Fire & Ice

by Rachel Spangler

  Chapter Nine

  “Yes, you’re going to want those to come right up to that dimple in your chin, but not until you’ve got your boots on.” Callie kneeled in front of a pigtailed little girl to help her push into the unforgiving ski boots.

  “What about my helmet?”

  “We don’t need it to measure you, but you need it to protect your noggin anytime you step on the slopes or a rink. Promise me you’ll wear it?”

  “I love my helmet. I put Wonder Woman stickers on it,” the little girl said gleefully. “I wear it when I ride my bike, and when I ski, and when I skate.”

  “And when you curl?”

  The child’s brows knit together. “I don’t curl.”

  “Well, we can fix that!” Callie snapped the last of the buckles and stood. “Curling is super fun, plus if you’re under sixteen, you have to wear your Wonder Woman helmet.”

  “Do you do it?”

  “I do,” Callie said, grabbing the skis and holding them up in front of her like a measuring stick. The curved tip rose right up to the level of the kid’s lower lip. “Pretty close, with a little room to grow.”

  “I’m still growing,” the girl said.

  “Good.” Callie handed her the skis. “Me, too. Just in different ways.”

  “So, we’re all set to start shredding some snow?” the girl’s young father asked, a hint of excitement in his voice.

  “Almost. You’ll want to take these up to the register, and my buddy Jason will get the bindings set for her boots.” She turned back to the girl. “It’ll only take about five minutes. Then you’ll be ready to rock, and in the meantime you can go look at our curling brooms.”

  “Okay,” the girl said. “Let’s go, Dad.”

  He smiled back at Callie as his daughter clasped his hand and tugged. “Thank you for your help with the skis, and for being so encouraging with her.”

  Callie shrugged. “Encouraging the next generation of sportswomen is never a burden. Good luck on the slopes!”

  She grinned as the girl pulled him away, her heavy boots tromping loudly down the central aisle of the small store.

  “Another happy customer,” a familiar voice said behind her.

  She turned to her boss, Heath, standing in the doorway of the storeroom wearing a vintage Sabres jersey and worn-out blue jeans. His hair still hung down almost to his shoulders, even though the brown had begun fading to gray around his temples. His nose had a wide, raised bridge that often made her wonder if he’d had some Roman ancestor, or merely suffered a childhood collision with a hockey puck. She grinned, both at the thought and at her general affection for him. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

  “Mitch called in sick . . . or more likely hungover.”

  She grimaced. “You know you’re going to have to fire him eventually, right?”

  “Not until I find a reliable replacement.” He eyed her expectantly.

  “No.”

  “You’re the best employee I’ve ever had.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t take on more hours.”

  “You say ‘can’t,’ I hear ‘won’t.’”

  “We’ve been through this.” She sighed. “I like the job, but the thing I appreciate most about it is how you offer me the flexibility to set my own hours. If I take on the manager position, I’ll have to accept a more set schedule. Plus, I’ll have to fill in every time someone else flakes out. Those responsibilities don’t dovetail with my curling career.”

  “Career? Come on, what’ll it take for you to put this job above curling, Callie?” His voice took on a new level of seriousness. “I’ve got money to pay what you’re worth. I’ve got a good insurance policy for a small business and two weeks of paid vacation. Can curling give you any of those things?”

  She shook her head as her stomach clenched. Even at the highest level of the sport, she would never have the kind of security he spoke of.

  “Look, I’m not trying to break your spirit. I know your dad is on you about the family business, but I’m not talking about selling windows. You could still be connected to sports here. You can still spread the gospel of curling all around Buffalo. You’d still have plenty of free weekends and evenings to play, but you’d also have a real job that’s worthy of you.”

  A muscle in her jaw twitched, and she had to breathe deeply through her nose to keep from snapping back at him. She had a real job. No one else in her life seemed to see curling that way, but she did. Not a hobby or a game or a dead end. A job. But, more than that, she also had a real passion, and while it didn’t come with any of the perks he and everyone else around her seemed to value so highly, it had something more. Curling offered her a million intangible risks and rewards that came from the quest to be the best in the world, but she didn’t know how to explain them or the sense of fulfillment she sought to someone who aspired only to steady income and dental insurance.

  “I’m honored,” she finally said. “Really. It means a lot to me that you’d consider putting me in charge of a business you worked so hard to build, but you deserve someone who can devote themselves fully to the tasks, and right now my heart’s not in it.”

  He smiled sadly. “I know. I don’t want to bully you. I just don’t understand.”

  “It’s okay.” She shrugged, some of his sadness seeping into her. “I’ve never met anyone else who really does.”

  “So, he said I could go ahead and attend the bonspiel next week in Minnesota, even though the network doesn’t have any coverage rights to it, because no one else has TV rights to it, either,” Max explained. “I won’t get any formal credit, but I won’t be stepping on any toes, either.”

  “But, if no one has broadcast rights, what are you going to do there?”

  “I’m going to write, of course, but I’ll also do some blogs and maybe even some live videos for our social media pages. There are limits to how much actual game footage we can share.” Max felt herself getting more excited as she spoke. “If we break it up, I can probably get away with doing one or two ends a day, then pair those with some interviews or maybe even instructional videos if you and your team are willing to take part in those.”

  “I am, but—” Callie glanced over her shoulder at the others huddled near the far end of the ice.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to try to speak for them,” Max said quickly, trying to stem the flashbacks to Brooke’s fist on the collar of her coat, and the tone of Ella’s voice as she all but called her a thief. “I’m well aware of how they feel about me.”

  Callie sighed. “I won’t sugarcoat things and say any of them will be easy to bring around, but you’re making an effort now, and we all need to do the same. They aren’t going to like me pulling rank, but I’m the skip, and it’s time for me to lead.”

  She turned resolutely, but Max caught her arm and pulled her back.

  “Don’t.”

  Callie stopped and glanced down at the point where Max’s fingers curled around her biceps.

  The muscle flexed under the thin long-sleeve shirt, and all coherent thought left Max’s brain. In that moment all she wanted was to kiss her again. Her eyes flicked to Callie’s lips, feeling their softness from memory.

  “Don’t what?”

  The question didn’t make sense to her. Very little made sense with Callie so close and her body so firm at the only place they connected. And yet she’d asked a question about something Max had said. Something about what she’d intended to do. She tried to mentally retrace their steps. Callie had been walking away from her toward her teammates. Max looked past her to see those teammates were all watching her now. She quickly dropped her hand back to her side as everything came back into focus. “Don’t let me come between you and your crew.”

  “Sorry if I gave you the wrong idea. You don’t have enough power to drive a wedge between me and this team.”

  “Um, good?”

  Callie laughed. “I only meant we’ll be fine, and I intend to lead by example. They’ll fall in line. Come
on.”

  With that, she headed off down the ice, and this time Max followed. She might not share Callie’s optimism, but she did trust her assessment of people’s willingness to go where she led.

  “Hey all,” Callie said, as she drew near the rest of them. “Max will be traveling to Minnesota with us next weekend to start work on some interviews and video footage. I’m going to give her some quick lessons on sweeping. Ella, I’ll set up a draw for you. Play it clean to the button.”

  Ella steadfastly refused to acknowledge Max, but she nodded and said, “Sure thing, Skip.”

  They all took their places, and Callie motioned for Max to join her.

  Without thinking, she started to step forward, but at the last second, she caught herself and drew back. “Um, actually, I think I better not.”

  “She can be taught.” Callie grinned ruefully. “But seriously, if you weren’t wearing loafers, you’d stand a better chance of staying upright.”

  “You want me to take them off, and what? Go barefoot on the ice?”

  “Put on some grippers.” She pointed to a bucket of black pieces of rubber. “They fit snugly over the bottom of your shoes, like short booties, and provide a bit of extra traction.”

  Max obliged and tugged two of them over her slick soles, then tentatively put one foot onto the ice. To her great relief, it didn’t immediately slide out from under her.

  With an economic nod of satisfaction, Callie turned back to her team and made a few sweeping motions with her broom as if relaying signals, but before Max had the time to fully find her feet, much less ask questions, Ella reared back and sent a rock their way.

  She shuffled right up behind Callie as it slid toward them in an arcing loop.

  “Nope,” Callie called. “Stay with it.”

  The sweepers walked along calmly beside the stone as it skirted around a guard.

  “Gotta curl,” Callie said, and as if on command, the slowing rock began to spin its way back toward the center of the ice, its handle rotating counterclockwise, and it eased into the outer ring of the house.

  “Now,” Callie instructed.

  Both sweepers pounced like cats who’d spotted a mouse.

  “All the way.”

  They scrubbed the ice mere millimeters in front of the stone as it continued its inward trajectory with dying speed.

  “There you go,” Callie said, as it came to rest, then turned to Max. “What’d you see?”

  “When the rock started to slow down, they swept it to make it go in the direction they wanted.”

  Brooke snorted, and Layla shook her head.

  “Wrong answer?” Max asked, a wave of embarrassment threatening to rise in her again.

  “It’s a common misconception,” Callie said kindly. “Sweeping cannot change the direction of the rock. We set the angle of the throw out of the hack, and the direction of the curl with that little twist of our fingers when we release. Nothing we do after the fact will change either of those things.”

  Max frowned. “So, if you can’t change the way the stone is spinning, why sweep in front of it?”

  “Look at the ice.” Callie crouched down. “See these little bumps?”

  Max carefully lowered herself until she could run her fingers over the slippery surface. Sure enough, it wasn’t smooth. Tiny raised dots peppered the sheet of ice.

  “We spray little drops of water over the ice to give it a texture. It’s called pebbling, and it’s too fine to see from a distance, but the rock can pick up every one of them as it skims along the top. We use the friction of brooms to heat up the surface enough to create a thin layer of water for just a split second.”

  “And the water changes the direction?” Max asked hopefully.

  “Seriously?” Brooke asked. “She just told you, sweeping doesn’t change the direction.”

  “But I saw it with my own eyes. A rock that was thrown to the right of that guard came back and ended to the left of it on the back side.”

  “Because of the rotation, the spin Ella put on it, and the faster it spins, the more it curls. Light spin makes for a straighter line, and heavy spin makes it curl more.”

  That made sense given everything Max knew about curveballs and dreidels or tennis serves. What it didn’t explain was what the sweeping did.

  Her confusion must’ve shown on her face, because Layla clasped a hand on her shoulder and grinned. “It all comes back to speed, though. Heating up the rocks with our broom makes them move faster, which means it makes fewer rotations around any given patch of ice.”

  “And remember, the ice is pebbled, so it’s naturally working to slow the stone down,” Brooke jumped back in. “So, a faster-moving stone gets fewer rotations, and a slower moving stone gets more rotations.”

  “And the number of rotations is what determines how much it curls!” Max practically shouted when it made sense.

  “Physics,” Brooke declared emphatically.

  “Did I mention Brooke is getting a PhD in physics?” Callie asked, leaning casually against her broom.

  “If you did, I wasn’t paying proper attention,” Max admitted, then extended her hand toward Brooke. “I’m sorry for that.”

  The woman stared at her hand for a long few seconds, and Max braced herself for another rejection, but just when she was about to retreat once more, Brooke clasped her hand.

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Sometime, if you have time, I’d love to talk about the physics of curling,” Max said. “There’s a lot I don’t know.”

  “There’s a lot no one knows,” Brooke said, her soft brown eyes lighting up behind the square lenses of her glasses. “There’s actually a ton of controversy around why sweeping works at all and how much value it actually has—”

  “And, we’re going to lay that to rest right now,” Callie cut back in. “Set ’em up again.”

  At the command, her team snapped back to attention, shuffling Ella’s rock back down the ice. Callie moved another one even with the first guard, but a couple of feet farther to the right. “Last lesson for today. Sometimes we need the rock to go straight, sometimes we need it to curl, and sometimes we need it to do one, then the other.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “For the shot I’m calling now, I want it to shoot the gap between these two guards.”

  “And, for that, you need it to go straight out wide,” Max supplied.

  “Yes, but then once I’m sure it will clear them both, I want it to curl in behind the first guard and sit there.”

  “Which will leave it protected from a clean takeout shot.”

  “Exactly.”

  As Callie called the shot, Max envisioned the play, for the first time seeing clearly the path a rock would have to take to accomplish the goal. If not for the lesson on sweeping, she would’ve thought that type of turnaround defied the laws of physics. Now she understood they were actually using those laws to their advantage.

  Sure enough, as Ella’s rock shot straight toward the outside guard, it barely veered from its path, but as it began to slow, the rotation became more pronounced.

  “Gotta curl,” Callie called, and Max finally understood the command to mean “let it slow down.”

  And it did. It slowed, and it spun, until the new trajectory sent it right between the guards like a perfect field goal, but as soon as it angled in, Callie shouted, “Yep, yep, yep. Hard!”

  She, Layla, and Brooke all scrubbed the ice with everything in them. Max watched, transfixed, as Callie leaned in with her team, a fierce look of determination creasing her beautiful features, as the hard line of her body pressed into the broom. She flashed back to the strength of the flexing biceps she’d curled her fingers around, and a flash of heat spread through her. Strength, speed, ferocity, heat—none of those attributes meshed with the ideas she’d had about curling when she’d arrived in Buffalo, and maybe they still didn’t apply to the sport as a whole. But there was no denying now that they absolutely fit Callie Mulligan.

&n
bsp; “Happy Thanksgiving,” Callie said, as she slid by on her way down the ice.

  Max snorted. “What are you doing here?”

  “Working off the tryptophan. What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see if you’d be here on a national holiday.”

  “You mean a day when we celebrate what we’re thankful for, and all my other jobs are closed?” Callie set herself back up in the hack. “Where else would I be?”

  “Don’t you have a family?” Max asked. “And I know you’ve got friends.”

  “Sure, and I saw them all afternoon.” She pushed off and enjoyed the seconds of total immersion before she released the stone and rose to track its progress. “My mother pulled the turkey out of the oven at noon on the nose. Layla stopped by for the first helping, which we devoured with a multitude of side dishes before the football started at one. We all fell asleep in the living room by two and woke up feeling sluggish by three.”

  Max glanced at her watch. “Which put you at the club by four.”

  “Not a bad day, huh?”

  Max shrugged, and Callie slowed her path back down the ice to take a better look at her. She wore charcoal slacks with a soft blue sweater and a dapper scarf, which hung along the lapels of her chic gray coat. She hadn’t traded her loafers for tennis shoes yet, and as usual her short dark hair was perfectly feathered back at her temples so as not to obscure even an inch of her classically smooth face. She would’ve cut a strikingly handsome figure if not for the dark smudges under her icy eyes.

  “What about you?” Callie asked, careful to keep her voice casual. “Didn’t go home to see family?”

  Max started to roll her eyes, then seemed to catch herself. “No, we’re not big holiday people. Or family people, really.”

  “Wait, then what did you do for lunch today?”

  “I had some leftover Chinese takeout that I heated up in my hotel room.”