Game Changer (6 page)

Duke gave an anxious laugh and straightened, smoothing his shirt.

Brandon offered him his hand to shake. “It'd be an honor to be charged with looking out for her until I leave for Miami. I'll take full responsibility for making sure Kayla's safe. You've got my word. After I leave, I know the rest of the team will look out for her, too. You could ask any one of the guys. All of them.”

Duke shook his hand. “I will. And thank you.” Then he tugged Brandon into a bear hug. “Let's get you on the ice to warm up. We've got a game to win for my granddaughter.”

***

Harper and Kayla watched Brandon follow Duke into the locker room hallway to talk. About what, Harper had no idea, but maybe it had something to do with the way Brandon kept eyeballing Kayla. Jerk. In fact, the whole team was a bunch of jerks, treating Kayla like some exotic siren to be feared lest they fall under her intoxicating spell.

“I didn't think my grandpa would be this pissed,” Kayla said, her eyes tracking the players warming up on the ice.

“He's worried about you, and I don't blame him, even if he did react poorly. Which he most certainly did.”

“I really thought, of all the people in my family, he'd be the one to understand why I have to do this with my life.”

Harper took a good, long look at the young woman sitting beside her. In a lot of ways, Kayla reminded her of her herself when she was younger. Confident in her skills and in her sexuality and not afraid to take on the world.

What happened to Harper in the years since she'd been Kayla's age? Of course, she already knew the answer to that. She shook away the thought and refocused on Kayla. “Why do you have to do this with your life? Help me understand.”

Kayla threw up her arms. “Because I'm bored.” She said it earnestly, as though boredom was a logical, justifiable reason to risk her life in a dangerous career.

“Bored?” That was the most ridiculous explanation she'd ever heard. “You're only, what, twenty-one?”

“Twenty-two.”

“How could you be bored with life already?”

Kayla slumped in her chair, looking disappointed with Harper. “You're just like them. My parents. They don't understand, either. They look at Grandpa's hockey team and all they see are the disfigurements, the disabilities. They don't see the life and the honor that being a soldier brings.”

Maybe it was because Harper was perilously close to turning forty, but being compared to Kayla's parents lit a fire inside her to prove otherwise. “No, no. I'm not like them. I see the life and the honor that the Bomb Squad players have. I just don't understand your logic—
yet
. That's why you need to help me out here. Tell me why boredom is a reasonable justification for joining the Marine Corps. Help me see this from your point of view.”

In the corner of Harper's vision, she saw her friends arrive—Olivia, Marlena, Allison, and Presley. She waved, then held up her finger to let them know she was busy listening to Kayla and would greet them in a moment. Getting the hint, they settled quietly on the bench behind the scorekeeper's table, talking softly amongst one another.

“Not enough people are bored. That what's wrong with people today,” Kayla said.

Oh, good. Another twenty-two year old who knows everything.
Astonishing, how wise the youth of America was before they had to grow up and get real jobs and pay the bills. Harper had hired enough young waitresses over the years to be intimately familiar with the faulty logic of know-it-all youngsters.

And didn't that make Harper sound like a stodgy old fart?
Ugh.
She refocused on Kayla's monologue, which showed no signs of slowing down.

“Everyone's so ready to accept the status quo,” Kayla said. “Nobody's hungry for life, at least not in the town I live in. My friends from high school, none of them want to move out of their parents' houses or get real jobs. Everyone's so boring all the time, but nobody's bored.”

“What do you mean by ‘bored'? I'm not following you yet.”

“If you're bored, then that means you're still hungry for new experiences. You're not satisfied with what you have. Like me. I don't want to live in Raleigh my whole life. I don't want to work in my parents' store and hang out with my high school friends. I don't want to get married and settle down.”

Sounded like someone else Harper knew. Her gaze flashed at the hallway from which Brandon was emerging. She watched him take to the ice and call the team around him for a pre-game powwow.

“I want to try everything and learn everything and never stop being afraid of boredom,” Kayla said. “But there's no way I could afford to see the world or have my mind blown with new experiences unless I enlist in the military. So I chose the Marine Corps, like Grandpa did.”

“A lot of soldiers get more than their minds blown with new experiences. Some of them actually get blown up.” That came out sounding way more lame than it had in her mind, but she got her point across.

“I know that. Of course I know that.” Kayla's gaze shifted to Gabe, who was standing in the goaltending crease making sure the ice in the crease was exactly how he wanted it. “But I can't live my life expecting the worst to happen.”

Harper blinked back as Kayla's words hit her hard. She'd never heard it put quite like that before, but that was exactly how Harper had been living her life. She had good reason to expect the worst to happen, but that attitude wasn't serving her well. Maybe Kayla and her know-it-all youthful wisdom wasn't so off base after all.

“My friends just showed up,” Harper said. “Let me introduce you.”

She stood and Kayla followed suit. “Ladies, I have a VIP for you to meet tonight. This is Duke's granddaughter, Kayla. Kayla, these are my friends. Olivia, Presley, Allison, and Marlena.”

Kayla shook each woman's hand.

“It's nice to meet someone from Duke's family,” Olivia said with a cheery smile. “We've heard so much about you and your parents over the years from Duke and Donna.”

“Olivia is a high school science teacher, and she also has the dubious honor of being the twin sister to one of the Bomb Squad defensemen, Liam.” Harper pointed him out on the ice. “He's the tall one with the high and tight dark blond hair and the tattoos on his arms.”

“The hot one,” Marlena added, giving a jaunty toss of her flowing copper-colored hair.

“And Marlena is married to Liam,” Harper told Kayla.

“Cool,” Kayla said. “Are you a teacher, too?”

“Yes. A yoga teacher.”

“Cool.”

Harper patted Allison's arm. “Allison co-owns a boat rental company along with her fiancé, Theo, another Bomb Squad player.”

“He's number sixteen, the guy whose hair is a little bit longer in back. The other hot one,” Allison said with a wink to Marlena.

“Where's Emily?” Harper asked Allison. To Kayla, she added, “That's Allison daughter. She's two and just about the cutest little thing you ever did see.”

Allison beamed. “And soon-to-be Theo's adopted daughter, as soon as the paperwork goes through. She's with a babysitter. Now that she's walking, I can't sit and watch the games in peace when I bring her.”

“And this is Presley.” Of all Harper's friends, Presley was her closest. They'd met years ago when Harper hired her as Locks' accountant and they had been fast friends ever since. Of all the women in Harper's life, Presley was by far the most style-conscious, with designer everything and a weakness for 1950s pinup-girl chic. Tonight, her black bangs cut a severe line across her forehead and her red lipstick stood out in stark contrast to her pale skin, though the color matched the scarf tying her hair back and the red pencil skirt that she'd topped with a white silk blouse.

Kayla nodded at Presley's enormous engagement ring. “Are you married to a player, too? The team sounds like a dating pool of Destiny Falls' most eligible bachelors.”

“It does, doesn't it?” Presley said. “But no. My fiancé is a lawyer.”

A lawyer who nobody ever saw. In all the years that Presley and Harper had been friends, she could count on her fingers the number of time she'd socialized with Marc outside of fleeting glances when he stayed over at Presley's condo.

“Is he here?” Kayla asked.

Presley's expression faltered, but only for a split second. “No. He had to work late tonight.”

Harper rushed to change the subject, for Presley's sake. “Kayla just announced that she enlisted in the Marine Corps.”

The ladies were reliably happy and full of congratulations and questions that kept Kayla busy while Harper finished prepping to keep score for the game, her eyes on the referees. Someday that'd be Harper, just as soon as she worked up the nerve to put in a request with the league. She'd never seen a female referee for the men's league, but that didn't mean it was against the rules or that she couldn't try. It beat being stuck at the scorekeeper's table indefinitely.

When the buzzer sounded, starting game play, Kayla plopped back into her seat next to Harper. “I've never seen a hockey game, like, live. So this is going to be fun.”

“The Slap Dragons have the worst record in the league this season, so this game should be a gimme for our boys,” Harper explained.

Brandon barked out some directives to his offensive line, then slid into the face-off circle to take the puck drop. He won it easily, but it was all downhill from there. His first pass to Theo went wide and was intercepted by the Slap Dragons. Not four seconds into the game, the Dragons had their first shot on goal. At least Gabe had defended the net handily on the shot.

Four shots-on-goal later, a dribbler of a shot ricocheted off Liam's skate and right into position for a waiting Slap Dragon's stick. That one made it past Gabe. Harper wasn't sure he ever saw it coming.

“Come on, Bomb Squad! Get something going here!” Kayla shouted. She rocketed to her feet, jumping up and down and cheering as Theo took position in the face-off circle for the next drop.

But the team was a disaster on the ice.

On a bad call from the ref, Harper was obliged as the scorekeeper to bite her tongue against joining the vocal protests from the crowd. What she wished for, though, as she did every time she disagreed with a ref's call, was that she was out there calling the penalties instead of on the sidelines recording them in the game book.

When the first period ended, the Slap Dragons were up three to nothing. So painful.

“They're usually better than this,” she told Kayla.

“I hope so.”

Harper had wished for better for Brandon on his last game with the team, but whether him leaving or Kayla's presence was to blame for the poor performance was anyone's guess. At the end of the period, Harper handed Kayla a twenty-dollar bill and sent her along with Allison and Olivia to the snack bar to buy a round of beer and nachos for them to drown their sorrows in.

As the teams filed off the ice to their respective locker rooms, Brandon zipped across the ice and executed a showy side stop in front of the scorekeeper's table.

“Sucky game,” Harper told him. “You think the guys are going to be able to rally next period?”

Brandon's foul mood was written all over his face. “Yeah, about that. You've got to tell Kayla to stop it with the bouncing.”

“Bouncing?”

“Yeah, it's awful. She's wearing this skimpy little top and she won't stop bouncing up and down every time there's a play or a ref call. None of the guys can concentrate.”

“You can't blame a twenty-two-year-old child for Bomb Squad's issues tonight. I mean, she's cute, but she's not that cute. Plus, did I mention she's just a child?”

“She's not a child, and yes, she is that hot—way too hot for her own good. Will hasn't stopped looking at his skates since she got here, Gabe's blushing like crazy and muttering what I think is a rosary prayer every time she starts in on the bouncing thing, and Theo is looking like he'd rather gouge his eyes out than look directly at her.”

Then a horrible thought occurred to Harper. “Brandon, I swear to God. You cannot sleep with Duke's granddaughter.”

Brandon turned his scowling face on Harper. “Jesus, first Duke and now you, too? Don't you think I know better than to disrespect Duke's family like that?”

Ah. The reason Duke had pulled Brandon into the hallway. She could see how that warning might be insulting, except that Brandon had made a point of flaunting his promiscuity over and over again throughout the years he'd lived in Destiny Falls. “I don't know. You slept with Theo's future sister-in-law last year, and he's one of your best friends.”

True, Allison and Theo weren't engaged at the time that Brandon slept with Allison's sister, Chelsea. Allison and Theo weren't even dating yet, but still.

Brandon rolled his neck, looking more pissed with every passing second. He glanced around, then slid closer to the plastic sheeting barrier around the rink, getting as close to Harper as he could. His eyes were sharp and dark and absolutely sinister. “Yeah, I did sleep with her. But you know what? It got your attention, didn't it? That's the only way I've ever been able to get your attention.”

How dare he
. “That's not fair.”

He straightened again, taking his hockey stick in both hands and rolling his shoulders back. “Who said I had to play fair with you? I don't remember that being part of the rules of our game.”

Their game. She'd never heard a more accurate label for their toxic relationship. One big game. With both of them keeping score and making up the rules and penalties as they went. Thank goodness he was leaving.

“I'm not going to talk to her about the bouncing. You immature, sexist Neanderthals are just going to have to deal. Or not, and blow the game. I don't care.”