he folded her arms beneath her breasts, and her arms got...

“Praise Jesus,” he said through a frown as a dull ache settled in the backs of his eyes. This conversation wasn’t going where he wanted. She was supposed to be getting mad and he was supposed to be laughing as he watched her walk out the door.

Chelsea looked at the tall, arrogant man in front of her. At his powerful arms and big chest. His scowl and his hard gaze. The jerk didn’t like a taste of his own medicine. “Really, you have no idea how relieved I am to know that I never have to have sex with you.”

“Yeh, I think I have some idea;

“I’m just so glad we have it out in the open.” You’re not ugly. She wasn’t the least ugly. In fact, she thought she was pretty darn attractive. He was just a typical jock a-hole who thought he was so special he should date supermodels. “And in the future, if I lean over to show you something and I accidentally touch you, it’s not on purpose.” And because she really did want to keep her job, she added, “Although I’m sure lots of women would kill to touch you.”

His brows lowered over his dark eyes, and combined with the black shadow of his beard, he looked kind of scary. “Just not you.”

But Chelsea had faced a lot scarier things than one moody hockey player. For all his weight and bulk and anger, he didn’t intimidate her. “No. Not me.” Time to change the subject before he got mad and got her fired. Or worse, sent her on another humiliating and senseless errand like buying condoms. “I think your participation in the charity golf tournament is important. First, because it’s for charity and the press will give it more attention if you’re there. Second, because your fans want to see you.”

“Are we back to that?” He closed his eyes and groaned. “God, you’re like a tick burrowing into my head. I told you I can’t play. I’d come in over par on every damn shot.”

A pit bull and now a tick. Flattering. “Your score isn’t the point.”

“The score is always the point.” He reached for his cane and rose to his full height. “I don’t play anything that I can’t win.”

“You don’t celebrate second place.”

“That’s right.”

“This event is for charity. The point of playing for any charity isn’t whether you win first, second, or third. It’s your participation.” He opened his mouth to argue but she held up one hand. “Just think about it. I have another week before I have to give them an answer either way.”

He moved past her. “Stop interfering in my life.”

“I’m just trying to help you.” She followed him. “I’m really at a loss here. I don’t know what you need.”

He stopped suddenly and she almost ran into his wide back and black nylon jogging pants.

“You are the only person I’ve ever worked for that doesn’t have an impossible list for me. You don’t have a list at all. Tell me what you need for me to do for you.”

His back straightened. “I don’t need you to do anything for me.”

She moved in front of him and looked up into his face. Light from the front of the house slashed across his nose and the top of his chest. His mouth was compressed even more than usual. “The Chinooks are paying me good money to be your assistant.”

“Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll give you double to quit.”

Somehow she doubted he’d give her twenty grand. “It’s not CIt& just about the money,” she lied. “I get satisfaction from my work. You need me and—”

“I don’t need you.”

“—and,” she continued as if he hadn’t interrupted, “if you don’t tell me what I can do to help you out, I’ll just have to keep coming up with stuff on my own.”

“Fine. You can write back to all those seven thousand hockey fans you’re so concerned about.”

It wasn’t like she hadn’t ever answered someone else’s fan mail before. “What do you want the e-mail to say?”

“One e-mail is so impersonal.” He continued around the stairs and headed down the darkened hall. “I think you need to answer each individually.”

She called after him, her Kate Spade wedges suddenly rooted to the tile. “What?”

“Write to each of the fans individually,” he repeated, his voice trailing after him.

Dread weighted her feet, and she forced herself to follow. “I thought a mass ‘thank you for your concern,’ yada yada, e-mail would be nice.”

“Yada yada isn’t personal.” He moved into a huge room with one of the biggest televisions she’d ever seen, a big leather couch, a large chaise, and three poker tables. She stopped in the doorway.

“Mention how much their letters mean to me,” he said over his shoulder. “And include something about their own letter so they’ll think I read it myself.”

“What a tool,” she whispered.

He turned and looked at her across the room. “Did you just call me a tool?”

He might have fractured half the bones in his body, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing. She pointed to the poker tables and totally lied. “No. I said, ‘That’s cool.’ Do you play a lot of poker?”

“I used to.” He grabbed the television remote from an end table and turned toward the television. “You better get going on those e-mails.”

Tool, she mouthed to his back. Then she turned and made her way back to the office in the front of the house. Her wooden wedges thumped across the tile floor like a death knell. “Seven thousand e-mails,” she moaned. Ten thousand dollars.

She pulled out the chair Mark had been sitting in earlier and called her sister. “I need to know who to contact to get access to Mark’s guest book page on the Chinooks’ Web site,” she explained. “The e-mail addresses of the people who signed it are hidden.” After a few minutes of further explanations, she grabbed a pen and a pad of sticky notes from a drawer. She wrote down a name and a number and called the senior manager of the Web site. After some back-and-forth, he determined that she wasn’t some wacko trying to get access. He gave her the link to the administration panel, username, and a password she could use. Within minutes she was in. Easy, cheesy, lemon squeezy. Now came the hard part, replying to all those letters.

The first dozen notes expressed the writersR Che 17; best wishes for Mark’s recovery. They were filled with concern, recollections, and hero worship. Chelsea hit reply and wrote basically the same message in all of them:

Thank you for your concern and for taking the time to write. Your caring support means a lot to me. I am doing well and feeling better every day.

Mark Bressler

After forty-five minutes of mind-numbing work, she came across:

Hi Mark,

This is Lydia Ferrari.

Chelsea smiled. Ferrari. Right.

We met at Lava Lounge a few months before your accident. I had on the green mini T-shirt dress and you said I looked like Heidi Klum.

Chelsea rolled her eyes before she continued.

We hooked up in my apartment in Redmond. It was one of the best nights of my life. I gave you my digits but you never called. At first my feelings were hurt but now I’m just sad to hear about your accident. I hope you recover soon.

Lydia

She didn’t know which was worse. That Lydia had hooked up with a man she’d met in a bar or that she’d written about it in a public forum. As for Mark’s behavior, she wasn’t surprised. Disgusted but not surprised. He was a jock.

Dear Lydia, she wrote.

Sorry I hooked up with you and never called. I’m kind of a jerk that way. On behalf of all men everywhere who’ve said they were going to call and never did, I’d like to apologize. Although really, Lydia, what do you expect? Get a little self-esteem and quit hooking up with men you meet in bars.

Chelsea sat back and looked at what she’d written. Instead of hitting reply, she pressed delete and erased Lydia’s inappropriate letter and her response.

The next letter began:

Mark Turdler,

Karma’s a bitch. That hit you gave Marleau was illegal as hell. I’m glad you’re in a coma.

Dan from San Jose

She deleted that one, too. There really wasn’t an excuse for someone to write something so horrible, and she didn’t think she should dignify Dan with a response.

She answered a few more, then read:

Mark,

My son and I never miss a Chinooks’ home game and a chance to see you play. You are an inspiration to my eight-year-old son, Derek, who met you at youth hockey camp last summe Campr. You were his coach and taught him to never give up. He talks about you all the time, and because of your encouragement, he wants to play professional hockey someday.

Mary White

Chelsea lifted her eyes from the screen and looked at the posters and trophies and other memorabilia around the room. A Chinooks’ jersey with the number “12” and the name “BRESSLER” written across the shoulders hung behind Plexiglas and beneath a broken hockey stick on the wall. On another wall hung a picture of him wearing a deep blue jersey, his hair matted and sweaty. A huge smile curved his mouth and showed his straight white teeth. In one hand he held a puck with a piece of tape across it. The number “500” was written across the white cloth tape.

All these things had meaning to him and told the story of his life. A life filled with hero worship and hockey, hooking up with random women, and inspiring young boys.

His was a story she didn’t know. And truthfully, didn’t understand. He had so much. Was so lucky, and yet he was so angry. It was like he’d flipped a switch and closed off the laughing, smiling man she’d watched in interview clips. The Mark Bressler she knew was more like the man she’d seen in other video clips of him, the hockey player throwing punches and fighting it out on the ice.

No, she didn’t understand his anger and his somber moods, but she supposed she wasn’t getting paid to understand him. She looked at the computer screen and got back to work.

Dear Mary, she wrote.

It was my pleasure to coach Derek last summer. I’m glad to hear he does not plan to give up. I’ll come see him play in the NHL someday.

Take care,

Mark Bressler

She scrolled to the next letter and made a mental note to ask Mark about youth hockey camp. He wouldn’t like it. He’d probably accuse her of being pushy and trying to run his life. He’d call her a tick, but his life needed someone to run it.

After forty minutes and ten more letters, she rose and stretched her arms over her head. At this rate, it was going to take her forever to get the letters written, and she suspected that’s why he’d told her to do it. She dropped her hands to her side and moved through the house toward the leisure room. Light from all the leaded glass windows smeared milky patches across the stone and wood and made her think she was in a villa in Tuscany. She wondered if his former wife had chosen the house, because the little she did know of Mark, it didn’t seem to suit his tastes. He seemed like more a modern architecture kind of guy.

The carpet in the huge room silenced the soles of her shoes as she walked inside. On the television, the noon news showed the weather forecast for the next week. The sound was so low she could barely hear it. The curtains were open, and the late morning sun poured in through large French doors, bleaching the carpet a lighter beige and stopping just short of the large chaise where Mark lay, asleep. His right hand rested on his stomach, the blue splint contrasting with the white of his T-shirt. His left hand lay on the leather beside him, palm up, his fingers curled arou Crs nd the remote. The permanent frown between his brows was gone, his forehead smooth. He looked younger, softer, which seemed odd given the strong angles of his face and the dark spiky stubble.

If I mention that I haven’t been laid for six months, are you going to start lining up hookers? he’d asked, and she bit the side of her lips to keep from laughing and waking him up. She’d worked for a comedian once who had asked her to get him a hooker. He’d used a certain escort service and had wanted Chelsea to go pick the girl up and drop her off. He’d wanted her to come back two hours later, then take the girl back home. She’d refused, and the comedian had paid for a cab instead.

Unlike the comedian, Mark Bressler obviously had no problems when it came to getting females. He was very good-looking and had a raw sexual aura that surrounded him like a poisonous cloud. Unless he had some sort of fetish, she just couldn’t see him dialing up hookers.

She moved to the heavy drapery and shut the curtains. It was a good thing she wasn’t easily offended anymore. If he’d made those comments about her large boobs several years ago, she would have burst into tears and run from his house, which she suspected was the reason he’d insulted her.

Again.

She turned, and he rubbed his injured hand across his stomach and chest, the rasp of his splint barely audible over the low voices pouring from the television. He didn’t open his eyes, and she wondered if she should wake him for lunch. Instead she tiptoed out of the room. Best not to poke the beast.

She went back to work, answering fan letters. For the next two days she wrote mostly generic responses or deleted inappropriate messages. Wednesday, she took a break from the computer to drive Mark to a doctor’s appointment a few miles away, and Thursday she drove him to the Verizon store. Both times he was such a horrible backseat driver, she threatened to drive him around in her Honda if he didn’t shut up.

He did. For a few minutes.

“Son of a bitch!” he swore as she drove him home from the Verizon store that Thursday afternoon. “That car almost hit us broadside.”

“A miss is as good as a mile,” she quoted her mother.

“Obviously not, or your car wouldn’t be dented to shit.”

Her Honda wasn’t “dented to shit.” It had a few minor parking lot dings. “That’s it. From now on we’re taking my car. You call me a tick and a nag, but you are the worst backseat driver in the entire state of Washington and half of Oregon.”

“You don’t know every backseat driver in Washington and half of Oregon.”

She ignored his comment. “You bitch when I pull out too fast. You bitch when it’s not fast enough. You bitch when I go through a yellow light and bitch when I stop,” she said. “For a person who has so much in life, you complain a lot.”

“You don’t know jackshit about my life.”

“I know that you’re bored. You need a hobby. Something to do.”

“I C1emdon’t need a hobby.”

“I’m thinking you should get involved in youth hockey camp. I know from reading your fan letters that you were a positive influence in the lives of those kids.”

He looked out the passenger window and was silent for several moments before he said, “In case you haven’t figured it out, I can’t skate these days.”

“When I went to that Stanley Cup final with my sister and Jules, I noticed that the Chinook coaches just stand behind the bench, act really cranky, and yell a lot. You can do that. You’re good at being cranky and yelling.”

“I’ve never yelled at you.”

“You just yelled ‘son of a bitch’ at me.”

“I raised my voice in reaction to you almost killing me. I survived one car wreck. I don’t want to be taken out now by a little person who can hardly see over the dash.”

Maybe that explained why he was so horrible when she drove him around. He was terrified of another car crash. Of course, that didn’t explain his ass hole behavior at home. “I can see perfectly fine and I’m five-one and a half.” She stopped at a red light and looked across the car at him. “In order to be considered a little person and attend the annual LPA national convention, I’d have to be four-ten or under.”

He turned and faced her. Both his brows rose above the frames of his sunglasses.

“What?”

He shook his head. “You know the height requirement of little people?”

She shrugged and glanced up at the traffic light. “When you grow up with kids calling you a midget, you look these things up.”

He chuckled, but she wasn’t amused. The one time he decided to laugh, it was at her. The light changed, and she put her foot on the gas pedal. Once again he’d managed to change the subject. “One of the letters I answered yesterday was from Mary White. You coached her son Derek.”

He turned and looked out the passenger window once more. He was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “I don’t remember a Derek.”

She didn’t know if that was the truth or he was just trying to shut her up. “That’s a shame. The impression I got from his mother was that you were a great coach.”

“Sometime today, you need to program my phone,” he said, subject closed. “I’ll give you a list of names and you can look the numbers up.”

She’d drop the subject. For now. “Programming a cell is really easy.” Because his phone was lost and he hadn’t backed up his numbers to the Verizon secure site, he’d lost everything. Yeah, it was easy, but finding all his numbers and programming them into his phone would take time. Time that she would rather spend plowing through the fan letters. “You can do it.”

“I don’t get paid to do it,” he said as they pulled into the garage. “You do.”

When they walked into the house, a cleaning service was there vacuuming and washing all those w Cng indows. Mark scribbled a list of names, then handed her his cell. “That will get you started,” he said, then disappeared into the elevator.

Chelsea plugged in the phone to give it a good charge before she turned to Mark’s computer and got back to work. While she answered a fan letter, an e-mail popped in his personal inbox. In case it was a Realtor, she opened his e-mail program. The return address caught her eye, and she opened it.

Coach Mark, it read.

My mom let me read what you wrote I hope you get better really soon I’ve been practicing my stops like you tot me I’m getting good you should see.

Derek White

Derek White? How had the kid managed to get ahold of Mark’s e-mail address? Wasn’t he like eight? If he’d been older, she might be scared. As it was, she was slightly alarmed.

Derek, she wrote.