On Thin Ice (9 page)

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Authors: Susan Andersen

BOOK: On Thin Ice
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And Lonnie, considering Ivan's words, thought that was probably the truth. Sasha did have something special—she all but shined with it. Hell, for years now she'd been the target of all this unrelenting bullshit. The brunt of it was aimed directly at her, and yet somehow she managed to remain untainted by it. How many times had he seen her backed into a corner with some redneck's meaty, unwelcome hand on her breast? She never screamed or swore—she usually just stared at her tormentor with those big gray eyes, and if the last of their humanity hadn't already been chiseled away by small-town prejudices drummed into their heads from the cradle, it pricked at their conscience. He'd watched it with his own eyes, seen it make them shift in shame, make their hands fall away, make them feel like the dog shit they were. She handled everything that life dished out to her with ten times the grace that he did.
“I'm tired of this crappy longhaired music,” he said with sudden restlessness and hopped up. Skating over to the dual cassette player, he pulled a cassette from his jacket pocket and popped it in. He cranked up the volume and skated back to where Sasha and Ivan still sat. Pink Floyd's “The Wall” blared out of the loudspeakers, and he could feel the bass thumping beneath his skates as he stopped with a flourish in front of them. He held out his hand invitingly. “C'mon, Saush,” he yelled over the music. “Let's show Ivan what we can do with some real music.”
“That iss not skate music,” Ivan roared, “that iss an abomination!” But it was an argument he'd been steadily losing over the past year. He'd allowed it in the first place only because he was not blind to the problems that faced his two young protégés in this unforgiving little backwater town, and practicing to their raucous music seemed to him a safe enough outlet for blowing off steam.
But then six months ago, without his permission, they had substituted it for their scheduled program at Nationals and now they had actually begun to build a reputation in international competition for their innovatively sexy brand of skating.
Watching them grin at each other as they did a side-by-side double lutz and then smoothly segued the movement into an overhead lift, he shrugged and settled back. Oh, what did it matter? It was one of the few things these days that didn't seemed destined to break their hearts.
 
 
For the past several years it had been nearly impossible for Sasha to reconcile her feelings for Lon. Given all that they had shared, she thought it should have been fairly simple but it wasn't. Instead, where he was concerned her emotions constantly shifted, an ever-changing pattern whose basis was a confusing snarl of contradictions.
For the longest time he had been her closest friend, her fellow outcast. Her big brother, almost. He had been, when everything else was said and done, the boy who had taken an awful lot of abuse on her behalf in a never-ending attempt to protect her. And God, how she loved the boy he had been in those days.
But there was a new hostility underlying her old feelings, a subterranean animosity she had to constantly struggle to overcome whenever she thought of the way he had thrown it all away. It arose, bitter as bile, every time she remembered how, in a world
finally,
blessedly free of the taint that had haunted them all those years in Kells Crossing, he had willfully saddled her with a brand-new reputation to live down.
It didn't matter that she hadn't sold drugs, just as it had never mattered that she wasn't a snob or a whore or a piece of meat for some rednecked lout to manhandle. Once again, not because of anything she had done but this time in response to her partner's actions, she had found herself the target of suspicious, unfriendly eyes.
And once again she had overcome the stigma by resurrecting an attitude she'd found successful in the past. She had closed her ears to the innuendoes and her eyes to the sidelong glances that were cast her way. She'd refused to talk about Lonnie or what he had done. Most of all, she had worked her tail to the bone.
Lon's request that she cozy up to J. R. Garland to secure him a place in the line hadn't helped her conflicted emotions, but Sasha now tried to shrug all the confusion aside. She waited in a drafty back hallway in the Portland Coliseum, clutching a phone receiver to her ear as she waited for the penitentiary bureaucracy to grind with its usual excessive slowness through the act of processing her call to Lon.
It wasn't as if getting her feathers all ruffled did her a damn bit of good anyway. Most of the stuff she tended to brood about was over and done with a long time ago, so what was the point? As for the rest . . . well, she could have exercised her options and God knows she'd had every opportunity to tell Lon no.
Except . . . that was something that had always been very difficult for her to do.
Suddenly the receiver on the other end was picked up. “Sasha?” Lon's excited voice came down the wire. “Is that you?”
“Hey, Lonnie.”
“Hey yourself, sweet thing.” There was an infinitesimal pause and then a sudden burst of exuberant laughter. “I don't know what you did, kiddo,” he said excitedly, “but it came down through the warden's office yesterday that I got the job. Saush! I got the job! I'm gonna skate again.”
Sasha sagged in relief. She had planned to stand tough on the issue of J. R. Garland . . . and she would have, too. Still, she was just as happy that the need to fight it out had been eliminated. Lon had a way of talking her around, from time to time, until she found herself doing things at his behest that she'd truly just as soon not be doing. “That's good, Lonnie.”
“Damn straight it's good, toots. And I owe it all to you.” He hesitated and then continued in a more sober tone, “Listen, Saush, my parole is effective on the fourteenth. I can catch a flight that lands me at SeaTac in Seattle at around 1
P.M.
and meet you in Tacoma. That is . . . that
is
where the schedule you sent me says you're gonna be that week.”
“Yeah, we've got three days at the Tacoma Dome,” Sasha confirmed.
“Do you think it would be possible for me to schedule some rink time while we're there and then again in Seattle?” Sasha could almost feel his shrug drift down through the wires as he continued, “I don't actually start performing with the line skaters until the first show in Spokane on the twenty-third, but let's face it, babe, I'm five years, two months, and seventeen days out of practice. That about qualifies me for the Rusty Blade award.”
“We've got a new manager,” Sasha replied and then responding to a warm spot on the back of her nape, turned to find the aforementioned manager standing directly across the hall from her. She jerked in surprise.
Mick was lounging with his wide shoulders and the flat of one foot propped casually against the wall at his back. Muscular arms crossed over his T-shirt-clad chest, he stared at her.
Sasha turned back to face the wall-mounted pay phone. “Speaking of whom, he's right here. I'll talk to him for you; I'm sure something can be arranged.” Unaccountably, her heart began to thud against her ribs as she looked over her shoulder and met Mick's eyes. “I've, uh, gotta go,” she murmured into the phone. Curling her fingers over her mouth and the receiver to provide a little pocket of privacy, she turned her back to Mick once more and whispered, “This is good news, Lon . . . the best. I'll see you on the fourteenth.” She replaced the receiver in its hook and slowly turned back to face Mick.
“So, tell me,” he inquired, dropping his foot from the wall and pushing away to stand upright. “Just what is it you're going to ask the new manager and for whom?” He stood facing her, his clenched fists jammed out of sight in his Levi's jeans pockets. This, then, was how she'd been managing it. Jesus, he was a chump.
He'd almost decided he was on the wrong trail after all, and all because her phone lines had been clear and her room had come up clean when he'd tossed it.
And, hell, admit it,
he prodded himself fiercely,
because that's what you wanted to believe.
That was the part that really fried his ass.
“Could we discuss this later, Mick?” Sasha interrupted his thoughts. “It took me longer than I expected to get my phone call put through this time, and I need to get some practice time in before the roadies show up.”
“Oh, by all means,” Mick muttered, following her down the hall into the arena proper. “Far be it for me to cut into your precious practice time.”
Puzzled by his tone, she shot him a curious glance over her shoulder but then shrugged and charged into the rink ahead of him. Mick forced back the scowl he could feel pulling his eyebrows together. Christ! How did she get away with looking so damned innocent anyhow; how did she get away with that scrubbed face and lopsided ponytail that made her look like some goddam teenager? What she was ought to show. It bloody well ought to show in some discernible manner.
Which was a damned odd thing for a man to be thinking when he'd run as many cons on the criminal element as Mick had.
Well, it was time to bring out the heavy artillery. He was through letting things slide. Sitting down next to the seat where Sasha had piled her skate bag, letterman's jacket, and pants, Mick leaned back and crossed one ankle over his knee. He propped his elbows on the armrests, steepled his fingers over his nose, and stared out at Sasha as she ran through her routine on the ice.
Usually, when he wanted to insinuate himself into a suspect's life, he labored to make them like him. Not far beyond like is trust, and no seduction will work without trust. And in the end, undercover work was, no matter what the media tried to make of it, just that. A seduction.
In this case, all his labor wasn't paying off quickly enough to suit him. He'd tried to be patient but he was growing itchy. So he was going to turn things around a little.
He was going to bypass the like part and jump headlong into the seduction.
Eyes narrowed, he observed Sasha out on the ice. He never tired of seeing her skate, and little by little, due primarily to watching her every chance he got and asking a ton of questions of anyone who'd take the time to answer, he had begun to pick up a modicum of knowledge about figure skating.
That thing she was launching into now was called a Biel-mann spin. With one leg bent up behind her and her head tilted way back, she bent backward at the waist and reached back with both hands to grasp the blade's toe pick. Then she lifted her arms toward the ceiling, bringing the skate along in its wake and, while spinning in place, raised and lowered her leg from the middle of her back to a full extension that was nearly a standing, vertical split. She let go of the skate and went into a fast layback spin, her head and arms bent as far back as they could reach.
The woman was agile.
And he was going to show her new ways to apply all that agility the first opportunity he got.
 
 
He was sprawled out in his seat, blocking Sasha's access to her skate bag and jacket when she came off the ice at the conclusion of her practice. Standing at the balustrade, sawing her blades back and forth as if she were on a Nordic Track machine, she stared down at Mick and couldn't help but notice that even in a relaxed state, that rude energy of his was apparently innate. It practically emanated from him in waves; it burned in the back of his steady, unwavering eyes when they met hers.
“If you aren't going to get up could you at least hand me my blade guards,” she demanded impatiently when he displayed no inclination to move aside his wide spread legs so she could reach her stuff unassisted. “I can't step off the ice without 'em.”
He took his sweet time complying with her request and regarded her all the while with that unnerving gaze. She was the first to drop her eyes.
His jeans, she observed as she slipped on the guards and climbed off the ice, were worn and faded nearly white except for faint streaks of indigo along the seams and in the folds radiating out from his fly. The material was thin and soft, and
boy
did it faithfully cup his . . .
Oh God, oh God, it was changing, straightening out, growing thick. Sasha had an insane impulse to laugh out loud, but her throat was too dry. Sudden heat prickled her cheeks and the desire to laugh collapsed entirely. She
knew
she should look away, that she was asking for trouble if she didn't, but it was almost as if her eyes had developed a life all their own. She continued to avidly watch as the object of her scrutiny realized its full potential.
“All right, by God,” Mick growled, “that does it! ” He shot out of his seat, gripped Sasha by the waist, and hoisted her onto the waist-high balustrade that separated the spectator seats from the rink. Roughly kneeing her legs apart, he insinuated himself between them and reached behind her to wrap her ponytail around his fist, forcing back her head.
For just a moment he stared down into her eyes, taking note of the lambent excitement that blazed back at him. Then his lids grew heavy and he lowered his head, rocking his mouth over hers. His free hand came up to spread across her arched throat, thumb and index finger wedging beneath the angles of her jaw to fetter her completely, keeping her face tipped up to his.

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