“He just got the call yesterday, Gi. I heard late last night when I finally turned on my phone and found a voice mail from my mom.”
“Huh,” she said. Her boss had been a busy man yesterday. Why had he bothered acquiring a new player the day before her father showed up? Even if he’d made it too loudly, her dad did have a point.
“Leo’s been busting his ass on that AHL team for a season and a half. He’d been hoping to get called up to Detroit, but a trade gets the job done just the same.”
“What else?” Georgia asked, wincing at the vagueness of her own question. The things she really wanted to know were the things she did not have a right to ask. Did Leo ever talk about her? Did he have a girlfriend? Or worse—was he engaged to be married?
God. That idea made her shudder. If there was a fiancée in his life, she needed to know now so she could work on her game face.
“I dunno what he’s been up to this season. I haven’t seen him since Christmas. But I guess I’ll be coming to a Bruisers game pretty soon. If they’re really going to play him in the big house.”
“Come anytime,” she said. “Can’t wait to see you.”
“Let me guess—that’s not what you would have said to Leo.”
Busted. “Well . . .” She cleared her throat. “It’s hard.”
He went quiet again. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be. It’s been more than five years, you know? He’ll probably be really happy to see you.”
She doubted that very much. The last time they’d spoken was the day she dumped him. “We’ll get through somehow,” she said, praying it was true.
“Hang in there,” DJ said. “Call me, okay? Lianne and I aren’t skiing today. We’re too sore from yesterday.”
“How will you fill the time, then? Just the two of you in a hotel room . . .” She giggled into the phone.
“No comment,” he said, laughing. “Bye.”
“Bye!” She hung up the phone with a smile, but it faded quickly. Talking to DJ was easy. Talking to his brother would not be.
And she had a press conference to throw. Pushing Leo’s file folder away from her on the desk, she tried to get to work.
TWO
For Leo Trevi, the last twenty-four hours had been a wild ride in the best possible way. He could hardly believe he was standing just outside Nate Kattenberger’s inner sanctum.
On the taxi ride over from the hotel, he’d wondered what to expect from the great Kattenberger hockey headquarters. Leo had pictured the Internet billionaire as the sort of guy to command the entire penthouse floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, with his desk in the center of a grand, rink-sized room. And maybe that’s the setup he had at his corporate headquarters in Manhattan. But this space felt more like a sound stage on an old movie set. Leo kept expecting guys to step out of the shadows in bowler hats and sporting handlebar mustaches. Instead, there was the friendly female office manager with purple hair and Dr. Martens.
It was all very unexpected.
Twenty-four hours ago, he was still working the line on an AHL team in Michigan, earning a salary of $42,000 and busting his ass for a shot in Detroit. Then, just after the morning skate, he got the big call from his agent. A few hours later he was on a flight to JFK airport. His paycheck? More than ten times higher than it was before the phone rang.
This morning he’d woken in a fancy hotel room a half an hour from where he was born and raised. It had been the most exciting day of his life so far, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock.
Standing there in his best suit, Leo didn’t have anything better to do than to admire the cool old factory building, with its exposed bricks and its industrial-looking ironwork. A couple of other guys sat perched on chairs by the windows, typing rapid-fire into their laptops. Whatever they were doing, it looked urgent.
Mr. Kattenberger’s assistant went to sit behind her desk, and for a few minutes nothing happened.
To amuse himself, Leo Googled “Dumbo” on his phone. He didn’t know why this Brooklyn neighborhood was named for a Disney elephant. As it turned out, Dumbo was an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. The O for “Overpass” was stuck on there for aesthetic purposes, he guessed. Without it, the neighborhood would be called “Dumb.”
Keyed up as he was, this idea hit him as hysterical. He actually snorted to himself as he put the phone away. Hell, he’d live in a neighborhood called “Dumb” if it meant he could play for this team. In fact—they could put “Dumb” on the back of his jersey if they felt like it. He wanted this opportunity badly, and he could barely believe that it was finally happening.
It was about a minute later when everything went south.
His first clue was an angry growl from the owner’s office. The assistant—purple-haired Becca—peered nervously at her watch. She was perched on a chair behind a modern, kidney-shaped desk and stealing glances at her boss’s office door. “I’m sure he’ll be right with you,” she said. “We’re going to have a crazy day today—there’s going to be a press conference announcing the brand-new coach.”
“Oh?” This was news to Leo. His agent hadn’t said anything about that. Everyone knew the Brooklyn Bruisers had been interviewing coaches for a year now. It was something of a joke in the press. Pundits had written that maybe Kattenberger wanted the job for himself. “Who is it?” he asked.
She winked her right eye at him—and the diamond stud in her nose twinkled under the antique lighting. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“That would shorten my career,” he joked. “I guess I’ll live with the mystery.”
Though it turned out he didn’t have to. Because somebody began yelling behind Mr. Kattenberger’s closed office door. “I don’t want this fucking player! Find a way to undo it!” And, damn. That voice sounded familiar.
Someone argued back in a low voice that Leo couldn’t quite make out.
“Oh yeah?” The first voice again. “We’ll just see what the lawyers say. Send him right back to Michigan or where-the-fuck-ever.”
The realization that he was talking about Leo hit him like a crosscheck into the plexi.
And just to extinguish any lingering doubt, Becca leapt out of her chair and scrambled to tap on the office door. Then she opened it a crack and stuck her head inside to say, pointedly, “Mr. Trevi has arrived, sir.”
If only. His big entrance suddenly seemed a hell of a lot smaller.
There was a murmured reply, after which the door was yanked all the way open. That’s when Leo saw him—the coach who had once been his mentor, until the man had decided he wasn’t anymore. Coach Karl Worthington leaned forward, searing Leo with his beady gaze, grimacing as if Leo were a cockroach who’d just scuttled in.