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“Well, we did lose...”
Luke’s face twisted with disgust. “Are you kidding me? It’s the first game! None of you even have beards yet. You guys really buy into this ‘no shaving’ bull?”
The rookie stroked his pitiful day’s worth of stubble. “All I know is that I’m in this to win this, and if sportin’ a Grizzly Adams gets me closer to a championship, then I’m on it like STDs on a hooker.”
“You realize that three out of four women hate beards, right?” Luke pulled his skate off, hating that he’d actually reduced himself to quoting stats from that reporter.
Sillinger got a philosophical look on his face. “Shave and you get laid for a night. Do what it takes to score a championship ring, and you’ll be up to your balls in puck bunnies for the rest of your life. I mean, seriously, Mags. A woman with a body like that reporter’s names me her ‘hockey hottie of the month,’ and I’ll answer any stupid question she asks.”
Luke paused in the act of loosening his other skate. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you serious?” Sillinger’s surprise was obvious. “Holly Evans? The Women’s Hockey Network?”
Luke gave a bewildered shrug.
“Dude, she’s all over YouTube! She does this girly hockey-analysis show that’s gone viral. And in it, she named you the hottest hockey player in the league. The top brass practically begged her to be our web reporter during the play-offs! Do you guys believe this? Hot Stuff here doesn’t even know who Holly Evans is!”
The announcement set off a round of catcalls and ribbing. Luke turned to his linemate, Eric Jacobs. The stoic centerman gave a shrug of his big shoulders and shook his head. Luke was relieved he wasn’t the only one out of the loop on this.
“Okay, okay.” Luke waited for the dressing room to quiet. “Let’s stay focused, guys. The game might be over, but we’ve still got work to do.”
Work that involved hours of ripping apart the carcass of the worst game they’d played all year. The assembled jackals—uh, reporters—were going to eat him alive, Luke thought soberly. He shed the rest of his equipment and headed for the showers.
But that was the price of the C on his jersey. The price of earning a living doing what he loved. Which was an honor and a privilege, considering some people never got that chance. And others had it stolen from them. Luke sighed.
At least the evisceration wouldn’t have anything to do with beard statistics and superstitious nonsense. And yet somehow Luke sensed that Holly Evans was a bigger threat than all the other sports reporters combined...
2 (#ulink_0ac3e637-1dd2-54fc-a65d-85248616fe5f)
“THE STORM ESSENTIALLY played an entire period shorthanded, which, given the dismal play of your PK unit, definitely contributed to tonight’s loss. Can you give us any insight as to what led to this unprecedented number of penalties for the Storm?”
Holly hit the pause button on last night’s broadcast and whirled on the couch to face her best friend, Paige Hallett. “Did you hear that? That was my question. Corey Baniuk just asked Luke Maguire my question. And did the dumb jock walk away without a word? No. He stood there and answered it, the jerk!”
“You asked him that question and he ignored you?” Paige looked offended on her behalf.
“Well, no. I asked him if he thought he might grow a play-off beard—then he ignored me. But that’s the question I wanted to ask him. That was a great question!”
Paige turned back to the magazine she was perusing. “I’ll take your word for it. He lost me when he started talking about China. Besides, why would the Storm play a whole period shorthanded? Seems kind of counterproductive to me.”
Holly sighed and set the remote on her coffee table. “They didn’t play an actual period shorthanded, they got twenty penalty minutes, so over the course of the game, they essentially played a man short for the length of a period. And he didn’t say Peking, he said PK unit. When a team gets a penalty, they put out their best penalty killers, their penalty kill unit.”
“Oh. Well, why didn’t he just say that?”
“He did! He did say that, and Luke Maguire answered him, because it was a relevant question asked by a serious sports reporter.”
Paige shot her a sympathetic look. “You’re a serious sports reporter.”
“No, I’m a traitor to my gender. Last night I wore a tiny suit and high shoes and made a mockery of everything I love.”
“Would you cut yourself some slack? Those were some seriously great shoes I picked out for you to wear. Besides, the only way you’re truly a traitor to your gender is the complete lack of readable magazines in your house.” Paige held up the Sports Illustrated she was flipping through as proof. “Seriously. If these guys weren’t shirtless, I’d throw this across the room in protest. Oh, wow.” A dreamy smile spread across Paige’s pretty face. “Who is that? Come to momma.”
Holly glanced over at the glossy, two-page spread featuring a certain hot, shirtless hockey player. His brown hair was the perfect length between shorn and shaggy, his blue eyes intense as ever. He was sitting in the dressing room, kitted out in hockey gear from the waist down—pants, socks and skates—and all muscle and beautiful bronzed skin from the waist up. Behind him, his last name and a big number 18 gleamed white against the navy of his Storm jersey.
“That’s Luke Maguire. The topic of my diatribe for the last twenty minutes? The man currently paused on my television?” Holly gestured at his stupid handsome face in HD.
“Well, why didn’t you tell me he was so yummy? I would have paid better attention.” She glanced at the television, presumably for the first time since her arrival. “Mmm. Maybe you were right. I should watch more hockey.”
Holly couldn’t help but smile. She had been trying to open Paige up to the wonders of sports for the better part of a decade now. How had Holly not realized the best way to turn Paige on to sports was to turn Paige on? “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”
Paige smiled sweetly. “I’m a divorcée with no serious relationship prospects on the horizon. I have to take my thrills where I can get them.” She flicked her gaze back to the TV. “And that man looks like he gives good thrill.”
Holly couldn’t argue. Irrationally, it made her even angrier at him. At one of her favorite hockey players. One day of playing dress-up and her view of the sports world was already starting to become skewed. So far, a steady paycheck was the only thing she enjoyed about this gig. Especially after such a mortifying first night. She’d taken the job because it was her chance to get on camera. One step closer to her big dream of talking sports on TV. But now...
“I’m wondering if taking this job was a mistake,” she confessed.
Since she’d graduated, she’d been plugging away, ghostwriting sports pieces for a bunch of online sports blogs. Hockey, basketball, baseball, football, golf...you name it, she wrote it. Not that anyone knew, since all her painstaking work was credited to “staff writer.” But it was the only way she could continue to write for enough outlets to make a living. She spent what little free time she had busting her butt trying to get one of her sports op-eds picked up.
That was the kind of writing she really loved—not spewing facts and stats and scores, but interpreting them, putting them in context, figuring out what was making a team successful, suggesting what they could do to become more so, having a go at dumb managerial decisions and underperforming athletes.
That sort of in-depth analysis was the key to getting where she really belonged—on television, just like her mom used to be. She wanted to read her pieces aloud, share them with people who loved sports as much as she did. Anyone could read a teleprompter; Holly wanted to make an impact.
“I mean, Jay and I made the Women’s Hockey Network video as a joke. And now it’s gotten me closer to my goal of being on camera than any article I’ve ever written.” Holly looked down, picking at the red lacquer Paige had insisted on slicking over her stubby nails. “But instead of feeling great about that, I feel like I’ve sold out. I’m a joke. I mean, can you even imagine what my mom would think of all this?”
“Woah. Back up the pity bus. I will not let you go down the mom road. She loved you and she would want what’s best for you. But Hols, even if your mom was still alive, what’s best for you would be your choice, not hers.”
Holly flopped onto the couch. “I know. But I still worry about letting her down. When I accepted this gig, I thought it was going to be a case of ‘all publicity is good publicity.’ Now I’m not so sure.”
She ran her hands down her face. “Luke Maguire believes I’m a total idiot! How can I ever do an in-depth interview with him now? And I don’t even get to travel with the team! That’s how dumb the questions I ask are supposed to be. I’m not worth a seat on a chartered plane that’s already been paid for.”
Paige glanced up from a picture featuring a shirtless LA Laker. “Lighten up, would you? It’s been one day. This job is a stepping-stone—one with over a hundred thousand hits on YouTube so far. You never know where this opportunity could take you. Besides, what do you think the rest of your former sports broadcasting classmates are doing right now? Interviewing team mascots and reporting on who scored the most baskets in soccer games played by twelve-year-olds? I’ll bet you’re closer to a real gig than any of them.” Paige shut the magazine and tossed it onto the coffee table. “You’re working with a real hockey team, interviewing some of the best players in the game. And yeah, it’s not perfect, but it could be a hell of a lot worse. So to quote a good friend of mine—” Paige arched one perfectly winged eyebrow “—suck it up, Princess. Go out there and do the job.”
Holly sighed. “I hate it when you’re right.”
“Then you must hate me all the time,” her friend lamented with a grin. It faded after a moment. “Was that enough of a pep talk? Because I’ll bail on my date and we can go out for a drink if you want to talk this out some more.”
“Oh, right! You have a date.” Holly shook her head. “I keep forgetting since you’ve been so secretive about this mystery man of yours.”
“It’s new. We’re still feeling each other out. Once we start feeling each other up, then I’ll have some details to share.” Paige was the only person in the world Holly knew who could pull off a wink with such aplomb.
“Of that I have no doubt. Now go and have fun. Besides, I’m already in the middle of a sports-related crisis. There’s no way I can muster the fortitude and patience it would take to teach you that you don’t score baskets in soccer right now.”
Paige laughed at the jab.
Holly squared her shoulders. “Like you said, I made this choice. I’m going to honor this contract. Maybe I can even convince them to let me do some real reporting. Wow ’em so they give me a chance to document the Storm’s first time in the play-offs with the gravitas and seriousness that it deserves.”
“That’s the spirit! You show those men who’s boss.” The phone rang just as Paige stood to leave. “See? That’s probably some titan of the hockey world, impressed with your journalistic integrity and calling to poach you for his own team.”
“Who else could it be?” Holly agreed drolly. “Say hi to your date for me.”
“No way. Get your own man, which I hope you do soon. You’re in desperate need of some hunky distraction in your life,” Paige advised, heading for the door. “At the very least, this job will be great for that.”
Holly rolled her eyes in a silent goodbye as she grabbed the handset of her phone, recognizing Jay’s number on call display. Paige didn’t like him very much, but Holly and Jay had hit it off immediately in broadcasting school.
When the Storm offered to let her pick her own cameraman, she’d eagerly snatched Jay away from filming weddings and local stories. It was a relief not to have to fake sports stupidity with at least one person.
“Hey. The footage looks great.” Embarrassing as it might be for her personally, she had to admit that Jay had edited her interviews with Luke and the rest of the team into a professional-looking comedic montage that could now be viewed by the world at portlandstorm.com.
“I’m glad you think so, because the boss man agrees.”
“What?”
“That’s why I’m calling. Check your texts.”
“Or you could just tell me since we’re, you know, on the phone,” she pointed out.
“Okay, smart-ass. It seems your big-haired alter ego can do no wrong. Hits on the Storm’s website have increased twenty percent since your interview was posted last night. Usually after a loss, website traffic goes down. They’ve decided to give us an extra assignment.”
“Oh, God.” Holly cringed. She couldn’t help it. A twenty percent uptick? That did not bode well for Operation: Journalistic Integrity. She’d be stuck asking about favorite childhood breakfast cereals for the rest of her career while important stories, like Luke Maguire’s scoring drought that had now entered its twelfth game, went unmentioned.
On the upside, at least the team captain was so annoyed with her about the play-off beard thing that she could focus her insipid questions on the rest of the players. “What do they want us to film?”
“Some fluffy pregame interviews with the guys, tomorrow after their morning skate. The brass plans to air them as teasers between periods to help drive up website traffic. We’re starting with the big three, then we’ll try to fit in as much of the rest of the team as we can manage.”
The big three: goaltender Jean-Claude LaCroix, centerman Eric Jacobs, and, because sometimes life sucked with a vengeance, captain and left-winger Luke Maguire. Holly couldn’t bring herself to speak through the impending sense of doom.
* * *
THWACK.
Luke’s slap shot missed the net completely.
God—thwack—damn—thwack—mother—thwack—fuc—
“Mags!”
Luke looked up from the line of pucks he was systematically assaulting to see Jean-Claude LaCroix—J.C. to his teammates—standing in the players’ box. He was dressed in a navy T-shirt that mimicked the Storm’s home jersey, this year’s standard issue for doing press.
With another muttered curse, Luke skated over to the bench.
“I just finished with the reporter, and Eric’s in the hot seat right now. Someone can cover for you with her if you want to grab a shower, but to avoid the wrath of the higher-ups, I’d suggest you get a move on.”
Luke pulled off one of his gloves so he could remove his helmet and set them both on the boards. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”
“You okay, man?”
He ran a hand over his sweaty hair. “Sure. What could be wrong?”
J.C. gave him a look. “You’re the one who snapped two sticks in practice and is still out here pounding the boards. You tell me.”
Luke appreciated his friend’s tact. It wasn’t like his problem wasn’t obvious.
He couldn’t hit the net.
It had been twelve games since he’d scored a goal—the longest dry spell of his hockey career. But no matter how hard he practiced, how much extra time he logged out here working on his shot, when he was in the game, he froze up. And people were noticing. He’d read the grumblings in the paper, heard the callouts on television. Hell, people were even tweeting him to say he sucked. If he didn’t get his act together soon, he’d be headed for some obligatory couch time with the sports psychologist. And that meant talking about Ethan, a fate he tried to avoid at all costs.
“It’s nothing.” Luke brushed it off, hoping his buddy would let it go.
J.C. shook his head, rejecting the lie. Luke should have known he would. They’d been playing hockey together on and off since they were fourteen years old. At this point, his goaltender could read him just as well off the ice as on.
“It’s not nothing, man. Don’t overthink it. Besides, scoring isn’t the only way to help the team.”
“Easy for you to say. Your save percentage was .916 this season. You’re doing your part, but we won’t win if we don’t put pucks in the other guys’ net.” Luke’s shoulders tightened under the weight of expectation—from management, the fans, his teammates... “I haven’t scored in over a month. What am I supposed to do about that?”
“Just relax and play the game.”
Luke rolled his eyes at the Zen advice. “This is the reason people hate goalies, you know? You’re all a bunch of pretentious assholes.”
J.C. just grinned. “I’ll see you up there, okay?”
With a nod, Luke grabbed his helmet and glove and headed to the dressing room to shower and change, hoping he could clear his head before he faced Holly Evans. His brain conjured the memory of the curvy blonde in the siren-red outfit. Yet another complication he didn’t need right now. Because last night, he’d done something stupid.
With a self-directed curse, he’d opened a new browser window and typed “The Women’s Hockey Network” into the search field on YouTube.
And there she was, Holly Evans, all big blond hair and big brown eyes and big, beautiful breasts. In fact, she was damn near perfect...until she got to the Hockey Hunk of the Month segment.
He wanted to be pissed.
Instead, he was oddly flattered.
Sure, he wasn’t wild about the fact she’d used that damned shirtless picture of him from last month’s Sports Illustrated, but after his on-ice struggles over the last month, he found his battered self-esteem had sort of appreciated the boost from those pouty, shiny lips of hers.
She’d even managed to make the award about more than his pectorals, citing his work with his pet charity, Kids on Wheels, and explaining its focus on providing wheelchairs and wheelchair-friendly sports programs for kids in need. Hell, she’d even brought up his role as a goodwill ambassador for ice sledge hockey, a cause near and dear to his heart.
If he wasn’t so firmly anti-reporter, he might have approved of the way she’d so beautifully shifted the focus from the nonsensical to something that actually mattered. But in the end, what mattered most was winning, and ogling the pretty reporter wasn’t going to help him put the puck in the net.
Now, Luke stood outside the dressing room, temporarily set aside this morning so that she could make a mockery of the sport he loved, willing himself to man up and walk in.
He scratched his chin self-consciously, wishing to hell that he’d shaved this morning. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of assuming his decision not to shave had anything to do with her. If he’d been given any kind of heads-up about being locked in a room with Little Miss Play-off Beard today, he definitely would’ve given a big middle finger to all the doubts she and his teammates had planted about their loss. But there’d been no warning until just before practice. No doubt about it, karma was a stone-cold bitch.
With a deep breath, he stepped through the door to find his linemate was just finishing up his interview.
“That was great, Eric.” Holly’s voice, warm and sexy, called to mind the drizzle of honey on cream. Luke subconsciously turned toward it.
Goddamn, the woman was gorgeous. She was rocking the painted-on suit again, but this time the color was the same teal as the stripes and the cresting wave on the Storm jersey. (A color which, according to the Women’s Hockey Network color chart, indicated a driven personality whose inner turmoil was often masked by an outward appearance of calm.)
She was sporting mile-high heels, a barely there skirt, plenty of cleavage and that big, tousled hair that probably felt like a helmet of straw in real life, but always managed to look kinda sexy on TV. And yet, now that she wasn’t just a caricature on his computer screen, but a living, breathing woman, smiling and putting the notoriously shy Eric Jacobs at ease as they finished up their interview, he found himself wondering what she’d look like in jeans and a T-shirt.
The thought irritated him. He just wanted to get this whole thing over with so he could concentrate on the important stuff. Like winning hockey games. He made himself take a step forward. “So I guess that means I’m up?”
