Game On

“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.