See Jane Score (27 page)

“Hey, boys. What are you all doing?”

Luc glanced up from the glossy pages of the magazine to Jane's green eyes. He would have to tell her. She'd freak out.

“Sharky,” the guys greeted her.

The corners of her lips tilted up slightly as she looked at him. Then her gaze fell on the open magazine and her little smile froze.

“Have you ever heard of
The Life of Honey Pie
?” Sutter asked her.

Jane's gaze locked with Luc's. “Yes. I have.”

“Honey Pie wrote about Luc.”

Color drained from her already pale complexion. “Are you sure it's you?”

“Positive.”

“I'm sorry, Luc.”

Luc rose from his chair. She understood what it meant. To him. She understood even what the rest of the guys didn't. Now, when anything was written about him, the Honey Pie article would be mentioned, just one more excuse to dissect his private life. To dig into the stuff that just didn't matter. He moved to her and looked into her eyes. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, then shook her head.

Without thinking about it, Luc took her arm and they walked from the bar. They crossed the lobby and entered the elevator. “I'm so sorry, Luc,” she said just above a whisper.

“It's not your fault, Jane.” He punched the number to her floor, then glanced over at her. She stood in the corner of the elevator. Her eyes were huge and filling with water and she suddenly looked very small. By the time they got to her hotel room, tears were falling down her cheeks. He hadn't even told her of his bizarre suspicions and she was already crying.

“Jane,” he began as soon the door shut behind him. “I know this will sound crazy . . .” He paused to sort it all out in his head. “There are some things in that Honey Pie piece-of-shit article that are just too close to be a coincidence. Things that were written about you and me that actually happened. I don't know how she knew so much. It's like someone was watching us and taking notes.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed and stuck her hands between her knees. She didn't say anything, and he continued to try and explain what he didn't understand. “Your red dress, for one. She described your red dress with the chain down the back.”

“Oh, God.”

He sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. The things the writer of the article knew about him were disturbing. Jane was already so upset, he didn't go into any more detail because he didn't want to scare her more than necessary. “I can't believe this is starting up again. I've been careful to get away from this sort of crap.” He gave her a squeeze. Thoughts tumbled in his head but made no sense “I feel crazy. Paranoid. A little insane. Maybe I should hire a PI to get to the bottom of this.”

She jumped up as if her pants had caught fire and walked to the chair by the window. She chewed on her bottom lip and gazed somewhere over the top of his head. “You're not flattered?”

“Hell, no! I feel like some total stranger has been watching me. Us. Sneaking around, hiding in the shadows.”

“We would have noticed someone following us.”

“You're probably right, but I don't know how else to explain the things in that magazine. I know how crazy it sounds.” And it did sound crazy. Even to him, and he'd read it. “Maybe one of the guys . . .” He shook his head as he thought out loud. “I don't like to think that one of the guys had something to do with this, but who else?” He shrugged. “Maybe I've lost my mind.”

She looked at him for several long moments, then said in a rush, “I wrote it.”

“What?”

“I write the
Honey Pie
serial.”

“What?”

She took a deep breath and said, “I'm Honey Pie.”

“Right.”

“I am,” she said through her tears.

“Why are you saying this?”

“Damn it! I can't believe I'm going to have to prove it to you. I never even wanted you to find out about it.” She wiped her cheeks and folded her arms across her chest. “Who else would know that you asked me if I was cold or turned on? We were alone in my apartment.”

And then, one by one, the pieces of the puzzle slid into place. The things that only he and Jane knew. The note he'd seen stuck in her day planner reminding her of some “Honey Pie” decision she had to make. Jane was Honey Pie. She couldn't be. “No.”

“Yes.”

He stood and looked across the room at Jane. At the dark curls he loved to touch. Her smooth white skin and pink mouth he loved to kiss. This woman looked like Jane, but if she was really Honey Pie, she was not the woman he thought he knew.

“Now you don't have to hire someone,” she said as if that were some damn consolation. “And you don't have to suspect one of the guys.”

He stared into her eyes as if he could see the unbelievable truth written there. What he saw was guilt. His chest felt suddenly hollow. He'd trusted her enough to let her into his home and his life. His sister's life too. He felt like such an ass.

“I wrote it the night after you kissed me the first time. You could say I was inspired by you.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I wrote it a long time before we became involved.”

“Not that long.” Even to himself, his voice sounded strange. Like his chest, hollow, waiting for his anger to rise up and fill it. It would, but not yet. “You've always known how I feel about that made-up bullshit being written about me. I told you.”

“I know, but please don't be angry. Or rather, be angry, because you have every right. It's just that . . .” Her tears filled her eyes again and she wiped at them with her fingers. “It's just that I was so attracted to you, and you kissed me and I wrote it.”

“And sent it in to be published in a porno magazine.”

“I was hoping you'd be flattered.”

“You knew I wouldn't be.” The anger he'd been holding swelled in his chest. He had to get out of there. He had to get away from Jane. The woman he'd thought he was falling in love with. “You must have had a real good laugh when I thought you were a prude. When I thought my fantasies would shock you.”

She shook her head. “No.”

Not only had she betrayed his trust in her, she'd made a raging fool of him. “What else am I going to read about myself?”

“Nothing.”

“Right.” He walked to the door and reached for the handle.

“Luc, wait! Don't go.” He paused. Her voice came to him, filled with tears and the same stabbing pain that twisted in his gut. “Please,” she cried. “We can work this out. I can make this up to you.”

He didn't turn around. He didn't want to see her. “I don't think so, Jane.”

“I love you.”

Her words were one more knife to his back, and the anger he'd been holding back finally broke free. He thought he would come apart with it. “Then I would hate to see what you do to people you don't love.” He opened the door. “Stay the hell away from me, and stay away from my sister.”

He moved down the hall. The busy pattern of the carpet was a blur. Jane was Honey Pie. His Jane. Even though he knew it was true, he was having a real hard time swallowing it all at once.

He walked into his room and leaned back against the closed door. The whole time he'd thought she was a prude, she wrote porn. The whole time he'd thought she was uptight, she knew more about sex than he did. The whole time they'd been together, he'd trusted her and she was taking notes.

She'd said she loved him. He didn't believe her for a second. He'd trusted her and she'd stabbed him in the back. She'd used him to write her porn article. She'd known how he'd feel about it, and she'd done it anyway.

The whole time he'd been careful not to make her feel like a groupie, she was actually . . . What was Honey Pie? A nymphomaniac?

Was Jane a nymphomaniac? No. Was she? He didn't know. He didn't know a thing about her.

The only thing he knew for certain was that he was a damn fool.

Chapter 17
On the Limp: Injured

S
he'd been a fool. Several times over. First for falling in love with Luc, even as she'd known he'd break her heart. Then for looking him in the face and telling him that she was Honey Pie. He
hadn't
known. Chances were that he never would have known.

She knew, and it had burned like a charcoal briquet right beneath her sternum. In the end she'd told him to relieve his mind. He'd been so freaked out thinking that someone was lurking in the shadows . . . and she supposed someone was. Her. And she'd told him to relieve her own conscience. So why didn't she feel better?

Jane tossed her suitcase on the floor and burst into tears. She'd spent roughly seven hours in taxis or airports or on planes trying to get home. Trying to keep it together. She couldn't anymore. The pain of losing Luc racked her body and huge sobs tore at her lungs. She'd known losing him would hurt, but she'd never imagined so much pain was even possible.

Moonlight poured through the window of the small bedroom in her apartment, and she shut the curtain. Shutting herself up in darkness. She'd taken the first available flight out of Phoenix that afternoon. She'd had a two-hour layover in San Francisco before continuing on to Seattle. She was a physical and emotional wreck. She'd had to leave. She hadn't had a choice. She could not have walked into the locker room the next night and seen Luc's face. She would have fallen apart. Right there in front of everyone.

Before she left, she'd called Darby and told him she had a family emergency. She was needed at home, and she would catch up with the team once they returned to Seattle. Even though there was nothing in it for Darby, he'd helped arrange her flight, and she realized that he was more than just a cocky wheeler-dealer. There was a heart beneath those thousand-dollar suits and bad ties. And just maybe he would be good for Caroline.

She'd called Kirk Thornton, too. He hadn't been as understanding as Darby. He'd asked the nature of the emergency and she'd been forced to lie. She'd told him that her father had a heart attack. When it was actually her whose heart was breaking.

She fell onto her bed and closed her eyes. She couldn't stop thinking about Luc or remembering his face when she'd walked into the sports bar. He'd looked stunned, as if someone had hit him with a brick. She could recall every excruciating detail. The worst was his concern for her. And when he'd finally accepted that she was Honey Pie, his concern had turned to contempt. In that moment, she'd known she'd lost him forever.

Jane rolled onto her side and touched the pillow next to her. Luc had been the last person to lay his head on that pillow. She ran her hand over the soft cotton case, then she held it to her nose. She could almost smell him.

Regret and anger mixed with the pain in her soul, and she wished she hadn't told him that she loved him. She wished he didn't know. Mostly, she wished he'd cared. But he hadn't.

Then I would hate to see what you do to people you don't love,
he'd said.

Tossing the pillow aside, she sat up in bed and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She changed into a large T-shirt, then moved through her dark apartment to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. It had been a while since she'd cleaned it out. She grabbed an old jar with one pickle chip floating on top and set it on the counter. She reached for an empty bottle of mustard and a half gallon of milk a week past its pull date and put them by the pickle jar. Her chest ached and her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. She would love to fall asleep until the pain went away, but even if that were possible, when she woke, she would face it again.

The telephone rang, and when it stopped, she took the receiver off the hook. She got her garbage can and some Formula 409 from beneath the sink and set them next to her within the light from the refrigerator. She cleaned to keep busy. To keep from completely going insane. It didn't help because she relived every wonderful and exciting and horrible moment she'd spent with Luc Martineau. She remembered the way he threw a dart as if he could muscle a bull's-eye. The way he rode his motorcycle and how it had felt to ride behind him. She recalled the exact color of his eyes and hair. The sound of his voice and the scent of his skin. The touch of his hands and body pressed to her. The taste of him in her mouth. They way he looked at her during sex.

She loved everything about Luc. But he didn't love her. She'd known it would end. Eventually. The
Honey Pie
column had just prompted the inevitable. Even if she'd never sent it in, even if she'd never even written it, a relationship between her and Luc wouldn't have worked out, despite her hope to the contrary. Ken hooked up with Barbie. Mick dated supermodels, and Brad married Jennifer. Period. That was life. The breakup was not her fault. He would have left. It was probably a good thing he'd left now, she told herself, instead of in a few more months when she would have discovered even more to love about him. When it would have hurt worse. Although she couldn't imagine anything hurting worse. She felt as if a part of her had died.

Jane set her 409 on the counter and glanced across her apartment at her briefcase tossed on the coffee table.

There are some things in that Honey Pie piece-of-shit article that are just too close to be a coincidence,
he'd said.

She'd always figured he'd recognize himself in the column, but she hadn't figured he'd recognize her. She moved to the couch and sat.
Things that were written about you and me that actually happened
.
She pulled out her laptop and turned it on. She brought up her
Honey Pie
folder and clicked on the March file. Until now, she'd been reluctant to read it. Afraid it was horrible and not flattering and not as good as she'd originally thought or intended. As she read, she was struck by how obvious she'd made it that it
was
her. It would have been more surprising if he hadn't suspected anything. The more she read, the more she wondered if she'd left clues on purpose. It was almost as if she were jumping up and down from the pages and waving her arms and yelling,
it's me, Luc. It's Jane. I wrote this.

Had she wanted him to figure out that she'd written the column? No. Of course not. That would be stupid. That would mean she'd purposely sabotaged the relationship.

She sat back and looked across the room at the fireplace mantel. At the photo of her and Caroline. At the crystal shark Luc had given her. When had she fallen in love with him? Was it the night of the banquet? The first night he'd kissed her? Or the day he'd bought her the hockey book all tied up in a pink bow? Perhaps she'd fallen a little in love with him all of those times.

She supposed the time didn't matter as much as the bigger question. Was what Caroline always said about her true? Did she enter relationships with one foot out the door? With an eye toward the exit sign? Had she purposely written the article in such an obvious way to get out of her relationship with Luc before she fell too deep? If that was the case, she'd gotten out too late. She'd fallen deeper and harder than ever before. She hadn't even known it was possible to fall so hard.

Her doorbell rang and she rose from the couch. It was past two
A.M
.
, and she couldn't imagine who'd be standing on her porch. Her heart pinched even as she told herself that it wasn't Luc, racing across the country after her like Dustin Hoffman in
The Graduate
.

It was Caroline.

“I called all the hospitals,” her friend said as she hugged Jane tight against her chest. “No one would give me any information.”

“About what?” Jane extracted herself from Caroline's grasp and took a step back.

“Your father.” Caroline lowered her chin and peered into Jane's eyes. “His heart attack.”

Jane shook her head and rubbed her chilled arms through her long T-shirt. “My dad didn't have a heart attack.”

“Darby called me and told me that he did!”

Oh, no. “That's what I told the paper, but I just needed to come home and I needed a good excuse.”

“Mr. Alcott isn't dying?”

“No.”

“I'm glad to hear it, of course.” Caroline sat hard on the sofa. “But I ordered flowers.”

Jane sat next to her. “Sorry. Can you cancel them?”

“I don't know.” Caroline turned and looked at her. “Why the lie? Why did you have to come home? And why have you been crying?”

“Have you read
Honey Pie
this month?”

Caroline usually read all the columns. “Of course.”

“It was Luc.”

“I gathered that. Was he flattered?”

“Not at all,” Jane answered, and then she told her why. Through tears that wouldn't stop, she told her friend everything. When she was finished, a frown pulled at Caroline's brows.

“You already know what I'm going to say.”

Yes, Jane knew. And for the first time she actually listened. Jane had always been the smart one. Caroline the pretty one. Tonight Caroline was the pretty
and
smart one.

“Can you fix it?” Caroline asked.

Jane recalled the look in Luc's eyes and him telling her to stay away from him and Marie. He'd meant it. “No. He would never listen to me now.” She leaned back against the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. “Men suck.” Jane rolled her head and looked at her friend. “Let's make a pact to swear off men for a while.”

Caroline bit her lip. “I can't. I'm sort of dating Darby now.”

Jane sat up straight. “Really? I didn't know things had gotten that serious.”

“Well, he isn't my usual type. But he's nice to me and I like him. I like talking to him and I like the way he looks at me. And, well, let's face it, he needs me.”

Yes, he certainly did. Jane figured Darby could probably fill Caroline up with a lifetime of need.

The next morning, Jane received flowers from the Chinooks organization expressing their condolences. At noon, flowers from the
Times
, and at one, Darby sent his own arrangement. At three, Caroline's were delivered. They were all gorgeous and smelled wonderful and filled her with guilt. This was pure karmic retribution, and she promised God that she would never lie again if He would make the flowers stop.

On television that night, she watched the Chinooks play the Coyotes. Through the wire of his mask, Luc's blue eyes looked out at her, as hard and as cold as the ice he played on. When he wasn't cursing the air blue in front of his net, his lips were compressed into a grim line.

He looked up and the camera caught the anger in his eyes. He wasn't in his zone. His personal life was affecting his game, and if Jane had harbored any hidden hope that she could fix the relationship, that hope died.

It was truly over.

Luc drew three penalties as he let his rage loose on anyone dumb enough to step inside his crease.

“What's the matter, Martineau?” a Coyote forward asked after the first penalty. “Got your period?”

“Kiss my hairy beanbag,” he answered, hooked his stick in the guy's skates, and pulled him off his feet.

“You're an asshole, Martineau,” the guy said as he looked up from his position on the ice. Whistles blew and Bruce Fish was sent to the penalty box instead of Luc.

Luc picked up his water bottle and sprayed his face. Mark Bressler joined him at the net.

“Having an anger management problem?” the captain asked.

“What the fuck do you think?” Water dripped from his face and mask. Jane wasn't in the press box. She wasn't even in the same state, but he couldn't get her out of his head.

“That's what the fuck I think.” Bressler punched his shoulder with his big glove. “Try not to draw any more penalties and we just might win this thing.”

He was right. Luc needed to concentrate more on the game than on who was or wasn't in the press box. “No more dumb penalties,” he agreed. But in the next frame, he wacked an opponent in the shin and the guy milked it for all it was worth.