Face Off: Emile (Nashville Sound Book 1) Read online

  Eat Cake wasn’t the first place Emile been thrown out of this morning. Hélène-Louise, the owner of the Gossamer Web, was the only person he knew within a hundred miles—including his sister—who could carry on a conversation with him in fluent French. But one of those lace-making apprentices needed help and she hadn’t had time for him either—just like she’d never really had time for him when he was trying to date her. That ship had sailed, of course. She’d married Bennett Watkins, who she claimed was the love of her life.

  How did you get a job like that? Being the love of someone’s life. Maybe he’d ask Bennett next time he saw him, but probably not. Bennett didn’t care much for him.

  The frosting on his square of limited edition cake began to melt. Packi—Oliver Klepacki, the Nashville Sound head equipment manager—would say that Emile shouldn’t be eating cake this close to the season opener next week. He was probably right. This would be his last sweet for a while.

  He licked the melting frosting off his fingers. A native of Quebec, Emile would never get used to the heat in the Southern United States—especially in the fall. Of course, if the rumors he’d heard at training camp were true, he might not be around this time next year to wear shorts in October. Word on the ice was that the Nashville Sound owner, Pickens Davenport, was considering selling the team to someone who planned to move them to Massachusetts. Emile didn’t hate the idea as much as some of his teammates did, but he didn’t especially like it either. First, it would mean leaving Gabriella, because there was no way she’d consider leaving Eat Cake until her apprenticeship was complete, and maybe not then. And second, Massachusetts was Bruins country—always would be. Apart from those things, he didn’t care where he played. His world was the net, and no one in the NHL defended it better.

  But the net was a lonely place. Sometimes it seemed like that old song, “You and Me Against the World.” Only in his case, the you was his stick—Bauer TotalOne NXG, P31 curve, cut to exactly twenty-seven and a quarter inches. That’s what he was using right now.

  Unlike some of his teammates, Emile wasn’t afraid to change his stick. If something better came along, he’d give it a try.

  He wiped his sticky fingers and tossed his napkin in a garbage can. That ought to hold him until lunch. He’d tried to guilt Gabriella into saying she’d take a break at noon and eat with him, but Gabriella hadn’t been her usual cooperative self. He hadn’t even tried with Hélène-Louise.

  There was one more stop he always made when he was in Beauford. The Sound team captain Nickolai Glazov’s wife, Noel, owned Piece by Piece, and he always went in to say hello. Often as not, Glaz was there, but even if he wasn’t, Noel would be. Maybe she’d go to lunch with him.

  But sure enough, when Emile opened the door, Glaz was putting the new baby in her little basket bed on wheels.

  “O Captain! My Captain!” Emile said.

  “O goaltender! My goaltender!” Glaz replied.

  Noel gave Emile a little wave from across the way where she was showing quilts to a pretty woman with dark hair. He waved back but didn’t interrupt her.

  Emile went to look at the baby. “And how is my goddaughter, the beautiful Amelie?” He liked babies; he always had. Too bad she was asleep.

  “You are not her godfather.”

  “I should be. I can shower Amelie with jewels, cars, and furs. I am going to have a tiny replica of my sweater made for her to wear to games.”

  “I can shower her with jewels, cars, and furs.”

  “But I would. You will not. You are too cheap.”

  Nickolai didn’t deny it, just as Emile knew he wouldn’t. He was proud that his favorite restaurant was Cracker Barrel and that he shopped at Dollar General.

  “She will not be wearing the sweater of a crazy goaltender.” But Nickolai smiled, amused. Emile was good at amusing people. “And stop calling her Amelie. We told you from the start we would not call her by a French name that sounds like yours. You know her name is Anna Lillian. Is bad luck to call the wrong name.”

  “Bah! You and your bad luck and superstitions. Silly.” Anna Lillian yawned and put her fist in her mouth. So cute. Maybe he would pick her up. He could do it without waking her. Probably.

  “I have no superstitions. Only a few rituals,” Glaz said. “And don’t even think about picking up Anna Lillian. She just went to sleep.”

  “I was not going to pick her up.” And apparently he wasn’t. “Ritual. Superstition. It is all the same. You wear the same suit for every road trip, and Noel must send you a text exactly one hour and seven minutes before puck drop. And you know what happens when anyone says the words Stanley Cup, unless we have just won it.” Which the Sound had done twice in the last three years.

  The big Russian’s nostrils flared. “Don’t say that!”

  “See? Non. I am the one with no superstitions.” Next to baseball, hockey players were known for being the most superstitious in the sports world, but win or lose, Emile would do it without superstitions or rituals. He just played.

  “No superstitions? What do you call refusing to talk between periods and going out of your mind if anyone touches your head while you are wearing your helmet?”

  “I call that concentrating on the game. And I don’t like having my head touched. That’s all.”

  “And taping your stick between every period? You may think no one knows you leave a bit of tape on if it was a good period and you spit on it and flush it down the toilet if it was a bad one. If there was a stat for the NHL player responsible for the most clogged toilets, you would win it.”

  It was true. He did do that, but not because he was superstitious. It was just a thing he did. He would never be superstitious, because his son-of-a-bitch stepfather had been—for all the good it had done him. Andre had never gotten beyond being a fourth-rate forward on a third-rate minor league team that barely paid the bills. But just the same, he’d changed his skate laces and eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before every game of his life—at least that’s what Emile’s mother had said. Emile didn’t remember.

  Emile’s biological father had died from a skate to the jugular when Emile was a baby, and his mother, Bridget, had married Andre when Emile was two. Andre immediately set about turning Emile into a hockey player. By the time Emile was seven, he showed real promise, but Andre was washed up.

  Maybe Emile should thank him for that, but he didn’t. Hard to be grateful to a man who beat the hell out of you every time you missed a save. And that was the least of his sins.

  “So, no superstitions, Mr. French Kiss? Da. If you say.” Glaz smirked, and Emile wanted to hit him but fought the urge, like he always did. Glaz was his friend and only savages hit people.

  Emile shrugged and called on the funny man inside him to take the reins. “Think what you like. The Lifeguard should have been my nickname.” Though he did love being called French Kiss. A female sportscaster had called him that because she said he had such a beautiful, kissable mouth. He’d tracked her down and let her try it out, but it had come to nothing. It always did.

  Glaz caught sight of something over Emile’s shoulder and put up a hand. “No, Noel. Do not climb that ladder. I will take the quilt down.” And he stepped away from Emile without a word.

  Emile wouldn’t have been much of a goaltender if he hadn’t learned a long time ago how to seize an opportunity. The opposing team’s forward makes a misstep, and you make that puck your own. In this case, Glaz was the forward and little Anna Lillian was the puck. He swooped in and picked her up—only he swooped with too much enthusiasm, and she began to cry.

  There was going to hell to pay now. He put her on his shoulder and began to bounce her. “Ne pleure pas, chérie.”

  “I told you not to pick her up!” Glaz shouted and Anna Lillian cried harder.

  “Silencieux,” Emile said. “See what you did.”

  “What I did! And stop speaking French in front of my baby.”

  “Now, now,” Noel said as she came toward him with her
arms outstretched. “This isn’t the first time she’s been wakened, and it won’t be last.” She smiled at Emile as she took the baby.

  “You have a sweet way about you, my lovely Noel. I know this beautiful bébé will be such as you.”

  “Leave my wife and child alone.” Glaz was on the ladder removing a quilt from the dowel where it hung. “Make yourself useful and let me hand this down to you.”

  Emile winked at Noel, gave Anna Lillian a little pat, and took his sweet time about crossing the room.

  “Bonjour,” he said to the dark-haired woman. “You are buying the lovely Noel’s quilt?”

  “I am.” Emile did not find all Southern accents easy on the ear, but hers was—more slow than flat, more like sharp molasses than overly sweet honey. Might be a little bourbon mixed in.

  “You are lucky to own such a thing. Noel is an artist.”

  “I am lucky. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” Her eyes were purple. He’d never seen purple eyes before. Was there a trick to making them appear that way, or was it real?

  Emile looked at the quilt. It was a wild swirl of colors and shapes that he couldn’t make sense of, but everyone said Noel’s quilts were fine textile art, so it must be true. In an attempt to improve himself, he’d taken some art classes at the University of North Dakota but he didn’t remember them saying anything about quilts.

  “Oui. A real work of art.”

  “Mr. French Kiss?” Glaz said. “Do you think you could take this work of art from me so it does not get soiled from the floor?”’

  “If I can stop a puck, I can stop a quilt.” He folded it and laid it on the table. “Come out to lunch with me, my captain. I will buy.”

  “Nyet.” I am to watch Anna Lillian until time to practice.”

  “Go,” Noel said. “Anna Lillian is asleep again. You can put her in the stroller and take her.”

  “I’ll push!” Emile volunteered.

  Glaz frowned, but he nodded. “Let me put away the ladder.”

  “Excellent,” Emile said. “I will get the pushchair.” He smiled at the purple-eyed woman and briefly wondered who would be under that quilt with her.

  • • •

  It was a good thing Cameron had gone for coffee. Never in her wildest dreams had Amy imagined there was any chance Nickolai Glazov would actually be in the shop. She watched him exit Piece by Piece with the one he’d called French Kiss pushing the baby. She hadn’t paid attention to their whole conversation, but it seemed he was a hockey player and teammate. She had only been to one Sound game with Cameron, though he went all the time. She had been raised on football—SEC college and Atlanta Falcons. Aside from hearing Cameron rant and rave about Glazov, she knew nothing about hockey players or hockey. But there was something familiar about Mr. French Kiss, and it was easy to see how that one had gotten his nickname. He had the most beautiful mouth she’d ever seen. The thought of his mouth jarred her memory.

  Wasn’t he the one in that candy commercial? At the end he said, “Au Chocolat,” smiled, and bit into a piece of chocolate with a filled center. Then came the capper. The camera zoomed in on that beautiful mouth as a tiny bit of syrupy filling ran from the corner of his mouth. It made every woman watching want to lick the TV screen.

  She tossed her head to shake off the thought. She shouldn’t be looking at other men’s mouths—even exceptional ones with full lips that smiled easily. Maybe, apart from the dripping candy, that was the attraction—the easy smile. There hadn’t been a lot of that in her life lately, not in the mirror and not across the dinner table.

  “I am so pleased you like this quilt.” Noel Glazov had refolded it and was wrapping it in tissue paper. “I have never made a crazy quilt before. I didn’t think I ever would. But I made it when I was pregnant.”

  Amy was thankful Noel had distracted her from thinking about mouths. The quilt with its swirling patterns and wild colors was not what she had imagined buying, but she’d known it was hers the moment she’d seen it—even though it was priced at three thousand dollars.

  “I thought I would want one made of squares like the one with the leaves there.” Amy pointed to the quilt display. “But this is my quilt. How is a crazy quilt different?”

  “There’s no real plan to a crazy quilt. You just start sewing together fabric of all shapes, sizes, and patterns.” Noel smiled warmly. “Not usually my way at all. I always like a plan of exactly what is going to happen.”

  “I understand that,” Amy said. “I used to be a professional organizer.” Were used to be the saddest words in the English language?

  “Really?” Noel was now wrapping the quilt in brown paper. “We could sure use some of that around here.”

  Amy laughed. Everyone said that. It was like English teachers hearing, “I’ll have to watch my grammar,” or people saying to a minister, “I’ll have to watch my language.”

  “Nonsense,” Amy said. “The shop is lovely. How did you decide to make a crazy quilt?”

  “Well, it was right after we found out I was pregnant.” Noel tied the parcel with twine from an old-fashioned dispenser. “I was on a plane, on the way to see my husband’s hockey game. I reached for my project bag and found that I had brought the wrong one—something I would probably not have done had I not had baby brain. What I’d brought was a bag of scraps. It’s a wonder I had scissors and a needle. So I just started stitching, thinking maybe I’d make a pincushion from it. Then there was enough for a pillow. But I just kept going.” She patted the box she had placed the bundle in. “And here it is. I call it Stir Crazy—which I was later on in my pregnancy.”

  “That’s a lovely story. I’ll bet you have stories for all your quilts.”

  Noel stopped and considered, then laughed. “I suppose I do. I live with them a long time. It took me almost as long to make Stir Crazy as it did to make Anna Lillian.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a pamphlet. “This is how to care for it. And there’s something else. After I named the quilt, I hid seventeen spoons in it. Different sizes, some embroidered, some appliquéd. I can give you a diagram that shows where they are, but I hope you’ll try to find them first. You can call me anytime and I’ll send you the diagram—either when you find them all or give up.”

  “So, spoons for Stir Crazy? I love it!” If she’d been charmed before, now she was enchanted.

  “And”—Noel gave her a sly little grin—“I thought it might be a good quilt to spoon under.”

  A nice thought. There hadn’t been much of that lately, but maybe better times were coming. Amy removed her credit card from her wallet and slid it across the counter.

  Noel picked up the card. “I’ll have you ready in just a jiffy.”

  “Take your time,” Amy said.

  Noel swiped the card and frowned. “Odd. Let me try again.”

  Amy didn’t think much of it. Transactions sometimes failed the first time. But Noel did not brighten and say, “There it goes,” as merchants always did when this happened. In fact, she seemed to be trying for a third time.

  Finally, Noel looked up. “I’m sorry. Your card has been declined.”

  “That’s impossible,” Amy said. That’s probably what everyone said, but it really was impossible. The limit on her card was ridiculous, and Cameron paid it off every month.

  Noel handed her the card. “I’m sure it’s just a glitch. Would you like to call them? Or use another card?”

  She didn’t have another card, except for her debit card, which she seldom used.

  “I’ll call the bank.” She flipped the card over and punched in the number. She didn’t even step away out of earshot. Why should she? She had plenty of money and nothing to be embarrassed about.

  But after a long, tortuous wait listening to elevator music with a recorded voice interrupting at regular intervals to ask her to be patient, she finally hung up. Now, reason or not, she was embarrassed. She couldn’t stay on hold forever. Cameron would be here soon. She’d work this out la
ter. She fished her debit card out of her wallet.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Amy said, “but I’m tired of being on hold. I’ll just use my debit card.”

  Noel smiled. “Certainly. Believe me, this kind of thing happens all the time.”

  “Maybe my fiancé got new cards and forgot to give me mine.” Uncomfortable at calling Cameron her fiancé, Amy hid her left hand. She wouldn’t have called him that if she had a better word, but boyfriend was so juvenile, and partner sounded like someone you had a business arrangement with—or maybe a cowboy, though wouldn’t that be pardner? She tried to picture Cameron in chaps and a cowboy hat, but couldn’t quite get there.

  “I’m sorry, Amy,” Noel said. “You debit card has been denied, too.”

  What!

  Amy shook her head. “This has never happened to me before. I don’t understand.”

  Noel looked as embarrassed as Amy felt. “You could call them.”

  No way was she going to stand here and make another call in front of this woman.

  “It’s the same bank. I’d just be on hold again.” She closed her eyes for a moment. Maybe Cameron had moved all their banking business and not told her—not that she was going to admit to this successful businesswoman and wife of a millionaire hockey player that she didn’t know anything about her own finances. Then she reminded herself that she—Amy—was a millionaire in her own right. Lots of people had other people handle their finances. Nikolai Glazov probably did. It was no different. Amy just didn’t have to pay Cameron.

  She lifted her chin and looked Noel in the eye. “I don’t know what is going on, but my fiancé is supposed to meet me back here. He handles our finances, and I know there has been some big misunderstanding. He’ll have the right cards.”