Blindsided Read online

  “Tom Wolford was my brother.”

  The fact that he’d guessed her wrong was hammered into oblivion as the past slammed forward, crisp and clear. Tom Wolford, standing in the shadows and exhaust clouds of the Wichita bus station, a vending machine ham sandwich in one hand, a can of pop in the other. The big man lumbering forward to throw a welcoming arm around the shoulders of an already homesick kid and lead him off into the world of minor league hockey. The pair of plaid polyester pants, white belt, white shoes, the hat with the crimped crown and the narrow brim… The half cigar that was never lit but always clamped in the corner of his mouth….

  Tom Wolford. Daddy Warbucks. The old days and the first foot in the door. It had been a long time since Logan had looked that far back. Now that looking forward wasn’t an option, maybe he could afford the luxury of reminiscing every now and then. It had been, what—almost five years since they’d last spoken? He should call Tom and— Logan blinked and frowned. “Did you say was ?”

  She nodded ever so slightly and her smile looked tired. “He passed away a little over a month ago. A heart attack.”

  “Unless he’d changed a lot in the last fourteen years,” Logan said as his throat tickled, “it couldn’t have been an unexpected one.”

  Catherine Talbott’s smile faded on a sigh and shrug of her slim shoulders. “No, it really wasn’t. Still…”

  Logan silently swore and kicked himself. “I’m sorry,” he offered sincerely. “I can be a real clod sometimes. Tom was a decent man. I owe him a lot and I’m sorry he’s gone.”

  Tucking her hair behind her ears, Catherine Talbott managed a slightly brighter smile. “I was hoping you’d feel that way.”

  Duh! his brain groaned. The memorial plaque. The endowment of some fund for underprivileged kids’ sports. He’d been tapped for such things before. It came with making the pro ranks. He knew the drill from beginning to end. “Oh, yeah?” he drawled, wondering how much she had in mind. “Why?”

  “Tom left me the team.”

  As responses went, it didn’t even come close to his expectations. “You own the Wichita Warriors?” he asked, having a hard time getting his brain wrapped around the image of Shirley Temple sitting behind Tom’s huge metal desk.

  “Yes, I do.”

  The assurance didn’t help one bit. “What does Millie think of that?”

  “Well… She’s…”

  The obvious hesitation sent a cold jolt through his veins. “Millie’s not dead, too, is she?”

  “No, no,” she hurriedly answered. “My sister-in-law is very much alive.” She hesitated and took a noticeably deep breath before she added, “But she has dementia. There are good days and there are not so good days.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he offered again, thinking that he was beginning to sound a little too much like a parrot. A socially retarded parrot. He used to be a lot better at this sort of thing.

  “It’s one of the risks of growing old,” she went on. “You don’t have much choice except to deal with what life gives you. Tom provided well for her, though. Millie doesn’t want for anything now, and there’s money to see her through even a long decline. She’s not going to be pushing a grocery cart around town and eating out of Dumpsters.”

  Millie eat out of Dumpsters? Never. Not even demented. Where Tom had been the loud impresario, Millie had been the perfect princess. “That’s good to know. I can’t tell you how many Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter dinners I had at Millie’s house. She always made sure that we weren’t alone those days.”

  “She still does the bring-all-your-friends spreads. With a little help now, of course. We did a backyard brat and potato salad affair when all the players came in for the new season.”

  God, it was so small-town, so Wichita. So incredibly minor league. “I’ll bet everyone had a real good time.”

  She nodded and then her smile faded on another sigh. “Until Tom collapsed.”

  Oh shit. He should have seen it coming. The nod followed by the sigh was the tip-off. He couldn’t offer apologies again. He just couldn’t. He’d choke to death if he even tried. “So,” he ventured, then cleared his throat as subtly as he could. “How are the Warriors doing these days?”

  “Well,” she drawled, “that depends on your perspective, I suppose.”

  Uh-oh. Evasion was never a good sign. She was working up to something. The something that had brought her halfway across the country. And odds were it wasn’t to hit him up for a memorial contribution. “You’re a month into the season. What’s the win-loss record?”

  “Two wins, ten losses,” she supplied with a little grimace.

  Bad. Really bad. “Why are they losing?”

  “I wish I could tell you, Mr. Dupree, but I don’t know anything about hockey.”

  Gee, there was a surprise. “What are your GM and coaching staff saying?” he pressed.

  She seemed to chew the inside of her cheek as she stared off over the water. “That it’s not their fault,” she finally answered. “That Tom didn’t spend enough to get the talent necessary to win.”

  Yeah, it was usually someone else’s fault. And dead guys made perfect scapegoats. “Is it true?”

  “Looking at the books,” she replied, still staring off, “I’d have to say that he spent all that he could. And then some.”

  And then some? There it was. The Warriors were in financial trouble and as the club’s poster boy for Big Dreams, he was the logical choice for White Knight, too. “Let’s cut to the chase, Ms. Talbott,” he said firmly. “Why are you here? What do you want from me? A bailout?”

  Her gaze came back to his with a snap and a blink. “Well, yes. In a—”

  “How much to take the ink from red to black?” he demanded, not caring that he sounded irritated. He was irritated.

  “I don’t want your money, Mr. Dupree,” she challenged as she squared her shoulders and her blue eyes flashed icy fire. “I want your talent. And I’m willing to pay you for it.”

  She couldn’t afford to pay him so much as a nickel on his NHL dollars. “My talent at what?”

  “I’ve had two offers for the franchise. Both of them reasonable and fair considering the shape it’s in.”

  How had they gone from him bailing out the team to her selling it? Talk about conversational whiplash. “You should signal left turns before you make them,” he growled.

  Another sigh. “I know. I’m bad about that.” Another little heave of her shoulders. Another pointless effort to tuck her curls behind her ears. “Here’s my thinking on it all,” she said, holding her hands in front of her like a balance scale. “I could sell tomorrow and walk away with a lot more than I have now. But if I did, I’d be selling out Tom’s hopes and expectations. I have a problem with that on a personal level. I’d feel much better about it if I could improve the franchise before I let it go. Tom couldn’t be disappointed then. Does that make sense?”

  It did. But in the most dangerous sort of way. If that was the full scope of her reasoning, the woman was playing a high-stakes game listening to her heart, not her head. And that was a guaranteed way to fail. He looked away from the big blue eyes that were so earnestly searching his. “Do you have experience in running any kind of business?”

  “I’ve organized several successful charity events.”

  He waited for her to toss out the next item on her résumé. All he got were the sounds of the marina. “That’s it?”

  “I have a master’s degree in Sociology,” she offered brightly. “And I’m an expert in robbing Peter to pay Paul. No one does it better.”

  What the hell had Tom been thinking? Millie, even with her marbles rattling loose, could do a better job than this lit tle socialite. Had Tom lost it, too? “Let’s go back,” Logan said tightly. “What do you want from me?”

  “I understand that you’re something of a legend in the minor leagues.”

  Yeah, he was a legend there. In the majors, too. But not for the reason he wanted. In two years the
only memory of him was going to be the moment when his eye tumbled out of its socket on national television. “Nail the point, Ms. Talbott. What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to coach the Warriors this season.”

  He gripped the arms of his chair, trying to keep himself from falling out. Step back twenty years? Start all over from nowhere? He’d never in his life wanted to coach. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  She certainly seemed sane. And sober. “Give up kicking back in the Florida sun and surf,” he posed dryly, “to spend the winter riding a broken-down bus across the windswept, frozen prairie with a bunch of third-rate hockey players. Would you go for an offer like that?”

  “Actually,” she said, with a fleeting, weak smile, “if you don’t, I’m going to have to.”

  “Come again?” he asked, stunned and even more appalled. “You know nothing about hockey but you think you can coach?”

  “The sea of red ink is deep. Really deep,” she explained, her eyes darkening. “I’ve already let John Ingram—the GM—go and taken over his responsibilities. The office staff has been pared down to one. Looking at the team’s record so far, I figure no one can do worse than Carl Spady when it comes to coaching. I’ll promote the current assistant coach and play his second for no pay. And when we get back into black, I’ll leave the bench and hire the best I can to replace me.”

  His head pounded. “You’re nuts.”

  “Maybe,” she allowed. “Mostly, I’m determined.”

  “The men won’t play for a woman.”

  “They’re not men. They’re boys,” she calmly countered. “The average age is twenty-three. And their choice is to play for the Warriors or go home. I may not know much, but I do know that we’re the bottom rung of the professional hockey ladder.”

  With her at the helm and on the bench…? The publicity would be incredible. The minors’ first female coach of a men’s team. The tickets to the freak show would go like hotcakes. She’d make money out of it. Hand over fist. But the players… God, being relegated to an unaffiliated team in the Central Hockey League was humiliation enough for them. Adding professional pity to it… Thank God it wasn’t his problem. His smile was grim and tight and he both knew it and didn’t care. “You have a lot to learn, Ms. Talbott. You might want to start with a copy of Hockey for Dummies. ”

  “I’ve read it from cover to cover. Twice,” she assured him. “And I bought myself some books on practice drills, too. They don’t make all that much sense at this point, but they will eventually.”

  He’d bet the boat that she’d never even laced up a pair of skates. The poor bastards. All the Warriors wanted was to make a living playing a game they loved. It wasn’t much of a living and as dreams went it was a long shot at best, but… Jesus F. Christ. Did they have any idea of what was coming down the ice at them?

  “Carl Spady pulls down a hefty five-figure salary,” she said, interrupting his nightmare. “I’d rather pay it to you.”

  And he’d rather give up his good eye. “I’m making a solid seven-figure one sitting right here in this deck chair.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  She’d said it softly, but there was an edge to her tone that made it ring like an insult. He held his breath and tamped down the instinct to charge squarely into the challenge. It took a of couple seconds and a conscious effort to unclench his teeth, but he eventually managed a fairly even, “Oh?”

  She didn’t reply. Instead, she leaned down and flipped open the leather bag at her feet. “Here’s my card,” she said in the next second, straightening to hand him a fuzzy-edged card. “Please consider the offer and let me know what you decide.”

  He looked down at the business card. Pink. With some fancy, feminine font. Pink! “There’s no thinking to be done, Ms. Talbott,” he declared as he tossed the card on the table beside his drink. “The answer’s ‘no thank you.’ I’m not even remotely interested.”

  “Well, if you’re sure…” she said while she rose to her feet.

  Logan gained his own, reached down, snagged the handle of her briefcase, and held it out to her saying, “I am.”

  She had to tilt her head way back to meet his gaze. For a long second she seemed to be considering him, chewing on the inside of her cheek as her eyes darkened. Then the boat shifted slightly beneath them and she rocked back, unbalanced. Even as he reached out to steady her, she righted herself with a tight smile and turned away.

  His arms fell back to his sides as she put the briefcase on the seat of the chair and opened it again. From it she drew a thick, brown expansion folder. Handing it to him with both hands, she explained, “Tom built this file over the years. Since there’s no reason for me to keep it, I think he’d probably want you to have it.”

  He looked down to see his name scrawled across the front flap in black magic marker. The thing was stuffed to the gills and weighed a ton.

  “Mr. Dupree?” She waited until he looked up. “If you change your mind…”

  “Not going to happen,” he assured her blandly, plunking the file down on the table.

  “Just the same,” she went on as she closed her case and took it in hand. “I’m on my way to the airport. My son has a ‘Hockey in Focus’ class tonight and I promised to have locker room treats for everyone afterwards.” She moved toward the walkway, adding as she went, “You can reach me on my cell after six. I’ll either be at home, making brownies, or at the rink, handing them out.”

  Brownies. Probably with little pink sprinkles on top. Did she make them for the Warriors, too? Did she send them out on the road with little care packages tied up with pink ribbons? She probably put notes inside reminding them to eat sensibly and to remember to brush their teeth.

  “May I ask you a personal question, Mr. Dupree?”

  He brought his attention back to the marina. She stood on the floating dock, shading her eyes with her hand again. He shrugged his permission and refrained from mentioning that he considered an answer optional.

  “My son is twelve. The first time he ever set foot in an ice rink was the day after Tom’s funeral. The hockey bug seems to have bitten him just as he stepped inside the door. As a man who played the game, can you give me some idea of what the odds are that it might be nothing more than a passing interest?”

  Twelve? If he was remembering right, that made the boy a Pee Wee. The second year kids were allowed to check. Having to learn to skate while getting hammered into the boards meant that the kid was either a masochist or had found a passion. Given that his mother was an obvious loony tune… He decided to give the kid a break and yank Mama’s chain. “I hope Tom left you some stock in CCM.”

  She arched a brow. “CCM?”

  God, she really was beyond clueless. “It’s a company that makes hockey gear,” he supplied. “Along with others like Easton, Bauer, and Itech. Just to name a few. Didn’t you notice the names when you bought him his equipment?”

  “I didn’t buy it. The Warriors outfitted him with their old stuff and hauled him out onto the ice. I was too busy worrying about broken bones to pay any attention to the labels.”

  What a typical mom. Logan chuckled and shook his head. “Hockey players will do anything to bring another guy into the fold. Does the kid nag you about getting to the rink on time?”

  The look on her face was answer enough. His own mother had often worn the very same exasperated expression. “He starts in two hours before we have to leave the house.”

  “It sounds to me like he’s been pretty well bitten. Brace yourself,” he warned, grinning. “It’s a long, hard, expensive haul.”

  “Thanks,” she muttered, rolling her eyes as she turned away.

  The question came out of the blue and tumbled off his tongue before he could even think to stop it. “Why did Tom leave you the team?”

  She paused and looked over her shoulder to meet his gaze. “I normally charge ten bucks for the story,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “But if you’ll take t
he job, I’ll tell you for free.”

  Damn, she was cute. In a pink, fuzzy, kid sister sort of way. The cameras would love her behind the bench. Is that what Tom had been thinking? “I can live with the mystery,” he countered, knowing that he wasn’t being completely honest about it.

  With a quiet laugh, she walked off, waving and calling back, “Have a good one, Mr. Dupree. Talk to you soon.”

  Hopefully she had enough good sense to stop holding her breath before she passed out and went face-first into a bowl of brownie mix. Shaking his head, Logan watched her make her way along the floating dock and up the steps to the parking lot. As she climbed into the driver’s seat of a bright red Taurus, he smiled and turned back to the chair and his now watery scotch. She had a nice swing. Not that he wanted it in his backyard, of course. And she did have killer legs—especially considering how short they were.

  Logan polished off his drink in one quick swallow. Rolling the empty glass between the palms of his hands, he eyed the expansion folder she’d handed him. There was no reason to open it up and go through it; he knew what was inside. Tom had kept a file on every one of his players. On “his boys.”

  With a bittersweet smile, Logan wandered his memories. The Warriors had been Tom’s family, their accomplishments his greatest source of pride. Every morning ten copies of the Wichita Eagle had been delivered to the front office and Tom would cull the sports page, carefully cutting out the articles. One copy was always stapled to the bulletin board by the ticket counter. Another copy went into the individual files. Another was always mailed to the player’s parents with a note from Tom about how pleased he was for the opportunity to know such an outstanding young man, such an outstanding human being.

  Being a good person had been important to Tom. Being a good hockey player hadn’t mattered nearly as much to him. He’d insisted that every man on the squad pick a social cause or a community organization and give it at least ten hours a week of volunteer time. It had been part of the playing contract and Tom had made the rounds, checking to make sure the players were where they said they’d be and when. No one had ever gotten away with shirking their charitable commitments. For Tom, giving back had been important.