“Do I have to, Coach? Can’t I just leave before she gets home?”

“No.” Mark moved to the threshold and motioned for Derek to precede him. The boy moved out of the way, and Mark gazed down into Chelsea’s face. “You and I will talk later.”

She stuck her chin up in the air. “I never told him to come over and practice.”

He looked into the variegated blue in her eyes. “Not about that.”

“About what?”

He lowered his attention to her mouth. “About what happened before Derek rang the doorbell.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that.” Although he really didn’t know what there was to say about that. Other than he was sorry and it wouldn’t happen again.

He tore his gaze from his assistant’s mouth and followed the kid down the hall. Derek’s socks slid down his skinny shins as he walked. “Are you in hockey camp this year?”

Derek shook his head. “My mom said we don’t got the money this year.”

Mark knew that a lot of kids got their hockey camp fee paid for through one of the Chinooks’ various organizations. He was fairly sure Derek had been one of those kids last year. “Didn’t you get a scholarship?”

“Not this year.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know.”

Mark walked beside Derek into the kitchen. The light bounced off the kid’s red hair, glasses, and the white, white skin between all those freckles.

“What name did we pick out for you last year?” he asked as he moved to the refrigerator and opened it.

Derek set his skates on the floor beside his feet. “The Hackster.”

“That’s right.” At camp, each kid got a hockey name. Derek was the Hackster for the way he hacked at the puck. Mark pulled out a bottle of green Gatorade and opened it with the palm of his right hand.

“Does it hurt?”

Mark looked up. “What?”

“Your hand.”

He tossed the cap on the granite island and flexed his fingers. The middle one stayed perfectly stiff. “It kind of aches sometimes. Not as much as it used to.” He handed Derek the bottle.

“Does your middle finger bend?”

Mark held up his hand and showed the kid. “Nope. It stays like this no matter what.”

“That’s cool.”

He laughed. “You think so?”

“Yep. You can flip people off and not get in trouble.” Derek took a long drink until he ran out of breath and lowered the bottle. “The school can’t call your mom,” he said between gasps, “’cause it’s not your fault.”

True. In his case, the school would have called his grandmother, who would have told his father, who would have skinned his behind.

“Are you going to play hockey again?”

Mark shook his head and looked down at the cap on the granite island. His agent had called him earlier that afternoon about possibly commentating for ESPN. “Afraid not.” While he wasn’t ruling it out, he’d wait for a solid offer. He wasn’t all that excited about sitting in a studio and talking about the game rather than being on the ice where the action took place. But as his agent had pointed out, job offers for Mark Bressler were drying up as fast as endorsement deals.

“My mom took me to a playoffs game against Detroit. We won three to one.” Derek took another drink, then pushed his glasses up. “Ty Savage put a hit on McCarty in retaliation for the hit McCarty put on Savage in game four. It was a good game, but it would have been better if you’d been there.” Derek looked up. His eyes glazed with hero worship. “You’re the best player ever. Better than Savage.”

Mark wouldn’t go so far as to say he was better than Ty Savage. Well, maybe a little.

“Even better than Gretzky.”

Mark wasn’t so sure he was better than Gretzky, but one thing he was absolutely sure of: He’d never been comfortable in the hero role. He’d played hockey. He’d never saved a life or put his own life on the line. He’d never been a damn hero, but it seemed important to Derek. “Thanks, Hackster.”

Derek set his bottle on the island. “Do you want to see my stops?”

Not really, but when the kid looked at him like that, he couldn’t say no. “Sure.” He pointed to Derek’s skates. “You can show me on the front drive.” It was long enough that the kid wouldn’t run into anything, except Chelsea’s car. But really, what was one more dent?

Derek grabbed his skates, and the two of them headed toward the front of the house. As they moved past the office, Chelsea stuck her head out of the door.

“Can I talk to you, Mr. Bressler?”

He put his hand on Derek’s shoulder. “Go ahead and put your skates on outside. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Okay, Coach.”

He watched Derek close the big door behind him before he approached his assistant. He was sure she’d want to talk about the kiss. “I’m sorry about grabbing you earlier,” he said, getting it over with. “It won’t happen again.”

She pushed up the corners of her lips. “Let’s just forget it ever happened.”

“Can you do that?” In his experience, women didn’t tend to forget something like that. They liked to pick at it and dissect it for days.

“Oh yeah.” She chuckled and waved a hand over her head as if the memory had been swept away. Her movement raised the hem of her hideous dress up her thigh. The laugh was a little too fake to convince anyone, least of all him. “Not a big deal. I’d already forgotten it.”

Liar. He took a step closer and stopped a few inches from her, forcing her to tilt her head back and look up at him as if she was waiting for his kiss. “I’m glad you’re not going to make a big deal out of it. I was half asleep.” Now it was his turn to lie. “And all doped up.” He hadn’t taken any Vicodin since that morning.

Her smile fell. “I think we’ve already established that we are not even re-motely attracted to each other. You think my face is okay, but not my body. And while I find you…” She held up one hand and tilted it from one side to the other. “…okay, you’re rude and your personality sucks. And I like a man with a good personality.”

He doubted that like hell. “Right.”

“I do,” she tried to argue.

“You’re talking like a homely girl.” And she was far from homely. “Only homely girls like guys for their personality.”

She pointed at him. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. That was really rude.”

He shrugged. “Maybe, but it’s true.”

She frowned and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “What happened earlier isn’t what I needed to talk over with you. An agent from Windemere called regarding a house in Bellevue. It’s about to go on the market, and the agent wanted to show it to you first.”

“Set it up for next week.”

“She wanted to show it today.”

He shook his head and moved to the front door. The less time he spent with his assistant at the moment, the better. “I’ve got a date with the Hackster.”

“The kid is trouble.”

Derek wasn’t the only one. Mark looked over his shoulder at his cute little assistant with the sassy hair and smart mouth. The woman was nothing but trouble.

He opened the front door and closed it behind him. Derek sat on the porch fastening his skates. “That girl’s mean.”

“Chelsea?” He put the tip of his cane on the stair below and stepped down. Chelsea was many things. Annoying being the most prominent, but she wasn’t mean.

“She gave me the stink eye.”

Mark laughed. “She didn’t give you the stink eye.” Although she had given Mark the stink eye on one or more occasions. The day she’d found out that sending her to buy those condoms had been a fool’s errand came to mind. “She just told you what you didn’t want to hear. You shouldn’t just show up at someone’s house. It’s rude.” He pulled his cell out of his pocket and handed it to the boy. “Call your mom.”

Derek finished buckling his skates. “Oh, man.”

“Did you think I’d forgotten?”

“Yes.” The kid punched the seven numbers and waited for the axe to fall. The grim line of his mouth turned to a smile and he whispered, “It’s going to her voice mail.”

Lucky break.

“Hi Mom. I went on a bike ride and ran into Coach Mark. I’ll be home by six. Love you. Bye.”

Mark let Derek’s little lie go for now.

The kid shut the phone and handed it to Mark. “I can skate backward now. I’ve been practicing in my basement.”

Mark dumped his phone in his back pocket. “Show me.”

Derek stood, and his ankles fell inward. He held his arms out to the sides and slowly moved his skates back and forth until he rolled to the center of the drive. He used a one-foot drag to stop. Much better than the snowplow he’d been using last summer, but his balance still sucked.

“That’s pretty good.”

Derek smiled as the late afternoon sun caught fire in his hair and bounced off his white forehead.

“Watch this.” He bent his knees, hunched over, and put pressure on the in-sides of the skates. He rolled back a couple of inches and beamed like he’d just scored a hat trick. What Derek lacked in skill, he made up for in heart. Heart was the one indefinable element that made a good player into a great player. No amount of drills could teach heart.

“You’re getting there.” Too bad heart wasn’t enough. “But you’re bent over looking at your feet. What’s the number one rule in hockey?”

“No whining.”

“Number two.”

“Keep your head up.”

“That’s right.” He pointed his cane at the boy. “Have you been practicing your step-overs and jumps?”

Derek sighed. “No.”

He lowered his cane and looked at his watch. “Keep your head up and get going to the end of the driveway and back.”

Chelsea pushed back the heavy drapes and watched Derek lift one knee and then the other. He marched toward the end of the driveway, his arms out from his shoulders. As he attempted to turn around, he fell on his skinny behind.

“Keep your head up,” Mark yelled.

Derek dusted himself off and marched all the way back. He reminded Chelsea of Rupert Grint in the first Harry Potter movie. Only geekier.