Ty chuckled, surprised to discover that even his face hurt. “No can do, honey. It doesn’t work that way at Chateau Gallagher. Why don’t you run along to the shower and I’ll arrange for a cab to pick you up in a half hour or so?”
The woman sat up, huffing. “Fine.” Pulling the sheet to her chest, she rose, Ty’s bedding trailing after her as she stomped off into the bathroom. “I know when I’m not wanted.”
Thank God for that, Ty said to himself, grabbing his robe from where it hung on the back of the bedroom door. While standing seemed to ease his headache somewhat, he was now acutely aware of the gritty insides of his mouth, which felt as if an invading army had marched through it. Keeping the shades drawn, he made his way into the kitchen, the light from the Sub-Zero fridge blinding him as he opened the door to check what was inside. Bottles of juice. Unused rolls of film. Batteries.
Palm to pounding forehead, he began rustling through the kitchen in search of coffee. His housekeeper, Inez, was always rearranging the damn cabinets, so he never knew where anything was at any given moment. In the freezer, he found the precious ground beans that he hoped would alleviate his headache. Putting up a pot in the Krups, he called the doorman to arrange for a cab for Laura-Laurie-Lauren, fervently praying that she took her time in the shower and didn’t emerge in time for a cup of joe and a chat.
For one thing, he wasn’t a morning person, especially when he was hungover. For another, he really had nothing to say to her. His mind circled back to the night before—to the sex, specifically. It had been good, no doubt about that. And then he remembered . . . Janna. The bottom dropped out of his already queasy stomach. At some point during foreplay, his imagination had taken over, and he had pretended it was Janna he was kissing deeply on the mouth, Janna’s smooth thighs he was parting. Oh, Jesus.
Shaken, he went to sit in his huge, glass-walled atelier living room, daylight stabbing him. This is what he needed: to be brutalized by bright morning sun so that he’d come to his senses. Ever since his exchange with Janna in the lounge the day before, he hadn’t been able to get her off his mind. She had guts, standing up to him like that, and he admired her for it. Some of his own guys longed to go toe-to-toe with him, but didn’t have the balls to do it. But this tiny woman—who would, no doubt, be busting his chops day and night as she threatened to do—she let him have it but good. He loved that. It turned him on. Showed she had brains, spirit, and courage—the same stuff needed to make it out on the ice. I’ll be the annoying song lyric you can’t get out of your head. Man, she was right about that. Now he just needed to figure out what to do about it, because there was no way in hell he could let himself fall for this woman, not when she worked for those corporate bastards at Kidco, not when he couldn’t afford to divert his attention from winning. He had to expunge her from his thoughts. Avoid her. Ignore her. Whatever it took.
“Can I at least get a cup of coffee before you throw me out?”
The sharp voice of Laurie-Laura-Lauren behind him brought Ty back to himself. He turned from the window to see his playmate from the night before standing by his large, cream-colored leather couch glaring at him, her low-cut emerald dress from the night before looking cheap and incongruous now in the morning light.
“Sure,” Ty replied, moving toward the kitchen. A cup of coffee and cab fare was the least he could do. But even as he was politely pouring out the steaming black liquid into a mug, his mind was fixated on one thing: Janna, and how to nip his desire for her in the bud. It wouldn’t be easy, but he could do it.
“There’s my girl.”
Her father’s greeting as she pulled into the circular driveway of her parents’ Connecticut estate never failed to bring a smile to Janna’s face. Ever since she could remember, those had been the first words out of his mouth whenever he’d catch sight of her. He had been bent low over a bed of Japanese anemone, their pale pink blossoms quivering slightly in the September breeze. He straightened up when he saw her, the bright eyes, set deep in his ruddy, weathered face, twinkling with delight. Peeling off his dirt-caked gardening gloves, he let them drop to the ground and came forward to hug her. Janna reveled in the comfort of his crushing embrace as she took in his scent: light sweat mixed with Dial soap, an aroma that took her straight back to childhood, to the happiness of time spent with him.
“How’s it going?” she asked, inspecting the beds. Everything she knew about gardening, she’d learned from her father. How many hours had they spent together poring over seed catalogs, planting and digging, weeding and watering? She wasn’t sure which had been his greatest gift: his unwavering belief in her, or the love of gardening that he’d passed on. She was certain she never could have survived her crazy childhood without both.
“They’re taking over,” her father replied in answer to her question. “I’m trying to get them trimmed back before they choke out everything else.”
Janna nodded sympathetically. He looked tired; then again, when didn’t he? Patrick MacNeil was known as a “workhorse.” Back when he’d first started out, working in construction, he was renowned for his sheer brute strength and stubborn endurance. There was no task his squat, square body wouldn’t tackle and keep at until it was done, and done properly. It was that same determination that had allowed him to strike out on his own as a builder.
Now, thirty-five years later, he sat at the head of a small building empire, the word delegate nonexistent in his vocabulary. He oversaw every detail of every operation from start to finish. Janna knew it was more than a matter of pride. She’d figured out long ago that losing himself in work gave her father a much-needed respite from the battleground that was his marriage.
As if on cue, Janna heard her mother’s tinkling laughter float through the open front door. Courtney MacNeil was the Town & Country woman come to life: tall, regal, unmistakably WASP. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she had never quite forgiven Janna’s father for temporarily yanking it out during their early years together, despite the fact that his business now earned more money than she could spend in a lifetime—although God knows she was trying. At fifty-four, she had the body of a woman half her age, and people viewing her from a distance, struck at first by her long mane of ash-blond hair, often mistook Courtney for one of her daughters, usually Petra or Skyler, which pleased her immensely.
Janna loved and hated her mother simultaneously. Loved her because a child doesn’t know how to do anything else, and hated her because her mother had always made her feel she was lacking. Sandwiched as she was between her older sister, Petra, who was tall and brilliant, and her younger sister, Skyler, who was tall and gorgeous, Janna was the odd girl out—pint-sized, ordinary, the classic middle child who fought to shine but never even managed a flicker. At least not in her mother’s eyes. One of her most painful memories was hearing her mother say to a room full of guests at a party, “Petra’s got the brains, Skyler’s got the beauty, and Janna”—here she had paused with pursed lips, obviously trying to think of something to say—“Janna’s got the drive.”
The drive. As if that was something lesser. No wonder she had always gravitated toward her father. He understood drive, didn’t see it as gauche or somehow grasping the way her mother did. She looked at her father now, and tears began welling in her eyes. He was the one who had encouraged her to start her own business, who believed in her savvy, who told her repeatedly not to give up. So why had she? Why did she work for big corporations, and not for herself? The answer was simple: fear. She was afraid of failing. Afraid that what her mother had said was true—all she had to offer was drive with no talent to back it up. So what if she’d studied at the Wharton School? She was an impostor, always had been. She’d tricked her professors into believing she had a solid head for business, just like she continued tricking everyone into believing she knew how to do PR. Like Lou, for instance, who thought she was MENSA material. Well, her mother knew better.
A blast of rock music coming from an open window on the second floor caught Janna’s
attention.
“I see the birthday boy is home,” she said to her father.
He glanced up at the screened window, a look of unmistakable displeasure crossing his face. “He calls that music.”
“Careful,” she teased, patting his arm. “Your age is showing.” Her father sighed, shaking his head, and returned happily to digging in the dirt.
Janna headed inside to wish her baby brother, Wills, a happy birthday. The last of the MacNeil children, he was twelve today, the age gap between him and his sisters sizable. Janna’s mother claimed he’d been “an accident,” but Janna and her sisters all concurred that having Wills had been their parents’ last-ditch attempt at trying to save their marriage—an attempt that had failed, leaving poor Wills to grow up alone in the big Georgian house with two warring parents. His solo status filled Janna with guilt. At least she, Petra and Skyler all had each other when things got rough. Wills had no one, which was why Janna made an extra effort to call and see him whenever she could. It was her way of letting him know that she was there for him, even if they didn’t live under the same roof.
Inside the house, her mother sat in the huge country kitchen chatting away on the portable phone. She gave a distracted wave as Janna popped the cake she’d baked for Wills in the fridge. Before heading upstairs to see her brother, she detoured to the back patio to say hello to her sisters, both of whom she knew were there thanks to the twin Mercedeses parked in the drive. Petra sat poolside in shorts and a T-shirt, engrossed in a book. Pet and her books, Janna thought affectionately. Why did she become a lawyer when what she really should have been was a writer? Skyler was poolside, too, her tanned, perfect body barely covered in a hot pink, crocheted bikini. Predictably, Skyler was a model. A very successful model, too. Janna loved her big sister Petra, but Skyler was another story. Shallow, vain, judgmental, she reminded Janna of their mother. Janna’s fervent hope was that Skyler would wake up the morning of her 30th birthday to find herself the size of Pavarotti. She knew it wasn’t nice, but Skyler was so damn gorgeous that Janna had no choice but to occasionally hate her for it, certain that every other normal looking woman in America occasionally felt the same way, too.
She chatted with them for a few minutes before leaving to check up on Wills. Her parents’ house reminded her of a museum: everything in its place, the climate carefully controlled, all hints of the combative, turbulent lives being lived there artfully concealed. Except for Wills. Though the music blasting from his room was earsplittingly loud, at least it signaled some sense of vitality the rest of the house lacked. Janna literally pounded on his bedroom door, knowing there was no way he’d hear her if she knocked politely.
The door flew open, and there he stood, his face breaking into a wide smile revealing two tidy, gleaming rows of braces, his head bopping up and down to the music. Like Janna, he was small, but he had his father’s sturdy build and dark coloring. “Hey,” he said, playfully punching her arm.
“Hey, yourself,” she half shouted at him. “Can I come in?”
He stood aside to let her enter. Janna didn’t want to appear uncool in his eyes, but the music was so loud the floor was shaking. She gestured towards the CD player, wincing apologetically. “Could you—?”
“Wuss.” Wills turned down the stereo.
“Thanks.”
Janna gazed around the four walls of the messy room. Every inch of available space was covered with pictures of either Britney Spears and Christine Aguilera, or posters of Wills’s sports heroes. There was Mark McGwire standing at home plate, and Michael Jordan three feet off the ground in the middle of a slam dunk, and—
Ty Gallagher, holding a place of honor above the head-board of Wills’s bed.
Janna turned to him. “When did you get that?”
“Last week.” Wills flopped down on his stomach on the bed. “Dad said you work with him. Is that true?”
“Yup.”
“Can I meet him?” There was no hiding the excitement in his voice.
Janna hesitated.
“Pleeeasse?” Wills begged.
Janna cleared away some dirty laundry and sat down on the edge of the bed. “All right,” she promised, images of Ty telling her and her punky brother to take a hike dancing through her head.
“Yes!” Wills pumped his fist in the air. “I knew there was a reason you were my favorite sister.”
“I thought it was because I baked you a double chocolate brownie cake for your birthday.”
“Double yes!” Wills exclaimed. He looked at his sister with outright adoration. “You rule.”
“I try.” Janna’s eyes kept drifting to the bright color poster of Gallagher on the ice, his expression fierce. He looked so—manly. Intense. Like some kind of warrior, not at all like the arrogant, uncooperative jerk she knew him to be. She tore her eyes away, focusing her attention on her brother.
“So, how does it feel to be twelve?”
Wills shrugged. “Dunno. The same.”
“What did Mom and Dad give you?”
“New hockey skates,” Wills recited, bored. “New skate-board.” He shrugged again. “Stuff.”
Stuff, Janna thought, her throat growing thick with words she longed to give voice to but knew she couldn’t. That had always been her parents’ way: to ply their kids with stuff, a way to assuage their guilt over not being able to give their children the important things, so caught up were they in their own drama.
“How’s it been around here lately?” Janna asked quietly. She watched as her brother flipped over on his back and stared up at the ceiling, his hands folded on his stomach in repose.
“The same,” he said evasively. “You know.”
The same meaning their mother having one cocktail too many before dinner then tearing into their father, telling him she married beneath her. Both of them yelling about working-class this and hoity-toity that. Shanty Irish. Ice Princess. My God, Janna despaired. Didn’t they care how it affected Wills? Then again, why should they? They didn’t care how it affected her and her sisters.
She ruffled his hair, a gesture he obviously thought he was now too old for as he jerked his head away. “Sorry,” she apologized. “Look, you know you can come stay with me anytime. I mean it. Or call me.”
He turned to her, hopeful. “If I stay with you, can I meet Ty Gallagher?”
“How ’bout this.” Janna thought a moment. “How ’bout you come home with me tonight, and tomorrow morning, I take you to a Blades practice with me and you can meet the guys?”
Wills jumped up. “You can do that? Really?”
“Sure I can do that,” Janna assured him, her heart filling with happiness as she saw the excited, little boy expression on his face.
“And I can get autographs and stuff?”
“Yup.”
“And a picture of me with Ty?”
“We can try.”
“You’re the best!” He hopped off the bed, impulsively kissing the side of her face. “Wait till I tell the guys about this!” He was halfway out the room to call his friends when he halted, rounding on Janna again. “Can I bring my skates? Can I skate on the same ice as them after they’re done?”
“I’ll check with my boss,” she said carefully. “But I don’t think it will be a problem.”
Whooping with delight, he tore out into the hallway and down the stairs. Alone now, Janna rose, turning back to the image of Ty above the bed. God, he was handsome, even with sweat dripping from his brow and his body bent forward in an attack position, ready to blast a puck down the ice. But so what? It wasn’t his looks she cared about right now. It was his heart. She hoped that beneath his surly exterior, he could find it within himself to be nice to a kid, even if that kid did happen to be her brother. Because if he wasn’t . . .
Doing PR had perks, and here was the proof: sitting rinkside, she was watching her baby brother watch the Blades practice. Wills’s eyes never left Ty; everything he did was pronounced the best, the greatest, the most amazing. That’s what yo
u think, Janna thought, knowing she’d have to go into the locker room after practice and try, once again, to talk Captain Stubborn into putting in some face time for a good cause. But when Ty glided past them and flipped a puck over the Plexiglas to Wills, Janna’s stance softened ever so slightly. He might not want to deal with her, but he clearly cared about making a young fan happy. The least she could do was give him credit for that.
Watching him, Janna tried to see Ty through the eyes of her brother, the fans, and his teammates. To her brother, he was a sports God whose courage and determination had helped him carve out a spot in athletic history. Fans loved him because he was larger than life, a legendary player and proven winner who had delivered the Stanley Cup to New York and seemed poised to do so again. His teammates loved him for the same reason and more: he was their leader, but he was also their friend, someone who genuinely cared about them individually. Lou had told her a story about a rookie who’d come to the Blades midseason and was being put up in a hotel. Gallagher invited the young player to stay with him instead, and even helped him find an apartment. Janna’s jaw had hit the floor when she heard that; she had a hard time reconciling the egotistical jock she’d been dealing with to this softie who supposedly had a heart. Who was this guy?
Practice over, Wills began lacing up his skates, eager for the chance to tell his friends that the blades of his Bauers had actually touched the same ice as those of Ty Gallagher. Janna’s plan was to let him skate a few laps to get it out of his system, then bring him into the locker room with her and introduce him to the players. Usually, Gallagher was one of the first off the ice and into the shower. Today, however, he was the last, and was in fact skating at an easy pace toward Janna and Wills, prompting Wills’s eyes to nearly double in size and Janna’s gut to shrivel into a tight, defensive knot.
“Hi,” he said through the Plexiglas to Wills. “I’m Ty.”
“I—” Wills halted, too dumbfounded to speak. He turned to his sister. Is this really happening? his gaze asked.
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