Body Check (2 page)

“Captain Gallagher?”

“The one and only.” The voice was polite but guarded, giving away nothing. Janna gingerly climbed down from the bench and extended her hand to him. Gallagher took it, briefly, for a very firm shake. Her hand grasped in his looked doll-sized; the thought flashed through her mind that with one quick squeeze he could easily ground her bones to powder if he wanted to. Which, thankfully, he didn't. Yet.

“I'm Janna MacNeil.”

“I know who you are.” He folded his strong arms across his chest and continued staring at her, challenging, expectant.

“I was just telling your teammates that as part of our effort to improve community relations, Kidco Corporation would like it if every player signed up for at least three charity events. Maybe you could lead the way and sign up first.”

“No.”

Janna blinked. “But—”

“No.”
He strode toward his locker and began dressing. She'd heard from Lou that he was an arrogant, uncooperative bastard. Here was her proof. Determined to play his dismissal down, she turned back to the players.

“Moving right along,” she continued smoothly, “is there anyone who
would
care to sign up?”

“I'll sign up,” a voice called out from the back.

Relieved, Janna stood on tiptoes and peered over the sea of heads to see who had spoken. It was brawny, curly-haired Kevin Gill, one of the team's assistant captains. Janna had met him yesterday and had been utterly charmed by how articulate he was. Truth be told, she hadn't been anticipating too much in the brains department when it came to dealing with these guys. They
were
hockey players, after all. They made a living chasing a little rubber biscuit around an ice rink. How smart could they be?

Kevin came forward, took Janna's list from her, and after skimming it, signed his initials next to three events. “Who's next?” he asked. Janna noticed that he shot Ty Gallagher an annoyed glance, which the captain responded to with an indifferent shrug. When no one moved, Kevin sighed.

“I tried,” he said to Janna, heading off in the direction of the shower. Clearly, the guys on the team took their cues from their beloved leader. If the great Ty Gallagher didn't think signing up for charity events was worth it, neither did they.
God help me,
Janna thought. It was going to take a lot more work to polish these guys up than she'd anticipated. Especially if she had to work through Captain Gallagher to do it.

“Well,” Janna called out to no one in particular, “if you don't sign up today, I'll be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, until you do sign. I'm not going anywhere, guys.”

Her threat hanging in the air, she found herself approached by the Russian prodigy, Alexei Lubov, which surprised her. Lou had warned her that many of the foreign players were hesitant about doing PR, because they were unsure about their command of English. They had great trepidation about involving themselves in anything that might embarrass them. Lubov was obviously an exception to the rule.

“Hello,” he said carefully in a heavy accent, his innocent baby face serious. “I am Alexei Lubov. You will call me Lex.”

Lex?
Janna thought, biting her lip.
Lex Lubov? Who was he, one of Superman's archenemies?

“Hello, Lex,” Janna said cordially. “Nice to meet you.”

He gestured at her sign-up sheet. “I wish to sign.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of events you prefer to be involved with?”

“Girls,” he declared, his baby blue eyes lighting up. “Something with many, many girls.”

Janna laughed. “There are usually women at all of them. Do you want to participate in a golf outing? A black tie dinner?”

“Yes, dinner.” He leaned closer to her, as if he were about to impart a secret. “You will be there, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You would like to go out with me?”

It took Janna a moment to realize that what he had meant to say was, “Would you like to go out with me?” At least, she hoped that's what he meant. She patted his arm. “Maybe some other time. But for now, I have work to do.”

“Yes, all right,” he said somewhat impatiently, and walked off. He was adorably cute. And God knows Kidco was confident he was destined for stardom. But he seemed a bit . . . boyish. Definitely not her type. And his name! Lex Lubov! She couldn't wait to tell her roommate Theresa that one.

Things began to wind down, and the locker room started emptying out, players departing in groups of two and three. Out of the corner of her eye, Janna caught sight of Ty Gallagher, now dressed, swinging his gym bag onto his shoulder. He donned sunglasses and was about to leave when Janna approached him.

“May I speak with you a minute?”

Lowering his sunglasses ever so slightly, Ty peered down at her with an irritated gaze. “What's on your mind?”

“Well, it's this. Since you're the team's captain, I'll be honest with you. I've been hired to help make over the team's image.”

“We don't need a makeover.”

“That's debatable. Kidco Corporation, which now owns the team, as you know, was less than pleased with how you guys behaved when you won the Cup last year.”

Ty suppressed a smirk. “We shared the Cup with the city. What's wrong with that?”

“You brought it to strip clubs.” Janna saw immediately that she'd hit a nerve—the wrong one. The chiseled features of his handsome face stiffened, and she got the distinct impression that he was struggling to keep his infamous temper in check, a temper that once supposedly drove him to threaten to push a player off a moving bus if the guy didn't improve his game. She waited, held deep in the prolonged freeze of what was now, unmistakably, a glare.

“Let me explain something to you, Miss MacNeil.” His voice was a low rumble, carefully controlled. “Last year, my guys busted their asses out there on the ice night after night, and for one reason: they wanted to win the Cup. When they did win, it was their right to do whatever the hell they wanted with it, whether it was take it to a strip club or let their dog eat Alpo from it. You understand?”

“How about snorting cocaine from it?” Janna asked sharply. “Were they free to do that?”

“That story is bull, and you know it.”

“I
don't
know it, and neither does Kidco. Ultimately, it really doesn't matter if it's true or not. What matters is that a rumor like that hurts the team's image. It's unacceptable.”

“And so your job is to—what? Turn us into choirboys?”

“Kidco doesn't expect the players to go home at night and bake cookies, no. But they
do
expect all of you to give a few hours to do some good old-fashioned PR to help offset the party animal image dogging the team.”

“No offense, but none of the guys on this team, especially me, owe Kidco anything.”

Janna chuckled, almost a snort. “Oh, really? Who do you think signs your checks now? Who do you think pays that mega salary that makes it possible for you to squire models around? Kidco
owns
the Blades, which means they own you, whether you like or not.”

Now it was Ty's turn to laugh, and it was a contemptuous one. “If it wasn't for me, all those soft boys in their suits wouldn't know who the hell the New York Blades
were
. The only reason they bought the team was because we won the Cup, and the only reason we won the Cup is because
I
was brought to New York specifically to turn this club back into a winning franchise, which I did. So don't tell me I owe them. I already
did
my part for the suits upstairs.”

Momentarily stunned into silence by his colossal ego, Janna merely blinked in reply. She stared up into his rugged face, which bore small, telltale marks of how he made his living—a tiny scar beneath the chin, another across the bridge of his nose—and then shook her head incredulously. “You don't get it, do you? Kidco Corporation has very deep pockets, captain. Their money could buy the best talent out there come trade time. But there's no way they're going to shell out to build a team that embarrasses them off of the ice. My suggestion to you is that if you want to
keep
winning Stanley Cups, you'd be wise to play it their way.”

The icy glare returned. “Are you threatening me?”

“I'm giving you the lay of the land. Your teammates clearly respect you, to the point of asking ‘How high?' if you ask them to jump. You do PR, and the rest of the guys will follow suit. I don't think it's too much to ask.”

“Yeah? Well, I do.” He pushed his sunglasses back up so his eyes were once again obscured. “Do me a favor, will you? Tell
Kidco
to take their ‘involvement in the community' and shove it. If I feel like doing a good deed, I will. But in the meantime, my humanitarianism isn't a commodity. You got that?”

“Got it,” Janna replied tersely. Against her will, the nausea she'd been keeping at bay began bubbling in the back of her throat.

“Good. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

“You, too,” Janna returned through gritted teeth as he strode past her. She waited until she couldn't hear his footsteps echoing anymore through the empty concrete hallway. Then, gathering up her papers, she hustled briskly out of the locker room and slammed through the door of the nearest ladies room. Quite unceremoniously, and with a force that frightened her, she threw up her breakfast.

 

 

The sheer obstinance!
Driving back to Manhattan, Janna mulled over Ty Gallagher. Here she'd been honest with him—downright confiding—and instead of being grateful, he'd behaved like the rich, pampered prima donna he no doubt was. She had clued him in as to how things worked, and he told her to stuff it! This didn't exactly surprise her; but she wished she hadn't let the discussion devolve into a confrontation. Now she'd have to work twice as hard to get the team captain to cooperate. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Well, at least she had fought the sickening insecurity that had flooded her long enough not to have thrown up at his feet. Or on them. On the outside, she knew, she was the picture of confidence and capability. But on the inside, she was a hard-core believer in the old adage, “If you can't make it, fake it.” In her mind, she'd spent her entire waking life faking all of it—intelligence, poise, ability—and so far, it seemed to work. Sooner or later, though, she feared someone was going to figure out the truth about her and the jig would be up.

She sighed, as her thoughts wandered to times when the inner Janna had overwhelmed the outer, and she'd wound up saying or doing something stupid. She winced, remembering the time she asked an older actor if his wife was his granddaughter. Thankfully, she was usually able to keep her inner insecurity at bay. She had learned, too, that insecurity could be harnessed toward a productive end. It provided her with raw, nervous energy, energy she used to work harder and reach further. It also gave her drive, and drive had gotten her where she was today.

For two years, she'd been a publicist for the top-rated ABC soap,
The Wild and the Free
. When she'd first arrived, she'd been the low flak on the totem pole, writing bios of the fresh-faced newcomers who'd been hired on the basis of looks alone and who, when asked who their heroes were, would name an MTV VJ. But eventually, she found she excelled at the art of spin. An actor found with a hooker in his dressing room? Let Janna handle it—she'll finesse it with the fans and press. One of the newly hired bumpkins say something out of line in an interview? Let Janna handle it—she'll teach him how to say, “This is off the record,” or “No comment.”

She was good at it. So good, in fact, that when the spoiled, rambunctious twenty-something cast of the network's highly rated nighttime soap,
Gotham
, started crashing cars and dancing on bars with no panties on, Janna was plucked from the network's daytime division and put in charge of revamping their image. It wasn't easy, but she did it, and kept on doing it for five lucrative years, until one day the phone rang and it was Lou Capesi, head of PR for the New York Blades, on the other end.

She knew why he was calling. Like everyone else in New York, she'd heard about the Stanley Cup shenanigans of the previous spring. Lou Capesi needed her, especially now that the team was a property of Kidco, which prided itself on being unabashedly G-rated. She wasn't a sports fan at all—was a bit of a snob about it, really—but hockey she could tolerate, having caught some of her little brother Wills's games. Lou, on the other hand, clearly adored it.

“In the beginning, God created hockey, ya understand?” he garbled through a pastrami sandwich the first time they met. Sitting on the opposite side of the desk from this passionate, hyperactive troll in his plush office, replete with matching black leather couches and walls crammed with pictures of himself with some of the greatest hockey players in the world, Janna was simultaneously fascinated and repulsed. Here was a man renowned for his PR prowess in the world of sports. Yet he talked with his mouth full, cursed like a trooper, and appeared to be unaware that calling a woman “doll” could land him in court. With his big, fat belly and perpetually stained tie, he didn't exactly cut a professional figure. Yet there was something about him—maybe it was his New York bluntness, or the unconscious way he seemed to pop a Tums every five minutes—that made him kind of endearing. Janna found herself giving him the benefit of the doubt as he multitasked, chewing and talking at the same time.

“Kidco needs these guys to clean up their act. Correction: they demand it. The players aren't bad guys, but the problem is that a lot 'em grew up in East Butthole, Canada, you hear what I'm saying? The big excitement of their life was shooting pucks at their little brother's head and watching reruns of
Three's Company
on the CBC. Now, all of a sudden, they're in the NHL, they're making big money. They start going a little nuts with the wine, women, and song stuff. Kidco wants Blades PR to play up the guys who are married with kids. And they want all of 'em to start going out and doing charity stuff.”