They’d spotted her and were moving toward her through a sea of toned, impeccably dressed bodies. The handsome athlete and the gorgeous model. How predictable, Janna thought disdainfully. He really was like the rumors said, going for boobs over brains every time. Not that she gave a rat’s—
“Hey, chickadee.” Skyler’s voice carried so much genuine affection that for a minute, Janna almost felt guilty for all the times she wished her sister would suddenly pork up overnight. Calling on every ounce of control and composure she had, Janna returned her sister’s dazzling smiling and reached up to kiss her on her flawlessly made up cheek.
“Hey, Stretch.”
She turned her attention to Ty. She had to admit, his expression was priceless. He was damn near slack-jawed with bafflement, his confused glance ping-ponging from Janna . . . to Skyler . . . back to Janna. “You two know each other?”
“We’re sisters,” Janna answered coolly.
“Can’t you tell?” Skyler joked.
“You don’t really look much alike,” Ty observed carefully.
“No, she’s tall and gorgeous and I’m short and plain,” Janna supplied gaily. Skyler laughed, clueless that she was the only one doing so. Her laughter seemed loud to Janna. Everything did. The music, the swirl of voices around them, all of it deafening. Perhaps she was about to faint. Meanwhile, Ty’s eyes were burning into her retinas. What was he trying to convey? Embarrassment? An apology? Well, whatever it was, she didn’t care.
Skyler’s laughter—loud, endless, cloying—eventually faded away, leaving a hole in the awkward, hellish moment that Janna didn’t have the energy to fill. Nor did Ty: the slack-jawed expression was gone, replaced by a look Janna interpreted as plain old discomfort. Skyler, as ever, was completely oblivious.
“So, what’s on the menu?” she asked brightly.
I’m sure you are, thought Janna. She flashed a big smile. “Don’t know, baby sis. But I do know I have to run. I have a couple more people I have to corral before we sit down to eat. I’ll catch up with you later!”
Feigning urgency, she flitted away into the crowd. Excruciating. That had been excruciating. Her eyes quickly scanned the room: Lou was with the editor from Seventeen. Good. Jack Cowley was staring down the cleavage of some poor unsuspecting woman on the board of Family and Children’s Services. Not good. She was halfway across the crowded room, nearly home free, when she felt a strong, firm grip on her arm.
“Janna, wait.”
Damn! She was close, so close, to escaping. Caught, she turned around to peer up into Ty’s face. “Yes?” she asked impatiently.
“Your sister and me—it’s not what you think.”
“I don’t think anything.”
“Janna, please. I can tell you’re upset.”
She thought fast. “I’m upset because you didn’t let me know you were coming. If you had, I could have drummed up a lot more publicity for this event. Then again, with Wayne Gretzky in the room, your being here is kind of redundant, know what I mean?”
Ty shook his head affectionately. “You’re a pistol, you know that?”
“Yes, well, this little pistol still has some bullets left to shoot before dinner. You and Skyler have fun, okay?”
“Janna.” She went to bolt but there was a hint of entreaty in his voice that kept her rooted. “Skyler and I—”
Brrrring.
“Shoot.” Eyes rolling in exasperation, Janna impatiently pulled her cell phone out of her purse. “I’ll just be a minute,” she told Ty, jamming the offending instrument to her ear so she could hear over the din of the buzzing crowd. She’d kill Theresa for this, absolutely kill her.
“Hello?”
But it wasn’t Theresa. It was Wills. Wills hiccuping and crying and saying Mom was drunk, and Dad was in a rage, and could she come get him, please, could she come now?
“I’m on my way,” she told him. “Wait for me in the guest house.” Trembling, she folded up the phone and shoved it back into her bag.
“Janna?” Ty asked, concerned.
“I have to go,” she mumbled distractedly, starting away from him.
“Is everything all—”
“I have to go,” she repeated, calling over her shoulder. She hurried to Lou, explaining there was a family emergency. And then she was gone, out into the night that just an hour before had felt utterly magical, but which now seemed only troubled.
CHAPTER 06
“Jesus Christ, Gallagher. Didn’t you have your Wheaties this morning?”
Ty whipped off his helmet and skated toward the bench, the coach’s comment ringing in his ears. Though it was only practice, he was off his game: there was no jump in his legs, and his reflexes were a millisecond slower than usual. Driving toward the net, the defense was nailing him every time. They stole the puck from him left and right. They ran him again and again into the boards. Everyone noticed and no one said a word—no one but Coach Matthias, whose job it was to say a word, to say lots of words, not all of them nice. Ty supposed he should be grateful for the coach’s diplomacy. It could have been worse; he could have told Ty he should be taken out to pasture and shot like an old, unproductive horse, which, right now, is precisely how he felt. Like an old, unproductive, and very distracted horse.
Last night. That was the problem screwing with his concentration. He’d tried to do something nice and it had blown up in his face. When at the last minute he’d decided to do Janna a favor after all, he’d just assumed that the right way to proceed was the way expected of him. Everyone expected high-profile jocks to show up with a model on their arm and smile for the cameras, right? It was all part of the game, part of the fantasy. So he’d called up the model “Skyler M,” who had slipped him her number at a restaurant bar the night before, and asked her if she wanted to go to this black-tie thing with him. And she, being someone who lived and breathed for being in the public eye, jumped at the opportunity. Great. Fine. They were on. He’d hung up the phone feeling quite pleased with the prop he’d picked out for himself. A little eye candy never hurt anyone.
Except Janna.
How was he supposed to know they were sisters?
It wasn’t even that which was troubling him, really. It was his lack of forethought. If he’d really thought this through, he would have shown up alone. It would have proved to Janna—after she stopped breathing fire at him—that when push came to shove, he wasn’t just a puck-shooting automaton obsessed with winning; he was someone who would do a favor for a friend. Instead, he’d performed the favor on his terms, and in the process . . . Christ, he didn’t even want to think about it. The woman was clearly upset, and he was the one who upset her. He knew why she was upset, which upset him. He felt guilty she was upset, and now he was going to have to dance even faster to make amends, because if there was one thing he couldn’t take, it was Janna being upset with him.
All because he’d brought Skyler.
Skyler. Jesus, what a Twinkie. He could hear the wind whistling around her head, that’s how empty the space between her ears was. It blew him away: How could one sister be so sharp and the other be so self-absorbed and dumb? Yeah, looking at her definitely got him dreaming from the waist down, he wouldn’t lie about that, but all she talked about was herself, and truth be told, it was a mind numbing bore. Not only that, but the woman was a goddamn human remora fish. He’d gone to give her a small peck on the cheek when the evening was over, and she’d grabbed him and practically sucked his face off. Maybe he was old-fashioned or backward or sexist, but he preferred to be the one who made the first move, if indeed a move was going to be made, which hadn’t been his intention, at all.
He’d planned to relate all this to Janna at practice this morning, but there was just one small problem: She wasn’t there. Usually he skated out onto the ice, and there she’d be, sitting with the Bull and the beat reporters, shooting the breeze. But today it was just Lou dazzling the troops. Ty waited until practice was done, then collared the neck-less Capesi on the way into t
he locker room.
“Hey.”
The Bull turned, surprised. “Nice of you to show last night, Gallagher. Now that you’ve seen the light, maybe we can get you to do some more stuff.”
Ty ignored the irritating comment about “seeing the light”—a tidy euphemism for doing things the Kidco way—and shrugged dismissively. “Yeah, maybe. Where’s your henchwoman today?” he asked casually.
“Janna? Something happened with her family, I’m not sure what. That’s why she ran out of there in a hurry last night.” He reached up and attempted to drape a brotherly arm around Ty’s shoulder, dropping his voice conspiratorially. “Look, you’re not injured or anything like that, are you?”
“No. Why?”
“ ’Cause you really sucked out there during practice, and the writers were asking me about it—‘Is he hurt?’ Yadda yadda.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them that practice isn’t the same as a game, and everyone’s entitled to an off day once in a while, even you. Did I do good?”
Ty patted his shoulder. “You did good. But you can do even better.”
“Wha?”
“Give me Janna MacNeil’s home address.”
Yellow roses. They meant friendship, didn’t they? Janna wondered as her fingertips caressed the delicate flower petals before finally setting the vase to rest on the steamer trunk in the living room. So sweet of him to send flowers, although when they first arrived, she had thought—hoped—they were from someone else. But the disappointment she felt evaporated somewhat when she read the card accompanying them:“J—Atta girl—knew you’d nail the captain eventually. Gretzky the cherry on top of the cake. Kidco’s thrilled. Congrats on a job well done—Lou.”
Of course, she hated herself for hoping they’d been from Ty. Hating herself was starting to become a full-time occupation, she’d noticed. Time to do something about that.
Sighing, she moved to the bank of windows looking out on the Fifty-ninth Street bridge. Traffic was doing its usual stop-and-start cha cha beneath the gray November sky. Janna thought she detected a few random snowflakes spiraling down to the crowded sidewalk below. When would the first snow fall? Before Thanksgiving? After? She loved watching the snow fall, loved the delicacy of it, like a baby gently closing its eyes. But in Manhattan, the virginal purity of the snow never lasted long. Between the trucks and the soot and the people, it blackened in no time. Janna hated dirty snow. It depressed her. But thinking about it was better than dwelling on . . .
She wondered if it hadn’t been a mistake taking the entire day off work. She could just as easily have taken the morning to drive Wills back up to Connecticut in time for school, then gone into the office after lunch. But she was exhausted: She and Wills had been up late talking, after which Janna couldn’t fall asleep. At five, tired of lying there with her mind racing, she’d gotten up and baked a batch of lemon poppyseed muffins. “When in doubt, cook” was one of her mottos. Wills and Theresa were both thrilled with the breakfast surprise, and for some reason, baking the muffins made her feel less guilty about bringing Wills back to Connecticut. Right now, she had a chocolate cake cooling, which she was waiting to frost, and she’d bought all the ingredients for moussaka, which she planned to make for dinner for her and Theresa tonight. Who knows, she mused, maybe crises really were blessings in disguise. After all, if they got her into the kitchen chopping and mixing and grating and measuring, which she loved, how bad could it be?
Answer: pretty bad. She didn’t want to think about Wills’s face when she’d deposited him at school that morning, knowing that after hockey practice later that day, he’d have to go home—if you could call it that. “Why don’t they just get a divorce?” he’d whispered on the drive back. Janna had no answer. It was a question she herself had been asking for as long as she could remember.
At least her father had called late last night to make sure Wills was all right. It was always her father, never her mother. He was always the one who expressed remorse, apologized to the kids, tried to make it up to them. Her mother never did; in fact, her mother’s behavior often seemed to imply that the war between her and her husband was somehow all their fault. Janna had spent hours assuring Wills of the opposite: that their parents’ horrible marriage was in no way his fault, that it was their problem. Whether her words sank in, she didn’t know. She was just glad he’d been willing to reach out for help when he needed it, and that she was able to get him the hell out of there, even if it was only for one night. Crazy thoughts had ricocheted through her mind while Wills had sat on the couch in the living room crying: Maybe he should move in here with me. Maybe I could become his guardian. But even while she thought about it, she knew it would never happen. Her parents would never let it happen. In the meantime, she’d do what she could: love her baby brother, be there for him when he needed her, assure him that the roller-coaster ride that was his home life had nothing to do with him. Perhaps most significant of all, she could prove to him that one could survive living in that house and come out the other side okay—okay being a relative term, of course.
Restless, she went into the kitchen to check on the cooling cake, gingerly resting her palm on top of it. Nope; still too warm to frost. She toyed with the idea of opening the can of frosting and simply spooning it into her mouth for lunch, but decided against it, knowing it would make her nauseous, and she’d had enough nausea over the past twenty-four hours, thank you. Thoughts of being sick to her stomach led inevitably to thoughts of Skyler—or, more specifically, Skyler and Ty.
It occurred to Janna as she’d hurried out of Tavern on the Green that maybe she should alert Skyler that the latest installment of Armageddon had commenced at their parents’ home in Connecticut. After all, it was her family, too. Why should Janna be the only one to have her evening ruined? But then Janna realized her evening had already been ruined—by Skyler. Besides, she knew what Skyler’s reaction would have been: “Oh.” And that would have been it. Oh. Because unless something impacted Skyler directly, it simply didn’t exist. Oh.
Pouring herself another cup of coffee—What was this, three? Four? She’d better watch her stomach—Janna tried to wrap her mind around the Ty/Skyler thing. It shouldn’t have upset her, but it did. It upset her that she was upset. She had no right to be. She and Ty Gallagher weren’t even friends. And she did have a boyfriend, if you counted Robert. So where did she get off thinking she could throw a hissy because one of the hottest bachelors in New York had shown up at a charity event with a major model at his side? Granted, the model was her sister, who also happened to be a major dodo, but still, she had no right.
Or did she? This was where she was getting confused. Ty seemed concerned she was upset, and that wouldn’t be the case unless he felt something for her, correct? So what was the deal? He’d rushed over to her pretty darn quickly, too, trying to explain what the situation was with him and Skyler. Now, why would a guy do that, unless he cared? Or . . . unless he thought she cared . . . and . . . he was trying to let her down easy?
Oh, God. That was it. Ty knew she was attracted to him, and he didn’t want her to be hurt. It had nothing to do with him having any feelings for her, it had to do with courtesy. Diplomacy. Pity. He pities me.
The thought smarted. It humiliated. And then it got her angry. He pitied her?! Well, she pitied him right back. Jerk! She knew he had a brain inside that thick skull, yet he was willing to be led around by his—by—he was willing to settle for a cipher like Skyler. Dumb jock. Take away the mega salary and the Hugo Boss threads and all you were left with was a big, dumb, shallow, rowdy jock. He and Skyler deserved each other. Let them go off together and create genetically gifted babies for all she cared. She’d stick with Robert, a man with brains, someone who could appreciate the finer things in life like books and art and music and mooching—no, not mooching, movies, she meant movies. She’d take brains over brawn anytime.
The doorbell buzzed and she jerked in her kitchen chair, startled. Pu
tting down her coffee mug, she started toward the foyer. It must be Theresa, who had no doubt forgotten her keys again and was back to pick up the gym bag she’d left sitting by the front door. Grabbing the bag with one hand, Janna unbolted the three locks with the other and opened the door.
“Forget something?” she teased.
There stood Ty Gallagher in a brown leather bomber jacket, blue jeans and a black crew neck sweater, his blond hair still damp from a shower, hand poised to ring the buzzer again. Okay, God, Janna thought miserably. Could you please just kill me now, so I don’t have to face any more humiliation?
“Ty,” she said, struggling to look neutral, while instantly remembering that she was in grungy old sweats, wearing glasses as thick as coke bottles. She tore her glasses off. “What are you doing here?”
“I—why did you just take your glasses off?”
“What?”
“Your glasses.” He gestured toward her hand. At least she thought he did, since without her glasses he’d been transformed into a tall, well-built blur. “Why did you take them off?”
“I was reading. I only use them for reading. ”
“Oh.” He seemed to be looking over her shoulder past her—checking, she thought, to see if Theresa was home. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” She ushered him inside, her mouth beginning to clog with words she wasn’t sure she wanted to say. She couldn’t believe he’d just shown up, especially when she looked like this. “Don’t you believe in calling first?” she asked peevishly, squinting as she thought he peeled off the bomber jacket, carefully placing it over the back of the couch. She detected head movement; he had to be glancing around.
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