She hoped they all got jock itch. Really, really bad jock itch. She looked down at the rubber mats as she walked into the tunnel, but she stopped short when she came face to naked chest with sculpted muscles, ripped abs, and a horseshoe tattoo rising out of a pair of hockey shorts. Luc Martineau. Her gaze lifted up his damp chest to his chin and mouth, up the deep furrow of his top lip, past his straight nose to the beautiful baby blues staring back at her.
“You!” she said.
One brow rose slowly up his forehead and her temper exploded.
“You did this to me,” she said. “I know you did. I guess it didn’t matter to you that I actually needed that job. You screw up in the net and I’m out.” She felt the backs of her eyes sting and that made her all the madder. “Who did you blame your loss on last night? And if you lose tonight, who will you blame? You… you…” she stammered. One rational part of her brain told her to shut up, to quit while she was ahead. To just walk around him and leave while she still had her dignity.
Too bad she was too far gone to listen to that part of her brain.
“You called him a big dumb dodo?” Caroline asked later that night as the two of them sat on Jane’s couch watching the gas fireplace lick the fake logs. “Why didn’t you go for broke and call him a poo-poo head too?”
Jane groaned. Hours later she was still writhing with embarrassment. “Don’t,” she pleaded and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “The only consolation I have is that I will never see Luc Martineau again.” But she didn’t ever think she’d forget the look on his face. Kind of stunned surprise, followed by laughter. She’d wanted to die right there, but she couldn’t even blame him for laughing at her. He probably hadn’t been called a big dumb dodo since grade school.
“Bummer,” Caroline said as she raised a glass of wine to her lips. She’d pulled her shiny blond hair back into a perfect ponytail and, as always, looked gorgeous. “I thought maybe you could introduce me to Rob Sutter.”
“The Hammer?” Jane shook her head and took a drink of her gin and tonic. “His nose is always broken and he always has a black eye.”
Caroline smiled and got a little dreamy-eyed. “I know.”
“He’s married and has a baby.”
“Hmm, well, someone single, then.”
“I thought you had a new man.”
“I do, but it’s not going to work out.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said through a sigh and put her wine on the cherrywood coffee table. “Lenny is handsome and rich but soooo boring.”
Which meant he was probably normal and didn’t need fixing. Caroline was a born fixer-upper.
“Do you want to turn on the game and watch it?” Caroline asked.
Jane shook her head. “Nah.” She’d been tempted, real tempted, to grab the remote and surf by the game to see who was winning. But that would only make everything worse.
“Maybe the Chinooks will lose. That might make you feel better.”
It wouldn’t. “No.” Jane leaned her head back on the floral print sofa. “I don’t ever want to see a hockey game again.” But she did. She wanted to be in the press box or a seat near the action. She wanted to feel the energy run through her, watch a flawless play, a fight break out in the corners, or Luc reach for the perfect glove save.
“Just when I thought I was making progress with the team, I get the sack. I beat Rob and Luc at darts, and they all kidded me about having lesbian glasses. And that night I didn’t get nuisance calls in my room. I know we weren’t friends, but I thought they were beginning to trust and accept me into the pack.” She thought a moment and added, “Like wild dingos.”
Caroline glanced at her watch. “I’ve been here fifteen minutes and you haven’t gotten to the good stuff.”
Jane didn’t have to ask what her friend was talking about. She knew Caroline too well. “I thought you came over to cheer me up, but you just want to hear about the locker room.”
“I did come to cheer you up.” She turned toward Jane and laid an arm across the back of the sofa. “Later.”
It wasn’t like she owed any of them any sort of loyalty. Not now. And it wasn’t as if she were going to put it in a tell-all book. “Okay,” she said, “but it wasn’t like you’re thinking. It wasn’t all really hard bodies and me the only woman. Well, it was, but I had to keep my eyes up and every time I walked past a player he dropped his cup.”
“You’re right,” Caroline said as she leaned over and plucked her wine off the table. “It isn’t what I was thinking. It’s better.”
“It’s harder than you think to talk to a naked man while you’re fully clothed. They’re all sweaty and flushed and they don’t want to talk. You ask them a question, and they just sort of grunt out an answer.”
“Sounds like my last three boyfriends during sex.”
“It wasn’t as much fun as sex, believe me.” She shook her head. “Some of them wouldn’t talk to me at all, and that made it really difficult to do my job.”
“Yeah, I know that part.” She waved a dismissive hand. “So, who has the best body?”
Jane thought a moment. “Well, they’re all incredibly built. Powerful legs and upper bodies. Mark Bressler probably has the biggest muscles, but Luc Martineau has this horseshoe tattoo low on his abdomen that makes you want to fall right to your knees and kiss it for good luck. And his butt… perfect.” She held her cool glass to her forehead. “Too bad he’s a jerk.”
“Sounds like you like him.”
Jane lowered the glass and looked over at Caroline. Like him? Like Luc? The guy who got her fired? More than all the other players combined, she felt most hurt and betrayed by Luc. Which, when she thought about it, probably wasn’t all that rational, since she didn’t really know him and he didn’t know her. It was just that she’d thought they’d developed a tentative friendship, and if she was honest, she’d admit that she’d also developed a slight infatuation for Luc. No, infatuation was too strong a word. Interest better described what she’d felt. “I don’t like him,” she said, “but he does have one of those Canadian accents that is only detectable with certain words.”
“Uh-oh.”
“What, uh-oh? I said I didn’t like him.”
“I know that’s what you said, but you’ve always been a sucker for a man with an accent.”
“Since when?”
“Since Balki on Perfect Strangers.”
“The sitcom?”
“Yep, you were mad for Balki all because he had that accent. No matter that he was a loser who lived with his cousin.”
“No, I was mad for Bronson Pinchot. Not Balki.” She laughed. “And that same year, you were mad for Tom Cruise. How many times do you think we saw Top Gun?”
“At least twenty.” Caroline took a drink of her wine. “Even back then you were attracted to losers.”
“I call it having realistic expectations.”
“More like selling yourself short because you have typical abandonment issues.”
“Are you high?”
Caroline shook her head and her ponytail brushed her shoulders. “No, I read all about it in a magazine while I was in my gynecologist’s office last week. Because your mother died, you’re afraid everyone you love will leave you.”
“Which just goes to show, there’s a lot of made-up crap in magazines.” And she should know. “Just last week you told me I had issues with leaving a relationship because I have a fear of getting dumped. Make up your mind.”
Caroline shrugged. “Obviously it’s all the same issue.”
“Right.”