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“Pretty much. That was six years ago and I’ve never looked back.” She picked up another olive. “What about you? You don’t play hockey anymore?” It wasn’t really a question.
“No. The car accident did quite a number on my leg. It’s a miracle I don’t walk with a limp or anything.” He could still take a simple turn around the rink, but that was all.
“You miss it.” Again, the question wasn’t a question at all.
“Just every day. Very little can compare with the feeling of sailing on ice, reaching the puck, finding all the players aligned, and one good swing sends the puck flying over the goalie’s outstretched hand and into the belly of the net. Win or lose, the adrenaline high after a game lasts for hours. There’s no going home and collapsing into bed. Every sense is alive and on fire. It takes time to get over that loss, and in my case, not playing with my brother anymore. Those were special years.” He didn’t like letting himself wander down memory lane. Thinking about what could have been. It took him a long while to appreciate what he’d had and not resent what he’d missed. “There are some positives to leaving the ice for a desk job.”
“And what would that be?” He loved the sincere interest sparkling in her eyes.
“For one thing,” he actually found himself smiling. It was nice to feel at peace with where he was in his life now. “No one slams me into the boards anymore so I don’t need to bathe in ice. I’ll probably get to keep all my teeth into my old age, and my laundry room doesn’t smell like a locker room.” He almost laughed out loud at the last point. He’d actually kept an entire room in his house to air out his equipment between games. “Truth is, I’m truly blessed to still be in the business of hockey.”
“But?”
“No buts.”
One brow rose higher than the other, but she didn’t say a word, just waited for him to say something.
Hefting a shoulder in a lazy shrug, he had no idea if she could read his mind or his heart, but he started to wonder. “I guess the whole truth is that yes, I love my job, I’m extremely thankful to still be in professional hockey, but I’ve kicked around whether or not switching to coaching would be a good move for me.”
“What’s stopping you?”
Wasn’t that a great question. “I don’t know if being that close to the ice, the action, would be good for my soul, or if not being able to actually play would only make me miss the game even more.”
“I guess,” she reached for her glass and stared up at him from over the rim, “there’s only one way to find out.”
The woman was right. He knew that. In five minutes she’d summed up what he’d been circumventing since he first stepped into the Comet’s home office.
“So,” she set the glass down and smiled at him. “How’d you wind up as point man on this? I would think going from city to city and having anxious committees douse you with promises teeters somewhere between exhausting and boring.”
“Well, so far, Houston has been anything but.”
Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped slightly open and suddenly lips never looked so kissable. His gaze leveled with hers and he swore he saw the same yearning in her eyes that was pushing him forward, prompting him to take a chance and kiss the woman.
Only an inch away from tasting heaven, a familiar scraping noise filled the room, followed by the loud banging of a heavy door against the wall. “There you are.”
Both Daniel and Paige sprang apart like a pair of bouncing electrons. The man he remembered as the winery manager crossed the cavernous room. Not that Daniel wanted to remain trapped all night, but he couldn’t help wishing that their rescuer had waited at least a little longer to set them free.
“Whose side are you on?” her brother Craig’s voice boomed from the dashboard of her car.
“It’s been a long day. What the heck are you talking about?”
“Hockey.” Craig’s voice went up an octave before he took in a deep, hopefully calming breath. “You’re supposed to be helping convince Daniel that the Comets belong in Houston. Instead, you’ve tried to feed steak to a vegetarian, put the man who gets seasick on a yacht, and now you’ve locked him in a basement.”
“Not a basement. The wine cellar. And to be perfectly clear, no one told me he was a vegetarian, or that he gets seasick, and we had a very nice dinner in the cellar.”
“Who has a nice dinner in a dark cellar?”
“It wasn’t dark.” There was no way she was going to tell her brother that it was all about the company, not the place.
“Sis, this is super important to the Governor. And the city. And—”
“Yes. I know.” She cut him off before he ran through a list of every politician in the state who was on board with this effort. “You don’t need to remind me, but I’m not the one who made reservations or who scheduled a day on the yacht.”
Craig’s deep sigh carried through the phone line. “I’m sorry. But did you have to lock him in the cellar?”
“Do you want to take over?”
“I don’t have the legs for the job.” A bit of humor seeped into her brother’s words. “What I do think is from now on, we need to double check the itinerary.”
