Read Online See Jane Score by Rachel Gibson - Free Book Online

parts.
    By the time she made it back to the hotel, it was ten o’clock. She had a column to write and a deadline to meet, all before she could put herself to bed. She plugged in her laptop and got to work on her first sports column. She knew the beat reporters at the Times would tear it apart and look for flaws, and she was determined that they would find none. She was determined to write better than a man.
    Chinooks Tie Coyotes; Lynch Makes Only Goal , she wrote, but she quickly discovered that writing sports copy wasn’t as easy as she’d anticipated. It was boring . After several hours of struggling to get the words just right and answering repeated nuisance phone calls, she took the receiver off the hook, pressed delete, and began again.
    From the second the puck dropped in the America West Arena tonight, the Chinooks and Coyotes treated fans to a wild roller-coaster ride of hard hits and white-knuckle suspense. Both teams kept up the frenetic pace until the very end, when Chinooks goalie Luc Martineau denied the Coyotes a smoker from the blue line. When the final buzzer sounded in overtime, the score remained tied at one with . . .
    Along with Luc’s many saves, she wrote about Lynch’s goal and the hard hits on the Hammer. It didn’t occur to her until after she’d sent the article early the next morning that Luc had been watching her in the locker room. As she’d been bouncing around like a pinball, not everyone had been ignoring her. Again she felt a disturbing catch in her chest and alarm bells rang in her head, signaling trouble. Big bad trouble with baby blue eyes and legendary fast hands.
    It was a good thing he didn’t like her. And she most definitely didn’t like anything about him.
    Well, except his tattoo. The tattoo rocked.
    Early the next morning, the Chinooks dressed in their suits, ties, and battle scars, and headed for the airport. A half hour into the flight heading for Dallas, Luc loosened his tie and broke out a deck of cards. Two of his teammates and the goalie coach, Don Boclair, joined him in a game of poker. Playing poker on long flights was one of the only times that Luc truly felt a part of the team.
    As he dealt, Luc gazed across the aisle of the BAC-111, at the heavy soles of a pair of small boots. Jane had pushed up the armrest between the seats and was sound asleep. She lay on her side, and for once her hair wasn’t scraped back from her face. Soft brown curls fell across her cheek and the corner of her parted lips. One hand was folded beneath her chin.
    â€œDo you think we were too rough on her last night?”
    Luc looked up at Bressler, leaning over the back of his seat. “Nah.” He shook his head, then laid the deck on the tray table in front of him. He glanced over his cards and bet on a pair of eights while the guy in the seat next to him, Nick “the Bear” Grizzell, folded. “She doesn’t belong here,” Luc added. “If Duffy was going to force a reporter on us, he could have at least picked someone who knows something about hockey.”
    â€œDid you see the way she kept blushing last night?”
    They all chuckled as the remaining players discarded.
    â€œShe got an eyeful of Vlad’s dick.” Bressler threw down his cards. “One.”
    â€œShe saw the Impaler?”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œHer eyes about bugged out of her head.” Luc dealt Don Boclair two cards while he took three. “I don’t think she’ll ever be the same,” he said. It was a well-known fact within the team that Vlad had an ugly dick. The only man who didn’t think so was Vlad himself, but everyone also knew that the Russian had taken a lot of hits to the head.
    Luc bet on three eights and his win was recorded in Don’s book. “How long did you keep her up with calls to her room?” Luc asked.
    â€œShe finally took the phone off the hook around midnight.”
    â€œThat first