Fresh Ice (16 page)

Dwight narrowed his eyes and marched down the narrow hallway. He surveyed the warzone that was his bedroom. He looked over at the closet. No. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t
dare
.

Dwight tore through the closet, flinging shoes over his shoulder. He found the boot
s and reassured himself the money would be inside right where it belonged. It wasn’t like Sarah even knew about his stash, right? But, then again, she had somehow found the one in the kitchen.

The boot was so slim that his meaty hand almost didn’t fit inside. He pushed his knuckles to the bottom and felt around with his fingers. He pulled his empty hand free and tilted the boot upside down and shook.

Nothing. The boot was as empty as the coffee can in the kitchen.

The fact that Sarah knew about his hiding places,
both
of his hiding places, meant she’d been watching him with those bug-eyes of hers. That really ticked him off. He had severely underestimated what a calculating little thief she was. She needed to be taught a lesson and he’d be glad to be the one to give it to her.

He flung the boot across the room with such force that he lost his balance and staggered to the floor.

That’s when he noticed the book on the floor.

Well, wasn’t that special. It was one of Sarah’s stupid smut books. How it was still in one piece boggled his
ever-lovin’ mind. Hadn’t he destroyed all of her books once and for all? All they did was put crazy notions into her head. Besides, they provided her with too much enjoyment for him to let her keep reading them.

He picked it up, glared at the sappy cover and skimmed through the pages. In the middle was a folded piece of paper serving as a bookmark. She’d left in such a hurry she forgot her precious book.

He unfolded the paper and squinted at the small type. It was a Greyhound Bus receipt for a one-way ticket to Las Vegas, Nevada. Method of payment: cash, paid in full. The date printed on the top was from last month.

Vegas? What the hell would Sarah want to go to Vegas for? And more importantly,
how in the hell
was he supposed to find her in a city like Vegas?

“Vegas,” he muttered.
“That conniving little skank.”

Dwight ripped the cover straight down the middle and tore all 255 pages from the spine. Then he stomped over the pages and went off to find Troy.

* * *

T
he rickety love seat creaked when Sarah sat down on it after another long day of work at the salon. It wasn’t the sturdiest as far as furniture went, but it felt cozy and added a touch of home to the drab motel room. Sarah curled up on the cushion and thought about Nathan.

Now that the painting was finished in the new salon and hockey season had started, she wouldn’t
be seeing him as often. In fact, she didn’t know when or
if
she’d ever get to see him again. Hopefully, he would stop into the salon for the haircut she owed him. If he even remembered.

Right now, he was probably at home reveling in his victory over the
Greenbacks. Even though Sarah wasn’t able to watch the game on TV, Peach had filled the entire salon in on the details. With Sebby out sick, her beloved son TJ was getting his big call to come up to the major league.

Sarah wished she could have seen the game. Nathan must have been happy to get to play and not watch from the sidelines. Peach made it sound like he
was a hero with the amount of saves he made.

Sarah’s smile faded when t
here was a knock at the door. She frowned and got up to look through the peephole. Skeet stood on the other side of the door and that gave her an uneasy feeling. She had paid him in advance for the room and didn’t owe him any more money. That she knew of.

She glanced over at her purse, glad for the Mace inside.

Hesitating, she slowly turned the knob and opened the door. Using the door as a shield, she stood behind it and poked her head out.

“Hello, Sarah
,” Skeet sneered. He wore a loose stained white tank top that exposed his sweaty armpit hair and boney ribs. How could someone who did so little sweat so much? There was a bulge on his lower lip from where he kept his chaw tucked.

“Skeet
,” she said, keeping her voice level. She waited for him to state his business, but he just stood there leering at her. “I’ve paid you for the rest of the week...,” she prompted.

“I’m not here for
more money.” His lip curled, revealing a brown wad of chewing tobacco. “I just wanted to let you know I fixed your leaky faucet today.”

“Oh?”
Skeet had been snooping around in her room while she was at work? A sick feeling crept up Sarah’s esophagus and she quickly swallowed it down. “Thank you. I, uh, didn’t realize anything needed fixing.”

Before she could react,
Skeet pushed his way into the room and she stumbled backwards. Then he positioned himself between her and the door so she couldn’t escape. “I see your boyfriend is out.” His eyes skittered over to the bed and back at her chest. “If you even have one at all.”

“I do
.” Her voice was shaky. “And he’ll be…he’ll be coming back any minute,” she stammered.

He shrugged.
“By the way, thanks for the tip.”

“Tip?
What tip?”

“It’s a nice little stash.”
He waved a roll of cash in her face. “I know all the hiding places junkies use. Except you don’t look like a junkie to me.” He swiped the back of his hand across his bottom lip and sniffed. “That was a nice touch putting it under the sink like that.”

S
arah lunged at him and grabbed at the cash but he was too quick. “That’s my money. Give it back!” she cried.

“Finders, keepers.”
His dirty hand clamped down on her arm and squeezed. Hard.

She blocked out the pain and focused on what she needed to survive.
“You stole my money!”

“
It’s enough to cover the parts for the faucet. Now, about the labor…”

Skeet
took a step toward her and she backed up against the wall. Frantically, her eyes darted around the room, looking for an escape. Skeet was blocking the door and her purse was on the other side of the room.

S
arah squeezed her eyes shut, hoping he was an illusion, but when she opened them, he was still standing there looking at her with cold, hungry eyes. Skeet may as well have been Dwight with the way he was looking at her and the identical way he smelled. She’d gone and traded one bad situation for another.

Her hand
nervously fluttered up to the pendant at her neck. How was she going to get out of this?

Skeet eyed her necklace.
“Whataya got there?”

Sarah
trembled as Skeet knocked her arm out of the way and reached out to touch the pendant. He gripped her neck, grasped the pendent and yanked the necklace off, breaking the chain.

She gasped and reached for
it but he curled his fingers tightly around it. He fixed his eyes on her heaving breasts and licked his chapped lips. The chain dangled from his fist as he grabbed her chest and squeezed. “It’s time to pay up…”

* * *

Nathan found himself at the Half Moon Motel standing at the bottom of the stairs.

He’d just returned home from a successful
road trip to Las Vegas and was feeling pretty good about it. By the grace of the hockey gods, Nathan had held off the Greenbacks and managed to keep the puck out of the net for the rest of the game.

All weekend he’d
been debating his feelings for Sarah. Back and forth, back and forth. She was a definitely a distraction he didn’t need. There was no room in his life or his career for distractions.

On the other hand, s
he
wasn’t
a distraction. She was a beautiful woman who intrigued him and captured his interest. And, man, he needed a distraction in the worst way. He’d kept his distractions to a minimum and look where that had gotten him these last two years. A trade, a ticket to Red Valley, a second string spot on the team and a nonexistent personal life. Go figure.

It was
evening now and there was a fifty percent chance that Sarah would be home. Nathan didn’t have her cell phone number and when he
HHHY
tried calling the motel, the office phone just rang and rang with no answer.

“It’s just dinner,” he
muttered to himself. “No biggie. Just go up there and ask if she wants to go get something to eat.” What was the worst that could happen? If she said no, he would just keep coming back until she said yes. Either way, he wanted to see her. He couldn’t stop thinking about how pretty she looked in the moonlight at the party. How her voice was so soft that he had to lean in close to hear her when she spoke. And how wonderful her hands felt shampooing his hair.

He had two choices. Man up and ask her right now
this second or wait until tomorrow and go to the salon where she could finish cutting his hair.

Nathan
climbed the motel steps two at a time. Waiting never had been his specialty.

Halfway up the stairs, Nathan heard voices arguing
from one of the rooms on the second floor. When he reached the landing, he could hear that it was a man and a woman. It must have been Sarah’s infamous neighbors fighting.

W
ait…was that…
Sarah
? He’d only ever heard her speak barely above a whisper, but that was definitely her voice.

The door to
Sarah’s room was wide open. When Nathan turned the corner and saw a man standing over her, gripping tight to her slender arm, Nathan saw red. The only conscious thought that pushed into his brain was one involving his fist flattening the man’s face. “Take your hands off her!” Nathan roared.

The man
looked over at Nathan and scowled. Then he wrenched Sarah’s arm so hard she cried out in pain.

In a few quick strides, Nathan grabbed hold of the guy’s
dirty tank top and yanked him away from Sarah. Last week he had let the junkie on the street corner get away, but this jerkoff wouldn’t be so lucky.

The guy took a swing at Nathan and missed.

Nathan’s fist connected with his face, square in the jaw and he went down in a heap. Nathan could have sat on him and pummeled his face into the dirty carpet, but he restrained himself. Barely.

“Just because I’m a goaltender doesn’t mean I don’t know how to fight
,” he told the lifeless body on the floor.

Nathan
took a deep breath, or three, and looked over at Sarah. Her face was ashen and her eyes as big as hockey pucks.

“Are you okay?”
He went to her, gently pulled her close and rested his chin on the top of her head. She let out a shaky breath and he thought she might be crying.

Holding her hands, he pulled back and peer
ed into her eyes. She wasn’t crying. She was in shock. Even though she was shaking, there wasn’t time to comfort her. There was a tweeker lying flat on her floor and Nathan didn’t want to be around when the guy woke up.

“Sarah, are you okay?” he asked again, more firmly this time.

Sarah rubbed her arm where Skeet had clamped his hand around it and winced. “I…I think so,” she said in a small voice. She touched her neck where the chain pinched it when it broke apart. “He stole my necklace,” she told Nathan.

Nathan bent down and pulled the necklace from Skeet’s hands and
tucked it into her hand.

She looked down at the broken chain and
the bent butterfly pendant and blinked back the tears. Would she ever be able to have anything beautiful without a man coming along and destroying it?

“Who is he?”
Nathan asked. Christ, the guy could be her boyfriend for all Nathan knew. He didn’t know anything about her other apart from what he’d heard from Tony and TJ and that wasn’t much.

“He runs the motel.”
She rubbed her arm where Skeet’s fingers had cut off the circulation. She’d have a bruise in the morning for sure. And just when all the old ones were beginning to fade.

“He took my money!”
she remembered.

Nathan
picked up the roll of cash on the floor and handed it to Sarah.

She unrolled the cash and to her horror found four dollar bills. Four dollars! “Where’s the rest. There was more,” she said, her voice cracking.
“A
lot
more.”

Nathan bent down a
nd checked Skeet’s pockets. “That’s all of it. There’s just some weed and cigarettes here.”

“I can’t believe this,” she said under her breath. Skeet must have stashed away the rest of her money before coming up to her room. She curled her fist around the four dollars.

“Get your stuff,” Nathan told her. “All of it. We’re getting you outta here.”

“
But what about my love seat!”

“Leave it. I’ll buy you a new one.”