Leslie LaFoy - Blindsided

“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.”