hen Jane finally forced herself from bed the next morning, she pulled on her laundry-day underwear and sweatsuit and hauled her dirty clothes to the Laundromat. As the machines washed and spun, she flipped open a People magazine and caught up on her reading.

There was no place she had to be today. No deadline breathing down her neck. She didn’t have anything work-related until tomorrow night’s game. She bought a Coke from the vending machine, sat back in a hard plastic chair, and enjoyed the mundane pleasure of watching her darks tumble dry. She grabbed the real estate section from the local newspaper and checked out properties for sale. With her added income from the hockey columns, she estimated that by summer she’d have enough money saved to put twenty percent down on a home of her own, but the more she looked, the more discouraged she got. Two hundred thousand sure didn’t buy much these days.

On the way home, she stopped at the grocery store to pick up a week’s worth of food. She had today off, but tomorrow the Chinooks were playing the Chicago Blackhawks at Key Arena. They had home games Thursday, Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday nights. Three days off after that, then it was back on the road. Back on the jet. Back on the bus and back to sleeping in hotel rooms.

Reporting the Chinooks’ six-four loss to the Sharks was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. After she’d trash-talked and played darts with them, she felt a bit like a traitor, but she’d had a job to do.

And Luc... watching the horror unfold in the net had almost been as bad as watching him sitting on the bench. Staring straight ahead, his handsome features void of expression. She’d felt bad for him. She’d felt bad that she had to be the one to report the details, but again, she’d had a job to do, and she’d done it.

When she returned home, there was a message on her machine from Leonard Callaway asking her to meet him the following morning in his office at the Times. She didn’t think the message bode well for her further employment as a sports reporter.

And she was right. He fired her. “We’ve decided it’s best if you no longer cover the Chinooks games. Jeff Noonan is going to fill in for Chris,” Leonard said.

The paper was letting Jane go and giving her job to the Nooner. “Why? What happened?”

“I think it’s best if we don’t get into that.”

The Chinooks hadn’t played their best games the past week, ending in Luc’s spectacular blowout. “They think I jinxed them. Don’t they?”

“We knew it was a possibility.”

Good-bye to her chance to write an important article. Good-bye to twenty-percent down on her own home. And all because some stupid hockey players thought she was bad luck. Well, she couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned or that she wasn’t half expecting it. Still, knowing it didn’t make it any easier to take. “Which players think I brought them bad luck? Luc Martineau?”

“Let’s not get into that,” Leonard said, but he didn’t deny it.

His silence hurt more than it should. Luc was nothing to her, and she was certainly nothing to him. Less than nothing. He’d never wanted her to travel with the team in the first place, and she was sure he was behind her getting the boot. Jane pushed up the corners of her mouth when what she really wanted was to scream and yell and threaten to sue for wrongful termination or sexism or... or... something. She might even have a case too. But might wasn’t a good enough guarantee, and she’d learned long ago not to let her hot temper burn bridges. She still had the Single Girl column to write for the Times.

“Well, thank you for the opportunity to write the sports column,” she said and shook Leonard’s hand. “Traveling with the Chinooks was an experience I won’t forget.”

She kept her smile on her face until she left the building. She was so angry, she wanted to hit someone. Someone with blue eyes and a horseshoe tattooed above his private parts.

And betrayed. She’d thought she’d made progress, but the players had turned on her. Maybe if she hadn’t beat them at darts, talked trash, and they hadn’t called her Sharky, she wouldn’t feel so betrayed now. But she did. She’d even felt bad for doing her job and reporting the facts of their last game. And this was how they repaid her? She hoped they got athlete’s foot. All at the same time.

For the next two days, she didn’t leave her apartment. She was so depressed she cleaned all the cupboards. While she recaulked the bathroom, she cranked the volume on the television and felt only slightly vindicated when she heard that the Chinooks lost to the Blackhawks four to three.

Who would they blame now?

By the third day, her anger hadn’t diminished, and she knew there was only one way to get rid of it. She had to confront the players if she was to reclaim her dignity.

She knew they would be at the Key Arena for the game-day skate, and before she could talk herself out of it, she dressed in her jeans and black sweater and drove into Seattle.

She entered on the mezzanine level, and her gaze immediately fell on the empty net. Only a few players practiced on the ice below, and with her stomach in knots, she walked down the steps and headed for the locker room.

“Hello, Fishy,” she said as she strolled toward him in the tunnel, a blowtorch in his hand as he warmed the blade of his stick.

He looked up and shut off the torch.

“Are the guys in the locker room?” she asked.

“Most of them.”

“Is Luc in there?”

“I don’t know, but he doesn’t like to talk on game days.”

Too damn bad. The soles of her boots squeaked on the rubber mats in the hallway and heads swiveled in her direction when she walked into the room. She raised a hand. “Keep your pants up, gentlemen,” she said as she moved to stand in the middle of the half-naked players. “I’ll just take a moment of your time, and I’d prefer you not do your synchronized jock-dropping thing.”

She turned to face them and stood with her shoulders straight and her head high. She didn’t see Luc. The rat bastard was probably hiding. “I’m sure you’ve all heard that I will no longer be covering Chinooks games, and I wanted to let you know that I will not forget our time together. Traveling with you guys was... interesting.” She walked to Captain Mark Bressler and stuck out her hand. “Good luck with your game tonight, Hitman.”

He looked at her a moment as if she made the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound center a bit nervous. “Ah, thanks,” he said and finally shook her hand. “Are you going to be in the seats tonight?”

She dropped her hand to her side. “No. I have other plans.”

She turned to face the room one last time. “Good-bye, gentlemen, good luck, and I hope this is your year to win the Stanley Cup.” She even managed a smile before she turned to go. She’d done it, she thought as she walked down the hall. They hadn’t chased her away with her tail between her legs. She’d shown them that she had class and dignity and that she was magnanimous too.

She hoped they all got jock itch. Really, really bad jock itch. She looked down at the rubber mats as she walked into the tunnel, but she stopped short when she came face to naked chest with sculpted muscles, ripped abs, and a horseshoe tattoo rising out of a pair of hockey shorts. Luc Martineau. Her gaze lifted up his damp chest to his chin and mouth, up the deep furrow of his top lip, past his straight nose to the beautiful baby blues staring back at her.

“You!” she said.

One brow rose slowly up his forehead and her temper exploded.

“You did this to me,” she said. “I know you did. I guess it didn’t matter to you that I actually needed that job. You screw up in the net and I’m out.” She felt the backs of her eyes sting and that made her all the madder. “Who did you blame your loss on last night? And if you lose tonight, who will you blame? You... you...” she stammered. One rational part of her brain told her to shut up, to quit while she was ahead. To just walk around him and leave while she still had her dignity.

Too bad she was too far gone to listen to that part of her brain.

“You called him a big dumb dodo?” Caroline asked later that night as the two of them sat on Jane’s couch watching the gas fireplace lick the fake logs. “Why didn’t you go for broke and call him a poo-poo head too?”

Jane groaned. Hours later she was still writhing with embarrassment. “Don’t,” she pleaded and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “The only consolation I have is that I will never see Luc Martineau again.” But she didn’t ever think she’d forget the look on his face. Kind of stunned surprise, followed by laughter. She’d wanted to die right there, but she couldn’t even blame him for laughing at her. He probably hadn’t been called a big dumb dodo since grade school.

“Bummer,” Caroline said as she raised a glass of wine to her lips. She’d pulled her shiny blond hair back into a perfect ponytail and, as always, looked gorgeous. “I thought maybe you could introduce me to Rob Sutter.”

“The Hammer?” Jane shook her head and took a drink of her gin and tonic. “His nose is always broken and he always has a black eye.”

Caroline smiled and got a little dreamy-eyed. “I know.”

“He’s married and has a baby.”

“Hmm, well, someone single, then.”

“I thought you had a new man.”

“I do, but it’s not going to work out.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said through a sigh and put her wine on the cherrywood coffee table. “Lenny is handsome and rich but soooo boring.”

Which meant he was probably normal and didn’t need fixing. Caroline was a born fixer-upper.

“Do you want to turn on the game and watch it?” Caroline asked.

Jane shook her head. “Nah.” She’d been tempted, real tempted, to grab the remote and surf by the game to see who was winning. But that would only make everything worse.

“Maybe the Chinooks will lose. That might make you feel better.”

It wouldn’t. “No.” Jane leaned her head back on the floral print sofa. “I don’t ever want to see a hockey game again.” But she did. She wanted to be in the press box or a seat near the action. She wanted to feel the energy run through her, watch a flawless play, a fight break out in the corners, or Luc reach for the perfect glove save.

“Just when I thought I was making progress with the team, I get the sack. I beat Rob and Luc at darts, and they all kidded me about having lesbian glasses. And that night I didn’t get nuisance calls in my room. I know we weren’t friends, but I thought they were beginning to trust and accept me into the pack.” She thought a moment and added, “Like wild dingos.”

Caroline glanced at her watch. “I’ve been here fifteen minutes and you haven’t gotten to the good stuff.”

Jane didn’t have to ask what her friend was talking about. She knew Caroline too well. “I thought you came over to cheer me up, but you just want to hear about the locker room.”

“I did come to cheer you up.” She turned toward Jane and laid an arm across the back of the sofa. “Later.”

It wasn’t like she owed any of them any sort of loyalty. Not now. And it wasn’t as if she were going to put it in a tell-all book. “Okay,” she said, “but it wasn’t like you’re thinking. It wasn’t all really hard bodies and me the only woman. Well, it was, but I had to keep my eyes up and every time I walked past a player he dropped his cup.”

“You’re right,” Caroline said as she leaned over and plucked her wine off the table. “It isn’t what I was thinking. It’s better.”

“It’s harder than you think to talk to a naked man while you’re fully clothed. They’re all sweaty and flushed and they don’t want to talk. You ask them a question, and they just sort of grunt out an answer.”

“Sounds like my last three boyfriends during sex.”

“It wasn’t as much fun as sex, believe me.” She shook her head. “Some of them wouldn’t talk to me at all, and that made it really difficult to do my job.”

“Yeah, I know that part.” She waved a dismissive hand. “So, who has the best body?”

Jane thought a moment. “Well, they’re all incredibly built. Powerful legs and upper bodies. Mark Bressler probably has the biggest muscles, but Luc Martineau has this horseshoe tattoo low on his abdomen that makes you want to fall right to your knees and kiss it for good luck. And his butt... perfect.” She held her cool glass to her forehead. “Too bad he’s a jerk.”

“Sounds like you like him.”

Jane lowered the glass and looked over at Caroline. Like him? Like Luc? The guy who got her fired? More than all the other players combined, she felt most hurt and betrayed by Luc. Which, when she thought about it, probably wasn’t all that rational, since she didn’t really know him and he didn’t know her. It was just that she’d thought they’d developed a tentative friendship, and if she was honest, she’d admit that she’d also developed a slight infatuation for Luc. No, infatuation was too strong a word. Interest better described what she’d felt. “I don’t like him,” she said, “but he does have one of those Canadian accents that is only detectable with certain words.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What, uh-oh? I said I didn’t like him.”

“I know that’s what you said, but you’ve always been a sucker for a man with an accent.”

“Since when?”

“Since Balki on Perfect Strangers.”

“The sitcom?”

“Yep, you were mad for Balki all because he had that accent. No matter that he was a loser who lived with his cousin.”

“No, I was mad for Bronson Pinchot. Not Balki.” She laughed. “And that same year, you were mad for Tom Cruise. How many times do you think we saw Top Gun?”

“At least twenty.” Caroline took a drink of her wine. “Even back then you were attracted to losers.”

“I call it having realistic expectations.”

“More like selling yourself short because you have typical abandonment issues.”

“Are you high?”

Caroline shook her head and her ponytail brushed her shoulders. “No, I read all about it in a magazine while I was in my gynecologist’s office last week. Because your mother died, you’re afraid everyone you love will leave you.”

“Which just goes to show, there’s a lot of made-up crap in magazines.” And she should know. “Just last week you told me I had issues with leaving a relationship because I have a fear of getting dumped. Make up your mind.”

Caroline shrugged. “Obviously it’s all the same issue.”

“Right.”

They watched the fireplace for a few more minutes, then Caroline suggested, “Let’s go out.”

“It’s Thursday night.”

“I know, but neither of us has to work tomorrow.”

Maybe a night of blowing out her ears with a garage band was just what she needed to take her mind off the hockey game she should have been covering but wasn’t. Get her out of the apartment so she couldn’t turn on the television and surf past the game. She looked down at her green T-shirt, black fleece, and jeans. She also needed new material for her Single Girl column. “Okay, but I’m not changing.”

Caroline, who’d dressed down tonight in a Tommy sweater with a flag on the chest and butt-tight jeans, looked at Jane and rolled her eyes. “At least put your contacts in.”

“Why?”

“Well, I didn’t want to say anything because I love you and all, and because I’m always telling you what to wear and I didn’t want you to feel self-conscious and have bad self-esteem, but those horrid people at Eye Care lied to you.”

Jane didn’t think her glasses were that bad. Lisa Loeb had a pair just like them. “Are you sure they don’t look good on me?”

“Yes, and I’m only telling you this because I don’t want people to think I’m the girl and you’re the boy.”

Not Caroline too? “What makes you think people would assume you’re the girl and I’m the boy?” she asked as she got up and moved into the bathroom. “It’s possible that people would think you’re the boy.” There was silence from the other room and she stuck her head around the door. “Well?”

Caroline stood at the fireplace applying red lipstick in front of the mirror hanging above the mantel “Well, what?” She replaced the lipstick in her cute little handbag.

“Well, what makes you think people would assume you’re the girl and I’m the boy?” she asked again.

“Oh, was that a real question? I thought you were trying to be funny.”

* * *

The next morning at nine o’clock, Jane’s telephone rang. It was Leonard phoning to tell her that he and Virgil and the Chinooks management had reconsidered their “hasty decision.” They wanted her to resume her job ASAP. Which meant they wanted her in the press box for tomorrow night’s game against St. Louis. She was so shocked, she could only lie in her bed and listen to Leonard’s complete about-face.

It seemed that after her talk with the team, they’d all played brilliant hockey. Bressler had scored a hat trick after she’d shaken his hand, and Luc was back in his zone. He’d kept the score at six-zero, and for the moment surpassed his rival Patrick Roy in shutouts.

Suddenly Jane Alcott was good luck.

“I don’t know, Leonard,” she said as she threw aside her yellow flannel duvet and sat on the edge of her bed. Her head and mouth felt as if they were stuffed with cotton, a result of too much late-night fun, and she was having a hard time grasping her thoughts. “I can’t take this job and wonder if I’m going to get fired every time the Chinooks lose a game.”

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

She didn’t believe him, and if she did decide to take the job again, she wasn’t going to jump at the opportunity like last time. And truthfully, she was still severely ticked off. “I’m going to have to think about it.”

After she hung up the phone, she brewed a pot of coffee and ate a little granola to take away the hollow feeling. She hadn’t gotten to bed until around two the night before, and she was sorry she’d even spent the money and wasted her time going out. She’d been unable to think of anything besides getting fired and she’d been bad company.

While she ate, she thought about Leonard’s new offer. The Chinooks had pretty much treated her like a leper and blamed their losses on her. Now they suddenly thought she was good luck? Did she really want to subject herself to more of their superstitious craziness? Their synchronized cup-dropping and nuisance calls?

When she finished eating, she jumped into the shower and closed her eyes as the warm water ran over her. Did she really want to travel with a goalie who could look right through her? Even as he made her heart race? Whether she wanted it to race or not? And she most definitely did not. Even if she and Luc liked each other, which they obviously didn’t, he only had eyes for tall gorgeous women.

She wrapped her hair in a towel and put on her glasses as she dried her body. She pulled on a sheer bandeau bra, a white University of Washington T-shirt, and a pair of old jeans with holes in the knees.

Her doorbell rang, and when she looked through the peephole, a man wearing a pair of silver Oakley sunglasses stood on her little porch all windblown and gorgeous, and looking exactly like Luc Martineau. She opened the door because she’d just been thinking of him, and she wasn’t certain this wasn’t a figment of her imagination.

“Hello, Jane,” he greeted. “May I come in?”

Wow, a polite Luc. Now she knew she was imagining things. “Why?”

“I hoped that we could talk about what happened.” That did it. He said aboot instead of about, and she knew she was talking to the real Luc.

“You getting me fired, you mean?”

He reached for his sunglasses and stuck them in the pocket of his leather bomber jacket. His cheeks were flushed, his hair messed, and behind him at the curb he’d parked his motorcycle. “I didn’t get you fired. Not directly anyway.” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “Are you going to invite me inside?”

Her hair was in a towel and the cold air was giving her goose bumps. She decided to let him in. “Have a seat,” she said as he followed her into the living room of her apartment. She left for a moment to take the towel from her head and to brush the tangles from her hair. Of all the men in the world, Luc was the last man she’d thought would ever be standing in her living room.

She brushed and towel-dried her hair the best she could, and for one brief moment she thought of maybe putting on some mascara and lip gloss. But she dismissed the thought just as quickly. She did, however, exchange her glasses for her contact lenses.

With her hair damp and the ends starting to curl, she returned to the living room. Luc stood with his back to her, studying a few photographs sitting on her mantel. His jacket lay on the sofa, and he wore a white dress shirt, the cuffs folded up his thick forearms. One wide pleat ran down the middle of his back and was tucked into a pair of Lucky Brand jeans. His wallet bulged one back pocket and the denim hugged his butt. He looked over his shoulder at her, his blue gaze moving from her bare feet, up her jeans and T-shirt to her face.

“Who’s this?” he asked and pointed to the middle photo of her and Caroline in their caps and gowns standing on the porch of her father’s house in Tacoma.

“That’s my best friend Caroline and me the night we graduated from Mt. Tahoma High School.”

“So you’ve lived around here all your life?”

“Yep.”

“You haven’t changed that much.”

She stood next to him. “I’m a lot older these days.”

He looked across his shoulder at her. “How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

He flashed a white smile that slid past her defenses, warmed her up, and curled her toes into the beige Berber carpet. “That old?” he asked. “You look pretty good for your age.”

Oh, God. She didn’t want to read more into that statement than he’d intended, which she was certain was absolutely nothing. She didn’t want him to dazzle her with a smile. She didn’t want to feel tingles or warm flushes or have bad sinful thoughts. “Why are you here, Luc?”

“I got a call from Darby Hogue.” He shoved one hand in the front pocket of those Lucky jeans and rested his weight on one foot. “He told me they’d offered you your job back and you turned them down.”

She hadn’t turned them down. She’d said she’d think about it. “What does that have to do with you?”

“Darby thought I could talk you into coming back.”

“You? You think I’m the archangel of gloom and doom.”

“You’re a cute archangel of doom.”

Oh, boy. “You were the wrong choice. I don’t—” she stopped because she couldn’t lie and say she didn’t like him. She did. Even though she didn’t want to like him. So she settled on a half lie. “I don’t know if I even like you.”

He chuckled as if he knew she lied. “That’s what I told Darby.” The corners of his mouth slid into a smile filled with charm, and he rocked back on his heels. “But he thought I could change your mind.”

“I doubt it.”

“I figured you might say that.” He walked to the couch and pulled something out of the pocket of his leather jacket. “So I brought you a peace offering.”

He handed her a thin trade-sized paperback with a pink ribbon tied around it. Hockey Talk: The Jargon, the Lore, the Stuff You’ll Never Learn from TV.

Shocked, she took it from him. “You did this?”

“Yeah, and I had the girl at the bookstore put that bow on it.”

He’d given her a gift. A peace offering. Something she could actually use. Not something generic men typically gave women, like flowers or chocolate or cheap underwear. He’d given it some thought. He’d paid attention. To her.

“They didn’t have black ribbon, so she had to use pink.”

Jane’s heart pinched in her chest and she knew she was in trouble. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She looked up past his smile and into his blue eyes. Big bad trouble. The kind all wrapped up in a white shirt and Lucky jeans. The kind that dated Barbie Dolls because he could.