Game On

When they were sitting down at a table that was too small for him, as most café tables and chairs were, she said, “So are we going to keep fighting for control?”

Only years of training stopped him from choking on his coffee. How had she read his mind like this? Her cool gaze assessed him. He felt a pull of attraction so strong he could barely focus.

He swallowed the hot, bitter brew slowly. Instead of answering her directly, he said, “I don’t think I need a performance coach.”

“I’ve known Max for a decade. He’s probably the smartest person I’ve ever met. And he’s known you since you all played together in the sandbox. He seems to think you do.”

“Max’s trouble is he’s always the smartest guy in the room. Makes him arrogant.”

She let the words hang for a second, then said, “And your friend Dylan?”

His discomfort with this conversation grew by the second. He fidgeted in the too-small chair, ordered himself to relax. She must read body language as well as or better than he did. He put his elbows on the table. Leaned in. She leaned back slightly in response. Good. Her long hair caught the light and he realized it wasn’t simply black, as he’d thought, but a shifting mix of brown and black. “I didn’t play at the top of my game in the play-offs last year. It happens. Check out the NHL sometime. Best team going into the play-offs loses in the first round. Most expensive player on the team falls on his ass. Like I said, it happens.”

“Your friends seem to think that you didn’t simply have a bad couple of days in both of the last two play-off seasons. They think you choked.”

He was getting more irritated by the second. He wondered how he’d managed to stay friends with such a pair of meddlers for the past three decades. “You should know that if you start putting ideas in a player’s head about choking and performance anxiety, you’re sowing the seeds for trouble.”

“That’s an interesting phrase you use. Performance anxiety. Do you think you suffer from it?”

“No. You’re putting words in my mouth. I—”

“They were your words, Adam.”

“Look, it’s an amateur tournament. We raise money for charity. It’s not the Stanley Cup.”

“Then why are you getting so worked up about this? Maybe I can help you. Maybe I can’t. The best thing that can happen is that I help you improve your playing ability during the play-off rounds. The worst thing that can happen is that nothing changes. Either way, my services are free and all you’re giving up is some time.”

“What about you? What’s in this for you?”

Her fingernails were longer than strictly necessary. He had a momentary vision of her dragging them down his back in the height of passion. He had to blink the crazy mental image away.

“Max is a good friend who’s done a lot to help me build my business. If he asks a favor, I’ll do it. No questions asked.”

It was stupid to feel a pang of jealousy. Max was a great guy and very successful with women. If he and the dominatrix performance coach had a past, it was nothing to do with him. Still, some devil prompted him to ask, “And Max? Would he do anything for you?”

Her gaze stayed level on his. “I like to think so.”

He took another sip of coffee. “I don’t know.”

“It’s up to you. If you’re not willing to work with me, to do any exercises I give you, then we’re both wasting our time.”

“And if I do? If I promise to do your exercises and whatever else you ask of me? Can you guarantee my team will win Badges on Ice?”

When she laughed, her whole face lightened. She had even white teeth, a little wrinkle at the top of her nose that crinkled when she smiled. “If I had that kind of power, I think we’d be sitting here bartering for your soul. At least.” She set her cup down. “Here’s what I can guarantee. If you work with me, you’ll know that your performance is the best it can be on that day. That you’re not getting in your own way.”

There was an uncomfortable ring of truth to those words. Getting in your own way. Did he do that?

“Give an example of one of these exercises.”

“I’ll give you one right now. And I want it completed next time we meet.” She pulled a well-worn leather planner out of her bag. Interesting that for all her gadgets she still relied on paper. “I think we should get right on this. How’s tomorrow at lunch for you? You can pick the place.”

“Yeah. I can do that. What’s the exercise?”

“I want you to go through the plays you messed up on last year’s play-off game. In visual detail, and reimagine them as successful plays.”

“I’ve played dozens of hockey games since last year. I can barely remember the championship game.”

She drilled him with her eyes. “You remember every second of those games. And you’ve tortured yourself over and over again reliving your mistakes.”

“I—”

“Don’t. We both know the truth.”

She was right, damn it, and the uncomfortable silence only confirmed her words. He’d spent sleepless nights going over every second of play, every moment when he should have been on top of his game, and instead he’d felt a big weight on his chest and a strange feeling of panic. He didn’t want to go back there and experience that panic again, not even in the privacy of his home. He wanted to get out there and prove he had the guts and skill to lead his team as he did all year long. To be a winner.

“I’ll try,” he said.

She shook her head. “Let’s work on a different verb. Not try.”

“Okay. I’ll do it!”

“Good.” She put her planner away and glanced at the slim gold watch on her wrist that was so expensive he bet a lover gave it to her. His mind sped to Max, who could afford to buy every watch, watchmaker and watch factory in Switzerland if he so desired. “Well, our thirty minutes are up. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He rose as well, mostly because his mother would smack him on the back of the head if she caught him slouching while a woman was leaving.

She held out her hand and as he clasped it, he thought that her long fingers and those red-tipped nails would look just right wrapped around the handle of a whip. Uncomfortable heat coursed through him.

As she released her grip, she said, “By the way, what was your wish? The one Dylan said you got?”

He stared at her for a moment, debating with himself, then decided, what the hell. She’d asked. He leaned a little closer, the way he would if he were at a party wanting to get to know a woman better. “I told Max that if I had to work with a female performance coach, she’d better be hot.”

She didn’t sputter or blush or act coy. She said, “Well, it’s nice to know your friend thinks I’m hot.”

“Oh, he’s not the only one.”

3

WHEN SHE ARRIVED home at the end of a long day, Serena was so tired she wanted to throw a frozen dinner into the microwave, pour herself a huge glass of wine and flop on the couch.

But her blog waited.

She could hear her inner saboteur muttering, I don’t want to blog tonight. I’m too tired.

Negative thinking, she reminded herself. Negative thinking got you exactly nowhere. Her success was the product of hard work as well as talent and she never let herself forget it. She was a big believer in the saying that success was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

She updated her blog every Monday. In a perfect world she’d update more often, but she tried to use her time as wisely as possible and once a week was a reasonable compromise.

As was a glass of wine, she decided.

She unzipped her boots, put her clothes neatly away and dragged on her oldest, most comfortable pair of jeans and a favorite pink sweater.

Then she poured herself that glass of wine. Instead of the microwave dinner, she took the extra few minutes to put brown rice in the steamer and a chicken breast in the oven and throw together a salad.

She sipped her wine while dinner was cooking and settled herself in front of the computer. In forty minutes she’d have the blog post written and dinner would be ready. She could do this.

She pulled up her website. The woman staring back at her from her home page seemed to have all the answers, all the confidence in the world. She’d paid a professional photographer a lot of money to get that message of confidence across.

To hide the truth that deep inside she was desperately afraid that one day she’d be found out as the fraud she was. That she wasn’t calm and confident. Inside she was the scared little girl who was hungry more often than not. Who collected cans and bottles off the side of the road in order to— Stop it, she ordered herself. She wasn’t that helpless little girl anymore and she’d worked hard to become the woman she now was.

What would she even write about?

“Negative Thinking.” The words were typed before she even realized she already had her topic for the week.

An image of the undeniably gorgeous, rough, tough hockey-playing detective—who was probably as much of a mess inside as she was—rose before her.

One thing you learned when you lived with secrets was that everyone had them.

What were Adam’s secret insecurities? The ones that were keeping him from playing hockey to his full potential? He probably didn’t even know. Neither, at this point, did she.

But they’d find them. He’d be a fun case, she decided. Once she got through his barrier of pride and toughness. There was a guy who didn’t let people in easily.

She knew the type well. She was exactly like him.

He was also her weakness. There was a moment when the screen wavered in front of her eyes and she saw not a blank page but a very sexy image of a tall, rugged, ruthless man who took what he wanted without waiting for permission. She shivered, then shook off the ridiculous fantasy. Adam Shawnigan was a client, not a potential lover. She did not, she reminded herself, have time for a lover.

“Negative Thinking.” The cursor blinked, inviting her to continue.

I know more people who have been brought down by negative thinking than by any other cause. How do you fight an enemy when the enemy is you?

Once she’d begun, the words poured out of her. Before she realized it, she’d written a longer blog post than usual. Her glass of wine was empty, the chicken was cooked and the rice was quietly staying warm for her.

She served herself dinner on the kind of china that she’d seen on TV shows when she was a child. The soap operas her mom loved to watch and her personal favorite, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Watching that show, she’d first begun to realize a person born poor could have a different life. Even now she recognized that a lot of her work was about helping clients live a different life, creating the future they dreamed of.

Sure, she could eat off everyday plates, except that she didn’t own any. When Serena Long ate dinner, she did so on fine china that she’d worked hard to afford. She drank out of crystal glasses and her cutlery was sterling.

While she ate, she checked the email account associated with her blog.

Often she gained new clients or opportunities to speak through her website and blog. Her assistant monitored the emails regularly and passed on anything that needed answering, but Serena also checked in herself now and again.

She pulled up the current emails. There were three. Considering she hadn’t given a speech recently or been mentioned in the media, three was pretty respectable.

The first was a thank-you from someone who had heard her speak and been inspired to face their fear of the water and enroll in beginner’s swimming lessons. Serena experienced the familiar feeling of pleasure when she realized she’d helped someone. A complete stranger she’d never meet but whose life she’d improved, even if only a little bit.

With a smile, she sent a quick message that basically said, “Congratulations! Keep up the good work.”

Then she clicked open the next message.

Hi gorgeous, the message began. I bet you could improve my performance. Want to try? Call me. With a hiss of annoyance, she deleted the message. The amazing thing about the perverts she heard from was how unimaginative they were. Couldn’t they at least put a little effort into their crude attempts to shock her or connect with her or whatever they were trying to do?

* * *

“I DID NOT go behind your back,” Max stated, putting down the heavy chair with a thunk. Adam had called both his supposed buddies to help him move the furniture out of his living room so he could refinish the floors. In truth, he hadn’t planned to sand the floors for a couple of months, but he had a mad-on and experience told him that physical exertion mixed with concentration was the best combination for getting rid of the mad.

Besides, making his sandbox pals come move furniture gave him an opportunity to berate them at the same time as he got free labor out of them.

“You hired a performance coach without telling me.”

“Technically, I didn’t hire her. She’s working for free. And I told you I was going to do it.”

“You didn’t tell me she was coming to hockey practice this morning.” He scowled at the memory of how she’d blindsided him with her cool sexiness and that uncomfortable resemblance to Madame D. His skin prickled with the attraction he was determined to ignore. “I wasn’t ready.”

“Most people would be pretty happy to have a professional performance coach helping them improve their game.”

He felt twitchy and irritable. Unlike himself. Usually if he had a problem, he understood its cause and dealt with the issue, but he’d never been in a position like this before, where he couldn’t control his behavior on the ice. The fact that he didn’t feel in control around the sexy Serena Long only compounded his frustration. “Why is she doing you this favor?”

“So that’s what’s got up your butt,” Dylan commented, flopping onto the couch they were supposed to be moving.

Max gazed at Adam for a long moment. “What did she say?”

“She said she’d do anything for you.”

Max looked inscrutable. But then, Max worked hard at looking inscrutable. “That was nice of her.”

“You’re not answering his question, dude,” Dylan said from his sprawled position on the couch. “He wants to know if you’ve had sex with the woman he’s got the hots for.”

“Is that what you want to know?” Max seemed to find this whole thing highly amusing, which only aggravated Adam more.

“No.” He grabbed his end of the couch and motioned Dylan off it so he could lift the other end. “Okay, yes,” he grunted as they hoisted the thing into the air.

“I didn’t set you two up on a blind date. You’re supposed to focus on improving your game. So why do you care?”

“I just want to know.”

Max carefully placed his chair in the corner of the spare bedroom. Dylan and Adam humped the couch in after him and pushed it against the back wall. “I don’t think I want to tell you.”

Dylan swore. “There’s a cold beer in the fridge with my name on it. I don’t care who slept with who—I just want to get this stuff moved so I can relax.”

They continued moving tables, the TV and a couple of lamps. When they were done, they had nowhere to sit but the old oak kitchen table Adam had refinished himself. He pulled out three cold ones, thumped them down on the table. Regarded Max, who wiped off the top of his bottle before he drank.

“What do you think?” he asked Dylan. “Did he?”

“Sleep with Serena Long? Hard to tell. He’s doing his inscrutable thing. You’re the detective. What do you think?”

“I think he’s playing with me.” He slumped into a chair and grabbed his own beer.

“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Why would sexy Serena sleep with him, anyway? What’s he got to offer a woman like that? A genius brain? Billions in the bank? Those big brown eyes?” Dylan shook his head. “She wouldn’t touch him.” He touched his bottle to Adam’s in a toast. “Not that you care.”

“I don’t.” He tipped the bottle against his lips and hoped the cool liquid would dampen his irritation.

“What are you using on the floors?” Dylan motioned to the now-cleared fir floor. It was original to the old cottage Adam had bought the year before and was slowly fixing up. It was a simple place, rustic and solidly built on a couple of acres of land. He’d known the minute he’d seen the run-down home that this was the renovation project he’d been looking for.

Since it had been rented for years and then left empty for a half a year after that, the place was a little dilapidated. And full of mice. But the old fir floors he’d revealed when he ripped up the filthy threadbare brown shag rug would come back with some work. The walls needed only patching and paint. The kitchen he could live with for a while since he rarely cooked. His first project had been the bathroom, most of which he’d done himself, with the help of a professional plumber. He’d patched and painted all the walls before he moved in, and he lived with the scuffed, scarred flooring.

But now he had a mad-on, and Max had done nothing to dissipate it. The floors were going to be sanded. And hard.

“I’ll rent a commercial sander. See how they come up, then decide. Might do a stain, might just slap on some Varathane to protect them.”

Dylan nodded. He was also a handy type. Unlike Max, who hired everything out and was currently checking email on his smartphone while they talked flooring.

As they finished their beer, the talk veered to people they knew, hockey, the upcoming play-offs.

“That performance coach sure is hot,” Dylan said, seemingly out of the blue. “She single?”

“As far as I know,” Max said. “Why? Are you interested?”

“Hell, no. I’m interested in winning the bet. I figure you’re both so competitive that if you two are going to fight over a woman, one of you will end up with her. Leaving me closer to winning the bet.” He grinned. “All those seasons of watching Survivor are paying off.” He raised his beer bottle in the air. “To the last bachelor standing. Me!”

Max still hadn’t volunteered the information Adam wanted by the time the guys were leaving. As they headed out the door, Adam turned to Dylan. “Why are we still friends with this guy?” he asked.

Dylan regarded Max. “He’s short and a weenie. Makes us look good.”

4

AFTER HE WATCHED the news, Adam was too restless to turn in. He flipped on his computer to check his email. Nothing of much interest. Ever since his old buddy had arranged a performance coach for him, hints of his play-off panic had begun to return. Today, in the presence of the sexy coach, Adam had felt his discomfort like an itch.

On a whim, he did a Google search of Serena Long. Of course she had a website. He should have known she would. All slick and professional, the site looked and felt expensive. The woman staring at him from his screen also seemed slick and professional—and expensive—with that hint of danger he’d detected.

Dylan was right, of course. He did want Serena Long. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had struck him like that, like a walking fantasy.

Some effusive comments about how wonderful she was, written by people he’d actually heard of, peppered the main page of her site. She’d authored a book that you could click to and buy right from the front page, naturally. The click of another button would give you details on inviting her to be a keynote speaker at your next big event.

And then she offered words of wisdom on her blog.

He rolled his eyes. Who didn’t have a blog these days?

He clicked through to it. And found a post dated today. “Negative Thinking.”

It was what she’d been talking to him about earlier. And she’d posted only a couple of hours ago. He settled back and read what she’d written.

Apparently, negative thinking was bad. He shook his head, wondering why he was wasting his time with a woman who was going to spout the obvious, but continued to read. And realized quickly that she was imparting some truly good advice. This wasn’t simply a “Rah, rah, you can do it!” post but an article that contained links to research on brain function and referenced B.F. Skinner and behavior modification. Good old B.F. He’d studied him in college. The man had conducted a lot of experiments involving pigeons, if he recalled correctly.

Behavior modification was all about rewards for the new behavior. Serena argued that weight-loss programs like Weight Watchers were based on building a new routine, like eating better, and receiving rewards in the form of encouragement at group meetings or online, rather than simply feeling bad about being fat. Made sense, he supposed. For him, going to the gym regularly meant he skated a little faster when he needed to or noticed a little more power and agility in his stick handling.

Her article went on to say that negative thinking and the self-destructive behavior that came out of it also had to have some kind of perceived reward or no one would engage in it.

His snort of disgust was loud in the quiet house.

He thought of the times he’d screwed up in the championship games and felt the familiar churn of self-disgust. What the hell had happened to him?

He’d choked. He could argue all he liked that it was just fatigue, a flu bug, preoccupation with work. But he knew, and he was pretty sure the entire team knew, that his problem came from inside.

Did this crackpot performance coach seriously think he got a reward from humiliating himself and letting down his team?

He turned off the computer and went to bed. But sleep didn’t come. What kind of reward could he possibly get for choking under pressure?

With a curse, he flipped on the bedside light, went to his spare-room office and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and crawled back into bed.

She’d asked him to go through everything that had happened that day. He supposed now was as good a time as any.

If Serena Long could figure out how he was rewarded for choking, she was worth all the big bucks they weren’t paying her.

He found himself looking forward to their next session. Not only because he wanted to be fixed but because he wanted to see her again. He’d never been the bondage and S-and-M type, but when he recalled the way that black-clad coolly sexy woman had looked at him, he began to understand the appeal.

* * *

SERENA CONSIDERED THE elliptical trainer at the gym one of her best friends. The machine was a time-efficient workout, improving her cardio and her lower and upper body while at the same time allowing her to catch up on the day’s news via a headset and inset TV monitor.

While she pedaled in endless ovals and pushed and pulled the handles, she absorbed the day’s news. It was the usual mishmash of drama, despair, politics and business with a few cute human-interest stories thrown in.

The upcoming IPO for Marcus Lemming’s company, Big Game, was mentioned. She suspected she was going to have to up her sessions with Marcus given the level of media interest. His was a classic geek-makes-good story of a quiet nerd with few social skills who’d parlayed an adolescence spent in his bedroom gaming into a terrific business. The trouble was that he hadn’t had the time, skills or inclination in high school to do all the things most other boys do, like converse with girls, date, interact socially, play sports. It was easy to find the source of his problem and fairly easy to fix it.

Her tougher client seemed to be Adam, a guy who’d clearly misspent his teenage years to the hilt. He had the unconscious confidence of a man who was a high school jock, popular with both sexes, smart enough to get by but not freakishly intelligent. According to Max he was a terrific hockey player and a dedicated detective. Why would a man like that have performance anxiety?

Max had no idea. She suspected from her brief meeting with Adam that he didn’t know, either. She wondered if he’d spend the time and effort required to work through his feelings about choking under pressure during the play-offs. And if he did the work, would he be self-aware enough to be able to diagnose his own ailment?