by Penny Dee
“I have a plan,” I said happily.
“Does it involve you hopping back in your car and leaving?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
I joined him at the small table between the kitchenette and the fireplace. I shrugged off my jacket and hung it over one of the chairs.
“I want to set up a meeting between you and the Fury,” I said.
Jake sighed. “If you’re anything, you’re persistent.”
“My dad told me you never called to cancel your contract.” I waited, watching him for any signs of discomfort because he had been called out. But I got nothing. He just stared at me. Completely poker-faced. “He said that you had an agreement. That you were to listen to my pitch about representing you. And then afterwards, you could call him and he would terminate your contract. But he said you never called.”
That told me more than he realized. It told me that somewhere inside of him, Jake wasn’t ready to let go of his hockey career just yet.
But again, Jake remained poker-faced.
“I don’t think you want to give up hockey,” I continued boldly. “That somewhere deep inside of Jake Pennington there is still a tenacious desire for hockey. That maybe, just maybe, you don’t want to let go.”
He paused for a moment. And as our eyes remained fixed, and the seconds ticked by, I held my breath. I was sure he was going to budge.
Finally, Jake broke the silence.
“No,” he said, folding his arms.
I sighed and didn’t bother trying to hide my frustration.
I poured another shot, threw it back, and then pushed the bottle away. I still had to drive and any more bourbon would ruin me. I glanced out the window. It was snowing now and I would need to leave before it got too heavy. Not being a native to snow, I hated driving in it.
Jake watched me, amused. “Are you okay?”
I swallowed hard, driving the aftertaste of bourbon down my throat.
I gestured to the little window that sat over the little kitchen sink. It was now late afternoon and it looked like the snow was getting heavier outside.
“It’s snowing again,” I said, trying to hold back another cough as bourbon bit at my throat. “I’m going to have to leave before it gets too heavy.”
Jake stood up. “Well, what can I say? Thanks for stopping by.”
I didn’t budge.
Instead, I made one last attempt at getting him to at least consider joining the Galveston Fury. “Please think about this.”
“I have. And I’m not going back to hockey,” he said. “And that is that.”
He was being stubborn. This was a lost cause and I might as well leave. Which was awful because I had a huge fucking bet in play. I needed to make one more attempt at convincing him, but before I could answer there was a pounding on the door that nearly sent me skyward out of my skin. Jake looked at me like I might be mental.
Yep. He thought I was a weirdo. Whatever.
I twisted in my seat and watched as Jake opened the door where, in the next second, a ten-foot giant Canadian appeared in the small space.
“Hey, Billy,” Jake shook the older guy’s hand.
“Hey, Jake, Alice wanted me to make sure you were aware—” catching sight of me, the man stopped talking and looked apologetic. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you had company.”
Jake looked over his shoulder at me.
I stood up. “That’s alright, I was just about to leave.”
The giant man looked apologetic again. “I don’t think so, young lady. That’s why I’m here. There’s a blizzard coming. A big one.”
“Blizzard?” I choked the word out.
“Going out there now would be suicide.”
“But I’m only staying at the B&B a few miles down the road,” I explained.
“That’s a ten-minute drive. You don’t want to risk it,” the exquisite looking Canadian said. “You’re both welcome to join Alice and me. We’re a couple of minutes across the pond. But Willy and Maggie have a bad case of bronchitis each, so it’s a bit noisy.”
I looked at Jake.
“Mackenzie, this is Billy Redwing, my neighbor. Billy, this is Mackenzie—” he hesitated before saying it, “—my agent.”
He ignored my suddenly smug smile. But I felt a swoop of joy in my tummy and couldn’t hide it. He had just admitted I was his agent which was a sign that maybe I was reaching the stubborn hockey player after all.
“Billy and his wife, Alice, have eight children,” Jake explained. “Willy and Maggie are two of them.”
“Our place is a bit bigger. There’s plenty of food and it’s warm. This blizzard might keep us snowed in for a couple of days.”
A couple of days?
My blood pressure went up.
I looked at Jake who was already looking at me. I gave him a little shake of my head. He must’ve understood because when he turned back to his friend he said, “Thanks, Billy, but I think we’ll be okay.”
When Jake closed the door behind Billy, I stood up.
“I have to go.”
“You heard Billy—”
“You don’t understand.” Anxiety prickled along the length of my spine. “I can’t be cooped up here for the next couple of days.”
Jake’s perfect brows rose but he said nothing. He just watched me as I dived headfirst into my meltdown.
Turning, I grabbed my coat from the back of the chair.
“If I leave now I will make it.” I thrust my arms into the sleeves. “It’s not even a ten-minute drive.”
“That’s not a good idea.” Jake crossed the room and stopped me from doing up my buttons by turning me around. Towering above me, he cupped my shoulders. “I think you’re going to have to accept facts.”
“What?”
“That you’re stuck here for the night, whether you like it or not.”
The sudden flurry of snow against the windows made me jump. And that’s when it hit. Like a wrecking ball toward my brain. Anxiety. I could feel the prickles of it spreading across my skin like a slow-moving plague.
He was going to think I was mental. He looked at me with those stupid, incredible eyes and my anxiety attack went from a Mount St. Helens to a Pompeii-size eruption.
Oh, boy.
This was going to suck.
* * *
Chapter Seven
Jake
Great. Not only was my agent a stalker. She was crazy, as well.
Which was just my luck. Being stuck in my grandaddy’s cabin with a beautiful woman who was on the wrong side of crazy.
But she was lucky. Because if there was one thing I knew how to handle, it was anxiety. And Mackenzie was simply having an anxiety attack.
I put my hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay, Z. Just breathe.”
She sucked in a deep breath and exhaled deeply.
“Just breathe.” I don’t know why I repeated myself. But I did. And then to top it off, I started to quickly inhale and exhale beside her. “That’s it. Breathe.”
But Mackenzie shrugged my hand away and looked at me like I’d just poured ice water over her head.
“What are you trying to make me do? Hyperventilate?” she exclaimed. “I’m having an anxiety attack, you weirdo, not giving birth!”
I couldn’t help but smile. She was feisty and sassy, and Christ, wait a minute—I parted her jacket to check.
“What the hell?” she exclaimed again, knocking my hands away.
“Just checking.”
She tried to be mad at me but failed miserably.
“Pervert,” she half grumbled, half giggled.
“Hey, I don’t know you. You could be having a baby for all I know.”
She was mad again. “Thanks. Now you’re implying I’m fat.”
I smiled but didn’t dispute it. Not that there was any truth in it. She was tiny.
“Oh, my God, you’re such a dick!” She wailed. As she stood up, she ripped off her coat, and pulled up the front of her T-shirt to
reveal a pretty spectacular flat stomach. I won’t lie, seeing that smooth plane of tanned flesh alerted something deep inside me. But before I had time to work out what it was, Mackenzie started wailing at me again. “Look. Look!” She prodded her tight belly with her index finger and then slapped it with her palm. “Do you call that fat?”
She was right. There was zero fat. But I didn’t tell her that, instead, I chuckled.
“Hey, Z?”
“What?” she snapped.
“How’s that anxiety attack?”
Her mouth opened to give me some smart-ass reply but stopped when she realized I had successfully distracted her long enough for her anxiety to pass.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she whispered.
I smiled. Preoccupation. It was a lifesaver when it came to coping with out-of-control emotions.
I would know.
* * *
Mackenzie
“We need rules.” Jake said.
I looked at him like he’d just spoken alien. “Rules?”
“Rules,” he repeated. “We are stuck here for however long this blizzard lasts. It’s a small cabin.”
I nodded slowly. “Okay. What are these rules?”
“Rule number one. No hockey talk.” When I started to interrupt, he stopped me. “Rule number two. No. Hockey. Talk.”
Point taken.
“Anything else?” I asked.
He shook his head. So I shrugged and nodded. “Okay. Sounds fair.”
He glanced at me sideways. “I’m serious,” he said. “I don’t want to hear anything about playoffs, or the Galveston Fury, or saucer shots.” He raised an eyebrow as he used the term he found so amusing.
I rolled my eyes. “Why are you still talking about hockey? You’re already breaking rules one and two.”
Now it was Jake’s turn to roll his eyes. But I just grinned at him, and then for some stupid reason, I started laughing.
“Why are you so chipper?” he asked.
“Chipper?” I laughed out the words. “How old are you, Grandpa? Who uses the word chipper?”
He sighed like an irritated adult might do to an annoying child. “Okay, then. Spritely. Why are you so spritely?”
“Why are you determined to talk like an old man?”
“I’m not talking like an old man. I’m Canadian.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Maybe we talk differently.”
“What . . . grandpa-esque?” I laughed because clearly I was hilarious. But Jake didn’t think so. Again, he sighed. And I could only imagine he was thinking about what a long and painful evening it would be if we kept having conversations like this one.
So I took pity on him.
“I’m happy because I’m here with you, is that such a bad thing?” I asked.
Jake fixed me with those damn magnetic eyes.
“How do you know I’m not a serial killer?” he asked, folding his big arms across his big chest. Because if you hadn’t heard, he was big.
“Are you a serial killer?” I asked.
“Well, no . . . but you don’t know that.”
“Do you plan on starving me in a cellar pit and then wearing my skin as a suit?”
“Not today.”
I handed him the shot glass, which he accepted. “Well then, drink up, Sunshine.” I clinked his glass with mine. “Anyway, just before I came here I rang my father to let him know where I was and what I was doing. I also left strict instructions for him to send for the Mounties if he doesn’t hear from me in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Really?”
I burst into laughter. “No!”
Like I was that organized.
I grinned but Jake just rolled his eyes at me.
“But I did ring him to let him know where I was going,” I reassured him.
“You should send him a message. Let him know there is a blizzard and you’re stuck here until it passes.”
While Jake disappeared to the small bathroom off the kitchenette, I decided to do exactly that. I wanted to send one to my dad, one to Meg and Anna, and one to my mom in California. Since the incident, I was more conscious about letting people know where I was throughout my day.
Except, I had left my cell phone in my car.
I looked at the clock above the window. It was only five-thirty but it was already getting dark outside thanks to the approaching weather. Thinking I could race out to my car and be back in no time I shoved on my coat and gloves, and opened the front door. Immediately, cold air blasted my face and a strong wind hurled snow across the little front porch. My car was only a few yards from the cabin but it might as well have been a thousand miles away. As soon as I stepped into the wind it whipped me up and sent me sliding across the floorboards and down the snow-laden front steps, landing me on my ass by my car. Using the chrome bumper I hoisted myself onto my feet again, struggling against the wind and the sleet as I reached for the car door.
Pulling on the doorhandle I yanked it open, leapt inside, and slammed it closed behind me.
Inside the car it was quiet. Still. Eerie. I couldn’t see a thing because the windshield was already under a layer of snow, so I had to feel around for my cell. I found it on the passenger seat and shoved it into the inner breast pocket of my coat before opening the door again.
As soon as I climbed out of the car, another surge of wind pushed me sideways and I fell straight onto my ass again. Dazed, I tried to get up but the wind wasn’t finished with me. Like a bear toying with its prey it rolled me over and over and over again. Ice and snow were like a rain of nails against my skin and the wind howled like a demon in my ears. Totally at its mercy all I could do was tuck my chin into my chest and hope to God I wasn’t blown away into the dark where I would certainly freeze to death.
Another howl of wind screamed past me, lifting me off the ground and rolling me farther away from the car. But like a beacon in the darkness a strong pair of hands pulled me off the ground. Before I realized what was happening, Jake threw me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing, and carried me through the screaming wind, his strong body fighting the weather until we were safely back in the cabin.
Wind tore through the front door and rattled everything in its path as Jake set me down on a chair at the table.
“Are you crazy?” he asked, kicking the door closed behind him.
“Clearly,” I said between chattering teeth.
My jacket had protected me from the snow but my jeans were damp.
He shook his head. “Why would you do that?”
“My phone was in my car.”
“And that was worth risking your life for?”
“Y-yes!” I fought to hold back my chattering teeth as I looked at him. “I have three very demanding clients. That equates to approximately one hundred phone calls a day. I n-need my phone.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.”
“No, it’s business.” Jesus Christ, I was cold. “I’m an agent. That’s w-what I do. I take p-phone calls and make deals.”
Jake opened the door to a small linen closet and pulled out a towel.
“You should take those off,” he said nodding toward the jeans I was hopelessly trying to dry off with my gloved hands. “You’ll freeze if you leave them on.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “There’s one I’ve never heard before.”
“Again with the funny,” he said, handing me the towel. “Take them off and I’ll put them in the dryer.”
Wrapping the towel around my waist, I shimmied out of my jeans and handed them to Jake. The clothes dryer was in a little nook off from the pantry. I heard him close the door and the subsequent sound of my jeans starting to tumble.
When Jake walked back into the room I was again taken back by the sheer size of him, and just how damn handsome he was. No wonder he had the reputation of a playboy. In the last couple of days I had read a lot about him and his taunts and trysts. They were all over the
Internet. How he liked women. Lots of women. How he was never short of a beautiful woman on his arm. How he could talk a girl out of her clothes with just a look.
Inwardly, I grinned. It can’t have all been lies. An hour with Jake and he already had me out of mine.
* * *
Chapter Eight
Mackenzie
“So who are they?” Jake asked.
“Who are who?”
“Your three clients—the ones you would risk your life for?”
I sat back in the chair and thought for a moment. The tips of my fingers rested on the handle of the cup of hot coffee in front of me.
“Okay, so first up is Ethan Valentine,” I said.
“The quarterback?”
“The one and only,” I replied flatly. The last time I had seen him in person he had told me all the things he was itching to do to me. It was kind of hard to forget. Apparently, this Indiana farmboy hid a very voracious desire for ropes and chains. “He’s currently taking a break in New Mexico.”
“A break?” Jake asked.
“A break.”
Jake nodded knowingly. I couldn’t tell him the details because I was sworn to confidentiality.
“Who else?” Jake asked.
“Daisy Jones.”
“The popstar?”
“You know you are very good at this,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee.
“I bet she keeps you on your toes.”
He wasn’t wrong. Trouble followed Daisy around like a shadow. Her latest drama was getting caught in the backstage bathroom of the Long Beach Entertainment Centre with the lead singer of a heavy metal band and an ounce of cocaine. All relatively tame stuff if she hadn’t been on her knees mid-fellatio when the singer's heavily pregnant wife had caught them. The blowback was a maelstrom of angry allegations, one stalled tour, a visit to rehab, and one big, fat, angry divorce.
It had taken a lot of smooth talking on my behalf to save her biggest endorsement deal, Allstar Cosmetics. Worth several million dollars, they didn’t want their high-end product being stained by their celebrity ambassador. They wanted the pure version of Daisy Jones. Not the slut-puppy who gave blowjobs to lead singers while on her knees in a backstage bathroom.
