“Yes.”
He stood and looked across the room at Jane. At the dark curls he loved to touch. Her smooth white skin and pink mouth he loved to kiss. This woman looked like Jane, but if she was really Honey Pie, she was not the woman he thought he knew.
“Now you don’t have to hire someone,” she said as if that were some damn consolation. “And you don’t have to suspect one of the guys.”
He stared into her eyes as if he could see the unbelievable truth written there. What he saw was guilt. His chest felt suddenly hollow. He’d trusted her enough to let her into his home and his life. His sister’s life too. He felt like such an ass.
“I wrote it the night after you kissed me the first time. You could say I was inspired by you.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I wrote it a long time before we became involved.”
“Not that long.” Even to himself, his voice sounded strange. Like his chest, hollow, waiting for his anger to rise up and fill it. It would, but not yet. “You’ve always known how I feel about that made-up bullshit being written about me. I told you.”
“I know, but please don’t be angry. Or rather, be angry, because you have every right. It’s just that…” Her tears filled her eyes again and she wiped at them with her fingers. “It’s just that I was so attracted to you, and you kissed me and I wrote it.”
“And sent it in to be published in a porno magazine.”
“I was hoping you’d be flattered.”
“You knew I wouldn’t be.” The anger he’d been holding swelled in his chest. He had to get out of there. He had to get away from Jane. The woman he’d thought he was falling in love with. “You must have had a real good laugh when I thought you were a prude. When I thought my fantasies would shock you.”
She shook her head. “No.”
Not only had she betrayed his trust in her, she’d made a raging fool of him. “What else am I going to read about myself?”
“Nothing.”
“Right.” He walked to the door and reached for the handle.
“Luc, wait! Don’t go.” He paused. Her voice came to him, filled with tears and the same stabbing pain that twisted in his gut. “Please,” she cried. “We can work this out. I can make this up to you.”
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to see her. “I don’t think so, Jane.”
“I love you.”
Her words were one more knife to his back, and the anger he’d been holding back finally broke free. He thought he would come apart with it. “Then I would hate to see what you do to people you don’t love.” He opened the door. “Stay the hell away from me, and stay away from my sister.”
He moved down the hall. The busy pattern of the carpet was a blur. Jane was Honey Pie. His Jane. Even though he knew it was true, he was having a real hard time swallowing it all at once.
He walked into his room and leaned back against the closed door. The whole time he’d thought she was a prude, she wrote porn. The whole time he’d thought she was uptight, she knew more about sex than he did. The whole time they’d been together, he’d trusted her and she was taking notes.
She’d said she loved him. He didn’t believe her for a second. He’d trusted her and she’d stabbed him in the back. She’d used him to write her porn article. She’d known how he’d feel about it, and she’d done it anyway.
The whole time he’d been careful not to make her feel like a groupie, she was actually… What was Honey Pie? A nymphomaniac?
Was Jane a nymphomaniac? No. Was she? He didn’t know. He didn’t know a thing about her.
The only thing he knew for certain was that he was a damn fool.
Chapter 17
On the Limp: Injured
She’d been a fool. Several times over. First for falling in love with Luc, even as she’d known he’d break her heart. Then for looking him in the face and telling him that she was Honey Pie. He hadn’t known. Chances were that he never would have known.
She knew, and it had burned like a charcoal briquet right beneath her sternum. In the end she’d told him to relieve his mind. He’d been so freaked out thinking that someone was lurking in the shadows… and she supposed someone was. Her. And she’d told him to relieve her own conscience. So why didn’t she feel better?
Jane tossed her suitcase on the floor and burst into tears. She’d spent roughly seven hours in taxis or airports or on planes trying to get home. Trying to keep it together. She couldn’t anymore. The pain of losing Luc racked her body and huge sobs tore at her lungs. She’d known losing him would hurt, but she’d never imagined so much pain was even possible.
Moonlight poured through the window of the small bedroom in her apartment, and she shut the curtain. Shutting herself up in darkness. She’d taken the first available flight out of Phoenix that afternoon. She’d had a two-hour layover in San Francisco before continuing on to Seattle. She was a physical and emotional wreck. She’d had to leave. She hadn’t had a choice. She could not have walked into the locker room the next night and seen Luc’s face. She would have fallen apart. Right there in front of everyone.
Before she left, she’d called Darby and told him she had a family emergency. She was needed at home, and she would catch up with the team once they returned to Seattle. Even though there was nothing in it for Darby, he’d helped arrange her flight, and she realized that he was more than just a cocky wheeler-dealer. There was a heart beneath those thousand-dollar suits and bad ties. And just maybe he would be good for Caroline.
She’d called Kirk Thornton, too. He hadn’t been as understanding as Darby. He’d asked the nature of the emergency and she’d been forced to lie. She’d told him that her father had a heart attack. When it was actually her whose heart was breaking.
She fell onto her bed and closed her eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking about Luc or remembering his face when she’d walked into the sports bar. He’d looked stunned, as if someone had hit him with a brick. She could recall every excruciating detail. The worst was his concern for her. And when he’d finally accepted that she was Honey Pie, his concern had turned to contempt. In that moment, she’d known she’d lost him forever.
Jane rolled onto her side and touched the pillow next to her. Luc had been the last person to lay his head on that pillow. She ran her hand over the soft cotton case, then she held it to her nose. She could almost smell him.
Regret and anger mixed with the pain in her soul, and she wished she hadn’t told him that she loved him. She wished he didn’t know. Mostly, she wished he’d cared. But he hadn’t.
Then I would hate to see what you do to people you don’t love, he’d said.
Tossing the pillow aside, she sat up in bed and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She changed into a large T-shirt, then moved through her dark apartment to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. It had been a while since she’d cleaned it out. She grabbed an old jar with one pickle chip floating on top and set it on the counter. She reached for an empty bottle of mustard and a half gallon of milk a week past its pull date and put them by the pickle jar. Her chest ached and her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. She would love to fall asleep until the pain went away, but even if that were possible, when she woke, she would face it again.
The telephone rang, and when it stopped, she took the receiver off the hook. She got her garbage can and some Formula 409 from beneath the sink and set them next to her within the light from the refrigerator. She cleaned to keep busy. To keep from completely going insane. It didn’t help because she relived every wonderful and exciting and horrible moment she’d spent with Luc Martineau. She remembered the way he threw a dart as if he could muscle a bull’s-eye. The way he rode his motorcycle and how it had felt to ride behind him. She recalled the exact color of his eyes and hair. The sound of his voice and the scent of his skin. The touch of his hands and body pressed to her. The taste of him in her mouth. They way he looked at her during sex.
She loved everything about Luc. But he didn’t love he
r. She’d known it would end. Eventually. The Honey Pie column had just prompted the inevitable. Even if she’d never sent it in, even if she’d never even written it, a relationship between her and Luc wouldn’t have worked out, despite her hope to the contrary. Ken hooked up with Barbie. Mick dated supermodels, and Brad married Jennifer. Period. That was life. The breakup was not her fault. He would have left. It was probably a good thing he’d left now, she told herself, instead of in a few more months when she would have discovered even more to love about him. When it would have hurt worse. Although she couldn’t imagine anything hurting worse. She felt as if a part of her had died.
Jane set her 409 on the counter and glanced across her apartment at her briefcase tossed on the coffee table.
There are some things in that Honey Pie piece-of-shit article that are just too close to be a coincidence, he’d said.
She’d always figured he’d recognize himself in the column, but she hadn’t figured he’d recognize her. She moved to the couch and sat. Things that were written about you and me that actually happened. She pulled out her laptop and turned it on. She brought up her Honey Pie folder and clicked on the March file. Until now, she’d been reluctant to read it. Afraid it was horrible and not flattering and not as good as she’d originally thought or intended. As she read, she was struck by how obvious she’d made it that it was her. It would have been more surprising if he hadn’t suspected anything. The more she read, the more she wondered if she’d left clues on purpose. It was almost as if she were jumping up and down from the pages and waving her arms and yelling, it’s me, Luc. It’s Jane. I wrote this.
Had she wanted him to figure out that she’d written the column? No. Of course not. That would be stupid. That would mean she’d purposely sabotaged the relationship.
She sat back and looked across the room at the fireplace mantel. At the photo of her and Caroline. At the crystal shark Luc had given her. When had she fallen in love with him? Was it the night of the banquet? The first night he’d kissed her? Or the day he’d bought her the hockey book all tied up in a pink bow? Perhaps she’d fallen a little in love with him all of those times.
She supposed the time didn’t matter as much as the bigger question. Was what Caroline always said about her true? Did she enter relationships with one foot out the door? With an eye toward the exit sign? Had she purposely written the article in such an obvious way to get out of her relationship with Luc before she fell too deep? If that was the case, she’d gotten out too late. She’d fallen deeper and harder than ever before. She hadn’t even known it was possible to fall so hard.
Her doorbell rang and she rose from the couch. It was past two a.m., and she couldn’t imagine who’d be standing on her porch. Her heart pinched even as she told herself that it wasn’t Luc, racing across the country after her like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.
It was Caroline.
“I called all the hospitals,” her friend said as she hugged Jane tight against her chest. “No one would give me any information.”
“About what?” Jane extracted herself from Caroline’s grasp and took a step back.
“Your father.” Caroline lowered her chin and peered into Jane’s eyes. “His heart attack.”
Jane shook her head and rubbed her chilled arms through her long T-shirt. “My dad didn’t have a heart attack.”
“Darby called me and told me that he did!”
Oh, no. “That’s what I told the paper, but I just needed to come home and I needed a good excuse.”
“Mr. Alcott isn’t dying?”
“No.”
“I’m glad to hear it, of course.” Caroline sat hard on the sofa. “But I ordered flowers.”
Jane sat next to her. “Sorry. Can you cancel them?”
“I don’t know.” Caroline turned and looked at her. “Why the lie? Why did you have to come home? And why have you been crying?”
“Have you read Honey Pie this month?”
Caroline usually read all the columns. “Of course.”
“It was Luc.”
“I gathered that. Was he flattered?”
“Not at all,” Jane answered, and then she told her why. Through tears that wouldn’t stop, she told her friend everything. When she was finished, a frown pulled at Caroline’s brows.
“You already know what I’m going to say.”
Yes, Jane knew. And for the first time she actually listened. Jane had always been the smart one. Caroline the pretty one. Tonight Caroline was the pretty and smart one.
“Can you fix it?” Caroline asked.
Jane recalled the look in Luc’s eyes and him telling her to stay away from him and Marie. He’d meant it. “No. He would never listen to me now.” She leaned back against the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. “Men suck.” Jane rolled her head and looked at her friend. “Let’s make a pact to swear off men for a while.”
Caroline bit her lip. “I can’t. I’m sort of dating Darby now.”
Jane sat up straight. “Really? I didn’t know things had gotten that serious.”
“Well, he isn’t my usual type. But he’s nice to me and I like him. I like talking to him and I like the way he looks at me. And, well, let’s face it, he needs me.”
Yes, he certainly did. Jane figured Darby could probably fill Caroline up with a lifetime of need.
The next morning, Jane received flowers from the Chinooks organization expressing their condolences. At noon, flowers from the Times, and at one, Darby sent his own arrangement. At three, Caroline’s were delivered. They were all gorgeous and smelled wonderful and filled her with guilt. This was pure karmic retribution, and she promised God that she would never lie again if He would make the flowers stop.
On television that night, she watched the Chinooks play the Coyotes. Through the wire of his mask, Luc’s blue eyes looked out at her, as hard and as cold as the ice he played on. When he wasn’t cursing the air blue in front of his net, his lips were compressed into a grim line.
He looked up and the camera caught the anger in his eyes. He wasn’t in his zone. His personal life was affecting his game, and if Jane had harbored any hidden hope that she could fix the relationship, that hope died.
It was truly over.
Luc drew three penalties as he let his rage loose on anyone dumb enough to step inside his crease.
“What’s the matter, Martineau?” a Coyote forward asked after the first penalty. “Got your period?”
“Kiss my hairy beanbag,” he answered, hooked his stick in the guy’s skates, and pulled him off his feet.
“You’re an asshole, Martineau,” the guy said as he looked up from his position on the ice. Whistles blew and Bruce Fish was sent to the penalty box instead of Luc.
Luc picked up his water bottle and sprayed his face. Mark Bressler joined him at the net.
“Having an anger management problem?” the captain asked.
“What the fuck do you think?” Water dripped from his face and mask. Jane wasn’t in the press box. She wasn’t even in the same state, but he couldn’t get her out of his head.
“That’s what the fuck I think.” Bressler punched his shoulder with his big glove. “Try not to draw any more penalties and we just might win this thing.”
He was right. Luc needed to concentrate more on the game than on who was or wasn’t in the press box. “No more dumb penalties,” he agreed. But in the next frame, he wacked an opponent in the shin and the guy milked it for all it was worth.
“That didn’t hurt, you pussy,” Luc said as he looked down at the guy holding his shin and writhing in pain. “Get back up and I’ll show you hurt.”
The whistles blew and Bressler skated by, shaking his head.
After the game, the locker room was more subdued than usual. They’d put up two goals late in the third period, but it hadn’t been enough. They’d lost three-five. Phoenix sports reporters combed the room searching for sound bites, but no one was talking much.
Jane’s father had suffered a heart at
tack, and the players felt her absence. Luc didn’t believe the heart attack story, and was surprised that she’d turned tail and run. That wasn’t like the Jane he knew. Then again, he didn’t really know her at all. The real Jane had lied to him and used him and made a fool out of him. She knew things about him that he did not want to read in the newspapers. She knew that he iced down his knees and that everything wasn’t one hundred percent.
He was an idiot. How in the hell had he let a short reporter with curly hair and a smart mouth into his life? He hadn’t even liked her at first. How had he fallen so hard for her? She’d turned his life upside down and now he had to figure a way to get her out of his head. To get his focus back. He could do it. He’d battled back before, and he’d battled bigger demons than Jane Alcott. He figured all he needed was determination and a little time. Darby had told the team she wouldn’t be back to work until next week.
One week. Now that she was out of his life physically, it shouldn’t take that much time to get her the hell out of his head and get mentally back into the game.
And a week later, he was right. Partly, anyhow. He was back in his zone. Back to playing with skill instead of brute strength fueled by emotion, but he’d failed to get Jane out of his head completely.
The day he returned to Seattle, he felt bruised inside and out. He just wanted to sit on his couch, relax, and watch mindless television until Marie came home from school. Maybe they’d order out and have a nice relaxing dinner.
He should have known better. Like always with his sister, one minute things were fine, and the next everything went straight to hell. One minute she was filling him in on her day at school, then she took off her big bulky sweatshirt. Luc’s jaw dropped when he got a good look at her tight T-shirt and her breasts. They were a lot bigger than when he’d left on his trip a week ago. Not that he stared, but he couldn’t help but notice the difference.
“What are you wearing?”
“My BEBE shirt.”
See Jane Score Page 24