Calling the Shots. Ellen Hartman
but scared scared in a way he hadn’t seen since those first panicked days three months ago when Erin had told them she was going on tour with Lush and Allie would be staying with him full-time.
What the hell had happened to put that look back in her eyes?
“You okay?” he asked, his voice rough.
When she nodded, he let his eyes skim quickly over the rest of her. There was blood on the neck of the Sabres jersey he’d given her for Christmas and the knee was torn out of her jeans, the skin underneath raw and weeping blood, but she looked all right. She was in one piece and he’d made it home, late but not too late, and whatever else happened, he could handle. He would handle. Somehow he’d make this right for Allie because although she deserved the best, all she had right now was him.
He slid one hand around to the back of her neck and then down to rest on her shoulder, reassuring himself as much as her as he turned to stand. His knee protested when he straightened it, but he barely noticed. With his immediate worries answered, the other people in the room finally registered. His gaze jerked from the woman in the chair next to Allie to the boy sitting on the far side. The boy who’d hit Allie. The boy who better have a damn good explanation for himself.
“Danny?” he said, his voice tight. “What happened?”
Danny pointed at the chair and Bryan sat—he had questions, but he trusted Danny to answer them. Danny was a straight shooter. He’d coached Bryan back in squirt hockey, and had never given him bad advice.
Allie’s cut knee was jerking up and down a mile a minute next to his. He rubbed her shoulder, trying to release some of her tension but the knee kept bouncing.
“Clare Sampson, meet Bryan James, Allie’s father. The kids already know each other,” Danny said. “A little too well.”
Bryan didn’t recognize Clare Sampson. She was dressed more stylishly than most of the hockey moms he saw around the rink; her navy belted car coat couldn’t possibly offer much protection from the metal benches. Her straight, sleek brown hair was tucked behind her ears and her eyes were also brown behind a pair of trendy-looking glasses with dark green frames. Her face was attractive, or would have been if she hadn’t been glaring at him as though he was a spot on the front of her white silk shirt. She must have kept her own last name because he didn’t know any dads named Sampson.
“Allie and Tim got in a pretty serious fight in the skate shop after practice,” Danny said. “I was fitting a pair of skates in the back and they were going at it before we could break them up. I haven’t taken stock yet, but I’m guessing there’s quite a bit of property damage—the front window’s broken for sure. Luckily neither of them is hurt too bad.”
Bryan leaned forward so he could see around Clare. The boy was sitting slumped in his chair, an ice pack on one eye, the neck of his shirt stretched and the skin underneath scratched. A bruise was blooming on his chin. His good eye was open but as soon as he saw Bryan looking at him, he closed it. Even allowing for the fact that he was a little beat up, Bryan didn’t recognize him.
“What happened?” he whispered fiercely to Allie. “How does that kid even know you?”
His daughter’s head dipped lower and her knee started bouncing harder so Bryan knew he’d made a mistake even before Clare’s mouth tightened and she snapped, “Tim is on the Twin Falls Cowboys, Mr. James. Same as Allie.”
Bryan leaned forward again for a second look at the boy and Allie muttered, “Right wing, fourth line.”
“Fourth line?” he said. “I didn’t think we had a—”
“Dad,” Allie said.
At the same instant Tim reopened his good eye and said, “It’s only my third week.”
“Discussing hockey positions isn’t the point,” Clare said. “Your daughter started a fight with my son and despite what Mr. Jackson says, Tim is not okay.” Bryan was all set to rip into her when she added, “And this is not the first time she’s done it.”
Not the first time? What did that mean? He looked to Allie, but she was staring at the floor again.
“Mom,” Tim protested, his voice cracking.
CLARE KNEW SHE WAS crossing a line her son hadn’t wanted her to cross, but she was frankly out of patience.
Allie James was a pretty girl, an excellent athlete and as far as she could see, a hot-tempered bully.
Clare straightened in her chair and patted Tim’s arm, but her son jerked away from her, the ice bag he’d been holding on his eye flinging drops of water onto her pants and the linoleum floor. He scuffed the water with the toe of one black sneaker. “I asked you not to do this,” he said with an embarrassed glance at Allie.
She ignored the guilt she felt as she said, “What happened, Mr. James, is your daughter attacked Tim after school on at least two occasions and then again tonight. I want to know what you’re going to do about that because I’m this close—” Clare held two fingers up, leaving barely a micron of space between them “—to calling the police.”
“The police? They’re kids.”
Despite his dismissive tone, Allie’s father sat forward, his attention on her now, not Tim. Good. He should know how serious this was and exactly who he was dealing with.
“Ms. Sampson,” the manager said. “Let me give Bryan a quick rundown of what happened tonight. I hope we can work this out without getting the police involved.”
Clare nodded. She’d give them a few more minutes but if she didn’t like what she saw, she was breaking up the boys club and getting some help down here. She might have just moved to Twin Falls while these guys seemed to be old friends, but that didn’t mean she had to let them push her or Tim around.
“After practice, Allie and Tim were in the pro shop. Like I said, I was in the back so I didn’t see what happened, but Cody MacAvoy was there, and he says Allie jumped Tim.”
Clare was watching Allie’s father closely. He winced at the manager’s last words.
His blue eyes were shadowed by the dark brown hair falling across his forehead. She’d noticed when he came into the office that he was much taller than the rink manager, and that he held himself with confidence despite a slight limp. Now, slumped in the chair next to his daughter, he looked considerably less formidable. He was shooting worried looks at Allie and nodding as the manager told the story, but she wasn’t sure how much he was really taking in. If circumstances were different, she could imagine sympathizing with him—this was a horrible situation and the man looked exhausted.
“It took two of us to…uh…pull her off him.”
Clare started to reach for Tim, to brush the hair off his forehead at least, to reassure herself, but she saw him tense and so she disguised the gesture by tucking her own hair behind her ear.
She and Tim had always been close—it was just the two of them and had been right from the start.
This year, ever since Tim started seventh grade, he’d been pushing her away. His reach for independence was natural, she knew. Healthy, even. But it scared her.
She’d told him she would stay out of the trouble he’d been having with Allie, but he couldn’t expect her to ignore this. She’d been right there in the lobby, half watching a repeat of Friends on the TV mounted over the snack-bar window while scrolling through her e-mail in another futile attempt to clear her in-box. Then there’d been yelling and the sound of breaking glass and a horrible cracking sound she figured out later was Tim’s head hitting the floor. She’d turned as the kids had come rolling out of the skate shop like some grotesque, many-armed monster. Thank God they’d avoided the broken glass, most of which was off to the side.
She’d never seen a fistfight before and the little she’d witnessed of this one had been brutal and desperate. She’d stood frozen while the rink manager pulled Allie off Tim, and Cody, a boy from