Breakaway (9 page)

“You’re telling me,” he said with heartfelt agreement that
only puzzled her more. Lord, the man was twisting her brains up. “C’mon. Let’s
go out.”

“When?”

“Right now. Tonight.”

“I can’t go out on a school night!”

He laughed. “Why not? It’s just dinner.”

Why not, indeed? He’d dismissed every objection she had,
although hadn’t really dealt with them to her satisfaction. Remi nibbled her
bottom lip. No Jasmine or Kyle waiting at home for her to cook dinner. She had
papers to mark but that could wait ‘til later. What was wrong with a dinner
out? Other than this guy was the hottest guy on the planet and was dangerous
like dynamite. And about as resistible as chocolate.

“Just fun?” she asked.

He nodded. “Just fun.”

“Why not?” she murmured.

“We could go to Inferno,” he said. “The food’s incredible
there.”

It was the hottest, most expensive restaurant in Chicago.
She looked down at her black pants and teal blue turtleneck sweater.

“I’m not really dressed for that,” she murmured. “Neither
are you.”

“True.” He shrugged. “How about pizza?”

She smiled reluctantly at him. “That sounds great.”

They dropped her car off at home and he took her to Mama
Sophia’s. Over deep-dish pizza and beer she quizzed him about his hockey
career. “I don’t know much about hockey,” she admitted. “But I think it’s very
rough.”

“It can be.” He smiled at her. “That’s the fun part.”

“Do you fight?”

He laughed. “I have been known to mix it up a bit. But not
often. There was a time back when I was a junior player and I was headed to
goonsville. I was big and I liked to protect the other guys, but sometimes I
tended to jump in and get physical without thinking about the consequences. I
had a great coach, though, who really got me to work on controlling those
impulses and to think about things.” He tilted his head. “You should come to a
game.”

“Oh. Yeah. Maybe.”

“I’ll get you a ticket. I’ll get you two tickets and you can
bring your friend…what’s her name…?”

“Delise.”

“Yeah. She didn’t seem too impressed with me the other
night. I think I should make it up to her.”

“It wasn’t you she wasn’t happy with, it was me.” Remi
grimaced. “She’s the one who wanted me to find a guy that night and get lucky.
Then when I did, she freaked out and got all paranoid that I was leaving with a
serial killer.”

Jason choked on a mouthful of beer. “Good to know she has a
high opinion of me.”

Remi laughed. “She didn’t even know who you were. She would
have felt that way if I was going home with the Pope.”

“Ha. Be glad it was me. You wouldn’t have gotten three
orgasms with the Pope.”

Now it was her turn to choke. “I didn’t get three! We were
interrupted…”

“Damn. That’s right.” His eyes went even darker. “I guess I
owe you one more, then.”

Everything inside her drew up tight and her skin tingled
with warmth. Oooh. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. Maybe after this…

“When is your next game?” she asked breathlessly, clutching
her beer glass.

He grinned. “Sunday afternoon. Two tickets. Okay?”

“I’ll check with Delise.”

He nodded. “I’m number twenty-five. Don’t forget that.”

Remi’s cell phone twittered in her purse. “Damn.” She
grabbed her bag and dug around for it. It was Jasmine, sobbing.

“He’s such a jerk!” she cried.

Remi eyed Jason. “Uh…who is, Jasmine?”

“Ethan! Who else!”

Remi sighed and leaned back in the booth. “Why? What
happened now?”

Sniffling and choking noises came across the line. “I think
he’s cheating on me.”

“Oh.” Remi rolled her eyes. There they went again. She’d
been waiting for this.

“So I’m moving back home.”

“What!?” Remi sat up straight.

Jason frowned at her from across the table and mouthed, “What’s
wrong?”

She shook her head and put her hand to her forehead. “When?”

“Right now. I’m on my way there. Where are you?”

“I’m…out. Having dinner.”

“On a school night?”

Remi rolled her lips in and released them with a pop. “Yes.
I’ll be home in a while.”

“Get home quick. Please, Rem.” She sniffled again.

Remi snapped her phone shut, then met Jason’s eyes. “My
little sister. She just had a fight with her boyfriend and is moving back home
as we speak.”

“Oh.”

She nodded, and finished her beer. “I’d better go. She
sounded pretty upset.”

“Damn.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. Damn.”

He’d already paid the bill with a platinum credit card and
stood to help her with her jacket. “We could go back to my place.”

She looked over her shoulder and up at him. Her insides all
warm and melty, she really, really wanted to. But her little sister was at home
crying.

“I’m sorry,” she said, voice catching. “I can’t tonight.”

He nodded. “That’s okay. Another time.”

Sure. She’d heard that before. He was looking for fun and
she was going home to be the responsible, dependable big sister yet again. She’d
never hear from him again. She knew how that worked.

He parked in front of her house in his Jeep Liberty. “Do you
want me to come in with you?”

“That’s okay.” She smiled at him. He reached across and took
hold of her chin with his fingers, then leaned over and brushed a kiss across
her mouth. A soft, melt-your-insides kind of kiss. She blinked at him.

“I’ll call you tomorrow. About the tickets. Check with
Delise.”

She stared at him. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

Her heart missed a beat, then pitter-pattered
embarrassingly. A thrill skittered through her. “Okay. Thanks.”

Chapter Six

Remi and Delise found their seats, row twelve right behind
the Wolves bench in the Metro Center, home of the Chicago Wolves. “Great seats,”
Delise remarked.

“Yeah.” They watched the players skating circles on the ice
in the warm-up, shooting randomly at their respective goalies. Music blasted
energetically from the speakers and the chilled air in the center smelled of
popcorn, sweat and artificial ice. A puck bounced off the boards with a bang
that made them jump.

“So…what’s with you and this hockey player?”

“Nothing.”

Delise snorted and tossed her long, auburn curls. “Riiiight.
And that’s why he gave you free tickets to the game.”

“We’re just having fun.”

“Mmm. It looked like you were having fun that night. Did I
tell you how cute you were in his shirt?”

“Oh, god.” Remi closed her eyes momentarily. “I’m sure the
cops appreciated it too.”

“They were having a good laugh about it, I think.”

“Well,it turns out Jason is involved in the Stars for
Reading Program at my school this year.”

“You’re kidding.” Delise swiveled her head to look at Remi. “You
didn’t tell me that.”

Remi licked her lips. “Yeah, well. I didn’t know it until he
showed up at the kickoff rally. He was a last-minute replacement. He acted kind
of weird. Sort of brushed me off. Which was okay, because even though he said
he’d call, I didn’t expect him to. It was just one night.”

Delise shot her a who-are-you-kidding look.

“But then last week after class he asked me out for dinner.”

“I see.”

Remi frowned at the disapproving tone in Delise’s voice. “I
thought you wanted me to have fun.”

“He’s an NHL hockey player.”

“Yeah. So?” Like she didn’t know that and hadn’t already
been over that a million times in her own head.

“Professional athletes are…um…trouble.”

Remi scanned the players in white jerseys, the home team
Wolves, with their red, brown and black logos, looking for number twenty-five.
She couldn’t find him. She frowned. “What do you mean by trouble?”

“They cheat on their wives.” Delise dipped her hand into the
bucket of popcorn Remi held on her lap.

“I’m not going to marry him,” Remi said, still looking for Jason.
Delise snorted. “He’s probably just being nice to me, giving me tickets,
because I’m a teacher at the school he’s volunteering with.” And Remi knew she
should just shut up, because the more she went on about how it was nothing, the
lamer she sounded. She pressed her lips together and tightened her fingers on
the bucket.

A loud horn blew to signal the end of the warm-up and the
players slowly started leaving the ice. Remi focused on each player as he
skated up to the boards, stopped sharply, then jumped lightly off the ice to
walk to the dressing room.

There he was! Number twenty-five. Hard to tell, with all the
equipment and the helmet. He was definitely one of the bigger players. When he
arrived at the boards, he lifted his head and looked directly at her. He must
know where their seats were. She smiled and gave a little wave and he too
lifted a big, gloved hand before disappearing.

She shivered and not just from the cold. He’d looked for
her. She hadn’t seen him earlier, of course, he’d left the tickets for her at
the box office. She wouldn’t see him after, either, unless she wanted to hang
around for an hour after the game. She and Delise would likely go have
something to eat after.

“I’ve been reading about hockey on the internet,” she told
Delise. “So hopefully I know what’s going on.”

“I think it’s pretty simple. They score a goal by shooting
the puck into the other team’s net.”

“Well, duh. I got that much.”

“There’s no half time.”

Remi grinned. “No. Three periods. Two intermissions.” She
picked up her Diet Coke and sipped it. “I guess we’ll figure it out.”

She wasn’t prepared for how fast the players moved, the brutal
hits that shuddered the glass above the boards, and the way the puck sometimes
missed the net in a blistering shot that sent it soaring over the boards.

“Jesus,” Delise muttered. “You could get hurt at one of
these games.”

Remi’d flinched once too, when two players fought over the
puck and sent it flying in their direction.

Jason was one of the players who did the face-off thing,
trying to get the puck, bending low to the ice, legs wide apart. He seemed to
win most of the face-offs, from what she could tell. But the score wasn’t
reflecting that. The visiting team, the Miami Fins, scored one goal and then
another.

Remi and Delise exchanged disappointed glances at the score.
She wanted Jason to win. Maybe he’d score a goal. According to the team’s website,
he was one of their top scorers.

And then he got the puck and broke away from the rest of the
players, racing toward the Fins’ net all on his own, carrying the puck. The
crowd roared and Remi’s heart jumped. He drew back his stick and took the
shot—oooh, a fake! He did a quick little maneuver and shot to the opposite side
of the net, but no! The goalie stretched out a gloved hand and made what seemed
to be an impossible save.

The crowd all groaned and Remi slumped back in her seat. “Damn!”

Jason’s teammates all skated in after him and they shot the
puck back and forth around the net, across the ice, around the net again. “What
are they doing?” Delise muttered. “They need to shoot at the net to get a goal.”

“I think they’re trying to set something up.”

Remi caught the amused glances of a couple sitting in front
of them and realized how clueless she and Delise must sound. She bit her lip.
Hopefully those people didn’t know she was there as Jason’s guest. She wouldn’t
want to embarrass him.

And then a Fin got the puck and Jason took off after him and,
to Remi’s horror, he smashed the guy into the boards with a thundering crash.
The crowd cheered in delight, but Remi put her hands to her mouth. Dear god, he
was going to kill the other guy. Or himself. Or both of them.

But they both skated away, although Jason had to adjust his
helmet.

Every muscle in her body was tense. Sheesh. She had to
relax.

The pace was sizzling, the action nonstop, the tension high.
For the rest of the first period, it seemed the teams were skating from one end
of the rink to the other and back again. These guys had to be in great shape,
although as she watched it seemed to Remi that sometimes they only played for a
minute at a time, constantly hopping off the ice onto the bench and being replaced
by players barreling over the boards and racing into the game.

When the buzzer sounded to end the first period, the Wolves
were still down two to zero.

Remi and Delise stood to go out onto the concourse area and
stretch their legs.

“Holy smokes,” Remi said. “I don’t know about the players,
but I’m exhausted.”

Delise shook her head. “You were playing that whole game
with Jason.”

Remi frowned. She had been caught up in it. It was
exciting—but scary. Thrilling—but stressful.

“Oh my god.” Remi clutched Delise’s arm.

“What?”

“Look over there. It’s Brianne Haskett.”

“Who? Oh, yeah. I see her. Rumor has it she’s going to model
for Victoria’s Secret.”

Remi’s stomach plunged to her toes. “Really? It figures.”

“Why?” Delise looked at her, eyebrows lifted.

“She’s Jason’s ex-girlfriend.”

Delise’s eyebrows flew higher. “Wow.”

“I know. Don’t say it. What the hell’s he doing with me,
right? I told you, he’s just being nice to me.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. Geez Remi, give yourself some
credit. You’re gorgeous too.”

Remi tipped her head to one side and smiled at her friend.
“I love you. I wonder what she’s doing here.”

Delise gave a crooked smile. “Cheering on her ex? Wonder if
she still has feelings for him.”

“He dumped her. Could be.” She watched Brianne talk to a
group of other women, all of them tall, gorgeous, exquisitely groomed and
expensively dressed. She sighed. “Let’s go back in.”

The drama continued to the third period, when the Wolves
scored a goal, making it two-one, then they blew one chance after another to
tie it up. Remi sat on the edge of her seat the entire period, cheering the
team on, earning amused glances from Delise.