“The Czech always shoots
top shelf,” the coach said. “If he scores on you, that’s where he’ll aim.” He flipped over a page on his clipboard. “And Federov will cut across the ice and shoot at you from his sweet spot near the left face-off circle.”
“Thanks, Don,” Luc said and turned to Jane when the goalie coach walked away.
“What were Fish and Sutter saying to you?” he wanted to know.
He towered over her in his gear. “They thought I looked different tonight.” She would have told him her after-the-afterglow theory, but she didn’t want to get him started down that path.
“Were they hitting on you?”
“No. You big dumb dodo.”
He looked around and waited for Daniel to move past before he said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh.”
He lowered his voice. “I think you should kiss my tattoo before every game for good luck.”
She scowled to keep from laughing. “I think I’m being sexually harassed.”
He grinned. “Absolutely. What do you say? Wanna kiss my tattoo?”
“Not a chance,” she said and turned away before anyone overheard the conversation. She headed up to the press box and took a seat by Darby. He told her that he was making some headway with management on her behalf, and he told her of a defender they hoped to acquire before the March 19 deadline four weeks away.
“Caroline said she’d go out with me when we get back into town,” he told her after they’d talked business.
“Where are you taking her?”
“Columbia Tower Club, like you suggested.”
She looked at his chili pepper tie hanging halfway down his chest and smiled. If Caroline decided to make Darby Hogue her next fixer-upper, she had her work cut out for her. Jane took out her sticky notes, wrote some reminders, and stuck them in her planner. And as soon as the puck was dropped, she pulled out her laptop.
Luc was definitely in his zone, stacking his pads or dropping to his knees and catching shots fired high. He played his angles brilliantly, and Jane had a hard time keeping her attention on the game, and not just on the Chinooks’ goalie.
That night on the team jet as they headed to Toronto, she sat within the light shining overhead and wrote her column for the Seattle Times. Throughout the flight, she felt Luc’s gaze on her and glanced across the aisle at him. He leaned against the side of the plane, his hands behind his head, watching her work. She wondered what he was thinking and decided it was probably best not to know.
She still hadn’t figured out the something that had been different with their sex the night before. She wondered if she’d imagined it, but when he came to her hotel room that night, took her by the hand, and led her to his room, she thought for sure she felt it again. She spent several hours in his bed trying to figure it out. Unsuccessful that night, she tried again in Boston, New York, and St. Louis. By the time they set down again in Seattle, she was tired of trying to figure anything out and decided not to overanalyze every word and touch. She was just going to go with it for as long as it lasted.
She’d fought falling in love with Luc, and she’d lost. Against her better judgment, she was having sex with him. Great sex. Fabulous sex that put her job at risk, but she knew she wouldn’t stop no matter the consequences to her career or her heart. She was in love with him and didn’t have a choice but to be with him. And over the next few weeks, her love grew and expanded until it filled every part of her. Body and soul. She was in too deep to get out.
One morning shortly after their return from St. Louis, she came home with baskets of her clean laundry to find Luc standing on her porch waiting for her. The mountain was out, and the sky was the same warm blue as his eyes. His dark blond hair was finger-combed and he looked like he should come with a warning label: Hazardous to your health. He kissed her hello and helped her carry her laundry inside. Then he led her to his motorcycle parked by the curb.
“No one will see your face,” he said as he handed her a helmet. “So you don’t have to worry about my bad reputation.”
If she didn’t know better, she’d think his feelings were hurt. “It’s not your reputation that worries me as much as people assuming I slept with you to get an interview.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that article.”
“What about it?”
He fixed her chin strap and his fingers brushed her throat. “You said I was aloof.”
“So?”
“I’m not aloof. I just don’t give interviews.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “What did you think of the rest of the article?”