Roughing (Ottawa Titans Book 1)

by Sarah Hegger

  “It’s Danica. She’s getting desperate. Desperate enough to come home early.”

  Her mother and her bestie, Danica, had been planning this trip for years. “How early?”

  “Like right away.” Mom lowered her voice as if someone was in the other room. “She’s worried about Sam.”

  “Sam?”

  “Sam.”

  Elizabeth braced her hands on the kitchen counter. No good ever came of Sam being anywhere in her vicinity. “What’s he done now?”

  The possibilities were endless.

  “She can’t get hold of him since he had his accident on the ice.”

  Elizabeth could barely hold her scoff in, but Mom liked Sam. “You mean when he laid a dirty hit on another player?”

  “It looked like a fair hit from here.” Mom grew snippy. “Danica and I have watched it on the iPad.”

  Sometimes it felt as if she was the only person who really saw Sam for what he was. “That was over two weeks ago. Why can’t she get hold of him?”

  “He’s not answering any of her calls. Last we knew he was having a horrid time and he asked Danica if he could stay at her house for a bit.” Mom lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “He’s been staying there since the league suspended him.”

  “And?” Oh God, please let her be wrong about this. Just this once.

  “Somebody needs to go around there and check on him.” Mom waded in with the body check. “Once Danica knows he’s okay, she can relax. And we can go and see the tulips.”

  No! Say no! You need to stop letting people drag you into stuff. But it was Mom and Danica and they both deserved this trip. This was bucket list stuff they were doing. “Okay, Mom.” Sucker! “I’ll pop around on my way to the women’s auxiliary and see if he’s all right.”

  Mom breathed a teary sigh of relief. “Darling, I would be so grateful if you would, and so would Danica.”

  “But I’m sure he’s fine. Probably sacrificing virgins or something.” Elizabeth stomped into her bedroom to get showered and dressed.

  Mom giggled. “Stop it, Elizabeth. Sam is a lovely boy.”

  “Sam is a—” She breathed deep. “I’ll call you later. Better yet, I’ll take a picture of him and text it to you.”

  Thirty minutes later Elizabeth parked outside Danica’s house.

  She had about twenty minutes to snap her shot of Sam before she was due at her women’s auxiliary meeting. Being the first Sunday in the month, they were expecting her. Mostly, they wanted the muffins she always brought, but sometimes they let her have an opinion.

  Cold sharp air hijacked her breath as she climbed from her car. Instead of being out in below freezing, she had planned to be tucked in the cozy meeting room behind the public library and weighing in on whether they should do a bake sale or a knitted goods stall at the upcoming high school fundraising fair.

  Nobody had shoveled the walkway since Danica had left a month ago, and she carefully placed her feet in the snow holes made by someone before her. Snow clung to her leggings and the wool tops of her boots.

  Reaching the porch, she stamped snow off her boots. Using the key and barging straight in would be rude. Also, she could never be quite sure what he might be doing in there.

  Icky, sordid Sam-type things, which did not bear thinking about.

  She shuddered and pressed the bell.

  “Go away,” Sam yelled from the other side.

  At least she could now reassure his mother he was alive. “It’s Elizabeth. Open up.”

  “Get outta here.”

  Same old charming Sam.

  Elizabeth rang the doorbell again. Unfortunately she needed more than proof of life.

  “He’s not answering.” A woman emerged from the large rhododendron guarding the right side of the door.

  For the life of her Elizabeth didn’t know how Danica got her rhodos through an Ottawa winter. She focused on the woman. “I’m sorry?”

  The woman heaved a huge sigh, which pushed her breasts perilously close to spilling over the gold corset top peeking out from beneath her red shaggy jacket. Elizabeth experienced a pang of ta-ta envy. Those things defied gravity and they looked real.

  “I can feel his pain,” she of the terrific ta-tas said. Actually she had pretty banging legs as well, lovingly covered in black stockings and showcased by her bright red and black micromini skirt. “I’ve been here since”—she leaned forward, ratcheting up the chance of wardrobe failure, and dropped her voice—“it happened.”

  “It what?” Elizabeth’s imagination rapidly cycled through cataclysmic hurricanes, genocide, pandemic plague, and finally hit on the answer. “Oh, you mean since Sam got tossed off the ice?”

  “Shhh!” Ta-tas—and Elizabeth suspected she was developing a mammary obsession at this point—pressed long, bright red fingernails to her equally red mouth and flinched. “It’s agonizing for him.”

  Agonizing her ass. Elizabeth snorted and ground her finger down on the bell again. “Well, he should have thought of that before he checked that guy’s lights out, shouldn’t he?”

  “Who are you?” Ta-tas looked hostile and squinty eyed. “It’s clear you’re not a fan.”

  “Nope.” Not even a little bit, and proud of it. Elizabeth rapped on the door. “Sam! Open the damn door or I’m coming in there after you.”

  The response came through the shut door loud and strong. “Fuck off.”

  “Charming.” Elizabeth glared at the door then gave it a healthy pound. “As much as I’d love to comply, your mother is worried about you, which means my mother is worried about your mother, and wants to come home.” She took a deep breath. Losing your temper when dealing with Sam didn’t work.

  Ta-tas watched her with huge, thickly lashed eyes and blinked.

  “And my mother is not coming home.” Elizabeth punctuated each word with a pound on the door. “My. Mother. Is. Going. To see. The tulips.”

  Thirty years of living with a man who treated you as nothing more than a convenience deserved a walk in the tulips, and a whole lot more.

  “You know his mother?” Ta-tas dialed down on the hostile. “She should come home. He needs her.”

  “Like hell she’s coming home.” Elizabeth tried not to glare at Ta-tas. She really couldn’t keep calling her that. “What’s your name anyway?”

  “Maddison. Maddy.” She eyed Elizabeth’s hand as if it might bite and then slid hers into it. “I’m a fan of Sam’s.”

  “I got that much.” Elizabeth dived under the rhododendron. The oval rock was right where it should be. She lifted it and dug out the front door key. “I, however, am not a fan of Sam’s.” She brandished the key at Maddy. “But I am going in there. You coming?”

  Maddy lit up. She really was an extraordinarily pretty girl. “I’d love to.” She indicated her outfit. “I’m wearing the team colors.” Her smiled died. “Do you think that might upset him? Should I change?”

  “Sam’ll be fine.” Because in order for things to be upsetting you had to have at least the sensitivity of a cockroach, which Sam didn’t, ergo Sam would be just peachy.

  She turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

  It jammed on the security chain and held.

  “Dammit!” The security chain gave her a three-inch peep into the house. Pressing her face against the opening she tried to catch sight of him. “Sam! Open the door.”

  “Not happening,” Sam slurred. “I w-want to be alone.”

  Great, he was drunk, which would increase his obnoxious quotient to around four billion.

  “I told you.” Maddy looked crushed. “We’ve been waiting outside his house for two weeks now.”

  “We?” Elizabeth stared at the chain. There had to be a way into the house. Then the rest of Maddy’s statement penetrated. “You’ve been waiting outside this house for two weeks?”

  “Not me personally.” Maddy blushed. “There are a group of us. We’re here for Sam and we want him to know it.” She looked coyly from beneath her lashes.
“We call ourselves the Stone Cold Foxes.”

  “Wow.” Elizabeth didn’t have much else. She stepped off the porch and circled the house. “What is a Stone Cold Fox, exactly?”

  Deeper snow crept over her shins and tried to work its way into her boots. “Great!”

  “We’re Sam’s superfans. Mostly we shorten it to the Foxes.” Maddy followed, doing a noteworthy job of walking through snow in five-inch heels, but she had to be feeling it through those sheer black stockings. “What are we doing?”

  “Right now we’re looking for an open window.” The curtains were shut on the lounge and dining room windows, so she couldn’t even see inside. She rounded the corner to the back of the house. “And what does a Fox do?”

  “We run a Facebook page, an Instagram account and a Twitter feed that’s all about Sam. Post pictures of him. Sightings of him out and about.” She smirked. “We even get to party with the team sometimes, because Sam knows us, and we don’t bug him.”

  Elizabeth bet Sam knew Maddy, and the others if they looked anything like Maddy. Then she felt like a bitch because Maddy was rather sweet.

  “Should we be doing this?” Maddy stopped and stared at the closed house. “Part of being a Fox is respecting Sam’s privacy.”

  Elizabeth gave a casual wave. “It’s totally fine. I’m a very old family friend.”

  Friend was pushing it. She’d known Sam far longer than she cared to remember, nearly in vitro if their mothers were to be believed. She and Sam had pretty much disliked each other from that point as well. Sam’s very first fight on the ice had been with her. He had pushed her, and she had whacked him with her hockey stick.

  Good times!

  “I think he wants to be left alone.” Maddy stood on tiptoe beside her as they peered over the windowsill into the open plan family room and kitchen.

  At least Sam had shelled out for a great house for his mother. A great house he was now squatting in, refusing to answer the phone, not letting anyone in and generally causing his mother to freak out.

  “His mother is worried about him.” Elizabeth looked mournful. She wasn’t proud of herself but if Maddy’s deplorable taste in professional hockey players would help her get into that house, she would use it. “She’s going to fly back from Europe, ruin the trip of a lifetime, if we don’t reassure her that Sam is all right.”

  “But Sam’s not all right.” Maddy sighed.

  “Think of her pain, “ Elizabeth said. Danica would be in true pain if she could see the way her son had treated her house. Pizza boxes, beer bottles, glasses, takeout containers and plates hid the square walnut coffee table in front of the oversized TV. Of course, he’d bought that for his mother. So she could better view the awesome that was Sam.

  Maddy chewed her lip. “You should tell her to come home.”

  “No.” Elizabeth needed a quick recovery. “She doesn’t need to. Because you and I are going to make sure that not only is Sam all right, we’re going to cheer him up.”

  “We are?” Maddy blinked at her.

  Elizabeth infused her voice with can-do and delivered the deal clincher, suppressing the desire to dry heave around the words that next came out of her mouth. “We’re going to save Sam.”

  Fervor gleamed in Maddy’s big brown eyes. “Yes, we are.”

  “And to do that.” Elizabeth pressed her advantage home. “I need to get into the house.”

  Maddy took a deep breath, and Elizabeth sympathized with straight men everywhere. It was hard to know where to look. “Let’s save Sam,” Maddy said.

  “I’m guessing he’s in there somewhere.” Elizabeth kept looking.

  “Why’s there a deck chair in the kitchen?” Maddy pointed to a deck chair with its back to them positioned in the sunlight streaming through the floor to ceiling glass doors leading to the pool.

  The deckchair sprouted an arm with a Baileys bottle dangling between long fingers.

  “Got him.” Elizabeth stared at the tangled top of Sam’s head.

  Things must be bad if he’d resorted to Danica’s stash of Baileys, kept for secret, giggly tipples over the bridge table.

  But one only, because ladies didn’t drink and get trashed, and Danica Stone was an old-fashioned lady of the sort who never left the house without her lipstick intact and her pantyhose waistband pulled up to her bra.

  Elizabeth would never be able to climb in through the window and it was locked tight. That wall around the pool, however, presented definite possibilities. Especially if you knew that the latch on the French doors leading from the pool to the kitchen was faulty and that Danica had been meaning to have it fixed for months.

  The same broken latch which you’d had fixed for her, and now kept the keys in your purse for when Danica got back from Europe.

  With Maddy trailing her she walked the length of the wall guarding the pool to where a lilac tree abutted it.

  She grinned at Maddy. “I’m going in.”

  * * * *

  Sam winced around a sugary mouthful of Baileys and swallowed. He raised the bottle and toasted himself. Sam Stone, right winger on the first line for the Ottawa Titans, picked fourth in the oh-eight draft, the not-so-much phenom of the ice, and now a drunken suspended has-been soaking up the wintry sun in his mother’s house because he was too chicken shit to face the world.

  What a guy!

  The bare branches of the lilac tree on the other side of the pool enclosure shook like a bear was climbing them.

  Weird.

  If he could sober up for long enough, he could make a run for some decent grog, and lose the Baileys. Sobering up, however, meant dealing, and he wasn’t ready for that yet.

  There actually was something in the tree. He didn’t think it was a bear. It looked definitely human. Maybe Maddy and the rest of the Foxes had decided to take a more aggressive approach.

  A warm female body might do what the Baileys was failing to and offer a moment or two of oblivion. Except he’d have to brush his teeth for that, and the bathroom was all the way at the end of the hall, and he wasn’t sure he could make it there in one piece.

  Besides, it wasn’t the Foxes’ style to shove themselves forward like common puck bunnies.

  But he knew who would consider climbing a tree if he locked her out.

  A booted foot appeared on the top of the wall, followed by its twin. The feet edged forward, tottered and then Lizzie crouched into view.

  She clung to the top of the wall for a moment and examined the drop on the pool side.

  Yup, it was a bit higher than on the other side.

  Lizzie swung her legs over the wall. She was dressed in those yoga leggings that made smart men do stupid things. Lizzie had great legs, long and shapely, which was a pity because of the toxic brain that drove them.

  She inched over until she was lying on her stomach and dangled. Her jacket snagged on the wall and revealed her ass sticking straight up in the air.

  Along with those nice gams, Lizzie had a killer ass on her, round and full and juicy.

  Of course, to get your hands on that ass you would have to run the gauntlet of her personality and that was a hard no.

  Her entire body stretched down the wall.

  Although for those legs and that ass it might be worth it. Except she’d probably mate with you and eat your head afterwards like those praying mantis things.

  Dropping the final foot to the ground, she nailed her landing.

  Sam toasted her with Baileys and regretted the action as soon as the sweet blasted his taste buds.

  Lizzie wriggled her coat down and smoothed her hair. Not even her climb over the wall had managed to disrupt her neatly contained brown hair or dirty her coat.

  She turned and their eyes locked over the length of the pool.

  Puck drop!

  Chapter 3

  Elizabeth almost took a victory lap around the pool. Sam thought he could lock her out, did he?

  She met his eyes over the pool and smirked. “Got ya.”

&nbs
p; The French doors were open, so she didn’t need Maddy to toss her the key.

  “Nice ass.” His gaze raked her from top to toe. “Glad to see you haven’t lost the best part of you.”

  “Funny guy.” Elizabeth tossed her head. She refused to let Sam’s opinion of her get to her. She held up a finger. “Wait! Let me see if I give a crap what you think.” She grimaced. “Nope. Not a crap.”

  He swigged and maintained eye contact. “Aren’t you worried your twenty nice cats will starve while you’re not there?”

  “Again.” She shrugged. “Not a crap.”

  Sam watched her as she walked toward the open door. She put a little swing in her step. His opinion meant nothing to her.

  As she got closer, he glanced at the doors.

  “Don’t bother,” she called. “I have the key.”

  He looked like crap, lounging in the green and white striped deck chair in a pair of track pants and what looked like Danica’s pale blue satin bathrobe. Elizabeth refused to look at the strip of bare skin peeking out between the robe’s edges. He probably used spray tan to highlight those abs anyway. Except his tanned skin didn’t carry the telltale orange of spray tan.

  “My eyes are up here.” Sam smirked.

  He was so vain, but those abs were enough to make any girl lose her way. Except for her and she forced herself to meet his mocking gaze. “I like the new look, Sam.”

  Around two weeks of beard accounted for the mess on his face, and his hair hadn’t seen a comb in as long.

  “Ah, Lizzie.” He ran a hand over his chest and down over those abs and tucked it into the waistband of his sweats. “You say the sweetest things.”

  She would not look. She would not look. She would not—

  Dammit!

  Raising his eyebrow, Sam pulled a cellphone from his robe pocket and dialed.

  Elizabeth dragged her brain into the game. She knew that look. It was the same one he’d worn when he had pushed her in the pool at her sweet sixteen. He still owed her for a dress.

  “OPP can I help you?” a woman said over the speaker on Sam’s cell.

  “Don’t you dare.” Elizabeth ran the remaining distance.