The Man Upstairs. Pamela Bauer
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person, I probably shouldn’t bother him about the stick,” Dena commented.
“I don’t think he’ll see it as a bother, but if you’d like, I could ask him for you.”
Dena said a prayer of thanks right then and there. “You wouldn’t mind?”
Leonie took a sip of her coffee, then said, “No, not at all. I’ll see what I can do.”
TRUE TO HER WORD, Leonie talked to Quinn. The very next day when Dena arrived home from work, she found a hockey stick propped against her door. Attached to it was a note that said, “Leonie told me about the auction for the Jorgensons. If there’s anything else I can do, let me know.” It was simply signed with a capital Q.
Leonie knew she needed to thank the man. Taking a deep breath, she took the stick and climbed the stairs to the third floor. To her relief, there was no answer to her knock on his door, and she went back to her apartment, where she studied the signature on the hockey stick.
The writing was bold and confident, the Q a big flamboyant circle compared to the rest of the letters, which weren’t much more than a series of upward strokes and wavy humps. His entire name was underscored.
She propped the stick against the wall, then sat down at her desk. She pulled a note card from the drawer and began to write.
“Mr. Sterling, Thank you so much for the auction donation for the Aaron Jorgenson benefit. It was very kind of you and your generosity is appreciated. Sincerely, your neighbor, Dena Bailey.”
She went back upstairs and slipped the note beneath his door.
The next day, when she brought the stick with her to work, it raised more than a few eyebrows of admiration. As the auction drew nearer and other donations arrived, Dena was confident that hers would bring the highest bid. Unfortunately, she was disappointed. As much as the fans in St. Paul loved Quinn Sterling, they were willing to pay more for lunch with the lovely Channel 8 news anchor than for an authentic, autographed hockey stick by their hometown hero.
Dena had hoped that her donation to the auction would get the creative director’s attention, but other than a personal thank-you note, it didn’t. What it did do, however, was give her a small amount of fame. Male co-workers made a habit of stopping by her cubicle to inquire about her neighbor.
Her popularity, however, was short-lived, and within a few days, it was business as usual. She forgot about the man who lived upstairs from her, and she put all of her energy into her fast-approaching deadline.
CHAPTER TWO
IT HAD BEEN A GRUELING ROAD TRIP. Quinn was tired and his body ached. He’d been tripped, elbowed, punched and banged into the boards during the past three games, and he could feel it in his muscles and bones. In addition to a black eye, he had a bandage on his cheek and a contusion on his right quadriceps. Hazards of the trade, he told himself as he dragged his weary body up the stairs to his apartment.
Judging by the way his body felt, he would have thought there were only a couple of weeks of the regular season left, not two months. Maybe it was age catching up with him. He was, after all, on the wrong side of thirty—at least for a hockey player. But he wouldn’t think about that now. He’d just had one of the best games of his career. There was no reason to think about that.
Aware that it was close to three in the morning, he moved as quietly as he could, not wanting to disturb the other residents of the house. He grimaced as the stairs creaked with his weight.
It was at times like this that he wondered if he’d made a mistake moving into 14 Valentine Place. Although it afforded him plenty of privacy, he’d been reluctant to accept Leonie Donovan’s offer to rent the third floor of the house, because he worried that his irregular hours might disturb her other tenants.
She’d had no such reservations. Not that she would have expressed them if she had. Leonie had been like a second mother to him most of his life. As a teen he’d eaten just as many meals at her house as he had at his own. That’s why, when he’d been traded to the Minnesota team, she’d been one of the first people he’d contacted.
“Shane is going to be so happy you’re coming home,” she’d gushed when he’d announced his return, hugging him as if he were one of her own children.
So far he’d only seen Shane once—the day he’d moved into the house. They’d been the best of buddies as kids, but now it was evident that their lives had gone in very different directions. Shane’s life centered around his wife and son. Quinn’s life was hockey. Not that Shane wasn’t still interested in talking about the sport, but Quinn could see that the passion they’d once shared as kids was now a thing of the past.
He didn’t understand it. Nothing had ever come close to replacing the love he had for the game of hockey. There was nothing like the sound of cold, hard steel cutting through ice, the clash of sticks sending the puck gliding across the rink, and the cheers of the crowd urging him on.
Now the sound he heard was a loud thud, thud, thud. A thick glass mug that had been tucked in the side pouch of his duffel bag tumbled onto the floor, falling down the stairs like an errant hockey puck. It was a souvenir molded into the shape of a western boot. The mug had been given to him by Smitty, the young goalie who’d bet him that he couldn’t shut down the shooters on the opposing team. Quinn had won the bet and the goalie had refilled the heavy glass half a dozen times as they’d sat in the bar celebrating the team’s victory.
That had been on day one of their road trip. Today was day five and Quinn still had the mug. It had been dropped numerous times and knocked off several hotel tables, but nothing had caused it to break. As solid as a rock was how Smitty had described it, which was why he’d insisted Quinn take it home with him. It was how the goalie viewed Quinn—able to take a heck of a beating and not break.
Now the glass boot was once again tumbling along the floor. Any hope that its clumping wouldn’t awaken his neighbors vanished when a light appeared beneath a door. Quinn knew he’d disturbed someone on the second floor.
Within seconds a door opened. Staring at him with a startled look on her face was a woman. She wore a long-sleeved white T-shirt and a pair of red pajama bottoms that had tiny penguins all over them. Her blond hair hung in total disarray around her shoulders. Looking as if she’d just been awakened from a deep sleep, she stood in the doorway, her feet bare.
Leonie had told him a new tenant had moved into Maddie’s old apartment. What his landlady hadn’t told him about the woman was that she was a sight for sore eyes. Not that she was beautiful in a Hollywood sort of way, because she wasn’t. What she had was a refreshingly natural look. His mother used to use the term “plain pretty,” and he’d never understood how someone could be plain and pretty, but now he knew what she meant.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a voice still husky with sleepiness, but also carrying a note of alarm.
“I’m sorry. I was on my way upstairs and I dropped something.”
“What?”
“A mug. It’s at the bottom of the stairs,” Quinn answered, trying to figure out why it was that when she spoke he had the feeling they’d already met.
She eyed the duffel bag over his shoulder suspiciously, then she focused on his face and grimaced. “Ooh. Your eye!”
He knew his skin had darkened to a motley black and blue. “It looks worse than it feels.” He moved closer to her. “I know we haven’t met before, but you look familiar.”
Self-consciously, she pushed her hair out of her eyes, then offered him her hand. “I’m Dena Bailey.”
“Quinn Sterling.” He took the soft hand in his. It was warm.
“Oh, of course.” As if it suddenly registered who he was, she said, “Quinn Sterling, my neighbor.” A tiny smile of embarrassment made her cheeks dimple. “You donated the hockey stick.”
“I did.”
“Thank