Her Family's Defender. Kim Findlay

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       CHAPTER ONE

      TROY HAD NEVER realized that the carpet in the hallway of his condo building had green in the pattern. But then, he’d never had his nose shoved into it before. As he breathed in the musty odor, he tried to assess just how much trouble he was in.

      A crazy fan had somehow flipped Troy over, pinned his arm behind his back and sat on him. Not good. On the other hand, he was bigger than she was, and he should be able to get free; he just didn’t want to do any damage to his arm while he did so. Training camp was starting soon, and after missing all of last year, he needed to be healthy and ready to play.

      Troy was a professional athlete, he was single and, in his opinion, pretty good-looking. He’d been a key part of the hockey team who’d won the Cup in a hockey-crazy city that hadn’t won that prize for more than fifty years. So he had fans. But he’d never had one go so overboard that she’d snuck into his condo building, followed him into the elevator and then somehow dropped him to the floor. He’d be happy not to have another.

      Why hadn’t he paid more attention to the woman who’d followed him into the elevator? He’d been thinking of the day he’d spent on the water, wondering if he should get a boat for himself instead of checking her for her ranking on the crazy meter.

      Which would be in the red zone.

      He hadn’t really noticed her until he was ready to get out on the penthouse level. There were only two condos on this floor: Troy’s and Mrs. Epps’s. Mrs. Epps was about eighty, Troy estimated, and she was away, so she wasn’t inviting guests over. The only place this woman could be going was Troy’s.

      Troy enjoyed being popular with fans. He especially enjoyed being popular with female fans. A couple of them had become very popular with him. But he preferred to be the one choosing, and even if she’d been one of his leggy blondes, he didn’t want a puck bunny tonight.

      So when the door pinged open on the penthouse floor, and she started to exit, he put his arm across the open door to block her progress.

      “Sorry, sweetheart. You’re not getting out—” he told her, adding a hint of a smile to soften the blow.

      The next thing he knew, he was examining the pattern on the carpet while the elevator doors softly closed behind him.

      “Do you have a problem?” Troy asked, calling on his reserves of patience. He’d seen the movie Misery. He couldn’t wait too long to get up if she was a real nutcase. But maybe he could convince her to get off him. And more important, protect his arm from any real damage.

      “I don’t have a problem now,” the woman responded. “But you will when the police arrive.”

      Police? He’d welcome them, or even building security. What kind of crazy was this woman?

      “I’m not the trespasser here, so you go ahead and call the cops and give yourself up,” he said as assertively as he could while breathing in who knows what from the carpet. He was going to have to talk to someone about the cleaning in this building.

      “I’m not trespassing,” she argued, rustling through her bag with one hand while keeping the other on his twisted arm.

      “There are two people living on this floor. I’m one and an eighty-year-old woman is the other. Since she’s away and not getting too many visitors right now, you’re going to have trouble selling that story.”

      “Mrs. Epps is letting us stay in her place while she’s on vacation,” the woman responded. She’d stopped groping around in her purse. Troy wasn’t sure if that was progress. He’d hoped she was searching for her phone to call the cops. Now she had both hands free to use on him. He wished he’d looked at her a little closer. He was starting to entertain the notion that she might be dangerous. She’d appeared harmless, but she obviously had some skills, since he was incapacitated on the floor, and she’d done enough research to have discovered not only where he lived, but also that Mrs. Epps was his neighbor and currently on vacation. It was adding up to stalker in his books.

      “Nice try. Why don’t we call security and ask them about this?” he suggested. Crap. He was going to sneeze. Would she break his arm if he did?