Face-Off

by Nancy Warren

  “Exactly. You’re a great teacher. You’re teaching me to live again and to quit coasting along making dumb-ass commercials for something to do. Maybe I’ll coach, maybe I’ll build stuff.”

  “Build stuff?”

  “Sure. I used to love working with my hands. I built furniture and all kinds of things when I was younger. Then hockey took over my life. I don’t need more money. I need something to do. I guess I got so caught up in who I used to be that I forgot there’s a whole new life out there waiting for me.”

  “Of course there is.” She spoke with so much confidence in him, how could she understand what that meant? He didn’t want to scare her since they’d only begun, but he had a pretty strong feeling that Sierra was going to be a part of that future.

  He caught a dream image glimpse of the two of them in the future. He bet she wouldn’t let him build a crib because of some safety thing, but he was bound and determined to build a high chair. That he could do.

  And maybe a rocking horse.

  He’d have go dig up his dad’s old tools and start practicing.

  The contentment was like a warm blanket around his heart. “Anything you need to go home for?”

  She shook her head. “School’s closed tomorrow. I threw a few extra things in my sports bag, in case I got an invitation I couldn’t refuse.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  NEXT MORNING, HE WOKE up feeling better than he’d felt in a long time. With a jolt, he realized he was alone in bed. Surely she hadn’t gone squirrely on him and snuck off home?

  Then he heard the greatest sound in the world, next to those panting cries she made when she came. He heard the sound of a woman singing in the kitchen.

  In his experience, a woman singing in the kitchen this early meant she was making something like coffee. Or breakfast in bed.

  Sure enough, she waltzed in a few minutes later, wearing one of his T-shirts that dropped almost to her knees, looking sexy as hell and bearing a tray. Okay, so it was healthier stuff than he usually ate, and maybe the portions were a little skimpy, but he didn’t feel like complaining.

  After breakfast, they sat around drinking coffee and reading the paper, then after a nice round of midmorning sex followed by a shower, he said, “Let’s go meet my family.”

  “Are you sure? I didn’t mean right away.”

  “I don’t know what that ex of yours did to you, but since you’ve helped me get over my little problem of feeling sorry for myself, I figure it’s the least I can do to return the favor and demonstrate how much I want to show you off.”

  She nibbled her lip. “I don’t know what to wear. What if your family doesn’t like me? What if—”

  He stopped her feeble protests with his lips. “Do you know what they called my ex-wife?”

  She shook her head.

  “Gold Digger Barbie.”

  “Ouch,” she said, but he could tell she was pleased. “I’m not a gold digger.”

  “I know. You’re a teacher.”

  She grinned at him. “Right.”

  “Also a real, intelligent woman. They are going to fall down and kiss your feet.”

  She giggled. “Okay.”

  “Dinner tonight?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I’ll give you a lift home, pick you up again later.”

  They drove out of his place and when he saw the car and the man at the top of his drive, he let out a string of curses that had Sierra’s jaw dropping.

  “Damn vipers,” he said finally.

  “Press?”

  “Yeah. This one’s a sports blogger. He’s not the worst. But if he prints something, everybody will pick it up.”

  He made to roar by the guy, and then at the last minute changed his mind. He pulled over. Looked over at Sierra. “You sure about being okay if we’re outted?”

  Her eyes shone back at him, and he thought he’d do anything, anything at all to make sure this woman stayed in his life. “Sure.”

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  He got out of the car. Went around slowly to open Sierra’s door. Then, with his arm around her, he confronted the blogger. He hadn’t realized there was another van parked half a block away. A TV crew. Who was he, Céline Dion, that the Canadian press should be so excited about his doings?

  He heard the camera whir and tamped down his irritation. He knew that once they had their story they’d be on their way. The duller the story, the less intrusion he’d have in his life.

  “Hey, guys. What can I do for you?” he asked, at his most benign.

  “Just have a few questions for you, Big J,” the blogger began.

  “Shoot.”

  “How do you feel about your former wife getting engaged to Ogden Terry? The NBA superstar?”

  “I wish her well. She’s a great woman and he’s a good guy. I hope they’ll be very happy.” To his immense surprise, he found that he actually meant those words. His marriage had been pretty much a disaster, since they’d both been such different people. He hadn’t given her what she’d wanted any more than she had him. He genuinely hoped she’d find what she was looking for with the next guy.

  “Really? She says you’re an overgrown boy with emotional issues.”

  He smiled. “Well, I’m working on them.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “This is Sierra.”

  “She your new girlfriend?”

  There was a beat of silence. The sun was making a valiant effort to peek out from behind the clouds, casting golden glints on the gray water. “Yes.”

  “Congratulations.” The camera and all attention turned to Sierra. “Can you tell me how you two met?”

  Her dimples peeped out. “At the skating rink.”

  They asked her what she did for a living, the spelling of her name, a few easy questions and then the zinger. The headline-grabbing, sound-bite-making, zinger.

  “So, are you guys in love?”

  She turned to him, wise and mischievous all at the same time. “We’re working on it,” she said, and then leaned in and kissed him while the camera whirred.

  “Well?” she said when the media left. “How was that?”

  “So much more satisfying than shooting a shaving commercial,” he said.

  “Come on, let’s go back inside and get naked.”

  THEY WERE MORE LIKE GODS than people, Sierra thought when she first saw the three McBrides together. They were gathered at Jarrad’s house for dinner and Jarrad was cooking. Well, he was supposed to be doing the cooking, but it seemed that the whole family had opinions on how to grill a steak on the barbecue.

  All three McBrides were built on a larger scale than Sierra was used to. Not only were they physically imposing but all of them shared a kind of energy that drew your attention and held it.

  Samantha, Jarrad’s younger sister, the closest to him in age, greeted Sierra with friendliness, but there was suspicion in her gaze. The woman was gorgeous, with long, dark hair, striking features and a tall, athletic body that Sierra would kill for.

  While she made Caesar salad, she grilled Sierra more thoroughly than Jarrad was grilling the steaks. Everything from her family to her job to her dating history was fair game. Finally, Jarrad said, “Hey, Sam, play nice. Sierra’s not a hostile witness. She’s my new girlfriend.”

  Samantha smashed garlic with gusto. “You have such appalling taste in women that I want to make sure she’s for real.”

  Sierra and Jarrad exchanged glances. There was so much warmth in his gaze that she felt she’d melt if she looked at him too long. “Oh, she’s for real all right,” he said. “And the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “I like her,” Taylor said. Taylor was the youngest. He had so much restless energy that he never stayed still. But she’d liked him immediately. He had a frank way of looking at a person, and a smile that could thaw ice. “It’s about time somebody in our family got serious. Mom’s going to have a fit if we all stay single much longer.”

  “A
h, we only just started dating,” Sierra pointed out. She was pretty sure she wanted to marry Jarrad, but not because his family pushed him into it.

  “Sam?” Taylor said. There was a jokiness about the way he spoke. As a teacher she could usually spot a youngest. They were often the class clown.

  “Don’t look at me,” Samantha said. “I like being single.” She said it in a way that sounded like a challenge, and Sierra had to wonder what that was about.

  “Well, I’m the baby of the family. I’m way too young to get married,” Taylor said. “Gotta get to the NHL first. Then I’ll hook up with a movie star.”

  “You are so full of it,” Samantha said. Then she turned to Sierra. “It’s a good thing you’re an elementary school teacher. Hanging around with these two will remind you of your students.”

  Sierra smiled and sipped her wine. Yes, she thought, as they continued to squabble, Jarrad’s family had definitely accepted her.

  She glanced up to find Jarrad looking at her. I love you, he mouthed.

  She smiled at him in a way that would let him know she’d show him exactly how much she loved him back.

  Later.

  In the Sin Bin

  1

  “CAN YOU NEVER ADMIT to being wrong?” Millicent Parker demanded of Samantha McBride.

  Sam smiled the smile of a lawyer who knows she’s about to settle out of court. “Not when I’m being paid a lot of money to be right.”

  Opposing counsel shook her head and unclipped her pen. “Okay. My client wants to stay out of court. He’s given me a certain amount of leeway. Let’s get this deal done. You’re asking way too much for a wrongful dismissal suit and you know it. Your client’s position was made redundant and he was given a fair exit package.”

  “He’s fifty-nine years old and showing early signs of dementia. We both know that’s why he was made redundant. He’ll never find another job and you know it.”

  Millicent sighed. “All right, what’s your bottom line?”

  Sam settled her computer closer and did what she did best. Argued her position.

  Samantha had been blessed—or cursed depending on how you looked at it—with no ability to see the so-called gray areas of an argument. Something was right or it was wrong. For her there was no middle ground. It made her a fierce lawyer, but sometimes in her personal life, her implacability caused a certain friction.

  She’d be married by now if she had a different personality. For a second she allowed her thoughts to stray to the man she’d loved so long ago, but she’d become an expert at steering her mind away from painful thoughts of the past.

  Back to business. Always business, where rules were clear and if there was any doubt, a judge would always decide. There were no gray areas, no “if onlys” in her practice, and that was exactly how she liked things.

  She was feeling pretty damned pleased with herself when she got home from work later that day. As she was changing for her run, the phone rang. Normally, she didn’t deviate from her routine, but when she saw it was her older brother calling, she grabbed the phone, one leg in her running tights.

  “Hi, Jarrad. How’s the coaching going?” If there was ever a good news/bad news scenario it had to be recently learning that her big brother was coming home to Vancouver where he belonged. That was the good news. Naturally, she’d assumed that he’d finally listened to her excellent arguments on the reasons for returning home and not wasting his life in Hollywood.

  However, the bad news part of the equation was that he was here not because he’d heeded her superior advice, but because Greg Olsen had asked him to coach the amateur firefighters and police league. Greg Olsen. Of all people.

  She’d wanted her big brother to come home and figure out what he wanted from life. He had a boatload of money and he’d enjoyed a decade of success in pro hockey. Now he could do anything. Go back to school, open a business, travel the world. Instead he’d informed her he was coming to coach.

  “You’re coaching? Seriously?” Sam could not believe her ears, and she’d heard some improbable stories in her seven years as a practicing lawyer. “Hockey?” she wanted to clarify to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood. Perhaps her older brother had completely lost his mind and was coaching synchronized swimming or something. Though, based on his marriage to the swimsuit model, she doubted he wanted to get close to that many women in tank suits anytime soon.

  “Yes. Hockey.” Jarrad had sound vaguely irritated. “Of course, hockey.”

  And now, weeks into the coaching thing, he was calling her. “Can I come up?”

  “You’re here?”

  “Right outside your building.”

  She rapidly considered her options. She could say no. Not an option with a big bro who had always been there for her and had so rarely asked for help. She could make him come running with her. Also probably not an option since he’d go at his athlete’s pace and then she’d get competitive and run too fast for conversation.

  So, she’d run later. She yanked her tights off. “Yeah, sure you can come up.” And then she scrambled into a clean pair of jeans and a blue shirt.

  When Jarrad arrived, he said, “I need your help.”

  “Trouble with Sierra?” She hoped that wasn’t it. She really liked Sierra and to see Jarrad with a sweet, normal woman was like seeing him grow up. She didn’t want to find out that he’d regressed again.

  He waved her words aside. “Nothing, but Sierra doesn’t understand hockey the way you do.”

  “I think we both need a beer to have this conversation,” she said, crossing into her galley kitchen to the fridge and pulling out two cold Granville Island lagers. She didn’t bother to offer him a glass, and, having grown up with brothers, she didn’t take one herself. They twisted off the tops and both drank.

  “So, is the problem hockey or Sierra?” She really needed clarification.

  Her big brother looked at her as though she might have drunk twelve beers instead of taking one sip. “What are you talking about? I love Sierra. It’s the coaching gig that’s the problem.”

  She crowed with delight and launched herself at him. “I knew it. I knew she was the one.” She squeezed her arms around his all-muscle middle. “This time it’s real love, isn’t it?”

  A crooked smile dawned, “Yeah. The forever kind.”

  “Ooh, I can’t wait to be an auntie.”

  “Sam, stop being a girl,” he ordered her sternly. “We’re talking hockey here.”

  “Right.” She pulled out of his arms, but nothing could stop the happy feeling inside her. At least one of them looked as though they had a solid romantic future ahead of them. “So, hockey.”

  “Yeah. I’m coaching Greg’s team.”

  “I know.”

  His long legs ate up the polished concrete floor of her Yaletown loft. Eight hundred and sixty two square feet had never felt so tiny. She was growing dizzy from watching him.

  “You don’t seem very happy about it.” Sometimes, she’d discovered, stating the obvious was the best way to get people talking. This time was no different.

  “Happy?” He swung round and actually stopped in his tracks long enough to make eye contact. “How can I be happy about it?”

  She thought about how it must feel to be an NHL heavyweight benched forever and the only coaching gig around was for a bunch of fire and police geezers. “Maybe this will be a stepping-stone to other coaching opportunities.”

  He shook his head at her, as though she’d said something incredibly dumb. Which couldn’t be possible. “I don’t know how to coach.”

  Ah, so it wasn’t the humiliation of the team, but fear of his own shortcomings that was stopping him.

  She walked forward, laid a hand on his shoulder. “How did you learn to play hockey?”

  “You were there. You saw me.”

  “Only if I hung out at the rink. You were always at the rink.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. That’s how I learned to play.”

  “Right. You practice
d. Hour after hour. Maybe coaching is the same. You practice.”

  “I don’t know. These guys are seriously messed up. It’s so bad I’m taking advice from an elementary school teacher.”

  She bit back a smile. Coaching wasn’t the only thing he was learning from Sierra Janssen.

  “Here’s the thing, Sam, you have a good eye. Remember when you figured out way back in high school that moving Tom Delaney from right wing to left would improve the team? And we moved him and it was amazing?”

  “I remember. But it was easy to spot from the bench. He couldn’t shoot left worth a damn. But if he shot right, he had a killer aim.”

  “Not everyone can spot those things. You’ve got an instinct. And you know hockey so I don’t have to explain anything.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, you’ve been complaining since I got to town that we hardly see each other.”

  “I was referring to having dinner together or hanging out, not me helping you coach a bunch of over-the-hill amateurs.”

  “Look. Come down to the rink on Saturday morning. You’ve got good judgment, let me know what you think.”

  Her hand came off her brother’s shoulder and clenched involuntarily at her side. “Is Greg going to be there?”

  Jarrad’s eyes narrowed in irritation. “Of course he’s going to be there. He’s on the team. Come on. You guys are ancient history. I’m sure you could be in the same hockey rink without killing each other.”

  She wasn’t so sure about that.

  Talk about complicated.

  “I know you don’t understand, but—”

  “You’re right. I don’t. No one does. So, you guys went out all through high school, then you went away to college and you broke up. Big deal. Happens all the time.”

  “Well, there was a little more to it than that.” She still experienced a weird ache in her chest at the thought of all the history that was between her and Greg Olsen. They hadn’t only been boyfriend and girlfriend in high school. Looking back she realized now they’d been truly in love. They were probably the only two high-school sophomores who got Romeo and Juliet, who really deep-down understood the kind of teenaged passionate love that would cause you to die for each other rather than live alone.