An Unexpected Partnership (HQR Special Edition)

by Teresa Southwick

  Dad was still holding the little boy and they headed for the exit. Probably going home for his bath, bedtime rituals and good-night hugs. Leo missed that time the most, and the small arms that had no chance of reaching around his shoulders but meant everything to him.

  “Leo?”

  “Hmm?” He turned away and met his friend’s questioning gaze. “Sorry. I was thinking about something else. You were saying?”

  “Are you going to be at the community event? People want to meet the highest-scoring defenseman who ever played.”

  “I’m planning on it.” He rested a hip on the desk. “Every participant comes away with a free stick and ball, right? We have enough?”

  “I think so. We’ll use leftovers at the next clinic.”

  Leo nodded approval. “We might want to have that one on the other side of town.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “So, show me the new snack bar.”

  “We’re getting positive feedback, pardon the pun.” Mark grinned at his joke.

  Leo groaned. “I hope the food is better than your sense of humor.”

  After following his friend downstairs, he noted the addition of more tables and chairs where customers could relax with a hot dog, a cup of hot chocolate or a soft drink. Soup, chili and taquitos, among other things, had been added to the menu. There was a teenage girl cleaning up and shutting it down. He’d interviewed her, but hadn’t seen her in action yet.

  Mark stopped at the counter. “Hey, Denise, how’s it going?”

  “Hi, Mr. Reeves.” The pretty gray-eyed blonde looked at Leo. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Wallace.”

  “How’s business?” She was a good hire, Leo thought. Smart, polite, pretty. Adults loved her because she was great with kids. And teenage boys would gather around her like bees to honey.

  “It’s really good,” she said. “I was going to talk to Mr. Reeves, but since you’re here, too...”

  “What’s up?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you’re quitting.”

  “No way.” Her ponytail flipped from side to side when she shook her head. “Just the opposite. When school is out for summer, I was hoping to increase my hours. I only have one more year until I go to college, and I need to save all the money I can.”

  Leo looked at Mark, who gave a thumbs-up. “That would be great. We’ll definitely work something out.”

  Possibly a rink-sponsored college scholarship, Leo thought.

  “Thanks.”

  “So, you’re closing up?” He noticed a foil-covered plate of food next to the cash register.

  The teen followed his gaze, and what could only be guilt settled on her face. “It’s leftovers.”

  Mark frowned. “No problem to take it. You’d just have to throw it out.”

  “It’s not for me...” She stopped and, if possible, looked more guilty.

  “What?” Leo nudged.

  “I don’t want to rat him out, but—”

  “Now you have to tell us.” Leo kept his voice light. He didn’t want to scare her. “This business is our responsibility, and if something is going on we need to know.”

  “He’s right, kiddo,” Mark agreed.

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t think it’s against the law exactly. Maybe trespassing—”

  “Why don’t you let us decide,” Leo said gently. Loyalty was pretty important to him but sometimes you needed to spill the whole truth. “No one has to know where the information came from. We’ll keep your name out of it.”

  Her expressive face gave away the conflict raging inside her. Finally she nodded. “There’s a boy from one of the teams. He slept here last night.”

  Mark looked surprised. “Whoever’s working a shift is supposed to do rounds—”

  It would be easy to hide, Leo realized. Men’s teams rented ice time off-hours for practices and games. The place was big, with a lot of dark corners. Someone familiar with it could find a place to crash and not be noticed. And he was being fed.

  Denise met his gaze, looking embarrassed and ashamed. “I know him from school, too. He’s got problems at home and I felt sorry for him.”

  Déjà vu, Leo thought. “You did the right thing. And you’re not in trouble. Just, if something like this happens again, come to us. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Okay.” She told them where to find him and gave Leo the plate of food. “His name is Josh.”

  Leo told Mark he would handle it, then went to the men’s locker room. There was a small storage space and that’s where he found Josh sleeping, using his bulky hockey bag for a pillow.

  He turned on the light and the boy opened his eyes, then sat up. “Hi, Josh.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I own this place. It’s my business to know what goes on,” he said vaguely. He handed over the plate. Teenage boys could eat more than half their weight in hamburgers and french fries, and it didn’t matter whether or not the food was warm. “I thought you might be hungry.”

  The kid answered with a sullen, negative head movement.

  “Why don’t you let me call your folks? I’ll even give you a ride home.”

  “No.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “You own this place. I thought you knew everything.”

  They went back and forth for a while and he got no information. Clearly the boy didn’t want to go home. Leo sympathized, but letting him sleep here was out of the question.

  He decided it was time to get tougher. “You’re trespassing, you know. I’ll just call the cops. Let them get the information out of you.”

  “Go ahead,” he challenged. “Anything is better than living with them.”

  Twenty years ago Leo was this kid. He hadn’t run away from home but it had crossed his mind. What if someone had called the cops on him? There had to be a compromise. “Look, my name is Leo—”

  “I know. Leo ‘The Wall’ Wallace. Highest-scoring defenseman in the NHL.” There was a little bit of awe in his voice.

  Maybe he could work that angle, Leo thought. Get Josh’s trust and take him to the house. Tess was there. He liked the sound of that but hoped it had more to do with her as backup for this kid crisis than anything personal.

  “What would you think about coming home with me?”

  Chapter Six

  Tess was sitting in the family room, idly using the TV remote to flip through channels while she waited for Leo. A part of her was really looking forward to seeing him, in a “crush on a boy” sort of way. The other part of her wanted to discuss the bar in a “what the heck are you doing to my grandfather’s legacy” way. When she’d seen the demolition, her stomach had turned and it had nothing to do with morning sickness.

  Oh, Leo had shown her the architectural plans and the computer images of how it was going to look, but now all she saw was an empty shell where there’d once been warmth and laughter. And maybe her imagination was working overtime, but tonight it seemed to her as if he’d been gone a lot longer than he’d led her to believe he would be.

  Then she heard the front door open and angry voices drifted inside. He wasn’t alone. Her first thought was that he’d taken her suggestion not to let her presence cramp his social life. That was followed by an unreasonable explosion of anger, with all the characteristics of jealousy. Seconds later it sank in that the person with him wasn’t a woman. Curiosity got the better of her and she left the family room to meet him in the entryway and find out what was going on.

  The heated conversation stopped when they saw her. Leo had brought home a hostile teenage hockey player, if that oversize, smelly equipment bag was anything to go by.

  She stopped in front of the newcomer, who didn’t smell much better. “Hi. I’m Tess. Who are you?”

  “You don’t need to know,” he said rudely.
r />   “This is Josh,” Leo said.

  He was cute, she noted, in a purely observational way. Blond hair, green eyes, a little skinny but give him a few years and he would be a heartbreaker, just like Leo. Unlike her partner, he was anything but easygoing. Intensity rolled off this kid like sweat.

  She looked at the other adult in the room. “What’s going on?”

  “Josh was crashing at the ice rink. Some beef with his folks. He wouldn’t say what it was or give me any other information. I couldn’t leave him there and the only other choice was to call the cops.”

  “Obviously there was another option because here you are with him,” she pointed out. Her guess would be that Leo didn’t want to call the authorities. That would have been easier, to let them deal with whatever was going on, but that’s not what he’d done. The fact that he was getting involved gave her a sudden warm and fuzzy feeling.

  “Are you hungry, Josh?”

  “No.” He tried to look sullen, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

  “It’s a well-known fact that, at your age, boys are always hungry. I’ll warm a plate in the microwave.” She turned away. “Follow me. And leave that bag by the front door. It smells like a squirrel crawled in there and died.”

  Someone behind her laughed and it didn’t sound like Leo. That was a start.

  She knew her business partner well enough now to know that he would have protested if he didn’t approve of feeding this kid, so she led the way to the kitchen.

  Tess pulled leftover baked chicken and fried potatoes, along with green beans, from the refrigerator and filled a plate before putting a cover on it. Then she put everything in the microwave and hit the warm-plate button on the panel. The light inside came on along with a low hum.

  The kid was hovering in the space between the family room and kitchen island. He wasn’t going to talk unless he felt comfortable and trusted them. How did they pull that off? She glanced at Leo and he looked uncertain, too. What would her grandfather have done?

  Basics, she thought. “Okay, Josh no-last-name—”

  “I have a last name,” he muttered.

  “Then let’s have it,” she said firmly.

  “It’s Hutak.”

  “Okay, Josh Hutak, there’s a powder room down the hall. Why don’t you wash up before you eat.” She could see a protest forming and cut it off. “That’s not optional and I recommend you don’t even think about talking back. No wash, no food. Not negotiable.”

  Hunger must have won out because the kid turned without another word and did as requested.

  When it was just her and Leo, she said, “What are we going to do with him? His parents must be worried sick.”

  “I would be.” Something in those three words said he knew how it felt to be concerned about a child. He dragged his fingers through his hair. “I’m hoping I can get through to him and he’ll voluntarily give up information. If he doesn’t, that leaves no choice but to—”

  “Call the police,” she finished. “We could let him stay but the thought of what his parents must be going through makes me want to shake the information out of him.”

  “I know. But the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and all that. We’ll keep this low-key if possible. I’d really rather not escalate the situation to that level.”

  Leo Wallace, heartless womanizer, was empathizing with this kid big-time, and Tess was curious. Clearly she knew nothing about this man beyond his lucrative hockey career and business pursuits, not to mention his pursuit of starlets and models. But she had a feeling there was a lot more to him than that.

  The microwave beeped, indicating the food was warmed. At the same time Josh came back into the room.

  “Have a seat at the table.”

  He did as instructed and she gave him utensils while Leo poured him a big glass of milk.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled before digging in.

  Everything disappeared quickly, as he practically inhaled it all. She’d cooked that night and wanted to believe it was about her skills, but figured he just hadn’t eaten for a while. That was concerning.

  “Do you want more?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She and Leo sat across from him at the table and waited for the kid to open up about his situation but he out-stubborned them.

  Finally Leo cleared his throat. “I didn’t like my parents very much when I was growing up. They argued all the time. More than once, one or both of them screamed at each other that they wished they’d never gotten married. My mother and father were the poster couple for why bitterly unhappy people should not stay together and make everyone around them miserable.”

  “Are they still together?” Tess couldn’t stop herself from asking. Where Leo was concerned, the list of questions was growing, and this seemed like the least intrusive.

  “No. They split when all of us kids were out of high school. But the damage was done. I have a brother and sister, and all three of us want no part of marriage thanks to them.”

  “It sucks.” Josh’s comment and emphatic tone indicated he was going through something similar.

  Tess felt obliged to point something out. “Since we’re sharing sucky family stuff, I need to tell you two it could have been worse.”

  “How?” Leo and Josh said together. They shared a fleeting grin.

  “My father, the sperm donor, disappeared before I was born. When I was six, my mother and I came to Huntington Hills to live here with her father. She left to go to the store one day and never came back. So he raised me, but I didn’t have either parent.”

  “You had your grandfather,” Leo said.

  “And he was awesome.” There were times, like now, when the pain of missing him was hard to bear. “But I was different from most of the other kids at school. They all had a mom or dad, or both. No one I knew lived with a grandparent. It made me different that neither of my parents wanted me.”

  “I wish mine didn’t,” Josh muttered.

  “Okay,” Leo said. “I think we should declare Tess the winner of the ‘worst parents ever’ award. But, Josh, reading between the lines, I’m hearing that your mom and dad fight with each other but both care about you. I have a feeling you’re getting flack for something. What’s really going on?”

  The boy stared at the empty plate in front of him, then looked up and glared. “I’m grounded from hockey.”

  “Why?” Leo asked.

  “Because they suck.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling us.” He didn’t flinch from the kid’s hostile gaze. “I’ve been where you are. My parents didn’t like each other but both of them wanted what was best for me.”

  “So you’re saying it’s my fault they fight?”

  Leo’s expression was bemused. “I’m not sure how you got there from what I said. No, their fights are with each other. I have a feeling they’re in agreement about something that’s going on with you. I can’t help if you don’t tell me what it is.”

  Tess was mesmerized by the gentle understanding in his voice. This was a side of him she had never seen before. It was a good side.

  “Why did they take hockey away?” he asked.

  Josh looked so achingly young and the pain on his face was tangible. There was also frustration and injustice tangled up in his expression. “I’m failing English. It’s stupid. They know I want to play pro hockey someday but how can I if they won’t let me be on the team now?”

  “I see.” Leo looked thoughtful. “So, what if you pull up that grade?”

  “I’m back on the team,” he grudgingly admitted. “But there’s no way I can. I have to pass every quiz before the final and do an extra-credit paper on The Great Gatsby to pass the class. I’m just screwed.”

  “Maybe you could get a tutor,” Tess suggested. “If your parents see that you’re trying, you might be able t
o negotiate hockey reinstatement, pending your final grade.”

  “They’d never go for it.”

  “Well,” Leo said, “running away from home isn’t going to keep you on the team. It’s an expensive sport.”

  The kid’s gaze was full of desperation. “Maybe you could give me a job at the rink. I’ll work for hockey expenses.”

  “That’s an idea.” Leo looked thoughtful. “But you’re underage. Without your parents’ consent, I would probably be breaking a whole lot of laws.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I do. I went through the same thing. You’ve got no choice,” Leo said.

  “What did you do?” Josh asked.

  “I got my grades up in high school. There were hockey scholarships for certain colleges, and I went after one and played while I was going to school. Eventually scouts for professional teams came looking. And I was drafted.” He stopped until the kid met his gaze. “But if I’d run away from home, none of that would have been possible.”

  “My dad won’t listen,” he said hopelessly.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Leo offered. “What have you got to lose?”

  Josh shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing, I guess.”

  “Good call. Why don’t you give me your dad’s number and I’ll get in touch with him.”

  Josh thought that over for a few moments, then nodded his agreement. Leo dialed the number and introduced himself when it was answered. From this end of the conversation Tess could tell that the man knew of Leo’s superstar status.

  When he hung up, he smiled at the boy. “Your dad is on the way to pick you up. Let’s wait for him out front. It’s going to be all right. I promise.”

  Josh nodded, then stood and thanked Tess for dinner. After that he followed Leo out of the room and she heard the front door open and close again.

  Tess couldn’t believe the man she’d just seen reasoning with a teenage boy was the same one she thought had the sensitivity of an alley cat. Now she knew why he found marriage unappealing, and who could blame him. But for reasons she didn’t totally get, understanding why he was that way didn’t make her feel better. Because she actually liked him and that was more dangerous than simply being physically attracted.