by Nancy Warren
“Tell me now, is it another embarrassing candid photo? I survived three days in the bush. Give me a break.”
“Just open the paper. To page three.”
She opened the paper. The front page had the photograph of her and Max getting off the rescue chopper. On page two was a photo of Frank and a big write-up. She knew Lynette had been interviewed and, of course, had been gracious about the man.
But it wasn’t the long obituary that caught her eye. It was the big, full-page ad staring her in the face when she turned to page three.
A full-page ad.
And it said:
Max Varo, CEO of Varo Enterprises, Inc., wishes to acquire control of Polar Air Ltd.
Mr. Varo challenges Ms. Claire Lundstrom to a one-on-one hockey game to be played next Friday night at the Spruce Bay Arena.
Admission Free.
Public welcome.
Game starts at 7:00 p.m. sharp.
* * *
THERE WAS SILENCE in the room but for the crinkle of newspaper as she stared at the ad.
“He’s crazy,” she said at last.
“As a bedbug.”
“You can’t play one-on-one hockey. There’s no such thing.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“You can go one-on-one in basketball. Not hockey. Anyway, I can’t play hockey with Max to decide who gets Polar Air. It’s ridiculous.”
“Can you beat him?”
“Of course I can beat him.”
“Does he know you were drafted for the Olympics?”
“No. But I’ve practiced with him. He’s seen me skate.”
“Has he seen your A game?”
“We were doing drills. Like I said, you can’t play a hockey game with two people.”
“Then what’s the problem? I think you should do it.”
“Is it even legal? You can’t buy a company based on a hockey game.”
“Seems to me, people gamble with businesses all the time. So long as Lynette agrees, I think you can.”
She gnawed her lip, thinking. “Do you think we’ll have an audience?”
Laurel did the biting her cheek thing again, and then said, “Yeah. I think you’ll have an audience.” She glanced at Claire and the paper and choked on a half-suppressed giggle. “Honey, everybody in town is talking about the big game. It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened around here in years.” She paused and then said, “Well, that didn’t involve some kind of act of God. Or grizzlies.”
“You’re asking me to show up at a crowded rink and humiliate Max so that I can save our family business?”
“Seems to me he’s asking to be humiliated. He’s a big boy. He can take it. He’ll simply fly out of here again and pay people big bucks to soothe his ego.”
She paced the small office. Laurel watched but didn’t say a word.
“Oh, I am so tempted.”
“He has no idea how good you are, does he?”
“None at all.”
“Do it.”
“He said he loves me.”
“Oh, he needs to be punished. Nail him with a well-placed puck.”
“You’re right, I will.”
* * *
“MAX, DUDE, YOU can’t have a one-on-one hockey tournament with a girl,” Dylan told him when he explained to his two friends why he was currently back in Hunter with his tail between his legs. The one good thing about being home was he’d been able to make a practice with the Hunter Hurricanes.
The three were alone in the change room now that the rest of the team had left. Max was zipping up his hockey bag.
“You can’t play one-on-one hockey at all,” Adam chimed in. “Doesn’t even make sense. You could challenge her to basketball one-on-one, but you suck at basketball.”
“Would you guys trust me? Anyhow, I can’t back down now. I’ve already put an ad in the paper.”
“Why couldn’t you fly up to Alaska and have a meeting in a boardroom like a normal person?”
“Because I’m not trying to buy an airline. I’m trying to win back the woman I love.”
“By beating her ass at hockey in front of everybody in the town where she lives? This is your plan to win her back?” Dylan was rubbing his hair with a towel after his postpractice shower.
Okay, when he put it like that it didn’t sound like the greatest plan in history. But they didn’t know Claire. He did. Or at least he liked to think he did. Although, if he’d really understood her, he’d have told her much earlier that he wasn’t only a bush pilot. That he had simply wanted to spend time flying and enjoying a different kind of life. That sometimes he got tired of suits and meetings and all the assorted crap that could seriously undermine how cool it was to be in his position. He had kept his feelings to himself, as he always did, not wanting to come across as a poor little rich boy.
“Yep. It’s my plan.”
“Is there a backup plan? A plan B?”
In the silence he could hear the drip of water coming from the shower area, which pretty much answered the question.
“You are so screwed.”
“Okay, then. Wish me luck.”
Adam made a derisive sound. “We’re your best friends and your teammates. We’re not letting you play the hockey game of your life without us there to cheer you on. You got room for three more in your plane?”
“Three more? You bringing along a doctor in case she takes me out?”
“No, dummy. We’re bringing Serena. She’s a performance coach. Maybe she can help you avoid making a fool of yourself.”
“Might be too late for that,” Dylan said, pulling on a T-shirt so wrinkled Max could hardly stand to watch. “Have you heard from Claire?”
“No.” And it was worrying him. He’d expected a phone call from Claire, had been glued to his cell ever since he’d put the ad in the paper. But nothing. “What if she doesn’t show up?”
“You’ll have a shiny fresh rink you’ve paid for. Me and Adam will get in some much-needed practice time with you.”
Max shot him a look.
Dylan put up his hands. “Hey, I like to look on the bright side.”
Adam regarded him. “Don’t you want him to work things out with Claire so you win the Last Bachelor Standing bet?”
Dylan’s grin was infectious. “See what I love about this situation? I can’t lose!”
22
THE DAY OF THE hockey tournament came a lot faster than Claire’s decision on whether she was going to show up or not. To answer his summons, in fact.
When she woke up, she was surprised to find she had been asleep at all. Most of the night she’d tossed and fretted and watched the clock tick the seconds, the minutes, the hours. It felt like she waffled with each tick. Show up at the rink? Play the kind of hockey that had won her a spot on the Olympic team? Pound puck after puck past an astonished Max until he was so humiliated that he called it quits?
In her meanest moments she sort of relished the image of him, sprawled on the ice, sweating and panting and begging her to stop. But she didn’t want to humiliate the man in public, even if he had brought the fight to her.
She wanted—and then she’d have to toss around again for a bit, trying to find a comfortable spot in her lonely bed—she wanted what exactly? For him to go away and never come back?
Yes. Sort of.
But she wanted to make sure he clearly understood how much he’d hurt and betrayed her. She needed to see him again just so she could tell him that. And then he could go away and never come back.
She’d toss a little more while her restless renegade of a body longed for his strong arms around her, for the low mumble of his voice when they talked late into the night, long after they’d made love.
Oh, she missed him. No, she reminded herself, punching the pillow to get it into the right shape, she did not miss Maximilian Varo, billionaire aerospace brainiac, she missed Max. Her Max, the guy who flew Beavers and Cessnas and made terrible coffee.
That last
thought had her sitting bolt upright. Of course he made terrible coffee. He had staff. Nobody with his money made their own coffee. If only she hadn’t been so foolishly, crazily in love with him, she’d have seen the telltale signs that he was really a rich tycoon.
The signs were all around her.
He couldn’t make coffee.
He...well, he couldn’t make coffee.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and plunked her much-abused pillow behind her back while she contemplated all the ways Max had slipped up, revealing his spoiled rich-boy status.
Well, she thought, that was easy. This wasn’t Sea-Tac Airport; at Polar Air the pilots also washed and cleaned the planes. He’d...she leaned back against the wall and hit her head. “Ow.” She drew up a picture of Max out there hosing down the plane, joking with—in her mental picture she couldn’t pull up the second person. All her attention had been on Max, with his dark good looks, his white, white smile and the neat and tidy way he went about completing a messy job.
Okay, so he could wash a plane without acting like it was beneath him. But there were other signs, other signs she should have picked up on.
“Aha,” she said aloud, suddenly remembering the truck he’d bought when he first started with Polar Air. She groaned inwardly as she recalled how she’d worried about where the money had come from. And he’d said, what had he said? Something that reassured her? Some lie.
She thought back. He’d said...now she remembered as clearly as though he were in her bedroom repeating the words. He’d said, “Don’t worry. I have money.” Something like that, but of course she’d assumed they were talking human scale amounts.
And wasn’t that the understatement of the year. She’d taken him at his word because she’d liked him even then and he’d seemed like an honest man. How he must have been laughing at her inside.
Her blood didn’t boil, exactly, but she was fairly certain it heated up a degree or two. Had he been laughing at them the whole time? These Alaskan rubes who wouldn’t know a billionaire from a snow shovel?
She banged her head back against the wall a couple more times until she realized she’d need an aspirin if she didn’t stop.
But round and round she went. Go and face off with this guy in a public rink for a stupid game you couldn’t even play one-on-one? Were they going to pull teams from thin air? Or should she do the sensible thing and simply refuse to play?
Coffee didn’t help. The granola and yogurt and fruit she forced herself to eat didn’t help.
When she headed out to the office she found two of the pilots and their maintenance guy in low conversation. Cash quickly disappeared off the tabletop and the three guys dispersed like a gang under surveillance.
“What’s going on?” she asked, drilling them with her eyes.
“Nothing.”
Nobody would meet her gaze.
“What kind of nothing?”
Finally, the maintenance guy said, “You going to play tonight or what? I got ten that says you go for it. I’m thinking of raising my bet to twenty.”
She could only stare. Finally she found her voice. “You are betting on whether I’ll play hockey against Max tonight?”
“Yeah.” And he looked at her expectantly.
“Much as I’d like to help you win some money, I can’t. I don’t know.”
She walked into the office, realized she was worse than useless, walked out again.
“If you need me, I’ll be at Lynette’s.” And she walked out with as much dignity as a person can knowing her staff have a betting pool going on her.
When she opened Lynette’s front door and called out, her grandmother’s voice came from the kitchen. “Figured you’d be by. Coffee’s fresh. And I baked morning-glory muffins.”
She didn’t have to announce that they were Claire’s favorite, obviously, but the words hung silently in the air.
Morning-glory muffins were also part of the breakfast of champions that she’d always eaten the morning of a big game. With a mental groan, Claire realized that granola, fruit and yogurt had also been a part of that morning routine. Then she’d have a huge, protein-packed meal at midday, followed by an energy snack before the game.
She entered the kitchen and Lynette handed her a mug of coffee. The muffins were already sitting on the table, steaming away in a basket. “I got eggs if you want them.”
“No, thanks. Muffin’s good.”
She sat at the table. She might be mad at Max and she might be seriously considering leaving him all alone at center ice in full view of the entire town of citizens he’d hoodwinked, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to eat one of her favorite muffins.
She reached for one, still warm from the oven, tore it open and spread the treat lavishly with butter.
When she bit in she started to feel better.
She tasted carrot and raisins and a hint of cinnamon. Knew there was oatmeal and good things inside that muffin, but what it tasted like to her was family loyalty.
Lynette had her back.
Her mouth was full when her grandmother sat opposite her, helped herself to one of the muffins and said, “Well? You going to meet that foolish young man on the ice?”
“You just cut right to the chase, don’t you, Grandma?”
“I don’t see the point in wasting time. At my age, I don’t have much to waste.”
“I’ve been awake half the night trying to figure out the answer to that question.”
Lynette nodded. Sipped her coffee. “He’ll look pretty foolish standing out there all on his own at center ice while every single person in town stares at him.”
“Oh, come on. Not every single person.”
“Well, Jamie-Lynn Burton says if her contractions get any closer together she won’t be there, but she’s hoping it’s only false labor. And of course, if she has the baby during the game then Doc Bouton will have to go deliver it. Other than that, I think you can count on every breathing soul between the ages of four and dead showing up at the rink.”
She’d known there were people who’d come, of course, her friends, a few of the curious who had nothing better to do on a Friday night, but everybody? “Why do people care so much? He’s trying to get control of Polar Air. That’s all he wants.”
“Is it?”
The sound that came out of her mouth was surprisingly like a growl.
She ripped open another muffin, stuffed half in her mouth.
“What do you want, honey?”
“I want—” And there was the problem that had kept her awake half the night. She didn’t know what she wanted. “I want to go back to before, when he was a bush pilot and we...”
“Fell in love,” Lynette finished for her.
“Well, one of us did.”
Lynette didn’t reply, simply sat, ate her muffin and drank her coffee. Slowly Claire began to feel less hysterical and more centered. “What do you think I should do?”
“It’s not my decision. It’s yours.”
She hated it when Lynette did that. “I know it’s my decision, but if you were in my place and you had to make it, what would you do?”
“I guess that would depend on whether I wanted to fight for what I want.”
“Of course I want to fight. I’ll fight anybody to keep Polar Air. It’s our family’s business. It’s who we are. What we do.”
Lynette had a half smile on her face. “Well, then.”
“Well, then.” She sighed. “I guess I’m going to play hockey tonight.”
“First time you’ve played a public game in a while. How are your skills?”
“Rusty, but I can still whup his ass.”
“That’s my girl.”
“You coming?”
Her grandmother wiped her mouth with a napkin before replying. “Oh, yes. I’ll be there.”
“You know, you don’t have to.”
“Actually, I do.” She didn’t look at Claire but fiddled with her coffee mug. “Ted Lowenbrau phoned me.”
“No. That’s not why he called, though I believe he has a fifty that says you’ll show up at the rink. Ted’s always liked you.”
“Then why did he call you?”
“They’ve asked me to referee.”
23
THERE WAS ENOUGH keyed-up excitement in the Spruce Bay rink that night to make the NHL jealous, Claire thought as she made her way from the change room. She’d chosen to wear her Vixens uniform as a reminder that she was part of the fabric of this town in the same way Polar Air was. And Max had better remember that.
These were her people and this was her town.
Lynette hadn’t lied. Everyone from the mayor to infants in arms piled into the seats. She noted some last-minute betting and could only assume the betting pool had moved on to the thorny question of who would win this impromptu match.
Well, everyone in town knew her history so she doubted the betting was very spirited. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that an Olympian could kick the butt of a civilian.
Ted Lowenbrau was the announcer for the evening, a job he’d been doing for years. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the mic. “Tonight we are privileged to watch a very special hockey game that will decide the fate of our beloved Polar Air. Fighting for her family’s company is our hometown girl, Claire Lundstrom!”
She skated onto the ice to thunderous applause. As she spun in a circle, acknowledging the packed stands, she saw Laurel waving and blowing a kiss her way. As she looked around she realized that these were her friends, her coworkers, her neighbors, her townspeople. She wasn’t about to let them down.
While she acknowledged the crowd Ted went through her accomplishments from winning MVP for the Vixens three years running to being scouted for the Olympic hockey team. She hoped Max was listening.
To her surprise, she saw Felix Gerard sitting not far from Laurel. He blew her a kiss. She nodded her head slightly, knowing he was probably here for Max.
Jamie-Lynn Burton sat near the center line and to Claire’s eyes she didn’t seem all that comfortable. She seemed to be squirming on her seat and kind of huffing when she breathed. To Claire’s relief, she noticed that Doc Bouton was sitting only a few seats away.
