Skating on Thin Ice: Seattle Sockeyes (Game On in Seattle Book 1) (12 page)

“We’ve been approached by another interested party.” The coward wouldn’t even meet his gaze.

“I bought this team, and if it wasn’t for your gag order, the entire world would know by now, and there’d be no going back.” Ethan fisted his hands under the table so he wouldn’t wrap them around Straus’s neck.

“We want a presence in Seattle. It’s a huge, untapped hockey market, but we have an offer that’ll keep the team in this city.” Straus’s gaze darted around the room, as if he was seeking an escape route.

“Offer? You shouldn’t be considering other offers. This team is sold for all intents and purposes. You know as well as I do, that even with a playoff run, the team is hemorrhaging money. New ownership won’t change the fact that there are other draws for people’s entertainment dollars, and hockey isn’t at the top of their list.” Ethan was incredibly frustrated. This was supposed to be a done deal, blessed by the league to rectify a unfortunate situation, and put a team in a bigger market with a better TV deal.

“The offer comes from well-respected men in the world of hockey. Several of the owners have expressed concerns regarding our hasty decision on the sale of the team.”

“Because I’m not a hockey guy? And none of my partners are hockey guys?”

Straus stared at his hands, “No, that’s not it.”

Liar.
“What’s the offer?” Ethan forced out the words from between gritted teeth. He’d be damned if he’d lose this team now.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Whatever the fuck it is, I’m raising my offer by one hundred million over whatever they come up with.” Ethan sat back and crossed his arms over his chest.
Take that, asshole. If money talks, then mine is shouting.

“You don’t know what their offer is.” Straus finally met his gaze. He swiped at the thin layer of sweat beading his brow, even though it was freezing-butt cold in this bar.

“I don’t fucking give a shit. That’s my offer. This is my team, and we had a deal. I’m holding you to it.” Ethan raised his chin and leaned forward. Straus shrank back in his seat.

“I’ll need to consult with the relocation committee.”

“Consult with them all you want. As soon as this team finishes its last game, I’ll be announcing my purchase and the move.”

“You can’t do that.” The commissioner sat up straighter and met his gaze, as if attempting to intimidate. Ethan almost laughed as he glared right back, and the man quickly looked away.

“I can, and I will. I have it in writing. You do recall our contract?”

The commissioner nodded and scratched his arm, glancing toward the doorway.

“Is that all?” Ethan was fighting mad and needed to get the hell out of here before he lost it and said something that couldn’t be taken back. Not waiting for a response, he stood and strode toward the door, leaving the bastard to pay the bill.

* * * *

Lauren glanced up as her father walked into her office and shut the door. “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”

“I have it from a good source, Williams is at an afternoon meeting with the commissioner right now.”

“I know he is. It’s not like it’s a deep, dark secret. He has a lot of meetings with Straus.”

Her father muttered something about Ethan having his head stuck up Straus’s ass. “I want you to find out what was discussed. My group made their official offer yesterday.”

Lauren fought back an odd rush of panic. Her pulse raised and her stomach clenched, her loyalties divided. “He won’t tell me anything, Dad. You know that.”

“So study his body language, his mood; those things tell more than his words. I want to know everything, every little nuance.”

“I’ll do what I can.” She mumbled, not committing to her father’s cause, even if guilt warned that she should be.

“Lauren, this is important. We want this team, the boys and I. You do want to keep your job, don’t you?”

Lauren bristled at the veiled insult that the only way she could get and keep a job with a team was because of her father’s influence. Sure, he’d helped her initially, but now her track record should speak for itself.

Besides, she wanted the job indicated by her title, not a glorified clerical position, where the men in charge sent her to make copies—who used paper copies anymore anyway?—and discounted everything she said or even worse, patronized her. Her dad’s good ol’ boy group would never give her the credit or clout she’d worked so hard to earn. She didn’t mind working twice as hard as any man, but eventually she wanted the respect she deserved and a shot at moving up based on her merits, not the size of her dick.

Ethan had given her that respect from the very beginning. He depended on her input and asked her opinions, never once giving a shit that she was female, while her father never asked her opinion. The GM didn’t, and the coach sure as hell didn’t. Yet, this wasn’t all about Lauren. It was about winning, putting the best possible product on the ice, and giving the guys every chance to succeed. Deep down, the current coaching staff and management weren’t getting it done. They’d been lucky and riding the backs of guys playing out of their minds. Ethan knew that as well as she did. Did anyone else get it?

“Dad, I want to keep this job, but I want more responsibility.”

Her father scowled, reminding her of when she was little girl, and she taxed him with one of her many questions why the boys got to do things she didn’t. “Lauren, honey, I know you were a good hockey player, you know hockey, but you can never know it at the level of someone who’s played in the NHL. You’re doing really well. Be happy with that.”

“Because I don’t have balls, I’m relegated to support roles, not decision-making ones.”

“Now, Lauren.”

God, she hated it when he tried to placate her. “Ethan would give me more responsibility.”

Her father took a step back and shook his head in disbelief. “Lauren, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“But you did, Dad. You heard it. Just because I didn’t play the game at the level you did, doesn’t mean I can’t see things that are wrong, that I can’t make contributions.”

Lon just smiled, one of those infuriatingly patronizing smiles. “I’m sure you can, honey.” He glanced at his watch. “Gotta go. Late for a meeting.”

He hurried away, just like he had every other time in her life that involved tough situations with his daughter. Lauren sighed and returned to her spreadsheets, evaluating the team’s performance in the last round of the playoffs.

Lauren waited anxiously for Ethan to return from his meeting, but it wasn’t until after six that he called and asked if she wanted to discuss the finals over dinner. He said he was famished.

Despite her promise to avoid private situations with him, she caved at the note of despair in his voice. He needed her, and very few people needed her. Not like that.

She waited for Ethan at the pizza joint down the road from the arena and found a seat in a high-backed booth.

The epiphany hit her with the speed of Cooper driving to the net.
She wanted Ethan to be involved with the Giants on a long-term basis
. In fact, she counted on it. Ethan’s steady leadership would do more for this team than her father’s good ol’ boy group of “hockey guys.” Ethan with his passion for the game, his open-minded acceptance of new ways of training and coaching, and his respect for her and her knowledge.

She looked up from the menu she held in her hands but hadn’t read one word of, as Ethan walked in. Lauren didn’t have to be good at deciphering body language to see how down Ethan was, almost defeated, which went against the grain for what she knew about this man. He slipped into the booth and clutched the menu, not making eye contact.

“You look like you could use a friend,” Lauren said.

He glanced over the top of his menu and smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re right about that.” His wry smile said it all. Lauren wanted to wrap her arms around him and absorb his pain as hers.

“After this past month together, I could say we’re friends.”

He nodded, not disputing her statement, which gave her the courage to press on.

“How did the meeting with the big man go?” She spoke casually, as if his answer were of no consequence to her, yet in some ways it was everything.

“Not as planned, I’ll say that much.” Ethan slumped in the booth and signaled for the waitress to order a bottle of wine.

“Does this have anything to do with another group trying to buy the team?”

His head shot up. His eyes narrowed in typical Ethan fashion. “You know about that?”

“My dad’s involved.” There, she’d said it, as simple as that, and laid it out on the table, that thing which had been between them for a few weeks.

“I didn’t know whether or not he’d say anything to you since you’re working closely with the enemy.” Ethan eyed her closely, as if discerning where she stood. How the hell could he know, when she wasn’t even sure?

Lauren smiled. “You’re not the enemy. Both groups want this team. No enemies here.”

“No, just one winner and one loser.” With that statement, he’d hit that puck in the net.

“I know.” Lauren shrugged.

He leaned forward, his chin propped in his hands, his elbows on the table. “Tell me, you’ve been with the team for years. What’s your assessment of this market? Will it sustain this team on a long-term basis? I know the statistical answer to this question, but I want an honest, gut feeling of a fan and employee whose heart bleeds for this organization and believes in it one-hundred percent.”

Lauren hesitated, her first inclination to defend the city and the fans, but honesty and common sense won over loyalty. “I don’t think so, even with the Sleezers out of it.” She spoke quietly, almost a whisper.

“Your dad’s group. Will they be able to afford to keep this team in town on a permanent basis? Do they have that kind of big money backing them? The Giants have been partially financed by the league for quite a while.”

“The better question would be—can your group afford to keep the team here with possible years of financial loss and no plan for a new arena?” She shot the question back to him.

“Can any ownership group if they’re good businessmen?” His face revealed nothing.

“Probably not.” Her heart dived as she said the dreaded words, knowing any infusion of money into this team only put a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

“So we’re looking at the possibility that ownership might need to move the team regardless of who it is?” His Caribbean blue eyes met and held hers, as if he needed her as a sounding board.

“Is there something you’re not telling me, Ethan?” She pried her gaze away from his and once again flipped through the menu.

“What’s your assessment of your dad’s ownership group?”

She hesitated, but her instincts aligned her with Ethan, as stupid and dangerous as that might be. “They’re great old-school hockey guys.”

“But? I hear a but…”

She didn’t answer.

“Lauren, I need to know what you think.” He snatched the menu from her and grabbed both of her hands, holding them tightly as he leaned forward, his gaze intent on her face. “Tell me, please.”

Lauren stared at her hands in his larger ones and cleared her throat. “This team isn’t going to win it all with old school hockey. We don’t have the traditional player types so we need to do it with more inventive means, more mixing up the lines, choosing and keeping players with valuable skills you can’t measure with normal statistics. Last year we let a young guy go because he didn’t have the big-time stats, but he did things to get the puck in the right place, stuff my statistical analysis measures, but their old school stuff does not. His absence hurt us this year, big time.”

“I bet you wanted them to keep him?”

Lauren nodded. “But they wouldn’t listen.”

“They don’t listen to you much, do they?”

Suddenly, Lauren choked up, and she hated it. She shook her head, unable to speak without blubbering. Silently she cursed this female weakness, which reared its ugly head at the most inopportune times.

“Lauren.” His voice turned gentle and her body turned to jelly. He slipped out of his side of the booth and slid in next to her, put his arm around her, and tucked her to his side. His comfort felt as natural as breathing. She clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder, even as her body was racked with sobs of frustration she’d held in for so long. He wrapped her in his strong, calm presence, almost making her believe he could keep the wolves at bay from sheer force of will. Max used to make her feel like that in the early days, like she was the most important thing on earth and together they could do anything. She’d fallen for his attentiveness and consideration of her, as if she mattered because she’d never mattered before, except maybe to Aunt Jo. But Max’s caring gestures had been an illusion carefully crafted to keep her clueless. And clueless she’d been until checks started bouncing, bills piled up, and her once-loving husband left her for a puck bunny barely eighteen years old.

And she trusted Ethan why? It wasn’t like she was a good judge of character or anything.

Ethan stroked her hair, and she wanted to fall back into denial. “It’s okay, honey. It is. I know it’s tough but don’t give up. Don’t let them win. I know what it’s like to be discounted and treated like you don’t know shit.”

Something he said struck a chord in her; hell, it played the entire piano. Wiping her eyes she looked up at him. “I did that to you, didn’t I? I kept telling you that you weren’t a hockey guy. I blew off your opinions just like they do to me.”

“It’s all right. I understand. Truly, I do.” He smiled and shrugged, not holding it against her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t—I didn’t realize I’d done to you what they do to me.”

“Even your dad?”

“Especially my dad. He barely knows I exist. I have two brothers in the NHL, one older, one younger.”

“I know.” His mouth twitched in a smile.

“I’m sorry. Of course, you know. He’ll call them and discuss a player even though they’re on competing teams before he’ll consider talking to me.”

Ethan frowned and for a moment his eyes got hard, but they softened just as quickly, and he sighed. “I’m sure my sister would say that our dad doesn’t consider her opinions as strongly as he does his sons’. He’s not a bad person, and he tries, but it’s hard when you’ve been raised in a culture that values men in business or in sports.”