See Jane Score

Chapter 10

Blindsided: Hit from Behind

Jane closed her laptop on Honey Pie and her latest victim, a hockey player Honey had met on the observation deck of the Space Needle. A hockey player who looked a lot like Luc Martineau.

She rose from the chair, pushed aside the heavy drapes, and looked out the hotel window at downtown Denver, Colorado. She’d definitely developed an infatuation for Luc. Probably an unhealthy one too. In the past, she’d sometimes based Honey’s victims on real people. She’d changed their names, but readers could still figure it out. A few months ago, she’d put Brendan Fraser into a coma for subjecting moviegoers to Monkeybone, Dudley Do-Right, and Blast from the Past. But this was the first time Jane had written someone she knew personally into the column.

People might recognize Luc when the magazine hit the shelves in March. Definitely the readers in Seattle would. He’d probably hear about it too. She wondered if he’d mind. Most men wouldn’t, but Luc wasn’t most men. He didn’t like to read about himself in books, newspapers, or magazines. No matter how flattering. And the Honey article was extremely flattering to him. Hotter and more passionate than she’d ever written. In fact, it was the best thing she’d ever written. She hadn’t decided if she was actually going to send it in. She had a few days before her deadline to decide.

The drapes fell from her hands and she turned back to the room. It had been about sixteen hours since Luc had kissed the breath out of her. Sixteen hours of reliving and analyzing every word and action. Sixteen hours later, she still didn’t know what to think. He’d kissed her and changed everything. Well, actually, he’d done more than just kiss her. He’d touched her breast and told her she drove him crazy, and if his sister hadn’t been sitting out in the car, Jane might have thrown him down and checked out that lucky tattoo, which was driving her crazy every time she saw it in the locker room. And that would have been bad. Very bad. For a lot of reasons.

Jane kicked off her shoes and pulled her sweater over her head. She tossed it on the bed as she moved to the bathroom. Her eyes were scratchy and her brain fuzzy, and instead of locking herself in her room working on her Honey Pie article, she should be at the Pepsi Center, talking to the coaches and players before tomorrow night’s game. Darby had mentioned that the best time to talk to the coaches or front-office management was during practice. And Jane wanted to ask them about their new acquisition, Pierre Dion.

She jumped into the shower and let the warm water pour over her head. That morning when Luc boarded the jet, wearing his dark glasses, blue suit, and striped tie, her stomach had fluttered like she was thirteen again with her first junior high school crush. It was horrible, and she was old enough to know that having a crush on the most popular boy in school would only bring her heartache.

After fifteen minutes, she stepped out of the shower and grabbed two towels. If she was honest with herself, something she tried to avoid if possible, she could no longer fool herself into thinking that what she felt for him was nothing more than a crush. It was more. So much more, it scared her. She was thirty. Not a girl. She’d been in love and she’d been in lust and she’d been somewhere in between. But she’d never allowed herself to fall for a guy like Luc. Never. Not when she had so much to lose. Not when there was more at stake than just her contrary heart. Something more important: her job.

A broken heart would mend; she could get over that. But she didn’t think she could get over blowing the best opportunity she’d been given in a long time. Because of a man. That was plain stupid, and she wasn’t stupid.

A knock interrupted her thoughts, and she moved to the door. She looked out the peephole, and Luc stood on the other side, all windblown and perfect. He glanced down at the ground and she took a moment to study him. He wore his leather coat and a gray wool sweater, and he must have just come from outside because his cheeks were pink. He looked back up and his blue eyes stared at her through the peephole as if he could see her. “Open up, Jane.”

“Just a sec,” she called out, feeling foolish. She moved to the closet and pulled out a terrycloth bathrobe. She tied the belt around her waist, then opened the door.

His gaze rose to the towel wrapped around her head, lowered to her mouth, then, in no great hurry, slipped to the tips of her bare toes. “Looks like I caught you just out of the shower again.”

“Yes. You did.”

He slid his gaze back up her legs and robe and looked at her without expression. He either was uninterested or doing a really good job of appearing uninterested. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.” She stepped aside and let him in. “What do you need?”

His long strides took him to the center of the room and he turned to face her. “When I saw you this morning, you seemed uncomfortable. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me, Jane.” He took a long deep breath and stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “So I think maybe I should apologize.”

“Apologize for…?” But she knew and she wished he wouldn’t.

“For kissing you last night. I’m still not sure how it happened.” He looked over her head as if the answer were written on the wall. “If you hadn’t cut your hair and been looking so good, I don’t think it would have happened.”

“Wait.” She held up one hand like a traffic cop. “Are you blaming my hair?” she asked, just to make sure she was hearing him right. Hoping she wasn’t.

“Probably had more to do with that dress. That dress was designed with ulterior motives.”

He’d kissed her, and she’d fallen so deep into infatuation that she wasn’t sure it even was infatuation anymore. Now here he was, blaming her hair and her dress as if she’d purposely tricked him. As if he wouldn’t have kissed her if he hadn’t been tricked. Knowing how he felt hurt more than it should have. He was a jerk, no doubt about it, but she was a fool. The latter was the hardest to take.

Pain and anger tangled into a knot around her heart, but she was determined not to let it show. “It just was an ordinary red dress.”

“It didn’t have a back and had only two strips of material up the front.” Luc rocked back on his heels and lowered his gaze from the towel wrapped around Jane’s head, down the front of her robe to her bare toes again. Since last night, he’d been thinking about that kiss in her apartment, and he wasn’t certain what had driven him to kiss her. The dress. The lips. Curiosity. All of those. “And the little gold chain hanging down your back was there for only one reason.”

“What? To hypnotize you?”

She was being sarcastic, but she wasn’t that far off. “Maybe not hypnotize, but it’s there so any man seeing it will think about unhooking it.”

She raised one brow and looked at him as if he were an idiot. He sort of felt like an idiot. “I’m telling you the truth. All the guys last night were thinking of unhooking your dress.” None of the guys had mentioned it to Luc, but he figured that if he’d been thinking it, they had too.

“Is this your idea of an apology or your way of rationalizing what happened?” She grabbed the towel from her head and tossed it on her bed.

“It’s a fact.”

She combed her fingers through her hair. “It’s delusional.”

If she were a guy, she’d see the logic in it.

“And it’s stupid.” Her wet curls tangled about her fingers as she pushed them back from her face. “It puts the blame on me, and I didn’t walk into your apartment last night and kiss you. You kissed me.”

“You didn’t protest.” He didn’t know what had shocked him more. Him kissing her, or her response. He never would have guessed that so much passion could be contained in so little a package.

She let out a long sigh as if she were bored. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

He laughed even as he wanted to cross the room and press his mouth to hers. To slip his hand inside that robe and cup her breast, even as he knew it was a hell of a bad idea. Luc leaned a hip into the desk as he lowered his gaze from her mouth and thought about how her mouth had tasted last night. He glanced somewhere safe, down at Jane’s laptop. “The way you kissed, I thought you were trying to climb inside me.” An open day planner sat beside the laptop. Several Post-Its were stuck on the inside. A couple of the notes had to do with hockey trivia and questions she wanted to ask for her sports columns.

“There you go, being delusional again.”

On one pink note the words, Feb. 16/Single Girl deadline, were printed. While another read, Honey Pie/make decision by Wednesday at the latest. Honey Pie? Did Jane read Honey Pie? The nympho who humped men into comas? He just couldn’t picture her reading porn. “You were so hot for it,” he said in a slow and deliberate drawl as he looked back up at her, “I could have had you naked in no time.”

“You’re not only conceited beyond belief, and delusional, you’re… you’re deranged!” she sputtered.

“Probably,” he admitted as he walked past her on his way to the door. He felt deranged.

“Wait a minute. When do I get the interview you promised me?”

With his hand on the doorknob, he turned and looked at her. “Not now,” he said.

“When?” she pushed.

“Sometime.”

“Sometime tomorrow?” She raised her arms and brushed her hair behind her ears.

“I’ll let you know.”

“You can’t back out on me now.”

He didn’t plan to. He just wasn’t going to do it now. Here. In a hotel room with a king-sized bed and a woman wearing a bathrobe begging him to prove just how deranged he was. “Yeah, says who?”

Her brows lowered and she pinned him with her gaze. “Me.”

He laughed again. He couldn’t help it. She looked like she was gearing up to kick his ass.

“You gave me your word.”

For a split second he thought about shutting her up with his mouth. Kissing her until she turned soft and melted into him again. Until she fed him that little moan of hers that had urged him on last night, to take it further. To touch her where his mind had been taking him since that first morning on the team jet when he’d looked back and seen her.

“When, Luc?”

Instead of giving in to the urge, he opened the door and said over his shoulder, “When you get a bra, Jane.”

Luc unzipped his jacket the rest of the way as he walked down the hall. A repeat of last night couldn’t happen again. The instant he’d kissed her, he’d gone from zero to hard in under a second, and that hadn’t happened to him in a very long time. If Marie hadn’t been waiting in the car, he didn’t know if he would have stopped. He liked to think he would have. He liked to think he was mature and experienced enough to stop before he did anything he’d regret, anything colossally stupid, but he wasn’t sure. He’d kissed a lot of women in his thirty-two years. A lot of women had kissed him too, but never like Jane. He didn’t know what it was about her, and he really didn’t want to take the time to figure it out. She already spent too much time in his head.

The very last thing he needed in his life right now was a woman. Any woman. Especially that woman. The reporter traveling with the team. Sharky, their good-luck charm.

There was only one solution to his Jane problem. He’d have to avoid her as much as possible. Not as simple as it sounded, granted. Not when she traveled with the team, covered every game, and had to call him a “big dumb dodo” for luck.

Over the course of his career, Luc had developed the kind of intensity that held up under the pressures of overtime and point-blank shooters. During the next few days, he planned to use that intensity to keep his focus on winning. He needed to concentrate on his game and do what needed to be done.

That night against Colorado, he shut down twenty-eight of thirty goal attempts and the Chinooks boarded the jet with a three-two victory over their biggest contenders for the Stanley Cup. As soon as the BAC-111 evened out, the glow of Jane’s laptop illuminated the space three rows up. Luc hadn’t needed the light to tell him where she sat-he knew. But just because he knew didn’t mean he had to do anything about it. During the flight from Denver to Philadelphia, he noticed some of the guys talking to her. Daniel said something that made her laugh, and Luc wondered what the young Swede told her that could possibly be so damn funny. Luc grabbed a pillow and sacked out for the rest of the trip.

Avoiding Jane turned out to be easier than anticipated, but not thinking about her proved impossible. It seemed the more determined he was to avoid her, the more he thought about her. The more he tried not to think about her, the more he wondered what she was doing and who she was doing it with. Probably that “wild man” Darby Hogue.

He only saw Jane once in Philadelphia, but the second she entered the locker room at the First Union Center, he noticed her red lips. And he knew she’d worn lipstick on purpose just to drive him insane. She gave her good-luck speech, then walked toward him where he sat in front of an open stall.

“Good luck, you big dumb dodo,” she said, then she lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “And for your information, I have several bras.”

As Luc watched her breeze from the room, he worried that her full red lips had fucked up his concentration. For a few tense moments, his focus was on Jane’s mouth and imaginary black lace bras. He closed his eyes and cleared his head, and by sheer force of will, he got it back ten minutes before he hit the ice.

That night, the Chinooks shut out the Flyers, but not before the boys from Philly laid on the lumber and sent Sutter to the hospital with a concussion. Rob was still on the injured list when the Chinooks landed in New York to take on the Rangers. In the locker room before the game, Luc waited for Jane to wish him luck before he said, “If you own several bras, you might try wearing one.”

She tilted her head to one side and looked at him. “Why?”

Why? He could tell her exactly why, but not in a locker room full of hockey players. Then again, it wasn’t his job to tell her that her nipples were at full salute. He was avoiding her. He was finished talking to her and thinking about her, he told himself as he skated to the net and turned his attention to winning against the Rangers. But without their best lunch pailer, the Chinooks took a thrashing against the boards and in the corners and ultimately lost the game when the Rangers’ captain broke away and shot at Luc on the long side.

Then it was on to Tennessee, the birthplace of Elvis and the Nashville Predators. That night in the locker room there was no mention of bras.

The young Tennessee expansion team easily fell victim to the more experienced Chinooks, and when the team boarded the jet for the long flight to Seattle, Luc was glad to be heading home. His right knee was bothering him and he was exhausted.

Once the BAC-111 evened out, he shrugged out of his jacket and raised the arm between the seats. Grabbing a duffel, he stuffed it against the side of the plane and leaned his back against it. With his fingers woven together and his hands resting on his stomach, he sat in the dark and looked across the aisle at Jane. The light directly above her poured over her head and filtered through her loose curls as she typed out her column. The tips of her fingers lightly touched the keyboard. She paused, stroked backspace several times, then started again. He thought of a few places on his body he’d like to feel those talented hands stroke.

A curl fell across her cheek and she pushed it behind her ear, drawing Luc’s gaze to her jaw and the side of her throat. A few rows back, some of the guys played poker, but most of them slept, their snores mixing with the sound of Jane’s typing.

For the past seven days, he’d kept himself busy, distracted. Now, with nothing to occupy his thoughts, he took the time to study her. To figure out exactly why he suddenly found Jane Alcott so interesting. What it was about her that wouldn’t let go and leave him alone? She was short, small-breasted, and had a smart mouth. If fact, she was just too damn smart. Luc didn’t like those qualities in a woman. And yet… he liked Jane. Tonight, she wore one of those cardigan sweater sets like old women and Ivy League girls wore. Black. No pearls. A pair of gray wool pants, and she’d kicked off her shoes.

Within the darkness, Luc studied her soft hair and smooth white skin. The first time he’d seen her, he’d thought her too plain. A natural girl. Now he was having a hard time remembering exactly why natural girls had never appealed to him before. He wondered what it would be like to slide his hands all over her soft skin. For the first time since he’d stood in her hotel room in Denver, he let himself wonder what it would feel like to hold her naked body against him. To lose himself in the pleasure of touching her. Of kissing her mouth and breasts and smooth thighs.

The tapping stopped, and Jane brought her fingers to her mouth. She pinched her bottom lip and moaned, followed by a long drawn-out sigh that could be either frustration or pleasure. The sound of her moan brought Luc to full painful attention, and he decided that picturing Jane naked hadn’t been such a grand idea after all.

Through the variegated shadows that separated them, he watched her tap backspace a dozen or so times and begin again. Luc closed his eyes and turned his thoughts toward home. While he’d been away, Mrs. Jackson hadn’t reported any more problems with Marie, and when he’d talked to his sister, she seemed somewhat stable. She’d made friends with a girl in their building, and Marie hadn’t burst into tears or gotten angry during any of the calls. He still hadn’t ruled out boarding school, because he did think she would ultimately benefit from a female environment. He just didn’t believe she was ready to talk about it yet, and for some reason he couldn’t explain, there was a part of him that wasn’t ready to talk about it either. Not yet.

Somewhere over Oklahoma he fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until the jet was about to set down at SeaTac. Once the jet landed and came to a stop, Luc grabbed his bags and headed for general parking. Jane walked at a distance in front of him, pulling a huge suitcase on wheels and lugging her laptop and briefcase. His longer stride easily overtook her and they stepped into the elevator together. They pushed the same button to the same floor of the garage and the doors slid closed. Luc leaned back against the wall and glanced over at Jane. Her head was tilted to one side as she studied him. She looked worn out, but so damn cute.

“What?” he asked.

“Are you going to give me the interview this week?”

She might be tired, but she was obviously on the job. While he was thinking how cute she looked and had been fantasizing about her soft skin and talented fingers, she was thinking about her work. Damn. “Are you wearing a bra?”

“Are we back to that?”

“Yes. Why don’t you wear a bra like most women?”

“Why do you care?”

His gaze lowered to the front of her wool coat, but of course he couldn’t see anything. “Your nipples stick out, and it’s distracting.” When he raised his gaze to her face, her brows were drawn and her mouth was open as if she’d been about to say something but forgot what. The elevator doors slid open. “You look like you’re turned on all the time,” he added and held the door open while she wheeled her big suitcase out. The stunned look on her face was classic and he started to laugh. “Don’t tell me that no one’s ever told you that before.”

“No. You’re the first.” She shook her head, and together they started across the parking lot. “You’re just yanking my chain again. Like when you offered to pee in my coffee and told me you were going to a strip bar.”

“I was serious about the coffee and I’m serious now.” He stopped at the rear of his Land Cruiser.

“Ah-huh. Right,” she said as she continued to her Honda Prelude parked a few spaces from his SUV.

He tossed his bags in the back of his Toyota, then looked over at her. The trunk of her car was open and she was making little huffing sounds as she tried to get her big suitcase inside. Luc walked past the two cars separating them, and the heels of his shoes echoed in the near-empty lot. At the sound of his footsteps she looked up. The lights in the garage cast deep shadows in the corner where she’d parked her car. A lock of her hair fell over one eye and she pushed it back. Her lips were slightly parted as she breathed.

“Need help?” he asked.

She pointed to the big suitcase still on the ground. “You can help me with that. I bought some books last night and they’ve made it really heavy.”

Luc easily heaved the suitcase into the trunk.

“Thank you.” She put her laptop and briefcase inside, then shut the trunk.

“You’re welcome.”

“Did Marie tell you I’m going to pick her up Saturday?” she asked as she moved to the driver’s side door.

“Yep.” He followed and took the key from her fingers. He unlocked the door and added, “She sounded real excited.”

She held out her hand and he dropped her keys in her palm. “I’m glad to hear it. We haven’t talked in a while, and I didn’t know if you were okay with the plan.”

He lowered his gaze from her hair, past her green eyes and straight nose, the bow of her top lip. “We’ve talked.”

“You may not know this, but me calling you a big dumb dodo and you razzing me about my bra isn’t considered talking.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “At least it isn’t outside of the locker room.”

He returned his gaze to hers and he wondered if she was trying to piss him off on purpose. He suspected she was. “What’s put your panties in a twist, sweetheart?”

She folded her arms across her chest and took a step back-Luc figured so she didn’t have to bend back her head so far to look up at him. “I think we both know.”

“I’m just a stupid hockey player, so why don’t you go ahead and spell it out real slow for me?”

“I never said you were stupid.”

He took a step closer so she’d have to look up at him again. “You implied it, Jane, and I’m not so stupid that I didn’t get the implication.”

She stepped back. “I didn’t mean that you’re stupid.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Okay, but I don’t think you’re stupid. You’re…”

He followed her. “I’m…?”

“Rude.”

He shrugged. “That’s true.”

“And you say inappropriate things to me.”

“Like?”

“That I look like I walk around turned on.”

She did.

“You wouldn’t say that to a male reporter.”

That’s true, but if a male reporter walked around with full wood, chances were Luc wouldn’t even notice. Now, Jane, he noticed. “I’ll work on that.”

She took one more step and her back hit the wall behind her. “And you’re spoiled. You get everything you want and everything is your way.”

She was talking about the interview again. “Not everything.” He moved forward and placed both of his hands on the cold concrete beside her head. “Some of the things I want aren’t good for me. So I have to leave them alone.”

“What?”

“Caffeine. Sugar.” He lowered his gaze to her lips. “You.”

“Me?”

“Most definitely you.” He slid his hand to the back of her neck and he lowered his mouth to hers. “I’ve never had you my way,” he said, and he kissed her because he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Her lips were warm and sweet and instant desire settled heavy in his groin. With nothing more than his hand on the back of her head and his mouth pressed to hers, lust rolled over him like a Zamboni.

He pulled back with every intention of walking away, of leaving before he did something he would regret, but she looked up at him and licked her moist lips. Instead of turning on his heels, he wrapped one arm around the small of her back and brought her body against his. He was used to tall women and he had to pull her up on her tiptoes. His mouth opened wide over hers and he fed her a hot wet kiss. He held her to him as her hands ran across his shoulder and up the sides of his neck. His tongue touched and mated with hers as she combed her fingers through his hair. His scalp tingled from her touch. She moaned deep in her throat, that sound of lust and frustration and yearning that had urged him on the other night and had him thinking about having sex with her right there against the wall now.

In the weak light of the parking garage, he unbuttoned her coat, then shoved his hand under her sweater. Her flat stomach was warm and he slid his hand to her breast. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her breast hardly filled his hand. Her puckered nipple poked the middle of his palm like a hard little raspberry, and his testicles squeezed and his scrotum tightened and his knees almost buckled. He slid his mouth to the side of her cheek and took a deep breath. This was the most sexual excitement he’d felt in a long, long time, and he had to stop.

“Luc,” she gasped, then she grabbed the sides of his head and brought his mouth right back to hers. She ran her hands over his shoulders and chest and kissed him like a woman who wanted to end up in bed. A hot openmouthed feeding kiss that had him thinking of security cameras and of the likelihood of arrest. He rolled her hard nipple beneath his palm and she wrapped her leg around his waist. He shoved his erection against her crotch. The heat of their bodies nearly did him in. He ground against her and forgot about stopping.

“Not here,” he said as he ended the kiss. “We’ll get arrested. Believe me, I know.” He tilted his head back and took a deep breath. “There’s a Best Western or a Ramada within a few miles.” He blinked. He was fairly sure there was anyway. “I’ll grab a room while you wait in the car.”

“What?”

God, he wanted her. He wanted to fall on top of her and stay there for a good long while. “We’ll have sex all night. Half the morning too. And just when you think you can’t take anymore, we’ll go at it again.” It had been a long time since he’d wanted it so bad that he could hardly think beyond the throbbing in his pants. “I’m going to fuck you real good.” She didn’t say anything and he looked down into her face.

She unwrapped her leg from his waist and lowered her foot to the ground. “In a motel room?”

“Yes. We can take my car.”

“No.”

“Where?”

She pushed his hand from her breast. “Nowhere.”

“Why the hell not? I’m hard, and I don’t have to stick my hand down your pants to know you’re wet.”

Her eyes were wide and a little glassy. “You’re talking to me like I’m one of your groupies.”

He’d never even thought of her in those terms. Had he? No, he hadn’t. “You don’t like wet? What do you call it?”

“I don’t call it anything, and I don’t fuck. I make love. Groupies fuck.”

“Jesus,” he swore, “who cares? When you get down to it, it’s all the same thing.”

“No, it’s not, and I care.” She shoved at his chest and he took a step back. “I’m not one of your women. I’m a professional reporter!”

He didn’t know who she was trying to convince. Him or herself. “You’re a tease and a damn prude,” he said and turned on his heels. He shoved one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his hand curled around his keys until they cut into his palm. He was sorry he’d ever met Jane. He was sorry he’d ever laid eyes on her, and sorrier that she made him so insane that he’d kissed her and now he was going home hard. Again.

As he walked to his vehicle, he heard her car start and by the time he unlocked the driver’s side door of his Land Cruiser, she was gone, the glow of her red taillights the last remnants of her.

That and the ache in Luc’s groin and the pounding in his brain and the knowledge that he’d have to see her again in three days.

I make love, she’d said. The first time he’d met her, he’d figured her for one of those uptight, probably-hadn’t-had-sex-in-five-years women. And he’d been right.

“ ‘Make love,’” he scoffed as he climbed into his vehicle and started it up. Jane didn’t want to make love. He hadn’t misinterpreted her signals. A woman who wanted him to “make love” to her didn’t kiss like a porn queen. A woman who wanted to “make love” wanted to take her time. She didn’t wrap her leg around his waist while he had her shoved up against a wall in a parking garage.

He backed out of the parking space and headed home. Someone should teach the little prude a thing or two about being a tease. But it wasn’t going to be him. He was through with Jane Alcott.

This time he meant it.