Calling the Shots

In all his years watching his daughter play hockey, Bryan had never once noticed how good another player’s mom looked in jeans. He’d never wondered how hot she’d look if he had the chance to see her in a skirt—or out of a skirt, for that matter. Now he couldn’t be near Clare for five minutes before his thoughts skated down paths they hadn’t taken since he got married…or since the divorce.

He looked back at the action on the ice. He was not, under any circumstances, going to let himself think about Clare that way again. They had to get along to help the kids through this mediation thing.

And he’d be willing to bet the counselor didn’t expect them to sleep together as part of the deal.

Dear Reader,

I wrote the first scene of this book long before I knew exactly what the story would be about. I had an idea for a dad and a daughter he loved fiercely but couldn’t quite connect with, and from that scene grew Calling the Shots.

I love to write about the complicated, messy side of relationships. In the book Clare says that she can’t trust herself and I can relate to that idea. How do lovers, or even parents and children, move past the fears and doubts that get in the way of satisfying connections? How does anyone have the courage to try again when they’ve been badly hurt in the past? When is it worth taking a risk and when is it smarter to run?

I hope you’ll enjoy reading along as Bryan and Clare wrestle with these issues.

Extras, including behind-the-scenes facts, deleted scenes and information about my other books are on my Web site, www.ellenhartman.com. Look for other Harlequin Superromance authors and readers on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/HarlequinSuperromance. I’d love to hear from you! Send e-mail to ellen@ellenhartman.com.

Happy reading!

Ellen Hartman

Calling the Shots

Ellen Hartman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ellen grew up in Pennsylvania where she played many sports including baseball, basketball and track. (Her efforts for the cross-country team were more comical than athletic.) After graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in creative writing, she spent the next fifteen years writing technical documentation. Eventually, she worked up the courage to try fiction and has been enjoying her new career as a romance author.

Currently Ellen lives in a college town in New York. She and her husband spend much of their free time watching their sons play baseball, soccer and, of course, hockey.

This book is dedicated to the parents and volunteers who share their time, talent and enthusiasm with kids through youth sports, especially my brother, Jerry.

In his first outing as a stand-in coach, he led our sister’s basketball team to their only “almost-win” of the season. The story of that game is a family favorite!

I would also like to thank the parents of the Ithaca Youth Hockey Squirt travel team who answered my questions about hockey terms and technique. Chris Thomas was especially helpful, and I regret that I wasn’t able to include some of his hilarious cheers in the book.

Finally, I continue to rely on the expertise and support of my critique partners, Diana, Harriett, Leslie, Liz and Mary. They were particularly helpful at the beginning of this project when Tim underwent a much-needed personality makeover.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

BRYAN WAS BEYOND LATE. He’d missed Allie’s entire practice. He just hoped she was still at the rink. He’d texted her, but she hadn’t replied. His sister, who watched Allie when he was gone, wasn’t picking up, either.

Not good.

So not good. People weren’t almost an hour late to pick up their thirteen-year-old kids from hockey. At least not people who were good at being parents.

He was going to have to arrange a backup plan for the nights he was coming from out of town. One more arrangement to get this whole precarious mess he and Allie were calling a family under control.

He sure as hell hoped Erin’s new life was worth it.

He pulled into the drop-off circle at the front of the rink. It was past nine o’clock—no one was going to complain if he left the Lexus there for a few minutes.

He took the stairs three at a time, his bad knee twinging as he landed on the icy top step, but he ignored the old pain. Bryan yanked the doors open, the blast of warmth hitting him hard after the bitter cold air. He was already scanning the lobby, checking the worn, tweed couches for his daughter when Danny Jackson, the rink manager, popped his head out of his office.

“Bryan,” Danny said. “I need to talk to you.”

Bryan glanced over but kept walking toward the locker rooms. “I’ll be back in one sec. I’m late picking up Allie,” he called. She wasn’t in the lobby but she had to be here somewhere. She wouldn’t have asked someone to drop her at the apartment. Not when she knew he was out of town.

“There was a fight, Bry,” Danny said. “That’s what we need to talk about.”

Just that quick there was no air in his lungs. No spit in his mouth. “Is she hurt?”

“No.” Danny looked uncomfortable, pulling his wrinkled golf shirt down over his gut as he opened the door wider. “Allie’s fine.”

“A fight?” He’d already started for the office, even though he hadn’t entirely processed what the guy meant. Allie took her hockey seriously, and yeah, she was still playing in the coed league at an age when most girls opted for the single-sex, no-contact league, but a fight? A hockey fight? At practice?

That was when he noticed the mess around the skate shop on the opposite side of the lobby. The display in the front window was knocked to pieces, and the glass from the window glinted on the floor. A rack of jackets was overturned near the entrance door. Allie’s stick with the distinctive fluorescent purple tape lay partially under the collapsed sandwich board advertising current sales.

He looked back to Danny who tugged at his shirt again.

The top of Allie’s head was slightly visible beyond Danny’s shoulder in the office. He tried to push by the smaller man but Danny locked his arm, blocking the doorway, and said in a low voice, “I’m sorry about this.”

“Let me see her.”

Danny stepped back and Bryan was past him and kneeling next to Allie. He barely registered that there were other people in the room as he put his hands on either side of his daughter’s chin and raised her head. Allie. His girl. For a second he couldn’t focus, he was so relieved that she was in one piece. He stroked her jaw with his thumbs, happy to have her there so close, and then he blinked and her features became clear. Her lip was split, a thin line of blood where the skin was cracked. Her small, upturned nose, with the exact same smattering of freckles his ex-wife had always hated on her own nose, was fine. She had a scratch on one cheek but nothing looked too bad except her eyes. She wouldn’t look straight at him, had her gaze fixed somewhere over his shoulder. Allie was scared. Not hurt scared, but scared scared in a way he hadn’t seen since those first panicked days three months ago when Erin had told them she was going on tour with Lush and Allie would be staying with him full-time.

What the hell had happened to put that look back in her eyes?

“You okay?” he asked, his voice rough.

When she nodded, he let his eyes skim quickly over the rest of her. There was blood on the neck of the Sabres jersey he’d given her for Christmas and the knee was torn out of her jeans, the skin underneath raw and weeping blood, but she looked all right. She was in one piece and he’d made it home, late but not too late, and whatever else happened, he could handle. He would handle. Somehow he’d make this right for Allie because although she deserved the best, all she had right now was him.

He slid one hand around to the back of her neck and then down to rest on her shoulder, reassuring himself as much as her as he turned to stand. His knee protested when he straightened it, but he barely noticed. With his immediate worries answered, the other people in the room finally registered. His gaze jerked from the woman in the chair next to Allie to the boy sitting on the far side. The boy who’d hit Allie. The boy who better have a damn good explanation for himself.

“Danny?” he said, his voice tight. “What happened?”

Danny pointed at the chair and Bryan sat—he had questions, but he trusted Danny to answer them. Danny was a straight shooter. He’d coached Bryan back in squirt hockey, and had never given him bad advice.

Allie’s cut knee was jerking up and down a mile a minute next to his. He rubbed her shoulder, trying to release some of her tension but the knee kept bouncing.

“Clare Sampson, meet Bryan James, Allie’s father. The kids already know each other,” Danny said. “A little too well.”

Bryan didn’t recognize Clare Sampson. She was dressed more stylishly than most of the hockey moms he saw around the rink; her navy belted car coat couldn’t possibly offer much protection from the metal benches. Her straight, sleek brown hair was tucked behind her ears and her eyes were also brown behind a pair of trendy-looking glasses with dark green frames. Her face was attractive, or would have been if she hadn’t been glaring at him as though he was a spot on the front of her white silk shirt. She must have kept her own last name because he didn’t know any dads named Sampson.

“Allie and Tim got in a pretty serious fight in the skate shop after practice,” Danny said. “I was fitting a pair of skates in the back and they were going at it before we could break them up. I haven’t taken stock yet, but I’m guessing there’s quite a bit of property damage—the front window’s broken for sure. Luckily neither of them is hurt too bad.”

Bryan leaned forward so he could see around Clare. The boy was sitting slumped in his chair, an ice pack on one eye, the neck of his shirt stretched and the skin underneath scratched. A bruise was blooming on his chin. His good eye was open but as soon as he saw Bryan looking at him, he closed it. Even allowing for the fact that he was a little beat up, Bryan didn’t recognize him.

“What happened?” he whispered fiercely to Allie. “How does that kid even know you?”

His daughter’s head dipped lower and her knee started bouncing harder so Bryan knew he’d made a mistake even before Clare’s mouth tightened and she snapped, “Tim is on the Twin Falls Cowboys, Mr. James. Same as Allie.”

Bryan leaned forward again for a second look at the boy and Allie muttered, “Right wing, fourth line.”

“Fourth line?” he said. “I didn’t think we had a—”

“Dad,” Allie said.

At the same instant Tim reopened his good eye and said, “It’s only my third week.”

“Discussing hockey positions isn’t the point,” Clare said. “Your daughter started a fight with my son and despite what Mr. Jackson says, Tim is not okay.” Bryan was all set to rip into her when she added, “And this is not the first time she’s done it.”

Not the first time? What did that mean? He looked to Allie, but she was staring at the floor again.

“Mom,” Tim protested, his voice cracking.

CLARE KNEW SHE WAS crossing a line her son hadn’t wanted her to cross, but she was frankly out of patience.

Allie James was a pretty girl, an excellent athlete and as far as she could see, a hot-tempered bully.

Clare straightened in her chair and patted Tim’s arm, but her son jerked away from her, the ice bag he’d been holding on his eye flinging drops of water onto her pants and the linoleum floor. He scuffed the water with the toe of one black sneaker. “I asked you not to do this,” he said with an embarrassed glance at Allie.

She ignored the guilt she felt as she said, “What happened, Mr. James, is your daughter attacked Tim after school on at least two occasions and then again tonight. I want to know what you’re going to do about that because I’m this close—” Clare held two fingers up, leaving barely a micron of space between them “—to calling the police.”

“The police? They’re kids.”

Despite his dismissive tone, Allie’s father sat forward, his attention on her now, not Tim. Good. He should know how serious this was and exactly who he was dealing with.

“Ms. Sampson,” the manager said. “Let me give Bryan a quick rundown of what happened tonight. I hope we can work this out without getting the police involved.”

Clare nodded. She’d give them a few more minutes but if she didn’t like what she saw, she was breaking up the boys club and getting some help down here. She might have just moved to Twin Falls while these guys seemed to be old friends, but that didn’t mean she had to let them push her or Tim around.

“After practice, Allie and Tim were in the pro shop. Like I said, I was in the back so I didn’t see what happened, but Cody MacAvoy was there, and he says Allie jumped Tim.”

Clare was watching Allie’s father closely. He winced at the manager’s last words.

His blue eyes were shadowed by the dark brown hair falling across his forehead. She’d noticed when he came into the office that he was much taller than the rink manager, and that he held himself with confidence despite a slight limp. Now, slumped in the chair next to his daughter, he looked considerably less formidable. He was shooting worried looks at Allie and nodding as the manager told the story, but she wasn’t sure how much he was really taking in. If circumstances were different, she could imagine sympathizing with him—this was a horrible situation and the man looked exhausted.

“It took two of us to…uh…pull her off him.”

Clare started to reach for Tim, to brush the hair off his forehead at least, to reassure herself, but she saw him tense and so she disguised the gesture by tucking her own hair behind her ear.

She and Tim had always been close—it was just the two of them and had been right from the start.

This year, ever since Tim started seventh grade, he’d been pushing her away. His reach for independence was natural, she knew. Healthy, even. But it scared her.

She’d told him she would stay out of the trouble he’d been having with Allie, but he couldn’t expect her to ignore this. She’d been right there in the lobby, half watching a repeat of Friends on the TV mounted over the snack-bar window while scrolling through her e-mail in another futile attempt to clear her in-box. Then there’d been yelling and the sound of breaking glass and a horrible cracking sound she figured out later was Tim’s head hitting the floor. She’d turned as the kids had come rolling out of the skate shop like some grotesque, many-armed monster. Thank God they’d avoided the broken glass, most of which was off to the side.

She’d never seen a fistfight before and the little she’d witnessed of this one had been brutal and desperate. She’d stood frozen while the rink manager pulled Allie off Tim, and Cody, a boy from their team, helped her son to his feet.

It had taken all of her self-control not to slap Allie’s face right there even though she’d never hit another human being in her life. She didn’t want to punish Allie for the physical damage she’d caused Tim, but for the anxious, bewildered look on his face as he was helped to his feet. And to be honest, for her own frustration. A thirteen-year-old girl hockey goon was not what they needed now while Tim was trying to get used to a new school and before either of them was comfortable in the new town.

“The kids won’t say what started it,” the man continued. “In fact, neither of them has said much of anything at all.”

Clare put her hands in her lap, squeezing them together hard, letting the discomfort remind herself to be strong here even if it made Tim or Allie or Allie’s father unhappy.

“Allie, does Danny have this straight?” Bryan asked.

She lifted her head. “I don’t care if she does call the police, I’m not talking about it.”

“Allie—”

Clare never found out what Bryan had intended to say because Allie put an end to the conversation by pushing her chair back and running out of the office, slamming the door behind her so hard the pictures rattled on the walls.

Bryan was up and ready to go after his daughter when Clare spoke.

“It’s late and we really have to get home if we’re going to get any sleep tonight.” She heard the frustration in her own voice, unable to care enough to conceal it. “We’ve accomplished nothing. I don’t see any choice but to file a police report, because honestly, Allie’s not showing any remorse and I can’t believe that Tim is going to be safe here or at school.”

Tim slumped lower in his chair, but Bryan looked furious. “I don’t know who you are, lady, but you don’t know Allie. She’s a thirteen-year-old girl, not a monster. You don’t call the police over a kids’ fistfight.”

Clare stood up, refusing to raise her voice, but not willing to back down. “Allie has attacked Tim on three separate occasions. Maybe if she realized that there are consequences for her actions she’d think twice before she does it again.”

“You’re unbelievable!”

“And you’re irresponsible. Your kid is out of control and you don’t even know it.”

He stared at her, his jaw tight, the blue of his eyes dark under his lowered eyebrows. If she hadn’t been defending Tim she might have felt intimidated. Even dressed in what she assumed were his business clothes, there was something about him that suggested strength coiled not too far under the starched dress shirt. He opened his mouth to respond but then made a disgusted sound and turned toward the door. The rink manager grabbed his arm to hold him in the room.

“Clare, I know you have valid concerns,” he said. “And, Bryan, I know you want to go after Allie. But I’m hoping instead of lawyers or, God forbid, the police, you’ll consider using the mediation program. The offices are right down the block at the community rec center, and I can tell you they get results.”

He handed a card to Bryan and stretched across the empty chair to give one to Clare. He looked seriously from her to Tim. “The best thing for the kids is to get them to work this out, not to let it fester. They can start to enjoy themselves on the ice.”

Clare felt a spike of anxiety. “Tim’s not going back on the ice, not in a hockey uniform. We’re finished with hockey.”

“Mom,” Tim said as he stood up. “I’m not quitting hockey.”

He started to brush past her. “Tim, wait,” she said.

“I’ll be in the car. I’d like you to take me home if you can make the time before you have Allie arrested for giving me a black eye.” He dropped the ice bag on the floor and then left the office, slamming the door harder than Allie had. A trophy rocked back and forth and then fell off the bookcase next to the door, but Bryan caught it before it hit the ground.

There was an awkward moment while the three adults stood in the sudden silence. Bryan carefully replaced the trophy, wiping the dust off the base with his finger. Danny broke the tension by saying, “I’m going to have to report this. The board will discuss it. Signing up for mediation will show you’re serious about working together and maybe they’ll let the kids stay in the league.”

“Let them stay?” Bryan said. “Allie’s not even supposed to be in this league. She got recruited by the Upstate Select team. If Erin hadn’t…” He stopped. “Twin Falls Youth Hockey should be happy to have her.”

“The board takes bullying seriously,” Danny replied.

“I know.” Bryan seemed to lose all his anger as he nodded, rubbing his thumb across the card before slipping it in his pocket as he reached for the door. “I gotta find Allie,” he said, looking directly at the rink manager. “If Ms. Sampson wants to pursue this mediation thing, she can get in touch. If not, I guess I’ll talk to the police when they come knocking. I’ll call you tomorrow about paying for the damage.”

He put his hand on the door frame, his knuckles whitening. He took a breath and Clare watched as he consciously relaxed his shoulders. She was sure he’d just counted to ten in his head, and she appreciated that even though he was mad, he was trying to keep his temper in check. If only Allie had some of his self-control. She appreciated even more that this time he made eye contact with her, not his friend.

“Allie’s a good kid,” he said. “I don’t know what went on tonight or the other times, but…” He paused and then repeated quietly, with conviction, “She’s a good kid. We’ve just…it’s been a rough year.” He gestured toward the ice bag melting on the floor. “I hope your boy is okay.”

She wasn’t anywhere close to forgiving him or Allie, but she managed a nod. She could acknowledge the effort he’d put into being civil without backing down from her own feelings.

When he was gone, Clare bent to retrieve her purse. She was drained and all she could think about was going home to crawl into bed with a heating pad and a book. If only all her books weren’t still packed in boxes. It didn’t really matter, because first she had to decide how to approach this situation and she had to get through to Tim. She wondered what Allie’s father would tell his wife, what that would feel like, to share these burdens with another person who loved your child the way you did. Tim spent a month every summer with his dad in Italy, but Matteo had never been involved in Tim’s day-to-day life.

The rink manager was watching her. “I’d understand if you called the police,” he said quietly. “That fight was scary and they’re not even my kids. Still, I’ve seen the mediation program work wonders. Allie’s definitely got problems she should work on. This program might help her.”

She was tired of these guys circling the wagons around Allie.

“I’m not sure why you believe I care about Allie’s issues,” Clare snapped.

“Because her issues are Tim’s issues. At least that’s how it sounds to me.”

“Tim isn’t the one hitting people for no reason.”

“How do you know there’s no reason?”

That stopped Clare. She knew there was no reason because Allie was a bully and Tim was her kid. Her well-adjusted, nonbullying kid. Right?

Clare had been sure that Tim hadn’t done anything to instigate this trouble. Except now there was a doubt. Not a big one and not something she wanted to consider. But what if Tim were partly responsible? Not that he or anyone ever deserved to get punched. But what if? He’d never been a bully, but he certainly wasn’t an angel. He almost always had some behavioral bumps when he was settling into a new school, but his feelings about their latest move were intensely negative.

Obviously she and Tim had some talking to do. The problem was that lately, talking was the one thing they couldn’t seem to manage.

CHAPTER TWO

AS HE DROVE HOME, BRYAN had half an eye on the road. Allie was silent in the seat next to him, her face flashing in and out of clarity as the shadows thrown by the streetlights blinked across the car. He couldn’t really see her. Couldn’t tell what was going on with her.

Didn’t have any idea what to say.

All he knew was that the kid Clare Sampson described wasn’t his kid. His Allie was competitive, driven even, but she wasn’t a bully.

Was she?

As soon as that traitorous doubt entered his mind he wanted to step on the gas and drive, take him and Allie down the road to a new town where they could start over. That’s what he’d always done, hit the road, let his commitment to his sales job run interference for him. He’d never taken his daughter with him on the road, never expected to have to, because she’d always been safe at home with Erin. He’d understood that his role was to make the money, that was what his wife had wanted from him. But now the roles were changed. He and Erin were divorced last year. Three months ago, she’d left Allie with him, and Allie, apparently, was beating people up left and right.