“Interviewing them for the paper.” Now that she’d seen all of them this morning, she was beginning to feel a bit apprehensive. Next to her five-foot stature, they were huge.
“Do you think they’d notice if you snapped some pictures?”
“They might.” Jane laughed. “They didn’t seem as dumb as you’d expect.”
“Bummer. I wouldn’t mind seeing some naked hockey players.”
And now that she’d seen them all, seeing them naked was one aspect of the job that worried her. She had to travel with these men. Sit with them on the airplane. She didn’t want to know what they looked like without their clothes. The only time she wanted to be near a naked man was when she was naked herself. And while she wrote explicit sexual fantasies for a living, in her real life she wasn’t all that comfortable with blatant nudity. She was not like the woman who wrote about dating and relationships in the column for the Times. And she was absolutely nothing like Honey Pie.
Jane Alcott was a fraud.
“If you can’t take pictures,” Caroline said as she reached for her fork once more and picked the chicken from her Oriental salad, “take notes for me.”
“That’s unethical on a lot of different levels,” she informed her friend. Then she thought about Luc Martineau’s offer to “piss” in her coffee, and she figured she could bend ethics in his case. “I did see Luc Martineau’s butt.”
“Au naturel?”
“As the day he was born.”
Caroline leaned forward. “How was it?”
“Good.” She pictured Luc’s sculpted shoulders and back, the indent of his spine, and his towel sliding down his perfect round cheeks. “Really fine.” No denying it, Luc was a beautiful man; too bad his personality sucked.
“God,” Caroline sighed, “why didn’t I finish college and get a job like yours?”
“Too many parties.”
“Oh, yeah.” Caroline paused a moment, then smiled. “You need an assistant. Take me.”
“The paper won’t pay for an assistant.”
“Bummer.” Her smile fell and her gaze lowered to Jane’s blazer. “You should get new clothes.”
“I have new clothes,” Jane said around a bite of ham and cheese.
“I mean new, as in attractive. You wear too much black and gray. People will begin to wonder if you’re depressed.”
“I’m not depressed.”
“Maybe not, but you should wear color. Reds and greens especially. You’re going to be traveling with big strong testosterone-infused men all season. It’s the perfect opportunity to get a guy interested in you.”
Jane was traveling with the team on business. She didn’t want to catch the interest of a man. Especially a hockey player. Especially if they were all like Luc Martineau. When she’d declined his offer concerning the coffee, he’d almost smiled. Almost. Instead he’d said, If you change your mind about that, let me know. Only he hadn’t said about. He’d said aboot. He was a jerk who hadn’t completely lost his Canadian accent. The last thing she wanted or needed was to attract attention from men like him. She glanced down at her black blazer and pants, and her gray blouse. She thought she looked okay. “It’s J. Crew.”
Caroline narrowed her blue eyes and Jane knew what was coming. J. Crew was not Donna Karan. “Exactly. From the catalogue?”
“Of course.”
“And black.”
“You know I’m color blind.”
“You’re not color blind. You just can’t tell when things clash.”
“True.” That’s why she liked black. She looked good in black. She couldn’t make a fashion faux pas in black.
“You’ve got a nice little body, Jane. You should work it, show it off. Come back to Nordy’s with me, and I’ll help you pick out some nice things.”
“No way. The last time I let you pick out my clothes, I looked like Greg Brady. Only not as groovy.”
“That was in the sixth grade and we had to go to Goodwill to do our shopping. We’re older and have more money. At least you do.”
Yes, and she planned to keep it that way too. She had plans for her nest egg. Plans that included buying a house, not designer clothes. “I like the way I dress,” she said as if they hadn’t had the same conversation a thousand times in the past.
Caroline rolled her eyes and changed the subject. “I met a guy.”
Of course she had. Since they’d both turned thirty last spring, Caroline’s biological clock had started ticking and all she’d been able to think about were her eggs shriveling up. She’d decided it was time to get married, and since she didn’t want to leave Jane out of the fun, she’d decided it was time they both got married. But there was a problem with Caroline’s plan. Jane had pretty much decided she was a magnet for men who would break her heart and treat her bad, and since jerks seemed to be the only type of man who made her go all weak and sweaty, she’d been thinking about getting a cat and staying home. But she was stuck in a Catch-22. If she stayed home, she wouldn’t discover new material for her Single Girl column.
“He has a friend.”
“The last ‘friend’ you set me up with drove a serial killer van with a couch in the back.”
“I know, and he wasn’t real pleased to read about himself in your Times column.”
“Too bad. He was one of those guys who assumes I’m desperate and horny because of the column.”
“This time will be different.”
“No.”
“You might like him.”
“That’s the problem. If I like him, I know he’ll treat me like crap, then dump me.”
“Jane, you rarely give anyone the chance to dump you. You always keep one foot out the door, waiting for an excuse.”
Caroline didn’t have a lot of room to talk. She dumped guys for being too perfect. “You haven’t had a boyfriend since Vinny,” Caroline said.
“Yeah, and look how that turned out.” He’d borrowed money from her to buy other women presents. As far as she could tell, he’d bought mostly cheap lingerie. Jane hated cheap lingerie.
“Look on the bright side. After you had to dump him, you were so upset you regrouted your bathroom.”
It was a sad fact of Jane’s life that when she was brokenhearted and depressed, she cleaned with a vengeance. When she was happy, she tended to overlook towels falling out of the closet onto her head.
After lunch, Jane dropped Caroline off at Nordstrom’s, then drove to the Seattle Times. Because she wrote a monthly column, she didn’t have a desk at the paper. In fact, she’d hardly ever ventured into the building.
She met with the sports editor, Kirk Thornton, and he didn’t have to tell her he was less than thrilled to have her covering for Chris. His reception of her was so cold, he could have chilled a glass on his forehead. He introduced her to the three other sports reporters, and their welcome wasn’t much warmer than Kirk’s. Except for Jeff Noonan’s.
Even though Jane was hardly ever in the Seattle Times building, she’d heard about Jeff Noonan. He was known by the female staff as the Nooner and was a sexual harassment lawsuit just waiting to happen. Not only did he believe a woman’s place was in the kitchen, he believed it was on her back on the kitchen table. The look he gave her told her he was thinking about her naked, and he smiled like she should be flattered or something.
The look she returned told him she’d rather eat rat poison.
The BAC-111 lifted off from SeaTac at six-twenty-three a.m. Within minutes, the jet broke through the cloud cover and banked left. The morning sun shot through the oval windows like spotlights. Almost as one, the shades were slammed shut against the brutal glare, and a good number of hockey players put their seats back and sacked out for the four-hour flight. A mix of aftershave and cologne filled the cabin as the jet finished its ascent and evened out.
Without taking her eyes from the itinerary in her lap, Jane reached over her head and adjusted the air. She turned its full force on her face as she looked over the team schedule. She not
iced that some of their flights left right after a game while others left the next morning. But except for the flight times, the schedule was always the same. The team practiced the day before each game and had a “light” run-through the day of the game. It never varied.
She set aside the itinerary and picked up a copy of the Hockey News. The morning light broke over the NHL team reports, and she paused to read a column concerning the Chinooks. The subhead read, “Chinooks’ Goaltending Key to Success.”
For the past few weeks, Jane had crammed her head with NHL stats. She’d familiarized herself with the names of the Chinooks and the positions they played. She’d read as many newspaper articles on the team as she could find, but she still didn’t have a firm grasp on the game or its players. She was going to have to fly by the seat of her pants and hope she didn’t crash and burn. She needed the respect and trust of these men. She wanted them to treat her as they did other sports journalists.
In her briefcase, she’d stashed two invaluable books: Hockey for Dummies and The Bad Boys of Hockey. The first gave her the rudiments and the how-tos, while the second told the dark side of the game and the men who played it.
Without lifting her face, she glanced across the aisle and down a row. Her gaze followed the emergency lights running down the dark blue carpeting and stopped on Luc Martineau’s polished loafers and charcoal trousers. Since their conversation at the Key Arena, she’d done more research on him than the other players.
He’d been born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His father was French-Canadian and divorced his mother when Luc had been just five years old. Luc had been drafted sixth overall into the NHL at the age of nineteen by the Oilers. He’d been traded to Detroit and finally Seattle. The most interesting reading had come from The Bad Boys of Hockey, which had devoted an entire five chapters to Luc. The book had gone into detail about the bad boy goalie, claiming he had the quickest hands on and off the ice. The photos had shown a string of actresses and models on his arm, and while none of them had come right out and claimed they’d slept with him, they hadn’t denied it either.
Her gaze rose to his big hand and long fingers tapping the arm of his seat. A sliver of his gold Rolex showed from beneath the cuff of his white-and-blue-striped shirt. She took in his shoulder and the profile of his high cheekbones and straight nose. His hair was cut short like a gladiator ready to do battle. Assuming half the juicy details of the bad boy book were true, Luc Martineau had a woman stashed in each city the team visited. Jane was surprised he wasn’t terminally exhausted.
Like all of the other players, this morning Luc looked more like a businessman or an investment banker than a hockey player. Earlier at the airport, Jane had been surprised to see the whole team show up in suits and ties as if they were on their way to the office.
Her view suddenly blocked, Jane glanced up into the battered face of enforcer Rob “the Hammer” Sutter. Bent over to accommodate the low ceiling, he appeared scarier than usual. She didn’t have the faces of all the Chinooks memorized yet, but Rob was one of those guys who was easy to remember. He was six-foot-three, two hundred and fifty pounds of intimidating muscle. At the moment, he sported a fuzzy goatee on his chin and a brilliant shiner beneath one of his green eyes. He’d taken off his suit jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and loosened his tie. His brown hair needed cutting and he had a piece of white tape across the bridge of his nose. He glanced at the briefcase on the seat next to her.
“Do you mind if I sit down for a few?”
Jane hated to admit it, but she’d always been a bit unnerved by big guys. They took up so much space and made her feel small and a little vulnerable. “Ahh, no.” She grabbed the leather handles and shoved the briefcase on the floor by her feet.
Rob crammed his big body in the seat next to her and pointed to the newspaper in her hands. “Did you read the article I wrote? It’s on page six.”
“Not yet.” Feeling a bit boxed in, Jane thumbed to page six and looked at a game photo of Rob Sutter. He had some guy in a headlock and was punching his face.
“That’s me feeding Rasmussen his lunch in his rookie season.”
She glanced sideways at Rob, taking in his black eye and broken nose. “Why?”
“Scored a hat trick.”
“Isn’t that his job?”
“Sure, but it’s my job to make things rough for him.” Rob shrugged. “Make him a little nervous when he sees me coming.”
Jane thought it prudent to keep her opinion of his job to herself. “What happened to your nose?”
“Got too close to a stick.” He pointed to the paper. “What do you think?”
She skimmed the article, which seemed to be well enough written.
“Do you think I hooked the reader in the first graph?”
“Graph?”
“That’s journalist talk for paragraph.”
She knew what graph meant. “I am more than a punching bag,‘” she read out loud. “That got my attention.”
Rob smiled, showing a row of beautiful white teeth. Jane wondered how many times they’d been knocked out and replaced. “I had a lot of fun writing that,” he said. “When I retire, I’m thinking maybe I’ll write articles full-time. Maybe you could give me some pointers.”
Getting a foot in the door was a lot easier said than done. Her own resume was less than stellar, but she didn’t want to rain on Rob’s parade by telling him the truth. “I’ll help you, if I can.”
“Thanks.” He half rose and pulled a wallet from his back pocket. When he sat down again, he flipped it open and pulled out a photograph. “This is Amelia,” he said as he handed her a picture of a baby girl resting on his chest.
“She’s so tiny. How old is she?”
“One month. Isn’t she the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen?”
Jane wasn’t about to argue with the Hammer. “She’s gorgeous.”
“Are we showing baby pictures again?”
Jane looked up and into a pair of brown eyes watching her over the seat in front of them. The man handed back a photo. “That’s Taylor Lee,” he said. “She’s two.”
Jane looked at the photo of a toddler as bald as the guy who’d handed it over, and she wondered what it was about people assuming everyone wanted to see their baby’s pictures. She didn’t recognize the eyes staring at her over the seat until Rob gave her a clue.
“She’s awfully bald, Fishy. When she gonna get some hair?”
Bruce Fish, second-string winger, half rose and took back his photograph. The light shone on his bald scalp while a scruffy beard covered the lower half of his face. “I was bald until I was five, and I turned out cute.”
Jane managed to keep a straight face. Bruce Fish might be a skilled puck handler, but he was not an attractive man.
“Do you have any kids?” he asked her.
“No, I’ve never been married,” she answered, and the conversation turned to which Chinook was married and who had how many children. Not exactly stimulating conversation, but it alleviated her worry that the players would shut her out.
She handed Rob his photograph and decided to get down to business. To dazzle them with her research, or to at least show them that she wasn’t completely clueless. “Given the age and lack of franchise players, the Coyotes are playing better than expected this year,” she said, reciting what she’d just read. “What are your biggest concerns going into Wednesday’s game?”
They both stared at her as if she’d just spoken a language they didn’t understand. Latin, perhaps.
Bruce Fish turned around and disappeared behind his seat. Rob shoved the baby photo in his wallet. “Here comes breakfast,” he said as he stood. The Hammer quickly departed, making it quite clear that while she was good enough to talk with about journalism and babies, he wasn’t going to talk with her about hockey. And as the flight progressed, it became even more clear to Jane that the players were ignoring her now. Except for her brief conversation with Bruce and Rob, no one spoke to her. Well, they
couldn’t ignore her forever. They had to allow her locker room access and answer her questions. They had to talk to her then or face a discrimination lawsuit.
She refused a muffin and orange juice and raised the arm between the chairs. She scooted to the aisle seat, spread out her articles and books, then took off her gray wool blazer. She got down to the business of trying to figure out what points were as opposed to goals. What penalty was awarded for which infraction, and the ever-confusing icing call. She grabbed a brick of Post-Its out of her briefcase, scribbled notes, and stuck them inside the book.
Keeping track of her work and life via sticky notes wasn’t the most efficient way to run things, and she had tried more organized methods. She’d tried a software program on her laptop, but she’d ended up scribbling notes about what to write in it. She’d bought the day planner she currently used, but only to stick notes on the calendar pages. Last year, she’d bought a Palm Pilot, but she’d never gotten comfortable with it. Without her sticky notes she’d had an anxiety attack and had ended up selling the handheld device to a friend.
She scribbled notes about hockey terminology she didn’t know, stuck them in the book, then glanced down a row at Luc. His hand rested beside a glass of orange juice on the tray table. His long fingers tore at a cocktail napkin, and he rubbed bits of paper between his fingers and thumb.
Someone called Luc’s name and he leaned forward and glanced toward the back. His blue gaze landed somewhere behind Jane, and he laughed at some joke she didn’t get. His teeth were white and straight, and he had a smile that could make a woman think of hot sinful things. Then he lowered his gaze to her and she forgot about his teeth. He simply looked at her as if he couldn’t quite figure out how she’d gotten there-like a spot on his tie-then his scrutiny slid down her face and neck to the middle of her plain white blouse. For some disturbing reason, her breath caught in her chest, right where his gaze rested. The moment became suspended. Prolonged. Hanging between them until his brows pulled into a straight line. Then, without looking up, he turned away. She finally let out her breath, and once again she had the feeling she’d been judged and found lacking by Luc Martineau.
See Jane Score Page 3
