by Amy Olle
Her nerves unraveling, she drew a deep breath and pushed it out between her lips. “Not many.”
Her response elicited a few gasps, quickly hushed.
Oops.
“What do you think of your dad’s decision to leave you in charge?”
“I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
“But don’t you think this is one more thing he’s done to embarrass the organization? Fans and shareholders are beyond frustrated at this point.”
Haven bristled. The fans were frustrated with her dad? They should try being his daughter. Still, it was one thing if she’d written Hank off, but it was an entirely different beast if anyone else thought to do so. He was her failure, not theirs.
“I think he’s putting his health and his family first for the next sixty days, and that’s a good thing for everyone involved, including the Renegades organization.”
“When will Bryce Lovejoy be back from suspension?”
Wyatt all but shoved her out of the way. “Sorry, folks. That’s all we have time for.”
The camera lights went dark and bodies began filing toward the exit.
Feeling dazed and bruised, she blindly followed Wyatt off the platform. “Who’s Bryce Lovejoy?”
“Starting forward,” Coach Cal answered when Wyatt scurried away. “He’s serving a six-game suspension.”
Darby shook his head. “It’s an excessive punishment. We’re appealing the league’s decision.”
“What did he do?” she asked.
A glower tarnished Coach Chambers’s well-formed features. “He beat up his girlfriend in a nightclub parking lot. Surveillance cameras caught the whole nasty incident on tape. All thirty-eight seconds of it.”
She swallowed the wrench of nausea that hit her.
Darby bridled. “You’re making it sound worse than it was.”
Haven wished she were surprised to hear Darby defend the jerk. “Only six games? He stays suspended.”
Darby’s face turned red and ruddy, but before he could demean or debate her, she turned her back to him.
To find herself pinned beneath a paralyzing green-gold gaze.
Chapter Ten
They didn’t speak, waiting while the few remaining reporters shuffled out of the room.
Believing she’d never see him again, she drank in the sight of him. Long, dark eyelashes framed his vivid eyes, made brighter against the canvas of his smooth, swarthy skin. The familiarity of his face soothed her, and a slow, steadying breath seeped from her.
Until she registered his dark scowl.
When they were alone at last, the air took on a hostile chill. She’d been identified as a threat.
“Did you plan this?” Wounded accusation laced his voice. “This thing between us, was it a setup?”
She gaped at him. “Did I…? You think I planned this?”
In response, one of his dark eyebrows lifted.
A lash of hurt and anger struck her. “Are you serious? You think I flew across the country, in a blizzard, to seduce you, somehow knowing my dad would get drunk, crash his car into a convenience store, and put me in charge of his hockey team, where I could then acquire you in a trade deal and show up at this press conference to make a fool of myself?”
A flicker of doubt flitted over his face, though he remained silent.
“I can assure you, I did not plan this.” The annoying quiver returned to her voice. “I don’t want this. Any of it.”
“Then why did you lie to me?”
She drew up at the accusation. “What did I lie to you about?”
“You said you were poor. But you’re not. You’re… you’re… rich.” He spat the word.
“I’m not rich. My dad is.”
His bitter laugh rankled. “It crossed my mind to worry you might be a puck bunny, but you’re a thousand times worse. You’re a puck princess.”
She flinched. “You told me you were a college professor.”
His brows slammed together. “I never once said that.”
She crawled through the jumbled chambers of her memories. Emily had said Jack was a professor. She recalled her pointing across the bar, and Haven had peered through the crowd to see Jack and another man….
A man with the same dark hair and striking features.
Oh, no. Was he—?
“Noah is the professor.” Jack’s hard gaze was unrelenting. “You know, the guy married to Emily’s cousin.”
“I was in town a few hours before I was in bed with you,” she snapped. “I didn’t have time to sort out the family tree.”
“Or you knew exactly who I was and what you wanted from me.”
“If I’d known you were a hockey player, I never would’ve slept with you.” Her fingernails bit into the flesh on her palms.
A smirk twisted his full lips. “That’s a bit superficial.”
“If you’d known I was Hank Callahan’s daughter, would you have slept with me?”
His smirk vanished. “Not a chance in hell.”
She should have felt some small sliver of satisfaction. Should have, but didn’t. “Now who’s being superficial?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
That muscle ticked in his jaw. “Everyone on that island knows I’m a hockey player.”
She flung her arms wide with frustration. “I never once set foot on that island before that day. How was I supposed to know? You don’t have hockey hair!”
A quizzical pucker formed between his eyebrows. “What the hell is hockey hair?”
“You know, the hair.” Her hands swept over her head. “Long and flowy. You don’t have it.”
“And you don’t act like a stuck-up rich girl. What’s your point?”
“That’s because I’m not a rich girl,” she ground out. “And my point is, I’m just as unpleasantly surprised by all this as you are.”
He searched her face for several heartbeats, and then he cursed. “So we were both fooled?”
“No, not fooled.” She lifted her chin. “We both got exactly what we wanted from each other—a no-strings-attached hookup.”
“Honey, we got more strings than a damned puppet.”
She frowned. “You make it sound so ugly.”
“Look around you.” His voice rose with the sweep of his arms. “This is ugly.”
“It’s only temporary.” She couldn’t banish the defensive ring from her tone. “In sixty days, I’ll be gone and you can go back to pretending I never existed.”
“What do we do until then?” His expression softened a little. “Pretend we never met before this moment?”
A band of butterflies banged around in her stomach. Did he think they had any other choice? That they could just pick up where they’d left off on the island? In bed together?
The butterflies crash-landed somewhere near her naval.
“It’s not that far from the truth.” She folded her arms over her abdomen. “What happened last weekend was a mistake. Just a moment, or… ten moments, of weakness. But it’s over now. Like it never happened.”
He crossed his arms to match her stance. “I wasn’t weak.”
Her arms dropped to her sides. “Fine. I was the weak one and I seduced you to my own purpose. Does that make you happy?”
“Depends. What purpose was that again?”
She hesitated. “I’d just broken up with my boyfriend.”
His eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “I was your rebound guy?”
No, he was her escape.
The thought startled her. To hide it, she lifted one shoulder. “You were my breakup guy.”
“What the hell is a breakup guy?”
“I had an ex-boyfriend I wanted to forget. Sleeping with you was a hell of a distraction, let me tell you.”
One corner of his puffy mouth tilted upward. “That’s the only reason you slept with me? To forget—what was his name?”
“Ch-Charlie.”
“Charlie.” Icicles dripped with the n
ame. “I feel so cheap.”
She blushed. Seriously, what was happening to her? She never blushed. Ever. “You should. I used you.”
“Because of Charlie?”
His eyes were laughing at her, as though he knew the truth. That since the moment she’d laid eyes on him, Charlie hadn’t once visited her thoughts. Not once.
“Right. Because of….” Oh, crap. What was his name? “Because of him.”
Jack’s gaze, hot and intense, roamed over her face, caressing every inch, drinking in every nuance and trait. Butterflies took flight.
Then, with a suddenness that left her cold and dizzy, a chill froze the warm green-and-gold jewel tones in his eyes and he gave his head a shake, as if throwing off a shroud of fog.
“Look, none of that matters now.” He fixed her with a dark look of mistrust. “You need to fix this. I’m supposed to be in Detroit right now.”
“Detroit?”
“It’s where I was supposed to be traded before you stepped in and ruined everything.”
His words took a gash out of her heart, though they didn’t hurt as much as the way he looked at her. As though she were nothing more than a nuisance to him. A regret he wished to scrub from his life.
The same way the boys in high school had looked at her after she’d had sex with them.
The soles of his shoes scraped against the floor as he moved to stand closer. He pushed into her space, towering over her.
The slippery slime of fear slithered down her spine.
“I won’t play for this team, Haven.”
Anger flared in her chest. How dare he—the one big man she could recall who didn’t frighten her—try to use his size to intimidate her.
She lifted her chin. “You’ll play. I own you, Jack. Or, m-my dad does.”
Fiery gold flashed in his eyes. “No one owns me. Not you, and definitely not your daddy.”
“So, we’re to be enemies now?” Even through her anger, the thought made her sad.
A flicker of some emotion alighted in his eyes but vanished too quickly for her to identify it.
He eased away from her. “You’re my boss. Beyond that, we’re not anything.”
The next day, Haven didn’t go to the arena. It was Saturday, and it was Christmas Eve. In her nightshirt, she sipped from a coffee mug and stared out at the wide expanse of the churning winter sea.
She stared hard, but no matter how long she stared, from so far up and away, the lake’s calming magic was lost to her. She couldn’t feel the reassuring lull or the moving strength that’d poured over her on the island.
The rest of the day, she tried unpacking the few belongings in her suitcases, but it felt too much like committing to this joke of an idea that she could take over ownership of the Renegades, so halfway through, she abandoned the effort.
The old familiar melancholy tried to take ahold of her, and several times throughout the evening she had to remind herself that she liked being alone. It’d taken years to get used to being alone after Ryan’s death, but now she relished the isolation. Preferred it, even.
Really, she did.
But even if she didn’t love it, Ryan had been gone fourteen years, and if he couldn’t be the one there with her, she didn’t want anyone else taking his place, in her life or in her heart.
The next day, bright sunlight ushered in Christmas morning. Haven set the coffee brewing and, as she did every Sunday, she reached for her cell phone.
She tapped the series of digits and when she heard the soft pitch of her mother’s voice, she forced a cheerfulness she didn’t feel into her own tone.
“Hi, Mom. Merry Christmas.”
“Hi, sweetie. Merry Christmas to you, too.”
She pulled a coffee mug down from the cupboard. “What are you doing today?”
“Oh, just taking it easy. Going through some pictures.”
The ball of dread in Haven’s stomach gave a wrench.
“Do you remember the year you two got bikes for Christmas?” Her mom’s soft laughter sounded light and tinkling. “And you rode them all through the house because the snow was too deep to ride outside.”
“I remember that. My bike had green streamers and a picture of Scooby-Doo on the seat.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment and through the connection, Haven heard the soft creak of the plastic photo album as her mom turned the pages.
“He was so handsome, wasn’t he?”
Haven swallowed the lump trying to form in the back of her throat. “Yeah, he was.”
“And so smart. I don’t know where he got that, but he was so bright.”
“How are you, Mom?” Haven poured coffee into her mug. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine, just fine.” After a beat of silence, her mom asked, “What was the name of his best friend in kindergarten? The little boy from Sheboygan?”
“Jonah.”
“Of course. Jonah.” She laughed. “I was up all night trying to remember his name. I wonder what he’s doing these days….”
Another crinkle reached Haven through the phone. Her heart ached.
“Mom, I have to get going. I just wanted to call and say Merry Christmas.”
“Oh, all right, dear. We’ll talk again soon.”
“Okay.” Haven’s voice cracked. “Love you, Mom.”
“Love you, too, baby.”
Silence dropped like a sledgehammer in the sprawling penthouse.
Restless, she paced the apartment, picking up and setting down the odd piece of abstract art or an article of her scattered clothing. By the afternoon, the walls were closing in on her.
Her mind kept trying to latch on to the sad memories, so she switched on the TV in hopes of distracting herself. Instead, she found the airwaves were flooded with sappy sentimental crap about families with parents that didn’t drink too much and call each other nasty names, and children who actually wanted to spend the holidays with them.
It was too ridiculous to be believed.
She ticked through the channels, landing eventually on a sports talk show. It’d been recorded a day or two before, as the two analysts squaring off across a large desk spoke of a football game that’d taken place three days prior.
The analyst with dark, wavy hair turned to the camera. “Now on to this week’s winners and losers. Let’s start with the losers, shall we?”
Beside his big head, a picture of Haven’s dad popped onto the screen. It was a close-up of his face, and he appeared dazed and disoriented, with an angry gash on his forehead leaking a trickle of blood.
“Oh, boy,” the other analyst said. “Do we have to talk about this guy?”
“Yes, Jerry, we do. Hank Callahan, owner and president of the Milwaukee Renegades, got drunk and ran his Escalade through the storefront of a Quickie Mart in downtown Milwaukee. But that’s not the craziest thing he did this week.”
“What’s the craziest thing?” Jerry asked obediently.
“He left control of his hockey team to his daughter.”
Jerry held up a hand. “C’mon, Dave. What’s so crazy about that?”
The picture in the background changed to one of her from the press conference, her white blouse straining over her breasts.
Jerry ate his smile. “She seems smart.”
Dave stared into the camera while his shoulders shook with repressed laughter. “Let’s roll the clip.”
The camera cut to the Renegades’ media room, and the shaking visual steadied on Haven at the podium.
In the background, the reporter asked his question. “What qualifications do you have to run this team?”
The line of Haven’s mouth twisted in a smirk. “Not many.”
They paused the film on her face and the two analysts reappeared on either side of her image.
“What’s wrong with that?” Jerry wanted to know. “It was a joke.”
“She has no experience!” Dave shouted.
“You think it’ll make a difference? This is the Renegades we�
�re talking about, after all.”
Dave crowed. “You know what, Jerry, that’s a great point.” Dave peered into the camera as the image of her dad reappeared next to her smirking face. “Nonetheless, Hank Callahan gets my biggest loser stamp for this week. The guy deserves to be locked up.”
With an obnoxious sound effect, a red X stamped onto her dad’s head.
“Give the guy a break, Dave. He’s in rehab. He’s trying. Shouldn’t he get the chance to fail at his recovery before we lock him up and throw away the key?”
Dave’s expression morphed into the epitome of somber seriousness. “Of course he should, Jerry. And let me be clear. I don’t believe Hank Callahan should go to jail for having a problem with alcohol. He should go to jail for being the worst owner of all the owners of any professional sports team in the history of sports.”
Both analysts roared with laughter.
“Can’t argue with you there,” Jerry said through his snickering.
She flipped off the TV. Her stomach roiled with nausea.
They thought this was funny? Haven didn’t recall her dad drinking when she was young, but he’d struggled with alcohol since Ryan’s death. They’d all struggled, in one way or another.
She wondered how much Chance and Braden understood what was happening to their family. At ten and twelve years old, probably an awful lot. Had they seen Dave and Jerry’s little act? Did the other kids at school tease them?
She wondered if Bryce Lovejoy had made the show’s list of losers. How did beating up a woman you supposedly love compare to the sin of losing a game? Or, as it were, a whole bunch of games?
Anger took root inside Haven. She wanted to shout at those mean men. Shake them until they understood the hurt they were causing. Mostly, she wanted to tell them to shut up.
But there was only one way to silence the haters.
Win.
The surge of angst and anger deserted her.
Welp, that wasn’t going to happen.
She flopped onto the sofa and lay staring up at the ceiling.
But what if they could win?
Truthfully, she knew too little about the team to know if winning was within the realm of possibility for them. Were the personnel in place simply underperforming, or were there larger issues? Could they make a few more trades and plug enough holes to float the boat? If they could just sneak a few more W’s into the score column….