See Jane Score

He was almost afraid to ask. “What’s up?”

Her big blue eyes lit up and she smiled. “I got asked to the dance.”

“What dance?”

“The dance at my school.”

He pulled the knot of his tie, and thought of the FedEx envelope sitting in the kitchen. He’d deal with it tomorrow. “When is it?”

“A few weeks.”

She might not be living with him in a few weeks. But she didn’t need to know that now. “Who asked you?”

Her eyes lit up even more and she moved farther into the room. “Zack Anderson. He’s a senior.”

Shit.

“He’s in a band! He’s got a lip ring and his nose and eyebrows are pierced. He has a tattoo. He’s sooooo hot!”

Double shit. Luc had nothing against a tattoo. But piercings? Christ. “What’s the name of his band?”

“The Slow Screws.”

Great.

“I need to get a dress. And shoes.” Marie sat on the edge of his bed and shoved her hands between her knees. “Mrs. Jackson said she’d take me.” She looked up, her eyes pleading. “But she’s old.”

“Marie, I’m a guy. I don’t know anything about buying prom dresses.”

“But you have lots of girlfriends. You know what looks good.”

On women. Not on girls. Not on his sister. Not to go to a prom she probably wouldn’t be here to attend anyway. And even if she was, not with Zack of the Loose Screws. The guy with the lip ring and pierced nose.

“I’ve never been on a date,” she confessed.

His hands fell to his sides and he looked at her closely. At her brows that were too thick and hair that looked a bit on the dry side. Damn, she needed a mother. A woman to help her. Not him.

“What do boys like girls to wear?” she asked.

As little as possible, he thought. “Long sleeves. We think long sleeves and high necks are hot. And long dresses with big puffy skirts so we can’t get very close.”

She laughed. “That’s not true.”

“I swear to God it is, Marie,” he said and pulled the tie from around his neck and tossed it on the bedside table. “We don’t like anything that shows too much skin. We like anything a nun would wear.”

“Now I know you’re lying.”

She laughed again and he thought it was a shame he didn’t know her better. She was his only sibling and he didn’t know her at all. And there was a possibility that he wouldn’t know her either. A part of him wished things could be different. Wished that he was home more, and that he knew what she needed.

“After school tomorrow, I’ll give you my credit card.” He sat next to her and untied his shoes. “Get what you need and I’ll take a look when you bring it home.”

She stood, her shoulders hunched, a frown pulling at her bottom lip. “Okay,” she said and walked from the room.

Jesus, he’d made her mad again. But she really didn’t expect him to shop for a prom dress with her, did she? Like he was her girlfriend? How could she be mad at him for that? He didn’t even like to shop with girls his own age.

Chapter 6

Gassed: Cut from the Team

When Jane finally forced herself from bed the next morning, she pulled on her laundry-day underwear and sweatsuit and hauled her dirty clothes to the Laundromat. As the machines washed and spun, she flipped open a People magazine and caught up on her reading.

There was no place she had to be today. No deadline breathing down her neck. She didn’t have anything work- related until tomorrow night’s game. She bought a Coke from the vending machine, sat back in a hard plastic chair, and enjoyed the mundane pleasure of watching her darks tumble dry. She grabbed the real estate section from the local newspaper and checked out properties for sale. With her added income from the hockey columns, she estimated that by summer she’d have enough money saved to put twenty percent down on a home of her own, but the more she looked, the more discouraged she got. Two hundred thousand sure didn’t buy much these days.

On the way home, she stopped at the grocery store to pick up a week’s worth of food. She had today off, but tomorrow the Chinooks were playing the Chicago Blackhawks at Key Arena. They had home games Thursday, Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday nights. Three days off after that, then it was back on the road. Back on the jet. Back on the bus and back to sleeping in hotel rooms.

Reporting the Chinooks’ six-four loss to the Sharks was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. After she’d trash-talked and played darts with them, she felt a bit like a traitor, but she’d had a job to do.

And Luc… watching the horror unfold in the net had almost been as bad as watching him sitting on the bench. Staring straight ahead, his handsome features void of expression. She’d felt bad for him. She’d felt bad that she had to be the one to report the details, but again, she’d had a job to do, and she’d done it.

When she returned home, there was a message on her machine from Leonard Callaway asking her to meet him the following morning in his office at the Times. She didn’t think the message bode well for her further employment as a sports reporter.

And she was right. He fired her. “We’ve decided it’s best if you no longer cover the Chinooks games. Jeff Noonan is going to fill in for Chris,” Leonard said.

The paper was letting Jane go and giving her job to the Nooner. “Why? What happened?”

“I think it’s best if we don’t get into that.”

The Chinooks hadn’t played their best games the past week, ending in Luc’s spectacular blowout. “They think I jinxed them. Don’t they?”

“We knew it was a possibility.”

Good-bye to her chance to write an important article. Good-bye to twenty-percent down on her own home. And all because some stupid hockey players thought she was bad luck. Well, she couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned or that she wasn’t half expecting it. Still, knowing it didn’t make it any easier to take. “Which players think I brought them bad luck? Luc Martineau?”

“Let’s not get into that,” Leonard said, but he didn’t deny it.

His silence hurt more than it should. Luc was nothing to her, and she was certainly nothing to him. Less than nothing. He’d never wanted her to travel with the team in the first place, and she was sure he was behind her getting the boot. Jane pushed up the corners of her mouth when what she really wanted was to scream and yell and threaten to sue for wrongful termination or sexism or… or… something. She might even have a case too. But might wasn’t a good enough guarantee, and she’d learned long ago not to let her hot temper burn bridges. She still had the Single Girl column to write for the Times.

“Well, thank you for the opportunity to write the sports column,” she said and shook Leonard’s hand. “Traveling with the Chinooks was an experience I won’t forget.”

She kept her smile on her face until she left the building. She was so angry, she wanted to hit someone. Someone with blue eyes and a horseshoe tattooed above his private parts.

And betrayed. She’d thought she’d made progress, but the players had turned on her. Maybe if she hadn’t beat them at darts, talked trash, and they hadn’t called her Sharky, she wouldn’t feel so betrayed now. But she did. She’d even felt bad for doing her job and reporting the facts of their last game. And this was how they repaid her? She hoped they got athlete’s foot. All at the same time.

For the next two days, she didn’t leave her apartment. She was so depressed she cleaned all the cupboards. While she recaulked the bathroom, she cranked the volume on the television and felt only slightly vindicated when she heard that the Chinooks lost to the Blackhawks four to three.