Jill Shalvis - Time Out

“All you have to do is take a man at face value. Don’t go into it thinking you can change them. Men aren’t fixer-uppers, not like a house or a car. You buy them as is.”

“Well I haven’t found one yet who’s not in need of a little fixing.”

Lena laughed. “No kidding, Ms. Control Freak.”

“Hey.”

“Face it, Rainey, you always have to have a plan with a start, a middle and an end. Definitely an end. You have to know everything before you even get into it. Dating doesn’t work that way.”

“Well, it should.” Rainey gestured the next car through, accepting the money and handing out more change. The teens were moving the cars along at a good pace, and she was proud of them. “Everyone could benefit from a well executed plan.”

“A love life doesn’t work that way,” Lena said. “And trust me, you need a love life.”

“You can get a love life in a specialty shop nowadays, complete with a couple of batteries.” Rainey took a moment to organize the cash box and quickly checked her work email on the laptop. “Thirty new emails,” she groaned. All timely and critical, and she’d have to deal with them before the end of the day. Goody.

“I could help you with some of that,” Lena offered.

“I’ve got it.”

“See? Control freak.”

Ignoring that painful truth, Rainey deleted a few emails and opened a few others. She loved her job, and was doing what she wanted. She’d gone to business school but she’d come back here to do this, to work with kids in need, and to give back. The work was crazy in the best of times. But these days, in the wake of the tragic California coast fires that had destroyed three out of four of their athletic fields last fall, not to mention both buildings where all their equipment had been housed, were not the best of times. Worse, the lease for the building they were in was up at the end of the year and they couldn’t afford renewal.

Problem was, she had a hundred kids, many of them displaced from their own burned-out homes. She wanted to give them something to do after school that didn’t involve loitering, shoplifting, drugs or sex. She’d just started to close her laptop when her gaze caught on the Yahoo news page. Hitting the volume key, she stared at a sports clip showing a seedy bar fight between some NHL players from the Anaheim Ducks and Sacramento Mammoths.

The clip had been playing all week, because…well, she hadn’t figured out why, other than people seemed to love a sports scandal. The video was little more than a pile of well-known professional athletes wrestling each other to the ground in some L.A. bar, fists flying, dust rising.

Rainey gestured another car through, then turned back to the screen, riveted by the million-dollar limbs and titillating show of testosterone. On the day the footage had been taken, the two teams had been in the Stanley Cup finals. The game had been decided on a controversial call in favor of the Ducks, killing the Mammoths’ dreams.

That night at the bar, the Mammoth players had instigated the fight, holding their own against four Ducks until their head coach strode up out of nowhere. At thirty-four, Mark Diego was the youngest, most popular NHL head coach in the country.

And possibly even more gorgeous than his brother Rick.

On the tape, Mark’s eyes narrowed in on the fight as he walked fearlessly into the fray, pulling his players out of the pile as though they weighed nothing. A fist flew near his face and he deflected it, leveling the sender of said fist a long, hard look.

The guy fell backwards trying to get away.

“That’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Lena murmured, watching the clip over Rainey’s shoulder.

Yeah. Yeah, it was. Rainey had seen Mark in action before, of course. He and Rick were close. And once upon a time, she’d been just as close, having grown up near the brothers. Back then, Mark had been tough, smart, and fiercely protective of those he cared about. He’d also had a wild streak a mile wide, and she’d seen him brawl plenty. It’d turned her on then, but it absolutely didn’t now. She was grown-up, mature.

Or so she told herself in the light of day.

On the screen, hands on hips, Mark said something, something quiet but that nevertheless had the heaving mass of aggression screeching to a halt.

“Oh, yeah. Come to momma,” Lena murmured. “Look at him, Rainey. Tall, dark, gorgeous. Fearless. I wouldn’t mind him exerting his authority on me.”

Rainey’s belly quivered, and not because she’d inhaled three pieces of pizza with the teens an hour ago. Mark was no longer a wild teenager, but a tightly controlled, complicated man. A stranger. How he “exerted his authority” was none of her business. “Lena, you’re dating his brother.” Just speaking about Mark had twisted open a wound in a small corner of her heart, a corner she didn’t visit very often.

“I’ve never gotten to see the glory that would be the Diego brothers in stereo.” Lena hadn’t grown up in Santa Rey. “Mark hasn’t come home since I’ve been with Rick. Being the youngest, baddest, sexiest head coach in all the NHL must be time-consuming.”

“Trust me, he’s not your type.”

“Because he’s rich and famous? Because he’s tough as hell and cool as ice?”

“Because he’s missing a vital organ.”

Lena gasped in horror. “He doesn’t have a d-”

“A heart! He’s missing a heart! Jeez, get your mind out of the gutter.”

Lena laughed. “How do you know he’s missing a heart?” Her eyes widened. “You have a past! Of course you have a past, you grew up here with Rick. Is it sordid? Tell me!”

Rainey sighed. “I was younger, so Mark always thought of me as a…”

“Forbidden fruit?” Lena asked hopefully.

“Pest,” Rainey corrected. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I do!”

Knowing Lena wouldn’t leave it alone, she caved. “Fine. I had a crush on him, and thought he was crushing back. Wrong. He didn’t even know how I felt about him, but before I figured that out, I managed to thoroughly humiliate myself. The end.”

“Oh, I’m going to need much more than that.”

Luckily Lena’s cell phone chose that very moment to ring. God bless AT &T. Lena glanced at the ID and grimaced. “I’ve got to go.” She pointed at Rainey. “This discussion is not over.”

“Yeah, yeah. Later.” Rainey waved her off. She purposely glanced away from her computer screen, but like a moth to a flame, she couldn’t fight the pull, and turned back.

Mark was shoving his players ahead of him, away from the run-down L.A. bar and towards a black SUV, single-handedly taking care of the situation.

That had been three days ago. The fight had been all over the news, and the commission was thinking about suspending the players involved. Supposedly the two head coaches had stepped in and offered a solution that would involve giving back to the fans who’d supported the two teams.

She looked into Mark’s implacable, uncompromising face on her laptop and the years fell away. She searched for the boy she’d once loved with all her sixteen-year-old heart, but couldn’t find a hint of him.

TWO HOURS LATER, they’d gone through a satisfying amount of cars, fattening the rec center’s empty coffers, and Rainey was ready to call it a day. She needed to help the teens clean up before the bus arrived. Many of them still had homework and other jobs to get to.

The parking lot was wet and soapy, with hoses crisscrossing the concrete, and buckets everywhere. With no more cars waiting, the teens were running around like wild banshees, feeling free to squirt and torture one another. Rainey blew her whistle to get their attention. “We’re done here,” she called out. “Thanks so much for all your help today. The faster we clean up, the faster we can-” She broke off as the county bus rolled up and opened its doors. Dammit. All but a handful of the kids needed to get on that bus. It was their only ride.