“What will the coaches think?” She set the mug on her desk, next to an open day planner with various colors of sticky notes stuck all over it.

“Doesn’t really matter. Ever since John Kowalsky and Hugh Miner retired, that arena hasn’t seen a capacity crowd. Duffy needs to pay for that hotshot goalie he bought last year. Virgil loves hockey, but he’s a businessman first and foremost. He’ll do what it takes to get the fans in those seats. Which is why he thought of you in the first place. He wants to attract more female fans to the game.”

What Leonard Callaway didn’t say was that Duffy had thought of her because he thought she wrote fluff for women. Which was okay with Jane; fluff helped pay her bills and was wildly popular with women who read the Seattle Times. But fluff didn’t pay all the bills. Not even close. Porn payed most of them. And the porn serials, The Life of Honey Pie, she wrote for Him magazine were wildly popular with males.

As Leonard talked about Duffy and his hockey team, Jane picked up a pen and wrote on a pink sticky note: Buy books on hockey. She tore the note from the top of the block, flipped a page, and stuck it in her day planner beneath several other strips of paper.

“… and you have to remember you’re dealing with hockey players. You know they can be real superstitious. If the Chinooks start losing games, you’ll get blamed and sent packing.”

Great. Her job was in the hands of superstitious jocks. She tore an old note marked Honey deadline from the planner and tossed it in the trash.

After a few more minutes of conversation, she hung up the telephone and picked up her coffee. Like most Seattlites, she couldn’t help but know the names and some of the faces of the hockey players. The season was long and hockey was mentioned on King-5 News most nights, but she’d actually only met one of the Chinooks, the goal-tender Leonard had mentioned, Luc Martineau.