LITMIR.BIZ

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      Yes, they were her boys. And they had heart. They went out and took the beatings night after night. If they were willing to step up and keep trying, then she couldn’t do any less. Her stomach settling and her brain coming back to earth, she stared at the idling bus and asked, “So if they can skate, why don’t they win?”

      “Consultants make big money, you know.”

      His voice was light, his words edged with amusement. He wasn’t going to hold out on her. Cat smiled. “And the owners of struggling minor league teams don’t have big money. Could we work out a trade of some sort?”

      “What are you offering?”

      Her body if it were twenty years younger. “Dinner and drinks?” She sweetened the offer by adding, “At the best sports bar in town.”

      He turned his head and grinned at her. “Toss in the ten dollar story and you’ve got a deal.”

      “Deal,” she said, resisting the urge to stick out her hand by shoving both of them in the hip pockets of her jeans. “So tell me why they don’t win.”

      “They don’t play as a team.”

      She waited, watching him out the corner of her eye. He seemed fascinated by the lighting on the water tower over at the Greyhound Park. “And?”

      “That’s the biggie.”

      “For dinner, drinks and the story, I want the smallies, too.”

      He frowned. “Are you still thinking about stepping behind the bench and coaching?”

      And he’d complained about her not signaling unexpected turns? “Let’s just say that the possibility is looming large,” she replied. “You’ve seen what Carl Spady’s got going. Do you think I could do any worse?”

      “Probably not,” he allowed as a smile slowly tipped up the corners of his mouth. Still studying the water tower, he said, “You’ve got two sets of problems going on out there on the ice. The first is in the technical aspects of the game. Players are often out of position, they don’t have a plan for salvaging a busted play, the lines aren’t set up to maximize skills and styles, shift changes are rough, and they’re running a playbook that was outdated ten years ago. Those are the most glaring problems, by the way, not the only ones.”

      Lines. She’d read about those. Something about the five guys on the ice together. She’d look it up again and figure out how it went with what he’d told her. “What’s the second set of problems?”

      “Attitudes,” he supplied, a steely edge to his voice. “You have Glory Boys, Grinders and Goons. As long as they see themselves and each other as being only one or the other, they’ll never play together as a team.”

      She was trying to remember if she’d ever heard the terms before and wondering where she could get a decent definition when he added, “Hell, I actually saw Wheatley strip the puck from his own wingers three times tonight. Vanderrossen and Stover would rather take a penalty than a pass. And your third line didn’t take a single shot on goal the entire game. All they did was D—badly—to give the first and second lines a rest. Which, quite frankly, they hadn’t earned.”

      She blinked, stunned at how thrilling she found his passion for the game. Found him. “D?” she asked lamely, hoping the response would take long enough for her to gather up a few of her scattered wits.

      “Defense,” he replied, grinning. “Keeping the puck out of your own net.”

      Oh, yeah. She knew that. “Can the problems—both sets of them—be fixed?”

      His smile disappeared. “It would be a long, hard haul.”

      That was the second time in two days she’d heard the expression. “Seems to be a standard description of the game,” she observed.

      “Accurate, too.”

      He cleared his throat and took a deep breath in the same way she did when she was getting ready to say something necessary but unpleasant. Not wanting to hear it, she deliberately cut him off. “But these boys aren’t new to hockey. They’ve been playing the game all of their lives. They have the grit to change, don’t they?”

      He slid her a sideways glance and sighed. “Some do, some probably won’t,” he answered, going back to his study of the water tower. “They each have to weigh the coach’s expectations against their own and figure out if they want to give the coach what he needs. Some will hang up the skates and others will lace them tighter.”

      “Is there any way to know who’s going to do which?” Please God, she silently added, let the hanger-uppers be the expensive ones.

      “The Glory Boys are going to be your toughest sell. They have the biggest egos, and they tend to view themselves as God’s gift to hockey.”

      Ah, a definition. She knew which ones he was talking about. She called them The Swaggerers. Glory Boys was more descriptive. And much easier to say. “It’s occurred to me,” she admitted, “that anyone playing hockey in Wichita, Kansas, isn’t God’s gift to anyone or anything.”

      “You might want to remind them of that,” he said coolly as he looked into the distance. “Especially when they threaten to take their razzle-dazzle to a more appreciative team. If they do, offer to help them pack their bags. You’ll be better off without them. Nothing poisons a locker room faster than an out-of-control ego.”

      If he saw her nod of agreement, it didn’t give him pause. “Your Grinders will be the next hardest. They don’t have any self-confidence. They’ve got to take some shots thinking they can actually score the goals. And the Goons are going to have to be put on leashes. You played an entire twelve minutes at full strength tonight. Your penalty killing unit was exhausted before the end of the first period and your power play unit never went out.”

      More stuff to look up. More things to think about and figure out. But since she had such incredible expertise at her fingertips… Well, figuratively anyway… “Why hasn’t Carl fixed these things?”

      “Good question,” he conceded with a slow nod. “Have you asked him?”

      “I’ve asked him why we don’t win. He told me it was because they were no-talent bums who don’t want to win. Tom did all the recruiting, in case you’re wondering.”

      “He did back in my day, too.” He turned his entire body to face her and unfolded his arms to stuff his hands in the pockets of his khakis. “And in case you’re wondering, there’s decent talent on the team. It’s just not put together in the right combinations and pointed in the right direction. As for wanting to win…. They have to think they can. Believing is nine-tenths of winning.” He smiled. “Don’t you know about the Miracle on Ice?”

      “1980,” she supplied. “Lake Placid. The American kids beat the mighty Russians. I was eighteen and cheered my ass off in the family room. And for the record—I’d never watched a hockey game before that. I didn’t know squat except that those boys were wonderful. And exciting. And worth cheering for.”

      “Nothing’s ever been as exciting as that game. Nothing ever will be.” He hesitated, then shrugged one shoulder. “Well, except for maybe being on the team that wins the Stanley Cup. They say there’s nothing like that feeling.”

      She hadn’t been able to look at the pictures in the magazine article Tom had saved, but she had read the story. And done a bit of Net surfing afterwards. The Tampa Bay Lightning had been in the running for Lord Stanley’s cup the year Logan Dupree had been injured. The sportswriters had all predicted that losing him would end the Bolt’s chances. And they’d been proven right. As a player, Logan Dupree had lost his chance to have his name placed on the Holy Grail of hockey. Talking about the cup with him would be right up there with asking Mrs. Lincoln about the play.

      But she’d read an article on the history of Lord Stanley’s little trophy and knew that players weren’t the only ones whose names

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