Blindsided. Leslie LaFoy
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smile. The one that set her teeth on edge every time she saw it.
“It’ll have to be quick, Mrs. Talbott,” he informed her as players moved around them. “The bus is waiting.”
“And it’ll sit right there until you get aboard,” she pointed out. “I’d like for you to change the lines starting with tomorrow morning’s practice. Obviously they’re not working as they are now.”
“It won’t make any difference. You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear.”
Sow’s ear, she silently corrected. “I don’t care. I want the lines changed, Carl. And while we’re making changes, I’ve never been a fan of either boxing or professional wrestling. I’m tired of our games being more a contest of fists than finesse. The fighting needs to be stopped.”
He gave a thumbs-up sign to one of the players walking past while telling her, “Fights are what the fans come to see.”
“Yeah, all six of them,” she countered dryly. “Maybe if we actually played hockey a few more people might be interested in coming to the games and helping to pay the rent.” At his snort, she put her hands on her hips and looked him square in the eye. “And your salary, Carl.”
He stopped smiling. He leaned close. “Look, Little Lady. With the exception of Wheatley, this team doesn’t have the talent to play the grand and glorious kind of hockey you’ve been watching on ESPN. Those guys are the pros. These guys are the ones who couldn’t make it. They’re bottom of the barrel.”
Bottom of the barrel? The boys took beatings for this man? Cat had to count to ten before she could unclench her teeth. “Let me ask you something, Carl. If you have such a low opinion of the boys, of their abilities and their chances, why do you bother to coach them?”
“I like seeing the country,” he answered, edging away from her with a sneer, “from the window of a stinking, belching, rattling bus.”
Cat stepped directly into his path. “I’m serious, Carl. Why do you coach them if you don’t believe in them?”
“I dunno,” he snarled. “Maybe it’s because I don’t have any other hobbies that I can make good money at.”
“A hobby?” she repeated, furious. Passing players stared, but she was too mad to care. “You consider coaching the Warriors a hobby? For these boys, it’s life. It’s their dream. How dare you blow them off!”
He tried to step around her again. Cat planted herself in his way, said, “You’re fired, Carl,” and stuck out her hand, palm up. “I’ll have the keys to the office and the rink, please. You can clean out your desk in the morning after Lakisha unlocks.”
He reached into his pants pocket and yanked out a key ring. “You got it, lady. We can talk about my severance package then, too.”
Standing with her hand out, she watched him find and separate two keys from the others. “This isn’t exactly a spur-of-the-moment decision and I’ve read your contract, Carl. There’s no severance provision. You’ll draw this month’s salary and that’s it.”
He slapped the loose keys into her hand, asking, “Your boyfriend over there sweet talk his way into my job?”
Logan. Oh, God. She’d forgotten him again. What would he think when he found out she’d fired Carl? That she was trying to manipulate him into taking the job? How was she going to convince him otherwise when she’d gladly give him anything he wanted if he’d sign on? Oh, wasn’t that going to be a scene and half. She’d rather set herself on fire.
“In the first place, Carl, he’s not my boyfriend,” she said as she stuffed the keys in her pocket. “And in the second, he’s not interested in coaching.”
“You’re not going to find anyone who’ll be willing to take on this bunch of losers. You know that, don’t you?”
Losers? The son of a bitch. She walked away, refusing to give him so much as a backward glance as she called over her shoulder, “And the horse you rode in on, Carl!”
Logan chuckled as she blew past him, “I take it Spady isn’t all that enthused about the idea to mix up the lines.”
She wasn’t in the mood to face the truth squarely or to tap dance around it. Not right now. She needed time to cool down and figure out a plan of some sort. “What Carl Spady thinks doesn’t matter,” she declared as she yanked open the driver’s side door. “I’m starving. Do you need a lift to your car?”
He came off the front end, his amusement replaced by a look of wary assessment. “I’m parked right over there,” he said, making a vague motion in the direction of the lot outside the chained off area.
“Then I’ll see you at Hero’s,” Cat announced, practically throwing herself into the seat and pulling the door closed. She turned the ignition over and snapped on the lights in the next second, all too keenly aware of Logan Dupree’s frown as he walked away.
“God,” she groaned, as she sagged into the seat and closed her eyes. “I hate frickin’ roller coasters. Just hate them.”
But there was no climbing off now and she knew it. Tom had belted her in and shoved the lever into Go! She had a couple of minutes before Logan got to his car. With a hard sigh, she opened her eyes and reached for the Dummies book in the passenger seat. “Lines,” she muttered, flipping through the index. “Definition and composition of.”
Chapter Three
All right, he was a fair man; he could admit a mistake when he made one. He’d been wrong about Wichita’s nightlife being the same now as twenty years ago. In the old days, downtown after dark had belonged to raggy winos and the homeless with their shopping carts. These days the drunks were younger and much better dressed. And the Safeway-mobiles had been replaced by Beemers and Infinitis. Yes, downtown had definitely gone upscale.
Which meant that Catherine Talbott’s very old Jeep stuck out like sore thumb. Logan stood in the public parking lot and considered it. God, what year was that thing? White and boxy, it had to be from the early nineties. It was missing a strip of door trim on the driver’s side. There was piece of duct tape holding the driver’s mirror in place. And the fact that she was walking around to lock each of the doors by hand told him that the automatic controls didn’t work anymore.
The engine apparently ran well, though. She’d flown down the highway, powered through half a dozen ramp curves like a NASCAR driver, and sailed through downtown with green lights all the way. She’d hit the brakes only twice—to slow down just enough to keep it on four wheels as she made the turn in to the parking lot and then to stop the charging beast after she’d whipped it into the tiny spot between a late model Yukon and a Suburban with a temporary tag. Did she drive like a bat out of hell all the time? Or had she been driving off her “Come To Jesus” Talk with Spady?
He’d made a mistake about her, too, he admitted while she locked the back hatch with the key. Well, sorta, anyway. Yeah, she wasn’t a model, super or otherwise. He’d gotten that part right. But she wasn’t a kid sister, either. Especially when she stuffed her hands into the hip pockets of her jeans. Lord, what her too big shirts had hidden up until that moment. Like the fact that Catherine Talbott had curves. Really nice curves. In all the right places. The kind of curves that made for perfect handholds. And handfuls.
She dropped her keys into her purse, slung the saddlebag-looking thing over her shoulder, and came toward him with an easy smile. Logan smiled back and asked, “Who taught you to drive? One of the Andrettis?”
“The choke sticks,” she answered as he fell in beside her and they headed up Mosley Street. “It’s either pull off the road and shut it down for ten minutes, or hang on tight.”
“Why don’t you get it fixed?”
“Because mechanics don’t take rubber checks.”
Good reason.