throwing punches and fighting it out on the ice.
No, she didn’t understand his anger and his somber moods, but she supposed she wasn’t getting paid to understand him. She looked at the computer screen and got back to work.
It was my pleasure to coach Derek last summer. I’m glad to hear he does not plan to give up. I’ll come see him play in the NHL someday.
Take care,
Mark Bressler
She scrolled to the next letter and made a mental note to ask Mark about youth hockey camp. He wouldn’t like it. He’d probably accuse her of being pushy and trying to run his life. He’d call her a tick, but his life needed someone to run it.
After forty minutes and ten more letters, she rose and stretched her arms over her head. At this rate, it was going to take her forever to get the letters written, and she suspected that’s why he’d told her to do it. She dropped her hands to her side and moved through the house toward the leisure room. Light from all the leaded glass windows smeared milky patches across the stone and wood and made her think she was in a villa in Tuscany. She wondered if his former wife had chosen the house, because the little she did know of Mark, it didn’t seem to suit his tastes. He seemed like more a modern architecture kind of guy.
The carpet in the huge room silenced the soles of her shoes as she walked inside. On the television, the noon news showed the weather forecast for the next week. The sound was so low she could barely hear it. The curtains were open, and the late morning sun poured in through large French doors, bleaching the carpet a lighter beige and stopping just short of the large chaise where Mark lay, asleep. His right hand rested on his stomach, the blue splint contrasting with the white of his T-shirt. His left hand lay on the leather beside him, palm up, his fingers curled arou Crs nd the remote. The permanent frown between his brows was gone, his forehead smooth. He looked younger, softer, which seemed odd given the strong angles of his face and the dark spiky stubble.
If I mention that I haven’t been laid for six months, are you going to start lining up hookers? he’d asked, and she bit the side of her lips to keep from laughing and waking him up. She’d worked for a comedian once who had asked her to get him a hooker. He’d used a certain escort service and had wanted Chelsea to go pick the girl up and drop her off. He’d wanted her to come back two hours later, then take the girl back home. She’d refused, and the comedian had paid for a cab instead.
Unlike the comedian, Mark Bressler obviously had no problems when it came to getting females. He was very good-looking and had a raw sexual aura that surrounded him like a poisonous cloud. Unless he had some sort of fetish, she just couldn’t see him dialing up hookers.
She moved to the heavy drapery and shut the curtains. It was a good thing she wasn’t easily offended anymore. If he’d made those comments about her large boobs several years ago, she would have burst into tears and run from his house, which she suspected was the reason he’d insulted her.
Again.
She turned, and he rubbed his injured hand across his stomach and chest, the rasp of his splint barely audible over the low voices pouring from the television. He didn’t open his eyes, and she wondered if she should wake him for lunch. Instead she tiptoed out of the room. Best not to poke the beast.
She went back to work, answering fan letters. For the next two days she wrote mostly generic responses or deleted inappropriate messages. Wednesday, she took a break from the computer to drive Mark to a doctor’s appointment a few miles away, and Thursday she drove him to the Verizon store. Both times he was such a horrible backseat driver, she threatened to drive him around in her Honda if he didn’t shut up.
He did. For a few minutes.
“Son of a bitch!” he swore as she drove him home from the Verizon store that Thursday afternoon. “That car almost hit us broadside.”
“A miss is as good as a mile,” she quoted her mother.
“Obviously not, or your car wouldn’t be dented to shit.”
Her Honda wasn’t “dented to shit.” It had a few minor parking lot dings. “That’s it. From now on we’re taking my car. You call me a tick and a nag, but you are the worst backseat driver in the entire state of Washington and half of Oregon.”
“You don’t know every backseat driver in Washington and half of Oregon.”
She ignored his comment. “You bitch when I pull out too fast. You bitch when it’s not fast enough. You bitch when I go through a yellow light and bitch when I stop,” she said. “For a person who has so much in life, you complain a lot.”
“You don’t know jackshit about my life.”
“I know that you’re bored. You need a hobby. Something to do.”
“I C1emdon’t need a hobby.”
“I’m thinking you should get involved in youth hockey camp. I know from reading your fan letters that you were a positive influence in the lives of those kids.”
He looked out the passenger window and was silent for several moments before he said, “In case you haven’t figured it out, I can’t skate these days.”
“When I went to that Stanley Cup final with my sister and Jules, I noticed that the Chinook coaches just stand behind the bench, act really cranky, and yell a lot. You can do that. You’re good at being cranky and yelling.”
“I’ve never yelled at you.”
“You just yelled ‘son of a bitch’ at me.”
“I raised my voice in reaction to you almost killing me. I survived one car wreck. I don’t want to be taken out now by a little person who can hardly see over the dash.”
Maybe that explained why he was so horrible when she drove him around. He was terrified of another car crash. Of course, that didn’t explain his ass hole behavior at home. “I can see perfectly fine and I’m five-one and a half.” She stopped at a red light and looked across the car at him. “In order to be considered a little person and attend the annual LPA national convention, I’d have to be four-ten or under.”
He turned and faced her. Both his brows rose above the frames of his sunglasses.
“What?”
He shook his head. “You know the height requirement of little people?”
She shrugged and glanced up at the traffic light. “When you grow up with kids calling you a midget, you look these things up.”
He chuckled, but she wasn’t amused. The one time he decided to laugh, it was at her. The light changed, and she put her foot on the gas pedal. Once again he’d managed to change the subject. “One of the letters I answered yesterday was from Mary White. You coached her son Derek.”
He turned and looked out the passenger window once more. He was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “I don’t remember a Derek.”
She didn’t know if that was the truth or he was just trying to shut her up. “That’s a shame. The impression I got from his mother was that you were a great coach.”
“Sometime today, you need to program my phone,” he said, subject closed. “I’ll give you a list of names and you can look the numbers up.”
She’d drop the subject. For now. “Programming a cell is really easy.” Because his phone was lost and he hadn’t backed up his numbers to the Verizon secure site, he’d lost everything. Yeah, it was easy, but finding all his numbers and programming them into his phone would take time. Time that she would rather spend plowing through the fan letters. “You can do it.”
“I don’t get paid to do it,” he said as they pulled into the garage. “You do.”
When they walked into the house, a cleaning service was there vacuuming and washing all those w Cng indows. Mark scribbled a list of names, then handed her his cell. “That will get you started,” he said, then disappeared into the elevator.
Chelsea plugged in the phone to give it a good charge before she turned to Mark’s computer and got back to work. While she answered a fan letter, an e-mail popped in his personal inbox. In case it was a Realtor, she opened his e-mail program. The return address caught her eye, and she opened it.
