Roughing (Ottawa Titans Book 1)

by Sarah Hegger

  Sam smirked. “Yes, hello this is Sam Stone. Fourteen Montgomery road. I need to report a prowler.”

  “Hey, Sam. Are you all right?”

  Elizabeth recognized Chris’s voice and grinned. “He’s fine, Chris. I’m his prowler.”

  “She climbed the wall and broke into my house.” Sam looked petulant. “It’s your job to get over here and arrest her.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Chris sighed. “And if I do that, next week she’ll be calling me to tell me you’re stalking her.”

  Sam snorted. “She should be so lucky.”

  “You’d arrest him for me, wouldn’t you? Bestie?” Elizabeth let her smug shine through.

  “Stop wasting police time and sort it out, children,” Chris said, and hung up.

  “What are you going to do next?” Elizabeth propped her shoulder against the doorjamb.

  Sam sipped his Baileys and grimaced. “I can still throw you in the pool.”

  “Right.” Elizabeth drew the word out. “I’d be surprised if you could throw yourself out of that deck chair.”

  Sam looked down at himself and then the deck chair. “You’re right.” He sighed and looked up at her, all cockiness gone. “What do you want, Lizzie?”

  “I want my mother to stop calling me.” She stepped into the kitchen and recoiled. “Damn, it stinks in here, Sam.”

  “Window’s open.”

  “And it’s freezing.”

  He took another swig. “You should feel right at home.”

  “And my mother is not going to stop calling me until your mother stops trying to get on a plane and rush home to you.” She shut the door and picked up a beer bottle at her feet and then another, and another. The itch to tidy roared through her, too strong to be denied and she grabbed another bottle and dropped it in the recycling bin beneath the sink.

  What the hell. She took the bin out and picked up an empty Jack Daniels bottle.

  “What are you doing?’ Sam scowled at her.

  “And your mother will only stop threatening to come home when she knows you’re all right.”

  Sam clutched his Baileys to his chest. “So tell her I’m all right and go away.”

  “Wow! When you sulk, you go all out, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sulking.” Sam sniffed. “What the hell do you know about it anyway?”

  “As much as I need to.” Elizabeth scooped empty cans off the table into her bin. “Which is a lot more than I want to know.”

  She took the box to the main recycling outside the kitchen door and emptied it with a clatter.

  Maddy popped her head around the corner of the house and looked at her hopefully.

  “In a minute.” Elizabeth motioned her to go around front. “Let me have a chat to him first.” And get him to pick his dropped lip up off the floor.

  Sam glowered at the pool, and still managed to look ridiculously sexy. Supporting her long-held theory he was one of hell’s minions.

  “Unfortunately, your mother is not going to settle for me telling her you’re okay.” She trashed the Styrofoam takeout boxes. Really! Styrofoam! Hadn’t they heard of recycling? “Because she knows as well as we do that I really don’t care. No, it’s going to take some proof.”

  “What are you babbling about?” Sam sneered at her. “You’re the last thing I need right now.”

  “Right back at ya, big boy.” Elizabeth loaded up pizza boxes. “And I’m not here for you. I’m here because of my mom. She needs this holiday, which means she needs your mom not to come rushing home to her precious little boy.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Not if you were the last man on earth.” It must be the alcohol because as Sam insults went, it was like he wasn’t even trying. “So, I tell you what.” She stood over him and stared down. “We get you cleaned up. Starting with those teeth. Snap a shot of you looking fine and dandy and you and I go back to pretending the other doesn’t exist.”

  He rolled to his feet and towered over her a good ten inches. She also got more of a sense of how wide and muscled he was when he stood. Her stomach clenched, but she couldn’t step back. He’d read that as giving ground, and he’d be right.

  “What’s wrong with your mom?”

  He smelled…awful. “Sam! That breath could kill a cow.”

  Swaying slightly on his feet, he gave her a flat stare. “I like your mom. I might do it for her.”

  The implication being not for Elizabeth, but she could work with that. “She divorced my dad.”

  “Eh?” Sam blinked at her. “I thought she’d done that years ago.”

  “She should have.” Elizabeth didn’t like talking about this, so she tidied. It’s not like the place didn’t need it. “But she finally got around to it earlier this year.”

  Sam whistled and staggered over to the coffee pot. He swayed over it looking mystified. “There isn’t any coffee.”

  “I’d be happy to make some for you.” She held up a hand. “If, and only if, coffee is a precursor to you getting prettied up and letting me take the picture that will put your mom’s mind at rest.”

  He blinked at her. “My mom is really threatening to come home?”

  “Go figure.” She shrugged. “I’d let you rot, but then I’m not your mother.”

  “Thank God for small mercies.”

  “That’s the ticket.” She punched his shoulder. “Now you’re starting to sound more like yourself.”

  “And you’ll go away if I do this?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “With pleasure.”

  He stood there and thought about it. “Make the coffee.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “For your mother.” He jabbed a forefinger at her face. “Not for you.”

  “Got it!” She saluted him and fetched the coffee grounds.

  Before he lumbered out of the kitchen, she stopped him. “Sam! Can I get a picture of you like this, for the old scrapbook?”

  He gave her the one-finger salute over his shoulder. Definitely not on his A-game, but coffee would help.

  Maddy was waiting on the front porch and Elizabeth let her in. “It’s worse than we thought.”

  With a look of horror, Maddy surveyed the kitchen. “How much worse?”

  “Sam looked worse than the kitchen.”

  Maddy’s big browns filled with tears. “Poor Sam. This is awful for him.”

  “He’ll rally.” Probably. But as long as he did so for long enough for her to get her photo, what did she care? Actually, she sort of cared. A tiny bit. It would take all the fun out of bitching at him if he became a broken-down old wreck. “But first, we need to make sure his mother thinks he’s fine.”

  “What do we do?” Maddy perked up.

  “I’m going to send a picture to my mom.” The next part was the clincher. “And you said you run social media groups for Sam?”

  Maddy nodded.

  “The best thing to do would be to make sure a picture of Sam got on one of those. That way his mother won’t suspect I’m faking it and she might believe it.”

  Frowning, Maddy tapped her chin. “Why would his mother not believe it if you were involved.”

  “Sam and I…have history.” Elizabeth loaded glasses and plates into the dishwasher.

  Maddy gaped at her. “Romantic history?”

  Elizabeth gaped right back. “Dear God, no.”

  * * * *

  Sobering up hurt, and Sam’s hands shook so badly, he cut himself three times while shaving. Popping Tylenol with the coffee Liz had made him, he downed six glasses of water before he started to feel partly human.

  Missing his track pants already, he pulled on jeans and a sweater.

  The man staring back at him from the mirror still looked like shit, but at least he now looked like respectable shit.

  Elizabeth moved about the kitchen, speaking to someone. He stopped and listened.

  Maddy. His favorite Fox—he suppressed a shudder that Lizzie had heard that name—Maddy never hung on him, and in the five y
ears she’d followed him around, had never once hit on him.

  He could deal with Maddy.

  The other viper in his mother’s kitchen might take more strength than he had right now.

  The smell of bacon got him moving and he hit the kitchen salivating.

  Elizabeth and Maddy had worked a miracle in the kitchen and were making another one happen in the family room.

  “Sam.” Maddy teared up. “We’ve been so worried about you.”

  If they’d been alone, he might have wallowed in the comfort offered by one of the nicest women he’d ever met.

  As it was, he put on a big boy face and accepted Maddy’s hug. “I’m good, Maddy. Just spending this time reflecting.”

  “Really?” Maddy stared into his face, trying to read his thoughts. “Because we want you to know that you’re not alone going through this.”

  Elizabeth snorted and made a clatter shaking the garbage bag and tying off the end.

  “Something got you in a tizzy, Lizzie?” He might still feel like four-day-old roadkill in the noonday sun, but his game was heading back to him.

  Liz gave him the look of death, sweeping up from his toes to his hairline and back again. “Absolutely nothing.”

  He didn’t bite, and mainly because Lizzie was the source of the bacon smell. Bacon, which she was now plating and putting on the island. He nearly cried when she put a set of cutlery beside it and motioned him to the island. “Eat.”

  Sam grabbed a stool. You didn’t have to put food in front of him twice. At least not the same food.

  Maddy sat beside him and watched him eat.

  Elizabeth poured him a glass of juice and another cup of coffee. She also watched him eat, but not with the wide-eyed adoration beaming from Maddy. Nope, good ole Liz was giving him the stink eye with both barrels.

  “So.” He shoveled up bacon and eggs. “What’s the plan?”

  “Why don’t we begin with basic table manners?” Liz curled her lip as she watched him eat.

  As he was two-fisting toast and bacon, his mother would have smacked the back of his head. But this was Lizzie, and he grinned and chewed.

  She rolled her eyes and turned her back.

  “Well.” Maddy eyed the two of them and then the door. “I can take a picture of you and post it, and then Elizabeth can tell her mother, who can show your mother.”

  Sam held his arms out. “Take your picture.”

  “Not in here.” Elizabeth peered down her nose at him. “It needs to be outside. You doing something that will reassure her you’re not sitting in her bathrobe drinking yourself into an early grave.”

  “Ooh, Lizzie.” He mimed getting shot. “You wound me.”

  “Really?” She brightened up. “Say it’s true. Don’t toy with me like that.”

  “Ummm.” Maddy held her hand up like it was school. “Maybe we could get a shot of Sam playing hockey. That would tell everyone he wasn’t sulk—that he was alright.”

  “I’m not playing hockey.” His okay mood crashed back into fucked off again.

  Lizzie cocked her head. “That gives me an idea.”

  “No.” Sam stood up so fast he knocked the stool over. It clattered to the ground behind him. “I am not playing hockey.”

  Maddy squeaked and dashed for the far side of the kitchen.

  Not so Lizzie. She squared her shoulders, rounded the island and stared him down. “What’s wrong, Sam? Too good to play hockey when someone isn’t paying you millions of dollars to do it.”

  “Back off, Liz.” Damn woman didn’t know when to stop pushing a man.

  Maddy cleared her throat. “Maybe we should—”

  “Or what, Sam?”

  Damn it to hell but she went toe to toe with him. He could and did say what he wanted about Lizzie, but the girl had guts.

  “You going to stamp back into your mommy’s room and put her robe on again?” She made a surprised face. “Or maybe you’ll punch someone.” Her eyes went squinty as she moved in for the kill. “Tell me, Sam? How did that work out for you last time?”

  “Sam was provoked.” Maddy rounded the island and hovered in their peripheral vision. “Karlov hooked him.”

  “So Sam broke his jaw. Seems a little disproportionate don’t you think?”

  No, Sam didn’t think that at all. Karlov had a glass jaw and you had no business being on the ice if you couldn’t take care of yourself.

  “Well.” Maddy’s voice wobbled. “Maybe it was a little…but Sam has a temper. Everybody knows not to mess with him.”

  Liz widened her eyes. “I’m shaking in my shoes.”

  “You should be.” Sam gave her his best look. The one that made six four, two-eighty-pound defensemen pale.

  Liz was tougher than Philly’s goon-squad defense, because she almost had her nose pressed to his as she whispered, “Chicken.”

  “Say that again.”

  “Pak!” Liz flapped her elbows. “Pak paaak. Pak, pak, pak. Paaak.”

  And damned if he didn’t want to laugh. Liz did the worst chicken ever. “You still can’t do that properly.”

  “I know.” She wrinkled her nose. “Come on, Sam. Don’t be a big baby. We take you to the pond, take a photo of you chatting to all the little wannabe Sams and then I get out of your hair, and leave you to Maddy’s tender mercies.”

  “At least Maddy has tender mercies.” He sneered. “Not that freezing no-man’s land you got going on.”

  “Whatever.” She waved him off. “But you’ll do it, right?”

  God, he hated giving in to her, but he really did like her mom, and his mom had been talking about this trip to Europe for years. Many, many years. “I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 4

  Vicious morning sunlight bounced off last week’s snow and jabbed Sam in the eyes as he sat folded into the front seat of Elizabeth’s compact car. A little green pine tree dangled from the rearview mirror, making the car smell like a formaldehyde rainforest. If he didn’t think she’d lose her shit, he’d open the window and toss it out.

  As if reading his thoughts, she cut her pea-green’s his way and said, “Don’t.”

  Even he wasn’t that balls to the wall. Things he’d learned about Lizzie’s crazy side. One, nobody messed with her car. That lesson he had learned due to a teen dating miscalculation on his part involving beer, curry, and Lizzie being the only person he had been able to think of to call for a ride home. Second, and in no way of less importance, Lizzie took her commitment to the environment seriously. Only a man with a death wish used a straw around Busy Lizzie. Littering would earn you an all season pass to Hurtville.

  Pretty face alight with the joy of living, Maddy sat in the back and leaned forward through the front seats. She kept her voice low enough not to hurt his fragile ears. God, the drinking thing had a savage payback. Not being much of a drinker, he had forgotten what a hangover felt like. Which almost took him back to the aforementioned Curry-pocalypse of ’07.

  When you’d been in training since you were twelve, alcohol hit your system like a Canadian National freight train.

  Lizzie drove like she did everything else, on the cautious side and strictly by the rules. She must be the only person he knew who actually went forty kilometers in a school zone. Every single school zone, and he’d never noticed before how many schools there were in this place.

  Canadians were a law-abiding group, as a rule, but even then, most people hovered somewhere between forty and fifty.

  Not Lizzy. She tapped the breaks and kept the needle at forty like the thing was Superglued there.

  It reminded him of an old joke.

  “Hey, Maddy?”

  She craned forward. “Yes, Sam?”

  “How do you get a hundred Canadians out of a swimming pool?”

  Maddy twinkled at him, and damn was she pretty with her eyes sparkling like that. “I don’t know, Sam. How do you get a hundred Canadians out of a swimming pool?”

  “You ask them.” Lizzy dropped the punchline.


  Big surprise. She always did like to rain on his parade. He never got why everyone else thought she was so sweet and generous and kind, like the Tooth Fairy and Pollyanna, all rolled into one sexy package.

  Sue him, Prissy Lizzie was sexy, in an if-you-touch-me-I’ll-deball-you kind of way.

  Maddy giggled, because she didn’t save her sweet for everyone else but him.

  The bright winter sun turned Lizzie’s skin marble white and it was as smooth and beautiful as he remembered. Thinking of Lizzie as beautiful would only get his nuts mangled, so he went for the distraction. “Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket?”

  “No.” She side-eyed him.

  “Parking ticket?”

  “No.” She frowned. “Are you bugging me about my driving?”

  “Of course he isn’t.” Maddy patted Liz’s shoulder. “You’re a wonderful driver. I feel perfectly safe.”

  Lizzie wasn’t a bad person; she was just a bit uptight. He didn’t blame her growing up the way she did, but he did resent that she couldn’t be nicer to him. Then again, Paul had pretty much ignored his daughters and paid more attention to him. “How’s your dad taking the divorce?”

  Lizzie flinched a tiny bit and Sam wanted to kick himself. Her dad was always a touchy subject between them. And that was saying something. He and Liz could argue about the color of the sky. “He seems okay.”

  Sam was willing to bet Paul Rogers was fine. The guy had been good to him once his hockey talent had showed up, but that didn’t make Sam blind to his faults. Paul Rogers was the most self-absorbed man on the planet, and this coming from Sam Stone.

  The way he treated his wife and daughters had made an impact on Sam even as a kid. The I’ll never treat any woman of mine like that kind of impact. He’d eat his skates if Paul had even noticed his wife was gone.

  Lizzie turned into the parking lot for Brock Park and found a space. She eased her compact straight in and equidistant from the cars on either side.

  “We’re going to the pond?” He had been quite clear on the no playing hockey thing in the kitchen.

  Lizzie threw him a bright smile. “Yup. I thought it would make a great photo. You outside, little Sams playing hockey, big Sam smiling and being encouraging.”

  That he could do. Actually, it was an awesome idea. The internet ate this shit up. Sam opened the car door. “Let’s do this.”