“Neve.”
“Neve?” Maddy’s brow furrowed. “Not like Neve Angel, theAgereporter?”
He nodded. “One and the same.”
She laughed, astonished. “I’ve never seen a picture of her, but I’ve read her column. Thought you two—”
“Couldn’t stand each other?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Guess we’d both been lying to ourselves. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t think it’s going to work out. I asked her to take my car back to Denver. I’ll stay here until they discharge Olive. They said another two days max. There’s a few car rentals in town that do one-way service.”
“What do you mean, it’s not going to work out?”
He tried to ignore her probing look, but to no avail. “It’s not like you and me. She loves hockey. She works as much as I do, more even.”
Maddy arched a brow. “Whoa, defensive much? I just asked why.”
“She’s a reporter, covers the hockey beat. She can’t be with me and do her job, not if me and the team are her job. It’s a conflict. An impasse. What can I say? I played with fire inviting her to go away for the weekend, and it didn’t do anything but burn us.”
“There’s no solution?”
“We’re on opposing teams. We called a truce, but it’s over now. My goalie got arrested last night. Posted bond. He’s MIA. The lockout isn’t letting up. She has to cover all of it. And I can’t tell her to quit her job or go off and report on badminton or something.”
“I didn’t realize you ever backed down from a challenge,” Maddie said lightly. “Or played to lose.”
“Life isn’t a game.”
“Really? Because from where I sit it’s rough, fast, exciting. Sometimes you get a throat punch. Sometimes you score.” She glanced at her watch. “Anyway, I’ve got to go back in. I promised Olive I’d be there when the nurse gave her a bath.”
He cleared his throat. “She’s going to be glad to have you there for that job, and not me.”
“You know, we might not have made a good marriage, but we’re darn good co-parents.” Her smile was small but genuine. “Amber and her girls told me what Neve did for Olive. How strong she was. How she kept her calm. She sounds like a good person, Tor. And I saw how you were looking at her.”
“And how was that?”
Her sigh was soft. “Like you finally realized what true love is.”
And with that she turned around and walked away.
His ex always did enjoy getting the last word—especially when she was right.
Chapter Nineteen
Neve hung up the phone in theAgelobby and stared at the massive modern-art piece hanging at the wall. It looked like a Rorschach test. Twenty minutes ago she might have been tempted to describe it as a tree branch dangling over a black hole. Now it was like a rising sun. A new day.
She’d barely hung on since getting back from her weekend with Tor. The Donnelly story was on lockdown. She’d been able to get a copy of the charges. Assault. He was out on bail and nowhere to be seen. The victim wasn’t talking. The woman purported to be in the middle of it had disappeared.
All that lingered were rumors. Had Patch quit the team? Some suggested he’d decided to quit professional sports and return to his first ambition—joining the priesthood.
What a mental picture that made—a Catholic priest who broke arms with his bare hands. Neve didn’t attend church but with that stage billing, she’d be curious.
Twenty minutes ago she’d sat in her grey cubicle at theAgedashing off an update on the lockout. There wasn’t much to say about the negotiations. The thesaurus didn’t have eight hundred words forblah, blah, blah.
That was when the phone rang. “Neve Angel, this is Tom McGovern, senior vice president of Hellions Communications...”
Hugging her chest, she took the elevator back up to her office, walked to her desk and stared at the computer.
