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

  “I’m sorry, Jennifer.” He kissed the back of one hand, his distant, polite manner bearing no resemblance to the charming cretin who’d stomped into her life on skates after a sweaty practice earlier that week.

  “Damn you, Axel.” She wrenched her hands away from him, hurt to the core even though she shouldn’t be. Even though there was no way a woman could care so much for a man she’d only just met.

  And oh, God, who was she kidding? Not once in her life had she slept with a man she didn’t l-o-v-e. Would spelling it make it any less real, she wondered? Any less true?

  “Jennifer, I have to leave.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I already talked Kyle and Marissa into giving your camera guys an at-home interview tonight, which will keep Kyle too occupied to follow me. Marissa has offered for you to stay overnight afterward so I know you’re safe.”

  “Do you honestly think you can dictate where I spend the night or orchestrate my life for me when you’re willing to walk away over this?” Sure, she hadn’t wanted to be a trophy girlfriend of some wealthy NHL player. But Ax was more than that.

  They could figure out something if they stayed together. Fought for a future.

  “I’m trusting you not to put your life in danger for a relationship that was never going to work anyhow. But if I have to, I’ll call Kyle and he’ll make sure you stay put for the night.”

  Anger and hurt fired through her, but he was so cool and distant she knew he’d made up his mind. No amount of arguing was going to change it.

  “You’re making a mistake,” she told him finally, hearing the media room doors open in the hallway and the sounds of the team filtering out into the corridor.

  “I’m fixing a mistake,” he told her, his square jaw flexing. “I should have done it a long time ago.”

  13

  “ARE YOU MAD AT ME?”

  Misty’s question was the first thing Chelsea heard when she answered her cell phone shortly after midnight.

  Exhausted from her last-minute volunteer shift at the shelter and even more drained from her encounter with Vinny the night before, Chelsea sank onto the futon in her tiny living room. She pulled the homemade afghan, a gift from a long-ago social worker, onto her lap.

  “Hmm. That begs the question, do I have a reason to be mad at you?” Tipping her head against the futon cushion, she closed her eyes for a moment until she remembered that Misty was still in New York with her SUV. She bolted upright in her seat. “Oh, God. You didn’t get in an accident, did you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. The car is fine.” Misty’s singsong voice assured her. “You didn’t watch the first installment of the Phantoms documentary series, did you?”

  “Not yet.” Grabbing the remote, she flipped on her television and the ancient VCR player beneath it. She was happy with her tag-sale furnishings and Craigslist purchases for the most part, but one of these days she needed to update her electronics. “Although, using my ever-reliable technology from a million years ago, I did try to record it.”

  She rewound the tape long enough to see footage of the game in New York. Still, she didn’t have the heart to watch the show tonight. In the end, she’d given the director permission to use the clips of her and Vinny. When she’d said yes, she’d been excited about the possibility of seeing him more. Of moving toward some kind of real relationship with a guy she already trusted.

  That was before she’d been scared spitless at the thought of meeting his parents.

  “Oh.” Misty paused awkwardly, an uncommon occurrence for the woman who had an answer to everything. “Well, then. I might as well prepare you.”

  “For what?” Her imagination ran wild. What if Vinny denounced her on national TV? Or what if someone researched her past and revealed private things about her that she wouldn’t want other people to know? That she’d been kicked out of that one gym, for example, where she’d used a fake membership card….

  “Nothing big,” Misty rushed to reassure her, although that was too little too late. “I just…I didn’t realize they were going to show the footage where I talked about your dream of running a shelter geared toward women and children.”

  “You broadcast my dreams on television?” Chelsea’s finger hit the rewind button again—she needed to find out the extent of the damage.

  Was privacy so much to ask for? Yes, safety and security came first. Yet after all the homeless years, after all the nights in shelters where anyone could walk past your bed while you were sleeping…damn it, she treasured her privacy.

  “I didn’t think it was secret, per se—”

  “But you knew I wouldn’t be happy about it or you wouldn’t have called asking if I’m mad at you.” She came to the start and hit Play. “Damn it, Misty, you of all people know—”

  “Look, Chels. Never mind. I’m not sorry and I did it on purpose, okay?” She blurted the words. “Maybe that’s half the reason I wanted to visit family, just in case you were going to freak out on me. But I’m your friend, and I love you. You deserve to have that shelter and I wanted to put it out there in the public eye where—”

  “What are you thinking?” Chelsea hit Fast-forward, but stopped dead when the screen came to her and Vinny talking. Oh, God. Her chest felt as if it had caved in, and she forgot to be mad at her best friend.

  “I’m thinking that it doesn’t hurt to share a dream on the most popular cable network in the world,” Misty countered. “You’re a sweet girl with a big heart and one of the sharpest, most streetwise people I know. Viewers are going to see that. And by morning, some rich philanthropist is going to want to donate a jillion dollars to make sure you have the chance to do good in the world…. Chels?” Misty cut the diatribe suddenly short.

  Chelsea tried to breathe past the lump in her throat and the pain in her chest.

  “Yeah?” She clutched her afghan, thumbs winding through the purple-and-blue yarn. Not even the feel of her favorite things—the sight of her spotlessly clean little apartment—could ease the ache in her chest.

  “I thought you’d cut me off or yell at me.” Misty sounded thoughtful. “Are you, like, genuinely furious?”

  “No.” Her VCR was paused on the image of her and Vinny. The guy whose number was the first one she’d ever tattooed on her body. “I broke things off between me and Vinny, and I’m such an idiot.”

  “You are not an idiot.” Misty took on her battle-general voice and it made Chelsea smile that she could envision her friend’s pursed lips and drawn-in cheeks perfectly. They’d lifted each other up through a lot of hard times.

  But she couldn’t imagine feeling uplifted now, when she’d run scared from the best—the nicest—thing to ever happen to her.

  “He wanted to introduce me to his parents.” She trembled inside just thinking about it. And she knew it was stupid that she was smart enough to survive homelessness and tough enough to outfox a coked-up teenager intent on raping her, yet the thought of meeting a couple of nice, ordinary Midwesterners frightened her to death.

  But there it was.

  “Well, of course you’re scared.” Misty said it as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

  She loved Misty. Loved. Her.

  “Really?”

  “Perfectly normal girls who are brought up in brownstones and go to private schools are scared to meet their boyfriends’ parents.”

  “He’s not exactly my boyfriend.” Her gaze went to the Phantoms poster on the wall above the TV, her eyes easily finding Vinny’s face amid all his teammates.

  “He wants to be,” Misty told her. The sounds of the city emanated in the background. Horns honking. Brakes squealing. “He just put the cart ahead of the horse because he’s excited to finally spend time with you. You’re so great that of course he wants his parents to meet you and see how awesome you are.”

  “Right.” Chelsea wrapped the afghan around herself and shuffled into the kitchen so she could forage in the cabinets for something to eat. “I can hear it now, ‘Mom, Dad, me