Body Check

by Deirdre Martin

  She relaxed back in her seat, confident now that she had made the right decision. She’d wait until the team was settled back at the hotel after the game. Then she’d pay Ty a visit.

  The Blades beat Pittsburgh, 3-2. Thank God, thought Janna, as she silently padded down the carpeted hotel hallway. Had they lost, she knew she’d be facing an absolute bear. As it was, she had prepared herself for whatever un-pleasantry he might throw her way: sarcasm, dismay, disbelief—all the various facets of Ty at his worst.

  She paused before knocking, pressing her ear to the door to hear what was going on inside while silently praying that no one walked by and wondered what she was doing. She could hear Kevin inside laughing, probably in response to something David Letterman was saying on TV; both were addicted to The Late Show. She rapped firmly on the door, trying to pretend she didn’t hear Ty moan and Kevin curse in response.

  “Who is it?” Ty shouted.

  “Janna!” she yelled back.

  The dead silence that greeted her felt worse than the annoyance she’d heard them express seconds before. She held her breath. Please God don’t let him be too much of a jerk.

  The door yanked open, and there stood Ty, a navy blue towel knotted around his waist and a scowl on his face. Janna’s mind flashed back to the first time she’d met him in the Blades’ locker room. He’d been wearing nothing but a towel then too, and she’d been just as unnerved as she was now.

  “This better be good.”

  “Actually it’s bad,” she informed him, pushing the door open wide, “which is why I need to talk to you.” Her eyes caught Kevin’s, who was stretched out on his side of the room in sweats. She smiled apologetically. “Hi, Kev. Sorry to disturb you guys.”

  “It’s okay,” said Kevin, sitting up. “Why don’t you come in?”

  At his invitation, Janna brushed past Ty, whom she heard release a long-suffering sigh as he closed the door behind them.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Kevin offered, gesturing towards the minibar across the room.

  “No thanks.” Her eyes stole to Ty, who stood watching her suspiciously, arms folded against his bare chest. He wasn’t going to make this easy, that much was clear. She turned her attention back to Kevin. “I need to speak with Ty about something—”

  “Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of Kevin,” Ty cut in.

  But Kevin wasn’t having it. “If Janna wants to talk to you privately, Ty,” he said as he rose from the bed and headed toward the door, “then I think we need to respect that.” He drew Janna into a quick, affectionate hug. “Don’t take any bull from this loser, you hear?”

  Janna managed a wan smile in response.

  “Where are you going?” Ty demanded. He seemed somewhat edgy about his friend leaving.

  “Down to Moonie’s room, maybe he’ll cut me in on the poker game. Give me a call down there when you’re done.”

  “Right,” Ty grunted, watching Kevin depart. Forced now to deal with his visitor, he turned to Janna. “You sure you don’t want anything to drink?” he asked begrudgingly.

  “A Coke would be fine if it’s not too much of a problem.”

  He muttered something to himself, Janna wasn’t sure what, and went to the minibar to fetch her a drink. She watched the strong muscles in his back ripple as he strode across the room, her eyes drawn to his broad expanse of shoulder as he pulled the Coke out of the small fridge and poured her soda into a plastic cup.

  “What’s up?” he asked, walking back toward her with the drink.

  Keep your eyes on his face, Janna told herself, nowhere but his face. She accepted the drink gratefully.

  “Can I sit down?” she asked.

  “Is it going to take that long?”

  “I’ll make it as fast as I can, I promise.”

  He gestured for her to sit in one of the chairs across from his bed. As she did so, he sat down too, and his towel began to come undone.

  “Shoot. Excuse me.” He rose, and letting the towel drop to the floor, walked towards the bathroom. Janna felt her entire body flush with unexpected heat and pleasure. Ty naked . . . was he doing this on purpose to torture her? Or was he oblivious in that way athletes were? That had to be it. By the time he emerged from the bathroom a few seconds later wrapped in a terry cloth robe provided by the hotel, her body temperature had returned to normal and she fancied that maybe she’d be able to get through this conversation without her desire for him clouding her ability to string a sentence together.

  “Okay,” he said, settling back down on the edge of his bed, “what’s so important that you have to throw Kevin out of his own hotel room?”

  “Kevin offered to leave,” she felt compelled to point out. Looking at Ty’s face, a face she loved, uneasiness began overtaking her at the thought of being the bearer of bad tidings. She reminded herself that what she had to say was bad only if he chose not to do anything with the information. Still, the idea of actually saying it . . . She stared down into her coke.

  “Lou told me something a couple of days ago that I’m not supposed to know.”

  “What’s that?”

  Janna lifted her eyes to meet his. “Seems that Corporate isn’t happy with your level of play.” She hesitated. “They’re saying that if you don’t improve your game, they’re not going to renew your contract at the end of the year.”

  He stared at her. That was it. Just stared. No visible reaction—that is, until he spoke. His voice was strained. “I see.” His jaw clenched. “Lou told you this when?”

  “Two days ago. He was in a meeting with Tad Morrison.”

  “Who the hell is Tad Morrison?” Ty snapped.

  “He’s one of the bigwigs at Kidco.” She paused. “He’s literally the one who signs your paycheck,” she added softly.

  “I see,” Ty repeated. Staring off into space, he ran his hand through his hair distractedly before putting his hands into the pockets of his robe and peering down at his bare feet. Janna fought the urge to throw her arms around him and comfort him. She watched him instead. He didn’t seem upset so much as furious. Contained. Like a geyser about to blow.

  “Ty?” she asked. He raised his head to look at her, his soft brown eyes now hard as stone.

  “You realize,” he said, “that half the reason they’re contemplating this is because I refuse to kiss their asses.”

  “I know,” Janna concurred.

  Without thinking, he reached out for her Coke and she handed it to him. It seemed the most normal thing in the world, something they had done countless times before. Except now . . .

  He handed the plastic cup back to her. “This is un-fucking-believable. I bring them the Cup last year, I will bring it to them again this year, and this is how they repay me? By not renewing my contract because of a few off days?”

  “It’s amazing, I know. I nearly keeled over when Lou told me.”

  His gaze pinned her. “Who else knows?”

  “As far as I know, just Lou, myself, and Corporate.” She made a sour face. “Jack Cowley has no idea, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It is what I’m asking. Cowley’s the idiot who was letting the press know about team injuries. What the hell was he thinking?”

  “He wasn’t.” He’ll get his, she added hopefully in her head.

  But Ty wasn’t listening. He was looking toward the window, his countenance solemn, his body still. I should go now, Janna thought. But something held her in place.

  “Are you going to be all right?” she asked him gently. There, that was it, the thing that was rooting her. It was concern. Love.

  “I’m fine,” he replied curtly. He looked back to her, and for the first time since they’d ended things, Janna had the feeling that he was really seeing her. There was a lack of defensiveness in his posture, a surrender of the many roles he imposed on himself. Right now, he was just Ty, a man in pain, a man feeling unappreciated.

  “Why did you tell me?” he asked quietly. “You could just
as easily have kept your mouth shut.”

  Janna glanced away, embarrassed. “Because it was the right thing to do. If the situation was reversed, I would want to know.” He was watching her carefully, she could feel it, his steady gaze heating the side of her face. “I did it for the team, too. Without you, they’ve got no spiritual core. I didn’t want to see that happen.”

  He responded with silence. When Janna dared to look back at him, he was staring down at the floor again.

  “I should go.” She put her cup of Coke on the table beside the chair, and rose. Ty did the same. Together they walked to the door.

  “I guess I’ll see you at practice tomorrow,” Janna said lamely.

  Ty barely nodded.

  She turned to the door, went to open it.

  “Janna?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Please, she thought. Please. Hand still gripping the doorknob, she turned around to face him.

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  The strain in his voice said it all.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He took a step toward her, then halted. She waited, breath held, body poised. Please Ty, she silently pleaded, do what your heart is telling you to do. Build a bridge to me with all the unsaid words here between us, and cross over it. Please.

  But he couldn’t, so she did it for him. She went to him, and standing on her tiptoes, softly kissed him on the cheek.

  “Try to get some sleep tonight,” she urged. Then she was gone, out the door and down the hall, her heart lighter for the gift she felt she’d given him. I’ve done what I needed to do, she told him in her head. Now it’s your turn.

  A man possessed. That’s the cliché all the sports writers were using to describe his play through the next three games against Pittsburgh. They’d won the Conference Final in an astounding four-game sweep, and as Ty held the Prince of Wales trophy high above his head on home ice, he lifted his eyes to the skybox where all the Kidco execs sat watching. He made sure he had a big smile plastered on his face that said, “You’re thinking of getting rid of me? Just wait until two weeks from now, when I’m skating around the arena holding the Stanley Cup aloft, you SOBs. Then we’ll see how quick you are to give me the shaft, when the fans are screaming my name and my face is on the front cover of every newspaper in New York.”

  He wasn’t stupid. This bull about him upping his level of play or else was just that—bull. If they truly valued him as a player, they would have come to him and expressed their concern, asking if anything was on his mind and how they could help. The fact they didn’t told another story, one that pointed to their fanatical devotion to image as well as their obsession with the bottom line. They wanted to get rid of him because they couldn’t control him. Because they knew winning this Cup would coincide with contract negotiations, placing him in prime position to name his price, which they would undoubtedly not want to pay. It didn’t matter that he was a marquee player and his presence on the team helped keep the arena filled. All they gave a damn about was payroll and presentation, and as far as they were concerned, he was trouble on both counts, the high-priced captain who refused to spend all his spare time cheerleading for causes handpicked to make Kidco look good.

  He’d heard rumblings that the suits were displeased about the role he played when it came to personnel, too. A thumbs-up or -down from him could mean the difference between a player being traded or not, benched or not. They seemed to disregard the fact that Tubs deliberately solicited his input. The Blades GM was threatened by his veto power. “He thinks you’re overstepping your bounds,” is what Tubs had told him, and they had both marveled over the stupidity of not wanting a captain who’d won three Stanley Cups to give his insights when asked. He liked to think he would have risen to the occasion without Janna’s clueing him in to what the bigwigs had in mind, but he wasn’t so sure. Her words had literally lit a fire under him, and when he went on the ice for the ensuing three games against Pittsburgh he blazed, fueled by raw adrenaline and an almost unquenchable drive to show the number crunchers what he was made of. That he’d be damned if he’d let them decide his fate.

  He couldn’t wait for the final round of the Cup finals to begin. If they thought he was a man possessed now, just wait until they saw him at the series opener in sunny LA.

  He passed the trophy off to Kevin, whose solemnity now reflected his own. Winning the Prince of Wales was nice, but all it meant was they’d won the first round. In his mind, it almost didn’t count. He could see Janna watching him from the press box. Usually it threw him a bit, but tonight he was filled with gratitude. Letting him know what Kidco was planning despite what had gone down between them impressed him to no end. Were the situation reversed, he didn’t know whether he would have been so generous. Probably not. In fact, being a major jerk, he probably would have let her twist in the wind. He didn’t know. All he knew was that she had driven his desire to win the Cup to the brink. Until she’d told him what was going on behind the scenes, he’d found her presence a distraction. But now he was going to take all that energy he’d been using trying not to think about her, and he was going to use it to drive himself and the Blades forward. And when they won, he would hand the Cup to her, giving proper thanks to the woman who saved his neck.

  And then he was going to give Kidco a surprise they’d never, ever forget.

  CHAPTER 22

  Un. Be. Lievable.

  For weeks Janna and Theresa had talked about going to the Angelika to see the late-night screening of Gone With the Wind. They were finally here, and of course, right in the middle of the burning of Atlanta, her cell phone rings. Forced to hustle out to the lobby before the other patrons killed her, Janna was now overcome with apprehension. Was it Wills? Had to be. Something awful had happened again. Swallowing hard, she pressed the phone to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Janna? It’s Pierre LaRouche.”

  Pierre LaRouche, the Blades’ goalie, calling her cell phone at close to midnight? Not good, not good at all.

  “Pierre? What’s happened?”

  “I’m at the police station.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “I, uh, got picked up for soliciting a prostitute.”

  Idiot!!! she longed to yell. You big, stupid French Canadian idiot!!

  “Have you talked to anyone else?” she asked instead, in the voice that you use to talk to slow children and dangerous maniacs.

  “No—I mean, you said if there was ever trouble we should call you first, so—”

  “You did the right thing,” she said quickly. “Tell me where you’re at, and I’ll be there as soon as I can. In the meantime, don’t talk to anyone else—not your wife, not one of the guys, no one. You hear me?”

  “Uh huh.” He gave her the address in a quivering voice.

  “Just relax, everything is going to be okay. See you in a few.”

  She ended the call and slumped against the lobby wall. Oh, this was just perfect, a textbook case of exactly the kind of publicity the team didn’t need. Especially now, poised on the brink of victory. Now what?

  “Is everything okay?”

  Janna looked up to see Theresa striding toward her, a look of unconcealed alarm on her face.

  “A player’s in trouble. I can’t go into the details right now. Go back and watch the movie, I’ll meet you at home later.”

  “Whatever you say, Miss Scarlett.” She gave Janna’s arm a reassuring squeeze and disappeared back into the dark theater.

  Unsure of what to do next, Janna began nervously pacing the lobby under the suspicious eye of the theater manager. What did he think she was going to do, stick him up with a box of Jujubes, steal a tub of buttered popcorn, and run? She returned his glare and continued wracking her brain for a course of action. She’d dealt with the police before; that wasn’t what worried her. What worried her was keeping this out of the public eye. If word of this got out, it could ruin LaRouche’s personal life, and put him out of commission on the ice for th
e rest of the season, since the NHL would suspend him, which would certainly affect the Blades. Not only that, but a situation like this looked really bad, perpetuating as it did the stereotype of athletes as sleazes, which, admittedly, some of them were. Why did he have to do this?

  Feeling as if she might burst right out of her skin, she left the theater and hailed a cab uptown to the police station. The ride seemed to take forever, with traffic grinding to nearly a complete standstill near Broadway and 42nd. Janna was so frustrated she contemplated jumping out and walking the rest of the way, but thought better of it when she caught sight of the dense crowds she’d have to fight through. Her cabby cursed, and she glanced out the window at the car that was trying to cut them off. It had a sticker for the Police Athletic League—PAL—plastered to its rear window. Her mind lurched. The PAL . . . of course! She had a connection at the PAL, a cop named Steve Dalvey. Back when she was at The Wild and the Free, she helped raise money for him by arranging a yearly celebrity softball game between cops and soap actors. All of the proceeds went to the inner-city kids PAL helped. Steve had said if she ever needed a favor, she should give him a call. Well, Steve-a-rino, she thought, as she frantically rooted through her handbag for her Palm Pilot and her phone, I hate to bother you this late at night, but the time has come for me to call in my favor.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was walking up the steps of the precinct house to meet her, a burly man with an easygoing demeanor.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Janna said. “Especially given the time.”

  “No problem,” he assured her, holding the police station door open.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, the station was abuzz with activity. A man with a bandaged, bloody head was sitting in one of the orange plastic seats along the wall, pointing and complaining about a drunk in a tattered overcoat who appeared to be asleep on the floor. A domestic dispute between a husband and a wife was being waged at full volume in a far corner, while a hooker with little on besides pink plastic pants and a bandeau top sat swinging her long legs and cursing under her breath. The stone-faced female officer behind the desk was doing her best to ignore all of them. Thankful this was a side of New York she rarely got to see, Janna followed Steve Dalvey as he strode up to the desk and flashed his badge while introducing himself.