Nothing but Trouble

by Rachel Gibson

  “Head up and roll your wrists,” he called out to Derek. “Did you tell her no?”

  She glanced up at him and her mouth parted in surprise. “You hate my hair.”

  “I don’t hate it.”

  “You said I looked like a Russian just off the boat.”

  “I was talking more about your clothes.” He looked down at her, and once again the shadow of his hat slid to the bow of his top lip. “Your hair’s not so bad. I’ve gotten used to it.”

  “Is this you trying to be nice again?”

  “No. If I was trying to be nice, I’d tell you that you look good.”

  Chelsea glanced down at her white blouse and Burberry kilt. “Because it’s more conservative than what I usually wear?”

  He chuckled. “Because your skirt’s short.” He pointed his cane at Derek. “You can stop now. I think you’re ready for some passes.” He walked into the garage, and when he returned, he had a hockey stick in his right hand. He thrust it toward Chelsea. “Derek, you’re going to feed passes to Chelsea.”

  “Me?”

  “Her? She’s a girl.”

  “That’s right,” Mark agreed, and she half expected him to say something sexist. “She’s little and quick, so you better watch yourself.”

  She took the stick and pointed to her feet. “I’m in three-inch heels.”

  “You don’t have to move. All you have to do is stop the puck.”

  “I’m wearing a skirt!”

  “Then I guess you’re going to have to be really careful not to bend over.” Beneath the shadow hitting his top lip, he grinned. “I wouldn’t mind, but we have to keep it clean ’cause Derek’s a minor and I promised his mom.”

  “The things I do for this job.” She kicked off her shoes and lowered her sunglasses to the bridge of her nose.

  Mark walked several feet away and pointed to Derek. “Move down ice. Bring the puck up and just feed it to her.”

  Derek moved down the driveway, barely able to stay up on his skates. Not only couldn’t he skate, but he got tangled up with his stick. A few times he nearly fell, and when he finally did shoot, it went wide and Chelsea had to run after it.

  “You’re watching the puck,” Mark told him. “Keep your head up and your eyes where you want the puck to go.” He tried again, and once again he barely stayed on his skates and Chelsea had to run after the puck. After the fourth straight time, she was getting a little irritated.

  “I’m tired of running after your pucks,” she complained as she brought the puck to the middle of the driveway.

  “Derek, what is the first rule of hockey?”

  “No whining, Coach.”

  Chelsea frowned and looked from Derek’s flushed face to Mark. “Is that in the official rule book?”

  “Yes. Along with the importance of trash talk.” Keeping his right leg straight, Mark bent down and picked up the puck. “So let’s hear some chatter,” he said as he handed it to the kid.

  “Okay, Coach.” This time as Derek skated toward her, he said, “Your hair is stupid and you have a stink eye.” He shot, and the puck hit Chelsea’s stick and bounced off.

  “I have a what?”

  “Stink eye.”

  She raised a hand to the lenses of her glasses. “I do?”

  Derek laughed and Mark shook his head. “No. Trash talk doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be distracting.” He picked up the puck and tossed it to Derek. “That was a good one. You do better when you’re not trying so hard.”

  This time when he skated toward Chelsea, she was ready for him with something she figured was age-and Derek-appropriate. “You’re so skinny, you can hula hoop with a Cheerio,” she said, thinking she was pretty clever.

  Derek shot. It went a little wide but she was able to stop it without have to run too far. He shook his head. “That was stupid.”

  This from the kid who said she had a stink eye? She looked at Mark and he shrugged. “Maybe you should work on your trash talk.”

  She wasn’t the only one. Other than stink eye, Derek didn’t have any other insults in his repertoire, and after he’d called her that three more times, she was ready to whack him with her stick. So when he got tangled up in his skates and fell, she wasn’t exactly feeling bad for him.

  “Ouch.” He rolled onto his back and looked up at the sky.

  “Are you okay?” Mark asked as he walked toward the kid.

  “The stick hit my nuts.”

  “Ohh.” Mark sucked in a breath through his teeth. “That sucks. Ringing the berries is the worst thing about hockey.”

  The boy didn’t look too hurt. He wasn’t writhing in pain or anything, and Chelsea could think of a few things worse than berry-ringing pain. Like the puck hitting your face and getting your teeth knocked out.

  “It really hurts.”

  “I thought there was no whining in hockey,” she reminded them.

  Mark scowled as if she’d said something really insensitive. “You can whine about a smashed nut.”

  “Is that an actual clause in the rule book?”

  “If it isn’t, it should be. Everyone knows that.” He got down on one knee beside the kid. “Are you going to be okay?”

  Derek nodded. “I think so.” He sat up, and Chelsea was pretty sure if she hadn’t been standing there, the kid would have cupped himself.

  “Then let’s call it a day,” Mark suggested, and helped Derek stand up.

  Chelsea was certainly ready to quit. She walked back to where she’d left her shoes and dusted off the bottoms of her feet. She leaned on the stick as she slipped her feet inside her pumps.

  Derek changed out of his skates and shoved them into his backpack. He handed Mark his stick and carefully climbed onto his bike. “Are you going to be okay to ride home? Do you need a ride?” Mark asked, and Derek shook his head.

  “I’m all right, Coach.”

  She guessed it was okay to make him ride his bike if he was exhausted. Just not with a “smashed nut.”

  As Derek rode away, Mark moved toward the garage doors. “What do you have planned for the rest of the day?” he asked her.

  “Answering your fan e-mails.” She followed him, letting her gaze travel from the back of his hat, down his neck and wide shoulders, to his tapered waist and hard butt. The man made everything look good. “Why?”

  “Some of the guys are coming over to play poker tomorrow night. I thought if I wrote you out a list, you could go to the store and pick up some beer and snacks.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.” He took her stick and placed it on a shelf in front of a big gym bag. “I’ll give you some cash.” He pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and opened it. “Well, that sucks. I only have a five,” he said, and returned his wallet. “I guess that means we both go.”

  She lifted a brow. “You shop? For your own groceries? Aren’t you too big a star?”

  “You have me confused with one of your celebrities.” He moved to the back door and reached inside the house. He came back with a set of keys and tossed them to her. “There’s a Whole Foods down the street.”

  “Are you going to backseat drive?”

  “No.”

  She stood her ground and refused to get into the car. “Promise?”

  He raised his right hand and looked like he was flipping her off more than swearing an oath. “Not even if you sideswipe a tree and kill me.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” She opened the door and slid inside. The seat was so far back, she couldn’t reach the steering wheel, let alone the pedals. “Have you been driving?”

  “No.” He looked away and shut his door. “I was looking for something the other day.”

  “What?”

  “Something.”

  He didn’t want to tell her, fine. As long as he didn’t turn into the backseat driver from hell, he could keep his secret. And surprisingly, he was true to his word. He didn’t complain at all about her driving. Not even when she tested him by coming to a rolling stop
at a stop sign.

  Whole Foods was one of those stores that took great pride in selling natural and organic foods to people who could afford it. The kind of place that had a killer deli and a kick-butt bakery. The kind that Chelsea generally avoided if she was shopping on her own dime.

  She grabbed a cart and they hit the beer aisle first. Mark loaded up on local brew. Everything from Red Hook and Pyramid to beers she’d never heard of. He grabbed bags of blue chips and organic salsa. He bought crackers and three kinds of cheese. Prosciutto and thinly sliced salami.

  “Do you know how to make nachos?” he asked as they headed toward the milk case.

  “No.” There were certain boundaries she didn’t cross with employers. Slaving away in their kitchens was one of them.

  “It can’t be that hard.”

  “Then you do it.”

  “I tried it once.” He shoved a quart of sour cream and a gallon of milk into the cart. “And I burned my hand and couldn’t wear my glove for a week.”

  “Poor baby.”

  “You can say that again. That burn was pretty much the reason I didn’t win the Art Ross Trophy in 2007.”

  “The what trophy?”

  “Art Ross. It’s the trophy given to a player who has the most points at the end of the regular season. Sidney Crosby won it that year. Beat me by five points, all on account of nachos.”

  She chuckled. “Is that even true?”

  He smiled and held up his bad hand like he was a Boy Scout again. He reached for bags of shredded cheese. “It’ll be easy. You won’t even have to grate the cheese.”

  “Sorry. Making nachos is above my pay grade.”

  He dropped the bags of cheddar into the cart. “What is your pay grade?”

  “Why?”

  “Just curious about what keeps you coming back every day.”

  “My deep and abiding commitment to people in need,” she lied.

  He shook his head. “Try again.”

  She laughed. “I get paid fifteen bucks an hour.”

  “Fifteen bucks an hour to answer e-mails and drive my car? That’s easy money.”

  Spoken like a typical pain in the backside. “I have to put up with you and now Derek.”

  “Derek’s an eggbeater. You should make human resources give you hazard pay.”

  He must not have been told about the bonus. She wondered whether she should tell him. The Chinooks’ organization hadn’t ever told her not to mention it to anyone. She didn’t think it was a secret, but something held her back. “Maybe I will if he ever connects with my shin.”

  “First he has to stay on his feet.” He smiled, and it spread to the tiny creases in the corners of his eyes.

  “Hello, Mark.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the tall woman behind them. His smile fell. “Chrissy.”

  “How are you doing?” The woman had platinum-blond hair and turquoise eyes. She was stunning, like a supermodel, but like a lot of models, she wasn’t perfect. Her nose was a little too long. Like Sarah Jessica Parker in The Family Stone. Not the Sarah Jessica of the Sex and the City movie. That Sarah Jessica was way too skinny.

  He spread his arms. “Good.”

  While Chrissy checked out Mark, Chelsea checked out Chrissy’s vintage Fendi satchel with the classic Fendi clasp in black. The purse was so difficult to find, it was practically an urban legend.

  “You look good.”

  “Still with the old man you married?”

  Ouch. That sounded bitter, and Chelsea figured that Chrissy must be a former girlfriend. She was the sort of woman Chelsea would expect to see with him.

  “Howard’s not that old, Mark. And, yes, we’re still together.”

  “Not that old? He’s got to be seventy-five.”

  “Sixty-five,” Chrissy corrected.

  Sixty-five wasn’t old unless you were thirty-five. Which was how old the woman looked. But who was Chelsea to judge? She might have married an old guy to get her hands on that vintage Fendi too.

  The woman’s attention turned to Chelsea. “Who’s your girlfriend?”

  That someone would mistake her for Mark’s girlfriend was humorous. “Oh, I’m—”

  “Chelsea,” he interrupted her. “This is Christine, my ex-wife.”

  Wife? She remembered Mark had said something about his ex-wife getting a nose job. She wondered how big it had been before. “It’s nice to meet you.” She stuck out her hand.

  Chrissy’s fingers barely touched Chelsea’s before she dropped her arm to her side and turned her attention back to Mark. “I heard you were in a rehabilitation hospital until last month.”

  “I got your flowers. Very touching. Does Howard know?”

  She adjusted the strap of her Fendi bag. “Yeah, sure. Are you still living in our house?”

  “My house?” He slid his palm to the small of Chelsea’s back. She jumped a little at the weight of his hand. The warmth of his touch heated her skin through the cotton of her blouse and spread tingles up her spine and across her butt. This was Mark Bressler. The guy she was paid to work for. She shouldn’t be feeling anything. “I’m moving as soon as I find a new place,” he added. “Chelsea’s helping me out with that.”

  “Are you in real estate?” she asked Chelsea.

  “I’m an actress.”

  Chrissy laughed. “Really?”

  “Yeh,” Mark answered for her. “Chelsea’s acted in a lot of different stuff.”

  “Such as?”

  “The Bold and the Beautiful, Juno, CSI: Miami, and some ‘go meat’ commercial.”

  She was shocked he’d remembered. “Hillshire Farms,” she clarified. She glanced up at him, then returned her gaze to his former wife. “I’ve mostly acted in the horror genre.”

  Chrissy raised one disdainful brow. “Slasher movies?”

  Mark’s voice was a deep velvet rumble when he said, “Chelsea’s a real screamer. You know I’ve always been partial to screamers.” He smiled, a slow, sexy curve of his lips.

  “That was one of your problems.”

  “That was never a problem.”

  Maybe it was his smile. Maybe it was the warm touch of his hand, but Chelsea couldn’t help it. Her mind went there and she wondered exactly what the man did to make women scream. She’d never screamed. She’d come close once, but never actually screamed out loud.

  Chrissy’s eyes narrowed. “I see the accident hasn’t changed you. You’re still the same old crude Mark.”

  “See you around, Chrissy.” He removed his hand from Chelsea’s back and pushed the cart in the opposite direction from his ex.

  Chelsea walked beside the cart and looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. “That was interesting.”

  “For who?” he asked, and moved down the cereal aisle.

  “Me. She’s exactly the type of woman I’d expect you to marry or date.”

  “What type is that?”

  “Tall. Pretty. Expensive.”

  “I don’t have a type.” He dumped two boxes of Wheaties into the cart. “At least not anymore.”

  THIRTEEN

  Mark carried the last bags of groceries into the kitchen and set them on the island. He leaned his cane against the granite top and grabbed a gallon of milk and a couple of packs of cheese. Earlier, his thigh had started to bother him and he’d popped several Vicodin before Derek had arrived on his bike. Now with the pain dulled, he moved with relative ease.

  “You don’t have to put my groceries away,” he told Chelsea as she opened several cupboards until she found where he kept his salt.

  “What else am I going to do for an hour?” The hem of her skirt rode up the backs of her legs as he watched her put away a box of sea salt.

  Mark opened his mouth but forgot what he was going to say. His eyes were glued to her butt and his feet were stuck to the floor like he was a kid again, waiting desperately for a glimpse of female bottom. Instead of a grown man who’d had more ass than he could recall. She lowered her arm, and he moved to t
he refrigerator and opened the door. “You should probably wear pants the next time Derek is scheduled to come over.” He shoved the milk and cheese inside, but left the door open and returned to the island.

  She turned and looked at him. Her brows creased as if she wasn’t going to like the answer to her “Why?”

  “I think I’ll have you play in the net.”

  Her mouth parted and she shook her head. “No way. That kid said I have a stink eye.”

  “I told you that’s just trash talk. Every hockey player has to learn to trash talk. I learned before I joined the traveling team.”

  “How old were you?”

  He reached for the sour cream and meat and returned to the refrigerator. “Ten.”

  “Were you any good?”

  He smiled. “I was good at a lot of things on the ice. Starting shit was just one of my many talents.”

  She grabbed the counter behind her with both her hands and crossed one foot over the other. “Like making women scream.”

  “What?” He shoved everything in those little drawers and shut the door. “Are you talking about my conversation with Chrissy?”

  “Yes. That was kind of inappropriate in the middle of Whole Foods.”

  He’d just been trying to get a reaction out of his former wife and he had. He’d recognized the irritation in her eyes. Not because it hadn’t been appropriate conversation in the middle of a grocery store, but because he’d reminded her of all the times he’d made her scream. Interesting thing was, he’d stopped caring what Chrissy did or thought a long time ago.

  “Are you still in love with her?”

  “God no.” So why had he purposely riled his former wife? He wasn’t altogether sure, but it had had something to do with the way his ex had looked at his assistant. Mark recognized that look. Like she was better because she was porking an old guy for better seats at country club events.

  Chelsea pushed herself away from the counter and walked toward him, the heels of her pumps a light, sexy tap tap across the tile. “How long have you been divorced?”

  “A little over a year.”

  She picked up his boxes of Wheaties and moved to the cupboard next to the stove. She opened the door and stood on her tiptoes. Her heel slipped out of one shoe and the hem of her skirt slid up her thighs. The cereal belonged in the pantry, but who was he to stop the show. “What went wrong?” she asked as she reached way above her head with a box in each hand.