Blindsided

“Big deal,” she grumbled.

“Actually, it is. No hockey player is ever any better at the game than he is at skating. The two go hand in hand. Your boys could stand some fine tuning, but they’re not send-’em-packing bad.”

Yes, they were her boys. And they had heart. They went out and took the beatings night after night. If they were willing to step up and keep trying, then she couldn’t do any less. Her stomach settling and her brain coming back to earth, she stared at the idling bus and asked, “So if they can skate, why don’t they win?”

“Consultants make big money, you know.”

His voice was light, his words edged with amusement. He wasn’t going to hold out on her. Cat smiled. “And the owners of struggling minor league teams don’t have big money. Could we work out a trade of some sort?”

“What are you offering?”

Her body if it were twenty years younger. “Dinner and drinks?” She sweetened the offer by adding, “At the best sports bar in town.”

He turned his head and grinned at her. “Toss in the ten dollar story and you’ve got a deal.”

“Deal,” she said, resisting the urge to stick out her hand by shoving both of them in the hip pockets of her jeans. “So tell me why they don’t win.”

“They don’t play as a team.”

She waited, watching him out the corner of her eye. He seemed fascinated by the lighting on the water tower over at the Greyhound Park. “And?”

“That’s the biggie.”

“For dinner, drinks and the story, I want the smallies, too.”

He frowned. “Are you still thinking about stepping behind the bench and coaching?”

And he’d complained about her not signaling unexpected turns? “Let’s just say that the possibility is looming large,” she replied. “You’ve seen what Carl Spady’s got going. Do you think I could do any worse?”

“Probably not,” he allowed as a smile slowly tipped up the corners of his mouth. Still studying the water tower, he said, “You’ve got two sets of problems going on out there on the ice. The first is in the technical aspects of the game. Players are often out of position, they don’t have a plan for salvaging a busted play, the lines aren’t set up to maximize skills and styles, shift changes are rough, and they’re running a playbook that was outdated ten years ago. Those are the most glaring problems, by the way, not the only ones.”

Lines. She’d read about those. Something about the five guys on the ice together. She’d look it up again and figure out how it went with what he’d told her. “What’s the second set of problems?”

“Attitudes,” he supplied, a steely edge to his voice. “You have Glory Boys, Grinders and Goons. As long as they see themselves and each other as being only one or the other, they’ll never play together as a team.”

She was trying to remember if she’d ever heard the terms before and wondering where she could get a decent definition when he added, “Hell, I actually saw Wheatley strip the puck from his own wingers three times tonight. Vanderrossen and Stover would rather take a penalty than a pass. And your third line didn’t take a single shot on goal the entire game. All they did was D—badly—to give the first and second lines a rest. Which, quite frankly, they hadn’t earned.”

She blinked, stunned at how thrilling she found his passion for the game. Found him. “D?” she asked lamely, hoping the response would take long enough for her to gather up a few of her scattered wits.

“Defense,” he replied, grinning. “Keeping the puck out of your own net.”

Oh, yeah. She knew that. “Can the problems—both sets of them—be fixed?”

His smile disappeared. “It would be a long, hard haul.”

That was the second time in two days she’d heard the expression. “Seems to be a standard description of the game,” she observed.

“Accurate, too.”

He cleared his throat and took a deep breath in the same way she did when she was getting ready to say something necessary but unpleasant. Not wanting to hear it, she deliberately cut him off. “But these boys aren’t new to hockey. They’ve been playing the game all of their lives. They have the grit to change, don’t they?”

He slid her a sideways glance and sighed. “Some do, some probably won’t,” he answered, going back to his study of the water tower. “They each have to weigh the coach’s expectations against their own and figure out if they want to give the coach what he needs. Some will hang up the skates and others will lace them tighter.”

“Is there any way to know who’s going to do which?” Please God, she silently added, let the hanger-uppers be the expensive ones.

“The Glory Boys are going to be your toughest sell. They have the biggest egos, and they tend to view themselves as God’s gift to hockey.”

Ah, a definition. She knew which ones he was talking about. She called them The Swaggerers. Glory Boys was more descriptive. And much easier to say. “It’s occurred to me,” she admitted, “that anyone playing hockey in Wichita, Kansas, isn’t God’s gift to anyone or anything.”

“You might want to remind them of that,” he said coolly as he looked into the distance. “Especially when they threaten to take their razzle-dazzle to a more appreciative team. If they do, offer to help them pack their bags. You’ll be better off without them. Nothing poisons a locker room faster than an out-of-control ego.”

If he saw her nod of agreement, it didn’t give him pause. “Your Grinders will be the next hardest. They don’t have any self-confidence. They’ve got to take some shots thinking they can actually score the goals. And the Goons are going to have to be put on leashes. You played an entire twelve minutes at full strength tonight. Your penalty killing unit was exhausted before the end of the first period and your power play unit never went out.”

More stuff to look up. More things to think about and figure out. But since she had such incredible expertise at her fingertips… Well, figuratively anyway… “Why hasn’t Carl fixed these things?”

“Good question,” he conceded with a slow nod. “Have you asked him?”

“I’ve asked him why we don’t win. He told me it was because they were no-talent bums who don’t want to win. Tom did all the recruiting, in case you’re wondering.”

“He did back in my day, too.” He turned his entire body to face her and unfolded his arms to stuff his hands in the pockets of his khakis. “And in case you’re wondering, there’s decent talent on the team. It’s just not put together in the right combinations and pointed in the right direction. As for wanting to win…. They have to think they can. Believing is nine-tenths of winning.” He smiled. “Don’t you know about the Miracle on Ice?”

“1980,” she supplied. “Lake Placid. The American kids beat the mighty Russians. I was eighteen and cheered my ass off in the family room. And for the record—I’d never watched a hockey game before that. I didn’t know squat except that those boys were wonderful. And exciting. And worth cheering for.”

“Nothing’s ever been as exciting as that game. Nothing ever will be.” He hesitated, then shrugged one shoulder. “Well, except for maybe being on the team that wins the Stanley Cup. They say there’s nothing like that feeling.”

She hadn’t been able to look at the pictures in the magazine article Tom had saved, but she had read the story. And done a bit of Net surfing afterwards. The Tampa Bay Lightning had been in the running for Lord Stanley’s cup the year Logan Dupree had been injured. The sportswriters had all predicted that losing him would end the Bolt’s chances. And they’d been proven right. As a player, Logan Dupree had lost his chance to have his name placed on the Holy Grail of hockey. Talking about the cup with him would be right up there with asking Mrs. Lincoln about the play.

But she’d read an article on the history of Lord Stanley’s little trophy and knew that players weren’t the only ones whose names went on it; the coaches’ did, too. His chances weren’t completely over. Odds were that if he could see problems, he could fix them, too. “You’d make a good coach.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

She winced, realizing how self-serving her comment must have looked to him. “I wasn’t talking about the Warriors,” she assured him. “And how do you know you wouldn’t be any good? Have you ever tried it?”

“Yeah,” he retorted dryly. “We went winless the entire season.”

“Tom didn’t have any clippings of that adventure,” she said, suspicious. “When exactly did you do this coaching? Where?”

“Long Island. Ten years ago,” he supplied crisply. He smiled and leaned back against the car again. “My girlfriend at the time had a seven-year-old. I was trying to earn points with her.”

A kids’ team? “Man,” she drawled, trying not to laugh, “if you can’t coach a bunch of Mites to a win…. I’m afraid that I have to withdraw my job offer. No hard feelings, okay?”

He gave her a smile that could have powered the East Coast for a week. “I’ll live. Where are we going for dinner?”

Dinner? Who cared about food when she was being dazzled by perfectly even teeth and crinkly cornered, twinkling eyes? “Hero’s in Old Town,” she answered, really sorry that she hadn’t met him years ago. “It’s just a ways up the left side of that street straight across from the Eagle building on Douglas. Just head downtown, you’ll see the cars packed in there. You can’t miss it.”

“How about if I follow you?”

How about if he gave her time to recover from that smile of his? “It’s going to be a bit before I head that way. I always wait and talk to the boys as they go to the bus. If they come out to see that I’ve bolted on them, they’re going to feel lower than they already do.”

“Then I’ll wait with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know, but women out on the roads alone at night isn’t a good idea. Not that you couldn’t handle anything that might happen, but still…”

Cat nodded and stared at the water tower. When was the last time a man had inconvenienced himself for her? Willingly?

She was back to high school and still searching when he said, “If we’ve run out of things to talk about, it’s going to be a very long dinner.”

Cat smiled. Since she couldn’t see him being pleased about any nomination for Knight of the Year, she went in another direction. “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you come to see the game tonight if you had no intention of taking the job? It’s a long way to travel for bad nachos and even worse hockey.”

“Old time’s sake, I guess. I got to thinking about Tom and remembering the years I spent here. I didn’t have anything else going on, so…” He shrugged. “Whoever said you can’t go back home was right.”

“Did you ever really think of Wichita as your home?”

“Naw. It was just another stopping point along the way to fame and fortune on ice.”

“Where is home? Des Moines?” she pressed.

“It used to be.” He sounded sad. “But my parents are both gone and my sisters moved away after they got out of college. There’s nothing there now to call me back.”

“So Tampa’s home?”

He shook his head and folded his arms across his chest again. “It’s just another of the stopping points. It’s no more special than anywhere else.”

Rootless in Tampa. Not only was it a lousy movie title, it had to be a miserable way to exist. She was about to point that out when the door of the Coliseum opened and the first of the players followed the shaft of light into the parking lot.

Off the hook, Cat stepped away from the car. “Hi, Matt,” she called out, recognizing the shorter than average shape heading her way.

Matt Hyerstrom barely managed a smile and shifted the weight of the bag on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s over,” Cat said kindly. “You have to shrug it off and go on to the next one.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Cat could tell that he didn’t believe a word of it. She pivoted as he went past and then called after him, “We’re going to modify the lines, you know.”

He stopped and turned back. “Really?” he asked. “When?”

“Tomorrow morning at practice sound good to you?”

With a huge grin, he turned back toward the bus, saying, “Sounds perfect, Mizz Talbott.”

“We’re changing up the lines?”

She looked back to find Jason Dody coming her way. “Yes, Jace, we are,” she assured him, hoping that they were indeed talking about the same thing. “I figure it couldn’t hurt. Which line do you want to play on?”

“Anyone’s except Wheatley’s,” he answered quietly as he walked past her.

“Well, we’ll just see what we can do about that. Give your dream line some thought tonight and we’ll see how it works.”

He lifted his sticks and called back, “Will do, ma’am.”

Two for two. Hey, she was on a roll. She greeted the third player crossing the lot. “Georgie, if that lip of yours gets any lower, you’re going to step on it. There’s no reason to add injury to insult tonight.” He lifted his head and grinned. “Ah, that’s much better,” Cat said. “You’re so good-looking when you smile. Girls can’t resist a smile, you know.”

“Yeah?” He stopped in front of her and planted the tips of his sticks in the gravel between their feet. “What are you doing later?”

Cat laughed outright. “I’m old enough to be your mother, Georgie. Get on the bus.”

His grin even brighter than before, he did as he was told, leaving her to watch the next man heading for the bus. Her smile faded as the team’s Goliath came near enough for her to see the contours of his face. “Oh, damn, Ryan,” she said softly, taking his arm and stopping him. She angled his face into the orange glow of the bus’s running lights. A line of black stitches held together a jagged tear that ran over a huge lump above his right eye. “That has to hurt. What did Doc Mallory say?”

“That he had one helluva time getting the needle through the scar tissue, ma’am.”

As always, the gentle voice coming from such a burly body melted her heart. “Maybe we need to think about fighting a lot less and playing a little more, huh?”

He gave her a weary smile. “Coach says I need to get better at the fighting.”

“Consider his directive countermanded.”

“Huh?” His attempt to cock a brow ended in a wince.

“I own the team, Ryan,” she said, “so I get to make the rules. I say less fighting, and I’ll make sure Carl understands that’s what I expect. When you get home, put some ice on that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he promised as she released him and gave him a little pat in the center of the back. She had to reach up to do it.

There wasn’t anyone else right behind him. Cat sighed in relief and stuffed her hands back into her pockets. Four for four. Now all she had to do was make good on her promises.

“You’re good.”

She smiled at the man leaning against her car, both amazed that she’d forgotten he was there and pleased by his approval. “Thanks. Wait until you see me behind the bench.”

“That’s a whole different world,” he countered. “You’re good at parking lot cheerleading. You’d be smart to leave it at that and not push your luck.”

Yeah, well, she’d spent way too many years of her life not pushing and, with one notable exception, she had nothing to show for it but regrets. “Hold on to that thought, I’ll be back to it in a few,” she said, eyeing the round, decidedly bald silhouette coming through the arena door. She went to meet him halfway, calling out, “Carl! If I could have a minute with you, please.”

He paused, barely, turning sideways as though he would walk off at any moment. His smile was the one he always gave her. The I’m-tolerating-you-only-because-you-sign-the-checks smile. The one that set her teeth on edge every time she saw it.

“It’ll have to be quick, Mrs. Talbott,” he informed her as players moved around them. “The bus is waiting.”

“And it’ll sit right there until you get aboard,” she pointed out. “I’d like for you to change the lines starting with tomorrow morning’s practice. Obviously they’re not working as they are now.”

“It won’t make any difference. You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear.”

Sow’s ear, she silently corrected. “I don’t care. I want the lines changed, Carl. And while we’re making changes, I’ve never been a fan of either boxing or professional wrestling. I’m tired of our games being more a contest of fists than finesse. The fighting needs to be stopped.”

He gave a thumbs-up sign to one of the players walking past while telling her, “Fights are what the fans come to see.”

“Yeah, all six of them,” she countered dryly. “Maybe if we actually played hockey a few more people might be interested in coming to the games and helping to pay the rent.” At his snort, she put her hands on her hips and looked him square in the eye. “And your salary, Carl.”

He stopped smiling. He leaned close. “Look, Little Lady. With the exception of Wheatley, this team doesn’t have the talent to play the grand and glorious kind of hockey you’ve been watching on ESPN. Those guys are the pros. These guys are the ones who couldn’t make it. They’re bottom of the barrel.”

Bottom of the barrel? The boys took beatings for this man? Cat had to count to ten before she could unclench her teeth. “Let me ask you something, Carl. If you have such a low opinion of the boys, of their abilities and their chances, why do you bother to coach them?”

“I like seeing the country,” he answered, edging away from her with a sneer, “from the window of a stinking, belching, rattling bus.”

Cat stepped directly into his path. “I’m serious, Carl. Why do you coach them if you don’t believe in them?”

“I dunno,” he snarled. “Maybe it’s because I don’t have any other hobbies that I can make good money at.”

“A hobby?” she repeated, furious. Passing players stared, but she was too mad to care. “You consider coaching the Warriors a hobby? For these boys, it’s life. It’s their dream. How dare you blow them off!”

He tried to step around her again. Cat planted herself in his way, said, “You’re fired, Carl,” and stuck out her hand, palm up. “I’ll have the keys to the office and the rink, please. You can clean out your desk in the morning after Lakisha unlocks.”

He reached into his pants pocket and yanked out a key ring. “You got it, lady. We can talk about my severance package then, too.”

Standing with her hand out, she watched him find and separate two keys from the others. “This isn’t exactly a spur-of-the-moment decision and I’ve read your contract, Carl. There’s no severance provision. You’ll draw this month’s salary and that’s it.”

He slapped the loose keys into her hand, asking, “Your boyfriend over there sweet talk his way into my job?”

Logan. Oh, God. She’d forgotten him again. What would he think when he found out she’d fired Carl? That she was trying to manipulate him into taking the job? How was she going to convince him otherwise when she’d gladly give him anything he wanted if he’d sign on? Oh, wasn’t that going to be a scene and half. She’d rather set herself on fire.

“In the first place, Carl, he’s not my boyfriend,” she said as she stuffed the keys in her pocket. “And in the second, he’s not interested in coaching.”

“You’re not going to find anyone who’ll be willing to take on this bunch of losers. You know that, don’t you?”

Losers? The son of a bitch. She walked away, refusing to give him so much as a backward glance as she called over her shoulder, “And the horse you rode in on, Carl!”

Logan chuckled as she blew past him, “I take it Spady isn’t all that enthused about the idea to mix up the lines.”

She wasn’t in the mood to face the truth squarely or to tap dance around it. Not right now. She needed time to cool down and figure out a plan of some sort. “What Carl Spady thinks doesn’t matter,” she declared as she yanked open the driver’s side door. “I’m starving. Do you need a lift to your car?”

He came off the front end, his amusement replaced by a look of wary assessment. “I’m parked right over there,” he said, making a vague motion in the direction of the lot outside the chained off area.

“Then I’ll see you at Hero’s,” Cat announced, practically throwing herself into the seat and pulling the door closed. She turned the ignition over and snapped on the lights in the next second, all too keenly aware of Logan Dupree’s frown as he walked away.

“God,” she groaned, as she sagged into the seat and closed her eyes. “I hate frickin’ roller coasters. Just hate them.”

But there was no climbing off now and she knew it. Tom had belted her in and shoved the lever into Go! She had a couple of minutes before Logan got to his car. With a hard sigh, she opened her eyes and reached for the Dummies book in the passenger seat. “Lines,” she muttered, flipping through the index. “Definition and composition of.”

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