he telephone next to Jane’s laptop rang and she stared at it for a moment before she picked up.

“Hello.” But there was no one on the other end. There hadn’t been the last seven times it had rung either. She dialed the front desk and was told they didn’t know where the calls originated. Jane had a pretty good idea the calls were coming from men with fish on their jerseys.

She left the receiver off the hook and glanced at the clock on the bedside stand. She had five hours before the game. Five hours to finish her Single Girl in the City column. She should have started her column for the Times last night, but she’d been exhausted and jet-lagged and all she’d wanted was to lie in bed, read her research books, and eat chocolate. If Luc hadn’t snuck up on her at the vending machine the night before, she would have bought a Milky Way too. Having been caught in her cow PJs had been bad enough. She hadn’t wanted him to think her a pig, but really, why should she care what he thought of her?

She didn’t know, except she supposed it was in a woman’s genetic makeup to care what handsome men thought. If Luc was ugly, she probably wouldn’t have cared. If he didn’t have those clear blue eyes, long lashes, and a body to make a nun weep, she would have grabbed that Milky Way and maybe chased it with a Hershey’s Big Block. If it weren’t for his evil grin that had her thinking sinful thoughts and remembering the sight of his naked butt, she might not have heard herself babbling about stewardesses like a jealous puck bunny.

She could not afford for any of the players to see her as anything other than a professional. Their reception of her had warmed little since they’d arrived. They spoke to her about recipes and babies, as if by virtue of having a uterus she was naturally interested. But if she brought up hockey, their mouths shut tight as clams.

Jane reread the first part of her column and made a few changes:

Single Girl in the City

Tired of talking about hair care products and men with commitment issues, I tuned out my friends and concentrated on my margarita and corn chips. As I sat looking around at the parrot and sombrero decor, I wondered if men were the only ones with commitment phobias. I mean, here we sat, four thirty-year-old women who’d never been married, and except for Tina’s one attempt at living with her ex-boss, none of us had ever had a real committed relationship. So was it them, or was it us?

There is a saying that goes something like, “If you put two neurotics in a room of one hundred people, they’d find each other.” So was there something else? Something deeper than a lack of available men without issues?

Had the four of us “found” each other? Were we friends because we truly enjoyed each other’s company? Or were we all neurotic?

Five hours and fifteen minutes after she’d started her column, she finally pushed send on her laptop. She shoved her notebook into her big purse, then raced to the door. She ran down the hall to the elevators and practically had to wrestle an elderly couple from a cab. When she walked into the America West Arena, the Phoenix Coyotes were just being introduced. The crowd went crazy cheering for their team.

She’d been given a pass to the press box, but Jane wanted to be as close as possible to the action. She’d finagled a seat three rows up from the boards, wanting to see and feel as much as she could of her first hockey game. She really didn’t know what to expect, she just hoped to God the Chinooks didn’t lose and blame it on her.

She found her place behind the goalie cage just as the Chinooks stepped onto the ice. Boos filled the arena, and Jane glanced around at the ill-behaved Coyotes fans. She’d been to a Mariners game once, but she didn’t remember the fans being so rude.

She turned her attention back to the ice and watched Luc Martineau skate toward her, geared up and ready for battle. She’d done more research on Luc than on the other players, and she knew that everything he wore was custom-made. The arena lights shone off his dark green helmet. His name was sewn across the shoulders of his jersey in dark green above the number of the legendary Gump Worsley. Why Mr. Worsley was legendary, Jane had yet to discover.

Luc circled the goal twice, turned, and circled it in the opposite direction. He stopped within the crease, slapped his stick on the posts, and crossed himself. Jane took out her notebook, a pen, and her Post-Its. On the top note she wrote: Superstitions and rituals?

The puck dropped, and all at once the sounds of the game rushed at her, the clash of sticks, scraping of skates on ice, and the puck slamming into the boards. The fans screamed and cheered and the smells of pizza and Budweiser soon hung in the air.

In preparation, Jane had viewed many game tapes. While she knew the game to be fast-paced, the tapes had not conveyed the frenetic energy or the way that energy infected the crowd. When play stopped, infractions were announced from the sound system and music blared until the puck was once more dropped and the team centers hacked it out.

As Jane took note of everything around her, she discovered what the tapes, and even television, did not show. The action wasn’t always where the puck was being played. A lot of the activity took place in the corners with punches and blows while the puck was at center ice. On several occasions she watched Luc whack the ankles of a Phoenix player unfortunate enough to stand within whacking distance. He seemed very good at hooking Coyote skates with his stick, and when he stuck out his arm and clothes lined Coyote Claude Lemieux, two men behind Jane jumped up and yelled, “You play like a girly man, Martineau!”

Whistles blew, the play stopped, and as Claude Lemieux picked himself up off the ice, the penalty was announced. “Martineau, roughing, two minutes.”

Because a goalie could not do time in the sin bin, Bruce Fish took his place. As Fish skated to the penalty box, Luc simply picked up his water bottle from the top of the net, shot a stream through the cage into his mouth, then spit it out. He shrugged, rolled his head from side to side, and tossed the bottle back onto the net.

Game on.

The pace fluctuated from wild to almost orderly. Almost. Just when Jane thought both teams had decided to play nice, the scrum for the puck turned physical. And nothing brought the crowd to their feet like the sight of players throwing their gloves and mixing it up in the corner. She couldn’t actually hear what the players were saying to each other, but she didn’t need to. She could clearly read their lips. The F-word seemed a real favorite. Even by the coaches who stood behind the bench in mild-mannered suits and ties. And when the players on the bench weren’t swearing, they were spitting. She’d never seen men spit so much.

Jane noticed that the heckling from the crowd was not limited to the Chinooks’ goalie. Anytime a Seattle player came within hollering distance, the men behind Jane yelled, “You suck!” After several Budweisers, they got more creative: “You suck, eighty-nine,” or thirty-nine, or whatever the player’s number.

Fifteen minutes into the first period, Rob Sutter checked a Coyote into the boards, and the Plexiglas shook so hard Jane thought it would crack. The player slid to the ice and the whistles blew.

“You suck, Hammer,” the men behind Jane yelled, and she wondered if the players could hear the fans over the collective noise. She knew she’d have to drink a lot of alcohol before she had the courage to tell the Hammer he sucked. She’d be too afraid he’d meet her in the parking lot later and “feed her lunch.”

After the first two periods, the score remained zero-zero, mostly due to some amazing saves by both goaltenders. But the Coyotes came out strong in the third. The team’s captain broke through the Chinook defense and sped down ice toward the Chinooks’ goal. Luc came out of the crease to meet him, but the captain snipered a shot passed his left shoulder. Luc got a piece of it with his stick, but the puck waffled and sailed into the net.

The crowd jumped to their feet as Luc skated to the goal. He calmly placed his stick and blocker on top of the net. As the blinking blue light announced the goal, he pushed his mask to the top of his head, picked up his water bottle, and shot water into his mouth. From where Jane sat, she watched him in profile. His cheek was slightly flushed, his damp hair stuck to his temple. A stream of water ran from the corner of his mouth, down his chin and neck, and wet the collar of his jersey. He lowered the bottle, tossed it on the cage, and shoved his hand into his blocker.

“Eat me, Martineau!” one of the men behind her yelled. “Eat me!”

Luc glanced up and one of Jane’s questions was answered. He’d clearly heard the men behind her. Without expression of any sort, he simply looked at them. He picked up his stick and lowered his gaze until it landed on Jane. He stared at her for several long seconds before he turned and skated to the Chinooks’ bench. Jane couldn’t tell what he thought of the two men, but she had bigger concerns than Luc’s feelings. She crossed her fingers and hoped like hell the Chinooks made a goal within the next fifteen minutes.

We have to remember we’re dealing with hockey players. You know they can be real superstitious, Leonard had warned. If the Chinooks start losing games, you’ll get blamed and sent packing. After the way they were already treating her, Jane figured they didn’t need much of an excuse.

It took them fourteen minutes and twenty seconds, but they finally scored on a power play. When the last buzzer sounded, the score was tied, and Jane let out a relieved breath.

Game over, or so she thought. Instead five more minutes were put on the clock, while four skaters and the goaltenders battled it out in overtime. Neither team scored and the game went into the record book as a tie.

Now Jane could breathe easy. They couldn’t blame her for their loss and send her packing.

She gathered her purse and shoved her notebook and pen inside. She headed to the Chinooks’ locker room, flashing her press pass. Her stomach twisted into knots as she moved down the hall. She was a professional. She could do this. No problem.

Keep your gaze pinned to their eyes, she reminded herself as she took out her small tape recorder. She entered the room and stopped as if the bottoms of her Doc Martins were suddenly glued to the floor. Men in various degrees of undress stood in front of benches and open stalls, peeling off their clothes. Hard muscles and sweat. Bare chests and backs. A flash of a naked stomach and butt, and...

Good Lord! Her cheeks burned and her eyes about jumped from her skull as she couldn’t help but stare at Vlad “the Impaler” Fetisov’s Russian-sized package. Jane jerked her gaze up, but not before she discovered that what she’d heard about European men was true. Vlad wasn’t circumcised, and that was just a little more info than she wanted. For one brief second she thought she should mumble an apology, but of course she couldn’t apologize, because that would be admitting that she’d seen something. She glanced at the other male reporters and they weren’t apologizing. So why did she feel like she was in high school peeking in the boys’ locker room?

You’ve seen a penis before, Jane. No big deal. If you’ve seen one penis, you’ve seen them all.... Well, okay, that’s not true. Some penises are better than others. Stop! Stop thinking about penises! she chastened herself. You’re not here to stare. You’re here to do a job, and you have just as much right to be here as male reporters do. It’s the law, and you’re a professional. Yeah, that’s what she told herself as she wove her way through players and other journalists, careful to keep her gaze above the shoulders, but she was the only female in a room filled with big, rugged, naked hockey players. She couldn’t help but feel very much out of place.

She kept her eyes up as she joined the reports interviewing Jack Lynch, the right winger who’d made the Chinooks’ only goal. She dug out her notebook as he dropped his shorts. She was almost certain he was wearing long underwear, but she wasn’t about to check it out. Don’t look, Jane. Whatever you do, don’t look down.

She turned on her tape recorder and interrupted one of her male counterparts. “After your injury last month,” she began, “there was some speculation that you might not be able to finish the season as strong as you’d started. I think that goal put the rumors to bed.”

Jack planted a foot on the bench in front of him and glanced across his shoulder at her. His cheek had an angry red welt, and an old scar creased his top lip. He unwound the tape from the top of his socks and took so long to respond that Jane began to fear he didn’t plan to answer at all.

“I hope so,” he finally spoke. Three words. That was it.

“How do you feel about the tie?” asked a reporter next to her.

“The Coyotes played a tough game tonight. Naturally we wanted the win, but we’ll take a tie.”

When she tried to ask more questions, she was talked over and shut out. She soon felt as if she were being conspired against. She tried to tell herself that she was probably being paranoid, but when she moved to the small group interviewing the captain of the Chinooks, Mark Bressler, he looked right through her and answered the questions put to him by other reporters.

She talked to a rookie with a blond Mohawk, figuring he’d be grateful for any exposure, but his English was so poor, she didn’t understand more than two words. She walked toward the Hammer, but he dropped his cup and she kept going. While she could tell herself that she was a professional and this was a job, she couldn’t bring herself to walk up to a totally naked man. Not on the first night.

Soon it became obvious to her that some of the other reporters resented her too, and the players were not going to answer any more of her questions. She wasn’t all that surprised by the male journalists’ attitudes. The sports-beat reporters at the Times hadn’t treated her any better.

Fine, she could write the column with what she already had, she thought as she made her way to the team’s goalie. Luc sat on a bench in the corner of the room, a big duffel on the floor by his feet. He’d removed everything but his thermal underwear bottoms and socks. He was bare from the waist up, and he’d wrapped a towel around his neck. The ends hung halfway down his chest, and as he watched her approach, he shot water from a plastic bottle into his mouth. A bead of moisture dripped from his bottom lip, slipped down his chin, and dropped to his sternum. Leaving a trail of moisture, it descended the defined planes of his chest and hard stomach and dipped into his navel.

He had a black horseshoe tattooed on his lower belly. The shadowing of the groove and nail holes gave depth and dimension to his flesh, and the heels curved upward on each side of his belly button. The bottom of the tattoo disappeared beneath the waistband of his underwear, and Jane doubted he needed the luck of a horseshoe tattooed above his goods.

“I don’t give interviews,” he said before she could ask him a question. “With all that research you’ve done on me, I’d have thought you’d know that.”

She did, but she wasn’t feeling particularly amiable. The boys’ club had shoved her out, and she felt like shoving back. She turned on her recorder. “How do you feel about tonight’s game?”

She didn’t expect him to answer and he didn’t.

“It looked like you got your stick on that puck right before it went into the net.”

The scar on his chin appeared especially white, but his face remained expressionless. Jane only dug in her heels.

“Isn’t it hard to concentrate when fans are yelling at you?”

With the edge of the towel, he wiped his face. But he didn’t respond.

“If it were me, I think I’d have a hard time ignoring those nasty insults.”

His blue eyes continued to stare into hers, but one corner of his mouth turned down as if he found her very annoying.

“Until tonight, I had no idea hockey fans were so rude. Those men behind me were drunk and disgusting. I can’t imagine standing up and yelling, ‘Eat me,’ in a crowd like they did.”

He pulled the towel from around his neck and finally said, “Ace, if you’d stood up and yelled, ‘Eat me,’ doubt you’d be standing here right now bugging the hell out of me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I imagine, you’d have gotten a taker or two.”

It took a few moments for his meaning to become clear, and when it did, shocked laughter spilled from her lips. “I guess it’s not the same thing, is it?”

“Not quite.”

He stood and hooked his thumbs beneath the elastic of his underwear. “Now run along and harass somebody else.” When she didn’t move, he added, “Unless you want to embarrass yourself some more.”

“I’m not embarrassed.”

“You keep blushing like your face is on fire.”

“It’s very hot in here,” she lied. Was he the only one who’d noticed? Probably not. “Very hot.”

“It’s about to get hotter.” He’d said aboot again. “Stick around and you’re going to get an eyeful of the good wood.”

She turned and beat a hasty retreat. Not because he told her to or because of the threat of getting an eyeful of the good wood, but because she had a deadline. Yeah, she had a deadline, she told herself as she walked from the locker room, careful to keep her gaze from falling on any more naked parts.

By the time she made it back to the hotel, it was ten o’clock. She had a column to write and a deadline to meet, all before she could put herself to bed. She plugged in her laptop and got to work on her first sports column. She knew the beat reporters at the Times would tear it apart and look for flaws, and she was determined that they would find none. She was determined to write better than a man.

Chinooks Tie Coyotes; Lynch Makes Only Goal, she wrote, but she quickly discovered that writing sports copy wasn’t as easy as she’d anticipated. It was boring. After several hours of struggling to get the words just right and answering repeated nuisance phone calls, she took the receiver off the hook, pressed delete, and began again.

From the second the puck dropped in the America West Arena tonight, the Chinooks and Coyotes treated fans to a wild roller-coaster ride of hard hits and white-knuckle suspense. Both teams kept up the frenetic pace until the very end, when Chinooks goalie Luc Martineau denied the Coyotes a smoker from the blue line. When the final buzzer sounded in overtime, the score remained tied at one with...

Along with Luc’s many saves, she wrote about Lynch’s goal and the hard hits on the Hammer. It didn’t occur to her until after she’d sent the article early the next morning that Luc had been watching her in the locker room. As she’d been bouncing around like a pinball, not everyone had been ignoring her. Again she felt a disturbing catch in her chest and alarm bells rang in her head, signaling trouble. Big bad trouble with baby blue eyes and legendary fast hands.

It was a good thing he didn’t like her. And she most definitely didn’t like anything about him.

Well, except his tattoo. The tattoo rocked.

Early the next morning, the Chinooks dressed in their suits, ties, and battle scars, and headed for the airport. A half hour into the flight heading for Dallas, Luc loosened his tie and broke out a deck of cards. Two of his teammates and the goalie coach, Don Boclair, joined him in a game of poker. Playing poker on long flights was one of the only times that Luc truly felt a part of the team.

As he dealt, Luc gazed across the aisle of the BAC-111, at the heavy soles of a pair of small boots. Jane had pushed up the armrest between the seats and was sound asleep. She lay on her side, and for once her hair wasn’t scraped back from her face. Soft brown curls fell across her cheek and the corner of her parted lips. One hand was folded beneath her chin.

“Do you think we were too rough on her last night?”

Luc looked up at Bressler, leaning over the back of his seat. “Nah.” He shook his head, then laid the deck on the tray table in front of him. He glanced over his cards and bet on a pair of eights while the guy in the seat next to him, Nick “the Bear” Grizzell, folded. “She doesn’t belong here,” Luc added. “If Duffy was going to force a reporter on us, he could have at least picked someone who knows something about hockey.”

“Did you see the way she kept blushing last night?”

They all chuckled as the remaining players discarded.

“She got an eyeful of Vlad’s dick.” Bressler threw down his cards. “One.”

“She saw the Impaler?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Her eyes about bugged out of her head.” Luc dealt Don Boclair two cards while he took three. “I don’t think she’ll ever be the same,” he said. It was a well-known fact within the team that Vlad had an ugly dick. The only man who didn’t think so was Vlad himself, but everyone also knew that the Russian had taken a lot of hits to the head.

Luc bet on three eights and his win was recorded in Don’s book. “How long did you keep her up with calls to her room?” Luc asked.

“She finally took the phone off the hook around midnight.”

“That first night I felt a little bad when we all went out and she was sitting by herself in the lobby bar,” Don confessed.

They all looked at him as if he were nuts. The last thing any of them wanted was a reporter— especially a woman—hanging around when they relaxed and cut loose. Be it relaxing in a strip club or nothing more than discussing an opposing team in the hotel bar, everything stayed within the team.

“Well,” Donny backpedaled as he dealt, “I hate to see any woman sitting alone.”

“It was kind of pathetic,” Grizzell added.

Luc looked over his cards and placed his bet. “Don’t tell me you feel bad too, Bear?”

“Hell, no. She’s got to go.” He threw down his cards. “I’m out for good.”

“Too rich for your blood?”

“Nah, I’m going to kick back and read for the rest of the fright.” Everyone knew that the Bear didn’t read anything that didn’t have pictures. “Reading is fundamental.”

“You got a Playboy?” Don asked.

“I picked up a Him last night after the game, but I haven’t been able to get it away from the Stromster,” he said, referring to the rookie Daniel Holstrom. “He’s learning English by reading The Life of Honey Pie.”

They all laughed as Don recorded Bressler’s win in the book. Living in Seattle especially, a lot of them were fans of Honey Pie. They read her column each month to see who she was screwing into a coma and where she’d left the body.

Luc shuffled the cards and glanced over at Jane sleeping peacefully. No doubt she was the kind of woman who’d get her panties in a twist if she saw one of the guys reading porn.

The talk around him turned to the previous night’s game. No one was satisfied with the tie, least of all Luc. Phoenix had made twenty-two scoring attempts, and he’d made twenty-one saves. Not a bad night at the office, but out of all the shots on goal that night, he’d love to have that one back. Not necessarily because it went into the net, but because the goal had been more a fluke than a skilled shot. While Luc was intensely competitive and hated to lose, he really hated to lose on a fluke rather than a contest of skills.

Luc glanced again across the aisle to the woman sleeping like the dead. Her chest moved as her softly parted lips drew breath. Was last night’s tie a fluke? A loss in the normal course of the season? Probably, but Luc had a lot on his mind these days, and that goal had come a bit too easy. Was his personal life affecting his game? He had yet to hear anything from his personal manager, and the Marie situation was still unresolved.

In her sleep, Jane pushed her hair from her face. Or was this the beginning of the curse of the woman reporter? Of course, one tie didn’t a curse make. But it might be the beginning if they lost this Friday night in Dallas.

As if Bressler had read Luc’s thoughts, he said, “Did you know that it was considered bad luck for a woman to board a pirate ship?”

Luc hadn’t known that, but it made perfect sense to him. There was nothing that could mess up a man’s life quicker than an unwanted female.

Friday night the Chinooks lost in a four-three nail-biter with Dallas. Saturday morning while Luc waited outside for the bus to take them back to DFW, he read the sports section of the Dallas Morning News.

The headline read, “Chinooks Spill Blood and Guts,” and that pretty much summed up the game after Chinooks rookie Daniel Holstrom took a puck to his cheek early in the second frame. The puck that dropped Holstrom like a rock had come from a Dallas stick. Holstrom had been helped off the ice and hadn’t returned. Tempers flared, retaliation was sought. The Hammer mixed it up with the Dallas offense, grabbing a winger in the third period and giving him a glove rub in the alley.

After that, things got ugly, and while the Chinooks may have won the battles in the corners, they’d ultimately lost the war. Dallas’s deep offensive lines had taken advantage of every power play and peppered Luc with thirty-two shots on goal.

This morning no one was saying much. Especially after the ass-ream they’d been given in the locker room by Coach Nystrom. The coach had closed the door on reporters and had proceeded to shake the cinder-block walls with his loud tirade. But he’d said nothing they hadn’t deserved. They’d drawn stupid penalties and paid the price.

Luc folded the paper and stuck it beneath one arm. He unbuttoned his blazer as Ms. Alcott stepped from the revolving door to his left. The Texas sun bathed her in bright morning light, and a slight breeze played with the ends of her ponytail. She wore a black skirt down to her knees, a black blazer, and turtleneck. Her shoes were flat, and she carried that big briefcase of hers and a to-go coffee. She added to the visual assault by wearing an ugly pair of sunglasses on the bridge of her nose. They were round and green like a fly. Damn, but she was into looking sexless.

“Interesting game last night.” She set her briefcase on the ground between them and looked up into his face.

“You liked that?”

“Like I said, it was interesting. What was the team’s motto? ‘If you can’t beat ’em, beat ‘em up?’”

“Something like that,” he said with a laugh. “What’s with all the gray and black you always wear?”

She glanced down at herself. “I look good in black.”

“No, sweetheart, you look like the archangel of doom.”

She took a sip of her coffee and said totally urbanely, as if he hadn’t hit a nerve, “I could live the rest of my life without fashion commentary according to Lucky Luc.”

Or at least she tried for urbane. The bloom in her cheeks and her narrowed gaze behind those ugly glasses gave her away. “Okay, but...” He stopped and shook his head. He looked up at the sky and waited for her to take the bait.

He did not wait long. “I know I’m going to regret this,” she sighed, “but what?”

“Well, I just think that a woman who has trouble getting a man might have better luck if she dressed up the package a little. Didn’t wear ugly sunglasses.”

“My sunglasses aren’t ugly, and my packaging is none of your business,” she said as she raised her coffee to her lips.

“So only my business is open for discussion? Your business is off limits?”

“That’s right.”

“You little hypocrite.”

“Yeah, sue me.”

He glanced down into her face and asked, “How’s the coffee this morning?”

“It’s fine.”

“Still taking it black?”

She looked up at him out of the corner of her eye and placed a hand over the lid. “Yes.”