This evening he wore black leather pants and a silk shirt with red flames and purple skulls on it. Leather pants on any man but Lenny Kravitz was a huge mistake, but she doubted even Lenny could pull off the shirt. Looking at him, Jane understood why the Chinooks might question Darby’s sexual orientation.

They took a taxi from the hotel to Big Buddy’s, a little bar more on the outskirts of the downtown area. The sun was just setting on a cloudless night, and the wind carried a hint of rain and dust. A crisp breeze brushed Jane’s cheeks as she and Darby exited the taxi. A faded sign above the door read, “Voted Best Ribs.” She almost tripped on the uneven sidewalk and wondered why the Chinooks had chosen such a dive.

Inside the building, several television sets hung suspended in the corners, while behind the bar a red and blue Budweiser sign glowed. A string of lights left over from Christmas was still taped to the mirror. It smelled of smoke and booze, barbeque sauce and roasted meat. If Jane hadn’t already eaten, her stomach would have growled.

Jane knew that by being seen with Darby, she ran the risk of adding fuel to the rumor that they were lovers, but she also figured that there was nothing she could do about it. And she wondered which was worse, being seen as the lover of a man who dressed like a pimp, or as the mistress of Virgil Duffy, a man old enough to be her grandfather.

Pinball machines pinged and flashed and she recognized two Chinooks playing air hockey in the corner. About five Seattle players sat at the bar, watching the Rangers battle it out with the Devils. Another half dozen sat at a table with a pitcher of beer, empty tubs of coleslaw, and Fred Flintstone-sized piles of stripped rib bones.

“Hey, guys,” Darby called out. At the sound of his voice, they turned their attention toward Darby and Jane. The hockey players looked like cavemen after feasting on a woolly mammoth, all full and content and sluggish, but they didn’t look too happy to see Darby, and even less happy to see her.

“Jane and I felt like a beer,” he continued as if he didn’t notice. He pulled out a chair for her, and she sat next to Bruce Fish and across from the rookie with the blond Mohawk. Darby sat to her left at the head of the table. The red flames and purple skulls on his shirt were subdued somewhat by the dim lighting.

A waitress with a tight Big Buddy’s T-shirt set two cocktail napkins on the table and took Darby’s order. As soon as he uttered the word Corona, he was instantly carded. A scowl drew his red brows together as he flashed his identification.

“That’s fake,” someone down the table said. “He’s only twelve.”

“I’m older than you, Peluso,” Darby grumbled and shoved his driver’s license back into his wallet.

The waitress turned her attention to Jane.

“Bet she orders a margarita,” Fishy said out of the corner of his mouth.

“Or one of those wine spritzers,” someone else added.

“Something fruity.”

Jane looked up into the shadowy face of the waitress. “Do you have Bombay Sapphire gin?”

“Sure do.”

“Fabulous. I’d like a dirty martini with three olives, please.” She glanced at the stunned faces around her and smiled. “A girl’s gotta get her daily allowance of green veggies.”

Bruce Fish laughed. “Maybe you should order a Bloody Mary for the celery.”

Jane grimaced and shook her head. “I don’t like tomato juice.” She looked across the table at Daniel Holstrom. The lights from the bar cast a reddish pink glow in his white-blond Mohawk. She wondered if the young rookie was twenty-one yet. She had her doubts.

Two more waitresses in Big Buddy’s T-shirts appeared and cleared and cleaned the table. Jane half expected flirting and a proposition or two- jocks were notorious for rude behavior toward women-but nothing happened besides a few polite thank yous. Conversation took place over and around Jane and involved nothing more important or more pressing than the latest movie they’d seen and the weather. She wondered if they were trying to bore her to death. She suspected that might be the case, and she could honestly say the most interesting thing going on was the flash of lights on Daniel’s scalp.

Bruce must have noticed her attention to the Swede’s head because he asked, “What do you think of The Stromster’s hair?”

She thought she detected a blush on Daniel’s cheeks to match the pink tint of his hair. “I like a man who is so secure in his own masculinity that he can dare to be different.”

“He didn’t have much of a choice,” Darby explained as his beer and Jane’s martini arrived. “He’s new to the team this year, and anyone new has to go through initiation.”

The Stromster nodded as if this made perfect sense.

“My first year,” Darby continued, “they emptied their dirty laundry in my car.”

The guys around the table laughed, deep ha-ha-ha-has.

“My first season was with the Rangers and they shaved my head and buried my cup in the ice machine,” Peter Peluso confessed.

Bruce sucked in his breath, and she suspected he might have put a protective hand over his crotch if she hadn’t been sitting next to him. “That’s harsh,” he said. “My rookie season was spent in Toronto, and I got thrown outside in my underwear a lot. Talk about colder than a well digger’s ass.” He shivered to prove his point.

“Wow,” Jane said and took a sip of her drink. “Now I feel lucky that you boys just left me a dead mouse and call me all night.”

Several pairs of guilty eyes looked at her, then slid away.

“How’s Taylor Lee?” she asked Fishy, deciding to let them all off the hook-for now. Just as she suspected he would, he launched into his daughter’s most recent accomplishments, which began with toilet training and ended with a repeat of the telephone conversation he’d had with his two-year-old earlier that evening.

Since she’d met Bruce that first morning, she’d done a little reading on him. She’d discovered that he was going through a real messy divorce, and she wasn’t all that surprised. Now that she’d live a small sample of their lives, she imagined it would be difficult to keep a family together while on the road so much. Especially given the rink bunnies that hung out in the lobby bars.

At first Jane hadn’t noticed them, but it hadn’t taken her long to pick up on who they were, and now she spotted them easily. They dressed in tight clothes, their bodies on display, and they all had that man-eater look in their eyes.

“Anyone want to play darts?” Rob Sutter asked as he approached the table.

Before anyone could speak, Jane was on her feet. “I do,” she said, and by the scowl on the Hammer’s face, it was clear he’d meant anyone but her.

“Just don’t expect me to let you win,” he said.

Hustling darts had helped Jane put herself through college. She didn’t expect anyone to let her win. She made her eyes go wide as she reached for her drink. “Aren’t you going to go easy on me because I’m a girl?”

“I don’t give quarter to girls.”

With her free hand, she took the extra set of darts and headed across the bar. The top of her head didn’t even reach his shoulder. The Hammer didn’t know it, but he was about to get the big hurt he so richly deserved. “Will you at least tell me the rules?”

He quickly explained how to play 501, which, of course, she already knew. But she asked questions like she’d never played before, and he was magnanimous enough to let her go first.

“Thanks,” she said as she put her martini on a nearby table and took her place at the taped toe line. Nailed to the wall a little over seven feet away, the board was lit from above. She rolled the shaft of the cheap house dart between her fingers, testing the weight. She preferred a ninety-eight percent tungsten dart with an aluminum shaft and Ribtex flights. Like the set she owned. The difference between the brass darts she held in her hands and the darts resting in their custom-made box at home was the difference between a Ford Taurus and a Ferrari.

She leaned way over the line, held the dart wrong, and glanced down the shaft as if she were sighting in a rifle. At the last second before release, she stopped. “Don’t you guys usually bet or something?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to take your money.” He looked at her and smiled as if he’d thought up something really funny. “But we could play for drinks. Whoever loses has to buy all the guys a beer.”

She contrived to look worried. “Oh. Hmm. Well, I’ve only got a fifty. Do you think that will cover it?”

“That ought to be enough,” he said, with all the arrogance of a man assured of his own success. And for the next half hour, Jane let him think he was winning too. Some of the other players gathered around to watch and heckle, but once she was behind by two hundred points and Rob was beginning to feel sorry for her, she got to work and beat him in four turns at the board. Darts were serious business, and she took serious pleasure in trouncing the Hammer.

“Where did you learn to play like that?” he asked.

“Beginner’s luck.” She downed the last of her drink. “Who’s next?”

“I’ll take you on.” Luc Martineau stepped out of the darkness and took the darts from Rob. The light from the bar chased varying degrees of shadows across his broad shoulders and the side of his face. Raindrops shone in his hair and the scent of the cool night breeze clung to him.

“Watch out, Luc, she’s a hustler,” Rob warned.

“Is that right?” One corner of Luc’s mouth lifted. “Are you a hustler, Ace?”

“Just because I beat the Hammer, I’m automatically a hustler?”

“No. You let poor Rob think he was winning and then you coldcocked him. That makes you a hustler.”

She tried not to smile, but she failed. “Are you scared?”