Nothing but Trouble

by Rachel Gibson

“A lot of different things.” Chelsea was used to that question. She got it a lot. “Did you see Juno?”

  “You were in Juno?”

  “Yeah. I was up in Canada assisting one of my B stars, who was working on a movie for Lifetime, when I got the call that the production company needed background people so I showed up.” She took the I–5 South exit. “I was in the shopping mall scene. If you look past Ellen Page’s big belly, you can see me talking on a cell phone.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For my part in Juno, yes. But I’ve done a lot of other films.”

  “Name something. Other than blink-and-you-miss-it parts.”

  “Slasher Camp, Killer Valentine, Prom Night 2, He Knows It’s You, and Motel on Lake Hell.”

  Silence filled the car, and then he started to laugh. A deep rumble that came from his chest. “You’re a scream queen. No shit?”

  She didn’t know that she could be considered a scream queen. More like a scream slut. Or the best friend of the scream queen. Her roles had never been big enough to be considered the queen. “I’ve done other things. Like walk-on parts on The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. And on CSI: Miami, I played one of a series of dead girls that kept washing up on the beach. The makeup was really interesting.” She looked over her left shoulder and passed a delivery truck. “Most people assume CSI: Miami is filmed in Miami but it’s not. It’s actually filmed on Manhattan Beach and Long Beach,” she continued. “I’ve done a ton of series pilots that never got picked up. Not to mention tons of commercials. The last commercial I did was for Hillshire Farms. I wore a cheerleader’s outfit and yelled, ‘Go meat.’ That was about six months ago. When I was in—”

  “Jesus!” he interrupted as he reached for the buttons to the radio and filled the inside of the Mercedes with “Slither.” The heavy bass vibrated the floor beneath her feet, and Chelsea bit the side of her lip to keep from laughing. He no doubt meant to be rude, but Velvet Revolver was one of her favorite bands. Scott Weiland was a skinny, hot rock god, and she’d rather listen to Scott than tax her brain in a futile effort to entertain a grumpy hockey player.

  Too bad Scott was such a junkie, she thought as she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel along with the heavy beat. If she were alone, she’d bust out and sing along, but Mr. Bressler was already annoyed with her. And while Chelsea had near perfect recall of song lyrics and movie dialogue—kind of a hidden savant talent—she couldn’t carry a tune.

  She glanced at the GPS and took exit 165A and merged onto James Street just as the trusty navigation system instructed. Within a few minutes, Chelsea pulled the Mercedes in front of the massive medical center.

  Mark turned off the radio and pointed the handle of his cane toward the windshield. “Keep going. The clinic entrance is further down.”

  “I’ll find the parking garage, then I’ll come find you.”

  “I don’t need you to find me,” he said as the car pulled to a stop beside the curb. “I’ll have one of the nurses call you when I’m ready to be picked up.”

  “Do you have my number?”

  “No.” He unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door with his good hand. “Write it on something.”

  Chelsea reached into the backseat and grabbed her purse. She pulled out an old business card and a pen. She wrote her new cell phone number on the back, then looked through the car at Mark. “My new number’s on the back,” she said as she handed it across to him.

  The tips of his fingers bumped into hers as he took the card and glanced over it. He slid his legs out of the car and grabbed his cane. “Don’t wreck the car,” he said as he grabbed the top of the door frame and stood. He shoved the card into his back pocket and shut the door.

  A taxi behind the Mercedes honked, and Chelsea eased her foot off the brake and headed toward the street. In her rearview mirror she caught a glimpse of Mark Bressler just before he entered the building. The bright morning sun shot glistening sparks off his aviators and shone in his dark hair. He paused to watch her—no doubt to make sure she didn’t “wreck the car”—before he moved within the deep shadows of the building.

  She turned her attention to the road and figured she had a little over an hour to kill. She was in downtown Seattle. There had to be somewhere she could go to scrub her mind free of the past hour. She needed to find her happy place.

  She touched the GPS screen and turned on the voice command mode. “Where to, Mark?” it asked. Clearly it didn’t know that it was supposed to ad-dress him as Mr. Bressler.

  “Neiman Marcus,” she said. “I need Neiman Marcus.”

  FOUR

  Mark glanced at the Neiman Marcus bags in the backseat of his car and buckled his seat belt. For her first day on the job, she sure was making herself comfortable.

  “Where to, Chelsea?”

  He looked at her, then at his navigation system. “What the hell?”

  His “assistant” gave the GPS an address in Belltown, then looked across at him and smiled. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I programmed my name into the voice recognition. It kept calling me Mark, which was just confusing because I am clearly not you.”

  “Turn right. 3.6 miles till destination.”

  He leaned forward, brought up the menu screen, and turned off the sound. “Confusing for who?”

  “The GPS.”

  “The GPS doesn’t get confused.” He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He’d been right about her. She was nuttier than squirrel shit, and she was driving his ninety-thousand-dollar car.

  “How was your appointment?” she asked, all cheery.

  “Great.” Mark opened his eyes and looked out the passenger window at St. James Cathedral. But the appointment hadn’t been great. He hadn’t received the news he’d been wanting to hear. The doctor had seemed pleased, but the tendons weren’t healing as fast as Mark hoped and he had to wear the splint for at least another month. Which meant he couldn’t transfer his cane to his right side for better balance. It also meant he had to take the splint off to button his shirt or pants, take a shower, or eat a meal. Although he’d always shot left, trying to sign his name left-handed was like writing with a pen stuck in his toes.

  A dull ache radiated from deep in the marrow of his femur and spread to his hip. At the moment, it wasn’t bad. Nothing he couldn’t handle, but in a few hours it was likely to get worse. He hadn’t brought any medication with him because he didn’t like to be doped up in public. He didn’t want anyone to think he couldn’t handle a little pain. He was Mark Bressler. He’d played hockey with a fractured ankle and a broken thumb. He’d played through concussions and torn and bruised muscles. He could handle the pain. If he was lucky, it wouldn’t get real bad until he got back home, where he could park himself in front of his big TV and knock back a bottle of his favorite medication.

  The car turned on Madison, and Mark glanced across at his assistant. Despite her big sunglasses, two-tone hair, and hideous shirt, she was cute. Like a kitten was cute, but Mark didn’t like cats. Cats were sneaky. One second a cat looked all soft and harmless. All big blue eyes and innocence. One second you were just looking at it thinking, Huh, that’s kind of a cute kitten, then it sank its teeth into your hand and ran away. A sort of stealth blitz that left a guy stunned and wondering what the hell just happened.

  Behind the mirror lenses of his glasses, he lowered his gaze down the side of her neck and shoulder to her breasts. She sure wasn’t built like a little kitty cat, more like a porn star. She’d said she was an actress. All porn stars thought they were actresses too. He wondered how much she’d paid for her boobs.

  He closed his eyes and groaned. What had his life come to? Looking at a nice pair of tits and wondering how much she paid for them? Who gave a shit! In another life, his other life, he’d be thinking about how he was going to get face-deep in her cleavage. His only thought about kittens would begin and end with how he was going to get her little kitty cat naked and riding his lap.

 
For most of his life, Mark had been good at two things: hockey and sex. He’d only set out to be good at shooting pucks, but a guy couldn’t exactly live his life hip-deep in rink bunnies and not get to know his way around a woman’s body. Now he couldn’t do one and didn’t have any interest in the other. He’d never been a guy whose dick defined his life, but sex sure had been a big part of his life. Except for when he’d been married. Christine had used sex as a reward. When she got what she wanted, he got laid.

  Hell, he’d always thought he should be rewarded because he’d been faithful, which, given the amount of time he’d spent on the road with women throwing themselves at him, had been damn tough.

  “This appointment shouldn’t take more than an hour,” his assistant said as she turned onto First Avenue and headed north. “I should have you at the Spitfire and your interview with Sports Illustrated right on time.”

  He couldn’t recall ever agreeing to the interview in the first place, but he must have. When he’d talked to his sports agent about it, he must have been high on morphine or he never would have agreed to be interviewed when he wasn’t one hundred percent. Normally his agent, Ron Dorcey, wouldn’t have pushed it either, but with Mark’s name fading from the sports pages, and endorsement deals drying up faster than a puddle of water in the Mojave, Ron had arranged one of the last interviews likely to come Mark’s way.

  He would have much preferred the interview take place next month or even next week when his head was a little clearer. When he’d had a chance to think about what he wanted to say in what would likely be one of the last articles written about him. He wasn’t prepared, and he wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to get himself interviewed today. In person.

  Wait—he did know. Somehow he’d let a little bit of a woman bully him into doing it. He didn’t care that getting the interview over and done was easiest in the long run, not to mention the right thing to do. He’d let her push him around like he didn’t outweigh her by a good hundred pounds. Now she was driving his car like her name was on the pink slip.

  Earlier, when she’d offered herself as his assistant instead of a health care worker, for one brief moment he’d thought, Why the hell not? No more waiting around for a car service might make him feel less dependent. But in reality he felt more dependent and less capable of taking care of himself. Health care workers wanted to manage his pain. Chelsea Ross clearly wanted to manage his life. He didn’t need her and he didn’t want her around.

  Mark brushed his thumb along the cool metal cane. Back to the original plan. No more Mr. Nice Guy. By the time he returned home that afternoon, he’d have her ready to quit. The thought of her peeling out of his driveway brought a genuine smile to his face.

  “I got a text from the Sports Illustrated reporter a few minutes ago and she’s set up in the VIP room,” Chelsea said as she and Mark moved toward the entrance of the Spitfire. The sounds of the city surrounded them, and the cool breeze blowing off the bay brushed her face as she glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye. She’d done a good job. She’d had him in and out of the John Louis Salon in time for his Sports Illustrated interview. That had to count for something. Had to show him that she was good at her job and that he needed her. “Her name is Donda Clark and she said the interview shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

  He looked good too. The back of his dark hair barely brushed the collar of his T-shirt and the tops of his ears. He looked clean-cut. Handsome. Manly.

  She’d been worried.

  The John Louis Salon catered to an alternative clientele. Edgy. Emo. And Chelsea had worried that Mark would come out with guyliner and Pete Wentz or Flock of Seagulls hair.

  “After I get you settled with the reporter, I have to run over to the Chinooks’ offices.” She had to sign some insurance papers, and the offices were only about five blocks away. “Call me if you’re done early.”

  “The last time I saw my cell phone was the night of the accident.” From behind his sunglasses, he glanced at her, then returned his gaze to the side-walk. “I assume it’s in the mangled Hummer somewhere.”

  She knew he had a home phone, but how could anyone live without text messaging for six months? She’d been in Seattle less than two weeks and she’d already changed her number and her plan. “Who’s your carrier?”

  “Verizon. Why?”

  “I’ll get you a new phone,” she said as she opened the door to the lounge and followed him inside. “And put you on my friends and family plan.”

  He pushed his glasses to the top of his head and said something about going ahead and killing himself. The scent and sizzle of carnitas and sliders hit her nostrils and made her stomach growl. The dim interior was lit with track lighting, white globes, and chandeliers. Forty-two-inch flat-screen televisions hung among local artwork and flashed with major sports events. The bar’s clientele was an eclectic mix of upwardly mobile and laid-back grunge. Knit hats and business suits all mingled inside the sports lounge.

  A decent lunch crowd filled the tables and booths as Chelsea followed Mark through the bar. Heads turned as they passed, and she didn’t fool herself that all that attention was directed at her. Over the hum of voices, people called out his name. He lifted his bad hand in acknowledgment, the dim light shining on the aluminum of his splint.

  Chelsea was used to walking into a restaurant and seeing all eyes turn to her employers. A time or two, she’d purposely created attention for them by posing as a fan or faux paparazzi. This energy was different from anything she’d ever experienced. This wasn’t superficial celebrity adoration. This was real and bigger than any of the B, C, or D listers she’d ever worked for.

  “Good to see you, Hitman,” the bartender called out to him as they passed. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No thanks. Not right now.”

  Chelsea bit the side of her lip. Hitman?

  The Sports Illustrated reporter sat on a red leather sofa in the back of the lounge; her long blond hair curled about her shoulders and shone in the subdued light. The reporter stood as they approached and moved from behind a large cocktail table. She wore a red bird’s-eye jacket and pencil skirt that hit her at mid-thigh. She was tall and gorgeous and perfectly proportioned, everything that Chelsea was not. Oh, Chelsea could buy that exact shade of blond and she planned to have her breasts reduced to fit her body, but she would never have those long legs.

  “Hello, I’m Chelsea Ross.” Chelsea shook the woman’s slender hand. “Mr. Bressler’s assistant.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” the reporter said, but her eyes were transfixed on the man behind Chelsea. “You’re a hard man to pin down,” she said as she dropped Chelsea’s hand and reached for Mark. “I’m Donda Clark.”

  He switched his cane to his right hand. “Mark Bressler.”

  “Yes, I know.” She smiled and motioned toward the seat next to her on the sofa. “I caught the game in Detroit last December.”

  A tight smile curved Mark’s lips. “That was one of the last games I played.” He moved to the sofa, placed his good hand on the arm, and slowly sat. The corners of his mouth tightened even more, and Chelsea wondered if he was up to the interview. He seemed so strong, it was easy to forget that he’d been near death just a few months prior.

  “I thought Detroit might turn it over after Leclaire drew a double minor in the third frame, but the Chinooks’ firepower clearly overwhelmed the Red Wings.”

  Wow, what an ass kisser. “Can I get anything for the two of you before I go?” Chelsea asked.

  “I’d like a Chablis,” Donda answered as she sat and dug a tape recorder out of her bag. “Thank you.”

  “Mr. Bressler?”

  He took the glasses from the top of his head and shoved one side down the collar of his T-shirt. “Water.”

  Chelsea moved to the bar and wondered if Donda noticed the pain etched in the side of Mark’s mouth and if she’d write about it.

  “What can I get you, sweetheart?” the bartender asked as his gaze land
ed on her chest. She was so used to guys’ reaction to her breasts, it didn’t anger her as much as it once had. Annoy, yes. Anger, no.

  Chelsea waited a few seconds before his gaze moved up to hers. “House Chablis and a glass of ice water.” She looked at the name tag clipped to his blue polo. “Colin.”

  He smiled. The cocky smile of bartenders worldwide who knew they were good-looking. “You know my name. What’s yours?”

  She’d been known to date a few cocky bartenders. Most of them had been out-of-work actors. “You already know it. It’s sweetheart.”

  He reached for a glass and filled it with ice. “It’s nice to meet you, sweetheart. What brings you into the Spitfire?”

  “I’m Mr. Bressler’s assistant.”

  Colin lifted his gaze from the glass he slid across the bar and grinned. “I didn’t think you were his date. You’re not his type.”

  “How do you know his type?”

  “A lot of hockey players hang out here. He used to come in with some of the guys.”

  He poured the wine, and Chelsea watched him for a few moments. “What’s his type?” she asked, only because it was her job to know that sort of thing. Not because she was nosy or anything.

  “He goes for models. Like the blond he’s talking to.”

  “Ah.” Figured.

  “I prefer cute and spunky. Like you.”

  Cute. She’d always been cute. For the most part, she was okay with that. Unless she had to stand next to a gorgeous supermodel and read for the same part. And because she was short, everyone assumed she was “spunky.” Or maybe it was her fashion flair. Although everyone always assumed the same about Bo, and Bo had the fashion sense of an undertaker. “What makes you think I’m spunky?”

  He chuckled. “It might as well be written across your forehead.”

  Which told her nothing. She reached for both glasses. “See ya, Colin.”

  “Don’t be a stranger, sweetheart.”

  She moved back into the VIP lounge and set the glasses on the table in front of the sofa. Mark glanced up at her and slid his sunglasses to one side of his neck. “I’ll be back in an hour,” she told him. “If you need anything, call.”