Chapter 5
Alex decided, after exactly twenty-three minutes of mingling, that this year’s event was way more civilized than last year’s at his place. At least it wasn’t likely that anyone’s car would end up in a pool. Mostly because Ryan’s house wasn’t a bachelor pad like his, and of course it helped that it didn’t even have a pool.
“Simba, we need to talk,” Loki snapped right next to him. He tugged at Alex’s arm and guided him into the kitchen, then through a set of double doors and into what he knew was a kind of storeroom. “Gooly’s pissed.”
The Dragons’ second line center was always pissed about something. It was that fire that made him so hot on the ice and in the locker room; impassioned and a team leader. Hence the A he wore on his chest.
Alex sighed. A pissed Gooly was never a good thing, and he felt the captain’s responsibility settling on his shoulders. Sometimes he’d just like one social event with the guys where he was Alex, instead of Alex-the-captain. “Where on the scale of pissed?”
“He’s talking completely in Russian,” Loki said. Loki was wide-eyed, and not much fazed his friend, but they both knew Gooly in full Russian-mode wasn’t going to end well.
“What’s happened? Last I saw him, he was texting his girlfriend! Jeez, did they break up?”
Alex had just wanted a quiet night tonight. Instead, the world and his wife wanted a photo with him, and he’d already spotted three journalists there, circling like sharks around chum. Topping it all, there were no TV timeouts in the game of socializing.
Loki leaned in. “Rumor hit twitter through the Russian player circle, that Vasiliev wants to move from the West Coast.”
The Russian players in the NHL had this freaky connection; seemed like nothing happened to one of them without the others knowing. But that wasn’t the first thing that hit him. Nope, that was the fact Gooly and Vasiliev were, in Gooly’s words, sworn enemies. And that was no understatement. They hated each other, chirped their way through entire matches, and both had majors in fighting each other. Whatever had happened had followed them to the US from the KHL, the Russian version of the NHL. Games where they were both featured always ended up in lots of insults and fighting in Russian that none of them, barring Semenov, understood.
And Semenov wouldn’t tell anyone what they said.
Not even his captain.
But it didn’t matter. Vasiliev wasn’t likely to come to the Dragons. They had their full contingent of forwards, and as a team, they were strong up front.
“I don’t get why Gooly is pissed about that.”
“There’s more to the rumors,” Loki murmured. “That he’s talked to the Bruins and to us.”
“What kind of— You’re fucking joking. The Dragons management want him?”
Fuck, he already had to deal with Rafferty and Ryan arguing on the same team. Why would they add warring Russians to the mix?
Loki shrugged. “Rumors are that Vasiliev is on management’s buy list.”
“Where did these rumors start?” Alex asked. His fingers itched to get onto Twitter.
“Semenov found it; it’s all in fucking Russian. Look, Alex, we can’t think about this too much. We need to defuse Gooly, but think about it, the Rafferty/Ryan thing worked for the best.”
“What Rafferty/Ryan thing?” Ryan said from the door. He was carrying three beers, and he passed two over.
“Not drinking,” Alex muttered, and relinquished his beer to Loki, who lined it up next to the other one. Seemed like Loki was making the most of their off days.
“I say again,” Ryan began, “What—”
“Russian circle rumors,” Loki interrupted. “Vasiliev is being offered out like a sacrificial lamb, with his team looking to free cap space.”
Ryan looked from Alex to Loki. “What? Why would that worry us?” Then it seemed to hit Ryan. “The Dragons want him? But what about Gooly? You remember what happened in the last game we played against Vasiliev.”
Alex sat down on the nearest chair. Yes, he recalled very well the two Russians dropping gloves during a power play and going at it right in front of net. Alex had literally had to sit on Gooly to calm him the hell down.
“Just because Vasiliev is available and the Dragons want him doesn’t mean it will actually happen,” Alex said. Shit, what if the Dragons did want him? What would the Dragons management be willing to lose to bring on the fiery left-wing?
“If they do, we’ll find a way to manage,” Ryan said. “It worked with me and Rafferty,” he added as he drank his beer. “I mean, I realize now that Raff’s not a complete asshole, and he’s a good D on the power play. Maybe the same thing will happen with Gooly and Vasiliev if worst comes to worst and we take him.”
“Captain?” Another voice at the door, this time Drago with a disgruntled Gooly in tow. A lesser man would have quailed at Gooly’s frown.
Gooly cursed in Russian, and all Alex could make out was syllables that sounded suspiciously like Vasiliev’s name. Given that the whole sentence was spat out with Gooly’s famed cursing ability, Alex began to see the start of another problem.
“I’ll talk to Coach,” he reassured Gooly.
“What about?” Drago asked, the goalie looking confused.
Loki answered. “Fucking management won’t leave the team alone to steady ourselves,” he snapped. “Vasiliev has indicated he wants to move, rumor machine has him wanting into the Dragons.”
Gooly muttered again.
“Well, shit,” Drago said. Then he placed an arm across Gooly’s back. “Let’s go, big guy—we need to find vodka.”
“Top shelf, behind the cans,” Ryan confirmed. “Wait, I’ll get it.” He followed the other two out and left Loki and Alex alone.
“Shit,” Alex repeated.
Loki took the opposite seat. “This is serious, Simba—bigger than just trade rumors. We need to get a grip on this team.” Unspoken was, You need to tell management to let us work with what we have. They can’t keep fucking with us like this, how can they expect us to win games when they won’t let us settle with the team we have?
Alex knew all that, and he pressed a hand to his temple, where a headache that had threatened all day was becoming a reality.
“Don’t you think I know that?” He was pissed, and he couldn’t fail to see Loki’s wince.
Instead of carrying on with the character assassination of the team, Loki looked deadly serious. “What can I do to help you?” he asked.
Alex regarded his friend. Something had changed in Loki since his time off the ice with a bum knee. Yeah, he was still in the middle of any prank within a ten-mile radius, but he was also more settled, somehow, more responsible.
“Nothing, man,” Alex said. “I can’t fight fires if they haven’t even started yet.”
Loki held up his beer in salute. “I’ll be here when you need me. Now get your ass out there, hero, and pimp us out.”
As much as he didn’t want to leave this nice quiet space, he knew his place, and he followed Loki back out to the guests.
A huge tent spread the entire length of the back of Ryan’s house, tables beautifully set, caterers right there helping smooth the way for a lot of big donations. It was a class act, and Alex thought maybe if last year’s event had been half as classy, then they’d have made twice the money for the Dragons Foundation.
“A huge fan, Mr. Simard,” someone said as they stuck a hand right at him and moved to block him from crossing over to a simmering, scowling Gooly. Alex blinked and came to a stop, and called up that inner part of him that had patience and tact with everyone. He loved meeting fans, went out of his way to meet families, visit homes, and share the love of the game.
“Hello,” he said, and shook hands with the giant of a man with an iron grip. “Call me Alex.”
“Fire Chief Swanson,” the man said.
“Are you having fun?” Alex asked, because that wasn’t the lamest line he could think of at that time. He couldn’t help it—Gooly was still cursing in Russian and causing a small spectacle in the corner.
“I bid in the silent auction on your stick from the 2013 All-Star Game,” Chief Swanson confided, leaning in to Alex and winking. “Big money as well,” he added. “It’ll look nice up on my study wall.”
“I hope you win,” Alex said, because that was what anyone bidding would want him to say.
“Oh, I will.” Swanson winked again and laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. Not genuine. “Seems I have some competition from that filly over there,” he said, and nodded at a woman talking to Kat. Alex seemed to recall she was a surgeon at the hospital or something similar. “Anyway,” Swanson continued with a way too creepy, I’m-confiding-in-you vibe, “man-to-man, I always win.”.
Alex backed away. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he said, and indicated the commotion. “Just some team things to sort.”
Swanson smacked Alex on the back, gave some kind of weird bro-hug type touch, then moved aside to let him pass.
By then the cursing had drawn a small audience. Right in the middle of it, the other Russian on the team, Semenov, was trying to calm Gooly down. Also in Russian, and also quite loudly.
“Outside,” Alex hissed to Gooly and, gripping his shirt, yanked him out of the party, followed by Semenov, through the tent, and into the cold December air. They hadn’t stopped for coats—it was pure Vermont ice hitting them—but he was Canadian, and two Russians had to be okay with the cold.
“What the hell!” he began, not asking, but with force and warning. “You got a problem, you don’t fucking curse about that shit at a charity event.”
Gooly said something under his breath, his arms crossed over his chest. Loki joined them, bundled up in a coat, followed closely by Ryan. They didn’t get right up close, and Alex didn’t know what they thought would happen.
Alex kept talking. “I get that you’re pissed, right? But if this team keeps playing like they have these last few games, playing that well, there is no way management will mess with our dynamic.” He was beginning to feel the cold as the heat of anger died away. “But don’t air this in public and make it look like we are anything but focused as a team.”
“Am team,” Gooly said, his usual ability to string complete sentences together in English obviously gone.
Semenov murmured something to Gooly, and the tension seemed to bleed from him.
Alex had one last thing to say. “I don’t know what the hell you and Vasiliev have going on, but we’ll talk about this at Saturday skate. I want you there thirty minutes early. Understand?”
Gooly nodded, the wind clearly having left his sails. Semenov took his arm and guided him back inside, Ryan following, until again it was just him and Loki.
“Okay?” Loki asked.
Alex stretched tall, the shirt he was wearing catching on his cast and not letting him extend fully. Even his clothes were conspiring against him, not to mention his arm ached like a bitch.
“Yeah.”
Unspoken was his exasperation at Gooly, at the management situation, at the fact that he was hurt and they were so close to actually making it work as a team that he could taste it. All Loki did was pat him reassuringly on the shoulder, and together they made their way back inside.
Alex spotted Jo as soon as he stepped back into the warmth of the house. It was hard not to, and how cliché was that, but she stood out. A head taller than some of the women there, she looked different to them. Slim, shapely, yes, but there was a strength in her, and she’d felt solid and real under his hands.
I owe her a real apology.
He sidestepped and avoided and exchanged pleasantries, but by the time he made it to where she’d been standing, she was gone. He gave up after the third attempt to find her, taken away from the search by this person who said they were bidding on this thing or who just wanted to shake his hand and talk about the accident. Looked like Swanson had rivals for the
Bauer Vapor stick, and he hoped it went to someone else. He wasn’t sure why, but something about Swanson made his skin crawl.
Someone tugged at his arm. “Photos please, Alex.” The young woman, Helen, was their social media guru. “This way.”
Helen walked through the crowds with all the confidence of a skater on a play, and all Alex did was follow and make sure he didn’t meet anyone’s eyes so they’d want to talk. When he did look up, he saw they were in the atrium of the gorgeous house, right in front of the huge tree.
And there was Jo, looking stunning in that beautiful copper-colored dress. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, the color of dark chocolate, and she wasn’t looking at him, but focusing on another man to her side. That other man had his hand on her, reassuringly, maybe, or could it be something more?
Alex was determined to find out, shocking himself with the intensity of his need to chase Jo. He never usually put that much work into finding out more about a woman.
She turned to face him, her cheeks a little pink, her lips slick with gloss, and her eyes narrowed. She didn’t look happy to be there, but he could work with that; he’d worked with less.
“You were the fireman who pulled me out?” he said as he realized he was being made to stand with her. She was the person who’d told him everything would be okay?
“Firefighter,” Jo murmured.
“Sorry?”
“Fire. Fighter. Not fire man,” she explained with gritted teeth, all the time trying to maintain a smile.
“Sorry, yes, I mean… Look… Jo,” he said, and kissed her cheek. She didn’t recoil. “I wanted to say—”
“Okay guys, if you can stand side by side. Jo can you turn a little…” Helen had the camera guy taking photos, and then she called a halt, and a couple of reporters stepped forward.
“What would you like to say to the firefighter who pulled you away from the car?” one reporter asked Alex directly.
“Thank you,” Alex said, and half turned to face Jo. “I thought I was in way too deep, and couldn’t see a way out.”
“You’re welcome,” Jo said, and smiled. But the smile didn’t really reach her eyes—in fact, there was a lack of any kind of emotion in her expression.
“And Jo, what did you think of the have-a-go hero?”
Jo straightened imperceptibly. “While we wouldn’t condone the action of putting yourself in danger, Mr. Simard showed a remarkable presence of mind, and as such, a father and his baby survived the accident.”
“Alex, Have you spoken to the father you pulled from the car?”
Alex hadn’t. He’d been going to, but his head was all over the fucking place. Team management were trying to organize a meetup, and he didn’t have the brain capacity to argue with them. The minute he’d had the C put on his chest he’d become the face of the franchise. He knew the family was safe, that the father was in hospital, but he’d been warned to stay away until the reporters left off hanging around the reception area.
“I intend to, soon,” he said. Then he changed the subject. “The team have these super cute onesies for babies with tiny dragons on the front, and I have some for them.” That was a good sound bite; the marketing team would love that.
“When are you expected back…”
He lost himself in the normal questions, couldn’t quite make his way free even though Jo vanished. He hoped to hell that she hadn’t left the damn party, because not only did he owe her an apology, but he also wanted to properly thank her.
He couldn’t see her at first look, but he did find Kat, who was in charge of the auction, and cornered her by the buffet.
“What are the bids up to on the stick I put in?” he whispered into her ear, under the pretense of filling his plate with shrimp.
“I’m not telling you; this is a closed auction,” Kat said out loud, although she leaned in like she wanted to hear the rest of anything Alex might say. “Why?”
“Because whatever your surgeon friend bids, I’ll top it up so she wins, okay? Between you and me.”
She raised her eyebrows in question. “You know Gloria is about to retire and has been married for thirty years.”
Alex let out a huff of annoyance. “I’m not doing it to hit on her,” he muttered.
She laughed at him then. “Should I ask?”
“No, really, don’t.”
He left her chuckling, with an unfeasibly large amount of shrimp on his plate, and then he spotted Jo. That guy Swanson was right there with her, and Alex wasn’t sure if it was perspective, but it looked to him like Swanson was definitely aiming to intimidate. He kind of loomed, a good six inches taller than Jo, and wider, and he was tense; hell, Alex could see the tension in him from where he was standing. She was saying something to him, and just the way she held herself shouted that she was pissed. Shrimp in one hand, he used every puck-handling skill he had to weave through the party to where she was standing, slipping around Swanson like he was a scrappy D in front of the net.
Thrusting out the plate of shrimp, he knocked into Swanson, made a noise of apology, then used Swanson turning to get in and stand right next to Jo.
“I brought your food, Jo,” he explained, gesturing at the plate and watching as both she and Swanson looked down at the mass of pink and sauce on the small plate. “Oh, and sir, I think someone put in a bigger bid than you on the stick.”
Swanson looked at him steadily, then at Jo. “We can talk later,” he said to Jo, and then he winked like Alex had done him a huge favor. “I’ll go and raise my bid. Don’t want someone else getting that, do we?”
Didn’t matter that every cent he upped was a lost cause and would cost Alex more, because Alex didn’t freaking care.
“Okay?” he asked Jo, who was staring at him like he was an alien or something worse.
“What is it with men like you and Swanson getting up in my space?” she snapped, and shoved past him.
Alex watched her work her way through the crowd, and clamber over the plant pot blocking the stairs. Which had to be difficult because of a combination of killer heels and a slim-fitting dress.
With little thought, and guided by a gut feeling, he dumped the plate of shrimp on the nearest table and, trying to be as inconspicuous as six-one and two hundred pounds can be, he followed her upstairs.
He wanted to talk to her.
And also, he wasn’t anything like Swanson, the oily, arrogant ass. The accusation had hurt his pride; he didn’t like this new trend of being misjudged.
Jo needed to know he was one of the nice guys, one of the men in this world who loved women, wanted to cherish them, and all that flowery shit the other guys on the team found so hard to think about, let alone say.
Maybe he was in touch with his feminine side, or maybe he was the product of an awesome mom who’d talked that respect into him. It was probably because he had two sisters. Either way, he was sick of Kat, and now Jo, thinking he was the bad guy.
She needed to know now.
And also, he really wanted a good look at her in that dress.
See if maybe she wanted him to take it off.