by Amy Olle
She pushed to her feet and crossed to her purse hanging on the back of a dining chair. Maybe the answers were in that folder Mel had given her.
But the folder wasn’t in her purse, and then Haven recalled that when she’d fled the arena Friday after that horrible press conference, she’d forgotten to grab it from her dad’s desk. If she was going to get any idea what was wrong with this team, she needed that folder.
Wrapping herself in her heavy winter wool coat, she plunged out into the frigid day. She expected the streets to be quiet, and mostly they were, though families packed the ice rink in midtown and a couple of nearby restaurants remained open to sell hot chocolate and provide a respite from the biting cold.
She circled around to the arena’s south end, where she’d been given card access to an employee-only entrance, but she found the large garage doors raised. She slipped past the charter bus idling in the garage, craning her neck to search for clues to the reason for the bus’s presence.
As she climbed the steps to the employee entrance, the heavy steel door swung open and a gigantic man stepped out onto the landing. Then a larger man followed, and another.
They filed out, surrounding her. Dwarfed by their size, the panic it’d taken years to get under control welled up, squeezing her chest and closing the back of her throat.
She stumbled along, bumping into one large chest and off another like a pinball. She gulped for air and tried to scurry out of their path.
Then a massive chest, and two large hands, came around her. She whirled and looked up into green eyes flecked with gold and rimmed in black.
Kind, kaleidoscope eyes.
“Jack.”
His clean, spicy scent tortured her senses, and with it, a punch of longing struck her beneath the breastbone.
He set her away from him. “Hey, boss.”
He made it sound like an insult.
With the pain of a slow heartbreak, she returned to herself. “Wh-What are you doing here?”
The words were out before her mind registered his tailored charcoal gray suit, the long hockey stick in one hand and the black duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
“We’re on our way to the airport. Road trip.” He spoke with a businesslike manner that wrenched her heart. There was no playfulness in his tone. Only an impersonal practicality.
“Right. A road trip. I knew that.” She scratched the tip of her nose. “Where are you going?”
His eyes narrowed. “To Buffalo.”
“Buffalo. That’s right. Should be cold there, huh?”
“We’re not going to Buffalo, Haven.” He shook his head. “You didn’t even read the schedule?”
“I did.” It was almost the truth. She’d glanced at the long list of games remaining on the regular season schedule, but it spanned three months and the dates and cities were too numerous to grasp. “I just… forgot the details.”
He started to turn. “Whatever you say.”
“I didn’t ask for this.” She blurted the words.
With slow increments, he turned back.
“I don’t want this.” She hated the catch of vulnerability in her voice. “I asked my dad, begged him, to pick someone else, but he picked me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. Maybe he was still drunk.”
“No, why would you beg him not to pick you?” He hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. “Do you know how many people would kill to be in your position?”
“Did you watch that press conference?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “It’s the media. Who cares about them? Every fan has dreamed of playing god of their team for a couple of months.”
“I am not a fan. I don’t even like sports.”
His long eyelashes fluttered. “What do you mean, you don’t like sports? You don’t like hockey?” Confusion puckered his brow. “You a football fan?”
“No, I don’t like any sports.”
He shuffled his feet. “You mean professional sports. You like the unpredictability of the college game better.”
She made a noise. “I detest college athletics.”
“You go to a liberal arts school or something?”
“What is so hard for you to understand? I do not like sports.”
He recoiled. “You really don’t like sports.” He shook his head. “That’s just not right.”
“Would you focus?”
Fire flashed in his eyes. “Oh, I’m focused. I even read the schedule.”
“Why are you so mad at me?”
“Why am I—” He pulled up. “No. You know what? Forget it.” He turned his back to her and strode toward the bus.
“I don’t want to forget it. What were you going to say?” she called after him. “Jack, please.”
His steps slowed, and a few feet from the bus, he stopped. Finally, he faced her. “I get it, okay. You didn’t ask for this and you don’t want it. But the thing is, Haven, you got it. It’s yours, along with the fate of a whole bunch of people. People who’ve given their lives to this game. Families whose livelihoods depend on it, who are now depending on you.” The warm passion in his voice iced over with his next words. “It’s yours now. So what the hell are you going to do with it?”
Without waiting for her answer, he climbed onto the bus, and through the tinted windows she lost sight of him. With a hiss, the bus doors closed and the large vehicle rolled out.
Leaving her all alone again.
Exactly the way she liked it.
Chapter Eleven
Jack welcomed the road trip. Airports and hotel check-ins, arena walk-throughs and team meals, while tedious, kept him singularly focused until game time, where he relished the animosity of the home crowd and the fire brought by the opponent seeking to defend their home turf.
Unfortunately, neither the mundane nor the hostile was enough to banish Haven from his thoughts. Not his yearnings for her delicious body, nor memories of the wounded expression that’d marred her pretty face when he’d accused her of plotting against him and snapped at her for not knowing where or even that the team was traveling.
Maybe he wasn’t being fair, but what the fuck did fairness have to do with any of this? She held his fate, and the fate of every other player on this team, in her hands, and she couldn’t be bothered to read the fucking schedule?
Maybe, if he were completely honest with himself, he’d acknowledge what was really pissing him off. That what had transpired between them felt like a betrayal. A dirty hit. She’d told him she grew up poor, like him, and he’d believed her. Not only was she not poor, she was the daughter of a fucking billionaire.
He’d never been stupid around women, and he sure as shit never let one dupe him. Until Haven fucking Callahan.
By game time, Jack was eager to hit someone.
The team captain, Mathieu Marleau, hadn’t played in eight weeks while he recovered from knee surgery, and the alternate captain, Bryce Lovejoy, was in the middle of a six-game suspension. The team played as one might expect a leaderless band of beer-leaguers to play.
Their timing was off and the refs whistled them offside a number of times throughout the game. On the other end, poor communication led to defensive breakdowns that gave Los Angeles too many opportunities to put the puck in the back of the net. They took advantage twice before the clock ran out on the first period.
In the second period, Jack worked on opening communication between his teammates. On the bench, he kept up a constant stream of chatter, pointing out weaknesses and tendencies in their opponents’ game that they might be able to exploit. On the ice, he called out adjustments to his teammates.
They strung together two or three good shifts, but all it took was a dark-haired woman walking through the stands to distract Jack. His head swung around to follow her, while his heart hammered with its hope of catching a glimpse of her.
A split-second distraction that proved disastrous when the ref dropped the puck in the face-off circle and Jack’s man sen
t a one-timer hurtling toward the Renegades’ net. The disc leaked through the goalie’s five-hole.
Jack struck the ice with his stick. What the hell was the matter with him? He was stronger than this, more disciplined. Years of meditation and work with a sports psychologist had made him mentally tough. The toughest. He should’ve been able to drive her from his thoughts with ease.
Why would she even be at their game when she didn’t know the team was traveling? Why did it piss him off so much that she didn’t know? And why, for all that was good and holy, couldn’t he get her out of his head?
She’d distracted him from the pills. Made sense she’d distract him from the game, too.
His mind in chaos, he watched from his position near the blue line as Los Angeles scored a fourth goal less than three minutes later.
A highly touted first-round draft pick, Milo Bishop hadn’t lived up to expectations in his first season.
Jack skated by the rookie goaltender as a string of expletives fell from the kid’s lips. He skated in a tight circle in front of the net, carefully lifting each foot to avoid touching the blue line marking the crease.
“You all right?” Jack asked.
“I’m fucking fine.” Milo’s head jerked with sharp repetitive up and down movements.
Hands on his knees, Jack dropped his head. Great, the goalie was a head case.
The Renegades’ play didn’t improve in the third period and the game wound up being a 6-0 blowout.
That night, Jack lay on the bed in his hotel room, throwing a rubbery stress ball against the wall while his teammates went out to a nearby club. He didn’t want to go out. He didn’t want to have drinks, and laugh, and chase after pretty girls.
He wanted to win hockey games.
On the night table, his cell phone vibrated. He scooped it up, but frowned at the unfamiliar number.
“How are things with the new team?” Sutton’s cheery tone chafed his eardrum.
Or maybe it was her question that grated. “Things are great.” He hurled the ball at the wall. “Just great.”
“So, you promised me a makeup date.”
Had he promised such a stupid-ass thing?
Shit. Maybe. Who knows? After he got off the phone with Graham, he’d deposited Sutton at her apartment and turned to the logistical nightmare of relocating to a new city within a twenty-four-hour period.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked.
“I have to be in Chicago in a couple of weeks.” A distinct ring of uncertainty touched her voice. “I thought maybe we could get together. Go out to a club or something.”
Jack repressed a sigh. He hated clubs, but he was too numb and distracted to work up a good lie.
“See you in a couple of weeks,” he said.
In Vancouver, the monotonous travel routine repeated itself, but so did the shitty play.
The debacle in Los Angeles left Milo wound too tight, and an early neutral zone turnover had him backpedaling as the Vancouver forward advanced for an easy put away. With the early goal, the team’s mental errors increased.
Coach Chambers barked orders and tried making adjustments, but nothing worked. At one point, late in the third and down three goals, some guys at the end of the bench found something funny in their shutout loss.
Their laughter abraded Jack’s competitive sensibilities. Anger and helpless humiliation churned in his gut.
By the time the team arrived in Edmonton, Jack understood his fate.
He’d not be winning a Stanley Cup this season.
As he made his way through the tunnel to take the ice, the piss and vinegar normally hammering through his veins at puck drop was barely a salty mix.
In fact, the predominant sentiment he felt just then was a pure, overwhelming dread. He didn’t like losing, and he especially didn’t like losing without, at the very least, putting up a respectable fight.
He hadn’t dreaded his time on the ice so much in a very long time. Not since his dad showed up at one of his junior league games, drunk and looking for a fight. Throughout the game, Daniel had continued to drink, and when, early in the third period, a call went against Jack, he’d staggered out onto the ice and charged at the referee with clenched fists.
Jack’s coaches had tried to intercede, but Daniel turned on them, too. Swinging wildly, and thoroughly inebriated, he lost his balance and went down hard. Refs and coaches had pounced on him, restraining him until the police arrived to remove him from the arena grounds.
After that, they barred Daniel from attending any of Jack’s games. When coach told him, Jack was relieved.
Relieved, but destroyed.
He’d watched his dad’s display with a pit of mortification churning away in his stomach, a pit that’d never fully dissolved since then. That day, Daniel had cast a taint over Jack’s sacred ground. Stained his success and contaminated his joy in playing.
Worse, he’d exposed Jack to his teammates. After that, they all knew what he was. The son of a piece-of-shit father.
Not like their dads. The children of wealth and privilege—because only rich kids could afford to play hockey—they’d realized Jack was nothing like them. He’d only found his way into their midst because Shea had worked two jobs and Leo had a knack for “finding” money. That’s the only way they paid for the gear, the travel, the ice time, and the tournament fees.
Now, the Renegades’ starting lineup gathered at center ice for the puck drop, including the team captain in his first game back from injury. A determined scowl settled over Mathieu’s angular features and sent a chord of electricity reverberating along the bench.
Coach put Jack and Mathieu together on the second line. Early in their shift, Mathieu spotted Jack racing up ice and hit him in stride with the puck, which Jack sent hurtling at the net. He picked his spot over the Edmonton goalie’s left shoulder, and the puck made it home.
As the clock wound down on the first period, it appeared the suddenly engaged and fiery Renegades would take a one-goal lead into the first intermission.
Then, with under a minute to go in the period, an Edmonton player put a brutal hit on Mathieu that dropped the Renegades captain to the ice.
Instinct sent Jack flying at the Edmonton player. He landed a solid fist on the other man’s jaw. A potent mix of anger and adrenaline fed Jack’s wrath, and he continued throwing punches until the refs pulled them apart.
At intermission, he charged through the tunnel, ready to tweak the game plan to take down those assholes and get back out on the ice, but a somber pall hung in the air inside the locker room when he entered.
Jack searched out the source, only to find Mathieu lying on his back on a trainer’s table, an arm flung over his face and a bag of ice taped to his knee. Around him, the trainers spoke with grim, hushed voices.
Jack’s stomach dropped. The captain was done for.
Mathieu was thirty-seven years old. He’d probably been in the league seventeen or eighteen years. He’d missed the last eight-plus weeks rehabbing the knee, only to reinjure it within a few minutes of returning to game action.
Everyone in that locker room knew what was going through Mathieu’s mind as he lay on that table. His playing days were numbered. Possibly, they were already over.
Jack turned away from Mathieu, trying not to think about the fact that, at thirty-two, he could already feel the changes in his body. No longer the fastest player in the league—the rookie in Tampa had him beat—he’d only get slower with each next season.
If he were lucky, he’d make it another four or five seasons without losing a significant amount of playing time to injury. But once the injuries started, the end would come quick.
Without hockey, and without the accolades of a champion, Jack would have nothing, except a broken body and a defective brain.
Back on the ice, the Renegades played with short bursts of focused, disciplined hockey through two periods. But they also made some boneheaded decisions and committed a rash of stupid penalties.
<
br /> Still, with two minutes remaining in the game, they held on to a one-goal lead. Excitement began to buzz between the players. Might they actually win one? On the road?
Edmonton pulled their goalie, giving them the man advantage for the final minute. Their offense set up in Milwaukee’s territory and Jack positioned his body in front of the net to help block shots.
The winger slapped the puck and the bullet struck Jack in the arm with a vicious sting before dropping harmlessly to the ground. There was a ruckus, with sticks and feet jabbing frantically at the black disc.
Milo knocked down the first and second shots on goal. In the chaotic scramble for the loose puck, Jack lost sight of it. He twisted and spun, searching.
Only to watch the puck float between his legs, deflect off his back skate, and slip through Milo’s pads to land in the back of the net.
Horns blared and the crowd went wild.
He’d just scored on his own team.
It was the last thing they needed. The crushing weight of lost hope did them in and they came out flat in overtime, going down on a sloppy turnover that led to a breakaway goal.
With the misery of yet another defeat hanging heavy around their necks, no one spoke in the locker room. Guys showered and packed in silence. They checked their cell phones and crammed earbuds in their ears, distracting themselves from the gloom. Or maybe they didn’t care.
That dark suspicion bore out a few moments later when Jack overheard two of his teammates planning to hook up with a couple of puck bunnies later.
Jack battled the slither of apathy wriggling under his skin, trying to burrow inside him and kill his will. A few months, maybe weeks from now and he might be exactly like them. Playing without passion or hunger. Only there to collect the paycheck and take his enjoyment in parties and available women.
With a hard shove, he stuffed his pads into his hockey bag. He latched on to the anger, for just then, it was the only thing standing between him and the repulsive squirm of apathy.
He wasn’t ready for the passionless life.