When Jane finally forced herself from bed the next morning, she pulled on her laundry-day underwear and sweatsuit and hauled her dirty clothes to the Laundromat. As the machines washed and spun, she flipped open a People magazine and caught up on her reading.

There was no place she had to be today. No deadline breathing down her neck. She didn’t have anything work-related until tomorrow night’s game. She bought a Coke from the vending machine, sat back in a hard plastic chair, and enjoyed the mundane pleasure of watching her darks tumble dry. She grabbed the real estate section from the local newspaper and checked out properties for sale. With her added income from the hockey columns, she estimated that by summer she’d have enough money saved to put twenty percent down on a home of her own, but the more she looked, the more discouraged she got. Two hundred thousand sure didn’t buy much these days.

On the way home, she stopped at the grocery store to pick up a week’s worth of food. She had today off, but tomorrow the Chinooks were playing the Chicago Blackhawks at Key Arena. They had home games Thursday, Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday nights. Three days off after that, then it was back on the road. Back on the jet. Back on the bus and back to sleeping in hotel rooms.

Reporting the Chinooks’ six-four loss to the Sharks was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. After she’d trash-talked and played darts with them, she felt a bit like a traitor, but she’d had a job to do.

And Luc… watching the horror unfold in the net had almost been as bad as watching him sitting on the bench. Staring straight ahead, his handsome features void of expression. She’d felt bad for him. She’d felt bad that she had to be the one to report the details, but again, she’d had a job to do, and she’d done it.

When she returned home, there was a message on her machine from Leonard Callaway asking her to meet him the following morning in his office at the Times. She didn’t think the message bode well for her further employment as a sports reporter.

And she was right. He fired her. “We’ve decided it’s best if you no longer cover the Chinooks games. Jeff Noonan is going to fill in for Chris,” Leonard said.

The paper was letting Jane go and giving her job to the Nooner. “Why? What happened?”

“I think it’s best if we don’t get into that.”

The Chinooks hadn’t played their best games the past week, ending in Luc’s spectacular blowout. “They think I jinxed them. Don’t they?”

“We knew it was a possibility.”

Good-bye to her chance to write an important article. Good-bye to twenty-percent down on her own home. And all because some stupid hockey players thought she was bad luck. Well, she couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned or that she wasn’t half expecting it. Still, knowing it didn’t make it any easier to take. “Which players think I brought them bad luck? Luc Martineau?”

“Let’s not get into that,” Leonard said, but he didn’t deny it.

His silence hurt more than it should. Luc was nothing to her, and she was certainly nothing to him. Less than nothing. He’d never wanted her to travel with the team in the first place, and she was sure he was behind her getting the boot. Jane pushed up the corners of her mouth when what she really wanted was to scream and yell and threaten to sue for wrongful termination or sexism or… or… something. She might even have a case too. But might wasn’t a good enough guarantee, and she’d learned long ago not to let her hot temper burn bridges. She still had the Single Girl column to write for the Times.

“Well, thank you for the opportunity to write the sports column,” she said and shook Leonard’s hand. “Traveling with the Chinooks was an experience I won’t forget.”

She kept her smile on her face until she left the building. She was so angry, she wanted to hit someone. Someone with blue eyes and a horseshoe tattooed above his private parts.

And betrayed. She’d thought she’d made progress, but the players had turned on her. Maybe if she hadn’t beat them at darts, talked trash, and they hadn’t called her Sharky, she wouldn’t feel so betrayed now. But she did. She’d even felt bad for doing her job and reporting the facts of their last game. And this was how they repaid her? She hoped they got athlete’s foot. All at the same time.

For the next two days, she didn’t leave her apartment. She was so depressed she cleaned all the cupboards. While she recaulked the bathroom, she cranked the volume on the television and felt only slightly vindicated when she heard that the Chinooks lost to the Blackhawks four to three.

Who would they blame now?

By the third day, her anger hadn’t diminished, and she knew there was only one way to get rid of it. She had to confront the players if she was to reclaim her dignity.

She knew they would be at the Key Arena for the game-day skate, and before she could talk herself out of it, she dressed in her jeans and black sweater and drove into Seattle.

She entered on the mezzanine level, and her gaze immediately fell on the empty net. Only a few players practiced on the ice below, and with her stomach in knots, she walked down the steps and headed for the locker room.

“Hello, Fishy,” she said as she strolled toward him in the tunnel, a blowtorch in his hand as he warmed the blade of his stick.

He looked up and shut off the torch.

“Are the guys in the locker room?” she asked.

“Most of them.”

“Is Luc in there?”

“I don’t know, but he doesn’t like to talk on game days.”

Too damn bad. The soles of her boots squeaked on the rubber mats in the hallway and heads swiveled in her direction when she walked into the room. She raised a hand. “Keep your pants up, gentlemen,” she said as she moved to stand in the middle of the half-naked players. “I’ll just take a moment of your time, and I’d prefer you not do your synchronized jock-dropping thing.”

She turned to face them and stood with her shoulders straight and her head high. She didn’t see Luc. The rat bastard was probably hiding. “I’m sure you’ve all heard that I will no longer be covering Chinooks games, and I wanted to let you know that I will not forget our time together. Traveling with you guys was… interesting.” She walked to Captain Mark Bressler and stuck out her hand. “Good luck with your game tonight, Hitman.”

He looked at her a moment as if she made the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound center a bit nervous. “Ah, thanks,” he said and finally shook her hand. “Are you going to be in the seats tonight?”

She dropped her hand to her side. “No. I have other plans.”

She turned to face the room one last time. “Good-bye, gentlemen, good luck, and I hope this is your year to win the Stanley Cup.” She even managed a smile before she turned to go. She’d done it, she thought as she walked down the hall. They hadn’t chased her away with her tail between her legs. She’d shown them that she had class and dignity and that she was magnanimous too.

She hoped they all got jock itch. Really, really bad jock itch. She looked down at the rubber mats as she walked into the tunnel, but she stopped short when she came face to naked chest with sculpted muscles, ripped abs, and a horseshoe tattoo rising out of a pair of hockey shorts. Luc Martineau. Her gaze lifted up his damp chest to his chin and mouth, up the deep furrow of his top lip, past his straight nose to the beautiful baby blues staring back at her.

“You!” she said.

One brow rose slowly up his forehead and her temper exploded.

“You did this to me,” she said. “I know you did. I guess it didn’t matter to you that I actually needed that job. You screw up in the net and I’m out.” She felt the backs of her eyes sting and that made her all the madder. “Who did you blame your loss on last night? And if you lose tonight, who will you blame? You… you…” she stammered. One rational part of her brain told her to shut up, to quit while she was ahead. To just walk around him and leave while she still had her dignity.

Too bad she was too far gone to listen to that part of her brain.


“You called him a big dumb dodo?” Caroline asked later that night as the two of them sat on Jane’s couch watching the gas fireplace lick the fake logs. “Why didn’t you go for broke and call him a poo-poo head too?”

Jane groaned. Hours later she was still writhing with embarrassment. “Don’t,” she pleaded and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “The only consolation I have is that I will never see Luc Martineau again.” But she didn’t ever think she’d forget the look on his face. Kind of stunned surprise, followed by laughter. She’d wanted to die right there, but she couldn’t even blame him for laughing at her. He probably hadn’t been called a big dumb dodo since grade school.

“Bummer,” Caroline said as she raised a glass of wine to her lips. She’d pulled her shiny blond hair back into a perfect ponytail and, as always, looked gorgeous. “I thought maybe you could introduce me to Rob Sutter.”

“The Hammer?” Jane shook her head and took a drink of her gin and tonic. “His nose is always broken and he always has a black eye.”

Caroline smiled and got a little dreamy-eyed. “I know.”

“He’s married and has a baby.”

“Hmm, well, someone single, then.”

“I thought you had a new man.”

“I do, but it’s not going to work out.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said through a sigh and put her wine on the cherrywood coffee table. “Lenny is handsome and rich but soooo boring.”

Which meant he was probably normal and didn’t need fixing. Caroline was a born fixer-upper.

“Do you want to turn on the game and watch it?” Caroline asked.

Jane shook her head. “Nah.” She’d been tempted, real tempted, to grab the remote and surf by the game to see who was winning. But that would only make everything worse.