They watched the fireplace for a few more minutes, then Caroline suggested, “Let’s go out.”
“It’s Thursday night.”
“I know, but neither of us has to work tomorrow.”
Maybe a night of blowing out her ears with a garage band was just what she needed to take her mind off the hockey game she should have been covering but wasn’t. Get her out of the apartment so she couldn’t turn on the television and surf past the game. She looked down at her green T-shirt, black fleece, and jeans. She also needed new material for her Single Girl column. “Okay, but I’m not changing.”
Caroline, who’d dressed down tonight in a Tommy sweater with a flag on the chest and butt-tight jeans, looked at Jane and rolled her eyes. “At least put your contacts in.”
“Why?”
“Well, I didn’t want to say anything because I love you and all, and because I’m always telling you what to wear and I didn’t want you to feel self-conscious and have bad self-esteem, but those horrid people at Eye Care lied to you.”
Jane didn’t think her glasses were that bad. Lisa Loeb had a pair just like them. “Are you sure they don’t look good on me?”
“Yes, and I’m only telling you this because I don’t want people to think I’m the girl and you’re the boy.”
Not Caroline too? “What makes you think people would assume you’re the girl and I’m the boy?” she asked as she got up and moved into the bathroom. “It’s possible that people would think you’re the boy.” There was silence from the other room and she stuck her head around the door. “Well?”
Caroline stood at the fireplace applying red lipstick in front of the mirror hanging above the mantel “Well, what?” She replaced the lipstick in her cute little handbag.
“Well, what makes you think people would assume you’re the girl and I’m the boy?” she asked again.
“Oh, was that a real question? I thought you were trying to be funny.”
The next morning at nine o’clock, Jane’s telephone rang. It was Leonard phoning to tell her that he and Virgil and the Chinooks management had reconsidered their “hasty decision.” They wanted her to resume her job ASAP. Which meant they wanted her in the press box for tomorrow night’s game against St. Louis. She was so shocked, she could only lie in her bed and listen to Leonard’s complete about-face.
It seemed that after her talk with the team, they’d all played brilliant hockey. Bressler had scored a hat trick after she’d shaken his hand, and Luc was back in his zone. He’d kept the score at six-zero, and for the moment surpassed his rival Patrick Roy in shutouts.
Suddenly Jane Alcott was good luck.
“I don’t know, Leonard,” she said as she threw aside her yellow flannel duvet and sat on the edge of her bed. Her head and mouth felt as if they were stuffed with cotton, a result of too much late-night fun, and she was having a hard time grasping her thoughts. “I can’t take this job and wonder if I’m going to get fired every time the Chinooks lose a game.”
“You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
She didn’t believe him, and if she did decide to take the job again, she wasn’t going to jump at the opportunity like last time. And truthfully, she was still severely ticked off. “I’m going to have to think about it.”
After she hung up the phone, she brewed a pot of coffee and ate a little granola to take away the hollow feeling. She hadn’t gotten to bed until around two the night before, and she was sorry she’d even spent the money and wasted her time going out. She’d been unable to think of anything besides getting fired and she’d been bad company.
While she ate, she thought about Leonard’s new offer. The Chinooks had pretty much treated her like a leper and blamed their losses on her. Now they suddenly thought she was good luck? Did she really want to subject herself to more of their superstitious craziness? Their synchronized cup-dropping and nuisance calls?
When she finished eating, she jumped into the shower and closed her eyes as the warm water ran over her. Did she really want to travel with a goalie who could look right through her? Even as he made her heart race? Whether she wanted it to race or not? And she most definitely did not. Even if she and Luc liked each other, which they obviously didn’t, he only had eyes for tall gorgeous women.
She wrapped her hair in a towel and put on her glasses as she dried her body. She pulled on a sheer bandeau bra, a white University of Washington T-shirt, and a pair of old jeans with holes in the knees.
Her doorbell rang, and when she looked through the peephole, a man wearing a pair of silver Oakley sunglasses stood on her little porch all windblown and gorgeous, and looking exactly like Luc Martineau. She opened the door because she’d just been thinking of him, and she wasn’t certain this wasn’t a figment of her imagination.
“Hello, Jane,” he greeted. “May I come in?”
Wow, a polite Luc. Now she knew she was imagining things. “Why?”
“I hoped that we could talk about what happened.” That did it. He said aboot instead of about, and she knew she was talking to the real Luc.
“You getting me fired, you mean?”
He reached for his sunglasses and stuck them in the pocket of his leather bomber jacket. His cheeks were flushed, his hair messed, and behind him at the curb he’d parked his motorcycle. “I didn’t get you fired. Not directly anyway.” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “Are you going to invite me inside?”
Her hair was in a towel and the cold air was giving her goose bumps. She decided to let him in. “Have a seat,” she said as he followed her into the living room of her apartment. She left for a moment to take the towel from her head and to brush the tangles from her hair. Of all the men in the world, Luc was the last man she’d thought would ever be standing in her living room.
She brushed and towel-dried her hair the best she could, and for one brief moment she thought of maybe putting on some mascara and lip gloss. But she dismissed the thought just as quickly. She did, however, exchange her glasses for her contact lenses.
With her hair damp and the ends starting to curl, she returned to the living room. Luc stood with his back to her, studying a few photographs sitting on her mantel. His jacket lay on the sofa, and he wore a white dress shirt, the cuffs folded up his thick forearms. One wide pleat ran down the middle of his back and was tucked into a pair of Lucky Brand jeans. His wallet bulged one back pocket and the denim hugged his butt. He looked over his shoulder at her, his blue gaze moving from her bare feet, up her jeans and T-shirt to her face.
“Who’s this?” he asked and pointed to the middle photo of her and Caroline in their caps and gowns standing on the porch of her father’s house in Tacoma.
“That’s my best friend Caroline and me the night we graduated from Mt. Tahoma High School.”
“So you’ve lived around here all your life?”
“Yep.”
“You haven’t changed that much.”
She stood next to him. “I’m a lot older these days.”
He looked across his shoulder at her. “How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
He flashed a white smile that slid past her defenses, warmed her up, and curled her toes into the beige Berber carpet. “That old?” he asked. “You look pretty good for your age.”
Oh, God. She didn’t want to read more into that statement than he’d intended, which she was certain was absolutely nothing. She didn’t want him to dazzle her with a smile. She didn’t want to feel tingles or warm flushes or have bad sinful thoughts. “Why are you here, Luc?”
“I got a call from Darby Hogue.” He shoved one hand in the front pocket of those Lucky jeans and rested his weight on one foot. “He told me they’d offered you your job back and you turned them down.”