NINE
You’re my princess.
For most little girls, hearing those words spoken by their father would have made them feel like the most special daughter in the world. But not Harper.
Sure, she’d bought it at first. Birth to age six, the precynicism years. She was the apple of Clifford’s eye, his precious bundle of joy after her mother had suffered so many miscarriages. Harper burst onto the scene, promptly breaking her mother’s womb in the process. (A fact former runway model Lorraine never failed to remind her daughter of every single day of Harper’s childhood.) Because of Harper, there would be no more children. No chance of sons.
But Clifford had her, Harper, his princess.
It should have been enough, but like Henry VIII, he decided his first wife was no longer living up to her end of the bargain—to produce male heirs—and it was time to move on to a new and shiny model.
You’re my princess, Harper—until something better comes along.
When Harper first heard about Isobel, she was too excited to be jealous. She’d always wanted a little sister, a live doll she could dress up, someone she could boss around, an ally who understood how hard it was to be Clifford Chase’s progeny. And when she saw week-old Isobel, with her too-big-for-her-little-body head and her dark, silky hair, Harper had fallen in love for the first—and only—time.
In the living room of her father’s new house near the Rebels’ stadium, Harper asked if she could touch her.
“Of course you can,” her father had boomed, his voice so loud that Harper worried he’d frighten the newborn. But Isobel didn’t even flinch. She was already that tough. Her eyes opened wide, big, blue, and impossibly heartbreaking, and she grasped Harper’s finger. Its strength shocked her, but what shocked her more was her father’s unconditional love for his new daughter. She hadn’t even done a thing to earn it yet!
“She’s strong,” Harper murmured, while her stepmother, Geraldine “call me Gerry!,” looked on indulgently. A former Olympic ice-skater, she had clearly been chosen for her perfect gene pool. At six and three quarters, Harper was old enough to recognize her father’s end game here.
“She’s going to be a champion,” her father affirmed. “When women go pro, she’ll be right there.” Even now, she remembered the desperate tinge to his voice. He hadn’t yet achieved his ultimate reproductive goal—a son—but he’d remake this child in as close to that image as he could.
As if sensing her father’s lofty aspirations for her, Isobel gripped Harper’s finger tighter. I’ve already won, that grip said. I’m better, stronger, a million times more lovable.
The melodrama of a child, perhaps, but kids have a sixth sense about these things, don’t they? And while Isobel might have been Harper’s first love, that passion burned to a fiery death in the face of Clifford’s boundless adoration for his newborn baby girl. (Children, so fickle.) With first love, Harper also experienced bitter jealousy, and it consumed her in its totality.
Why, twenty-five years later, was Harper even thinking of this? Remy DuPre, that’s why. Must be nice to have that power, princess.
No one had called her that since she was a little girl. Neither time had she deserved it.
Trust the dumb jock to jump to conclusions about how she’d used him to win points with Billy Stroger. As if that piece of shit was worth Harper getting in a feminine snit about. Remy had no idea, just assumed the worst.
Let him. She didn’t need his good opinion. Neither did she need him to act like she had lured him to the plane’s galley for that hot, sexy kiss. Her intentions had been benign, only wanting to check on him after all those hits he took from Stroger during the game. Even Isobel had commented that it was more egregious than usual. But when Remy mentioned his burning dislike for Stroger, something had cracked open inside her.
Vindication.
It wasn’t your fault, Harper. Billy Stroger is an asshole to everyone!
Alone with Remy in that tight galley space, she had come this close to spilling every secret and fear. Stroger, the “playoffs or bust” stipulation, how in over her head she felt every minute of every day. It was so easy to melt into his arms, to forget her problems for a while, especially with that drugging kiss. Why couldn’t he be bad at that?
The cold light of day put a gloss of reality on it. To let him burrow further under her skin would be a huge mistake. He had caught her in a weakened moment and used his lips to reestablish his dominance in their war. There would be no more of that!
Bleary eyed after no sleep and her body still reeling from the DuPre Smooch Attack, Harper came into the kitchen just as Violet was walking out, wearing a pair of tiny shorts and an off-the-shoulder ripped tee.
“Hey, there.” Violet had lain low since their last home game four days ago. Before heading to Boston yesterday, Harper had knocked on the door of the coach house at the end of the path, but there had been no answer, just Stevie Nicks’s “Rhiannon” blasting at decibel levels not usually heard, or tolerated, in the tony enclave of Lake Forest. There wasn’t a whole lot Harper could do to force her sisterly devotion on her, short of banging down the door like a crazy person.
Violet held up a plastic bag of ground coffee, still on a slide for the exit. “Ran out, so took the liberty.”
“Sure!” Harper said a little too brightly. “Maybe you can stay for breakfast, and we could talk.” After her spat with Remy, she wanted company. She hadn’t realized how lonely this big old house was until people had moved into the hood.
Her sister looked like she’d rather have a root canal with a rusty screwdriver than talk, but she wasn’t completely without class, so she walked back to the kitchen island. Slowly.
Harper bit her lip. “Problem is, I lied.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I usually just do coffee for breakfast.”
Violet’s lips quirked ever so slightly. “Coffee’s fine.”
As Harper busied herself measuring out grounds for the coffeemaker—her Keurig was on the fritz—Violet took a seat at the island. This was nice. They could catch up, and maybe Harper could give Violet some big-sister advice and fashion tips, because Lord knew she needed it, just look at those shorts, and—
“How’s the sexy Cajun?”
Harper spilled the grounds she was about to pour into the filter.
She couldn’t say “who?” because that would be stupid, so she responded with, “You think DuPre’s sexy?” and prayed to the gods of nonchalance that Violet didn’t notice how her voice dropped a couple of octaves.
“Sure. All that lazy menace. Sleek like a cat. Could do with working on his reflexes, though, with how that asshole came at him last night.”
“You watched the game?”
Now it was Violet’s turn to take the awkward baton and run with it. “I need to learn what it’s all about so I can earn my inheritance,” she muttered.
Harper suspected that Violet knew a hell of a lot more about hockey than she let on.
Isobel walked in just then, dressed in Hello Kitty PJs and stifling a yawn. “Hey.” She noticed Violet. “You guys plotting against me?”
Violet smiled. “Sure are, and all dastardly plots require caffeine. If Harper could get around to making the coffee.”
“Oh, right.” Harper returned to the task that had been derailed by Violet’s mention of the sexy Cajun. Her words. Harper would never think . . . ah, who was she kidding? He was both sexy and Cajun, and she didn’t enjoy Violet’s leer.
“Curtis Deacon at the Sun-Times is still being a jerk,” Isobel said, tapping her phone. “We won last night, yet the grief continues.”
Violet leaned over to catch whatever was on Isobel’s phone screen. “Is that the guy who called us the Spice Girls?”
Harper rolled her eyes. “I’d take it if they kept the original names. I remember dressing up as Scary Spice when I was a kid, and I totally rocked it.” Instead Deacon had labeled them as Incompetent Spice, Middle-Child Spice, and Latina Spice. Hilarious.
Isobel snickered. “I should be Sporty Spice. I mean I’m actually good at freakin’ sports!”
They laughed, though it wasn’t all that funny. Wanting to take advantage of the us versus them vibes, Harper chose her next words carefully.
“I’ve been thinking. Maybe we should set aside a night each week to spend time together. Watch dumb movies, eat ice cream, drink wine.”
The others stared at her as if she’d grown two heads and one of them looked like a creepy clown’s.
“Or not.”
Isobel squinted at her. “You never seemed all that interested before.”
That smarted, but Isobel was right. All her life, Harper had refused to let her younger sister in when she wanted to be closer. Why should she have played nice with the girl responsible for her parents’ broken marriage and her mother’s descent into depression and alcoholism? Circumstances placed them on opposing sides, and Clifford as referee always made the calls in Isobel’s favor.
Harper recalled how her father had forced her to invite Isobel to her thirteenth birthday party. As if a seven-year-old could have fun at a party with big girls! On reflection, locking Isobel in the utility room was harsh, but it was the only way to ensure her father’s undivided attention. It wasn’t every day a girl became a teenager.
Shame at how she had acted all those years ago crept over her now. It was why, once she’d heard about Violet’s existence, she’d pushed for a relationship with the newest leaf on the Chase family tree. Too little too late, perhaps, but she wanted to give it a shot and steal her own chance at sisterly redemption.
“Things have changed, haven’t they? It seems strange to be practically living together and acting like strangers.”
Isobel looked unconvinced.
Violet spoke up. “So you want to do Awkward Girls’ Night In, emphasis on awkward?”
Harper turned away, feeling foolish for having tried. She watched the drip-drip of the coffee filling the glass pot, willing it to move faster.
“We’ll do it,” she heard behind her from Isobel, “if you do something for us.”
“What?”
“Tell us what’s going on with you and Remy DuPre.”
“You two looked pretty cozy at Ford Callaghan’s birthday party,” Violet hummed in agreement.
Facing them, Harper opened her mouth to deny it. Closed it again.
“And last night on the plane,” Isobel said with a devilish gleam in her green eyes, “you both went to the galley, and Remy came out looking like his nuts had been stomped on by size five Choos.”
“I knew it.” Violet wagged a finger. “After all your apocalyptic warnings about getting involved with the players.”
“There is no involvement. We just rub each other the wrong way”—deliciously wrong—“and last night I screwed up.” By almost dragging him into an airplane bathroom to finish what that kiss started.
The girls waited, and realizing that partially fessing up to her sins might increase her stock in the good-sister market, Harper told them the shortened, abuse-free version of her run-in with Billy Stroger, how that likely contributed to his vendetta for Remy out on the ice, and how DuPre hadn’t quite appreciated her retelling of the tale.
She kept that spine-dissolving kiss with Remy to herself. I didn’t think it was relevant, Officer.
“So that’s why you’re so opposed to boning the players?” Violet asked. “Because you had a bad break-up with this Stroger guy?”
Today, children, we’re learning all about shame! Another round coursed through her, the memory of how low Stroger had made her feel an alternately hot and cold front in her chest. Not even 8 a.m., and this day sucked donkey balls.
She refused to elaborate. “We are the first women to own and run a professional sports team. The world is watching how we handle this. If we let our hormones get the better of us, what does that say? That we’re slaves to our desires—”
“So you admit you have the hots for DuPre?” Violet was like a dog with a bone.
“I admit nothing!” Complete with finger point. “He’s an employee who I happen to not get along with particularly well. But I don’t have to get along with him. I just have to ensure he plays to the best of his ability. The same with all the players. We can’t do anything that puts that in jeopardy. So no flirting, fraternization, or—or smirking! Okay, Violet?”
Violet threw up her hands. “Why are you looking at me?”
Isobel laughed. “We’ve all seen you getting cozy with Cade Burnett. Heads huddled, whisper-whisper, et cetera, et cetera.”
Harper blinked. “I thought you had your eye on St. James.”
Violet smiled serenely. “I’m equal opportunity when it comes to these hunks of brawn. This is the year of the V, chicas—and I mean that in all the ways it can possibly be taken.” Her brow crimped, some other thought taking over for the briefest second. “But you can strike Nessie off the list.”
“Nessie?”
“Loch Ness,” Violet said. “Because he’s Scottish and gives off the still waters of mystery vibe.”
Harper had heard plenty of names for the broody captain of the Rebels: Laird of the Puck, the Gentleman Enforcer, and the team nickname, Highlander. Nessie was a new one.
Violet chuckled. “I might have thrown that one at him, and he looked at me like I’d asked what was under his kilt.”
Harper had no problem imagining Bren’s reaction. Not exactly known for his cheerful disposition, since emerging from rehab he’d been as dour as a rainy day in the Scottish highlands. She grabbed a few mugs and started pouring coffee.
Isobel coughed slightly. “Nice diversion, Harper, but I think we need to also talk about the fact you had a fling with Billy Stroger.”
Her blood turned to ice. “It was years ago. Dad said I shouldn’t, so that was like cock nip. The thrill of the forbidden and all that.”
Isobel looked sympathetic, while Violet studied her more closely. “Yeah, but what exactly happened?”
No amount of sisterly bonding would help loosen her tongue on that topic. “He wasn’t performing well so we traded him out. He took it personally. And that, ladies, is why hockey and sex do not mix.”
Better they see her as a hard-ass who’d happily trade a lover. No sentiment because, dammit, there’s no crying in hockey.
Isobel poured cream into her coffee. “He doesn’t seem your type at all.”
“What’s my type?”
“Kenneth,” they both said in unison.
Boring, staid, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly Kenneth. She supposed that wasn’t entirely wrong, but why did it sting to be filed away so quickly? Although she had been holding Kenneth at arm’s length, perhaps it was time to let him off the bench. Spending time with him would crowd out all thoughts of a certain Cajun ice warrior.
She was almost sure of it.
This was not how Remy imagined spending his first free Saturday night in a month, but then Chicago had been just one long cavalcade of surprises so far.
Cade “Alamo” Burnett sat on Remy’s sofa, whupping all comers at Star Wars Battlefront on Remy’s PS4. Alamo was from, you guessed it, San Antone, and was about as arrogant as you’d expect from someone born in the Lone Star State. His fingers feverishly worked the controller as he played Boba Fett, the badassest bounty hunter in the galaxy, against a bunch of anonymous online players.
After about two minutes, he twisted his wrist, unleashed a weird war cry, and smashed the Rebel resistance back to wherever the hell they’d X-Winged in from.
“Yeeeessss!”
“Congratulations, dude,” Callaghan said. “You just beat a bunch of twelve-year-olds.”
Burnett smirked. “Are you kidding? Those little fuckers play this 24/7. You bet I’m proud to crush their spirits.”
An hour ago, Erik Jorgenson had led several of the players into Remy’s apartment, saying they’d heard Remy had “the video games.” Remy liked their goalie, Erik, or “Fish” as the team nicknamed him. He came from O-Vik, a small town near Bumblefuck, the Arctic Circle. Considered the holy city of Swedish hockey, it had produced more NHL players per capita than anywhere in the world. People said it was the air, the water, the northern lights. Remy assumed there was only so much sex you could have during all-dark days in winter; if you were surrounded by that much snow, hockey would be your life.
“So none of you guys have your own PS4?”
“Uh, we’re worth fucking millions, DuPre,” Ford said. “Of course we have our own PS4. But we figured you were lonely, not knowing anyone, so we came over.”
“Your woman was sick of you fussing around her, right?”
Callaghan grinned. “Bingo.”
Ford’s girlfriend was pregnant, which he’d learned the night of his birthday party. He wouldn’t shut up about it in the locker room, so lord only knew how annoying he was at home. Remy guessed Addison had pushed him out the door tonight with instructions to stop hovering.
In truth, Remy was glad for the distraction. After that fight with Harper two nights ago, he’d been irritable. Not even a ten-mile run today had cast off visions of her wounded expression.
Like she had a right to be hurt. Jesus.
He wasn’t enjoying that guilt curdling in the pit of his stomach. Neither did he enjoy that this morning’s in-shower fun times with his right hand only caught fire when the memory of how she’d tasted popped in for a visit.
“How long for the food?” Burnett asked. As soon as the guys arrived, Remy had done what he always did when his teammates came over: he dragged out his stockpot.
“You could’ve ordered pizza.”
“Pizza in Riverbrook sucks, man. They don’t know what they’re doing this far from the big smoke. Besides, we heard you were den dad to your last crew.” He grinned big. “Can’t wait to try that gumbo, Jinx.”
Taking that as his cue, Remy headed into the kitchen, with requests for more beers and “something salty” from Jorgenson, who apparently thought sodium was a food group. A knock on the front door redirected his journey.
St. James stood on the threshold, looking as awkward as, well, an alcoholic at a party. He held up a six-pack of Sam Adams Octoberfest, which did not make it any less uncomfortable. Gretzky, who’d been sitting at the petulant Scot’s feet, pushed past Remy with a loud toot to announce his arrival.
“Heard we were playing video games.” That gruff brogue challenged Remy to disagree.
“Sure,” Remy said, “accepting” the beers shoved in his midsection as Bren walked by.
“Highlander!” Erik called out cheerily while the rest of the gang joined in.
Bren waved and waited for Remy to move into the kitchen. They hadn’t talked much in the few weeks since Remy’s arrival, though the team seemed to have his back. That’s what your hockey family did, even when you fucked up royally. Remy didn’t know all the details beyond the guy’s need for detox after he apparently showed up for a game drunk out of his tree in the final days of the regular season.
“What’ll it be?”
“Water would be good.”
While Remy grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, Bren approached the stove like a bomb sat on it. “Smells good.”
“Seafood gumbo. Old family recipe.”
Bren took the water Remy offered. “You still pissed?”
How in hell had St. James heard about his fight with Harper? He played dumb. “About what?”
“Your trade.”
Oh that. He guessed he had been a bit sullen about it. “I’m coming around. Winning always helps.”
“You played a blinder in Boston. I guess you had something to prove against your old team.”
Bren took a slug of his water while Remy considered his next move. Time to get down to brass tacks. “Apparently we’re headed to the playoffs.”
St. James’s smile was about as lively as Remy had ever seen it. “Harper’s not given to hyperbole, but it won’t happen without us coming together. I was surprised she asked me to wear the captain’s band again, but I’ve always trusted her. She had my back when the rest of ’em were ready to bail on me.”
Bren’s burst of honesty was as unexpected as that pretty picture he painted of can-do-no-wrong Harper. First she’s bringing Ford and his woman together by trading him in, now she’s holding St. James’s hand on the road back to recovery. None of it squared with the ruthless woman who didn’t allow for sentiment.
He considered himself a pretty good judge of character, so he didn’t enjoy being wrong about anyone. Harper had already demonstrated she wasn’t making the best calls: going for broke toward the playoffs. Firing her GM. Fucking Stroger.
Next.
Harper didn’t act like any manager he’d ever worked with. Though it wasn’t required, she usually came into the locker room before the games to wish them all luck in that stilted way she had. The guys didn’t know what to do with it, not because she was female—though he guessed that could be part of it—but because she seemed so ill at ease with them. Like she was holding her breath every time. For a woman who had grown up around professional sports, she sure didn’t act like it.
Weird, because she knew her stuff and had no problem giving as good as she got from Remy. She could reel off stats, had an eye for talent, and clearly ate three square meals of hockey a day, but when it came to the intangibles of running a team, Harper Chase knew shit.
He wondered why she was so desperate to force the issue this year, and why that desperation made her sound so human. Don’t get all caught up in her schemes, DuPre. You’re out of here in ten weeks max. The Rebels are not your problem.
“So what else you got to prove, DuPre?”
Remy stared at Bren, trying to interpret that question amid the undercurrent of tension that’d existed between them since Remy’s arrival. That he was here to knit the team together had to get Bren’s back up. Ensuring that they acted as a cohesive unit should be the captain’s job.
“I know how to win.”
“Up to a point,” Bren returned with challenge. Evidently he was wondering what sort of deal Remy had with Harper. He’d witnessed that run-in in the Philly locker room. He’d seen Remy’s effort levels increasing since. A man as astute as Bren St. James would be rightly suspicious of Remy’s endgame.
While he could assure the man his captain’s spot was safe, now was not the time to mention that Remy’s stay was short term. He might not agree with Harper on much, but he recognized that ripping the rug out from under them would interfere with the mission.
“You believe I’m jinxed?” Remy asked, turning the challenge around.
Bren rubbed his mouth, a resigned gesture if ever Remy had seen one. “We’re all jinxed in one way or another.”