He brushed aside his jacket and stuck his hand in his pocket. “What type is that?”
“A rink bunny.”
Luc never went with rink bunnies, and he wasn’t so sure he had a type anymore. Not when he could look at Jane Alcott and wonder what she’d do if he pulled her into a linen closet and kissed off her red lipstick. If he ran his fingers down her spine and slid his hand around the front and cupped her small breast. Of course, he could never do that. Not with Jane. “What’s it to you?”
“Jane and I are friends.”
“Aren’t you the same guy who called and asked me to talk her into taking her job back?”
“That was business. If you mess with her, she could lose her job. Permanently. I’d be really pissed off if you did something to hurt her.”
“Are you threatening me?” Luc looked down into Darby’s pale face and almost developed some respect for the guy.
“Yes.”
Luc smiled. Maybe Darby wasn’t the dickless wonder he’d always thought. The band struck its first chords and Luc walked away. The sort of jazz crap that got on his nerves filled the room and he wove his way to the man of the hour, Hugh Miner. John Kowalsky joined them, and they talked hockey, discussing the Chinooks’ chances of winning the cup that year.
“If the team stays healthy,” Hugh predicted, “we have a good shot at the cup.”
“A sniper wouldn’t hurt either,” the Wall added.
Their conversation turned to what they’d both been up to since retirement and Hugh pulled a wallet out of the back pocket of his trousers and flipped it open. “This is Nathan.” Luc didn’t bother telling him that he’d already seen the photograph.
Chapter 9
Rock Head Move: Dumb Move
Jane dried her hands with a paper towel and tossed it in the garbage. She looked in the mirror above the sink and hardly recognized herself. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
She opened the little purse she’d borrowed from Caroline and pulled out a tube of red lip gloss. Marie joined her at the sink, and Jane studied Luc’s sister as she washed her hands. Brother and sister looked nothing alike, except that their eyes were the same shade of blue.
Earlier, when she’d turned and seen Luc with such a young girl, she’d been shocked. Her first thought had been that he should be arrested, but then he’d shocked her further a moment later when he’d introduced his sister.
“I’m not good at this,” Jane confessed as she leaned forward and smeared the gloss on her mouth. Before the banquet, Caroline had put some sort of semipermanent color on her lips, and all Jane had to do was reapply the gloss. She thought she’d done a good job, but she had no experience and wasn’t certain. “Tell me the truth. Do my lips look messy?”
“No.”
“Huge?” She had to admit that getting this made up was kind of fun. Not something she would want to do every day, though. Or even very often.
“No.” Marie dropped the paper towel in the trash. “I like your dress.”
“I got it at Nordstrom.”
“Me too!”
She handed Marie the gloss. “My friend helped me pick it out. I’m not very good with color.”
“I picked mine out, but Luc bought it.”
If that was the case, she wondered why Luc let his sister buy a dress that was too small. Jane might not be a slave to fashion, but even she could see it. “That was very nice of him.” Through the mirror, she watched Marie coat her lips a bit too much. “Do you live in Seattle?”
“Yep, I live with Luc.”
Shock number three of the evening. “Really? That must be a flaming hell. Are you being punished for something?”
“No, my mom died a month and a half ago.”
“Oh, no.” Jane’s chest squeezed. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to be funny and I said something insensitive. I feel like such an ass.”
“It’s okay.” Marie gave Jane half a smile. “And living with Luc isn’t always a flaming hell.”
Jane took back her gloss and turned to face Marie. What was there to say? Nothing. She tried anyway. “My mother died when I was six. It’s been twenty-four years, but I know…” she paused, searching for the right word. There wasn’t one. “I know the hole it leaves in your heart.”
Marie nodded and she looked down at her shoes. “Sometimes I still can’t believe she’s gone.”
“I know how you feel.” Jane dropped the tube back in her purse and put her arm around Marie’s shoulders. “If you ever want to talk about it with someone, you can talk to me.”
“That might be okay.”
Tears filled the corners of Marie’s eyes and Jane gave her a little squeeze. It had been twenty-four years, but Jane clearly recalled the emotions that were so close to the surface. “But not tonight. Tonight we’re going to have fun. Earlier I met some of Hugh Miner’s nephews. They’re here from Minnesota and I think they’re your age.”
Marie dabbed at her eyes with her fingers. “Are they hot?”
Jane thought about that. If she were Marie’s age, she might think so, but she wasn’t, and thinking teenage boys were hot made her uncomfortable. She could almost hear the song “Mrs. Robinson” in her ears. “Well, they live on a farm,” she began as they left the bathroom. “I think they milk cows.”
“Yuck.”
“No, that means they’re buff, and as far as I could tell, they don’t smell like a barn.”
“That’s good.”
“Very good.” Jane looked across her shoulder at Marie. “I like your eye shadow. It’s very sparkly.”
“Thanks. You can borrow it sometime.”
“I think I’m a little old for eye glitter.” Jane dropped her arm as they wove their way through the crowd. She found Hugh Miner’s nephews looking out over the city and introduced Marie to the two teenage boys. Jack and Mac Miner were seventeen-year-old twins and were dressed in matching tuxedos with scarlet cummerbunds. They had spiky crew cuts and big brown eyes, and Jane had to admit that they were kind of cute.
“What grade are you in?” Mac, or perhaps Jack, asked Marie.
A blush stained her cheeks, and she hunched her shoulders. Looking at Marie brought it all back, the horrid insecurity of adolescence, and Jane thanked God she never had to go through it again.
“Tenth,” Marie answered.
“We were in tenth last year.”
“Yeah, everyone picks on the tenth-graders.”
Marie nodded. “They throw tenth-graders in Dumpsters.”
“We don’t. At least not the girls.”
“If we were at your school, we’d look out for you,” one of the twins said, impressing Jane with his gallantry. They were really nice young gentlemen, and their parents had raised them right and should be proud. “Tenth blows,” he added.
Maybe not. Maybe someone should inform him that he shouldn’t talk like that in front of girls.
“Yeah, it blows,” Marie agreed. “I can’t wait till next year.”
Okay, maybe Jane was just getting old. And she supposed, that when you got right down to it, saying something blew was the same as saying it sucked.
The more the teens talked, the more Marie seemed to relax. They talked about where they went to school, what sports they played, and what music they liked. All of them agreed that the jazz band playing at the opposite side of the room was lame.
While Marie and the twins talked about what “blew” and what was “lame,” Jane glanced about the room, searching for more adult conversation. Her gaze skimmed over Darby, who was in a deep conversation with General Manager Clark Gamache, and landed on Luc where he leaned against the end of the bar, talking to a tall blond woman in a white slip dress. The woman had her palm on his arm and his head was lowered over hers as she spoke. He brushed aside the edge of his jacket and shoved one hand in his pants pocket. Charcoal suspenders lay flat against the white pleats of his shirt, and Jane knew under those formal clothes the man had the body of a god and a horseshoe tattooed on his flat belly. Luc laughed at something the woman said, and Jane looked away. Something alarming that felt a lot like jealousy landed in the pit of her stomach and her hand tightened on her little purse. She couldn’t be jealous. She had no claim to him, and she didn’t even like him. Well, not that much. What she felt was anger, she reasoned. While she babysat Luc’s sister, he trolled for Vanna White look-alikes.