Playing To Win. Taryn Leigh Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ nodded, glancing over at Jay, who avoided meeting his gaze. “Sounded like hockey talk to me.”

      “What? No.”

      “Yes,” he countered, matching her wide-eyed tone. “It really did. I’m a bit of an expert on the subject. Salt Lake City, Vancouver, first round. Definite hockey talk.”

      Luke had already nailed the fact that she was using this job to angle for a promotion. If she confirmed it by dropping the shtick, he could have her fired before she even got started. The best way to reassure him that she was harmless was to be harmless.

      Holly’s laugh was both forced and slightly manic as she shooed his words away with the dainty flick of her hand. “Oh, that. I was just telling Jay about...uh—” Think, Holly. Think! “—the numerology class I took.” She nodded, warming to the story. “Yeah, really interesting stuff. I was explaining how it can help you make decisions about important things. Like which handbag to buy. Or in Jay’s case, he’s doing some hockey thing with his friends and I was showing him how he could use it to pick teams.”

      “Cool. I’d love to see how it works.” He raised an eyebrow to punctuate the challenge, and she couldn’t quite hold back her frown. But she’d come this far. Might as well go all-in.

      Holly could almost swear she saw something like respect in his blue eyes as she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders.

      “Uh, yeah. I just added up the letters in Vancouver—A is one, B is two and so on, your typical cipher—and then you take whatever the sum is, add those numbers together if it’s more than a single digit and you have it. And in this case, it was equal to nine. Jay’s birthday is September ninth, so obviously Vancouver is the luckier team for him.”

      Luke smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “So it has nothing to do with the fact that Vancouver is a team with enough depth and experience that it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that they’ll knock Salt Lake out of the first round?”

      Holly shrugged. “What can I say? The numbers don’t lie.”

      “Sorry to interrupt...whatever this is, but I gotta use the can,” Jay announced. “Down the hall and to the left?” he confirmed, and Luke nodded. The members of the Portland Storm were so superstitious that she and Jay had been asked to trek all the way to the building’s public washrooms because no one but the team was allowed in the dressing-room bathroom on game day.

      The two of them watched Jay leave, and she used the silence to regroup. She felt much more formidable when her adversary’s baby blues swung back in her direction.

      Until he said, “What is your game?”

      “Game?”

      His laugh was derisive, but kind of sexy for all that. “You’re not fooling anyone. I know something’s up with you and I intend to figure out what it is.”

      Oh great. That was all she needed, this handsome bastard messing up the most real-life, on-camera experience on her résumé. She might not like this job, but it was good experience, and she certainly wasn’t going to lose it by making him suspicious on the second day.

      “Up to something?” She placed a hand on her chest like a Southern belle. “Me?”

      His parry was a narrowing of his pretty blue eyes. “Something has been bugging me about your act since the moment we met.”

      “Oh, you mean that time you were so unchivalrous as to walk away from me without answering my question?”

      “So I asked myself,” he continued, without missing a beat, “why would someone who disliked sports so much that she asked about beards instead of the game bother to make a fake sports show? And the only answer I could come up with was, she wouldn’t. The way I see it, you have your own agenda, and it’s not going to do any of the members of this team any good.”

      Holly shook her head, eyes wide like an ingenue. “I don’t know what you mean. The Women’s Hockey Network is all about asking the kinds of questions we girls find important, such as what kind of cologne do you wear?”

      He smelled so good she was actually a little curious.

      “Oh, really? You’re gonna keep up the act?”

      Luke stepped closer. His big body sucked up all the oxygen, and her breath came faster to compensate. Who knew having a man accuse you of being smart was such a turn-on?

      “That’s the only question you want to ask me? I’ll give you a free pass, on the record. Ask me anything. No holds barred. Nothing’s off-limits. And I guarantee you a real answer. I promise not to say ‘no comment.’”

      Holly’s hand clenched into a fist.

      Any question. On the record. The reporting equivalent to winning the lottery.

      She could ask about his brother’s accident. Be the only reporter ever to get a statement on the one topic that was off-limits when interviewing Luke Maguire. Hear in his own words how it felt to be back in the play-offs for the first time since tragedy struck.

      And she wanted to. She wanted to ask more than she wanted her next breath. But she wasn’t supposed to know anything about hockey, so she restrained herself. Because if she took the bait, she would confirm that when given the opportunity, she’d put her ambition before the team. And she’d be done here. He could not only get her fired, but ruin her career. She had to keep her eye on the prize. She had to believe that one day, she would earn that story from him on her own merit, not as blackmail, and it would be worth the wait.

      So she did what was best for her career and took a deep, centering breath. Man, he really does smell amazing. “Seriously, is that the new Hugo Boss fragrance?”

      He narrowed his eyes and the crease between his brows deepened. It made him look even sexier, if that was possible.

      “I’ve got my eye on you, Evans.”

      Not exactly the part of him she wanted on her just then, but probably the safest of the available options.

      “I’m going to figure out what you’re doing here and I’m going to expose you.”

      Geez. Everything sounded sexual when he was standing this close. She upped the ante and took a half step closer to him—she definitely wasn’t going to let him intimidate her in this sexy game of cat and mouse they’d embarked on. If he thought she was going to let him be the cat, he was so very wrong. She’d been holding her own in a man’s world for a long time.

      “You can try, but there’s nothing to expose. What you see is what you get.”

      “Oh, I very much doubt that, Ms. Evans. The truth is hiding somewhere behind that big hair and tiny suit.”

      “Look at me, Mr. Maguire. You honestly think there’s room to hide anything under this suit?”

      Her breath stuttered at the sudden fierceness in his eyes, the predatory gleam that pinned her in place. Were their lips getting closer because he was leaning in, or had she swayed toward him?

      She was drawn to his body, hard as iron and just as magnetic. Her fingers brushed his biceps as his hands made first contact with her waist. She didn’t want to stop looking at him, but her eyelids СКАЧАТЬ