Page 17 of Playoff
"Team, here's Alek Denbrowski, our new winger. Make him welcome. Have they got his cubby ready?"
The team was organized, because in the middle of the forwards was a stall with my name, containing practice gear, also with my name on it. Spelled right too. More than once I'd had to correct how the equipment guys had written it.
Cooper was on the opposite side with the defense, already dressed. His was among the heys that were sent my way. I nodded and headed to my new stall to change. Being on the ice, where I knew what I was doing and was good at it, would help a lot in settling in. It was reassuring to see my equipment had arrived—my skates, and sticks, not the illegal one from the last game.
I sat down to pull off my shoes. I picked them up to put away and met the gaze of the guy in the stall directly across from me. He was staring, eyes narrowed.
JJ. Justin Johnson. From the expression on his face, he already hated me. That was a new record. I wondered what his issue was. My rep? My parents? My game?
I drew in a long breath. This might be a long couple of months after all. I broke the staring contest and continued to get dressed. He was gone before I was putting on skates.
Stepping onto the ice was like coming home—as close to a home as I could claim. There were differences with each team, but we all did drills, we all spit and sweated and swore. I had an excuse for not keeping up in this practice, but I would have to make a real effort. The systems were different, and the coaches didn’t let anything slide. They were as quick to call out Cooper for being out of position as they were Mitchell, the backup who’d let in the winning goal in the finals last season.
I was out of position a lot, but less so as the drills went on. My new linemates were Deek and Oppy, and they were used to playing with Ducky. I wasn’t as fast, but I had more muscle. We needed time to learn to play together, but they’d relied on Ducky to put the puck in the net the most, and that was what I did.
The coaches kept me back, talked strategy with me, since the Blaze used man-on-man defense when high in the DZ, while LA had stuck with the simpler zone defense. My job was to light up the goal lamp, so I focused more on OZ play, but this was a challenge. If anyone fucked up, it left the goalie vulnerable.
By the time they let me go, most of the locker room had emptied out. JJ was gone. He left a sense of foreboding behind him.
Chapter 8
Mata Hari him
Jess
* * *
The buzzing of my phone woke me up. I groaned. Should have turned off the alarm. It was Saturday, and after being up late then crying on JJ, I wanted to sleep in. My body twinged in some unfamiliar places and I smiled. I didn't regret last night. The sex had been amazing, and the crying cathartic. Despite being tired, my body felt good. Relaxed.
Then I picked up my phone and everything else rushed back into my head. Mrs. Garvin. The trade. An onslaught of messages and calls from my parents. My mom, to be precise. By the time I read through them I was tense and stiff, all post-orgasm relaxation gone.
My parents had notifications set up for anything with the name Denbrowski, so they'd heard about Denny being traded here as soon as the news went public. Ten years ago, they'd invested all the money they had with Boris and Claudia Denbrowski. My mother came from money, and she and my dad owned a travel agency where they did little of the actual work but catered to their wealthy friends who liked to travel. Mostly the agency was an excuse for them to take trips all around the world. Justin and I had spent a lot of time with our paternal grandmother while they were away. She was more of a parental figure than Mom and Dad while we were growing up.
When the Denbrowskis fled the country with all the money they'd “invested” for their clients, our lives changed. My parents no longer had money, and a lot of their social circle also lost investments. There weren't any more friends using the family travel agency. Since my parents spent their time and resources trying to find a way to recover what the Denbrowskis had taken rather than pay attention to their business, the agency had gone bankrupt.
They still clung to the belief that they could somehow recover the money and lifestyle they'd enjoyed. It had become an obsession, a way to avoid looking at their own contribution to the mess. They’d spent too much money on lawyers and private investigators. Even if they found something, at this point the Denbrowskis had probably burned through most of what they’d taken. It must cost a lot to evade detection.
Now, with Alek Denbrowski in Toronto, and playing with Justin? They’d see this as an opportunity. Access to a Denbrowski. Not sure what they planned, but they’d be planning something.
I left my phone on the charger and showered, trying to postpone the inevitable. I’d made coffee and toast and settled on a chair to enjoy my breakfast when the phone rang again. With a sigh and a look at the time, I caved. At least, since Mom and Dad were in Victoria, BC, I didn’t usually get early wake-up calls.
"Jess, where have you been? We were trying to get a hold of you all night.” Mom didn’t wait for me to answer. “Did you hear the news? The Denbrowski boy is back in Canada, on Justin's team. This is a golden opportunity for us."
And so it began. "Sorry to have missed you last night. I was out with a friend." Not like I was going to share with them what I'd actually been doing. "Yes, we heard, Alek Denbrowski was traded to the Blaze. Justin will be professional on the ice.” I hoped so. “After all, he’s played against him before." I ignored the part where she talked about opportunity. Denny hadn’t been involved in his parents’ crimes, according to the police. My parents had followed the investigation closely and they’d checked him out extensively. If there was any chance they could have sued him, they’d have taken it.
“Of course he will. Justin always does the right thing.” Doing what he considered the right thing had hurt him badly ten years ago, but my parents ignored that. "We've discussed how Alek Denbrowski might be liable for his parents' debts. If he had knowledge of what was happening and benefited from it, we could sue him for what we lost."
I rubbed a hand over my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. When my mother said discussed, she meant that she had repeatedly vented about it being unfair that Alek Denbrowski had never been touched after he had patently been a recipient of the benefits of his parents' lifestyle.
I tried, once, to ask if the police had investigated him. And if there was evidence of his complicity, wouldn’t they have charged him? My mother asked if I was on “their” side or the Denbrowskis. As if I would ever support the people who'd wrecked so much for my twin and me. But when it came to this topic, logic was never involved. So I'd stopped arguing, and let the complaints and plans flow around me. Unless they wanted to use Justin's money. That, I stopped. I wouldn’t sacrifice Justin any further.
"Now Justin has a perfect opportunity to befriend the man and discover the truth. He could record conversations on his phone, couldn't he? Would that be admissible in court? You could also help out. From what I read, he's single, and probably lonely in a new city. As a woman you could learn even more of his secrets than Justin could."
What the actual hell, Mom?
Her voice went dreamy. "Just imagine, if you found out the truth and we could get our money back."
The headache was pounding now. Justin, who'd walked out of the bar when he heard Denbrowski's name, was to befriend the man. Not suspicious at all. And apparently I was supposed to Mata Hari him to find out all his secrets. There were so many problems with that scenario. It would never work. But my mother would harp on this as long as the man was in Toronto.
