Blindsided: A Moo U Hockey Romance

by Victoria Denault

  “You’d be better off selling the rotten apples,” I shoot back, but he just smirks because he knows that’s not true. Tate Adler is built like some kind of action movie star—six foot one, tanned a golden-brown from the summer farm work, and the parts of him that aren’t muscled are chiseled. Ugh. Screw Tate Adler.

  “You’ve only got your granny panties in a knot because it was my granddad who got there first,” Tate replies coolly. “If it was your booth, you’d tell me tough shit too and you know it.”

  I turn to face him, arms folded across my chest. “You’re one hundred percent right.”

  He isn’t expecting that kind of candor and the frown he’s been sporting disappears. Although I would never admit it out loud, even if I was tortured, his cupid’s bow mouth has the potential to be all kinds of sexy…if it didn’t spew the garbage his brain thinks up. “Is this some psychology-major mind game or something?”

  “I’m a business major focusing on entrepreneurial studies, just like you. We have a lot of the same classes, like accounting,” I say. Since the semester started two weeks ago, I’ve watched him look up every time he entered the classroom to see where I was sitting and immediately walk to the opposite side of the room, so I know he knows this. “Also, I don’t wear granny panties. Anyway I’m agreeing that yes, I would have done the same thing, but you have the opportunity to be the bigger person here. Come on small town hockey hero, show the world you’re a bigger person than me.”

  Was that too much taunting? I know hockey players love a challenge. Uncle Bobby, who was the last local player to get drafted to the NHL, has never turned down a challenge or a dare in his entire life. He swears it’s because of the competitive nature he developed playing hockey. And for the quickest little second, I think Tate might take my challenge. But George Adler appears from the bowels of the station and comes marching up to us. He’s a tall, burly man with a barrel chest and thinning gray hair that used to be dirty blond. His polo shirt and jeans are in good condition and show no signs of the scuffle he had with Clyde, but there’s a slight red abrasion on his chubby right cheek.

  George stops in front of Tate, turning his entire body so that I’m behind his back, out of view, and he says to his eldest grandchild. “I’m sorry they bothered you. I had them call Raquel but she didn’t answer her phone, and they wouldn’t let me leave without supervision. Like I’m a goddamn toddler.”

  Tate frowns. “If you don’t want to be treated like a toddler, Gramps, then maybe don’t get into infantile fights. Let’s go. I’m late.”

  George and Tate leave without another word or even glance at me. Son of a…

  The door to the back swings open again and Clyde appears in all his hunched over, bloodshot-eyed glory. He has the audacity to walk right past me and grumble. “Hurry up. I want to get the hell out of here.”

  I follow behind, scowling at the back of his balding head. We’re crossing the parking lot when Matt, my brief Tinder date, pulls into the lot in his police cruiser and lowers his window. “Hey gorgeous! So it was your gramps? That’s wild!”

  “Yeah. Wild,” I say tersely. Clyde has kept on marching to my car. George Adler has climbed into the passenger side of Tate’s beat-up pickup, which is only a parking stall away from where I’m standing. So of course Tate has chosen to stand beside his truck and eavesdrop over leaving. Great. Matt smiles up at me and I’m sure he’s leering at me behind those mirrored shades. In the fifteen minutes our date lasted, his eyes kept sweeping from my chest to my ankles, which made me regret the short strappy sundress I’d chosen to wear.

  “So…we should probably reschedule our date, huh?” Matt lowers the sunglasses long enough to wink at me. “We had one hell of a vibe going before you ran off, didn’t we?”

  I’m about to tell him the vibe he was getting from me was repulsion but I’m not in the mood for another confrontation or to have a cop in town on my bad side or to give Tate Adler more of a show. So instead I just make a weird sound in the back of my throat and mutter. “Call me.”

  “I ain’t got all day, Magnolia!” Clyde barks, and I turn and leave Matt without so much as a goodbye wave. I keep my head tipped down, eyes on the pavement as I make my way past Tate. I do not want to see his reaction to any of this.

  I wait a second, until Tate has pulled out of the parking lot, before pulling out myself. Clyde turns to me and opens his mouth but I slap a hand up between us. “I don’t want to hear it. You can explain at the farm—to everyone—how you got arrested and cost us a spot at the farmer’s market. Until then, not a word, Clyde.”

  “Mag—”

  “Not. One. Word!”

  2

  Tate

  My dad scrubs his face with his hand as he leans against the kitchen counter. “Can you say that again? My brain just isn’t making sense of it.”

  “Because it makes no sense,” I reply and glance at the clock above the sink. My hockey practice is starting soon. Too soon. I have to leave this instant if I’m going to make it close to on time. “Look, I have practice. Just ask grandpa why he got into a fist fight with Clyde Todd. He can probably explain it better than me.”

  I start toward the front hall but there are footsteps thumping on the stairs and then my younger brother, Jace, swings his body over the whitewashed pine stair railing and lands with a thud directly in front of me. “Grandpa got arrested?”

  “I told you how I feel about eavesdropping,” Grandma says sternly from where she’s sitting at the kitchen table a few feet away.

  Jace shrugs his hoodie clad shoulders innocently. “It’s not my fault the heating ducts from the kitchen carry every word people say right into my room. You guys really need to stop having private discussions in here. Try the barn.”

  “What’s left of the barn is currently occupied by Grandpa who is blowing off steam by working,” I explain. “And yeah he was arrested. Not charged. Thanks to me.”

  “Please say that loser Clyde Todd is still rotting in a cell,” Jace says.

  “Nope. Unfortunately he was sprung by Maggie. I gotta go,” I say and push past Jace. He almost looks hurt. I feel bad because I don’t hang out with him much at all lately. Now that I’m back at school, and hockey practices have started even though the season doesn’t start for another month I barely see him and I know he misses me. I miss him too. He is used to me not being around since I went to boarding school for high school, but I think he assumed I’d live at home when I got into Moo U. But my full ride included money for housing, so I spent my freshman year in the dorms and moved into the hockey house a few blocks off campus this year. “I’ll be seeing you on Sundays now though, since we got a booth at the farmer’s market.”

  “We got the booth? Over the Todds?” Dad says and I can hear the relief in his voice. “You should have led with that, son.”

  I glance back at him and he smiles at me. I smile back, but I’m not as convinced as they are that getting a booth is a good thing. I mean, our apple crop is pretty pitiful this year and part of the plan was to sell pies and strudels and muffins from our less-than-presentable apples, but that relies on my grandma, and the arthritis in her hands is worse than ever. Aunt Louise and my cousin Raquel are supposed to help her out with the baking, but they tend to do a half-ass job if they show up at all. They both work other jobs—part-time—so I almost can’t blame them except that they always expect me to give up everything to help with the farm, and I have other obligations. But I do it, so they should too. Jace has tried to help with baking but he usually messes up an ingredient amount and whatever he’s making ends up inedible. “We will have enough baked goods to supplement the apples, right?”

  “We will have enough. I think,” Grandma says not even trying to sound confident. She tucks a strand of salt and pepper hair back behind her ear. “I mean I sent Louise to the store this morning for more flour, but she isn’t back yet.”

  I grind my teeth. If you looked up self-absorbed in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of my aunt Louise
. I can’t say that out loud because my grandparents adore her. Louise can do no wrong in their eyes. “Jace, can you head to town and track down Louise please?” I say calmly and then whisper so only he can hear. “Check the coffee shop and the shoe store. If she spent the money grandma gave her on herself…”

  I don’t finish the sentence because there’s no point. If Louise did spend the cash she was given for pie ingredients on shoes or a lunch for herself, I can’t do a damn thing about it except make more money to replace it. Louise knows it and I know it. Jace nods and walks to the front hall to grab the keys to the family SUV. Well, it’s technically Grandpa’s but since Dad’s car died in July and we haven’t had the money to get him a new one, it’s a communal car now, as with Gram’s relic of a hatchback. He swings open the screen door and steps onto the porch. I follow.

  “I’ll be back early Sunday morning to help bring everything down to the farmer’s market,” I call as I walk out of the house.

  Grandpa is walking out of the barn. He’s red-faced and sweaty. I wonder what he’s been doing in there. I don’t know if I should ask. He wouldn’t speak to me the whole ride home. He told me he was sorry I had to come fetch him and that it wasn’t his fault but that was it. George Adler isn’t the strong silent type. He talks. In fact, it’s usually hard to get him to shut up whether he’s armchair quarterbacking the Patriots game on TV or giving instructions to the farmhands—when we could afford to have farmhands —or telling his lame jokes at the dinner table, he’s always yapping. “Need to replace the brushes on the apple washer.”

  “What? Why?” I ask, my feet skidding to a halt on the dirt drive, dust rising around me. “I thought we just did that.”

  “We did. Brushes are too hard. Bruised the crap out of the fruit,” he tosses an apple at me. I catch it and examine it. He’s right. It’s all banged up. We can’t sell that.

  “Why did we buy brushes that are too hard?” I say, my voice tight with frustration. I run a hand through my hair. “There’s no way you can break down the washer and get it back together by tomorrow is there?”

  “I’ll stay up all night if I have to. Your dad will help,” Grandpa replies.

  He doesn’t sound confident, he sounds resigned. He’ll get it done, but it won’t be easy. I’m not anywhere near confident either. Last time he broke down the washer it took three days to put back together. “Why did we buy the wrong brushes?”

  “They aren’t wrong. They just aren’t right,” Grandpa mutters and that lame excuse of a defense means he’s covering for someone.

  “Louise bought the wrong brushes? Or was it Raquel?”

  “It’s my fault. I asked Raquel to order them online and I didn’t make it clear which ones. I was trying to save a couple bucks because it’s cheaper than the local stores,” Grandpa says and waves a hand between us like he’s trying to air out the tension I’m emanating.

  “Grandpa, did you really get arrested? For clocking Clyde Todd?” Jace asks and I want to bark at him because he should be halfway to town by now tracking down Louise. Instead he’s hanging his head out the SUV window while it idles, burning away the gas we can barely afford.

  “Yeah well, he deserved it. Was trying to steal our farmer’s market booth,” Grandpa says and frowns.

  “He says you flirted your way into the line in front of him,” I say, and Jace laughs.

  “Clyde is always calling you a womanizer,” Jace laments. “You’ve been with Grams forever and he’s the one with the runaway wife. How does that even make sense?”

  Somehow, Jace’s defense of him makes Gramps even more ornery. I’m more observant than Jace so I think I know why, but I’m not about to voice that suspicion. “I was nice to Kathy Oleson and Clyde’s blowing it out of proportion. He’s a drunk jackass. He and that group of miscreants he calls a family can take their fancy hippie cheese and shove it up their patchouli covered—”

  The screen door slams behind me and Grandpa stops speaking instantly. I glance over my shoulder and see Grandma standing there, arms crossed and a look on her face that seems like it’s equal parts hurt and anger. “George Adler, you and that belligerent mouth of yours have some explaining to do. Walk with me.”

  It isn’t a request, it’s an order. My grandmother rarely delivers orders to her husband, so when she does, you know it’s serious. George looks guilty as he marches by me and joins grandma as she starts toward the orchard. I walk over to the SUV, where Jace is chuckling. “Wow. Grandma is pissed.”

  I think it’s because she heard me say Gramps was flirting with another woman more than because of his use of colorful language and brawl with Clyde. Because if the suspicions I’ve had since I was ten and Grandpa spent seven months sleeping on the couch in the living room are correct, he’s done more than flirt in the past. But now is not the time to explain that to Jace because it would take time neither of us has. “I’m pissed too because you’re still here and not tracking down Louise and getting her and the supplies grandma needs back to the house.”

  Jace rolls his eyes. “Relax. I’ll find her. Can you believe Grandpa and old man Todd actually came to blows? Has that ever happened before?”

  “I have no idea but I’d say it’s likely,” I tell Jace. “They’ve been enemies since the day we moved here, I think.”

  Jace cocks his head and the backward baseball cap covering his light brown hair almost falls off as the brim hits the headrest on the seat. He adjusts it, spinning it forward. “Huh. Why?”

  “What do you mean why?” I question. “Because Clyde Todd is a drunken asshole, you know that.”

  “Yeah but there’s got to be more to it. What happened to trigger a grudge that lasts decades?” Jace asks.

  “Jesus, I don’t know. Why are you always so full of useless questions?” I ask and grin at him. “Next thing you know you’ll be asking me why Zebras have stripes.”

  “Modern day scientists feel that Zebras have stripes as a natural defense mechanism because the pattern wards off biting flies that can carry deadly disease,” Jace tells me. I smile at that because of course he knows why zebras are striped. He’s actually a giant brainiac. He would qualify for a scholarship in a heartbeat if he would just actually try to pass his classes, but he doesn’t, not for the last couple of years anyway.

  I pull my phone from my pocket and glance at the time and swear. “I gotta fly. Can you go find Louise? Make sure she bought the right ingredients for grandma and help Dad and Grandpa with the apple washer tonight, okay?”

  “Will do.”

  I jump into my car and take off as fast as legally possible back to campus. Today is not going as planned but what else is new? Since I started college the only thing that has gone right in my life is hockey. In a way it’s my own fault, I guess. If I’d checked in more from my prep school in Minnesota maybe someone would have mentioned to me that Grandpa wanted to remortgage the farm to tear out half our Golden Delicious trees and replace them with super expensive, already matured Honey Crisp trees. I would have done the Google search that Grandpa didn’t do and figured out that, though they sell for more, Honey Crisp trees often produce significantly less sellable fruit due to birds, insect infestations, and because they bruise more easily. Maybe we wouldn’t have lost over forty percent of that first crop. And last year if I wasn’t enjoying college so much and skipping visits home to spend weekends partying, maybe I would have noticed the cider press was on the fritz and in need of serious maintenance before it caught fire and burned down half the barn.

  Now here we are, I’m a sophomore hockey star with a solid chance at going in the first round of the draft this coming summer, but I can’t enjoy any of it anymore. When I’m not running off to a job I’m not supposed to have, I’m running back here to solve some crisis, working my butt off at hockey practice, studying, or lying awake at night trying to decide what I’ll do if I do get drafted. Stay in school or bail immediately for a hockey contract and much needed money?

  And as if all that weren’t enoug
h, Grandpa is risking jail time just so he can continue his war with the farm next door. I huff out a frustrated breath as I pull into the campus parking lot closest to the rink and jog toward it. I hadn’t a clue why George was in jail at first. He just called and asked me to “spring him from the hoosegow” and I rushed over there without even asking why. But then Maggie Todd stormed in like a tornado—all red hair and pink cheeks and long, toned arms and legs—and asked to see her grandfather and the pieces fell into place.

  Admittedly, I’m a little hazy on the details of the long-standing feud between the Adlers and the Todds. But that girl—who turned into a hell of a beautiful woman, unfortunately—has gotten on my last nerve since I was a kid. We went to the same grade school, and she used to run recess like she owned the place. All the other girls loved her and flocked to her, playing whatever game she wanted to play, giggling over whatever she giggled over and all that crap. Adults liked her too. She was always the teacher’s pet. She talked like an adult too, which was weird as a grade school kid. On the occasions I overheard her yammering in the schoolyard, she didn’t sound timid and used words I hadn’t learned yet. And she smiled at everyone all the time. Everyone but me. To me she only glared, even before I told all the guys in fifth grade to call her Maggot instead of Maggie…which I only did because she glared.

  We did our best to ignore each other in middle school and then it was time for high school and my hockey skills brought me an offer to attend an elite boarding school in Minnesota with the best hockey program in the country, and Maggie and all the Todds blissfully became a distant memory. All but forgotten until I came face-to-face with her during freshman orientation here last year. In an unspoken pact we reverted back to middle school days and ignored each other—until today when I end up next to her at the police station listening to her slam her foot into the linoleum. And her glare—the one that gets under my skin worse than a sunburn—was back in full force so I made things worse by being a brat to her.