Her Man Advantage (4 page)

Pencil poised, she looked at him expectantly. Here was his out. He could simply give her the name of one of the other guys and someone else could escort her around the rest of the training facility. Their game arena downtown. Someone else could talk to her and catch her when she jumped down from swinging on the girders.

Thinking about how much one of the other guys might like that—and how much he would hate every second of witnessing it—he found he couldn’t come up with a name for her.

“How about I call Leandre Archambault?” she prompted, pointing to his teammate’s photo on the wall.

Her pencil flew across the paper until he caught it. Halted it. Gripped the damn thing so hard he accidentally snapped it in two. Leandre was the worst ladies’ man on the team and he had no intention of letting him anywhere near Jennifer.

“No.” He couldn’t walk away. Besides, he was better off talking to her behind the scenes, steering her away from him and toward other guys for filming purposes. If she had to film them, Axel would make sure her camera was focused on anyone but him. “I have time to talk to you.”

“What about your routine?” One eyebrow quirked, but she didn’t seem to be gloating over his inability to cut her loose. If anything, she appeared genuinely interested.

“I’ll find a way to make it work.” That way he could keep an eye on her. Damn it, he’d known that would be best all along. But the encounter in the hall had rocked him so much he’d second-guessed the plan. “Let’s start tomorrow, though. Give us time to regroup.”

She nodded.

“Great. And because I appreciate it so much, I’m going to promise you that I will keep my hands to myself at all times.” She held up her hands for him to see and wiggled the fingers for good measure. “See? You’re safe with me.”

His skin reacted as surely as if she’d skimmed that touch along his bare back. His naked abs.

Desire slammed him like a body check to the boards.

“Right.” He waved her away from the display toward the conference room so she could gather her stuff. “Too bad it’s not you I’m worried about.”

4

“I
S
IT
TRUE
YOU
’
RE
MAKING
a movie about the Phantoms?”

The speaker squatted into Jennifer’s vision as she sat in the practice rink’s viewing seats at 10:00 a.m. the next morning. While the players ran a slapshot drill out on the ice, Jennifer worked at her laptop, making notes to ask Axel. Well, she
tried
to work on her laptop.

The hopeful young face blinking up at her from the row of seats below prevented her from concentrating. The lithe brunette in a knit beret clutched a paper coffee cup in both hands, hovering over the steam drifting up like a nebulizer while the players lofted puck after puck at their backup goalie.

“Not a movie. A documentary series.” Jennifer tried to smile politely, wishing she’d known that today’s morning skate was open to the public.

She would have given her cameraman the day off. Bryce’s equipment attracted attention and questions.

“I’m Chelsea, groupie extraordinaire.” The young woman thrust out a hand. “Let me know if I can be of any help.”

Taking the woman’s hand, Jennifer shook it briefly, reassessing.

“A fan?” Her gaze went from Chelsea to the guys on the ice—mainly Axel, whose number she found immediately through the glass boards.

He stood on a blue line—she had discerned the significance of that location last night in a mega cram-session on hockey. Apparently the blue lines marked the offensive zones and as a defenseman, he was often called a “blue liner” since he frequently played there.

Jennifer’s interest in and admiration for his role on the ice had increased the more she read until she found herself enthused to return to the rink today. But part of that enthusiasm died at the notion of groupies. Did he have female fans who shadowed his movements? The idea rankled. What if caressing strange women in deserted halls was all in a day’s work for a national league hockey player?

“Yes. There are four of us who follow the team whenever possible.” Chelsea gestured to a threesome of coffee-clutching young women two rows down. They appeared to be twenty to twenty-five years old. Unlike the stereotype of attention-seeking groupies who dressed to get noticed, this crowd wore appropriate clothes for a hockey rink—jackets and scarves with the blue-and-white team logo. They squealed as two of the players skated their way, giving them a grin and a nod.

“Do you attend a lot of these practices?” Jennifer wondered what kinds of jobs the young supporters had if they could afford to tailor their schedules around a hockey team.

“We come to these all the time, sometimes even when they’re not open to the public.” Chelsea flipped a long brown curl from one eye, a hint of a tattoo on her wrist visible under her jacket sleeve. “After this, we’re headed to Montreal for tomorrow’s game. The team flies, but we have to leave earlier since we drive and we want to be there when they touch down.”

To do what, exactly?
Warm their beds?

Jennifer bit her tongue on the questions, knowing her role here wasn’t to judge, or even to get involved. It was simply to document. She had to admit that “not getting involved” part had always been tough for her. When she’d documented poverty, she’d helped educate young moms on wise consumer choices at the grocery store. When she’d made a film on the public school system, she’d found herself volunteering for bake sales. But if the woman in front of her wanted to follow a team of athletes around the country, it certainly wasn’t Jen’s job to tell her she could do better than that. Although the temptation lingered.

“How interesting.” She waved over her cameraman. The stands weren’t full for the practice session, so he climbed over the seats to introduce himself to Chelsea before Jennifer explained why she wanted them to meet. “Bryce will be recording a lot of raw footage on this project while we figure out our primary angles for this week’s installment. Would you mind if he tagged along on your road trip? Maybe took some footage of your conversations about the team?”

“Really?” Hopping out of her seat, Chelsea sloshed a little coffee out the top of the cup as she waved over her friends. “Almost like we were in the movie, too?”

A whistle blew on the ice and Jennifer noticed the players congregated around the coach.

“You would be.” Her attention went back to the woman’s wrist where she could have sworn she’d spotted numbers in Phantom blue. An ode to a player? “I’d have to ask you to sign waivers giving us permission to film you and use any footage we obtain, but only a small percentage ever sees the final print.”

There was a brief huddled conversation among the women, but it didn’t take long for Chelsea to pop out of the cluster.

“We’d love to.”

“Great.” Jennifer pulled up the waiver page on her laptop and handed Chelsea the stylus so she could sign it electronically while the players seemed to finish up their practice. “Just make sure Bryce knows where to be and at what time to meet you.”

While the fans thronged the tunnels off the ice for a chance at slapping hands with the exiting players, Chelsea handed the laptop around to her friends so they could each sign the waiver. When she turned back to Jennifer, her expression had clouded, the initial excitement dimmed.

Second thoughts already?

“Is everything okay?” Jennifer asked, not wanting her documentary stars to be second-guessing themselves yet. Any misgivings had to wait until the series was edited and printed.

Although she knew Axel would have reservations every moment of filming until she returned to New York. She respected his privacy, in theory, even if her assignment here proved at odds with his personal preferences. But was there a deeper reason behind how fiercely he protected his privacy? Most athletes saw the benefit of media attention on their careers, and it turned out Axel Rankin was having a banner year on the ice.

Why so camera shy?

“Sure.” Chelsea still held Jennifer’s laptop, her eyes fixed on the ice where Axel and Kyle Murphy—his foster brother, she’d learned in her reading—were laughing with the goalie. “I’m glad the documentary will help the team. Maybe boost ticket sales.”

“It probably will,” Jennifer agreed, trying to see which one of the guys Chelsea had her eye on since all the others had headed to the locker room by now.

She turned back to Jennifer. “But the guys are so great, I almost hate to share them, you know? Kind of like when the newspaper reviews your favorite dive restaurant. Soon everyone’s showing up to try the grub and it’s not the same anymore.”

While Jennifer tried to puzzle through Chelsea’s concerns—lack of access to the players, maybe—she reached for her laptop.

And, as Chelsea extended it, her sleeve lifted higher on her wrist. Revealing
#68,
Axel Rankin’s jersey number, tattooed on her skin.

* * *

T
HE
CAMERAS
WERE
OUT
in full force today.

Axel had noticed as soon as he’d arrived at the practice facility early that morning. Even now, as he waited for Jen to meet him after the team skate, he had to contend with the bright light of a fill flash in his eyes. He’d taken refuge in a practice room to tweak his shot on one of the shooting tarps, but the camera guy had followed him in.

There were three camera operators—all male—who would roam the Phantoms’ facilities over the next month. The team had been introduced to the group at the morning meeting. They would attend games and road trips in addition to occasionally following the players home or around town on errands, nights out or anywhere that might be relevant to the larger story. Besides the film crew with handhelds, there were stationary cameras in the rafters above the ice, in the box where players sat between shifts and in a couple of other common areas.

He’d called his foster parents last night to warn them about the documentary. They didn’t know the extent of his connections to the motorcycle club back in Finland—ties that hadn’t been easily severed. He’d never hidden from the old crew, exactly. He’d known an NHL career gave him a certain amount of visibility, so he’d always been accessible to his enemies. But there’d been a tacit peace these past nine years, with everyone moving on.

Axel wasn’t all that sure the peace would hold if this documentary series found a global audience. What would the old gang think of his high-end lifestyle if they saw pictures up close and personal? Would they be able to forgive what they considered the debt of letting him leave if they could see the evidence of his success from the comfort of their living rooms overseas? He didn’t want to push his luck.

So he’d told the Murphys to be on their toes if anyone called looking for more information on him. The wealthy Murphy family had resources to increase security at their Cape Cod compound and he’d advised them to do so, claiming a rise in public interest could bring out the occasional nut job. Better to be safe.

As Axel found his shooting rhythm on a tarp, he tried to ignore the hum of the Panasonic recording his every move and wondered if Jennifer had stood him up.

With how gung ho she’d been to quiz him about the Phantoms the day before, he’d figured she would bombard him with questions the second he left the ice. But an hour and a half after practice, he still hadn’t seen a sign of her.

Except, of course, in his mind’s eye. She’d set up residence there after yesterday’s close encounter, insinuating herself in his thoughts and making him edgy for more.

“Have you seen Jennifer around?” Axel asked the young guy shouldering the video equipment, breaking protocol by addressing him directly.

But hey, the less usable footage they had of him, the better.

Shutting off the camera, the tall, skinny dude shifted it aside. “She might be in the parking lot, setting things up for one of the crew to ride with some fans to Montreal.”

“Fans?” Surprised and encouraged that she would devote so much film to people who weren’t on the team, Axel decided he’d have to give her a rundown on everyone on the Phantoms support staff.

That alone could occupy a camera for a couple of days.

“Groupies, man.” The kid—twenty at the oldest—grinned. “Four girls that came to the morning skate. You’re living the dream.”

Before he could reply, Jennifer strode into the practice room, her cheeks flushed and her hair windblown.

“Yes, congratulations on that, Mr. Rankin.” She thumbed through a stack of notes on her clipboard, her hands a flurry of shuffling. “You’re a very fortunate man to be so widely admired.”

He’d never been in it for the fame. If anything, that made his life more difficult given the enemies he’d made back home.

“Actually, I think I’m fortunate because I get paid to do a job I love.” He handed his stick to an attendant, eager to shake off old ghosts and talk to Jennifer away from the whir of rolling film. “Are you ready to go?”

“Very.” Pivoting on her heel, she walked out of the practice room.

She wore a blue-and-white Phantoms T-shirt today, a thoughtful endorsement. A floor-length black skirt with big blue flowers billowed around her legs, a skinny silver chain belt dangling from her waist.

She looked great. He liked her colorful, offbeat style. Her energetic walk and enthusiastic hands when she touched him. He liked everything about her a little too well. But sticking close to her throughout the filming might help him avoid being a central figure in any of the footage.

As for the heat between them? He’d have to gamble they’d be able to handle it.

He had to admit Jen seemed to be keeping a professional distance today.

Hell, he wasn’t even keeping up with her, now that he thought about it. Was she pulling the same trick he had yesterday, trying to outpace him?

“Where’s the fire?” he asked, lengthening his stride as she headed toward the administrative offices. “Why are you in such a hurry?”

“Just trying to be considerate.” She shoved open a door to a small office that should have belonged to the staff travel secretary. Apparently the office had been lent to Jennifer while she was here since an assortment of camera bags crammed the floor and a board with a list of shot sequences had been hung behind the desk. “I know you have to travel tonight for tomorrow’s game.”

He followed her inside, leaving the door open to ensure they wouldn’t have too much privacy. It was being alone with her yesterday that had driven him to touch her. Today would be all business.

“Our flight doesn’t leave until seven and I’m already packed. I’ve got plenty of time.”

“Well, I need to make a lot of arrangements before then.” She turned to face him, her shoulders tense. Still clutching the clipboard like a flotation device for a woman at sea.

“Jen.” He stepped closer in spite of himself, sensing a vibe at work that he didn’t understand. “Is something wrong?”

“Honestly?” She slammed the clipboard on the desk, sending a few loose papers flying. “I’m a little creeped out to think you have your own personal fan base following you around to all your hotels when you travel.”

A strong reaction from a woman he’d only just met. She couldn’t be…jealous?

“I think every big-league sports team develops that kind of following,” he said carefully.