Page 72 of Rookie Move
How crazy.
Regardless of its legality, Georgia had a PR quandary on her hands. She didn’t know whether to put Silas in front of every reporter in the stadium, or try to hide him and downplay the incident.
She had about ninety seconds to figure it out.
Georgia ran into the empty dressing room and out the other door. The first players were just clomping off the ice and down the rubber mats. Luckily, Silas was one of the first off the rink. She grabbed his arm and spun around to walk with him into the dressing room. “Nice work out there. But I don’t want you to brag about it on camera.”
Silas grinned. “Thought you might say that. I’m gonna say it was just an accident of timing that I happened to open the door then. Didn’t know their guy would fall on his face at our feet.”
“Perfect,” Georgia said. “Now come say that out in the hallway. But I’m not bringing you into the press conference, because that makes it look too official for something that was an accident.”
“Okay, boss.” Silas removed his gloves and hurled them toward his locker. “Let’s do it.”
In the hallway, a local sports reporter pounced, and Silas gave his quote about the “accident of timing.”
“That’s really your story?” the reporter drawled.
“Sure is,” Silas said, slowing down the words to matchthe other man’s southern accent. “I guess it’s just the same kind of coincidence your guy had when he accidentally clocked my teammate in the head.”
Georgia bit her lip to keep from laughing, then she sent Silas back into the locker room.
Of course, his teammates knew better. Their shouts could be heard even through the dressing room door. “Silas for president!” some player yelled. “Play of the year!” hooted another.
The hallway was chock-full of journalists looking for quotes from the winning team. When Georgia put her head into the locker room, asking for O’Doul, the GM told her that he’d refused to take questions tonight.
“He’s feeling beat. Take someone else,” Hugh said.
That made her job a little trickier, but if the captain had decided he was in no mood for polite conversation, she wasn’t about to argue. She pried Bayer out of the locker room to say something about his goal. He made a little dig at the other team, something about “past grudges that some players couldn’t set aside,” but it wasn’t too bad. Tonight would not be a complete PR disaster.
Lately that counted as a win.
A lot of time went by, though, without Leo showing his face. Georgia was worried about him. She checked her phone, but there were no messages. She could always go into the locker room and ask, but if something was seriously wrong, her father would be there, too.
Rock, meet hard place.
Georgia gathered her things together and went to find the bus back to the hotel.
TWENTY-TWO
Leo was prodded six ways ’til Sunday by the doctor and the trainer after the game. They did a battery of tests for concussion, shining a light in his eyes, asking stupid questions.
“What day is it?”
“Game day!” he answered cheerfully.
“Mr. Trevi...”
“Thursday, I’m pretty sure. But on the road, I forget sometimes. You should ask me who the president is, or something. And I’m fine. Really.”
That went on for some time, and then they probed his ribs and shoulder, which were admittedly pretty tender. But he was used to feeling beat up after a game. “I’ll take an ice bath,” he suggested. He’d offer anything to get ’em off his back. The doctor and the trainer were also worried about cracked ribs, but Leo knew from experience that it would be a day before he was sure whether the soreness could be written off as muscle aches or not.
“All right,” the trainer finally agreed. “We’ll look at you again tomorrow.”
Leo took a quick shower, trying not to hiss when the hot water hit an abrasion on his neck. Then he went to suffer in the ice bath, as he’d promised he would. At thisfacility, the thing was just a plastic tub and a cold tap, which some helpful soul had running at full blast. He put his hand in the water and then wished he hadn’t. With a sigh he stepped in, one leg at a time, and then sank quickly below the surface, up to his chin.
Some people swore by the cold bath as a way of staving off muscle aches, but Leo had never been convinced that it accomplished anything more than shrinking his nuts down to pebble size. He counted to three hundred and then got the heck out of there, drying himself with blue-tinged fingers and cursing the inventor of the ice bath.
By the time he’d fumbled his shaking limbs into his suit and shoes, the press conference was over and the bus had already left with the first group of players. The dressing room was almost empty. And by the time he’d hefted his duffle bag to leave, the only other player in there was O’Doul. The captain sat fully dressed on the bench in front of his locker, his head tipped back, as if he were reading a treatise off the ceiling.
