On the Fly Read Free

spent too long watching her before heading back down
to the locker room. I figured I should go ahead and sort out what
gear I needed to take with me. I couldn’t get her out of my head,
though. She definitely had a nice ass, this Rachel Shaw. Very nice.
Curvy, over her short legs.
    And that was pretty much the last
thing in the world I needed to be thinking about, the curvy ass of
some random, little redhead with fairy-dust freckles.
    Not when I had to prove to myself and
everyone else I should be playing in the NHL.

    It really shouldn’t have been so hard to concentrate on this
interview. Not when I’d become such an old pro at them in recent
days. But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the man who’d
run straight into me a few minutes ago. He’d been huge. I mean, I
knew professional athletes were bigger than your everyday sort of
man in general, and no one would ever call my five foot two tall,
but holy cow.
    Talk about an imposing presence. And
if I was going to work for an NHL team, I was going to be around
guys his size all the time. At least Maddie wouldn’t be around
them, though. It wouldn’t be so bad for me, and I needed a
job.
    I might have been able to stop myself
from thinking about him if he hadn’t been so good-looking. Not just
everyday good-looking, but like a movie star—a bit like Pierce
Brosnan, back in his younger days. I thought all hockey players
were supposed to be missing half their teeth and have bent, broken
noses and stitches and bruises everywhere. He’d had a long scar on
one cheek that had faded to a pinkish hue, but that was pretty much
the only flaw I could find on his chiseled cheekbones, perfectly
straight nose, and piercing brown eyes.
    And that was more than just a little
disarming.
    “ I’m a little curious,” Mr.
Sutter said, peering at me over the top of his glasses and jolting
me back to the task at hand, “why the employment agency would send
you to interview for an administrative position when your prior
work experience is all in manufacturing.”
    I knew that look he was giving me. The
doubt. I’d been to a dozen interviews in the last week, and every
single one of them had dismissed even the tiniest little inkling of
a thought of hiring me, straight out of hand, for no reason other
than I’d never done any administrative work before.
    Well, not all of them. The woman at
the doctor’s office on Friday hadn’t let that part bother her. Her
problem had been the fact that I didn’t have a college education,
that I only had a GED instead of a high school diploma.
    I just needed someone—anyone—to look
past my lack of experience and education, to give me a chance. I
could do anything I put my mind to, and I’d prove it, but I could
only prove it if someone gave me the opportunity.
    I fought back my frustrations and took
a breath to clear my head. “I’m looking for a change,” I said as
calmly as I could manage. “I don’t have anyone to help me with my
kids, so I need something with comparable hours to when they’ll be
in school. When I worked in manufacturing, it was always second
shift. I was at work when they were at home.”
    And that was when all hell had broken
loose.
    I couldn’t go much longer
without work. I had to have something , and I needed it now. There
were only so many more nights I could afford the hotel room and to
buy meals for my kids, Madison and Tucker. It wouldn’t be long
before we’d go completely through the dregs of my cashed-out
401(k), and then what would I do? Sell the car? It wouldn’t be very
easy to get to a job without a car. Besides, I doubted it would
bring in much, as old as it was.
    Mrs. Alvarez leaned closer to me and
narrowed her eyes. She intimidated me more than Mr. Sutter did. It
was her eyes. It was like she could see through you, see all the
bits of yourself that you’d rather keep private.
    I shifted in my seat and crossed my
legs in the opposite direction.
    “ But you did have someone
to help