Read Online Body Check by Deirdre Martin - Free Book Online Page B

Wills managed in a whisper.
    Ty pointed to the skates on Wills’s feet. “You play hockey?”
    Wills nodded.
    Ty’s head bobbed in approval. “Good man. It’s the only sport that matters. You want to do a few laps with me, pass the puck?”
    This time Janna and Wills both went wide-eyed.
    â€œTy,” Janna began, trying to keep the astonishment in her voice at bay, “you don’t have to do that.”
    â€œI know. But I want to.” He flashed Wills an encouraging smile. “You game?”
    â€œYeah,” said Wills, awed.
    â€œThere’s just one condition.”
    Of course, thought Janna bitterly. I knew this was too good to be true .
    â€œIf I miss a pass, you can’t tell a soul. I do have a reputation to uphold, after all.”
    Wills grinned, and looking to Janna once more for reassurance, joined his hero on the ice. He was nervous at first, and seemed unsure of his footing, but gradually he loosened up. Janna couldn’t hear what Ty was saying to him, but whatever it was, it was making her brother smile and laugh. Janna was moved. When was the last time she heard her baby brother laugh like that, so carefree and happy? They skated, taking turns at playfully checking each other into the boards, passing the puck back and forth between them. It gradually dawned on Janna that right now, she wasn’t seeing Ty Gallagher as his fans saw him, or as her brother saw him, or as his teammates saw him.
    She was seeing him as a woman sees a man, one who could, if permitted, cross the line from periphery to potential. She saw a strong man, one who cared and whose convictions ran as deep as his emotions obviously did. Someone willing to take the time to make a young boy happy; a man whom a woman could imagine . . .
    She stopped herself right there. What was she thinking?! The man out there charming her brother to death on the ice was the bane of her professional existence. Not only that, but he was a jock—uneducated, egotistical, probably sexist, too, if you scratched his surface, which she certainly didn’t want to do! No, she’d stick to Robert, cerebral, pretentious, unmotivated Robert. Safe Robert. At least thinking about him didn’t whip up feelings deep inside her that were scary as hell. That had to count for something, right? But exactly what it counted for, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

CHAPTER 04
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    Being nice to her kid brother had been a mistake. Ty could see that now.
    It was the end of October, a month into the official season, and ever since he’d made the kid’s day by giving him a few minutes of ice time, along with signing an autograph and posing for a picture or two, Janna the Human Terrier had been on him, relentlessly cajoling and wheedling and pleading and begging and bargaining, trying to get him to show his face at an event, any event.
    Which, of course, he wouldn’t.
    Much as her constant nagging made him want to snatch a roll of athletic tape from one of the trainers and plaster some over her mouth, deep down he realized she was just doing her job—a job which seemed largely to center around bugging the living hell out of him. It had become something of joke: all she had to do was come within three feet of him and the first words out of his mouth were a swift, emphatic, “No.”
    It was his own fault, he supposed. If he’d ignored the kid, just headed on into the locker room that day the way he usually did, then she’d still think he was a hard-ass. But no; he’d gone out of his way to do something nice, and in doing so, had revealed a small chink in his armor, one she was now trying to blast through with that jackhammer approach of hers, obviously thinking that if she pressured him long enough, he’d eventually cave. Too bad she was wrong.
    So why had he done it? He pondered the question as he looked out the window of the Amtrak train as it sped toward DC.