Playing To Win. Taryn Leigh Taylor

beautiful bronzed skin from the waist up. Behind him, his last name and a big number 18 gleamed white against the navy of his Storm jersey.

      “That’s Luke Maguire. The topic of my diatribe for the last twenty minutes? The man currently paused on my television?” Holly gestured at his stupid handsome face in HD.

      “Well, why didn’t you tell me he was so yummy? I would have paid better attention.” She glanced at the television, presumably for the first time since her arrival. “Mmm. Maybe you were right. I should watch more hockey.”

      Holly couldn’t help but smile. She had been trying to open Paige up to the wonders of sports for the better part of a decade now. How had Holly not realized the best way to turn Paige on to sports was to turn Paige on? “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

      Paige smiled sweetly. “I’m a divorcée with no serious relationship prospects on the horizon. I have to take my thrills where I can get them.” She flicked her gaze back to the TV. “And that man looks like he gives good thrill.”

      Holly couldn’t argue. Irrationally, it made her even angrier at him. At one of her favorite hockey players. One day of playing dress-up and her view of the sports world was already starting to become skewed. So far, a steady paycheck was the only thing she enjoyed about this gig. Especially after such a mortifying first night. She’d taken the job because it was her chance to get on camera. One step closer to her big dream of talking sports on TV. But now...

      “I’m wondering if taking this job was a mistake,” she confessed.

      Since she’d graduated, she’d been plugging away, ghostwriting sports pieces for a bunch of online sports blogs. Hockey, basketball, baseball, football, golf...you name it, she wrote it. Not that anyone knew, since all her painstaking work was credited to “staff writer.” But it was the only way she could continue to write for enough outlets to make a living. She spent what little free time she had busting her butt trying to get one of her sports op-eds picked up.

      That was the kind of writing she really loved—not spewing facts and stats and scores, but interpreting them, putting them in context, figuring out what was making a team successful, suggesting what they could do to become more so, having a go at dumb managerial decisions and underperforming athletes.

      That sort of in-depth analysis was the key to getting where she really belonged—on television, just like her mom used to be. She wanted to read her pieces aloud, share them with people who loved sports as much as she did. Anyone could read a teleprompter; Holly wanted to make an impact.

      “I mean, Jay and I made the Women’s Hockey Network video as a joke. And now it’s gotten me closer to my goal of being on camera than any article I’ve ever written.” Holly looked down, picking at the red lacquer Paige had insisted on slicking over her stubby nails. “But instead of feeling great about that, I feel like I’ve sold out. I’m a joke. I mean, can you even imagine what my mom would think of all this?”

      “Woah. Back up the pity bus. I will not let you go down the mom road. She loved you and she would want what’s best for you. But Hols, even if your mom was still alive, what’s best for you would be your choice, not hers.”

      Holly flopped onto the couch. “I know. But I still worry about letting her down. When I accepted this gig, I thought it was going to be a case of ‘all publicity is good publicity.’ Now I’m not so sure.”

      She ran her hands down her face. “Luke Maguire believes I’m a total idiot! How can I ever do an in-depth interview with him now? And I don’t even get to travel with the team! That’s how dumb the questions I ask are supposed to be. I’m not worth a seat on a chartered plane that’s already been paid for.”

      Paige glanced up from a picture featuring a shirtless LA Laker. “Lighten up, would you? It’s been one day. This job is a stepping-stone—one with over a hundred thousand hits on YouTube so far. You never know where this opportunity could take you. Besides, what do you think the rest of your former sports broadcasting classmates are doing right now? Interviewing team mascots and reporting on who scored the most baskets in soccer games played by twelve-year-olds? I’ll bet you’re closer to a real gig than any of them.” Paige shut the magazine and tossed it onto the coffee table. “You’re working with a real hockey team, interviewing some of the best players in the game. And yeah, it’s not perfect, but it could be a hell of a lot worse. So to quote a good friend of mine—” Paige arched one perfectly winged eyebrow “—suck it up, Princess. Go out there and do the job.”

      Holly sighed. “I hate it when you’re right.”

      “Then you must hate me all the time,” her friend lamented with a grin. It faded after a moment. “Was that enough of a pep talk? Because I’ll bail on my date and we can go out for a drink if you want to talk this out some more.”

      “Oh, right! You have a date.” Holly shook her head. “I keep forgetting since you’ve been so secretive about this mystery man of yours.”

      “It’s new. We’re still feeling each other out. Once we start feeling each other up, then I’ll have some details to share.” Paige was the only person in the world Holly knew who could pull off a wink with such aplomb.

      “Of that I have no doubt. Now go and have fun. Besides, I’m already in the middle of a sports-related crisis. There’s no way I can muster the fortitude and patience it would take to teach you that you don’t score baskets in soccer right now.”

      Paige laughed at the jab.

      Holly squared her shoulders. “Like you said, I made this choice. I’m going to honor this contract. Maybe I can even convince them to let me do some real reporting. Wow ’em so they give me a chance to document the Storm’s first time in the play-offs with the gravitas and seriousness that it deserves.”

      “That’s the spirit! You show those men who’s boss.” The phone rang just as Paige stood to leave. “See? That’s probably some titan of the hockey world, impressed with your journalistic integrity and calling to poach you for his own team.”

      “Who else could it be?” Holly agreed drolly. “Say hi to your date for me.”

      “No way. Get your own man, which I hope you do soon. You’re in desperate need of some hunky distraction in your life,” Paige advised, heading for the door. “At the very least, this job will be great for that.”

      Holly rolled her eyes in a silent goodbye as she grabbed the handset of her phone, recognizing Jay’s number on call display. Paige didn’t like him very much, but Holly and Jay had hit it off immediately in broadcasting school.

      When the Storm offered to let her pick her own cameraman, she’d eagerly snatched Jay away from filming weddings and local stories. It was a relief not to have to fake sports stupidity with at least one person.

      “Hey. The footage looks great.” Embarrassing as it might be for her personally, she had to admit that Jay had edited her interviews with Luke and the rest of the team into a professional-looking comedic montage that could now be viewed by the world at portlandstorm.com.

      “I’m glad you think so, because the boss man agrees.”

      “What?”

      “That’s why I’m calling. Check your texts.”

      “Or you could just tell me since we’re, you know, on the phone,” she pointed out.

      “Okay, smart-ass. It seems your big-haired alter ego can do no wrong. Hits on the Storm’s website have increased twenty percent since your interview was posted last night. Usually after a loss, website traffic goes down. They’ve decided to give us an extra assignment.”

      “Oh, God.” Holly cringed. She couldn’t help it. A twenty percent uptick? That did not bode well for Operation: Journalistic Integrity. She’d be stuck asking about favorite childhood breakfast cereals for the rest of her career while important stories, like Luke Maguire’s scoring drought that had now entered its twelfth game, went unmentioned.

      On