writers were using to describe his play through the next three games against Pittsburgh. They'd won the Conference Final in an astounding four-game sweep, and as Ty held the Prince of Wales trophy high above his head on home ice, he lifted his eyes to the skybox where all the Kidco execs sat watching. He made sure he had a big smile plastered on his face that said, “You're thinking of getting rid of me? Just wait until two weeks from now, when I'm skating around the arena holding the Stanley Cup aloft, you SOBs. Then we'll see how quick you are to give me the shaft, when the fans are screaming my name and my face is on the front cover of every newspaper in New York.”

He wasn't stupid. This bull about him upping his level of play
or else
was just that—bull. If they truly valued him as a player, they would have come to him and expressed their concern, asking if anything was on his mind and how they could help. The fact they didn't told another story, one that pointed to their fanatical devotion to image as well as their obsession with the bottom line. They wanted to get rid of him because they couldn't control him. Because they knew winning this Cup would coincide with contract negotiations, placing him in prime position to name his price, which they would undoubtedly not want to pay. It didn't matter that he was a marquee player and his presence on the team helped keep the arena filled. All they gave a damn about was payroll and presentation, and as far as they were concerned, he was trouble on both counts, the high-priced captain who refused to spend all his spare time cheerleading for causes handpicked to make Kidco look good.

He'd heard rumblings that the suits were displeased about the role he played when it came to personnel, too. A thumbs-up or -down from him could mean the difference between a player being traded or not, benched or not. They seemed to disregard the fact that Tubs deliberately solicited his input. The Blades GM was threatened by his veto power. “He thinks you're overstepping your bounds,” is what Tubs had told him, and they had both marveled over the stupidity of not wanting a captain who'd won three Stanley Cups to give his insights when asked. He liked to think he would have risen to the occasion without Janna's clueing him in to what the bigwigs had in mind, but he wasn't so sure. Her words had literally lit a fire under him, and when he went on the ice for the ensuing three games against Pittsburgh he blazed, fueled by raw adrenaline and an almost unquenchable drive to show the number crunchers what he was made of. That he'd be damned if he'd let them decide his fate.

He couldn't wait for the final round of the Cup finals to begin. If they thought he was a man possessed now, just wait until they saw him at the series opener in sunny LA.

He passed the trophy off to Kevin, whose solemnity now reflected his own. Winning the Prince of Wales was nice, but all it meant was they'd won the first round. In his mind, it almost didn't count. He could see Janna watching him from the press box. Usually it threw him a bit, but tonight he was filled with gratitude. Letting him know what Kidco was planning despite what had gone down between them impressed him to no end. Were the situation reversed, he didn't know whether he would have been so generous. Probably not. In fact, being a major jerk, he probably would have let her twist in the wind. He didn't know. All he knew was that she had driven his desire to win the Cup to the brink. Until she'd told him what was going on behind the scenes, he'd found her presence a distraction. But now he was going to take all that energy he'd been using trying not to think about her, and he was going to use it to drive himself and the Blades forward. And when they won, he would hand the Cup to her, giving proper thanks to the woman who saved his neck.

And then he was going to give Kidco a surprise they'd never, ever forget.

 

 

 

 

For weeks Janna and Theresa had talked about going to the Angelika to see the late-night screening of
Gone With the Wind
. They were finally here, and of course, right in the middle of the burning of Atlanta, her cell phone rings. Forced to hustle out to the lobby before the other patrons killed her, Janna was now overcome with apprehension. Was it Wills? Had to be. Something awful had happened again. Swallowing hard, she pressed the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Janna? It's Pierre LaRouche.”

Pierre LaRouche, the Blades' goalie, calling her cell phone at close to midnight?
Not good, not good at all
.

“Pierre? What's happened?”

“I'm at the police station.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “I, uh, got picked up for soliciting a prostitute.”

Idiot!!!
she longed to yell.
You big, stupid French Canadian idiot!!

“Have you talked to anyone else?” she asked instead, in the voice that you use to talk to slow children and dangerous maniacs.

“No—I mean, you said if there was ever trouble we should call you first, so—”

“You did the right thing,” she said quickly. “Tell me where you're at, and I'll be there as soon as I can. In the meantime,
don't talk to anyone else
—not your wife, not one of the guys, no one. You hear me?”

“Uh huh.” He gave her the address in a quivering voice.

“Just relax, everything is going to be okay. See you in a few.”

She ended the call and slumped against the lobby wall.
Oh, this was just perfect, a textbook case of exactly the kind of publicity the team didn't need. Especially now, poised on the brink of victory. Now what?

“Is everything okay?”

Janna looked up to see Theresa striding toward her, a look of unconcealed alarm on her face.

“A player's in trouble. I can't go into the details right now. Go back and watch the movie, I'll meet you at home later.”

“Whatever you say, Miss Scarlett.” She gave Janna's arm a reassuring squeeze and disappeared back into the dark theater.

Unsure of what to do next, Janna began nervously pacing the lobby under the suspicious eye of the theater manager. What did he think she was going to do, stick him up with a box of Jujubes, steal a tub of buttered popcorn, and run? She returned his glare and continued wracking her brain for a course of action. She'd dealt with the police before; that wasn't what worried her. What worried her was keeping this out of the public eye. If word of this got out, it could ruin LaRouche's personal life, and put him out of commission on the ice for the rest of the season, since the NHL would suspend him, which would certainly affect the Blades. Not only that, but a situation like this looked really bad, perpetuating as it did the stereotype of athletes as sleazes, which, admittedly, some of them were.
Why did he have to do this?

Feeling as if she might burst right out of her skin, she left the theater and hailed a cab uptown to the police station. The ride seemed to take forever, with traffic grinding to nearly a complete standstill near Broadway and 42nd. Janna was so frustrated she contemplated jumping out and walking the rest of the way, but thought better of it when she caught sight of the dense crowds she'd have to fight through. Her cabby cursed, and she glanced out the window at the car that was trying to cut them off. It had a sticker for the Police Athletic League—PAL—plastered to its rear window. Her mind lurched. The PAL . . . of course! She had a connection at the PAL, a cop named Steve Dalvey. Back when she was at
The Wild and the Free
, she helped raise money for him by arranging a yearly celebrity softball game between cops and soap actors. All of the proceeds went to the inner-city kids PAL helped. Steve had said if she ever needed a favor, she should give him a call.
Well, Steve-a-rino
, she thought, as she frantically rooted through her handbag for her Palm Pilot and her phone,
I hate to bother you this late at night, but the time has come for me to call in my favor
.

Fifteen minutes later, he was walking up the steps of the precinct house to meet her, a burly man with an easygoing demeanor.

“I can't tell you how much I appreciate this,” Janna said. “Especially given the time.”

“No problem,” he assured her, holding the police station door open.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the station was abuzz with activity. A man with a bandaged, bloody head was sitting in one of the orange plastic seats along the wall, pointing and complaining about a drunk in a tattered overcoat who appeared to be asleep on the floor. A domestic dispute between a husband and a wife was being waged at full volume in a far corner, while a hooker with little on besides pink plastic pants and a bandeau top sat swinging her long legs and cursing under her breath. The stone-faced female officer behind the desk was doing her best to ignore all of them. Thankful this was a side of New York she rarely got to see, Janna followed Steve Dalvey as he strode up to the desk and flashed his badge while introducing himself.

“You got a john here, French guy with the name of LaRouche?”

The officer behind the desk nodded.

“Well, I need to see him and the officer processing the case.”

“Hang on.” She dialed the phone in front of her, repeated Steve's request, and a minute later he and Janna were being led toward the back of the station house, where they found Pierre and the officer in a large, neon-lit room filled with endless file cabinets. Pierre was sitting next to a small metal desk where a paunchy, middle-aged cop sat typing at a computer. When Pierre saw Janna, he jumped up and started babbling excitedly in French.

“Sit down, sit down,” Janna urged, gently pushing him back down to his seat. “You don't want to get in any more trouble.”

The cop behind the computer looked up at Janna. “You the wife?”

Bite your tongue
, she thought. “A friend.”

Steve showed his badge to the cop, who nodded in recognition. “I need a favor from you,” he said amiably.

“Yeah?” asked the other cop.

“See this guy sitting here? You know who he is, right?” The other cop nodded. “Treat his case the same way you treat every other john—process him, fine him, set up a date for a court appearance, and let him go. Not a word to the press, TV, sports radio, anyone. Can you do that?”

The cop shrugged. “For you? Sure, no problem.”

“Good man.” The two shook hands and Steve turned to Janna. “Let's let Officer Affa finish processing Pierre.”

Back out in the waiting room, Janna almost fainted with relief.

“I owe you big time,” she said.

“Get outta here. Anything for an old friend. Any chance of arranging a charity ball game between the Blades and the cops?”

“You bet. Just wait until the Playoffs are finished, okay?”

He winked at her. “Deal. I'm gonna take off now, if you don't mind. Will you be okay on your own with this French guy?”

“I'll be fine,” she assured him. She gave him a quick hug and watched him go, the man who had just saved Pierre LaRouche's butt and, possibly, the Blades' entire season. Connections. They made the world go round.

Exhausted but elated, she picked a plastic seat far from the hooker and the bleeding man, and waited for Pierre to be released.

 

 

“Janna?” Lou poked
his head into her office. “Gallagher just called. He said he wants to see you down in the locker room ASAP.”

She checked her watch. “Lou, they're in the middle of their pre-game meeting. Are you sure he said he wanted to see me
now
?”

Lou nodded. “He was yelling, doll face. I think there might be a problem.”

Making her way down to the Blades' locker room, Janna fought mounting panic. For Ty to summon her during the pre-game prep could only mean one thing: something was very, very wrong. LaRouche again? Why was everything hitting the fan now, when they were so close to the Cup?

Heart in throat, she knocked on the locker room door. She heard Ty's voice shout, “Come in!”

Opening the door, she was completely unprepared for the sight that greeted her. The players stood in a circle, fully dressed. In the center of the room was Pierre LaRouche, holding a huge bouquet of flowers.