LITMIR.BIZ

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as entertain the notion that coaching the Warriors might be a more productive use of his life than drinking the days away on his boat and feeling sorry for himself. So much for nice thoughts. Basking in the sun and polluting his liver was a slow road to hell. Coaching the Warriors would be like getting there on the bullet train.

      Logan checked his watch. Ten o’clock. They’d already rolled up the ramps and shut down the airport for the night, so he was stuck until the first morning flight to civilization at six. How to kill eight hours in the middle of a Wichita night had always been a problem and from what he’d been able to tell on his trip from the airport to the Coliseum, no one had come close to solving it in the fourteen years he’d been gone.

      The options tonight were the same as they’d been from October through April for almost all of his adult life: go back to the hotel, drink in the bar until they closed it down, leave a wake-up call request, crash a couple of hours and then stumble to the terminal gate with a raging headache so he could do it all over again the next night in another town. The beauty of his boat was not having to do all the stumbling between point A and point B.

      Snagging the overpriced, too glossy program from the cement floor, Logan rolled it into a tube, shoved himself up out of the hard plastic seat and headed toward the exit just as the final buzzer sounded. He paused and turned back to check the scoreboard—12–0. He was thinking that the Ice Bats had shown the Warriors some mercy when his gaze slipped past the scoreboard to the sky boxes along the east wall.

      Only two were lit. One was the press box with a pair of announcers undoubtedly trying to wrap up a dismal show. The other contained a single, slim figure with blond curly hair. Catherine Talbott stood alone in the owner’s box, her arms folded across her chest and her head bowed as though she were praying for a miracle. She needed one, he knew. Just as he knew that he wasn’t going to be it.

      Logan shook his head and was turning away when his conscience squirmed. With a wince, he stopped again. He’d already given her offer way more time, money and consideration than it deserved. And he’d told her yesterday before she’d walked off his boat that he wouldn’t take the job, that he didn’t want or need it. There was no reason for her to hear it again. It would be cruel to go up to that sky box. It’d be like rubbing salt in an open wound; she had to feel bad enough already.

      Cool reasoning didn’t settle his conscience. It prickled and then clenched tight like some long neglected, suddenly over-exercised muscle. With a growl, Logan eyed the sky box again, wondering just what the hell he could say to her that might be anywhere near encouraging or optimistic. Hey, at least you didn’t have to call an ambulance. Cheer up, they won two of the fifteen fights. Lady, if someone wants to buy this loser franchise, sell it!

      Logan blinked, and in that same second the lights in the owner’s booth winked out. The scoreboard went dark in the next. He considered the now silent arena and the scarred, shaved ice below. Wichita had never been a great hockey town; it was too far south, too far north and nowhere near cosmopolitan enough to bring in transplants from the parts of the country where hockey was a way of life. It didn’t matter how bad or how good the Warriors were; it had never made a difference and never would.

      Tom Wolford had spent his life swimming against the tide. And from the looks of things, he’d been pretty well swept out to sea for his effort. If Catherine Talbott didn’t know that the odds were stacked against her, then someone needed to be bluntly honest about it. It didn’t have to be him. It wasn’t like there was some big ledger book that said he owed her anything.

      Aw, hell. Who was he kidding? Getting the hard stuff done had always been his job.

      Cat leaned back against the grille of her ancient Jeep and crossed her ankles. The team’s just as ancient bus idled on the far side of the private parking lot, its running lights glowing bright orange in the crisp autumn night, the storage doors open, the driver standing beside them, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the team to file out and board. A good fifty feet separated the bus from the rear doors of the Coliseum. Cat considered the space, wondering what she should say to the players as they passed. Good game! probably wasn’t going to cut it. Even she knew that tonight’s game had been beyond pathetic. Telling them they’d win next time wasn’t something she thought she could choke out. At least not sincerely. Chewing Carl Spady up one side and down the other might cheer them up for a while. Or not. Most of the players had been on the team long enough to know that their coach would react by making their next practice a revenge-fest.

      Of course she could just jump in her car and drive off before she had to face them. Cowardly, yes, but it would spare them all the awkwardness of trying to be upbeat. But it would also leave the players with nothing to counter Carl’s infamously nasty potshots. Why Tom hadn’t dumped him years ago was a mystery she hadn’t been able to solve. There had been nothing in the scribbled-on napkins to give her so much as a clue.

      She was wondering about the therapeutic value of a good cry when the rear door of the arena squeaked on its hinges. Putting self-indulgence on hold, she stared down at the gravel just long enough to summon a smile and then lifted her head to give it to the man coming through the doorway.

      The smile evaporated the instant the shape of the dark silhouette registered in her brain. The player had changed into his street clothes; they all did before boarding the bus. Always. And they always had their gear bags over their shoulder and their sticks in their hand as they went that way. Except this time, this player. He’d left his gear behind. God, was he quitting the team? Were they all packing it up and leaving it behind?

      “You can’t!” she cried, vaulting off the front of her car to stand in the path of the player made featureless by the dark. “As long as you play, there’s hope. If you quit, it’s gone.”

      “Empty hope doesn’t count for much.”

      She knew the voice. Her heart actually fluttered, just before it shot up into her throat and cut off her air supply. “Logan Dupree?” she croaked out, her oxygen-deprived brain suggesting that she throw herself into his arms and kiss him senseless.

      “I’m surprised I’m here, too,” he drawled with a lopsided smile as he stopped in front of her.

      God, even in the dark he was so damn good-looking. And so tall. So broad shouldered. Throwing herself into his arms would require a running leap. The automatic half step back sparked some common sense. Swallowing around her stupid heart, Cat leaned back against the grille of her car and asked as nonchalantly as she could, “Do you want the free story now or later?”

      “Never will be fine,” he replied, settling in beside her and crossing his arms over his chest. “There isn’t enough money in the world to get me to sign on to this disaster you call a team.”

      Her heart dropped like a lead weight into the pit of her stomach. He wasn’t here to be her knight in shining armor. “Please lower your voice,” she said, desperately trying to anchor herself and hoping she didn’t sound as dizzy and queasy as she felt. Thank God she hadn’t done the grateful damsel routine. “The players will be coming out and they don’t need to hear themselves being run down.”

      “They’re not stupid,” he pointed out quietly. “They know they suck.”

      The choice was between crying, throwing up, or going on the defensive. “Well, they don’t need to hear anyone else say it,” she countered, lifting her chin. “That would be mean. And I happen to believe—contrary to what Carl thinks—that you don’t get people to improve by focusing on the negatives.”

      “If you don’t look at the negatives, there’s no way you’ll ever turn them into positives.”

      “But where’s the motivation to improve if there’s never a word of praise for the things you do right and well?”

      “Okay, I’ll give you that one.” The shrug that went with the concession said that he considered it a very minor one.

      God, she didn’t want to ask, but she had to. Just had to. “Do they do anything right or well?”

      “Well,” he said slowly enough that she knew he was searching,

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