I couldn’t lie and pretend I wasn’t just as interested in Channing as he was. If for no other reason than that the man had shown tenderness and command. Kindness and the sort of control that soothed rather than stung.
“Maybe him,” I conceded.
“We still have to beat him today.”
“Fuck my life,” I muttered, and Evan laughed, throwing his head back with the kind of wild, abundant laughter I hadn’t heard come out of him in, I realized, far too long.
CHAPTER 13
EVAN
We did not beatAlan Channing and his team of three that afternoon. Perry skipped an awesome game but the one thing no one expected to face that day gave Alan’s crew an advantage over us that we just couldn’t get our heads around.
Turned out the Darren brothers went straight to the press about being dropped from Channing’s team. The number of cameras and sheer volume of people crowded into the rink was so overwhelming Channing decided to hold an impromptu briefing to explain the situation.
“Curling has a code of conduct,” he said into the array of phones and mics pointed at him. “There are certain expectations the Darrens are not prepared to meet at this time, so we were forced to part ways.”
Shaw snorted. “No mention that one of them punched the rival Skip in the face, I see.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Perry said. “Let him handle it. He’s used to the press circus. I want to go inside and get ready to play.”
I caught Alan’s eye as we passed and he nodded, then said something I didn’t hear, but that drew everyone’s attention away from us and back to him. We walked into the venue undisturbed, and that was nice of him.
It was no surprise that the press was not nearly satisfied with Alan’s explanations so they hung around filming the game and asking questions of anyone who stood still long enough to have a recording device shoved in their face.
Thankfully, they didn’t bother the players on the sheet so we were spared once we were out there. That didn’t stop anyone else who’d heard the story from splashing it out though, and every one of the vultures wanted to talk to Perry the second the game was over.
Not surprisingly, the circus made it hard to concentrate and had me jumping and dancing and Perry getting quieter and quieter. Oddly, the madhouse around us today did not affect his game play. His focus was all on the frosty ice and the way the humidity from so many bodies affected the curl of the stones. He made calls that wouldn’t have worked yesterday, but we trusted him, and I could honestly say we played one of our best games to date. I wasn’t mad it wasn’t quite good enough to beat Channing, but proud it wasn’t a blow out.
“That could have gone better,” he said after the last end.
“It could have gone a lot worse,” Darby said. “You called a great game.”
“Thanks.” He smiled thinly. “I need to get out of here.” He said it into the small circle of our team, quietly, as the announcement of the winners was happening over the speakers.
“We have to stay for the awards,” I reminded him. “It would be rude not to.”
Perry nodded and took my hand. “Let’s just stay out here until we have to go up,” he suggested. “I don’t want to talk about this.” He indicated his bruised face and blackened eye.
“Yeah.” I kissed the back of his hand and we slid over to the near end of the sheets where we could stand out of view of the bar windows above.
“I don’t even know how we’re going to get past all of that.”
“Ask Alan to run interference like he did so we could come inside?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “First names?”
“He said so last night.”
That got me a snort. “I guess we’ll see.”
“I didn’t misread this morning, did I?” I asked, suddenly feeling queasy that I’d got his intentions wrong.
“No, baby, you did not.” He took the moment, under cover of the upper story overhang and out of sight of the cameras, to kiss me. Soundly. “We’ll see,” he repeated.
“If he comes back around?”
“We’ll see.”
