Lucky Score (The Hawkeyes Hockey Series Book 6)

As if this day wasn’t long enough with storm prep and more texts for Josslin, I woke to the sound of someone attempting to break into the house’s front door.

I don’t bother to put on a shirt or a pair of pants. Whoever this fucker is trying to gain access into my house at one in the morning is going to have to deal with the repercussions of their actions while getting their ass handed to them by a pissed off guy in his underwear.

The minute I swing the door open with one hand while clutching a baseball bat in the other, I’m ready to meet whatever unlucky bastard decided to try to rob this house. Only when I open the door, I’m taken back at first to see it’s not some asshole robber hitting up all the houses that have been left abandoned by homeowners fleeing the area. Instead, it’s a woman at my door.

A woman who, by the look of her dropped jaw and wide-eyed stare of dread, appears more shocked to see me on the other side of the door than I am to see her.

She looks more like a drowned cat than a red-blooded woman. Her brown hair is dripping wet and stingy from the rain and humidity, with some strands plastered against her face. Her black mascara has already started running, giving her tired, baggy eyes a raccoon-like effect.

“What do you mean, “What am I doing here?” This is my rental as of three p.m. check-in time yesterday afternoon. What are you doing here?” she asks.

I can’t tell if the drowned cat has something against curse words or if she just wasn’t listening closely enough.

I might have found the lack of her using the f-word as endearing if she wasn’t copping up an attitude with the guy who owns the porch she’s standing on and who she woke up in the middle of the night.

“I own it,” I say simply.

She looks down at her phone and then back at me.

“That can’t be right. I have a confirmation email saying that I rented this place for the next two weeks.”

Two weeks?

Like hell, she’s staying here for two weeks.

She has to have the wrong house. There’s no other explanation.

I should just slam the door in her face and head back to bed, leaving her to figure it out on her own. I’m too fucking tired and too fucking irritated about being woken up in the middle of the night to pull together the very bare minimum of patience that I force myself to give.

It’s dangerous for her to be out in the storm and though I’d like to know what a young woman, about half my size, traveling by herself, is doing entering codes on random people’s house locks in the middle of the night, I know better than to get involved.

I’ve done a good job at staying uninvolved with anyone over the last eighteen years, and I’m not going to break my streak with a woman who looks like a creature who just walked out of the depths of the ocean behind her.

“I can promise you that you have the wrong house. And just a word of caution: you should double-check the address before attempting to break into someone’s home. You never know who’s going to be on the other side.”

I begin to shut the door, but her hand slams against it to stop me from closing it.

She’s no match for me in height or strength. Her efforts to push back on the door wouldn’t stop me from closing it in her face if I wanted to. But I stop and look back at her through the small gap still left open between me and her through the door.

She’s got guts; I’ll give her that… but evidently, no brains, considering that she thinks taking on a pissed-off, half-naked man is a good idea.

What woman in her mid to late twenties knocks on some random house in the middle of the night and doesn’t turn and run the second that they see me holding a bat on the other side of the door.

“This is house number 524, correct?” she asks.

She stares back at the house number to the left side of the house, screwed into the stucco.

I let out a frustrated breath. Obviously, she isn’t going to leave me alone until I’ve convinced her that she’s in the wrong place.

You’d think that telling someone that you own the place that you’re currently standing in would be adequate enough, but not in this case.

I put the bat down by the side of the door where it usually lives and pull the door wider. Unless she’s got a 45 caliber pistol hidden in that soaked laptop bag, she’s no threat to me, except for putting me in an even worse mood.

“Obviously, that’s the right number since you’re reading it on the front of my house. But you still have the wrong house. I own this place, as I’ve already mentioned, and I don’t rent it out.”

Her eyebrows stitch together at my answer.

“Wait, you can’t own this house,” she says, pointing down at the porch.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a rental unit. My writing agent booked it for me,” she says and then thinks for a second. “Oh wait, is this some kind of squatter situation? Although it seems that you of all people…”

Squatter situation?

Me, of all people?

What the fuck is she talking about?

Her eyebrows furrow even deeper at the idea of it.

“Hell no. I’ve owned it for over fifteen years, and I’ve never rented it for a single day in any of that time. I have no idea who told you that this house is a rental, but I certainly didn’t.”

It’s the honest truth.

I have more money than I’ll spend in a lifetime, even after I retire, which means I don’t need this place to pay for itself in order for me to keep it.

Even if I did want to make a little extra money, I wouldn’t do it by renting out my beach house. The entire reason I have this place is to get away and unwind from the life I live in Seattle.

How can I do that if every time I show up, I know that random people have been screwing like bunnies on my bed, the kitchen table, and every other inch of this house while they’ve been staying in it?

Half of the year, I spend sleeping in hotel rooms for out-of-town games, and the last thing I would ever do is take a black light to any of the nice hotels that the Hawkeyes put us up in. I wouldn’t even trust the walls not to be smeared in bodily fluids.

Nope.

No, thank you.

I bought this place to have something that is only mine. Where the people don’t give a shit about who I am, and where I don’t have to worry about waking up to bed bug bites or getting chlamydia from the toilet seat.

“Well then, explain this,” she says, holding up her phone so I can see a confirmation email.

I take a small step forward and bend forward to look at the email.

Why do I even give a shit?

I have no idea.

I should just close the door. She’s intruding, and I don’t have to explain anything more to her. But instead, something tells me that this woman wouldn’t be standing on my front porch in a storm if she didn’t think she was in the right place.

My vision roams over the confirmation email just long enough for me to see the name of the vacation rental “property management” company.

There it is.

Bingo.

It all makes sense now.

I lean back up again and look over to the woman still standing on my porch with her luggage at her sides.

“The luxury premier property management company that you thought you booked with, is a scam company. They’re actually famous around here for that reason. They don’t manage a single property, nor are they a real business. They just have a scam website where they take photos of houses on the beach of popular destinations and then wait for unsuspecting vacationers to “book” a house and take all their money.”

Her face falls instantly. And though I didn’t think she could look any worse for wear, I watch her complexion turn a sickly gray as the blood drains from her face when she realizes what this means.

She or her “agent” just got ripped off, and now she has nowhere to stay.

If she hadn’t come in all hot and heavy, convinced that I’m the intruder in this situation, I might feel a little bad for the fact that she just got taken advantage of and paid a premium price for a beach house that she won’t be staying in.

Does it give me some satisfaction that I’m vindicated?

Yep, it sure does.

Does that make me an asshole?

Probably.

Though I can’t say that I’m happy she has nowhere to go. And unless she has friends or family around here, which I doubt she does, then she’s in a really bad position.

“A scam website? How do you know,” she asks.

She pulls her phone away from me and starts to scan the email with her own eyes trying to see where I figured it out.

“They’re one of the prominent scam websites for this area. My neighbor’s house has been “rented” out three times in the last few years, but my neighbor lives here full time, and she and her late husband have owned that place for almost twenty years.”

“Oh my God…” she says, rubbing her palm against her forehead. “What am I going to do?”

She says to herself, staring back at her phone and then turning her head to look back over her shoulder towards the beach and the angry ocean that’s thrashing against the shore.

Being out in this weather isn’t an option.

“Do you know anyone around here?” I ask, though I feel I already know the answer.

“No, I don’t know anyone,” she sighs in defeat, looking back down at her phone as if it might come up with an answer for her. “And the airport is shut down. There are no flights going in or out. It’s packed with passengers.”

“All of the hotels are booked solid with stranded vacationers, too,” I tell her.

“Do you know that for certain?” she asks, her frown increasing.

I’m guessing that was her next thought.

“I have a friend who manages one of the largest resorts in Cancun. He told me that everything is sold out right now since no flights are going out. People are stranded right now unless they were able to get one of the few rental cars and get the hell out of here.”

“Yeah, I know. My rental car. They gave away my reservation before my flight landed.”

It does sound like she’s having the vacation from hell. Still, it has nothing to do with me.

“How did you get here if you didn’t get a rental car?”

“A taxi driver was willing to bring me all the way out here. I figured I’d get a lift back into town tomorrow when the rental car company opens back up.”

That won’t be happening.

With every update I hear, the storm is inching closer, and I doubt there is a single car rental on this coastline for at least a couple hundred miles.

“I wouldn’t plan on getting that rental car tomorrow. Nor is that taxi coming back for you. You know that there is a hurricane advisory right now, right? We’re at least going to get the tail end of it, assuming it doesn’t come any closer. And besides, where would you go? No one has vacancies anywhere close.”

I can see the light in her eyes go dim, and she stares up at me.

I’d rather see the distrust in me that I saw earlier than the look of pure hopelessness that I see in them now.

I know I can’t leave her out here to fend for herself, but something tells me that letting her in is going to cost me more than I can afford.

“Ummm… Can…” she starts hesitantly. “Can I stay on your porch tonight? I’ll be gone in the morning. As soon as I can get a lift from someone back to the airport.”

Just then, the wind whips hard enough down the beach that a beach chair that a neighbor further up must have left out, comes whirling out of nowhere and smashes against one of the large palm trees out front of my house.

The woman in front of me shrieks at the sound, wraps her arms around her shoulders, and cowers a little as the wind knocks over her luggage.

She jumps back out of the way so they don’t knock her over.

I can’t leave her out here.

It’s too dangerous.

“Come on,” I say, taking a step out into the wind and picking up both of the pieces of luggage that toppled to the ground.

“Come on, what?” she asks, her voice a little shaky.

“You can’t stay outside.”

I turn around and head back for the house.

“Why not?” she asks, following behind me as I take the steps inside the house with her bags.

“Because if I let you sit out there in this weather, you might not still be there by morning. Your luggage sure as hell won’t be.”

I look over my shoulder to find her still with her arms protectively crossed over one another.

“Close the door and lock the deadbolt,” I instruct, and then start heading for the hall.

She hesitates for only a second but then does as I ask.

I hear the deadbolt engage behind me.

She’s brave or stupid to be willing to stay with a strange man in a house alone, but that’s not really my problem. She’s desperate, and the only intention I have with her is to find her a different place to stay by the end of the day tomorrow.

“You’re Lucky Wrenley, aren’t you?” she asks behind me.

Now I get the “You of all people” comment. I guess she’s making the assumption that a professional athlete wouldn’t squat in a house. I have no idea if that is true, but in my case, it sure as hell is.

I’m surprised she knows my name. She doesn’t exactly strike me as a hockey fan. Especially since she scowled at me the minute I opened the door.

“Seven. My name is Seven. And how do you know who I am?”

I’ve always hated the nickname.

The media coined the term after my first season when I was signed to a team that had never won a Stanley Cup in over twenty years.

They were thought to be a cursed team.

I ended up starting as the goalie when our starter got hurt the game before the last game of the championship, and I didn’t let a single puck get past me that night. Maybe I had something to prove or maybe I just got “lucky” as most sports commentators suggested.

We won the Stanley Cup, and the name stuck, and I’ve resented it ever since.

You don’t become one of the longest-player goalies in NHL history out of pure luck. My stats speak for themselves. It’s not cocky. It’s the facts.

I don’t ask fans not to call me that, but she’s not a fan, and thank God for that.

‘I live in Seattle. Your billboard-sized head is hard to miss.’

Does she realize how many dirty jokes she just set me up for? Too bad the last thing I’m in the mood for is a joke at one in the morning with a random stranger who just tried to break into my house.

She mentioned that she has an editor and that she’s from Seattle. If she turns out to be a sports journalist and this is all a ploy to get an exclusive interview, her ass is going back out to the porch.

Maybe Silas, my buddy who manages one of the hotels, has a room opening up tomorrow. Or maybe he knows of a vacant rental house somewhere around here that I can call the owner to get her into.

If Rita still has that open room above her bar available, I might be able to put her there.

Either way, tomorrow, the girl is gone.