Blindsided

She touched her lower lip with her tongue and took a shaky breath. “I didn’t wear this dress just to distract Ralph. I also wanted to knock your socks off.”

Whoa. If she could be that honest, so could he. “You succeeded. My toes are kinda curled, too.”

“I also wanted you to know that I’m not a Pollyanna.”

The jury was still out on that one, but he knew what he was supposed to say. “I got the message, loud and clear.”

Her smile was faint. She didn’t move. God, he’d only thought her laugh had made him warm. The kiss me look was smokin’. It was also an invitation and he decided to take it. “Wondering,” he asked softly, “just how much further you can go and still be safe?”

She blinked. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s what I’m wondering.”

Dear Reader,

Most of us look forward to October for the end-of-the-month treats, but we here at Silhouette Special Edition want you to experience those treats all month long—beginning, this time around, with the next book in our MOST LIKELY TO…series. In The Pregnancy Project by Victoria Pade, a woman who’s used to getting what she wants, wants a baby. And the man she’s earmarked to help her is her arrogant ex-classmate, now a brilliant, if brash, fertility expert.

Popular author Gina Wilkins brings back her acclaimed FAMILY FOUND series with Adding to the Family, in which a party girl turned single mother of twins needs help—and her handsome accountant (accountant?), a single father himself, is just the one to give it. In She’s Having a Baby, bestselling author Marie Ferrarella continues her miniseries, THE CAMEO, with this story of a vivacious, single, pregnant woman and her devastatingly handsome—if reserved—next-door neighbor. Special Edition welcomes author Brenda Harlen and her poignant novel Once and Again, a heartwarming story of homecoming and second chances. About the Boy by Sharon DeVita is the story of a beautiful single mother, a widowed chief of police…and a matchmaking little boy. And Silhouette is thrilled to have Blindsided by talented author Leslie LaFoy in our lineup. When a woman who’s inherited a hockey team decides that they need the best coach in the business, she applies to a man who thought he’d put his hockey days behind him. But he’s been…blindsided!

So enjoy, be safe and come back in November for more. This is my favorite time of year (well, the beginning of it, anyway).

Regards,

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

Blindsided

Leslie Lafoy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Garrett

Who picked up a hockey stick eight years ago

and changed the course of our lives.

Thank you, Son.

LESLIE LAFOY

A former high school history teacher with wide ranging interests, Leslie collects antique silver and loves to work with stained glass. She admits to being one of the last women in America who considers sewing a recreational activity. And home rehabbing—major, major fun. She’s married—twenty-one years—to David and they have a teenage son who plays hockey and lacrosse.

In her spare time , Leslie has written nine historical romantic suspense novels and one novella. She’s now adding contemporaries into the writing mix just for the fun of doing something different.

The Girls’ Guide to Hockey

There are four basic types of hockey players.

The Goalie. He’s the guy standing in front of the net and looking like the Road Warrior version of the Michelin Man. Under those pads is a man who has the single-mindedness of a medic dragging a wounded soldier to safety. Off ice… They can be a bit oblivious to what’s going on around them. If you want their attention, try tossing a puck across their seemingly blank stare.

The Center. Speed. Drive. Confidence. Loads and loads of confidence. While these tendencies can be a bit off-putting off ice, it is possible to drop his jaw. Off ice… Just sweetly move around him and go on like he isn’t there. They’re so not used to that that they’ll come after you out of sheer curiosity.

The Wingers (Left and Right). They’re every bit as good as the center; they just don’t usually get the spotlight. Which is fine by them. It’s not that they lack confidence, it’s that they prefer to play strong supporting roles. Off ice… Invite the whole team over for dinner and ask him to help. He’ll adore you forever.

The Defensemen. aka The Rescuers. They charge into the fray and put not only their bodies, but also their hearts and souls between the puck and the net. They’re usually the most unassuming guys on the ice. “It’s no big deal. It’s just my job.” Off ice… They live to be needed. Just don’t gush publicly over their rescue exploits. Privately… Everyone likes to be appreciated.

Contents

Prologue

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 Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Prologue

That had gone as well as could be expected, Catherine Talbott decided as she watched the team’s now former general manager storm out of the office. The door could probably be put back on the hinges. And if it couldn’t, she could live without one. She’d lived without a lot lately. She was actually getting good at it.

John Ingram—he who had just joined the ranks of disgruntled former employees—was somewhere in the administrative office shouting about Cat pretending to have a penis when Lakisha Leonard sauntered in through the mangled doorway.

Cat’s assistant flipped her assortment of beaded braids over her shoulder and arched a glitter-spangled brow. “He’s not happy.”

The understatement of the year. “People who get fired usually aren’t,” Cat pointed out, organizing the pile of bills on the desk in front of her and trying not to fixate on the huge, red PAST DUEs stamped on them.

“Carl isn’t going to be happy, either,” Lakisha said warily. “The two of them go way back together.”

“Yeah, well,” Catherine countered, setting aside the neat stack of bills with a sigh, “if I could find another coach willing to work for stale peanuts and flat beer, they could go forward together, too.”

Lakisha drew back slightly, puckered her lips and wiggled her nose back and forth. In the month since Catherine had inherited her brother’s hockey franchise, she’d seen Lakisha’s “rabbit look” often enough to know that there was something to be said. “What?” she asked, her pulse racing. “You know a decent coach who can be had cheap?”

“I didn’t want to mention it right off,” Lakisha began, looking like she really wasn’t all that excited about mentioning it now. “Your plate being as full as it is and all. You’ve barely had time to get your feet under you.”

“But?” Catherine pressed.

“Your brother was working on a plan.”

Of course he was. Tom had always been working on The Next Big Thing. All the intricate details of his various plots to take over the economic world had been scribbled on napkins from one end of his office to the other. Putting them together to actually understand the grand plan was proving to be a bit difficult, though. “I must have missed that particular note,” Catherine quipped, eyeing the pile on the credenza. “Do you happen to know which restaurant he had the brainstorm in?”

Lakisha selected a braid and rolled the beads between her fingers. “He said the time wasn’t right.”

“What, he was going to wait until the players filed pay grievances and the power company shut off the lights?”

“No.” The secretary abandoned her hair to consider the palm tree motifs on her impossibly long acrylic nails, then shrugged and turned away, saying, “I guess I could get you the file.”

“That would be nice,” Catherine muttered. She leaned back into the massive leather chair and closed her eyes. “It would have been even nicer a month ago.”

Tom might have owned the team, but the plain truth was that Lakisha Leonard was the one who made the machinery run. And turning the controls over to Tom’s baby sister wasn’t something she’d been willing to do without certified proof of competency.

It had been a grueling thirty days. But somewhere between hauling her life across two states, the endless meetings with the league’s governing board and getting the new season started, she’d somehow managed to assure Lakisha that Tom had indeed been of sound mind when he’d drawn up his last will and testament.

Of course Lakisha was the only one who believed it. Cat sure didn’t. The vote of the governing board was still out. The players, while terribly respectful, were openly uncomfortable. Carl Spady always called her “Little Lady” in a tone that implied that she really ought to be home baking a cake and doing the laundry. John Ingram had called her “Sweetie Pie.” Well, until she’d fired him for nonperformance and then Sweetie Pie had morphed into a power-hungry bitch.

And she could understand how he’d come to feel that way. He’d been the Warriors’ GM for the last ten years. But, as far as she could tell, he’d stopped putting any effort into it somewhere around the sixth. Tom had never called him on it. She had. Not because she could—as John had claimed—but because she simply hadn’t had any other option.

It was done, though. She’d put a man out of work. There was no going back, no point in wishing things were different. The franchise was on the financial rocks and what had to be done to save it had to be done. There was no one else to do it. It was the responsibility of ownership. She owed it to the players. To the fans. It was business. And while every bit of it was absolutely true, none of it made her feel any less guilty. Nice people didn’t make other people unhappy.

The dull click of beads announced Lakisha’s return and Cat opened her eyes just as a fat, brown expansion folder landed on top of the past due bills.

“There you go,” Lakisha announced, already on her way out again. “You read while I go make sure John doesn’t steal my only decent stapler. Replacing it could bankrupt us.”

That wasn’t all that much of an overstatement. Catherine sat forward and turned the folder around. Across the flap, written in Tom’s characteristic block lettering, was a name: Logan Dupree.

She slipped the band and pulled the contents out—a stack of papers, pieces large and small, of yellowed newsprint and glossy magazine and photo stock. The top one was a clipping from a long ago sports page. Lord, what a smile the kid had. Wide and bright and full of life. Eighteen-year-old Logan Dupree, the caption said, had been signed to play center for the Wichita Warriors, the minor league affiliate for the Edmonton Oilers. Tom had written at the bottom of the article: Des Moines. July, 1984.

Catherine mentally ran the math. Over twenty years ago. The kid wasn’t a kid anymore. He was almost into his forties. And two years younger than she was.

She flipped the clipping over, moving on to an eight-by-ten color publicity photo of Logan Dupree in a Wichita Warriors’ jersey. Sweater, she corrected herself with a quick wince. They called them sweaters. Pants were breezers. She had to remember those sorts of things. Like that the C on his left shoulder meant that he’d been the captain of the team. A manly man among men.

She skimmed Tom’s recruitment notes. At eighteen, Logan Dupree had been six foot two and weighed an even two hundred pounds. He shot left and had a slap shot clocked at eighty-seven miles an hour. Catherine grinned. Tom had failed to note that Logan Dupree had thick, dark hair, a chiseled jaw, cheekbones to kill for and the kind of deep brown, soulful eyes that could melt panties at fifty paces.

She worked her way down through the stack of newspaper clippings, photos and magazine articles, through Logan Dupree’s life. She read about his being called up to the majors, about his success there, the trades, the big money contracts, the houses, the cars, the beautiful women.

And she watched him, from picture to picture, change over those years. His shoulders broadened and his chest thickened. The angles of his face became even more defined, more ruggedly handsome. He developed a sense of presence, too; an in-your-face sort of confidence that made his good looks even more dashing, more dangerously appealing.

But it was his smile that changed the most. What had been wide and bright became studied and controlled. Genuine and real were replaced by superficial and plastic. The price of success had been his happiness. The sacrifice of himself. It was so sad.

“Get a grip,” she grumbled as she flipped through the photo spread from GQ, past a picture of Logan Dupree in a tux and seemingly unaware that he had a Hollywood starlet draped around his neck. “You don’t even know the man.”

She gasped and recoiled, then slapped her hand over the picture, unwilling to see any more of the gory details than she already had. The caption was sufficient. An accidental high stick. A freak injury. The sudden end of his playing career. Of his hopes for Lord Stanley’s cup.

And at the bottom of the article, highlighted in yellow, was a quote. “I’m not interested in coaching. If I can’t play, I’m done.” And beside it, in the margin, was a simple note in Tom’s handwriting: Ha!

Chapter One

Logan Dupree didn’t need more than one eye to tell him that the woman in the navy blue suit was a problem looking for a place to happen. He took a sip of his scotch and racked his brain, trying to put her into a place, into a group of people. And couldn’t. Which didn’t necessarily mean much. Long stretches of his memory were nothing more than a chemical-induced blur.

The boat beneath him rocked on the wake of a vessel slowly leaving the yacht club marina. The motion brought him back to the moment and the curly-haired blonde standing on the floating dock. She was shading her eyes from the Florida sun with one hand and studying the stern of his ship. In her other hand she clutched a battered leather bag.

He skimmed her from head to toes. Navy skirt, navy blazer, navy pumps with barely a heel. Run-of-the-mill stockings. A simple white blouse with the first two buttons left open. On a woman who had decent cleavage it would have been sexy. On her… She wasn’t a supermodel; that was for sure. Or a model, period. She was too short, too plain. Not his type at all. She looked more like a—

He dragged a slow, deep breath into his lungs and considered her again with narrowed eyes. A reporter? No, reporters almost always had a photographer in tow. A lawyer? Yeah, that was the more likely possibility. She was wearing the uniform. Logan thought back, ticking through the calendar and the parade of women who’d knotted his sheets over the last year. There weren’t that many of them; his stock had plummeted the day they’d announced that he’d never again meet the NHL’s vision requirements.

But in the years before that there had been a hell of a lot of women. Most of them without names that he could recall on the spur of the moment. Which was about as clearly as he could recall the particulars of their encounters. Safe sex was automatic, though. Even when three sheets to the wind. If this woman was here to threaten him with a paternity suit…

Good luck, lady, he silently challenged as he watched her move farther out on the floating dock. She was halfway between the stern and the gangplank when she managed to get her heel caught in the space between the dock boards. He winced as it brought her up short, smiled as she frowned down at it and then wrenched it free with a little growl. She shoved her foot back into her shoe and immediately started forward again. And without looking around to see if anyone had seen the graceless moment. He took another sip of his drink and decided that he had to give her points for that.

“Good morning,” she said brightly as she came to a halt at the base of the gangplank. “I’m looking for a Mr. Logan Dupree. Would that happen to be you?”

She had to know damn good and well who he was. She wouldn’t have found him if someone in corporate hadn’t pointed her this way. But that realization paled beside another that swept over him in the next second. She had the bluest eyes. Bright blue. With the hair and the “kiss me” mouth… God, put her in a frilly little costume and she’d look like one of those dolls off the Home Shopping Network. “Maybe,” he answered. “It depends on who you are and what you want.”

She smiled. “May I come aboard?”

He wanted to say no. He really did. Instead, he shrugged, dredged up a smile he hoped passed for polite, set his drink on the table beside him, and levered himself up out of the deck chair. She didn’t wait for him to step over to the railing and offer her a hand up the ramp, though. No, she vaulted up the narrow walkway all on her own and without catching her heel and toppling over into the water.

Logan released the breath he’d been holding as she gestured to the other chair on the deck and asked brightly, “May I have a seat?”

He nodded and watched as she lowered herself into it with an easy, confident smile, smoothing the skirt over the curves of her hip and backside as she did. They were really nice curves, he had to admit as she put the bag down between them.

She waited until he’d taken his own seat again before sticking out her hand and saying, “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Catherine Talbott.”

The name meant absolutely nothing to him, but he politely shook her hand and replied, “Ma’am,” while bracing himself to remember a string of names followed by Attorneys at Law.

“Tom Wolford was my brother.”

The fact that he’d guessed her wrong was hammered into oblivion as the past slammed forward, crisp and clear. Tom Wolford, standing in the shadows and exhaust clouds of the Wichita bus station, a vending machine ham sandwich in one hand, a can of pop in the other. The big man lumbering forward to throw a welcoming arm around the shoulders of an already homesick kid and lead him off into the world of minor league hockey. The pair of plaid polyester pants, white belt, white shoes, the hat with the crimped crown and the narrow brim… The half cigar that was never lit but always clamped in the corner of his mouth….

Tom Wolford. Daddy Warbucks. The old days and the first foot in the door. It had been a long time since Logan had looked that far back. Now that looking forward wasn’t an option, maybe he could afford the luxury of reminiscing every now and then. It had been, what—almost five years since they’d last spoken? He should call Tom and— Logan blinked and frowned. “Did you say was?”

She nodded ever so slightly and her smile looked tired. “He passed away a little over a month ago. A heart attack.”

“Unless he’d changed a lot in the last fourteen years,” Logan said as his throat tickled, “it couldn’t have been an unexpected one.”

Catherine Talbott’s smile faded on a sigh and shrug of her slim shoulders. “No, it really wasn’t. Still…”

Logan silently swore and kicked himself. “I’m sorry,” he offered sincerely. “I can be a real clod sometimes. Tom was a decent man. I owe him a lot and I’m sorry he’s gone.”

Tucking her hair behind her ears, Catherine Talbott managed a slightly brighter smile. “I was hoping you’d feel that way.”

Duh! his brain groaned. The memorial plaque. The endowment of some fund for underprivileged kids’ sports. He’d been tapped for such things before. It came with making the pro ranks. He knew the drill from beginning to end. “Oh, yeah?” he drawled, wondering how much she had in mind. “Why?”

“Tom left me the team.”

As responses went, it didn’t even come close to his expectations. “You own the Wichita Warriors?” he asked, having a hard time getting his brain wrapped around the image of Shirley Temple sitting behind Tom’s huge metal desk.

“Yes, I do.”

The assurance didn’t help one bit. “What does Millie think of that?”

“Well… She’s…”

The obvious hesitation sent a cold jolt through his veins. “Millie’s not dead, too, is she?”

“No, no,” she hurriedly answered. “My sister-in-law is very much alive.” She hesitated and took a noticeably deep breath before she added, “But she has dementia. There are good days and there are not so good days.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he offered again, thinking that he was beginning to sound a little too much like a parrot. A socially retarded parrot. He used to be a lot better at this sort of thing.

“It’s one of the risks of growing old,” she went on. “You don’t have much choice except to deal with what life gives you. Tom provided well for her, though. Millie doesn’t want for anything now, and there’s money to see her through even a long decline. She’s not going to be pushing a grocery cart around town and eating out of Dumpsters.”

Millie eat out of Dumpsters? Never. Not even demented. Where Tom had been the loud impresario, Millie had been the perfect princess. “That’s good to know. I can’t tell you how many Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter dinners I had at Millie’s house. She always made sure that we weren’t alone those days.”

“She still does the bring-all-your-friends spreads. With a little help now, of course. We did a backyard brat and potato salad affair when all the players came in for the new season.”

God, it was so small-town, so Wichita. So incredibly minor league. “I’ll bet everyone had a real good time.”

She nodded and then her smile faded on another sigh. “Until Tom collapsed.”

Oh shit. He should have seen it coming. The nod followed by the sigh was the tip-off. He couldn’t offer apologies again. He just couldn’t. He’d choke to death if he even tried. “So,” he ventured, then cleared his throat as subtly as he could. “How are the Warriors doing these days?”

“Well,” she drawled, “that depends on your perspective, I suppose.”

Uh-oh. Evasion was never a good sign. She was working up to something. The something that had brought her halfway across the country. And odds were it wasn’t to hit him up for a memorial contribution. “You’re a month into the season. What’s the win-loss record?”

“Two wins, ten losses,” she supplied with a little grimace.

Bad. Really bad. “Why are they losing?”

“I wish I could tell you, Mr. Dupree, but I don’t know anything about hockey.”

Gee, there was a surprise. “What are your GM and coaching staff saying?” he pressed.

She seemed to chew the inside of her cheek as she stared off over the water. “That it’s not their fault,” she finally answered. “That Tom didn’t spend enough to get the talent necessary to win.”

Yeah, it was usually someone else’s fault. And dead guys made perfect scapegoats. “Is it true?”

“Looking at the books,” she replied, still staring off, “I’d have to say that he spent all that he could. And then some.”

And then some? There it was. The Warriors were in financial trouble and as the club’s poster boy for Big Dreams, he was the logical choice for White Knight, too. “Let’s cut to the chase, Ms. Talbott,” he said firmly. “Why are you here? What do you want from me? A bailout?”

Her gaze came back to his with a snap and a blink. “Well, yes. In a—”

“How much to take the ink from red to black?” he demanded, not caring that he sounded irritated. He was irritated.

“I don’t want your money, Mr. Dupree,” she challenged as she squared her shoulders and her blue eyes flashed icy fire. “I want your talent. And I’m willing to pay you for it.”