Nothing but Trouble (Chinooks #5) (7 page)

She laughed next to his ear. A soft, breathy little sound that tickled his temple. “I meant high as in elevation.”

He almost smiled. Showed where his mind tended to reside these days.

She leaned forward a little more, pressing into him. “This house is almost four thousand square feet. It has a great view of the bay and is all one floor. I thought it might be perfect for you.”

He wondered if she was doing it on purpose. Women had been pressing and rubbing up against him since his rookie days. Letting him know they wanted sex in not so subtle ways. But he didn’t really think his little assistant was rubbing up against him because she wanted him to push her down on his desk and have sex with her right there.

Or did she?

“The kitchen has been completely renovated and modernized. What do you think?”

What did he think? He thought of her sitting on his desk in front of him, his hands pushing the skirt up her legs, because as much as Mark loved spending time with a nice pair of breasts, he was ultimately a thigh man. A woman’s smooth inner thighs were his favorite parts. He loved sliding his palms up soft, warm skin, getting softer and warmer as his hand moved up higher.

“What do you think, Mr. Bressler?”

The weight slowly lowered to just beneath his navel and stopped before reaching his groin. “I don’t cook.” Six months ago, he would have had a full-blown erection by now.

“You don’t have to cook.”

The warm heaviness was the most of anything he’d felt in a long time and the very last thing he wanted to feel for the woman pressing into him. “Tell me again? Why am I looking at real estate?”

“Because you want to move.”

He placed his left hand on the desk and stood, balancing most of his weight on his right side. He didn’t need her butting into his business and trying to run his life. “I never told you that.”

She was forced to take a step back. “You mentioned it.”

He turned and leaned his behind on the desk. “If I mention that I haven’t been laid for six months, are you going to start lining up hookers?”

Her brows lowered over her blue eyes. “You didn’t get laid yesterday?”

God, did she ever react like a normal woman?

“You didn’t hook up with Donda?”

The
Sports Illustrated
reporter? “No.” He’d never hook up with a reporter, on the off chance she’d write about it.

“Or anyone else?”

Why would she think something like that? “It’s none of your damn business.”

Her gaze narrowed. “It
is
when you make me buy you condoms and KY and a magnum pleasure ring. God, that was embarrassing and just plain gross. And it was all for nothing!”

He folded his arms across his chest. “I was
thinking
about getting laid.” She looked mad. Good. That made two of them. Pushy woman. She needed to back off, and she really needed to stop rubbing against him before he
did
get a hard-on. Or worse, much worse, before she noticed that he couldn’t get it up. That he wasn’t a functioning man. “But thinking about sex and buying condoms doesn’t mean I want to do it with
you
. So you can stop rubbing yourself against me. I’m not that desperate.”

Her big blue eyes rounded. “What?”

“You’re not my type of woman. I’m not a boob man, and rubbing your breasts against me doesn’t turn me on.”

“I didn’t rub against you.”

“You rubbed.” He pointed his rigid middle finger at all the ruffles on her blouse. “I don’t want to have sex with you. No offense.”

Her mouth fell open. “‘No offense’? You’ve been trying to offend me since the first day we met.”

He dropped his hand to the top of the desk beside his right hip. That was true.

“You’ve been working overtime at it.”

No, he hadn’t. If he’d been working overtime, he would have said, “Now, don’t get all mad and bitter and hurt. I’m sure some men find you attractive. I’m just not one of them. Honestly, I just can’t get it up for a woman with a smart mouth, big boobs, and ridiculous hair. It’s just totally out of the question.”

She blinked. He’d shocked her, and he half expected her to storm out of his house. “That’s a relief.” A smile curved her full pink lips. “I’ve quit, or been fired, from a lot of jobs because I refused to have sex with my boss.” Her nose crinkled like she smelled something bad. “You wouldn’t believe what some men have wanted me to do.”

Actually, he probably could. Men were fairly predictable.

“It’s disgusting. The last guy I worked for expected a BJ.”

And while men and some women were fairly predictable, she was not. She didn’t react like he expected because she wasn’t a normal woman. She had yellow and reddish-pink hair and dressed like an abstract painting.

She laughed as she shook her head. “It’s a huge relief to know I never have to worry about that from you.”

For a man who’d never had to work all that hard at getting a woman in bed, her laughter irritated him more than usual. Which said a lot. “Hold on. You’re not ugly. I didn’t say anything about a BJ being out of the question.”

She folded her arms beneath her breasts, and her arms got lost in gold ruffles. “Well, it is.” In fact, he’d never seen such relief on a woman’s face. It made her smile huge and brightened her eyes like she’d just won the tri-state lotto. “And since we’re being honest, I just have to tell you, Mr. Bressler, that I don’t find you in the least attractive either.” She lifted a hand out of all those ruffles before tucking it back inside.

“Praise Jesus,” he said through a frown as a dull ache settled in the backs of his eyes. This conversation wasn’t going where he wanted. She was supposed to be getting mad and he was supposed to be laughing as he watched her walk out the door.

Chelsea looked at the tall, arrogant man in front of her. At his powerful arms and big chest. His scowl and his hard gaze. The jerk didn’t like a taste of his own medicine. “Really, you have no idea how relieved I am to know that I
never
have to have sex with
you
.”

“Yeh, I think I have some idea. You’ve said it three times now.”

“I’m just so glad we have it out in the open.”
You’re not ugly
. She wasn’t the least ugly. In fact, she thought she was pretty darn attractive. He was just a typical jock a-hole who thought he was so special he should date supermodels. “And in the future, if I lean over to show you something and I accidentally touch you, it’s not on purpose.” And because she really did want to keep her job, she added, “Although I’m sure lots of women would kill to touch you.”

His brows lowered over his dark eyes, and combined with the black shadow of his beard, he looked kind of scary. “Just not you.”

But Chelsea had faced a lot scarier things than one moody hockey player. For all his weight and bulk and anger, he didn’t intimidate her. “No. Not me.” Time to change the subject before he got mad and got her fired. Or worse, sent her on another humiliating and senseless errand like buying condoms. “I think your participation in the charity golf tournament is important. First, because it’s for charity and the press will give it more attention if you’re there. Second, because your fans want to see you.”

“Are we back to that?” He closed his eyes and groaned. “God, you’re like a tick burrowing into my head. I told you I can’t play. I’d come in over par on every damn shot.”

A pit bull and now a tick. Flattering. “Your score isn’t the point.”

“The score is always the point.” He reached for his cane and rose to his full height. “I don’t play anything that I can’t win.”

“You don’t celebrate second place.”

“That’s right.”

“This event is for charity. The point of playing for any charity isn’t whether you win first, second, or third. It’s your participation.” He opened his mouth to argue but she held up one hand. “Just think about it. I have another week before I have to give them an answer either way.”

He moved past her. “Stop interfering in my life.”

“I’m just trying to help you.” She followed him. “I’m really at a loss here. I don’t know what you need.”

He stopped suddenly and she almost ran into his wide back and black nylon jogging pants.

“You are the only person I’ve ever worked for that doesn’t have an impossible list for me. You don’t have a list at all. Tell me what you need for me to do for you.”

His back straightened. “I don’t
need
you to do anything for me.”

She moved in front of him and looked up into his face. Light from the front of the house slashed across his nose and the top of his chest. His mouth was compressed even more than usual. “The Chinooks are paying me good money to be your assistant.”

“Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll give you double to quit.”

Somehow she doubted he’d give her twenty grand. “It’s not just about the money,” she lied. “I get satisfaction from my work. You need me and—”

“I don’t need you.”

“—and,” she continued as if he hadn’t interrupted, “if you don’t tell me what I can do to help you out, I’ll just have to keep coming up with stuff on my own.”

“Fine. You can write back to all those seven thousand hockey fans you’re so concerned about.”

It wasn’t like she hadn’t ever answered someone else’s fan mail before. “What do you want the e-mail to say?”

“One e-mail is so impersonal.” He continued around the stairs and headed down the darkened hall. “I think you need to answer each individually.”

She called after him, her Kate Spade wedges suddenly rooted to the tile. “What?”

“Write to each of the fans individually,” he repeated, his voice trailing after him.

Dread weighted her feet, and she forced herself to follow. “I thought a mass ‘thank you for your concern,’ yada yada, e-mail would be nice.”

“Yada yada isn’t personal.” He moved into a huge room with one of the biggest televisions she’d ever seen, a big leather couch, a large chaise, and three poker tables. She stopped in the doorway.

“Mention how much their letters mean to me,” he said over his shoulder. “And include something about their own letter so they’ll think I read it myself.”

“What a tool,” she whispered.

He turned and looked at her across the room. “Did you just call me a tool?”

He might have fractured half the bones in his body, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing. She pointed to the poker tables and totally lied. “No. I said, ‘That’s cool.’ Do you play a lot of poker?”

“I used to.” He grabbed the television remote from an end table and turned toward the television. “You better get going on those e-mails.”

Tool
, she mouthed to his back. Then she turned and made her way back to the office in the front of the house. Her wooden wedges thumped across the tile floor like a death knell. “Seven thousand e-mails,” she moaned.
Ten thousand dollars
.

She pulled out the chair Mark had been sitting in earlier and called her sister. “I need to know who to contact to get access to Mark’s guest book page on the Chinooks’ Web site,” she explained. “The e-mail addresses of the people who signed it are hidden.” After a few minutes of further explanations, she grabbed a pen and a pad of sticky notes from a drawer. She wrote down a name and a number and called the senior manager of the Web site. After some back-and-forth, he determined that she wasn’t some wacko trying to get access. He gave her the link to the administration panel, username, and a password she could use. Within minutes she was in. Easy, cheesy, lemon squeezy. Now came the hard part, replying to all those letters.

The first dozen notes expressed the writers’ best wishes for Mark’s recovery. They were filled with concern, recollections, and hero worship. Chelsea hit reply and wrote basically the same message in all of them:

After forty-five minutes of mind-numbing work, she came across:

Chelsea smiled. Ferrari. Right.

Chelsea rolled her eyes before she continued.

She didn’t know which was worse. That Lydia had hooked up with a man she’d met in a bar or that she’d written about it in a public forum. As for Mark’s behavior, she wasn’t surprised. Disgusted but not surprised. He was a jock.

Dear Lydia
, she wrote.

Chelsea sat back and looked at what she’d written. Instead of hitting reply, she pressed delete and erased Lydia’s inappropriate letter and her response.

The next letter began:

She deleted that one, too. There really wasn’t an excuse for someone to write something so horrible, and she didn’t think she should dignify Dan with a response.

She answered a few more, then read:

Chelsea lifted her eyes from the screen and looked at the posters and trophies and other memorabilia around the room. A Chinooks’ jersey with the number “12” and the name “BRESSLER” written across the shoulders hung behind Plexiglas and beneath a broken hockey stick on the wall. On another wall hung a picture of him wearing a deep blue jersey, his hair matted and sweaty. A huge smile curved his mouth and showed his straight white teeth. In one hand he held a puck with a piece of tape across it. The number “500” was written across the white cloth tape.

All these things had meaning to him and told the story of his life. A life filled with hero worship and hockey, hooking up with random women, and inspiring young boys.

His was a story she didn’t know. And truthfully, didn’t understand. He had so much. Was so lucky, and yet he was so angry. It was like he’d flipped a switch and closed off the laughing, smiling man she’d watched in interview clips. The Mark Bressler she knew was more like the man she’d seen in other video clips of him, the hockey player throwing punches and fighting it out on the ice.

No, she didn’t understand his anger and his somber moods, but she supposed she wasn’t getting paid to understand him. She looked at the computer screen and got back to work.

Dear Mary
, she wrote.

She scrolled to the next letter and made a mental note to ask Mark about youth hockey camp. He wouldn’t like it. He’d probably accuse her of being pushy and trying to run his life. He’d call her a tick, but his life needed someone to run it.

After forty minutes and ten more letters, she rose and stretched her arms over her head. At this rate, it was going to take her forever to get the letters written, and she suspected that’s why he’d told her to do it. She dropped her hands to her side and moved through the house toward the leisure room. Light from all the leaded glass windows smeared milky patches across the stone and wood and made her think she was in a villa in Tuscany. She wondered if his former wife had chosen the house, because the little she did know of Mark, it didn’t seem to suit his tastes. He seemed like more a modern architecture kind of guy.

The carpet in the huge room silenced the soles of her shoes as she walked inside. On the television, the noon news showed the weather forecast for the next week. The sound was so low she could barely hear it. The curtains were open, and the late morning sun poured in through large French doors, bleaching the carpet a lighter beige and stopping just short of the large chaise where Mark lay, asleep. His right hand rested on his stomach, the blue splint contrasting with the white of his T-shirt. His left hand lay on the leather beside him, palm up, his fingers curled around the remote. The permanent frown between his brows was gone, his forehead smooth. He looked younger, softer, which seemed odd given the strong angles of his face and the dark spiky stubble.

If I mention that I haven’t been laid for six months, are you going to start lining up hookers?
he’d asked, and she bit the side of her lips to keep from laughing and waking him up. She’d worked for a comedian once who
had
asked her to get him a hooker. He’d used a certain escort service and had wanted Chelsea to go pick the girl up and drop her off. He’d wanted her to come back two hours later, then take the girl back home. She’d refused, and the comedian had paid for a cab instead.

Unlike the comedian, Mark Bressler obviously had no problems when it came to getting females. He was very good-looking and had a raw sexual aura that surrounded him like a poisonous cloud. Unless he had some sort of fetish, she just couldn’t see him dialing up hookers.

She moved to the heavy drapery and shut the curtains. It was a good thing she wasn’t easily offended anymore. If he’d made those comments about her large boobs several years ago, she would have burst into tears and run from his house, which she suspected was the reason he’d insulted her.

Again.

She turned, and he rubbed his injured hand across his stomach and chest, the rasp of his splint barely audible over the low voices pouring from the television. He didn’t open his eyes, and she wondered if she should wake him for lunch. Instead she tiptoed out of the room. Best not to poke the beast.

She went back to work, answering fan letters. For the next two days she wrote mostly generic responses or deleted inappropriate messages. Wednesday, she took a break from the computer to drive Mark to a doctor’s appointment a few miles away, and Thursday she drove him to the Verizon store. Both times he was such a horrible backseat driver, she threatened to drive him around in her Honda if he didn’t shut up.