Playing to Win(8)

She could feel his muscles beneath his suit jacket, enough to tell that  they were barely straining under her weight. She shot him her best  "what the hell?" glare through the onslaught of yum, and he gestured  with his chin in the direction of her feet.

"Your shoes. That's how I knew you were in here."

He breathed the words quietly, his mouth so close that she could feel  the exhalation against the sensitive skin beneath her ear. It tickled,  and she turned her head to protect her neck. Suddenly there was nothing  but a fraction of an inch's worth of air separating their lips.

His muscles flexed then, pulling her tighter to his chest and her  breath came fast and shallow. Heat prickled over her skin and pooled in  her belly. Her fingers clenched against the soft material of his jacket.

Holly had never experienced lust at first sight before, but man, Luke  Maguire made her lust. She ran her hand up his chest, and he shifted his  stance, but before their lips met, he banged his elbow against the  stall. The thump reverberated through the bathroom, snapping them back  into the present, and they froze, eyes wide.

They both cocked their heads toward the sink side of the stall, listening intently for any sign that they'd blown their cover.

After another moment of silence, Luke set her carefully on her feet.  The lust hangover made Holly a little wobbly on her heels. He stepped  forward and lifted onto his toes so he could see over the edge of the  stall. "He's gone," he said, the words tinged with relief. They hadn't  even heard him retreat.

Holly unlatched the door, and with a covert glance to assure herself  they were, in fact, alone, took some tentative steps toward the sink.  She paused for a moment, but the piece of paper wasn't on the floor, nor  had it been kicked under the sink.

"No time for sightseeing, Evans." Luke's hand at the small of her back  was warm and insistent. "Let's get out of here before you get caught."

They snuck back out to the dressing room, Holly letting Luke precede  her so he could make sure the coast was clear. She wasn't four steps out  of the bathroom before several members of the team strutted into the  dressing room, bedecked in expensive suits and pregame gravitas. Luke  sent her a "See? You really lucked out," kind of look.

Ass.

Then the "Charge" anthem sounded to her right. Holly's spine snapped  straight as she watched Luke fish his iPhone out of the breast pocket of  his suit jacket.

He glanced at the caller ID and that serious expression of his  descended over his handsome face like a shutter. Holly decided she might  prefer his pompous expression after all.

"I gotta take this," he said. She watched with interest as he turned  away from her, shielding the call with his broad shoulders. "Why are you  calling again? Seriously? Hold on." Was it her imagination, or did Luke  glance in her direction. "Let me get somewhere I can talk."

The "Charge" fanfare? Why are you calling again? Pieces were falling  into place and she didn't particularly like the picture they were  forming.

Had it been Luke in the bathroom earlier? She'd just assumed that  whoever had inadvertently held the two of them hostage had come back for  his list. But now that she thought about it, Luke had definitely had  enough time to pick up the wayward paper before he'd gone all foot  fetishist on her and blown her hiding place. That could be the reason  he'd even noticed her shoes under the stall in the first place-he was  bending over to pick up the list.                       
       
           


       

Holly strained to hear more of his conversation, but he pointedly  disappeared back into the bathroom. To her dismay, there were too many  team members in the swanky locker room now for her to follow. Still, the  reporter buzz-that's what her mother used to call it-was zinging around  her gut. She was on to something. Obviously Luke's regular deep  baritone had sounded nothing like the whispered panic she'd heard  earlier, but that ringtone was an indisputable clue, and one that she  had to follow up on.

* * *

LUKE WALKED OVER to stand by the sinks, hating that his gaze went  immediately to the stall he and Holly had hidden out in only moments  ago.

But he couldn't afford to be distracted by sex right now. Harding Lowe  was the kind of law firm that charged in the triple digits for phone  calls like these, and with money as tight as it was, Luke had to pay  close attention and cut to the chase. "What's so important?"

"I was going to wait until tomorrow to tell you this, but I'm worried  it might hit the papers and I didn't want you to find out like that,"  Craig Harding informed him.

Luke's blood turned to ice. It was never good when someone started a  phone call that way, but when it was your lawyer? Infinitely worse.

"What?" The word was flat, more demand than question.

"Brad Timmons is filing for bankruptcy."

Luke's face went numb. The asshole who'd put Ethan in a wheelchair, put  his parents in debt, strained his family to the emotional breaking  point time after time over the last three years, was going to screw them  over again.

"Fuck."

The word echoed hollowly in the vast expanse of shiny white tile and empty navy stalls.

Luke wanted to punch something, but it wasn't worth the fine the Storm would levy against him if he did.

Jesus Christ, how had things come to this? He made almost two million  dollars a year with his new contract and still it was all he could do to  keep himself and the people he loved financially afloat.

Loans, renovations, lawyers, specialists, physio-it had all added up  after the accident. His paycheck was all but spent before it got  deposited. He was grateful he had the means to keep his family living a  comfortably middle-class life despite their exorbitant bills, but the  idea that the coward who'd put his little brother in a wheelchair wasn't  going to have to contribute a dime to Ethan's recovery made Luke  nauseous.

Timmons had already lucked out with his criminal charges. He'd been  convicted of assault with a weapon for the crosscheck, but ended up with  an eighteen-month conditional discharge, which meant he hadn't served  any jail time and he wouldn't have a criminal record once his probation  was complete. Now he'd found a way to punk out on financial restitution,  too.

"Thanks for the heads-up, Craig. I'll take care of telling my family."

"Understood. I'll be in touch."

Luke hung up the phone. He would deal with the personal stuff later.  Right now, he had to focus on his team. They were only two hours away  from puck drop.

He reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit, exchanging his  phone for a folded-up piece of yellow legal paper. He'd found it on the  floor of the bathroom and recognized instantly what it was. That 5 – 0  loss had been brutal. The fact that it was predetermined made it cut  even deeper. Luke shook his head against the proof clutched in his hand.

He couldn't believe any of his guys would do this. They'd battled too hard to get to where they were.

And yet...the entire premise of point-shaving and over/under betting  was predicated on having an inside man, someone out there on the ice who  could impact the game.

This was the last thing they needed right now. He'd only just put this  team back together after losing their last captain in a blaze of scandal  and lies. It had taken months of work to get all twenty-three players  over the shake-up and focused on making the play-offs.

And look at them now.

The only bright spot in this rotten situation was that he'd been the  one to find the betting sheet. At least this way he could deal with it  internally-protect his team.

He didn't even want to think about how this would have played out if  Holly had found it instead. She could've ruined their chance at winning  the championship before it even began.                       
       
           


       

And he wanted that championship, not just for himself but for the team.

Each and every one of those guys deserved to hoist sports' greatest  trophy above their heads, and he'd do whatever it took to make sure that  happened.

For them. For himself. For his brother.





5

"WE'LL WIN TONIGHT. Yes. By two."

The words still echoed in Holly's brain, hours after the final buzzer had sounded.

The Storm had handled their opponents with relative ease tonight, up  3 – 0 after two periods. Then at the start of the third, Sillinger had  taken a bone-headed roughing penalty, Luke had fumbled the puck and  failed to clear the zone, and seconds later, LaCroix had lost his chance  for a shutout.

For a while, things settled down a bit, until Colorado scored to make  it 3 – 2 with seven minutes left in the game. Things were looking grim for  the list's prediction, and then Jacobs came out of nowhere, stripping  one of his opponent's defensemen of the puck. He deked out the  goaltender and put a wrister top-shelf to make the final score 4 – 2.