Rachel Gibson - See Jane Score

He set everything in the sink, and instead of answering, he took her full glass of milk and drained it. When he lowered the glass again, she repeated her question. “Why don’t you want me traveling with the team?”

His blue eyes stared into hers as he sucked his milk mustache from his top lip, and she had a feeling his answer was very important. To her. Because, though she wished it weren’t happening, and no matter how hard she tried to prevent it, she was falling in love with Luc. The harder she resisted, the more the force of it pulled her under.

“I’m leaving,” Marie said as she reentered the kitchen.

For a few brief moments, Luc continued to look at Jane before dragging his gaze to his sister. “Do you need money?” he asked and set the glass in the sink.

“I have a twenty. That ought to cover it.” Marie shrugged into a snowboarding jacket and pulled her hair from the back collar. “I might spend the night with Hanna. She has to ask her mom, though.”

“Let me know either way.”

“I will.” She zipped up her coat and bade Jane good-bye. As Jane watched Luc walk his sister to the door, her gaze fell on her briefcase and she was reminded why she was in his apartment in the first place. They might be attracted to each other, but they were both professionals and she was here to do a job. She wasn’t his kind of woman, and she didn’t want to fall in love with a man who would break her heart like a Dorito.

She moved from the kitchen to the sofa in the living room. She unzipped her briefcase and pulled out a pad of paper and her tape recorder. Jane didn’t want her heart broken. She didn’t want to love Luc Martineau, but each beat of her heart told her it was too late.

When Luc shut the door behind Marie, Jane looked up at him. “Ready to get busy?” she asked.

“Are we officially on the clock?”

“Yep.” She took a pen from the pocket of her briefcase.

He moved toward her, his long stride closing the distance between them. What was it about him walking toward her, looking at her through his beautiful blue eyes, that melted her beneath his molten mojo?

“Where do you want to do it?” she asked.

“Now, there’s a question,” he said through a warm sexy smile.

Hat Trick: Player Scores Three Goals in One Night

“Are you going to sexually harass me?”

Luc folded his arms across his chest and stared down at Jane. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yes. I’m here to interview you for the Times.” Damn. Her shoulders straight, her gaze direct, she was all business. Too bad. He liked harassing her. “Have a seat.” It had been a long time since Luc had seen a woman other than Gloria Jackson in his home. Since before Marie had come to live with him.

Earlier, when he’d first looked up and Jane had been standing in the living room, it had been a shock to see her, surrounded by his things. Like it had been in the beginning when he’d looked around and had seen her sitting on the team jet or bus. An out-of-place female in an unexpected place. Now, as then, it didn’t take long before she seemed to fit. As if she’d always belonged.

He took a seat at one end of the couch and Jane sat in the middle. Several dark curls fell across her temple and cheek as she looked at the notepad and tape recorder in her lap. She wore her usual black pants and white blouse, and he knew her skin was as soft as it looked.

“How much of your past do you want to talk about?” she began, keeping her head bent over her notebook as she asked her first question.

“None.”

“There’s been a lot written about it. You could clear the air.”

“The less said about it, the better.”

“Which bothers you the most, the stuff written about you that is true?” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Or the total fabrications?”

No one had ever asked him that question, and he thought about that for a moment. “Probably the stuff that isn’t true.”

“Even if it’s flattering?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She sucked in a breath and blew it out. “The women. The all-night sex stuff.”

He was a little disappointed that she would bring it up. Since she hadn’t turned on her tape recorder yet, he said, “There was never any all night sex. If I stayed up all night, it was because I was high.”

She looked down at her lap again and chewed on the inside of her lip. “Most men would probably be flattered if they were portrayed as some sort of sexual marathoner.”

He figured he must trust her or he wouldn’t have told her as much as he had. So much so that he added, “If I was high and up all night, I wasn’t up sexually, if you get my meaning.”

“So none of that stuff about you and the different women is flattering?”

He wondered if she asked because she was a bit of a prude and was intrigued by that sort of thing. “Not really. I’m trying to rebuild my career and that shit gets in the way of what’s important.”

“Oh.” She clicked her pen and flipped on her tape recorder. “In the Hockey News’s ranking of the top fifty players so far this season, you are number six, second among goaltenders,” she said, moving the interview away from his private life. “Last year you didn’t make the list at all. What do you think contributed to your startling improvement over last season?”

She had to be kidding. “I didn’t improve. I didn’t play much last season.”

“A lot has been made this year about your comeback from your injury.” She sounded stiff, as if she were nervous, which was a bit of a surprise. He didn’t think there was much on the planet that made her nervous. “What has been the single biggest obstacle for you?” she asked.

“Getting a chance to play again.”

She pushed her hair behind her ear and glanced up at him. “How are the knees?”

“One hundred percent,” he lied. His knees would never be what they had been before the injury. He’d have to live with the pain and worry as long as he played.

“I’ve read that when you started out in the junior league in Edmonton, you played center. What made you decide to become a goalie?”

Apparently she’d researched more than his sex life. For some reason, that didn’t irritate him like it used to. “I played center from about the age of five to twelve. Our team goalie quit midseason and the coach looked around and said, ‘Luc, get between the pipes. You’re goalie.’”

She laughed and seemed to relax a bit. “Really? You weren’t born with a burning desire to stop pucks with your head?”

He liked her laugh. It was sincere and shone from her green eyes. “No, but I got real good real fast so I wouldn’t get a concussion.”

She scribbled something on the notepad. “Did you ever think of going back to your former position?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Once I was in the net, I never wanted to leave. I never even thought about it.”

She looked back up at him. “Did you know that you say aboot instead of about?”

“Still? I’ve been working on that.”

“Don’t. I like it.”

And he liked her. A lot more than he knew was wise, but looking at her, with her shiny hair and pink lips, he suddenly didn’t care about being wise. “Then I guess I won’t work on it-eh?” he said like a true son of Edmonton.

A smile tugged at both corners of her mouth, and she turned her attention back to the notebook on her lap. “Some people have said that goalies are different from other players. That you are a whole different breed. Would you agree?”

“That’s probably true to a certain degree.” He leaned farther back into the sofa and rested his arm along the top. “We play a different game than the other players. Hockey is a team sport, except for the guy between the pipes. A goaltender plays much more one-on-one. And if we mess up, there’s no one to cover for us.”

“Lights don’t flash and the crowd doesn’t cheer when one gets by the wingers?” she asked.

“Exactly.”

“How long does it take you to shake off a loss?”

“That depends on the loss. I review the game tape, figure out how to do it better next time, and am usually over it the next day.”

“What are your pregame rituals?”

He remained silent until she finally turned her head toward him, then he asked, “Besides you calling me a dodo?”

“I’m not printing that.”

“Hypocrite.”

She shrugged. “Sue me.”

There were several things he could see himself doing to her, but suing her wasn’t one of them. “I eat a lot of protein and iron the night before and the day of the game.”

“Retired goalie Glenn Hall was quoted as saying he hated every minute that he played. How do you feel about the position?”

Interesting question, he thought as he tilted his head and studied Jane. How did he feel about it? Sometimes he hated it as much as Hall had. Sometimes it was better than sex. “On the ice I am very focused and competitive. There is no greater feeling than when I’m in my zone, blocking shots and snagging pucks from midair. Yeah, I love what I do.”

She wrote something in the notebook, then flipped the page. She raised the pen and pressed it to her bottom lip, drawing Luc’s attention to her mouth.

There was something about Jane that intrigued him more than any woman he’d ever known. Something more than the contradictions between Jane the prude, and the Jane who kissed like a porn queen. Something that made him want to run his fingers through her shiny curls and hold her face in his palms. Luc had been with many beautiful women in his life, physically perfect women, but he’d always been in control of his desire. Except with Jane. Skinny little Jane, with her small breasts and wild curls and deep green eyes that could look through him and see that he was up to absolutely no good. Ever since the night of the banquet when he’d kissed her, he’d envisioned taking off her clothes and exploring her body with his hands and mouth. He’d tried to avoid her, and instead he’d come close to having sex with her against a parking garage wall. And his desire for her had only gotten stronger over the past few days.