Centuria Books · Man Advantage 9
Man Advantage 9 — Read the First Chapter
Her father taught her that obedience was safety. Two brutal hockey stars make her want a freedom sharp enough to bite.
Chapter 1
Dima Harb had been unemployed for eleven days when a four-thousand-dollar coat cried in her arms.
She stopped beside the cloakroom rail. Beyond the curtain, a violin slipped through the chatter of the winter benefit. The guests had paid for music, dinner, and a chance to admire one another’s generosity. Dima had agreed to work for an introduction.
One introduction. A woman with a shop in town needed someone who could read old labels and write good descriptions. Dima could do both. At twenty-one, with graduation seven months away, she had acquired the useful skill of making unpaid work sound temporary.
The coat cried again.
She turned it over. Cream wool, horn buttons, dark satin lining. A soft fur collar lay across her wrist. The price tag still hung beneath the maker’s label; the coat belonged to the auction rather than a guest.
One sleeve moved.
Dima lowered the coat onto the counter and put her ear near the shoulder. A blonde streak fell across her cheek, loose from the pin holding back her brown waves. She tucked it behind her ear and listened. A scratching sound came from under the satin. She ran two fingers along the seam until a claw caught her glove.
“Oh, you poor thing.”
The claw held on.
She pulled off her glove and searched the counter. Ticket rolls, spare hangers, a tin of mints. The scissors were in the sewing box beneath the till. She had used them an hour earlier to cut a hanging thread from a guest’s dress, an act for which she had received advice about smiling.
Now she slid one blunt blade beneath the loose seam.
“Put that down.”
The voice came from the curtain behind her.
Dima kept the blade still. A man stood in the opening with a black overcoat across his arm. He was tall enough to look past the top of the curtain, with short black hair and an old split in his lower lip. His dinner jacket fitted his muscular shoulders badly. The rest of it had given up somewhere around his chest.
She pointed at the coat.
“There’s an animal in the lining.”
He crossed the room in two steps.
“The scissors,” he said. “Put those down until we know where it is.”
“I know where its paw is.”
“The rest matters.”
Fair. Annoying, but fair.
She set the scissors on the counter. He placed his overcoat beside hers and rolled the trapped sleeve between his palms, using far less force than his size suggested. A small gray paw pushed through the gap she had opened.
His face changed at the sight of it. The hard line beside his mouth eased.
“Tarik.”
A second man pulled the curtain aside.
Dima recognized this one. Half the campus had watched a clip of Tarik Brkic driving a rival into the boards hard enough to lift the man’s skates. Her roommate had played it four times, then explained the appeal at a length Dima considered unhealthy.
The man beside her had to be Rami Zaidan.
Rami and Tarik. Dartmouth’s hockey royalty, if royalty could be built from split lips and disciplinary warnings. They had arrived together. They went everywhere together. Even Dima, who had attended exactly one hockey game and spent most of it trying to find the puck, knew they were a couple.
Tarik leaned over the coat. His dark-blond hair curled at the edge of his collar, and a pale scar cut across his right temple. A long, narrow rip ran through the knee of his formal trousers.
“Before you ask,” he said, catching her glance, “I paid for the rental.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.”
“You were about to judge.”
“I can do that quietly.”
Rami guided the little paw back through the opening. “Hold here.”
Tarik caught the sleeve where he pointed. His joking manner vanished as the animal struggled beneath their hands.
Dima picked up the scissors again.
“Leave the cloth loose,” she said. “I’ll follow the seam.”
This time Rami stood beside her and kept the lining raised. She cut three stitches. Tarik bent so close that his shoulder pressed hers, warm through the thin velvet of her dress.
Four stitches. Five.
A gray head pushed out, followed by two enormous ears. The kitten opened its mouth. The cry that emerged was so small that Dima almost laughed from the relief of getting any sound at all.
“Hello,” she whispered. “That was a dreadful choice of coat.”
Rami freed the back feet. The kitten collapsed against his palm.
He held it out to Dima at once.
She tucked the animal inside the front of her wool coat. Its bones pressed against her wrist. A sour smell rose from the damp fur, and she folded the clean scarf from her bag around it.
“Keep its face clear,” Tarik said.
“I am.”
“I’m saying things because I don’t like how still it is.”
The admission stopped her next sharp reply.
“Neither do I.”
Rami already had his phone out. He moved to the corner and spoke in a low voice, asking for an emergency clinic that could take a kitten. Tarik stripped the torn lining farther back. A small patch of dried dirt fell onto the counter.
“How did it get in?” he asked.
Dima touched the old opening beneath the sleeve. The edge was dark and frayed. Her fresh cut shone white beside it.
“Through there, I think. Then it couldn’t find the way out.”
The kitten pressed its face against her scarf. Its ears had the thin, folded shape of a moth’s wings.
“Don’t go to sleep yet,” she murmured. “You can do that somewhere expensive.”
Tarik glanced at the auction tag. “It has standards.”
“Terrible ones. Look who it invited to help.”
“Two hockey players?”
“Two brooding men and not a cat carrier between you. Very poor planning.”
He laughed once. Rami turned at the sound, and Tarik’s smile changed when it reached him. The private warmth of it caught Dima harder than either man’s size had.
They belonged to each other. That fact ought to have made the room easier.
Instead, she kept noticing the places where they touched.
Rami returned and caught Tarik lightly by the back of his neck. He spoke near his ear, and Tarik nodded before reaching for his own phone. The gesture lasted a second. Dima lowered her gaze to the kitten and tucked her scarf more securely around it.
“There’s a clinic that can see it,” Rami said. “We’re going.”
“I need to tell the event manager.”
“Tell her on the way.”
The certainty in his voice was nearly a relief. For one foolish second, Dima wanted to hand him every troublesome choice she had carried through the last eleven days.
Then the curtain opened again.
Gareth Skeffington stood in the gap with a drink in his hand.
He had worn that navy overcoat on the day he dismissed her. Tonight he had added a red scarf and a small enamel badge that marked him as a donor. His shoes were dry. Dima had walked through sleet to get here, and the difference irritated her before he spoke.
“What happened to my coat?”
His gaze went straight to the satin on the counter.
“A kitten was trapped inside it,” Dima said.
“That is auction stock.”
She opened her own coat just enough to show the gray head.
Gareth held his glass higher, away from the animal.
“We need to get it to a vet,” she said. “The seam was already torn. I cut it wider.”
“Of course you did.”
The familiar tone reached her before the words that followed. He had used it when she questioned a label in his stockroom. It made a reasonable question sound like a small, female failure of temperament.
“You were employed to describe things, Dima. Even then, you had to invent a cause.”
Tarik straightened. The curtain brushed his shoulders.
“She found a cat in your sleeve,” he said. “That’s a fairly strong cause.”
Gareth shifted his attention to him. Recognition arrived with a careful smile.
“Mr. Brkic. Mr. Zaidan. I didn’t realize you were involved.”
“Now you do,” Rami said.
Dima adjusted the scarf. The kitten had stopped gripping her glove. Beneath the wet fur, its small chest still rose and fell.
She wanted to leave. She also wanted Gareth to explain why the collar on this coat had the same short, dense fur as the pieces he had asked her to call rabbit.
The two wants collided in her throat.
“Where was it stored?” she asked.
“What?”
“The coat. Before it came here. Was it in your shop?”
“An auction is not a place to discuss my business.”
“The kitten came out of your business.”
Gareth set his drink on the counter. “Give it to me. I’ll have someone deal with it.”
He reached past Rami.
Rami caught his wrist.
The room went quiet enough for the music outside to sharpen. Rami held Gareth’s arm between them, low and still. Tarik moved to Dima’s other side, and the way out opened behind her.
“Take your hand back,” Rami said.
Gareth looked down at his wrist.
“Do you know how much I give to this college?”
“Take it back.”
Rami released him when he stepped away. A red mark remained above the expensive watch.
Dima stared at it. The force had been brief and cold. Rami had spent more strength keeping the kitten still than he appeared to need for Gareth.
She ought to have been thinking about the mark. About what men that size could do when patience ended.
Instead, she caught herself moving closer to them.
Gareth pulled his cuff down.
“The introduction you wanted,” he told her. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
There it was. The small piece of her evening he could still take.
Dima pushed her bare hand deeper into the scarf, beneath the kitten’s paws.
“Then stop counting it as a favor.”
She walked past him before the tremor reached her voice.
Tarik took her bag from the counter. Rami collected their coats. Nobody asked Gareth to excuse them.
The benefit continued on the other side of the curtain. A woman in pearls raised her hand to stop Dima, then lowered it at the sight of the men behind her. Dima crossed the carpet with a damp kitten tucked against a dress she had bought secondhand for fifteen dollars.
At the exit, she hesitated.
Her phone had been vibrating in her bag for most of the evening. Three calls from her father. A message from her mother. Sunday at home, her father had written. We need to discuss what you have been reading.
The little Gospel she had borrowed sat beside her wallet. Its blue cover had bent where she carried it everywhere, tucked out of sight until carrying it began to feel like another kind of lie.
She would have to answer him.
Tonight, the kitten needed her first.
Cold air pushed through the open door. Rami stepped in front of it and held his overcoat wide while Tarik brought the car around. Dima moved into the shelter he made. Snow melted on his dark hair.
“That was my best chance of work,” she said.
“That was his favorite way of keeping you grateful.”
“You don’t know what the other jobs pay.”
“I know what he wanted for the introduction.”
Rami looked toward the bright windows, and Dima remembered Gareth pulling his cuff over the mark on his wrist. Her lost wages still mattered. So did the extraordinary pleasure of watching someone make him retreat.
“You make enemies quickly,” she said.
“He took years. You’ve met me on a patient evening.”
She ought to ask what had happened in those years. Instead, she watched him turn back to her, pleased to have his attention and curious about how much trouble it might cost.
Tarik pulled up at the curb in an old station wagon. The passenger seat was piled with books and a paper bag. He leaned across and swept everything into the back.
“My luxury vehicle,” he said through the open door. “Mind the heater. It has two settings.”
“Which are?” Dima asked.
“You’ll find out.”
Rami rested a hand at her back and guided her under the door frame. Dima caught her skirt before the hem brushed the slush; his hand stayed steady through the awkward turn, and she lingered against it a moment longer than getting into a car required.
The car smelled of coffee, damp wool, and the oranges rolling beneath the seat. Dima settled the kitten in her lap. Its mouth opened again, and this time the sound had a little anger in it.
“Good,” she whispered. “Stay cross with us.”
Tarik reached over and turned the warm air toward her feet.
In the mirror, Rami’s gaze met his. A whole exchange passed between them without a word. Then Rami leaned forward from the back seat and laid his coat across Dima’s knees.
She had come to the benefit hoping someone would give her a chance.
Now she sat in a strange car between the attention of two men she should have had no chance with at all, holding a kitten that had chosen the worst coat in the room.
The car pulled away. Dima kept one finger beneath the little gray chin and counted each soft breath until the lights of the benefit disappeared behind them.
Chapter 2
Rami had seen Tarik carry a broken stick to the bench with blood running into his glove. He had watched him finish a game on a knee that swelled before the last whistle. Neither memory prepared him for Tarik standing in a veterinary waiting room, holding a pink carrier as though an abrupt movement might break the floor beneath it.
“They said we could borrow it,” Tarik told Dima.
“It’s empty.”
“I know.”
“You can put it down.”
“I know that too.”
She moved her feet, making room beside her chair. Tarik lowered the carrier with care. Its handle squeaked when he let go.
The kitten had been taken through the treatment door ten minutes earlier. A dark wet patch remained on Dima’s green dress where she had held it. She kept rubbing the place through her coat, as if she might wipe away the memory of how cold the animal had been.
Rami sat opposite them. The chair was too narrow. He left one knee in the aisle and watched Tarik take Dima’s abandoned glove from the floor.
He folded it over its mate on her bag.
Tarik did that with Rami’s gloves too, including after the argument last week when he had told Rami to find his own damn things. The gloves had appeared beside his keys anyway. Rami had kissed him over the kitchen counter and received a complaint about being late for practice.
Tonight, Dima watched too.
She glanced at the gloves, then at Tarik. Her expression softened before she turned toward the treatment door.
The small exchange lodged beneath Rami’s ribs.
He pulled his phone out and opened the message he had received at the benefit.
Gareth’s name headed the screen.
An unfortunate scene. Call me tomorrow. There’s no reason to let an upset former employee make enemies of friends.
Rami locked the phone.
“What does he want?” Tarik asked.
“To talk.”
“He had that chance.”
“Tomorrow.”
Dima looked between them. “Gareth?”
Rami nodded.
“You know him?”
“Through people who support the team.”
The answer was true. It was also too small.
Gareth had been at the dinner where a private donor offered to cover the overdue rent on Rami’s mother’s apartment. Rami had repaid the money that summer. Gareth still spoke to him as if the payment had bought a lifetime of gratitude.
Dima had worked in his shop. She knew his stock, his temper, and perhaps enough about his business to make him afraid of her questions. Rami had recognized the chance at the benefit, before she climbed into Tarik’s car. Keeping her close could give him a way to strike back.
She had asked who he knew. He had given her the smallest answer that would let him keep sitting here with that plan intact.
The treatment door opened before he spoke.
All three stood.
The veterinarian carried Dima’s scarf in a clear bag. “She’s warmer. That’s a good start.”
Dima pressed one palm against the counter. Tarik set his hand beside hers, leaving a little space.
“She’s thin and dehydrated,” the vet continued. “We’re keeping her tonight. I want to see her eating and holding her temperature before she goes anywhere.”
“Does she have a chip?” Dima asked.
“We haven’t found one. Did any of you see where she came from?”
They described the coat. Rami kept his part short. Dima gave the useful details: the old tear, the sleeve, the damp lining. Tarik added that the animal’s back feet had been caught near a fold in the satin.
The vet asked whether the coat was available.
Dima’s shoulders dropped. “We left it.”
“That’s all right. You brought what mattered tonight.”