Offside (3 page)

Chapter Two

A couple of guys with injuries were
already there working with athletic therapists Buck and Rob when
Matt arrived in the dressing room for practice. A few months ago,
after that massive hit into the boards that could have ended his
career, he would’ve been one of those guys. Now they checked in on
him about how he was feeling after skating last week with the team
for the first time. He was happy to report he felt great, no
post-concussive symptoms at all and his neck was fine. Sure, there
were always minor things, sore muscles, but overall he felt solid.
He changed into shorts and a T-shirt and climbed on a bike to warm
up while other guys started showing up, some getting some
ultrasound to loosen up their muscles, some getting minor things
checked out, others getting help with some stretches.

Buck and Rob were great at their job
and Matt had faithfully done everything they and the medical
professionals had asked of him during his rehab, everything and
more. This was his career and being in good enough shape to play
was everything.

As he pedaled he couldn’t help
thinking about Honey Holbrook. Shit. How the hell had this
happened?

She was still fucking gorgeous. He
couldn’t stop his mind from going back eight years to the time
they’d spent together when he’d attended the Condors’ development
camp that summer. After the week-long camp, he’d decided to stay in
California because of her. He’d been out of his element—a kid from
a small Canadian city who went to school in North Dakota, spending
time in Los Angeles hanging out with Honey’s mega-wealthy friends,
partying and doing wild and crazy things, even though some of those
things he had to admit had made him uncomfortable. But she’d been
pretty and sexy and fun, and wow, the chemistry between them had
been red hot.

Christ. He couldn’t be distracted by
her. He had a career to get back on track. He’d been working his
ass off and wasn’t going to let her pretty face and hot body divert
him from his goal. He pedaled harder.

The practice went well. After a win
last night the mood was always lighter, with lots of joking and
trash talking and Matt was right in there, despite still wearing
the orange no-contact jersey. He liked to try to make things fun.
When the team was losing, that wasn’t always easy, and sometimes
the fun aspect of what they did got away from them. But they were
all there because they loved hockey and focusing on that was better
than focusing on the negatives.

Not that there wasn’t anything to work
on.

Despite the win, their power play had
not rocked, so coach Kris Radnor had them working on that, trying
to create good point shots and puck movement. He spent time
explaining plays and drawing diagrams on the white board. “We’ve
got to simplify it. We’ve got to have better convergence on the
puck and on the net. We gotta make sure when we get an opportunity
to shoot the puck that it’s getting off our stick fast and getting
to the net.”

While recovering from his injury, Matt
had been watching home games from the press box. Watching from
above gave a whole different view of the game and he’d seen a few
areas the team could improve on—puck movement, player movement not
being so stagnant, getting pucks to the net, having a better
net-front presence—which he’d shared with Coach. He was glad Coach
had been interested in listening to what he’d had to
say.

Then they got down to running drills.
Coach kept stopping them in the middle of plays, explaining how
they could put themselves in better position, and then resuming the
drill.

“Keep adjusting your angles based on
the passes being made,” yelled goaltender coach Bob Purcell to
goalie François Letellier. “And square your body more to the
shooter.”

Matt focused on a quick release, and
put the puck in the net several times to Frankie’s annoyance. That
just made Matt grin.

They ended the practice with a
shootout competition that had lots of cheering and jeering. When
Matt rang one off the crossbar, he deliberately fell to the ice and
slid gently into the boards to hoots of laughter.

He left the ice sweaty but
exhilarated. Some media guys were hanging around, including Dan
Jasper from ESPN, wanting to talk about when he was going to play.
That was a question he couldn’t answer, but he spoke to them for a
few minutes then cooled down with more time on the bike and
stretching. He wasn’t fond of stretching but had come to see how
important it was in preventing injuries.

After a shower and dressed in his
street clothes, he lounged around in the dressing room listening to
music and shooting the shit with some of the guys.

“Hey, wanna come to my place and swim
this afternoon?” he asked teammates Joe Barzetti, Chris Dobie and
Niklas Berglund. “Bring some beer.”

So later that afternoon, that was
where they were, lounging around the pool at his apartment
building. Matt made himself work out before he kicked back with a
beer. After a punishing round of laps, he climbed out of the pool
dripping water all over the pool deck and walked to where he’d left
his towel on a chair. His three buddies and team mates already
lounged there in the sun, beers in hand.

Matt rubbed his towel over his wet
hair and reached for the can sitting by his chair.

“How many laps did you do?” Joe asked
with amusement.

“Lost count,” Matt said. “Fuck, that
felt good.” He loved swimming. “You should try it. You need to work
out and keep your svelte figure. You’re getting love
handles.”

“Fuck off, I am not.” Joe tipped his
face up to the sun, his dark complexion now even more
tanned.

“I was reading the other day that love
handles are a hormonal thing,” Dobie put in.

“Huh?” Joe turned his face to Dobie.
“What the fuck? Hormonal?”

“Yeah. Swimming won’t get rid of them.
You gotta do a different workout to produce the hormones that will
help get rid of fat there.”

“I don’t have fuckin’ love handles,”
Joe said.

Niklas reached out and gave Joe’s side
a pinch. “Oh yeah, you do, man.” Joe jerked back from his touch and
shoved his hand away.

Matt grinned and guzzled down his
beer. “Ugh. This is warm. Toss me a cold one from the cooler,
Nik.”

The blue-eyed blond Swede unzipped the
top of the soft thermal bag they’d brought down to the pool,
reached in and then lofted a can toward Matt. Matt caught it
easily, the aluminum cold and wet in his hand. He popped it and
gulped.

“If you’re insulin resistant, you’ll
store your fat as love handles,” Dobie continued.

“Our resident fitness expert,” Nik
commented.

It was true. Dobie read a lot about
health and fitness and was a workout fool. But that was cool,
because Matt had learned a lot from him. He’d lost a shit ton of
weight after he’d been hurt and he had to work hard to keep muscle
on. Six foot three and a hundred eighty pounds was pretty damn puny
by NHL standards. Sure, there were a few guys under six feet and
two hundred pounds, some damn good players. But he could battle
better in the corners and take out some bodies when he had a few
more pounds on him, and he tried to keep his weight over two
hundred.

For some reason a memory of talking to
Honey about that eight years ago flashed through his head.
Shit.

Now he was thinking about Honey again.
He leaned back into the lounge chair and closed his eyes against
the bright sunshine.

He hadn’t expected that to happen when
he’d walking into that meeting room. Honey Holbrook back in his
life. Honey looking all professional. Honey being attacked by a
bunch of jerkoffs. He sighed.

“What?” Joe said to him.

He cracked open an eye. “What
what?”

“Why the big heavy sigh?”

“Nothing.” He paused. “You guys know
Honey Holbrook?”

They all made noises.

“Oh yeah.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Big time trampy trouble.”

Matt frowned. “She’s not a
tramp.”

“Are you fucking kidding, man? Have
you
seen
some of the pictures of her?”

Yeah. Sadly, he had.

“Heimdall got traded away by Daddy
when he fucked around with Honey.”

Matt’s scowl deepened. “Heimdall?
Seriously?”

Joe shrugged. “Yep. She’s been with a
fuckin’ million guys. She stayed away from hockey players after
that, but rumor has it she slept with most of the
Dodgers.”

Matt’s gut clenched and his fingers
tightened on his beer can.

“Why’d you ask?” Dobie
said.

Matt took another mouthful of beer
before he replied. “She’s working for Condor Community Foundation
now.”

“Huh.”

“No shit.”

“They gonna use her as a poster girl
to raise money?” Joe asked. “That could definitely work. Put her in
a skimpy swimsuit or something…no question she’s hot as
hell.”

“Killer rack,” Nik agreed.

“I’d tap that in a heartbeat,” Dobie
said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Matt
snapped.

All heads turned to look at him.
Silence.

“Uh dude…what’s up?” Joe
asked.

Matt scowled at his beer again.
“Nothing.”

They all gave him skeptical raised
eyebrows.

“What?” he snapped again. “She was at
a meeting this morning.”

“Dude! Fucking A! You want to tap her
too!”

Christ. What would they say if they
knew he already had? Years ago. But still.

“Stay away from her,” Joe said. “You
don’t want Steve Holbrook coming down on you because you nailed his
daughter.”

“Jesus,” Dobie said. “She’s
what…twenty-six?”

“Twenty-seven,” Matt said.

They all looked at him
again.

He shrugged.

“My point being,” Dobie continued.
“She’s an adult. Her dad can’t go around getting rid of every guy
she sleeps with. If he did, there’d be no major league baseball in
L.A.”

“There’s the Angels,” Nik
offered.

Dobie waved a hand. “Like I
said.”

Joe guffawed. “I don’t know,” he said.
“There were a lot of stories about how upset Holbrook was when she
was putting half naked pics of herself on Facebook, and she was
over twenty-one when that was going on.”

“Ha,” Dobie said. “She’s supposedly
the reason Holbrook’s hair went gray.”

Matt sucked in a deep breath. None of
this was news to him. But Honey’s uh…colorful past wasn’t something
he really wanted to think about. “She’s apparently reformed. It’s a
serious job. She got a college degree.”

“No shit?” Joe said. “She still
hot?”

Matt’s mouth twisted. Oh yeah.
“Smokin’ hot,” he admitted. “Even wearing a suit.”

“A suit? Jesus!”

Yeah, yeah. They were all probably
picturing that photo shoot of her in a barely-there bikini—or half
of it, anyway—that had been in
Mustang Magazine
years
ago.

“I guess I’m gonna be working with her
on this deal they set up with the school. Possibly other
stuff.”

“I do charity work,” Joe said. “Why
don’t I get to work with her?”

Because she’s
mine.

Whoa. Where the fuck had that come
from? He didn’t even
want
to work with her. She was brand
new, inexperienced, spoiled rotten and…fucking gorgeous.

Matt set down his beer. “I need to
swim more.” He tossed aside the towel, strode to the pool and dove
in.

The cool water closed over his head
and he did a few slow breaststrokes until he broke the surface.
Then he rolled onto his back and began to backstroke the length of
the pool. He never should’ve mentioned Honey to these guys. They
were all pigs.

He was strangely unsettled by seeing
Honey again. It was fucking weird. When they’d met back when he was
twenty and she was nineteen, they’d been hot for each other like
nothing he’d ever experienced, despite the fact that he’d been
pretty fucking horny as a kid and had experimented with all kinds
of shit. They’d both been…adventurous, might be the word. They’d
had some crazy fun. But they’d also had other times together,
talking and laughing and doing normal things like riding the Ferris
wheel at the Santa Monica Pier.

And he’d felt that heat again, today.
She was beautiful. She was sexy. She was…interesting.

Nah. He was just curious about her,
about what had happened and how she’d ended up going to Berkeley
and now working for a big non-profit organization.

He and the guys had had the pool to
themselves for a while, but as Matt hauled himself out of the water
again, three women emerged from the apartment building. His
eyebrows rose, taking in their bikinis, all three of them damn
fine.

He sat again and grinned as the other
guys checked out the girls, and they in turn sent flirty smiles
back as they arranged themselves on lounge chairs in the
sun.