Game On Box Set: Time Out\Her Man Advantage\Face-Off\Body Check Read online

  Around them, the room went quiet as footage of their last home game filled the screen, the microphones capturing the curses and shouting on the ice better than regular game coverage would. Close-ups of the players interspersed with narration that must have been done by someone in New York since Axel didn’t recognize the voice.

  “Vinny!” the team shouted when the player appeared on-screen in his suburban home, talking about what it was like to play for famed Phantoms coach Nico Cesare.

  “Where’s Chelsea?” someone asked in the front, a question that was quickly shushed and locked down by the other guys, making Axel wonder what had happened to stop their favorite groupie from attending.

  “I thought she had a role in this,” Axel spoke into Jennifer’s ear, glad for a chance to be close to her again.

  “She does.” Jennifer nodded. “Maybe she’ll arrive later.”

  Axel was the next up on-screen as the program cut away to a practice room with him making shot after shot into a small net.

  “Ax!” the players shouted. Kyle threw some popcorn at the image.

  “Good transition,” Axel told Jennifer, liking the way she’d gone from Vinny discussing how hard the team worked to the shot of Axel silently firing pucks into a net.

  “Thank you.” She took his hand in the darkness, even though bigmouthed Leandre Archambault sat on the other side of her where he could have seen the gesture.

  Damn, but he liked that. He admired her grit and her fire. But Jennifer had a soft side, too, a tenderness that made her a loyal protector. A champion of the underdog. It was obvious in her film topics and evident in the care she took when she showed people on-screen. She revealed something about each person’s character in the documentary.

  Did she see him the way he looked in this segment, a robot worker so zeroed in on his game he didn’t look up?

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket while the program switched to an interview with Coach Cesare and his wife, Lainie.

  Discreetly, Axel took out his phone and clicked open the main screen to see he had a text.

  Looks like U can still fire a shot. We’ll expect U @ target practice tonight. Leave your brother’s house alone. Someone will meet you.

  “What is it?” Jennifer glanced his way, perhaps feeling the tension in him where their hands joined.

  Crap.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead just looking at her sitting next to him. So vulnerable because of shit he’d done in the past. He turned his ringer off and rolled his shoulders to alleviate the tension. Obviously, the Destroyers were coming for him tonight. Were probably already in position around Kyle’s house. Watching.

  He’d have to figure out a way to make sure Jen was somewhere safe while he took care of business.

  “Nothing.” He shook his head and tried to stretch his mouth into an easy grin. “Some other players ribbing me about the show.”

  Jen nodded, but he could see the doubt in her eyes. Her attention returned to the screen where the series showed a long shot of Vinny and Chelsea having a conversation in the parking lot behind the practice rink, their body language advertising interest in each other even if there was no sound for the image.

  Interesting. Vinny damn well better take good care of Chels. Axel had identified with the loner look in her eyes the first time they’d met. He’d seen the same wariness in other gang members. The guys in motorcycle clubs were hard-asses, but most of them had gotten that way because they’d been through hell in some other part of their lives. Axel didn’t know exactly what had put Chelsea on the streets as a teen, but he’d bet it had been a tough road for her.

  “Chelsea should be watching with us,” he observed out loud, just to make his opinion known.

  “She’s volunteering at a shelter tonight,” Vinny Girard supplied from the other side of the room.

  Some other guys shushed them as the scene swapped to the groupies in the car riding up to the Montreal game, the girls all talking about what it meant to be hockey fans.

  “It’s like having a family,” Chelsea said on-screen, never taking her eyes from the road as she cruised up the highway toward the Canadian border.

  “Yeah. A family full of kick-ass brothers,” Misty piped up from the backseat, making the girls laugh in the clip. Some of the team pumped their fists in agreement around Kyle’s media room.

  Family. Axel turned that idea over in his head while he kept his eyes on the flat screen. Misty talked about the hard-luck backgrounds the girls had come from and the dream they shared about opening a more full-service shelter in Philadelphia that catered to women and children.

  But Axel was stuck on the family idea, knowing deep in his gut that he’d been looking for that when he’d joined the Destroyers way too young. That ratty stepfather who drank like a fish and took off after a few years had paid far more attention to him than his mother ever had. So as a kid, Ax was only too happy to follow the guy into a gutted shell of a building to hang out with a bunch of seedy “uncles.” Looking back, Ax understood that as a kid he’d just wanted a place to fit in. People to look out for him.

  By the time he’d met Kyle Murphy, he’d been ready for a better family. A new life. But apparently he’d pissed off the old clan too much. And like any family quarrel, it had only festered over time. Tonight, he needed to end it for good.

  “Get ready,” Jennifer whispered to him, calling his thoughts to the documentary series as it came back from a commercial break. “We’re up next.”

  Trying to focus on the screen, Axel watched as game footage of him scoring a winning goal dissolved into a scene with him and Jennifer kissing in the conference room.

  Massively kissing.

  The media room erupted in wolf howls and shouts as a team full of grown men were transformed into twelve-year-olds at the sight of a lip-lock. Thankfully, the shot was short-lived and returned to an interview with their goalie talking about the way different guys tried to let off steam during the run for the playoffs.

  “Was that what we were doing?” he asked Jennifer. “Letting off steam?” He’d sure as hell looked like a man who had it bad for Jen in that kissing shot.

  How obvious would it be to his former gang that this woman was important to him?

  “I lobbied for them to edit it out right up until the bitter end,” she confided, leaning so close her hair slid onto his shoulder. “I even caved on the film I want to make and said I didn’t care about that anymore, since you were right that my sister doesn’t want any part of it. But the producer was adamant the footage would stay in since I’d already signed the waiver.”

  She’d been prepared to give up the film that she wanted to make so bad, no matter what her sister said. It touched him that she’d listened to his advice and consulted her sister about the project. It touched him even more that she’d gone to bat for him with her boss. That, more than anything, told him he needed to distance himself from Jennifer while he still had a prayer of pulling away. She was too passionately committed to the things she cared about, too apt to want to help him fight his battles. And he could not risk getting her involved in whatever happened with the Destroyers.

  Even if that meant he had to hurt them both in the process. Hearts at least stood a chance of healing. But if they came after Jennifer? His chest felt as though an icy hand had reached inside him and squeezed.

  “Nice guy you work for,” he muttered darkly. “But I need you to have some extra protection until this thing settles out with my old gang. They’ll know now that they could get to me through you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘settles out’? Are you going to the police about the way that goon nearly made us get into an accident before we left for Montreal? Because I think that constitutes a threat.” She turned toward him in her seat, ignoring the show she’d worked so hard on to talk to him quietly in the dark media room. “I’m your witness. I saw it all.”

  Damn. Already she was searching for solutions to his problem, eager to get involved. He couldn’t have that