Power Play (Center Ice Book 2) (2 page)

Fiona leans forward, green eyes flashing, bosom heaving, and I’m so entranced by that span of creamy flesh looming in my face that I barely catch her rant. Which is a goddamn shame. Or it would be, if I wasn’t imagining myself being smothered between those breasts while she gives me a tongue lashing to end all lashings—

“—think that you’re god’s gift both to hockey and women, and that your actions don’t have consequences. That anyone who tries to criticize you must be coming from a place of ignorance, or hate, and that they might not have any real,
valid
concerns about the way you conduct yourself. Well, guess what, Marcus.  You’re a pig, and you’re a liar, and you’re only half as talented as you think you are. You deserve to be taken down a peg, and it’s a goddamned shame no one before me was willing to do it. The Eagles would be better off trading you, or sending you back to the farm teams to learn some goddamned discipline. You’re skating by on some great momentum right now, but you’re hiding something. You have to be. And sooner or later, I am going to force it out of you, one way or another, and you’ll wish you’d just shut up and listened to me the first time.”

My jaw hangs open as I stare at her, this fiery goddess. She’s right about one thing—no one’s ever spoken me to this way before.

Not unless I was paying them.

“Have dinner with me,” I blurt.

She blinks furiously, flustered, mouth twisting into all kinds of adorably confused shapes. “What?” she finally manages to stammer out. Then, fumbling to shut off her phone, “No!”

“No. Please. I want to hear more about everything you think I’m doing wrong.” I bat my eyes at her.

Her nose crinkles up. “You’re . . . strange.”

My smile fades. I stare right at her, at that fierce gaze, those pillowy lips, that forced confidence in her posture. She’s nervous, shaking after her tirade. Not used to showing her abrasive side. Like maybe, for her, it’s both a shield and a weapon, too.

“I think you’re the same kind of strange as me.”

Her lips part. She looks up at me, really, truly seeing me for the first time. Maybe she catches my meaning, maybe not, but it’s almost like I can see the dots connecting in her head. I hold my palms out toward her, facing up. Gingerly, she lays her palms against mine.

“Have dinner with me, Fiona. No voice recorders, no masks.” I curl my fingers so I’m just barely gripping her hands in mine. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

She swallows, looking too shocked to be angry with me, though I’m sure her temper will return soon. “You’ll tell me what I want to know?” she whispers.

“I’ll do much better.” I grin again. “I’ll show you.”

She pulls her hands from mine and folds them in her lap. Runs her tongue over her lips—dear
god
, does she know how sexy that looks? Then, slowly, she nods. “Okay.”

“Excellent.” I stand up and snatch my gym bag from the ground in one swift motion, then sling it over my shoulder just in time to conceal the major tenting action I still have going on. “I’ll see you at Sakura downtown at eight.”

“I’ll be there,” she echoes, still looking confused.

Dammit, Marcus. I curse myself as soon as I’m out of the green room and winding my way out of the Eagles Arena. She’s digging into what happened in college, and you’re going to give her the power to interrogate you even more?

But that’s always been my problem. Control. Power. They’re my favorite sort of games.

By giving her this small bit of power over me, I’m hoping to control the conversation.

. . . But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want her to resist.

A dinner date with Marcus Wright. He of the dimpled grin and obvious erection and yet impossible to resist way of enduring my trademark Fiona Callahan beatdowns and grinning all the while. What the hell was I thinking?

I can already hear Mum’s voice ringing in my head.
Journalistic integrity, Fiona. We must prize journalistic integrity above all.
Going to dinner with your investigative subject shows a lack of integrity. Toying with your very hot interview subject shows a lack of integrity. Ogling your investigative subject while he’s flexing and flying on the ice—

Oh, for flip’s sake, Fiona, get a grip on yourself.
I pat myself on the cheeks to jar me back to reality. It’s just dinner. No recorders—he said so himself. I know how to keep my personal life separate from my professional life.

It’s been pretty easy to do so, really. Seeing as how my personal life has been nonexistent for quite some time. But the point remains.

I tug the belt tight on my Burberry trench coat and step out into the crisp December air. I’m due at the editorial meeting for the school newspaper on campus at three, but I have some time to kill. Normally I’d spend it double-checking my columnists’ progress on their respective assignments or following up on my source leads, but I already know what’s awaiting me. A big, fat nothing.

College newspapers. Land of the tragically half-assed. The only columnist who ever turns his assignments in on time is the bearded Media Studies guy who won’t shut up about how
Reservoir Dogs
is the greatest movie ever made. When he’s not complaining about the evils of the friend zone, that is.

I give my phone a little pat inside my purse and slip into my favorite downtown lounge for a dirty martini and an hour of editing and note-taking. Only a few more months, and I’ll be free. Working my way up the ranks of the Astro News Service, if all goes well. If I can make something of my investigative looks at the Washington Eagles, then it should go
very
well indeed.

No sooner do I get my drink and get into the zone outlining my big article, though, does Skype pop up with an incoming call. BRIGID CALLAHAN. Oh, flip me. I straighten my hair, angle my laptop toward the back wall so it doesn’t totally look like I’m in a bar, and hit accept.

“Hi, Mum.”

Brigid Callahan pixelates into focus. A gauzy scarf drapes loose over her deep auburn hair; even with the poor image quality, I can make out the deep smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes. She’s always been model-thin, but it’s too sharp now, like her current assignment’s been whittling her away.

“Fiona, darling.” She leans toward her screen, eyebrows scrunching up. “Are you drinking? Isn’t it lunchtime over there?”

“No, I—I mean, just a little with my lunch, I—How can you tell that?” I stammer. I move the empty martini glass beside me to back behind my laptop.

“Your neck is flushed. It always flushes red when you drink.” She presses her lips into a thin line. “I was going to ask how your investigation was going, but I suppose that tells me all I need to know.”

I prop my chin into my hands. “It’s going fine, Mum. I’m making good progress.” Then, before she gets a chance to ask for more details, I ask, “How about you?”

Mum sighs and leans back from the screen. “Oh, it’s about as well as can be expected out here. The rebels are mostly cooperative, but they’re reluctant to open up to a woman, you know, and they don’t think I can possibly comprehend the nuanced details of their political stance. Meanwhile, the regime’s men are starting to raise a fit with our camera crew, threatening to confiscate our equipment, and the like. We’re trying to keep everything stored in the cloud, but it’s not easy when you have to rely on satellite uplinks for connectivity.”

Oh, yes, Mum, we all know of the challenges of reporting live from a warzone. Brigid Callahan, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. I know the college paper’s staff think I’m a real nutcracker, but they don’t understand—I learned from the best.

Whether I got her prize-winning genes or not, however, remains to be seen.

“Anyhow, it’s nothing we didn’t anticipate. I’ll have my first piece for it on the site by evening your time, I think, if you care to take a look.” She smiles. “But back to your work . . .”

I hold back a groan. Now would be a great time for her satellite uplink to cut out. Nothing serious, no mortar fire on her position or anything, just some light cosmic interference.

“The FBI is stonewalling me on the details of the Drakonov case,” I explain. “I managed to line up an interview with one of my classmates, who played a role in the whole ordeal, but until she’s out of the hospital—gunshot wound—everything else is going cold.”

“There are no cold cases,” Mum says, reciting it with the same weariness she usually reserves for bubbly news anchors. “Only cold trails. Find yourself a better trail.”

“Well, I think I’ve got one.”

I hesitate. I’m not sure I’m ready to push Marcus Wright into Mum’s clutches just yet. He’d completely surprised me in the interview this morning. I was expecting the typical overconfident jock, but he was playful. Clever. And absolutely, positively feeding me a line of bullshit.

What really surprised me, though, was how quickly I was able to strike a nerve. I was casting around in the dark, pushing whatever buttons I’d found to push, but there was no mistaking the change in his entire demeanor the moment I brought up his college record. For good reason. He’d had a stellar record—dean’s list, on track for magna cum laude, and enrolled in difficult classes, too. Business finance and engineering management. Not sure what he intended to do with those, but no exercise science for Wright.

He’d left the College of Jefferson & Adams early for a reason, and I just can’t shake the feeling that reason wasn’t the Washington Eagles.

“Well?” Mum asks. “Are you pursuing it?”

Pursuing—yeah, that’s one word for it, Mum. I’d agreed to dinner with Marcus Wright.
Dinner.
Guys don’t ask me to dinner. Either they go straight for the kill, or they get as far away from me as possible. Jae-eun, my assistant at the paper, is the queen of understatement: “Well, Fi, I think they find you a little bit . . . intimidating.”

Like it’s so flippin’ terrible to know exactly what I want, and refuse to settle for less.

Like I’ll never find a guy who feels the same way.

I grimace. Okay, so far, I
haven’t
found a guy willing to deal with me for any longer than it takes him to yank his jeans back up and go running for the nearest cab. But there’s got to be one out there. Right?

No cold cases. Only cold trails.

“Yeah. I’m pursuing it.” Suddenly, I’m aware I’m smiling. I quickly correct that and reach for my keyboard. “Okay, Mum, glad to hear you’re safe for now—I’ve really got to get going—”

“Don’t you dare rush me off, Fifi darling.” Mum’s face turns dark and terrifying on the screen. “I haven’t been bellycrawling beneath the regime’s suppressing fire and interviewing scumbag warlords who can’t decide if they want to bed me or deport me just to have my only child treat me like a disposable trinket.”

I flinch. As if there’s any question which side of the family my personality comes from. “Please don’t call me Fifi. I’m not five anymore.”

“I’ve raised you on my own for the past thirteen years. I’ll call you whatever I please.”

My waiter swings by to check on me, and when he sees I’m on a call, makes a gesture toward my empty martini glass.
Another
, I mouth. He collects the empty glass with a nod.

“It sounds to me,” Mum continues, “that your piece is rather
disjointed
. Minimal details on the team’s ties to organized crime, and then a few other scattershot leads. I’m not sensing a cohesive narrative to your work.”

“The narrative is that major sports franchises deserve closer scrutiny.” I curl one hand into a fist under the table. “We pour all our money and attention into them, and what are we really getting out of it? The glorification of violence. Criminal links. Violent and abusive behavior from some of the biggest names. All of it perpetuating a misogynistic, materialistic culture—”

“Now, now, I’m not disagreeing.” Mum holds up one hand. “But you’ve lost the thread, dear.”

No, you’ve lost your thread.
I cross my arms.

“I know the professors at that overpaid daycare they call a university these days would gladly accept any bit of fecal matter smeared across the page. But Gunther’s going to expect a higher standard from you. Much higher.”

Gunther Bernhardt. The founder and CEO of Insight News. Mum’s boss. He’s “expressed an interest” in my senior thesis, my long-form investigation into violence and crime in sports culture. But I haven’t had the heart—or, okay, the guts—to tell Mum that I’m applying for a job with Astro, as well.

“I’ll get there. Promise. I just need a little more time.”

Mum smiles, all teeth and cold. “I know you’ll do your best.”

Maybe from other people’s parents, that’d sound like sweet words of encouragement. But I know her too well. It’s a threat.

“Fiona?” Mum leans toward the camera again, her hazel eyes looming large on my screen. “You aren’t saddling yourself with any further . . . distractions, are you?”

Flippin’ kill me.

I tell my mother—my own flesh and blood, a woman I’m reasonably sure has had sex at least
once
in her life, or I wouldn’t be here—about a boy one time.
One time.
A boy who broke my heart, as all boys inevitably do to Callahan women. And all she can do now is lord it over me. A reminder that my judgment is not to be trusted; that men are there to respect us, not to love us; that I’m far better off focusing on my own goals and dreams than trying to satisfy any ephemeral need for male attention I might have.

And, all right, I’ll admit it. I do like to satisfy that ephemeral need from time to time. I don’t mind using the bountiful boobs and, as Mum calls them, “good Catholic hips” she gave me, if it means clearing my head. But it’s getting harder and harder to find a guy willing to let me be in charge. Apparently, if I’m not limp and bland as string cheese, guys aren’t interested in me anymore. They want to call the shots.

Marcus Wright, though . . . he didn’t seem to mind when I bared some teeth. I dare say it even turned him on. I can count on one hand the number of guys willing to let me call them on their own bullshit, and not immediately call me a bitch, a cunt, a lesbo, a slut. And the way he smiled and held his chin high—

“Oh, lord in heaven, there is someone, isn’t there?”

“What?” I jolt back to the present. “No! No, Mum, seriously, there isn’t anyone—”

“Don’t lie to me, Fiona.” She thins her lips. “It doesn’t become you to lie.”

“I’m not. Honest. I was just thinking—about how much work I have to get done.” I groan, wishing that
were
a lie. “Finals in two weeks, then I have to spend all of my winter break working on this piece . . .”

“Finals shouldn’t be a problem for you, as long as you’ve been on top of your studies,” Mum says.

“Yes, doing just fine!” God, I have to get away from her. “Well, Mum, you stay safe—I really do have to go now.” I rub my hands together—my palms are sweaty—and position one finger over the End Call button.