“Now I know you’re lying.”
She laughed again and he thought it was a shame he didn’t know her better. She was his only sibling and he didn’t know her at all. And there was a possibility that he wouldn’t know her either. A part of him wished things could be different. Wished that he was home more, and that he knew what she needed.
“After school tomorrow, I’ll give you my credit card.” He sat next to her and untied his shoes. “Get what you need and I’ll take a look when you bring it home.”
She stood, her shoulders hunched, a frown pulling at her bottom lip. “Okay,” she said and walked from the room.
Jesus, he’d made her mad again. But she really didn’t expect him to shop for a prom dress with her, did she? Like he was her girlfriend? How could she be mad at him for that? He didn’t even like to shop with girls his own age.
Chapter 6
Gassed: Cut from the Team
When Jane finally forced herself from bed the next morning, she pulled on her laundry-day underwear and sweatsuit and hauled her dirty clothes to the Laundromat. As the machines washed and spun, she flipped open a People magazine and caught up on her reading.
There was no place she had to be today. No deadline breathing down her neck. She didn’t have anything work-related until tomorrow night’s game. She bought a Coke from the vending machine, sat back in a hard plastic chair, and enjoyed the mundane pleasure of watching her darks tumble dry. She grabbed the real estate section from the local newspaper and checked out properties for sale. With her added income from the hockey columns, she estimated that by summer she’d have enough money saved to put twenty percent down on a home of her own, but the more she looked, the more discouraged she got. Two hundred thousand sure didn’t buy much these days.
On the way home, she stopped at the grocery store to pick up a week’s worth of food. She had today off, but tomorrow the Chinooks were playing the Chicago Blackhawks at Key Arena. They had home games Thursday, Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday nights. Three days off after that, then it was back on the road. Back on the jet. Back on the bus and back to sleeping in hotel rooms.
Reporting the Chinooks’ six-four loss to the Sharks was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. After she’d trash-talked and played darts with them, she felt a bit like a traitor, but she’d had a job to do.
And Luc… watching the horror unfold in the net had almost been as bad as watching him sitting on the bench. Staring straight ahead, his handsome features void of expression. She’d felt bad for him. She’d felt bad that she had to be the one to report the details, but again, she’d had a job to do, and she’d done it.
When she returned home, there was a message on her machine from Leonard Callaway asking her to meet him the following morning in his office at the Times. She didn’t think the message bode well for her further employment as a sports reporter.
And she was right. He fired her. “We’ve decided it’s best if you no longer cover the Chinooks games. Jeff Noonan is going to fill in for Chris,” Leonard said.
The paper was letting Jane go and giving her job to the Nooner. “Why? What happened?”
“I think it’s best if we don’t get into that.”
The Chinooks hadn’t played their best games the past week, ending in Luc’s spectacular blowout. “They think I jinxed them. Don’t they?”
“We knew it was a possibility.”
Good-bye to her chance to write an important article. Good-bye to twenty-percent down on her own home. And all because some stupid hockey players thought she was bad luck. Well, she couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned or that she wasn’t half expecting it. Still, knowing it didn’t make it any easier to take. “Which players think I brought them bad luck? Luc Martineau?”
“Let’s not get into that,” Leonard said, but he didn’t deny it.
His silence hurt more than it should. Luc was nothing to her, and she was certainly nothing to him. Less than nothing. He’d never wanted her to travel with the team in the first place, and she was sure he was behind her getting the boot. Jane pushed up the corners of her mouth when what she really wanted was to scream and yell and threaten to sue for wrongful termination or sexism or… or… something. She might even have a case too. But might wasn’t a good enough guarantee, and she’d learned long ago not to let her hot temper burn bridges. She still had the Single Girl column to write for the Times.
“Well, thank you for the opportunity to write the sports column,” she said and shook Leonard’s hand. “Traveling with the Chinooks was an experience I won’t forget.”
She kept her smile on her face until she left the building. She was so angry, she wanted to hit someone. Someone with blue eyes and a horseshoe tattooed above his private parts.
And betrayed. She’d thought she’d made progress, but the players had turned on her. Maybe if she hadn’t beat them at darts, talked trash, and they hadn’t called her Sharky, she wouldn’t feel so betrayed now. But she did. She’d even felt bad for doing her job and reporting the facts of their last game. And this was how they repaid her? She hoped they got athlete’s foot. All at the same time.
For the next two days, she didn’t leave her apartment. She was so depressed she cleaned all the cupboards. While she recaulked the bathroom, she cranked the volume on the television and felt only slightly vindicated when she heard that the Chinooks lost to the Blackhawks four to three.
Who would they blame now?
By the third day, her anger hadn’t diminished, and she knew there was only one way to get rid of it. She had to confront the players if she was to reclaim her dignity.
She knew they would be at the Key Arena for the game-day skate, and before she could talk herself out of it, she dressed in her jeans and black sweater and drove into Seattle.
She entered on the mezzanine level, and her gaze immediately fell on the empty net. Only a few players practiced on the ice below, and with her stomach in knots, she walked down the steps and headed for the locker room.
“Hello, Fishy,” she said as she strolled toward him in the tunnel, a blowtorch in his hand as he warmed the blade of his stick.
He looked up and shut off the torch.
“Are the guys in the locker room?” she asked.
“Most of them.”
“Is Luc in there?”
“I don’t know, but he doesn’t like to talk on game days.”
Too damn bad. The soles of her boots squeaked on the rubber mats in the hallway and heads swiveled in her direction when she walked into the room. She raised a hand. “Keep your pants up, gentlemen,” she said as she moved to stand in the middle of the half-naked players. “I’ll just take a moment of your time, and I’d prefer you not do your synchronized jock-dropping thing.”
She turned to face them and stood with her shoulders straight and her head high. She didn’t see Luc. The rat bastard was probably hiding. “I’m sure you’ve all heard that I will no longer be covering Chinooks games, and I wanted to let you know that I will not forget our time together. Traveling with you guys was… interesting.” She walked to Captain Mark Bressler and stuck out her hand. “Good luck with your game tonight, Hitman.”
He looked at her a moment as if she made the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound center a bit nervous. “Ah, thanks,” he said and finally shook her hand. “Are you going to be in the seats tonight?”
She dropped her hand to her side. “No. I have other plans.”
She turned to face the room one last time. “Good-bye, gentlemen, good luck, and I hope this is your year to win the Stanley Cup.” She even managed a smile before she turned to go. She’d done it, she thought as she walked down the hall. They hadn’t chased her away with her tail between her legs. She’d shown them that she had class and dignity and that she was magnanimous too.