“Right now. I’m on my way there. Where are you?”
“I’m…out. Having dinner.”
“On a school night?”
Remi rolled her lips in and released them with a pop. “Yes. I’ll be home in a while.”
“Get home quick. Please, Rem.” She sniffled again.
Remi snapped her phone shut, then met Jason’s eyes. “My little sister. She just had a fight with her boyfriend and is moving back home as we speak.”
“Oh.”
She nodded, and finished her beer. “I’d better go. She sounded pretty upset.”
“Damn.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. Damn.”
He’d already paid the bill with a platinum credit card and stood to help her with her jacket. “We could go back to my place.”
She looked over her shoulder and up at him. Her insides all warm and melty, she really, really wanted to. But her little sister was at home crying.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice catching. “I can’t tonight.”
He nodded. “That’s okay. Another time.”
Sure. She’d heard that before. He was looking for fun and she was going home to be the responsible, dependable big sister yet again. She’d never hear from him again. She knew how that worked.
He parked in front of her house in his Jeep Liberty. “Do you want me to come in with you?”
“That’s okay.” She smiled at him. He reached across and took hold of her chin with his fingers, then leaned over and brushed a kiss across her mouth. A soft, melt-your-insides kind of kiss. She blinked at him.
“I’ll call you tomorrow. About the tickets. Check with Delise.”
She stared at him. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
Her heart missed a beat, then pitter-pattered embarrassingly. A thrill skittered through her. “Okay. Thanks.”
Chapter Six
Remi and Delise found their seats, row twelve right behind the Wolves bench in the Metro Center, home of the Chicago Wolves. “Great seats,” Delise remarked.
“Yeah.” They watched the players skating circles on the ice in the warm-up, shooting randomly at their respective goalies. Music blasted energetically from the speakers and the chilled air in the center smelled of popcorn, sweat and artificial ice. A puck bounced off the boards with a bang that made them jump.
“So…what’s with you and this hockey player?”
“Nothing.”
Delise snorted and tossed her long, auburn curls. “Riiiight. And that’s why he gave you free tickets to the game.”
“We’re just having fun.”
“Mmm. It looked like you were having fun that night. Did I tell you how cute you were in his shirt?”
“Oh, god.” Remi closed her eyes momentarily. “I’m sure the cops appreciated it too.”
“They were having a good laugh about it, I think.”
“Well,it turns out Jason is involved in the Stars for Reading Program at my school this year.”
“You’re kidding.” Delise swiveled her head to look at Remi. “You didn’t tell me that.”
Remi licked her lips. “Yeah, well. I didn’t know it until he showed up at the kickoff rally. He was a last-minute replacement. He acted kind of weird. Sort of brushed me off. Which was okay, because even though he said he’d call, I didn’t expect him to. It was just one night.”
Delise shot her a who-are-you-kidding look.
“But then last week after class he asked me out for dinner.”
“I see.”
Remi frowned at the disapproving tone in Delise’s voice. “I thought you wanted me to have fun.”
“He’s an NHL hockey player.”
“Yeah. So?” Like she didn’t know that and hadn’t already been over that a million times in her own head.
“Professional athletes are…um…trouble.”
Remi scanned the players in white jerseys, the home team Wolves, with their red, brown and black logos, looking for number twenty-five. She couldn’t find him. She frowned. “What do you mean by trouble?”
“They cheat on their wives.” Delise dipped her hand into the bucket of popcorn Remi held on her lap.
“I’m not going to marry him,” Remi said, still looking for Jason. Delise snorted. “He’s probably just being nice to me, giving me tickets, because I’m a teacher at the school he’s volunteering with.” And Remi knew she should just shut up, because the more she went on about how it was nothing, the lamer she sounded. She pressed her lips together and tightened her fingers on the bucket.
A loud horn blew to signal the end of the warm-up and the players slowly started leaving the ice. Remi focused on each player as he skated up to the boards, stopped sharply, then jumped lightly off the ice to walk to the dressing room.
There he was! Number twenty-five. Hard to tell, with all the equipment and the helmet. He was definitely one of the bigger players. When he arrived at the boards, he lifted his head and looked directly at her. He must know where their seats were. She smiled and gave a little wave and he too lifted a big, gloved hand before disappearing.
She shivered and not just from the cold. He’d looked for her. She hadn’t seen him earlier, of course, he’d left the tickets for her at the box office. She wouldn’t see him after, either, unless she wanted to hang around for an hour after the game. She and Delise would likely go have something to eat after.
“I’ve been reading about hockey on the internet,” she told Delise. “So hopefully I know what’s going on.”
“I think it’s pretty simple. They score a goal by shooting the puck into the other team’s net.”
“Well, duh. I got that much.”
“There’s no half time.”
Remi grinned. “No. Three periods. Two intermissions.” She picked up her Diet Coke and sipped it. “I guess we’ll figure it out.”
She wasn’t prepared for how fast the players moved, the brutal hits that shuddered the glass above the boards, and the way the puck sometimes missed the net in a blistering shot that sent it soaring over the boards.
“Jesus,” Delise muttered. “You could get hurt at one of these games.”
Remi’d flinched once too, when two players fought over the puck and sent it flying in their direction.
Jason was one of the players who did the face-off thing, trying to get the puck, bending low to the ice, legs wide apart. He seemed to win most of the face-offs, from what she could tell. But the score wasn’t reflecting that. The visiting team, the Miami Fins, scored one goal and then another.
Remi and Delise exchanged disappointed glances at the score. She wanted Jason to win. Maybe he’d score a goal. According to the team’s website, he was one of their top scorers.
And then he got the puck and broke away from the rest of the players, racing toward the Fins’ net all on his own, carrying the puck. The crowd roared and Remi’s heart jumped. He drew back his stick and took the shot—oooh, a fake! He did a quick little maneuver and shot to the opposite side of the net, but no! The goalie stretched out a gloved hand and made what seemed to be an impossible save.
The crowd all groaned and Remi slumped back in her seat. “Damn!”
Jason’s teammates all skated in after him and they shot the puck back and forth around the net, across the ice, around the net again. “What are they doing?” Delise muttered. “They need to shoot at the net to get a goal.”
“I think they’re trying to set something up.”
Remi caught the amused glances of a couple sitting in front of them and realized how clueless she and Delise must sound. She bit her lip. Hopefully those people didn’t know she was there as Jason’s guest. She wouldn’t want to embarrass him.
And then a Fin got the puck and Jason took off after him and, to Remi’s horror, he smashed the guy into the boards with a thundering crash. The crowd cheered in delight, but Remi put her hands to her mouth. Dear god, he was going to kill the other guy. Or himself. Or both of them.