Page 19 of An Irresistible Force (Vancouver Vice)

I gathered up my file folder and took off for my office before I could do any more damage. And I walked straight into Chris. Ugh. He smelled so good—like a walk in the forest. Every day he looked hotter and hotter. Today he was wearing a buttery-soft leather jacket over a fitted ribbed sweater and dark jeans. And of course, the prominent outline of his chest under that sweater made me bite my lip.

Luckily for me, before I could collapse into a puddle of molten lust, he opened his mouth. “Morning, Amanda. Sorry, I’m a little late. And I’m almost done with those contracts.”

The guy was a lazy slacker. I’d already been at the office for two hours, and he couldn’t even hit a nine o’clock start? And those contracts, which any normal person could look over in one afternoon, had been on his desk for more than two days.

“Time is money,” I told him and walked to my office. Awesome, now I had filled my lame cliché quota for the day. What was it about Chris that turned me into an idiot? He must be contagious.

Back in my office, I was leafing through the marketing files. There was a drawing of a large white cube with a face and skinny white legs, and I was trying to figure out what the heck it was. I held the paper out at arm’s length. It looked like a happy marshmallow ready for roasting on the cannibal campfire.

“Oh, you found V-Ice!” Gregory’s cheerful voice broke into my examination. He perched on my desk and beamed at the drawing.

“Vee-Ice?” Was that like V-plates or V-card? Something this white and ugly had to be a virgin. “What is it?”

“I designed a mascot for the team. He’s an ice cube, get it? V-Ice. Like Vice, but a V-Ice Cube. Kind of gangster.”

I tried not to laugh. What could be less gangster than a plush white cube on skates? But Gregory was clearly excited about his baby. I nodded. “Mmm hmm.”

“Hey, a mascot is just up your alley. You’ve been talking about making things more family-friendly.”

“Yes, but that was more a euphemism for let’s get the scantily-clad women out of the arena.”

“You want to get rid of the Ice Girls?” Gregory couldn’t have sounded more shocked if I’d said I wanted to remove beer from the concessions.

I nodded. “You can’t tell me you’re into sexy women clearing snow?”

“Well, not me, of course.” He began to blush. “But many of our fans really like the Ice Girls. When we do any kind of fan event, they’re the biggest draw. Sometimes they’re bigger than the players.”

“But, Gregory, if we’re trying to clean up our act here, that means not objectifying women at every level of the team organization. I have no problem with women clearing the ice, but why should they do it in tiny skirts and midriff-baring tops?”

He frowned. “I guess you’re right. It’s kind of a hockey tradition though.”

“Besides, the fans at the games may like the Ice Girls, but who knows how many people we’re turning off by having them. We don’t have as many female fans or families as I’d like to have.”

Getting rid of Ice Girls wasn’t going to bring floods of women into the stands, but it might help prove that we weren’t a hotbed of sexual objectification. Eventually, we’d get more fans too.

“So, are you going to fire them all?” he wondered.

“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I admitted. I had only fired one person in my life, and it was a brutal experience. “I’ll have to look at their contracts. But I can guarantee we won’t have them next season.”

“The season is half-over, and they don’t even make that much money,” Gregory said with sad puppy eyes. He always pulled that face on me when we were kids and I was going to tell on him. Damn, it still worked.

“Okay, I won’t fire them. But I’m definitely covering them up.”

“Good idea,” he agreed. “So you wanted to talk about revenue?”

“Yeah.” I turned my laptop to face him. “I’ve done some calculations. Our sales department expenses are surprisingly high. We need to bring them into line. And we’ll talk to the bank about consolidating our debts and lowering our interest payments. Just those two things will get us pretty close to break-even. And if we could increase attendance, we’d be profitable again.” However if attendance continued to drop, we would keep losing money.

My brother looked over the numbers. Like most musicians, he’d always been good at math. “Wow. You’re awesome. I’m so glad you’re here now. I was totally stressed out.”

Poor guy. He was always a worrier. I reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “Honestly, if the team is in trouble, and the Millionaires want to buy it—why is this not something we are considering?”

Gregory shook his head. “I guess it’s because Uncle Thomas and our mother are so against it. I’d be happy to do something else. When I was only the Brand Marketing guy, I was able to get time off for my DJ gigs. Now I’m working crazy hours.”

I leaned back in my ratty pleather chair. “It’s bizarre. Neither of us is qualified to manage a hockey team, and we don’t even want to be here. Mummy is the one who should be doing it. She has enough willpower to raise the Titanic.”

“Yeah. It’s scary the way she can make you feel that it was your decision to do exactly the opposite of what you wanted. Rebecca laughs at me.”

“Imagine living with her once you’re grown up.” I sighed.

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