Rachel Gibson - See Jane Score

“You getting me fired, you mean?”

He reached for his sunglasses and stuck them in the pocket of his leather bomber jacket. His cheeks were flushed, his hair messed, and behind him at the curb he’d parked his motorcycle. “I didn’t get you fired. Not directly anyway.” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “Are you going to invite me inside?”

Her hair was in a towel and the cold air was giving her goose bumps. She decided to let him in. “Have a seat,” she said as he followed her into the living room of her apartment. She left for a moment to take the towel from her head and to brush the tangles from her hair. Of all the men in the world, Luc was the last man she’d thought would ever be standing in her living room.

She brushed and towel-dried her hair the best she could, and for one brief moment she thought of maybe putting on some mascara and lip gloss. But she dismissed the thought just as quickly. She did, however, exchange her glasses for her contact lenses.

With her hair damp and the ends starting to curl, she returned to the living room. Luc stood with his back to her, studying a few photographs sitting on her mantel. His jacket lay on the sofa, and he wore a white dress shirt, the cuffs folded up his thick forearms. One wide pleat ran down the middle of his back and was tucked into a pair of Lucky Brand jeans. His wallet bulged one back pocket and the denim hugged his butt. He looked over his shoulder at her, his blue gaze moving from her bare feet, up her jeans and T-shirt to her face.

“Who’s this?” he asked and pointed to the middle photo of her and Caroline in their caps and gowns standing on the porch of her father’s house in Tacoma.

“That’s my best friend Caroline and me the night we graduated from Mt. Tahoma High School.”

“So you’ve lived around here all your life?”

“Yep.”

“You haven’t changed that much.”

She stood next to him. “I’m a lot older these days.”

He looked across his shoulder at her. “How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

He flashed a white smile that slid past her defenses, warmed her up, and curled her toes into the beige Berber carpet. “That old?” he asked. “You look pretty good for your age.”

Oh, God. She didn’t want to read more into that statement than he’d intended, which she was certain was absolutely nothing. She didn’t want him to dazzle her with a smile. She didn’t want to feel tingles or warm flushes or have bad sinful thoughts. “Why are you here, Luc?”

“I got a call from Darby Hogue.” He shoved one hand in the front pocket of those Lucky jeans and rested his weight on one foot. “He told me they’d offered you your job back and you turned them down.”

She hadn’t turned them down. She’d said she’d think about it. “What does that have to do with you?”

“Darby thought I could talk you into coming back.”

“You? You think I’m the archangel of gloom and doom.”

“You’re a cute archangel of doom.”

Oh, boy. “You were the wrong choice. I don’t-” she stopped because she couldn’t lie and say she didn’t like him. She did. Even though she didn’t want to like him. So she settled on a half lie. “I don’t know if I even like you.”

He chuckled as if he knew she lied. “That’s what I told Darby.” The corners of his mouth slid into a smile filled with charm, and he rocked back on his heels. “But he thought I could change your mind.”

“I doubt it.”

“I figured you might say that.” He walked to the couch and pulled something out of the pocket of his leather jacket. “So I brought you a peace offering.”

He handed her a thin trade-sized paperback with a pink ribbon tied around it. Hockey Talk: The Jargon, the Lore, the Stuff You’ll Never Learn from TV.

Shocked, she took it from him. “You did this?”

“Yeah, and I had the girl at the bookstore put that bow on it.”

He’d given her a gift. A peace offering. Something she could actually use. Not something generic men typically gave women, like flowers or chocolate or cheap underwear. He’d given it some thought. He’d paid attention. To her.

“They didn’t have black ribbon, so she had to use pink.”

Jane’s heart pinched in her chest and she knew she was in trouble. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She looked up past his smile and into his blue eyes. Big bad trouble. The kind all wrapped up in a white shirt and Lucky jeans. The kind that dated Barbie Dolls because he could.

Deke: To Outmaneuver an Opponent

Luc looked down into Jane’s green eyes, and he knew his gift had worked. He’d softened her up, maneuvered her right where he wanted. But just before he had her completely and she dropped into his hand like a puck from heaven, her gaze turned wary. She took a step back and skepticism pulled her brows together.

“Did Darby tell you to butter me up with this?” she asked and held up the book.

Damn. “No.” The little dweeb had suggested he bring her flowers, but the book had been Luc’s idea. “That was my idea, but everyone wants you to come back and cover the games.”

“I find it hard to believe that everyone wants me back. Especially the coaches.”

She was right. Not everyone did want her back, especially management. After the disgraceful loss in San Jose, the team had been looking for something to blame. Something in the air or the alignment of the stars. Something other than their pathetic performance. That something had been Jane. They’d groused and bitched in the locker room, but none of them had thought she’d get fired. Especially Luc. After she’d told him she’d needed the job, he’d been able to think of little else but Jane living on the streets because of something he’d said. And looking at the size of her apartment, she probably did need the money. It was clean and, surprisingly enough, not everything was black, but the whole thing could easily fit into his living room. He was glad he’d come.

“I told management you’re our good-luck charm,” he said, which was true. After she’d called him a big dumb dodo, of all things, he’d played one of the best games of his life. And Bressler pulled his first hat trick of the season after she’d shaken his hand.

A frown pulled at the corners of her lips. “Do you really believe that?”

Luc never questioned the source of good luck. “Of course, but mostly I’m here because I know what it’s like to need a job and have the opportunity taken from you.”

Jane looked down at her bare feet and Luc studied the part in her damp hair. The ends had begun to curl about her shoulders as if she’d twisted them around her finger. He wondered what they’d feel like curled around his own finger. Standing so close, he was reminded of how short she was. How small her shoulders, and how young she looked in her University of Washington T-shirt. Not for the first time he noticed her nipples poking at the front of her shirt, and again he wondered if she was cold or turned on. Warmth spread through his veins and settled in his groin. He felt himself get semi-hard and was shocked as hell at his response to Jane Alcott. She was short and flat-chested and too smart. Despite all of that, he heard himself say, “Maybe we could start over. Forget about the first time we met when I offered to piss in your coffee.”

She looked up again. Her skin was smooth and flawless and her lips full and pink. He wondered if her cheeks were as soft as they looked and he lowered his gaze to her mouth. No, she wasn’t his kind of woman, but there was something about her that intrigued him. Perhaps it was her humor and her grit. Perhaps it was nothing more than her puckered nipples and his sudden interest in her soft curls.

“Actually, that wasn’t the first time we met,” she said.

He raised his gaze to her eyes. Shit. There were several months of his life that were a blur to him. When he’d done things he’d only heard or read about later. He hadn’t lived in Seattle at that time, but he’d certainly traveled with Detroit here. He was almost afraid of the answer, but he had to ask. “When did we meet?”

“Last summer at a press party.”

Relief poured through him and he almost laughed. He would have remembered if he’d slept with Jane last summer. It was the summer before that his memory got a bit dicey. “The press party at the Four Seasons?”

“No, at the Key Arena.”

He tilted his head back and looked at her. “There were a lot of people there that night, but I’m surprised I didn’t remember you,” he said, even though he wasn’t at all surprised. Jane wasn’t the sort of woman he would have remembered on first meeting. And yeah, he knew what that said about him, and he still didn’t really care. He lived his life a certain way, looked at things a certain way. He’d lived it so long, he was comfortable with himself. “But maybe not all that surprising, since you were probably wearing black,” he joked.

“I remember exactly what you were wearing,” she said and moved across the room to the kitchen. “Dark suit, red tie, gold watch, and a blond woman.”

He let his gaze slide down her back to her round booty. Everything about Jane was small but her attitude. “Were you jealous?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Of the watch?”

“That too.”

Instead of answering, she moved into the kitchen and asked, “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks. I don’t drink caffeine.” He followed but stopped in the doorway of the narrow kitchen. “Are you going to take your job back?”

She set the book he’d given her on the counter and poured coffee into a tall Starbucks mug. “I might.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a quart of milk. The door had Post-Its stuck all over it with notes reminding her to buy everything from pickles and saltines to Comet. “How much is it worth?” she asked as she put the milk away and shut the refrigerator.