See Jane Score (11 page)

Jane figured she had two choices. Get upset and indignant, or relax. She was a journalist, a professional woman. She wasn't traveling with the team to become buddies, and certainly not to be teased like they were all back in high school. But the professional approach hadn't worked so far, and she had to admit that she liked the teasing better than being ignored. Besides, these guys probably razzed male reporters also. “Luc, you're already a prima donna,” she said.

Luc chuckled and she finally got a laugh out of the others. For the rest of the game, she tried to give as good as she got, but these guys were much better at it than she and had had years of practice. In the end, she beat Luc by almost two hundred points, but she lost in the war of words.

Somehow, during all the teasing and trash-talking, she'd moved up a few notches in their esteem. She probably could have done without their opinions on her clothes, shoes, and hair, but at least they weren't talking about the weather, giving her one-word answers, or ignoring her altogether. Yes, this was definitely progress.

After the game tomorrow night, they might actually speak to her. She didn't expect for them all to become good pals, but perhaps now they wouldn't give her such a hard time in the locker room. Perhaps they'd give her an interview and a break and keep their jockstraps up as she walked by.

Behind the wire cage of his mask, Luc watched the puck drop and spin on its side. Bressler muscled the puck out of the play-off circle, and the battle between Seattle and San Jose began.

Luc crossed himself for luck, but ten minutes into the first frame, his luck completely deserted him. Sharks right winger Teemu Selanne chipped the puck and it bounced into the net. It was an easy goal. One Luc should have stopped, and it seemed to trigger a complete blowout. Not only for Luc, but the entire team.

When the first period ended, two Chinooks players required stitches, and Luc had given up four goals. At two minutes into the second frame, Grizzell got brutally cross-checked at center ice. He went down hard and didn't get back up. He had to be carried from the ice, and ten minutes later Luc misplaced a puck in his glove hand and the fifth Sharks goal went up on the board. Coach Nystrom gave the signal, yanked Luc from the net, and replaced him with the second-string goalie.

The skate from the pipes to the bench is the longest of any netminder's life. Every goalie who ever played the game had an off night, but for Luc Martineau, it was more than that. He'd been through it too many times during his last season with Detroit not to feel it looming overhead now like an executioner's ax. He'd lost focus out there, felt out of sync. Instead of seeing the play before it happened, he was one second behind it. Was this it? The first bad game in a downhill slide? A fluke or a trend? The beginning of the end?

Apprehension and a real fear he didn't even want to admit feeling squeezed his chest and bit the back of his neck. He felt it as he sat on the bench, watching the rest of the game from the pines.

“Everyone has an off night,” Coach Nystrom told him in the locker room. “Roy got pulled last month. Don't worry about it, Luc.”

“None of us played worth a shit tonight,” Sutter told him.

“We should have played better in front of you,” Bressler added. “When you're in the goal, we sometimes forget to step in the crease and protect you.”

Luc didn't let himself off quite so easy. He'd never been one to blame others and was ultimately responsible for his own play.

As the jet took off from San Francisco, he sat in the dark cabin reliving his past, and not the good stuff. The horrible hit to his knees, the surgeries and months of physical rehabilitation. His addiction to painkillers, and the horrible body aches and nausea that rolled through him if he didn't feed it. And ultimately his inability to play the game he loved.

Failure whispered in his ear as he headed home, telling him he'd lost his edge. The glow of Jane Alcott's laptop screen and the
click-click
of her keyboard assured him that everyone else would know it too. In the sports section of the paper, he would read her report of that night's disaster.

At the airport in Seattle, Luc headed to long-term parking and caught a glimpse of Jane cramming her stuff into a Honda Prelude. She looked up as he passed, but neither of them spoke. She looked like she didn't need his help with her suitcase, and he didn't have anything to say to the archangel of gloom and doom.

A sprinkling of rain wet the windshield of his Land Cruiser as he made the forty-minute drive into downtown Seattle. He couldn't remember a time when he'd been so glad to be home.

Moonlight spilled through the eight-foot windows in the living room as he moved through his dark apartment. The light above the stove had been left on, illuminating the FedEx envelope on the counter. He walked into his bedroom and flipped on the light. He left the door partway open and tossed his duffel on the floor by his bed. Shrugging out of his blazer, he hung it next to his garment bag in his closet. He'd unpack tomorrow. Right now he was tired and relieved to be home, and he wanted nothing more than to fall face first into bed.

He loosened the knot of his tie as Marie knocked on his door, pushing it open the rest of the way. She wore a pair of flannel drawstring pajama bottoms and a Britney Spears T-shirt. She looked about ten years old.

“Guess what, Luc?”

“Hey, there.” He glanced at his watch. It was past midnight; whatever she wanted, she obviously didn't feel could wait until morning. He wondered if she'd managed to get kicked out of school since he'd spoken to her last. He was almost afraid to ask. “What's up?”

Her big blue eyes lit up and she smiled. “I got asked to the dance.”

“What dance?”

“The dance at my school.”

He pulled the knot of his tie, and thought of the FedEx envelope sitting in the kitchen. He'd deal with it tomorrow. “When is it?”

“A few weeks.”

She might not be living with him in a few weeks. But she didn't need to know that now. “Who asked you?”

Her eyes lit up even more and she moved farther into the room. “Zack Anderson. He's a senior.”

Shit.

“He's in a band! He's got a lip ring and his nose and eyebrows are pierced. He has a tattoo. He's sooooo hot!”

Double shit. Luc had nothing against a tattoo. But piercings? Christ. “What's the name of his band?”

“The Slow Screws.”

Great.

“I need to get a dress. And shoes.” Marie sat on the edge of his bed and shoved her hands between her knees. “Mrs. Jackson said she'd take me.” She looked up, her eyes pleading. “But she's old.”

“Marie, I'm a guy. I don't know anything about buying prom dresses.”

“But you have lots of girlfriends. You know what looks good.”

On women. Not on girls. Not on his sister. Not to go to a prom she probably wouldn't be here to attend anyway. And even if she was, not with Zack of the Loose Screws. The guy with the lip ring and pierced nose.

“I've never been on a date,” she confessed.

His hands fell to his sides and he looked at her closely. At her brows that were too thick and hair that looked a bit on the dry side. Damn, she needed a mother. A woman to help her. Not him.

“What do boys like girls to wear?” she asked.

As little as possible,
he thought. “Long sleeves. We think long sleeves and high necks are hot. And long dresses with big puffy skirts so we can't get very close.”

She laughed. “That's not true.”

“I swear to God it is, Marie,” he said and pulled the tie from around his neck and tossed it on the bedside table. “We don't like anything that shows too much skin. We like anything a nun would wear.”

“Now I know you're lying.”

She laughed again and he thought it was a shame he didn't know her better. She was his only sibling and he didn't know her at all. And there was a possibility that he wouldn't know her either. A part of him wished things could be different. Wished that he was home more, and that he knew what she needed.

“After school tomorrow, I'll give you my credit card.” He sat next to her and untied his shoes. “Get what you need and I'll take a look when you bring it home.”

She stood, her shoulders hunched, a frown pulling at her bottom lip. “Okay,” she said and walked from the room.

Jesus, he'd made her mad again. But she really didn't expect him to shop for a prom dress with her, did she? Like he was her girlfriend? How could she be mad at him for that? He didn't even like to shop with girls his own age.

Chapter 6
Gassed: Cut from the Team

W
hen Jane finally forced herself from bed the next morning, she pulled on her laundry-day underwear and sweatsuit and hauled her dirty clothes to the Laundromat. As the machines washed and spun, she flipped open a
People
magazine and caught up on her reading.

There was no place she had to be today. No deadline breathing down her neck. She didn't have anything work-related until tomorrow night's game. She bought a Coke from the vending machine, sat back in a hard plastic chair, and enjoyed the mundane pleasure of watching her darks tumble dry. She grabbed the real estate section from the local newspaper and checked out properties for sale. With her added income from the hockey columns, she estimated that by summer she'd have enough money saved to put twenty percent down on a home of her own, but the more she looked, the more discouraged she got. Two hundred thousand sure didn't buy much these days.

On the way home, she stopped at the grocery store to pick up a week's worth of food. She had today off, but tomorrow the Chinooks were playing the Chicago Blackhawks at Key Arena. They had home games Thursday, Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday nights. Three days off after that, then it was back on the road. Back on the jet. Back on the bus and back to sleeping in hotel rooms.

Reporting the Chinooks' six–four loss to the Sharks was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. After she'd trash-talked and played darts with them, she felt a bit like a traitor, but she'd had a job to do.

And Luc . . . watching the horror unfold in the net had almost been as bad as watching him sitting on the bench. Staring straight ahead, his handsome features void of expression. She'd felt bad for him. She'd felt bad that she had to be the one to report the details, but again, she'd had a job to do, and she'd done it.

When she returned home, there was a message on her machine from Leonard Callaway asking her to meet him the following morning in his office at the
Times.
She didn't think the message bode well for her further employment as a sports reporter.

And she was right. He fired her. “We've decided it's best if you no longer cover the Chinooks games. Jeff Noonan is going to fill in for Chris,” Leonard said.

The paper was letting Jane go and giving her job to the Nooner. “Why? What happened?”

“I think it's best if we don't get into that.”

The Chinooks hadn't played their best games the past week, ending in Luc's spectacular blowout. “They think I jinxed them. Don't they?”

“We knew it was a possibility.”

Good-bye to her chance to write an important article. Good-bye to twenty-percent down on her own home. And all because some stupid hockey players thought she was bad luck. Well, she couldn't say that she hadn't been warned or that she wasn't half expecting it. Still, knowing it didn't make it any easier to take. “Which players think I brought them bad luck? Luc Martineau?”

“Let's not get into that,” Leonard said, but he didn't deny it.

His silence hurt more than it should. Luc was nothing to her, and she was certainly nothing to him. Less than nothing. He'd never wanted her to travel with the team in the first place, and she was sure he was behind her getting the boot. Jane pushed up the corners of her mouth when what she really wanted was to scream and yell and threaten to sue for wrongful termination or sexism or . . . or . . . something. She might even have a case too. But
might
wasn't a good enough guarantee, and she'd learned long ago not to let her hot temper burn bridges. She still had the
Single Girl
column to write for the
Times.

“Well, thank you for the opportunity to write the sports column,” she said and shook Leonard's hand. “Traveling with the Chinooks was an experience I won't forget.”

She kept her smile on her face until she left the building. She was so angry, she wanted to hit someone. Someone with blue eyes and a horseshoe tattooed above his private parts.

And betrayed. She'd thought she'd made progress, but the players had turned on her. Maybe if she hadn't beat them at darts, talked trash, and they hadn't called her Sharky, she wouldn't feel so betrayed now. But she did. She'd even felt bad for doing her job and reporting the facts of their last game. And this was how they repaid her? She hoped they got athlete's foot. All at the same time.

For the next two days, she didn't leave her apartment. She was so depressed she cleaned all the cupboards. While she recaulked the bathroom, she cranked the volume on the televison and felt only slightly vindicated when she heard that the Chinooks lost to the Blackhawks four to three.

Who would they blame now?

By the third day, her anger hadn't diminished, and she knew there was only one way to get rid of it. She had to confront the players if she was to reclaim her dignity.

She knew they would be at the Key Arena for the game-day skate, and before she could talk herself out of it, she dressed in her jeans and black sweater and drove into Seattle.

She entered on the mezzanine level, and her gaze immediately fell on the empty net. Only a few players practiced on the ice below, and with her stomach in knots, she walked down the steps and headed for the locker room.

“Hello, Fishy,” she said as she strolled toward him in the tunnel, a blowtorch in his hand as he warmed the blade of his stick.

He looked up and shut off the torch.

“Are the guys in the locker room?” she asked.

“Most of them.”

“Is Luc in there?”

“I don't know, but he doesn't like to talk on game days.”

Too damn bad. The soles of her boots squeaked on the rubber mats in the hallway and heads swiveled in her direction when she walked into the room. She raised a hand. “Keep your pants up, gentlemen,” she said as she moved to stand in the middle of the half-naked players. “I'll just take a moment of your time, and I'd prefer you not do your synchronized jock-dropping thing.”

She turned to face them and stood with her shoulders straight and her head high. She didn't see Luc. The rat bastard was probably hiding. “I'm sure you've all heard that I will no longer be covering Chinooks games, and I wanted to let you know that I will not forget our time together. Traveling with you guys was . . . interesting.” She walked to Captain Mark Bressler and stuck out her hand. “Good luck with your game tonight, Hitman.”

He looked at her a moment as if she made the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound center a bit nervous. “Ah, thanks,” he said and finally shook her hand. “Are you going to be in the seats tonight?”

She dropped her hand to her side. “No. I have other plans.”

She turned to face the room one last time. “Good-bye, gentlemen, good luck, and I hope this is your year to win the Stanley Cup.” She even managed a smile before she turned to go. She'd done it, she thought as she walked down the hall. They hadn't chased her away with her tail between her legs. She'd shown them that she had class and dignity and that she was magnanimous too.

She hoped they all got jock itch. Really, really bad jock itch. She looked down at the rubber mats as she walked into the tunnel, but she stopped short when she came face to naked chest with sculpted muscles, ripped abs, and a horseshoe tattoo rising out of a pair of hockey shorts. Luc Martineau. Her gaze lifted up his damp chest to his chin and mouth, up the deep furrow of his top lip, past his straight nose to the beautiful baby blues staring back at her.

“You!” she said.

One brow rose slowly up his forehead and her temper exploded.

“You did this to me,” she said. “I know you did. I guess it didn't matter to you that I actually needed that job. You screw up in the net and
I'm
out.” She felt the backs of her eyes sting and that made her all the madder. “Who did you blame your loss on last night? And if you lose tonight, who will you blame? You . . . you . . .” she stammered. One rational part of her brain told her to shut up, to quit while she was ahead. To just walk around him and leave while she still had her dignity.

Too bad she was too far gone to listen to that part of her brain.

“You called him a big dumb dodo?” Caroline asked later that night as the two of them sat on Jane's couch watching the gas fireplace lick the fake logs. “Why didn't you go for broke and call him a poo-poo head too?”

Jane groaned. Hours later she was still writhing with embarrassment. “Don't,” she pleaded and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “The only consolation I have is that I will never see Luc Martineau again.” But she didn't ever think she'd forget the look on his face. Kind of stunned surprise, followed by laughter. She'd wanted to die right there, but she couldn't even blame him for laughing at her. He probably hadn't been called a big dumb dodo since grade school.

“Bummer,” Caroline said as she raised a glass of wine to her lips. She'd pulled her shiny blond hair back into a perfect ponytail and, as always, looked gorgeous. “I thought maybe you could introduce me to Rob Sutter.”

“The Hammer?” Jane shook her head and took a drink of her gin and tonic. “His nose is always broken and he always has a black eye.”

Caroline smiled and got a little dreamy-eyed. “I know.”

“He's married and has a baby.”

“Hmm, well, someone single, then.”

“I thought you had a new man.”

“I do, but it's not going to work out.”

“Why?”

“I don't know,” she said through a sigh and put her wine on the cherrywood coffee table. “Lenny is handsome and rich but soooo boring.”

Which meant he was probably normal and didn't need fixing. Caroline was a born fixer-upper.

“Do you want to turn on the game and watch it?” Caroline asked.

Jane shook her head. “Nah.” She'd been tempted, real tempted, to grab the remote and surf by the game to see who was winning. But that would only make everything worse.

“Maybe the Chinooks will lose. That might make you feel better.”

It wouldn't. “No.” Jane leaned her head back on the floral print sofa. “I don't ever want to see a hockey game again.” But she did. She wanted to be in the press box or a seat near the action. She wanted to feel the energy run through her, watch a flawless play, a fight break out in the corners, or Luc reach for the perfect glove save.

“Just when I thought I was making progress with the team, I get the sack. I beat Rob and Luc at darts, and they all kidded me about having lesbian glasses. And that night I didn't get nuisance calls in my room. I know we weren't friends, but I thought they were beginning to trust and accept me into the pack.” She thought a moment and added, “Like wild dingos.”

Caroline glanced at her watch. “I've been here fifteen minutes and you haven't gotten to the good stuff.”

Jane didn't have to ask what her friend was talking about. She knew Caroline too well. “I thought you came over to cheer me up, but you just want to hear about the locker room.”

“I did come to cheer you up.” She turned toward Jane and laid an arm across the back of the sofa. “Later.”

It wasn't like she owed any of them any sort of loyalty. Not now. And it wasn't as if she were going to put it in a tell-all book. “Okay,” she said, “but it wasn't like you're thinking. It wasn't all really hard bodies and me the only woman. Well, it was, but I had to keep my eyes up and every time I walked past a player he dropped his cup.”

“You're right,” Caroline said as she leaned over and plucked her wine off the table. “It isn't what I was thinking. It's better.”

“It's harder than you think to talk to a naked man while you're fully clothed. They're all sweaty and flushed and they don't want to talk. You ask them a question, and they just sort of grunt out an answer.”

“Sounds like my last three boyfriends during sex.”

“It wasn't as much fun as sex, believe me.” She shook her head. “Some of them wouldn't talk to me at all, and that made it really difficult to do my job.”