By the time the aircraft touched down in Phoenix, the weather was fifty-three degrees and sunny. The hockey players straightened their ties, put on their jackets, and filed out toward the bus.
Luc waited until Jane Alcott passed before he stepped into the aisle behind her. While shrugging into his Hugo Boss jacket, he studied her from behind.
She’d hung a wool blazer over the same arm that held a big briefcase crammed full of books and newspapers. Her hair was pulled back again into a tight ponytail, and the ends curled and brushed her shoulders as they moved forward. She was so short, the top of her head reached to just below his chin, and through the haze of cologne and aftershave he smelled a hint of something flowery.
The edge of her briefcase caught the back of a seat and she stumbled. Luc grasped her arm to steady her as newspapers, books, and multiple notes fell to the cabin floor. He let go of her arm, then knelt beside her in the cramped aisle. He picked up a book on the official NHL rules and Hockey For Dummies.
“Don’t know much about the game, huh?” he said as he passed her the books. The tips of his fingers brushed hers and she glanced up at him.
With her face a few inches from his, he took the opportunity to study her. Her skin was flawless and there was a slight pink flush to her smooth cheeks. Her eyes were the color of summer grass, and he could make out the faint lines of contact lenses on the edges of her irises. If she wasn’t a reporter and hadn’t already asked him if he was still drug-free the first time they’d met, maybe he’d think she wasn’t all that bad-looking. Maybe he’d even think she was kind of cute. Maybe.
“I know plenty,” she said as she pulled her hand away and stuffed the books into the front pouch.
“Sure you do, Ace.” He tore a sticky note from the knee of his pants. On it was written: What the heck is a body check? He grabbed her wrist and slapped the note in her palm. “Looks like you know squat.”
They stood and he took the briefcase from her.
“I can carry that,” she protested as she shoved the note into her pants pocket.
“Let me.”
“If you’re trying to be nice, it’s too late.”
“I’m not being nice. I’d like to get out of here before the bus leaves.”
“Oh.” She opened her mouth to say more but closed it again. They proceeded down the aisle; the swing of her ponytail told him of her agitation. Once inside the bus, she sat next to the general manager, and Luc dumped the briefcase into her lap and walked to the back.
Rob Sutter leaned forward as Luc dropped into a seat in front of the enforcer. “Hey, Lucky,” Rob said. “Don’t you think she’s kinda cute?”
Luc glanced several rows up at the back of Jane’s head and the curls of her tight ponytail. She wasn’t bad-looking, but she wasn’t his type. He liked Barbie Doll women. Long legs and big breasts. Big hair and red lips. Women who liked to please men and didn’t expect anything but pleasure in return. He knew what that said about him, and he didn’t particularly care. Jane had nice skin and her hair might be okay if she didn’t pull it back so tight, but her breasts were small.
A picture of the front of her blouse flashed across his brain. He’d turned to answer something Vlad Fetisov had asked him, and he’d noticed her for the first time since takeoff. Then he’d noticed the two distinct points in the front of her silky blouse. For a brief moment, he’d wondered if she was cold or turned on.
“Not especially,” he answered Rob.
“Do you think it’s true that she slept with Duffy to get this assignment?”
“Is that what the guys are saying?”
“Either him or his friend at the Seattle Times.”
The thought of a young woman like Jane getting it on with two old geezers to get a job turned Luc’s stomach. He didn’t know why it should bother him one way or the other, and with a shrug he dismissed Jane and whom she may or may not be sleeping with from his mind.
He was expecting an important call from his business manager, Howie. Howie lived in LA and sent all three of his children to boarding school in southern California. The more Luc had thought about it, the more he’d convinced himself that boarding school in California was the perfect solution for Marie. Marie had lived in southern California for most of her life. It would be like going back home for her. She’d be happier and he’d get his life back. An all-around win situation for everyone.
The Chinooks checked into the hotel by eleven, had a quick lunch, and were on the ice by two for their scheduled practice at the America West Arena. The team hadn’t lost a game in two weeks, and Luc had put up five shutouts already this season. The team hadn’t been a real threat since their former captain, John Kowalsky, retired. This year was different. This year they were hot.
By four, the Chinooks were back at the hotel and Luc rode the elevator to his room and placed a phone call to a friend. Two hours later, he stepped back off the elevator, ready to live his life while he could.
He’d first met Jenny Davis on a United flight to Denver. She’d served him a soda water and lime, a bag of nuts, and a cocktail napkin with her name and telephone number written on it. That was three years ago, and they got together when he was in Phoenix or she happened to be in Seattle. The situation was mutually satisfying. He satisfied her. She satisfied him.
Tonight he met Jenny in the lobby and together they drove to Durant’s, where Luc ate his night-before-the-game meal of lamb chops, Caesar salad, and wild rice.
After dinner, Jenny took him to her home in Scottsdale, where she fed him his dessert. She had him back at the hotel by curfew; he loved his life on the road. Walking back into the hotel, he was completely calm, relaxed, and ready to take on the Coyotes tomorrow night.
He talked for a few minutes with his teammates in the lobby bar, then made his way up to his room. His right knee bothered him a little, and he grabbed the empty ice bucket from atop the television, then walked down the hall to the ice machine. He almost turned back when he saw Jane Alcott standing in front of the vending machine feeding it change. Her hair was pulled on top of her head and fell in a tangle of loose curls. She stepped forward and pushed the button to her selection, and a bag of Peanut M &M’s dropped to the bottom of the machine.
She bent over, and that’s when he noticed her nicely rounded butt with cows on it. In fact, she had cows all over her blue flannel pajamas. The thing was one piece, and from the back looked like long Johns. She turned and he was confronted by a horror worse than those pajamas. A pair of black-rimmed glasses sat on her face. The lenses were small and square, and he supposed they were in style with militant women’s groups. They were just plain ugly.
Seeing him, her eyes widened and she sucked in a startled breath. “I thought you guys were supposed to be in bed by now,” she said.
Damn, he didn’t think a woman could look any more sexless. “What is this?” he asked and pointed the bucket at her. “The I-don’t-ever-want-to-get-laid-again look?”
She frowned. “This may shock you, but I’m here to do a job. Not to get laid.”
“Good thing.” He thought of his conversation with Sutter and wondered if she’d slept with old Virgil Duffy to get her job. He’d heard the stories of Virgil’s fondness for women young enough to be his granddaughter. In fact, when Luc had first moved to Seattle, Sutter told him that in 1998 Virgil had been set to marry a young woman, but the woman had come to her senses and had left him at the altar. Luc didn’t listen to gossip and didn’t know how much of it was true. He just couldn’t picture Virgil in the role of a hound, though. “I doubt you’ll find any action in that getup.”
Jane ripped open her bag of candy. “You don’t seem to have a problem with finding action, Lucky.” Luc didn’t like the way she said Lucky and he didn’t ask her to elaborate. She did anyway. “I saw you leave with the blonde. If I had to guess, I’d say she was a stewardess. She had that come-fly-me look about her.”
Luc moved to the ice machine and lifted the lid. “She was my cousin, twice rem
oved.” She didn’t look like she believed him, but he really didn’t care. She’d believe what she wanted and write what sold papers.
“What’s with the ice? Your knees bothering you?”
“Nope.” She was too damn smart for her own good.
“Who’s Gump Worsley?” she asked.
Gump was a hockey great who’d played more games than any goalie in history. Luc admired his record and his dedication. Years ago, he’d taken Gump’s number for luck. It was no big deal. No big secret either.
“Have you been reading up on me again?” he asked as he scooped ice with his bucket. “I’m flattered,” he said, but he didn’t bother to make it sound convincing.
“Don’t be. It’s my job.” She popped an M &M into her mouth, and when he didn’t say anything she lifted a brow. “You’re not going to answer my question?”
“Nope.” She’d soon learn that none of the guys were going to cooperate either. They’d all talked about it and come up with a plan to confuse and bug the hell out of her. Maybe get her to go home. Outside the locker room, they’d show her baby pictures and talk about anything other than what she was dying to talk about. Hockey. Inside the locker room they’d cooperate just enough to avoid a discrimination suit, but that was it. Luc didn’t think much of the scheme. Sure it would bug her, but not enough to make her go home. No, after talking to her a few times, he figured there wasn’t much that could knock Ms. Alcott off her pumps.
“Tell you what, though.” Luc shut the lid to the ice machine and said close to her ear as he walked past, “Keep digging, ‘cause that Gump thing’s a real interesting story.”
“Digging is also my job, but don’t worry, I’m not interested in your dirty little secrets,” she called after him.
Luc didn’t have any dirty secrets. Not anymore. There were parts of his personal life he’d rather not read about in the papers, though. He’d rather it wasn’t known that he had several different women friends in several different cities, although that piece of information in itself wouldn’t make banner headlines. Most people wouldn’t care. He wasn’t married and neither were his friends.
He opened the door to his room and shut himself inside. There was only one secret he didn’t want anyone to know. One secret that woke him up in a cold sweat.
Each time he played, he played with the possibility that one good hit would cripple him for life, and worse, end his career.
Luc dumped the ice into a hand towel and stripped to his white boxers. He scratched his belly, then sat on the bed with his knee elevated over a pillow, the ice packed around it.
His whole life, all he’d ever wanted was to play hockey and win the Stanley Cup. He’d lived and breathed it for so long, that’s all he knew. Unlike some guys who got drafted out of college, he’d been drafted into the NHL at the age of nineteen, a bright future ahead of him.
For a while, his future had gotten off track. He’d slid into a vicious cycle of pain and addiction and prescription drugs. Of recovery and hard work. And now finally a chance to return to the game that made him feel alive. But the sport that had given him a Conn Smythe the year before his injury now looked at him sideways and wondered if he still had what it took. There were those, some within the Chinook management, who wondered if they’d payed too much for their premier goalie, if Luc could still deliver on his once-promising career.
Whatever it took, no matter how much pain he had to play through, he’d be damned if he’d let anything stand between him and his shot at the cup.
Right now, he was hot. Saw every play, got a piece of every puck. He was in his zone, but he knew how fast his hot streak could turn cold and unforgiving. He could lose focus. Let in a few soft goals. Misjudge the speed of the puck, let too many get past, and get pulled from the net. Having an off night and getting yanked from the pipes happened to all goalies, but that didn’t make it any less appalling.
A bad game didn’t mean a bad season. Most of the time. But Luc could not afford most of the time.
Chapter 3
Paraphernalia: Between a Player’s Legs
The telephone next to Jane’s laptop rang and she stared at it for a moment before she picked up.
“Hello.” But there was no one on the other end. There hadn’t been the last seven times it had rung either. She dialed the front desk and was told they didn’t know where the calls originated. Jane had a pretty good idea the calls were coming from men with fish on their jerseys.
She left the receiver off the hook and glanced at the clock on the bedside stand. She had five hours before the game. Five hours to finish her Single Girl in the City column. She should have started her column for the Times last night, but she’d been exhausted and jet-lagged and all she’d wanted was to lie in bed, read her research books, and eat chocolate. If Luc hadn’t snuck up on her at the vending machine the night before, she would have bought a Milky Way too. Having been caught in her cow PJs had been bad enough. She hadn’t wanted him to think her a pig, but really, why should she care what he thought of her?
She didn’t know, except she supposed it was in a woman’s genetic makeup to care what handsome men thought. If Luc was ugly, she probably wouldn’t have cared. If he didn’t have those clear blue eyes, long lashes, and a body to make a nun weep, she would have grabbed that Milky Way and maybe chased it with a Hershey’s Big Block. If it weren’t for his evil grin that had her thinking sinful thoughts and remembering the sight of his naked butt, she might not have heard herself babbling about stewardesses like a jealous puck bunny.
She could not afford for any of the players to see her as anything other than a professional. Their reception of her had warmed little since they’d arrived. They spoke to her about recipes and babies, as if by virtue of having a uterus she was naturally interested. But if she brought up hockey, their mouths shut tight as clams.
Jane reread the first part of her column and made a few changes:
Single Girl in the City
Tired of talking about hair care products and men with commitment issues, I tuned out my friends and concentrated on my margarita and corn chips. As I sat looking around at the parrot and sombrero decor, I wondered if men were the only ones with commitment phobias. I mean, here we sat, four thirty-year-old women who’d never been married, and except for Tina’s one attempt at living with her ex-boss, none of us had ever had a real committed relationship. So was it them, or was it us?
There is a saying that goes something like, “If you put two neurotics in a room of one hundred people, they’d find each other.” So was there something else? Something deeper than a lack of available men without issues?
Had the four of us “found” each other? Were we friends because we truly enjoyed each other’s company? Or were we all neurotic?
Five hours and fifteen minutes after she’d started her column, she finally pushed send on her laptop. She shoved her notebook into her big purse, then raced to the door. She ran down the hall to the elevators and practically had to wrestle an elderly couple from a cab. When she walked into the America West Arena, the Phoenix Coyotes were just being introduced. The crowd went crazy cheering for their team.
She’d been given a pass to the press box, but Jane wanted to be as close as possible to the action. She’d finagled a seat three rows up from the boards, wanting to see and feel as much as she could of her first hockey game. She really didn’t know what to expect, she just hoped to God the Chinooks didn’t lose and blame it on her.
She found her place behind the goalie cage just as the Chinooks stepped onto the ice. Boos filled the arena, and Jane glanced around at the ill-behaved Coyotes fans. She’d been to a Mariners game once, but she didn’t remember the fans being so rude.
She turned her attention back to the ice and watched Luc Martineau skate toward her, geared up and ready for battle. She’d done more research on Luc than on the other players, and she knew that everything he wore was custom-made. The arena lights shone off his dark green helmet. His name was sewn across the shoul
ders of his jersey in dark green above the number of the legendary Gump Worsley. Why Mr. Worsley was legendary, Jane had yet to discover.
Luc circled the goal twice, turned, and circled it in the opposite direction. He stopped within the crease, slapped his stick on the posts, and crossed himself. Jane took out her notebook, a pen, and her Post-Its. On the top note she wrote: Superstitions and rituals?
The puck dropped, and all at once the sounds of the game rushed at her, the clash of sticks, scraping of skates on ice, and the puck slamming into the boards. The fans screamed and cheered and the smells of pizza and Budweiser soon hung in the air.
In preparation, Jane had viewed many game tapes. While she knew the game to be fast-paced, the tapes had not conveyed the frenetic energy or the way that energy infected the crowd. When play stopped, infractions were announced from the sound system and music blared until the puck was once more dropped and the team centers hacked it out.
As Jane took note of everything around her, she discovered what the tapes, and even television, did not show. The action wasn’t always where the puck was being played. A lot of the activity took place in the corners with punches and blows while the puck was at center ice. On several occasions she watched Luc whack the ankles of a Phoenix player unfortunate enough to stand within whacking distance. He seemed very good at hooking Coyote skates with his stick, and when he stuck out his arm and clothes lined Coyote Claude Lemieux, two men behind Jane jumped up and yelled, “You play like a girly man, Martineau!”
Whistles blew, the play stopped, and as Claude Lemieux picked himself up off the ice, the penalty was announced. “Martineau, roughing, two minutes.”
Because a goalie could not do time in the sin bin, Bruce Fish took his place. As Fish skated to the penalty box, Luc simply picked up his water bottle from the top of the net, shot a stream through the cage into his mouth, then spit it out. He shrugged, rolled his head from side to side, and tossed the bottle back onto the net.
See Jane Score Page 4