Backhand (Gold Hockey)

by Elise Faber

  “Five.”

  Mitch glanced over at her for the first time and raised a brow. She read the unspoken question in his expression. Did she want to sell?

  For five thousand dollars? Hell yes, she wanted to sell.

  Approval slid across Mitch’s face. “Sold,” he said, and they began talking about framing and matting options.

  And in the span of five minutes, she’d sold her first work.

  Holy balls of Satan.

  She might actually make a go of this artist thing.

  Later when the store had closed, Mitch handed her a check for the drawing. She blinked when she saw that no commission had been taken out.

  He tapped her on the nose before she could protest. “First one’s on the house, sweetheart. Just make sure to save something for taxes.”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  “None of that,” he said. “I know you’ve had a shit time of it, but things are going to get better. I promise.”

  Oddly touched, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thanks, Mitch.”

  “Give me some more drawings to sell, and that’ll be thanks enough.”

  The thought made her nervous, but she gave a determined nod, shoved her sketchbook into her backpack, and shrugged into her coat.

  Sara called her good-bye and left, thinking the world might be just a tad bit friendlier than she’d previously thought.

  Of course, she was disabused of that notion exactly ten minutes and three blocks later when the skies opened up.

  It was February, smack dab in the typical rainy season of Northern California, and the downpour shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

  The weatherman had even predicted it. And gotten things right for a change.

  Unfortunately, her umbrella was currently sitting in Mitch’s office.

  Well, nothing to be done about it.

  Tugging her hood up, she moved faster. Her apartment was a good nine blocks away, and since she was already soaked through, she might as well press on.

  A car drove by, and she flinched away from the curb. Though it was too soon for puddles to have formed and for the tires to kick them up onto her, the instinct had been honed by five years of San Franciscan living.

  She did not want whatever was in that water or on the street anywhere near her.

  Her obsession with avoiding the nonexistent puddle was probably why she missed the car stopping. At least until the driver’s window whirred down, and she heard Mike’s voice, trailed by a cacophony of screeching tires and blaring horns.

  “Sara,” he said, calmly. As though he wasn’t just chilling in the middle of the lane, as though cars weren’t swerving around him and delivering fingers and curse words alike.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Water streamed down her face, soaked through her clothes. She pulled her backpack off and clutched it to her chest, thankful it had a waterproof inner layer.

  He raised a brow. “Want to get in?”

  Mike Stewart, unwelcome blast from the past, professional hockey player, and former Mr. Popular of Nowhere, Minnesota, had parked in the middle of Market Street to have a casual roadside chat.

  “Yeah, no,” she said. “I’m cool.” She started walking again.

  The tires of his car made a whooshing sound as he trailed after her.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted and waved a hand at the line of angry drivers behind him. “You’re blocking traffic.”

  “Get in, Sara. We need to talk.”

  Yeah. That wasn’t happening.

  “No, we don’t, Hot Shot.”

  “Sara,” he growled, keeping pace with her. Which meant he was driving all of five miles per hour down the busy San Franciscan street.

  The stoplight in front of his car turned red, and he slid to a stop. Not even Mike would blow a red light. He might have the same slice of reckless as every other member of the male populace, but he didn’t risk other people.

  Or he hadn’t used to, anyway.

  Which is why she wasn’t getting anywhere near him. He didn’t need to be mixed up in her garbage.

  With a wave, she hurried around the corner, starting down a side street that would actually take her farther from her apartment.

  But since it was a one-way street — the wrong way for anyone particularly pesky and exceptionally annoying to follow — she would be safe.

  Mike had different ideas.

  “Sara.” He’d gotten out of the car and was right behind her. And that voice — melted chocolate and velvet all mixed up in one — slid down her skin. It stopped somewhere in the vicinity of her lady parts. Damn. That intensity, the alpha inside him making an appearance…

  She could be a feminist and still like the growly way the man ordered her around.

  Didn’t mean she was going to obey, though.

  Except maybe in the bedroom, or against the building, rain sluicing down their faces, soaking into their clothes, cooling their heated skin as Mike pounded into her—

  And holy crap-on-a-stick, where had that come from?

  The Mike she knew had been gangly with acne on his chin. He’d been sweet and kind and… not interested in her in the least.

  Her Mike no longer existed. Which tended to happen when more than a decade passed.

  Straightening her shoulders, Sara turned around. “What do you want?”

  “It’s been years, sweetheart. Last I heard, you’re on the Olympic podium. Then nothing. No word, no email.” His voice dropped, and she shivered, not in a good way this time. His gaze pinned her in place. “You just pop up in my city with demons in your eyes.”

  “I don’t have demons,” she said, taking a step back.

  “Yes.” He came closer, bent so his head was near hers. “You do.”

  She opened her mouth, but he didn’t give her a chance to respond, just plucked her backpack from her arms and strode back down the street.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Stop!”

  He didn’t.

  “Mike! Wait!”

  He tossed her a look over his shoulder, not stopping, not waiting, just walking away. “Doesn’t feel good, does it?” he asked.

  No, it damn well didn’t feel good.

  But then again, she’d had plenty of experience burying the hurt that came along with people walking away from her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MIKE TOSSED THE backpack into the passenger seat, dropped himself and his sopping wet suit into the driver’s seat, and waited.

  Five. Four. Three. Two—

  Sara didn’t disappoint. She wrenched open the door and reached for the backpack. “What the hell do you—?”

  Yeah, not happening.

  Mike snatched it up and gave her a look, waiting for her to sit down and close the door.

  Her eyes went heavenward, and she sighed. “Can’t I just—”

  “No.” He tucked the backpack down by his legs.

  A horn blared behind them, jolting his mind back to the present, back to the fact that he was in the middle of Market during rush hour and had just casually parked his car in the right lane.

  An SUV screeched by, its driver waving a certain finger.

  Mike raised a brow. “Gonna get in, sweetheart? Or you planning on playing Frogger all night?”

  Huffing, Sara collapsed into the seat, slammed the door, and glared at him. “Happy now?” she snapped.

  Attitude.

  He had to bite back a smile. At least that piece of her hadn’t changed.

  And neither had the fact that he liked when she gave him sass.

  “Not yet.” He slanted her a look. “You know the rules of my car.”

  “No seatbelt, no move,” she muttered, snapping the belt. “Yes, I remember your caveman nonsense all too well.”

  “Good.”

  Mike turned off his hazards — traffic in this city meant people did way crazier shit than just blocking a lane — and shifted the car into drive, happy that the locks automatically engaged. The look on Sa
ra’s face was half-irritation, half-pure-terror, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d tried to launch herself from the moving vehicle.

  “Where to?”

  She was silent and after a moment, he shifted back into park.

  Her eyes flashed to his.

  “Where. To?”

  Her lips moved, but no sound came out, and he could almost picture her mental count to ten.

  Right about eight, he said, “I can do this all day, baby. You know I can.”

  Ice. Frosted spikes hit him in the chest. Right in the heart. Or at least, that was what her glare said. She crossed her arms, sighed, and then gave her address.

  Without another word, Mike took off.

  The car was silent, not uncomfortable exactly, but it also wasn’t the easy familiarity of their youth when he’d driven her to the rink.

  They’d both had private lessons before school, Sara for figure skating, he for hockey.

  And since her parents hadn’t allowed her to get her license until she was eighteen, and he’d been two years older, they’d had a lot of early mornings together.

  “Remember the first time I drove you?”

  She was quiet for so long that he thought she’d refuse to take the trip down memory lane with him.

  But eventually her lips quirked up, and she smiled.

  That smile took his breath away. It always had.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You weren’t much of a morning person.”

  He stopped at a light, backed up and clogged with cars. People in California really couldn’t drive in the rain. It probably also didn’t help when assholes from Minnesota blocked traffic for diversions down one-way streets.

  “No, I’m still not,” he said, grinning at her, wanting to find some of their old camaraderie. “But you were.”

  For a second, he thought she wouldn’t play along. Then her mouth curved. “I was nervous back then. I blab when I’m nervous.”

  “Nervous?” he asked. “Why?”

  She snorted. “Because you were gorgeous and older and popular, and I was—”

  He waited for Sara to finish the thought but was met with silence. Eventually, he settled for touching her cheek, shocked at how silky soft it was.

  Her breath caught, and he saw something reflected in her eyes. Not desire exactly. Instead, it was more like… fear?

  What did Sara have to fear? Especially with him?

  The thought made him unreasonably angry. He was different. They were different together. Always had been and—

  Ten years had passed.

  He dropped his arm.

  “How long have you lived in the city?”

  “Why?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.

  His eyes rolled heavenward, and he mimed a steering wheel. “Me drive. You small talk.”

  The wariness dropped off her face, and her eyes sparkled with amusement.

  Sara had the best eyes, cat-like and slanted up at the corners, long lashes, and the clearest, deepest blue…

  A car honked behind them, and he jumped, glancing forward and seeing the light in front of him turn yellow. He sped through just as it changed to red.

  Ah well. His driving karma was certainly taking a beating today.

  “So I have to confess I don’t know where I’m going,” he admitted as they pulled to a stop at the next signal.

  Sara sighed. “Turn left ahead.”

  He did and followed the remainder of her directions until he pulled his car up to the curb in front of an older-looking building. A Chinese restaurant, a laundromat, and a watch repair shop, all neon lights and peeling paint, took up space on the ground floor.

  “This is where you live?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Not everyone is a millionaire athlete, Mike.”

  “Last I heard, you were on your way to becoming one.”

  Shoulders stiffening and chin coming up, she met his stare head-on. Finally, she looked at him.

  Those cat eyes hit him like a fist to the gut, serious and holding a hurt that hadn’t been there a decade before.

  “You really don’t know, do you?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MIKE SHOOK HIS head, and Sara couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard, that he didn’t know how violently her life had imploded.

  For a few years, it had seemed like every person in the world knew her pain, that she’d become the poster child for unsportsmanlike conduct in professional sports.

  She’d been banned from the U.S. Figure Skating Association for life. She couldn’t compete, couldn’t coach.

  The sport had been everything to her.

  And then it had all been taken away.

  Her purpose, her endorsements, her friends, her parents.

  She was all alone—

  Boo-hoo.

  Reaching over Mike, she snatched her backpack, holding it tight to her chest. “Google it.”

  “Google what?”

  Raising a brow, she said, “I think you know what.” Then she popped the passenger’s side handle and slid from the car.

  The downpour hadn’t let up, and rain soaked through her shoes, wetting her socks. It dripped from her ponytail, trailed down her spine.

  But she hardly noticed any of that, because the passenger side window rolled down, and she heard his voice.

  “See you soon, Sara.”

  Not likely after he Googled her.

  She turned and jogged for the stairs on the side of her building.

  Later that night, she sat beneath the crappy light of the exposed bulbs in her studio apartment’s ceiling and watched the San Francisco Gold play.

  For the first time in years, she watched something with an ice rink in it, and while she’d felt a little jab at seeing the pristine sheet of white, hockey was different enough from figure skating that it was okay.

  Or maybe it was because Mike was there on that ice.

  His face serious, his muscular bulk even larger with the pads.

  And he was magnificent.

  Fast, strong, crafty, and creative, Mike was a master at defense. Paired with Stefan Barie, captain of the Gold, along with Brit Plantain in net, the first female goalie in the NHL — no big deal there, right? — and the team easily defeated their opponent.

  Next would come their postgame routine — cooling down, meeting with the trainer, showering, and getting ready to do the same thing all over again the next day.

  Sara couldn’t deny that her heart ached for that routine. Not for hockey, as she’d never had the right temperament for the sport, but for competing. For giving every last drop of herself on the ice, skating until her quads threatened to give out, trying a jump — and trying and trying — and ending up covered in bruises only to crawl out of bed before the sun rose the next morning and getting right back out there.

  For her, the sport was expensive skates and fleece-lined leggings, rolling bags full to the brim with Band-Aids and wraps and blister pads. The smell of the rink, the moisture in the air, the black skate mats, the left-behind water bottles from a kids’ hockey practice the night before.

  It was cold air tightening her skin, the crunch of the ice beneath her skates. Fogged-up breath clouding the air in front of her nose and mouth. It was—

  —never going to happen for her again.

  Not now. She was too old. She’d lost her chance.

  “No,” she murmured and scrambled for her notebook. Dutifully shoving those memories aside, she took the easiest way to numb her thoughts. The quickest and least dangerous.

  She drew.

  Except this time, it wasn’t the architecture of the city, not the clean lines of skyscrapers mixed with Gothic peaks and curves of Victorian moldings emerging from beneath the point of her pencil.

  Instead, she drew a sharp nose, stubble dotting a strong jaw, a scar bisecting one arched brow.

  She drew — as she’d done too many times before — Mike.

  HER ALARM CAME way too early, and Sara spent the first half hour of her day muzzy and
stumbling.

  But same as she’d done since she was ten years old, she pulled on her workout clothes, did a short yoga routine, and went for a run.

  The run was her favorite part, even though it was a lesson in pain management nowadays. The yoga she merely tolerated.

  It made her bendy and all that jazz.

  Not that she needed to be bendy. Not any longer at least.

  Still, she ran because she loved it. Getting lost in the city, earbuds in and nothing but the sidewalk in front of her simplified everything else.

  People didn’t care about her past. Not here. They had jobs to get to, deals to make, tourist sites to see.

  Running was easy anonymity.

  An hour later, she’d showered and was walking toward the studio. Mitch didn’t open the doors for a couple of hours, but Sara always got there early on Fridays.

  Shipment day.

  Or basically Christmas and her birthday all rolled into an hour of awesomeness.

  She let herself into the studio and made her way to the storeroom. Ryan, the delivery guy, was waiting outside the back door and helped her get the heavy boxes inside. After signing the shipment form, she spent a happy hour digging through the packages like a kid on Christmas morning.

  Sara was just dragging out a reclaimed metal depiction of Sisyphus pushing his proverbial rock up the hill — and boy, was that ever the metaphor for her life — from the storeroom into the studio, when she heard a knock.

  She glanced up and was promptly assaulted by a stomach full of butterflies.

  None other than Mike Stewart was standing outside the store’s glass windows.

  He waved when he saw her looking.

  It really wasn’t fair. No one had a right to look that good in jeans and a leather jacket.

  He knocked again, pointed at the door.

  For a second, she debated ignoring him.

  Except, it was Mike.

  If he’d parked his car in the middle of the street to chase her down, he probably wasn’t going to let a pesky pane of glass stop him.

  Dusting her hands on her pants, she walked to the front of the store.

  Mike watched her approach the door and slipped through literally the second she’d unlatched the bolt, like he was afraid she was going to change her mind and lock it right back up.