Body Check: Post 8-

Chapter Five: The Plot Thickens

It turns out that the Darcy-the-best-friend owns a lingerie boutique, because of course she does. And she’s in a bad mood when Hayden arrives because a man with whom she’d had one date, which amounted to smoothies and a bit of in-car making out, sent her a bouquet of roses. Hayden tells her that there’s something wrong with Darcy for being freaked out about the bouquet (which she has thrown away) and calls it a sign of Darcy’s commitment issues. Frankly, though, I’m with Darcy on this one. Roses delivered to work after one not-quite-a-date? That’s too much too soon. On the other hand, it probably wouldn’t make me burst out with “What is the matter with the penis species?” the way it does Darcy (56 emphasis original).

After Darcy calms down a bit, Hayden fills her in on meeting up with Brody again. Darcy assumes that Hayden was able to keep to her one-night-stand plan, especially after finding out that Brody is a hockey player, but Hayden also fills her in on the Lakeshore Lounge Public Orgasming Event. Darcy offers two solutions. First, forget Brody entirely by watching porn or have a fling with Brody, since not every relationship is either one-night stand or marriage.

In the next scene, the plot with the soon-to-be-ex stepmother thickens. Hayden has given her deposition (to a lawyer named Diane Krueger. Isn’t that an actress?) and notices that  Sheila is looking haggard. Her father reminds Hayden that she’s agreed to attend a “shindig” at a “gentlemen’s club” (61). I’m sure the author doesn’t mean what it sounds like, so I’ll move on. After that encounter, Hayden is stopped by Sheila-the-Stepmother who drops some hints that maybe she’s not the villain—or at least not the only villain—in the piece. To begin with, she wants to tell Hayden that there’s no hard feelings and that she knows Hayden is only protecting her father. This confuses me since the only thing Sheila has done is give a deposition that Sheila was not coerced into signing the prenup. Nothing the text has given us privy to from Hayden’s perspectives suggests that she’s perjuring herself or anything. Next, Sheila mentions how much she still cares for Presley and how she doesn’t want put all the blame on him, and that in fact it was she who “sent him into another woman’s arms” (62). Of course Hayden doesn’t want to believe that her father might have been unfaithful, but it worsens further when Sheila also suggests that Presley has been drinking again, which sounds like he has a problem, which Hayden never knew about. She tries to push it all from her mind.

The perspective switches to Brody, and I have a great deal to say about the actual hockey parts of this chapter, but I’m going to push that off until the next post. Suffice it to say that as Brody leaves practice, he realizes he’d forgotten his watch, which had been given to him by his doting parents. He heads back to the locker room but on the way finds his team’s captain (Mr Serious, Jonathon Toews Craig Wyatt) whispering intently with the Soon-to-be-Ex, Sheila Houston.

Naturally, Brody eavesdrops. Did those doting, watch-giving parents not teach Brody any manners?!

Anyway, Brody doesn’t stay long, just long enough to hear that Sheila is crying and that CraigSerious calls her “baby.” This leads to Brody wondering if they’re having an affair, which would explain the rumors even if it seems out of character to him for Mr Serious. Brody debates what to do with the information he’s so rudely gathered, and decides to go to Becker, the team veteran.

Oh, and lest you forget he’s pining for Hayden, his scene ends with his wishing her in his bed.

Body Check: Post 7-

Chapter Four: Magic Pants & Public Sex

The last chapter ended on a cliff-hanger, where Brody and Hayden ran into each other (literally) in the bowels of the arena and realized who each other is. While Hayden’s father is still there, they  pretend not have any real (or carnal) knowledge of each other, to the point where Hayden even says “charmed” in response to “it’s nice to meet you.”

After telling Brody that Hayden teaches “art” and then saying that that’s the same thing as art history, Presley hurries off to conveniently talk with the team coach, leaving the two of them to talk more openly. This scene is from Hayden’s point of view, but she can tell that Brody is feeling because apparently she can see all his emotions in his eyes. (On page 46 alone, amusement dances in his eyes, he blinks innocently, and his eyes darken “to a sensual glitter.”)

He flirts, seduces, and blackmails his way into having drinks with Hayden, saying that if she says no, he’ll tell her father what she’s saying no to. Which, I wonder if he actually would. He seems serious, and Hayden believes him. She thinks to herself that her father could handle knowing she has a sex life but that he’s very against her dating hockey players, having once delivered a diatribe to her when an opposing team’s player had asked her out, even though she’d declined. But honestly, I think in this scenario Brody has more to lose. Sure, it wouldn’t violate his contract or anything, but he’s entering free agency and the narrative has already been explicit about the role that Presley plays as team owner. If he doesn’t want Brody re-signed, he wouldn’t be re-signed. And having sex with his daughter might well be enough for that to occur.

Hayden is torn, though, since she did, obviously enjoy the sex (and the five orgasms, as Brody has her tell him), and so she acquiesces despite her better judgment. Plus, he mentions the word “fantasy” and she starts thinking about tying up Brody. I have to say, it’s refreshing to see a woman in a dominant fantasy position and it goes back to my thoughts in the third post. Plus, it makes Brody’s “easy way or hard way” blackmail method of getting a date a little more palatable.

I’m thinking the magic pants also helped. Hayden admires Brody, thinking he

…looked so darn edible in gray wool pants that hugged his muscular legs and a ribbed black sweater that stretched across his chest (46).

This struck me as odd (we’ll get to the magic part in a moment) because NHL players have a dress code. They are contractually obligated, at least since 2005, to wear suits to and from games, not wool pants and a black sweater. The narrative didn’t show Brody’s arrival at the arena, so he might have arrived at work up to par and then in his rush out the door put on easier to manage clothes… that he happened to bring along with him. We can, of course, handwave this because nowhere does it say that this is the NHL, as I’ve harped on before. This is the Chicago Warriors not the Chicago Blackhawks.

However, we cannot handwave the fact that while the two of them are still in the hallway discussing whether or not Hayden will join Brody for a drink, her drops her gaze to his crotch,

…almost expecting to see the long ridge of arousal pressing against the denim of his jeans. Fine, no almost about it. He had an erection all right… (49).

I would be far, far more surprised to find his pants had magically changed from gray wool to denim than I would be to see he has an erection, given they’ve been talking about sex.

What’s odder still than the magic pants is that when they get to the Lakeshore Lounge, it has “a strict dress code—blazers required” (50). Which means that had Brody just been wearing his contractually obligated suit, it wouldn’t matter if the owner “turned a blind eye to Brody’s casual attire” (50). And the jeans weren’t just a one-time typo. If it had been, if Brody were still in his gray wool pants, he’d probably fit in better. But the text declares “[h]e wanted nothing more than to shuck his jeans” while they’re in the bar (530.

Magic trousers aside, the whole trip to the bar is about sex. Hayden is surprised that they went to a bar at all, having thought drink was a codeword, as “nightcap” had been the previous evening. They find a secluded table and they get their drinks (a gin and tonic for Brody and a white wine for Hayden). Hayden declares that the previous night’s sex was just that: sex. “It’s not like the damn earth moved” she insists (52). Apparently Brody takes that as a challenge and within a few more small paragraphs, he has his hands up her skirt and in her panties.

Brody eventually brings Hayden to a silent orgasm, despite her token protestations, in an attempt to convince her that she wants a replay of the previous night’s activities as much as he does. Unfortunately, while she manages to keep quiet, she shakes, knocking over her wineglass so that it shatters on the marble floor and banging into the table so that the ice cubes in his glass jingle. As the waiter hurries over, he asks “Still want to tell me the earth didn’t move?”

Which is cute and all, but no, it didn’t. The table did. Just sayin’.

Body Check: Post 6-

Chapter Three: The Inevitable (Re)Meeting

We finally see an interaction between Hayden and her father, Presley, the team owner. They’re watching the game up in the owners’ box and Hayden is not enjoying it in any way, shape, or form. In fact, she spends most of the time lamenting to herself that she’s there and thinking about growing up with her father as a coach. She apparently idolized him and he made sure to take the time to take her to art museums and encourage her interests until she was an adult.

We also learn that her stepmother, Sheila-the-soon-to-be-ex, is only two years older than Hayden, which means I can finally pinpoint ages. Her father, Presley, we know is 57. And Sheila is 29 years his junior, making her 28 and thus Hayden 26. Which, yeah, there’s very little likelihood she could have gotten a PhD by then. (Assuming college at 17, graduation at 21, grad school with a masters in passing, she could maaaaaybe have just finished one. But we know she’s still working on it, and the text tells us she’s been teaching full time, explicitly four classes at least the previous semester.) I won’t rehash my point about academia any further, however.

Evidently, Presley had really invited Hayden to come watch the game because his lawyer wants Hayden to give a deposition since apparently she’d been there when the prenuptial agreement had been signed between her father and Sheila. The soon-to-be-ex is claiming that she was coerced into signing the prenup, so Hayden needs to go on record that Sheila was in her right mind.

By the time this conversation concludes, it’s three minutes to the end of the third period, although Presley has to explain that to Hayden. Is she incapable of looking at the scoreboard? Seriously, I get being ignorant of a sport. I have done my best to remain willfully ignorant of (American) football (and for that matter, soccer), for example. I have zero idea why men are parading up and down the field and hitting each other a lot, and most importantly, why the heck they’re stopping all the time. And I honestly don’t want to know. But I promise you, if I had been raised as a coach’s daughter, filling in my coloring books behind the team bench, I’d at least know when the game was ending. Hayden feels “stupid for asking and even stupider for not knowing” (43) and here I have to agree. I’m not saying she should have a finely tuned appreciation for the game’s nuances, such as whether a particular hit was legal or even what icing is, but to know when the period is going to end because the GIANT SCOREBOARD says so? That’s not too much to ask.

Here, let me help with a few important hockey terms, from Slap Shot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_w4MV_LwMw  I’m afraid I can’t help with the part where you read a scoreboard to find out how much time is left, however.

Presley offers to show Hayden around the arena post game and she reluctantly agrees. I’d like to point out that evidently she really and truly managed to ignore the entire game really well, or else Brody played really unnoticeably for a star scorer. Else surely his name would have been said by the announcer if he’d scored a goal, made an assist, or taken a penalty, or even if he was in the starting lineup. The owners’ box isn’t soundproofed—that’d be silly but also the narrative specifically mentions “a deafening buzz followed by a cheesy dancebeat” at one point (42). Again, this has to be a choice in order for the re-meet in the next scene to be a complete surprise, but it makes Hayden seem incredibly unaware (although that was already accomplished by her not knowing how to read the scoreboard.)

Post game, Brody showers, notices he’s already getting a bruise from the player he was warned about earlier in the chapter, and dresses quickly so that he can go back to Hayden’s hotel in the hopes of more sex. (Oh, less importantly, the Warriors won and are now up by two games in the first-round.) He dashes out of the locker room, “promptly colliding with a warm wall of curves” (43). I’m not really sure why that description bothers me, but it does. The narrative has described Hayden as petite (but curvy!) many times, so “wall” seems like an odd choice.

Fortunately, we don’t have one of those distrusting moments that could so easily be cleared up by asking a question – Brody actually does ask a question, saying “I thought you said you weren’t a hockey fan,” but not thinking that Hayden somehow knew who he was but was lying. Unfortunately we get the far more squicky misunderstanding when Presley calls her “sweetheart” and Brody thinks Hayden is the team owner’s mistress. “Oh, man. Had he screwed around with Houston’s mistress?” (44). Thankfully, oh so thankfully, this lasts only two paragraphs until the chapter ends with “I see you’ve met my daughter, Hayden”.

So, chapter one: meet. Chapter two: hot, different-from-everything-before sex. Chapter three: ponder and desire more of the sex and then introduce an obstacle for the couple. Yup, seems about right on pace for Harlequin.

(I would like to take this moment to say that I don’t think that this is a bad book, actually. It’s a pretty good example, so far, of its genre, but you have to like its genre to like the book. Still, it’s situated in a weird intersection of things I know a lot about and feel strongly about, so I’m having quite a lot to say.)