Tomboy (The Hartigans #3)(16)

“Real classy, Lucy,” Kyle said with a huff.

She shrugged. “Whatever, Kyle.”

One of these days these two were going to get in a cage match to finally fight it out. Zach’s money, what little was left of it, was on Lucy. The woman was a shark in a world full of minnows. Still, as fun as it was to watch them chip away at each other, there was business to discuss.

“Children,” he said as he got out of bed and walked across his room to his closet to grab a hoodie. “Shall we get back to the issue at hand—mainly that trash site The Biscuit and how it’s trying to get me shit-canned?”

“Zach, I love you but you’re doing that yourself,” Lucy said. “You want to shut up the most read hockey blog in Harbor City? Get back the magic you had the other night.”

“You don’t think I’m trying?” Hockey was pretty much the only thing he thought about when he wasn’t trying to figure a way out of the debt-ridden shithole his parents had shoved him into. “I’m the first one on the ice and the last one to leave. If I’m not watching game tape, I’m in the workout room. Hell, I even tried yoga. I’m doing everything I can think of.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Lucy asked, her forehead wrinkling with concern. “I could have Fallon check you out on the down low.”

He yanked the dark blue hoodie over his head before Kyle or Lucy could spot the smile tugging his lips upward at the mention of Fallon’s name. “I’m fine.”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed at something she saw on his face. “What if everyone is right, and The Biscuit is onto something?”

Zach closed his eyes and tried to shut his mouth before a groan of disgust came out, but he whiffed that almost as much as the check he’d tried to put on Fahey the other night.

“Not you, too,” he grumbled as he headed out of the mostly barren walk-in closet toward the kitchen. “I’ve heard enough from Coach already.”

“Peppers thinks there’s something to this Lady Luck thing,” Lucy said as if that solved everything.

“Zach, baby.” Kyle’s voice echoed off the walls of the empty hallway—unless you counted his slides abandoned outside of the kitchen. “Peppers knows his stuff.”

“This isn’t stuff.” Zach strode to the fridge and yanked it open, setting his phone against the gallon of milk so he could maintain eye contact with Lucy and Kyle while rooting around for something to eat. “It’s a woman who hates me.”

“Oh, don’t take that personally,” Lucy said with a laugh. “Fallon hates everybody.”

His agent narrowed his eyes, and the first hint of sweat dotted his forehead. “Not helpful, Lucy.”

“Not asking your opinion, Kyle.” She didn’t flip off the camera, but she might as well have, considering the amount of fuck-you layered into that five-word answer.

This whole conversation was going nowhere. It was ridiculous. He was as superstitious as the next defenseman, but there was just no way. He opened his mouth to say just that, but that’s not what came out. “You really think Fallon’s my four-leaf clover?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way to her, but she might be,” Lucy said. She took a drink of her Mountain Dew and then leaned forward, her eyes sparkling with intensity even in the ultra-bright light of his fridge. “How about an experiment? You get her to come to the next game. See how it goes. If your playing is still for shit, we try something else.”

Kyle sighed and wiped a towel across his forehead. “You know it pains me to say this, Zach baby, but Lucy’s right.”

A shocked silence filled the kitchen as Zach grabbed a pre-made protein shake and his phone before closing the fridge. He’d been working with Kyle and Lucy since he’d kicked his former managers (AKA his parents) to the curb for gross negligence and malfeasance. In the past year, the only thing Kyle and Lucy had ever agreed on was that Zach could get back the magic of playing hockey like he was doing it for fun and not to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. That they’d just done it again—and about Fallon—shook him all the way down to the squishy soles of his slides.

“Someone talk now, or it’ll be weird,” Kyle said, breaking the quiet.

Looking at the problem like he would an opposing team’s first line, he broke it down to the two things he needed to do first. “She’s ignoring my texts, and I don’t know where to find her.”

“You’ve been texting her?” Lucy asked, her tone all but screaming “tell me everything.”

Fallon hadn’t told her best friend what happened when she’d been over here? Interesting. Instead of answering the question on Lucy’s face, he started gulping down the protein shake that tasted like chocolate chalk with a chaser of putrid spinach.

“You’re no fun.” Lucy shook her head. “It’s Saturday, that’s the day of the Hartigans’ weekly family lunch.”

He pictured his own family meals growing up. They’d been silent, uncomfortable, and painful. Why someone would do that voluntarily once a week was beyond him, but if Fallon voluntarily did that maybe that explained why she made him all jumpy—because she was obviously part alien.

Zach set down his now-empty protein shake bottle. “So I catch her there.”

“You might want to rethink that.” Lucy paused, looking up at the trees and the pink-and-orange sky above her, obviously trying to find the right words. Finally, she let out a little what-the-fuck kind of sigh and dropped her gaze back at the camera. “The Hartigans are a lot to take in. They’re a little overwhelming in their sweet, overbearing, totally-in-your-business way.”