On the Fly

by Catherine Gayle

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  On the Fly

  Copyright © 2014 by Catherine Gayle

  Cover Design by Kim Killion, The Killion Group

  Published by Night Shift Publishing at Smashwords

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

  For more information: catherinegayle.author@gmail.com

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Catherine Gayle Titles

  For Sarah.

  A huge thank you to my editor, Danielle Poiesz, for all your help and insight.

  An even bigger thank you to all my readers—you make all the blood, sweat, and tears worth it.

  My thighs had a good burn going, matched only by the burn in my lungs. I fought to take in enough oxygen to get through the laps Hammer and I were skating, trying to ignore the slight twinge in my left foot from my latest broken bone.

  That hairline fracture was only one of countless injuries to keep me off the ice and out of hockey games in recent years. Ever since I’d turned pro, it seemed like injuries stalked me like a cat, waiting for another opportunity to pounce and take me out. The bone had healed now, but this was the first time I’d used my foot for anything physical, the first time I’d been able to push myself. That was the only reason it still felt a little sore, or at least that was what I told myself.

  Everything on my body felt a little sore, though, and had for years.

  “Two more laps around the ice, Soupy—as fast as you can go,” Hammer said. Daniel “Hammer” Hamm was one of the assistant coaches of the Portland Storm, the team I played for in the National Hockey League. Today, he’d been tasked with putting me through my paces, helping to test me to see if I was ready to return to game action. “Come on. Faster.”

  Fuck. He didn’t even sound winded, and I could barely breathe.

  I’d been out of commission for over five weeks. I’d gotten hurt about a month into the season on a night when we had been playing the Bruins in Boston. For some crazy reason, I’d thought it would be a good idea to block a Zdeno Chara slap shot with my foot. Admittedly, I’d never faced one of his shots before, so I didn’t know just how hard they really were. I might have been putting too much effort into proving I could hack it in the NHL, that I belonged with the big club and not in the minors. Whatever the reason behind it, blocking that shot had blown up in my face.

  I probably should’ve been wearing one of those foot guards designed to give extra protection, but I hadn’t been. I’d never liked the feel of them over my skates. It was like they restricted my movement, like they slowed my skating.

  Smooth skating and speed had never been areas of strength for me, a point which my dad, himself a former NHL player, was always ready to remind me of. But I couldn’t afford to lose any more speed, so I’d rebelled against the thought of wearing the guards—much like I’d rebelled against wearing a shield on my helmet because it limited my vision. I didn’t need anything else hampering my ability to succeed in this league, even if it meant maybe getting a few more stitches on my face.

  Good thing I’d never been vain about my appearance.

  My wrist shot and my readiness to go into the dirty areas of the ice were just about the only two things I had going for me to keep me in the NHL. Well, both of those things and a willingness to give up my body for my team. Those skills got me here, and they were what might keep me here—at least once the team’s head doctor cleared me first for contact and then to play.

  I sucked in as much air as I could, churning my legs to keep up with Hammer. He had been one fast son of a bitch back in his playing days, before he started coaching. He had always skated with an effortlessness that made no sense at all given his size. Even though he’d retired as a player over a decade ago, he hadn’t lost a step in the speed department.

  It was taking everything I had not to get left in his dust.

  We turned around the goal and made a final push for center ice. Once I passed it and stopped, I bent over and rested my hands on my knees, heaving as much air in and out of my lungs as I could. I nearly puked, but I forced the bile down.

  The rest of the team was just starting to trickle out to the ice for today’s practice. I looked up and saw Eric Zellinger, my best friend and the team captain, watching me from near the bench.

  Zee wasn’t just my best friend. Not anymore. He’d started dating my sister, Dana, last season. That had created a gigantic clusterfuck in our relationship, mine and Zee’s, and things still weren’t great between us. Better, definitely, but not like before. It was mainly my fault, and I knew it. It was hard, though, thinking about anyone touching my sister after all she’d been through, knowing how for years after she’d been raped, she’d experienced massive panic attacks when any man touched her—even Dad and me.

  Zee gave me a nod, but that was all. He had work to do, and I still wasn’t allowed to be part of it due to my status on the injured reserve list.

  Hammer slapped me on the shoulder while I was still fighting to breathe. “Nice work, Soupy. After you get cleaned up and see the doctor, Jim wants a word in his office.”

  I wasn’t surprised Jim Sutter, the Storm’s general manager, wanted to see me. All signs pointed to me being cleared for contact for tomorrow. If all went well, then I could be back in the lineup for Friday’s game against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

  “Yeah, will do, Hammer.”

  He skated away from me, over to the far end of the ice to join the boys for the day’s practice. I made my way to the showers and then to see Dr. Mitchell, the team’s head physician.

  Doc took a new set of scans to make sure everything was as it should be. He looked them over, then poked and prodded my foot, looking at it from every angle. “No pain after skating today?”

  Pain was all relative, and I couldn’t think of a time in recent memory that I could say I had no pain. Anyone who’d suffered as many injuries in his career as I had would be in a similar position. “It’s a little tender,” I said. “Nothing I can’t fight through, and nothing that won’t be better after more use.”

  “How close to ready are you?” Doc put another film up in front of the light, narrowing his eyes at it. “Seventy percent? Eighty?”

  “One hundred percent ready to go.” I couldn’t stand sitting around any longer than I had to. The thought of spending even another week watching from the press box with my foot in a walking boot made me feel physically ill. “A little tenderness won’t make me any slower than I already am.”

  “Hmm.”

  What the fuck did hmm mean? Doc wouldn’t even look at me. He just kept studying my films, flipping through my medical chart.

  “So am I cleared?” I asked, not even attempting to hide my frustration. It wasn’t his fault, but I was this close to going insane from being forced to watch from the sidelines. “Can I get back in a game?”

  He didn’t answer me. Instead, he scribbled some notes on a notepad that looked like a prescription pad, ripped it off, and put
it in an envelope. “You’re heading up to see Jim, right? Give him this.”

  Then he handed me the envelope and left, taking my charts and films with him.

  Asswipe. He could have just answered my question. How hard would that have been? It would have taken two seconds.

  But he hadn’t.

  I made my way up to the next level of the building where all the offices for the team executives were located.

  At the end of the main hall, in front of a large corner office, Martha Alvarez tucked her silver-gray hair behind her ear and pushed her bifocals up her nose, never even glancing over her computer monitor at me. She was Jim’s assistant, and probably the most efficient person I’d ever met. Nothing ever slipped past her; nothing got lost in the shuffle. If you needed anything, Martha could either handle it or direct you to someone who could.

  “Go on in, Campbell,” she said. “Jim’s expecting you.” She pushed a plate of homemade cookies closer to the edge of her desk so I’d see them. Not that I would have missed them. I’d learned early in my time with the Storm that Martha always had cookies at her desk, and I had made a habit of taking full advantage of that fact. It reminded me of my mom.

  Martha was one of the few people in the world who didn’t call me Soupy. My family called me Brenden, and Martha called me Campbell. Jim would flip between all of them indiscriminately. He’d played with my dad for a few years, and Dad had always been Soupy to his teammates, too. The use of nicknames is universal in the hockey world, and there is no nickname more readily at a guy’s tongue than Soupy for someone with the last name Campbell.

  “Thanks, Martha,” I said. She didn’t acknowledge me, too absorbed in whatever she was doing. I grabbed two cookies and knocked on the open door. “You wanted to see me?” I said when Jim Sutter spun his executive chair around.

  He nodded and pointed to the chair across from him. “How’d it feel skating? I told Hammer to really push you, see what you could handle.”

  “Felt good.” As good as an intense skate could feel after spending more than a month off my feet, at least. I shoved the envelope across the desk to him. “Doc asked me to give you this.”

  “No pain? No tenderness?” Jim pulled Doc’s note out and scanned it, looking through the lower part of his glasses. “Doc says you were pretty winded still when you got to him and that you had some tenderness when he prodded your foot.”

  “I’ll be back in game shape in no time. One or two games, that’s all it’ll take.” It was easier to get the kind of conditioning you needed to play hockey by actually playing hockey, more so than skating laps or spending hours on an exercise bike.

  “Hmm.”

  I was beginning to hate hmm.

  “Did he clear me for contact?” I asked when Jim still didn’t elaborate. “I’m ready, Jim. I can contribute. Waiting a few more days or another week won’t change that.”

  He set the note down on his desk and took off his glasses. “Doc cleared you. You’re good to join back in full practices with contact starting tomorrow.”

  It was about time.

  He folded in the earpieces of his glasses and set them on the desk. “But…”

  But was worse than hmm. By a fucking mile. I was already grinding my jaw—couldn’t stop myself—and I didn’t have a clue what was coming.

  “I need you to get back up to game speed before you jump into a game,” he said. “The boys have been on a pretty good roll lately, really working together and picking up points at a nice clip. I don’t want to mess with that chemistry by bringing someone in who isn’t up to par.”

  He was sending me back down to the AHL—to the Seattle Storm, the minor league affiliate of the Portland Storm. He didn’t even have to say the words. I could read it all over his face. I’d had enough conversations with enough GMs in my career to know. “This is bullshit, Jim. One game. That’s all it’ll take.”

  He had a placating look in his eye that made me want to punch him. “I can’t afford to have you chasing the game for even one night, Brenden. I don’t need the boys trying to pick up your slack. This won’t be a permanent reassignment—”

  “No, just until you trade my ass somewhere else,” I bit off. “Or are you hoping someone will pick me up on waivers?”

  “Would you calm down for just a minute? I’m not trading you. I have no plans to trade you. You’re not going on waivers.”

  Not going on waivers? That one tripped me up. I sat back in my chair and tried to calm down. I usually had a better grip on my temper, but sitting around with nothing to do for weeks had been eating at me from the inside. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “I want to send you to Seattle on a conditioning assignment. The Collective Bargaining Agreement says you have to consent to the assignment, though, so we need to talk about it.”

  “I don’t want to go to Seattle. I want to play here.”

  “I know you do. We want you to, as well.” Jim leaned forward, his elbows propping him up on his desk. “Here’s the deal. Scotty and I watched you with Hammer out there today. We don’t think you’re ready to get back in a game, not with how the boys have been playing without you. If you go to Seattle, you’ll play tomorrow. If you stay here, you’ll keep working with Hammer and watching from the press box until Scotty thinks you’ve earned your way back into the lineup—or until one of the guys gets hurt or stops performing as well as he needs to. That might be a few games. It might be a few weeks. We need you to be as good as we know you can be from the minute you step out on the ice. Anything less isn’t enough.”

  It might not be as bad as I’d initially assumed, but I still didn’t want to do it. “But you need my okay?” I was trying to determine which would be worse—getting sent back to the minors for a few games or sitting in the press box for a few more.

  “It would only be for a week. Seattle has three games on the schedule, all at home. No travel. You’d get top-line minutes, and then you’d be back with us.”

  “You swear you’re not going to put me on waivers as soon as this conditioning assignment is up?”

  “I didn’t sign you over the summer for you to get paid that kind of money and play in Seattle,” Jim said. “I signed you to play here.”

  I knew he was telling it to me straight, but my natural instinct was to be distrustful of GMs. Too many of them had given up on me. Too many had told me one thing and done another. It didn’t matter that he was one of Dad’s old buddies. I had a really hard time trusting Jim Sutter on this, even though he personally had done nothing to earn my distrust.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Right.”

  “They’ll be expecting you in time for tomorrow morning’s practice. I’ll have Martha arrange a hotel for you, and we’ll see you back here in a week.”

  I started to argue again, even though I didn’t know what my argument would be when I’d opened my mouth, but Martha knocked and opened the door, stopping me before anything came out.

  “Rachel Shaw’s here, Jim.”

  “Tell her I’ll be right with her,” he said. Then he turned back to me. “So you’ll do this conditioning assignment, right? You’re not going to fight me on it? I believe this is what’s best both for you and for the Storm.”

  I scowled. If I went to Seattle, at least I would be put in some games. Not the games I wanted to be in, but it was something. He’d made no bones about what would happen if I stayed in Portland. Damn it. “Yeah, I’ll go.”

  He got up and shook my hand, and I made my way out.

  I was fuming so much that I almost ran headfirst into the most hauntingly beautiful, petite redhead I’d ever laid eyes on. She took three quick steps backward, and I put out my hand to help steady her. Her green eyes went wide, and her lips parted into an O. It was like Tinkerbell had sprinkled fairy dust all over her nose and cheeks and left freckles behind.

  She was totally not my type, or at least not my usual type. I tend to go for leggy brunettes, girls who were completely put together in every conceivable way. This woman could
n’t look more out of place. Her clothes were probably from a thrift shop and didn’t fit her well, her hair was running riot out of her ponytail holder, her coat wasn’t nearly heavy enough for the local weather, and the fabric of her purse was dingy and covered in what looked to be cat hair.

  Despite all of that, I couldn’t stop staring at her.

  Holy shit.

  “I’m sorry,” I said when I pulled myself back together again. “I should have been paying attention to where I was going.”

  “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

  She didn’t look fine, though. She looked terrified. I really hoped I wasn’t the reason for her fear, but I figured I was. She gave a brief shake of her head and separated herself from me. In a single movement, she tucked a wild curl behind her ear and settled her purse strap more fully over her shoulder. Then she made a wide circle around me, going with Martha into Jim’s office, peeking over her shoulder at me as she disappeared inside.

  So this was Rachel Shaw, then. Whoever Rachel Shaw was.

  “Yeah. All right,” I said to her back. I spent too long watching her before heading back down to the locker room. I figured I should go ahead and sort out what gear I needed to take with me. I couldn’t get her out of my head, though. She definitely had a nice ass, this Rachel Shaw. Very nice. Curvy, over her short legs.

  And that was pretty much the last thing in the world I needed to be thinking about, the curvy ass of some random, little redhead with fairy-dust freckles.

  Not when I had to prove to myself and everyone else I should be playing in the NHL.

  It really shouldn’t have been so hard to concentrate on this interview. Not when I’d become such an old pro at them in recent days. But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the man who’d run straight into me a few minutes ago. He’d been huge. I mean, I knew professional athletes were bigger than your everyday sort of man in general, and no one would ever call my five foot two tall, but holy cow.