“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Luc reassured her. “If I were a girl, I’d be a lesbian too.”
Jane figured she had two choices. Get upset and indignant, or relax. She was a journalist, a professional woman. She wasn’t traveling with the team to become buddies, and certainly not to be teased like they were all back in high school. But the professional approach hadn’t worked so far, and she had to admit that she liked the teasing better than being ignored. Besides, these guys probably razzed male reporters also. “Luc, you’re already a prima donna,” she said.
Luc chuckled and she finally got a laugh out of the others. For the rest of the game, she tried to give as good as she got, but these guys were much better at it than she and had had years of practice. In the end, she beat Luc by almost two hundred points, but she lost in the war of words.
Somehow, during all the teasing and trash-talking, she’d moved up a few notches in their esteem. She probably could have done without their opinions on her clothes, shoes, and hair, but at least they weren’t talking about the weather, giving her one-word answers, or ignoring her altogether. Yes, this was definitely progress.
After the game tomorrow night, they might actually speak to her. She didn’t expect for them all to become good pals, but perhaps now they wouldn’t give her such a hard time in the locker room. Perhaps they’d give her an interview and a break and keep their jockstraps up as she walked by.
Behind the wire cage of his mask, Luc watched me puck drop and spin on its side. Bressler muscled the puck out of the play-off circle, and the battle between Seattle and San Jose began.
Luc crossed himself for luck, but ten minutes into the first frame, his luck completely deserted him. Sharks right winger Teemu Selanne chipped the puck and it bounced into the net. It was an easy goal. One Luc should have stopped, and it seemed to trigger a complete blowout. Not only for Luc, but the entire team.
When the first period ended, two Chinooks players required stitches, and Luc had given up four goals. At two minutes into the second frame, Grizzell got brutally cross-checked at center ice. He went down hard and didn’t get back up. He had to be carried from the ice, and ten minutes later Luc misplaced a puck in his glove hand and the fifth Sharks goal went up on the board. Coach Nystrom gave the signal, yanked Luc from the net, and replaced him with the second-string goalie.
The skate from the pipes to the bench is the longest of any netminder’s life. Every goalie who ever played the game had an off night, but for Luc Martineau, it was more than that. He’d been through it too many times during his last season with Detroit not to feel it looming overhead now like an executioner’s ax. He’d lost focus out there, felt out of sync. Instead of seeing the play before it happened, he was one second behind it. Was this it? The first bad game in a downhill slide? A fluke or a trend? The beginning of the end?
Apprehension and a real fear he didn’t even want to admit feeling squeezed his chest and bit the back of his neck. He felt it as he sat on the bench, watching the rest of the game from the pines.
“Everyone has an off night,” Coach Nystrom told him in the locker room. “Roy got pulled last month. Don’t worry about it, Luc.”
“None of us played worth a shit tonight,” Sutter told him.
“We should have played better in front of you,” Bressler added. “When you’re in the goal, we sometimes forget to step in the crease and protect you.”
Luc didn’t let himself off quite so easy. He’d never been one to blame others and was ultimately responsible for his own play.
As the jet took off from San Francisco, he sat in the dark cabin reliving his past, and not the good stuff. The horrible hit to his knees, the surgeries and months of physical rehabilitation. His addiction to painkillers, and the horrible body aches and nausea that rolled through him if he didn’t feed it. And ultimately his inability to play the game he loved.
Failure whispered in his ear as he headed home, telling him he’d lost his edge. The glow of Jane Alcott’s laptop screen and the click-click of her keyboard assured him that everyone else would know it too. In the sports section of the paper, he would read her report of that night’s disaster.
At the airport in Seattle, Luc headed to long-term parking and caught a glimpse of Jane cramming her stuff into a Honda Prelude. She looked up as he passed, but neither of them spoke. She looked like she didn’t need his help with her suitcase, and he didn’t have anything to say to the archangel of gloom and doom.
A sprinkling of rain wet the windshield of his Land Cruiser as he made the forty-minute drive into downtown Seattle. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so glad to be home.
Moonlight spilled through the eight-foot windows in the living room as he moved through his dark apartment. The light above the stove had been left on, illuminating the FedEx envelope on the counter. He walked into his bedroom and flipped on the light. He left the door partway open and tossed his duffel on the floor by his bed. Shrugging out of his blazer, he hung it next to his garment bag in his closet. He’d unpack tomorrow.
Right now he was tired and relieved to be home, and he wanted nothing more than to fall face first into bed.
He loosened the knot of his tie as Marie knocked on his door, pushing it open the rest of the way. She wore a pair of flannel drawstring pajama bottoms and a Britney Spears T-shirt. She looked about ten years old.
“Guess what, Luc?”
“Hey, there.” He glanced at his watch. It was past midnight; whatever she wanted, she obviously didn’t feel could wait until morning. He wondered if she’d managed to get kicked out of school since he’d spoken to her last. He was almost afraid to ask. “What’s up?”
Her big blue eyes lit up and she smiled. “I got asked to the dance.”
“What dance?”
“The dance at my school.”
He pulled the knot of his tie, and thought of the FedEx envelope sitting in the kitchen. He’d deal with it tomorrow. “When is it?”
“A few weeks.”
She might not be living with him in a few weeks. But she didn’t need to know that now. “Who asked you?”
Her eyes lit up even more and she moved farther into the room. “Zack Anderson. He’s a senior.”
Shit.
“He’s in a band! He’s got a lip ring and his nose and eyebrows are pierced. He has a tattoo. He’s sooooo hot!”
Double shit. Luc had nothing against a tattoo. But piercings? Christ. “What’s the name of his band?”
“The Slow Screws.”
Great.
“I need to get a dress. And shoes.” Marie sat on the edge of his bed and shoved her hands between her knees. “Mrs. Jackson said she’d take me.” She looked up, her eyes pleading. “But she’s old.”
“Marie, I’m a guy. I don’t know anything about buying prom dresses.”
“But you have lots of girlfriends. You know what looks good.”
On women. Not on girls. Not on his sister. Not to go to a prom she probably wouldn’t be here to attend anyway. And even if she was, not with Zack of the Loose Screws. The guy with the lip ring and pierced nose.
“I’ve never been on a date,” she confessed.
His hands fell to his sides and he looked at her closely. At her brows that were too thick and hair that looked a bit on the dry side. Damn, she needed a mother. A woman to help her. Not him.
“What do boys like girls to wear?” she asked.
As little as possible, he thought. “Long sleeves. We think long sleeves and high necks are hot. And long dresses with big puffy skirts so we can’t get very close.”
She laughed. “That’s not true.”
“I swear to God it is, Marie,” he said and pulled the tie from around his neck and tossed it on the bedside table. “We don’t like anything that shows too much skin. We like anything a nun would wear.”