Erik (Arizona Vengeance 2)

For the next few hours, I manage to keep most of my thoughts on the game and not on how great Erik looks out there. And when it’s all said and done, Legend does it for a third game in a row.

He gives us another shutout and we win 2–0.

I might even rethink my position that Max Fournier is the best goalie in the league right now.Chapter 6ErikI’m dismayed when I pull my car up to the visitors’ parking lot for the Cresson. I’m not sure what I was expecting of the group home that Billy Gardner lives in, but it definitely wasn’t this drab institutional-looking three-story building. I guess because when I had first met Billy he seemed like such a cheerful guy and was having fun at the festival with Blue. Perhaps I subconsciously expected him to live in something that resembled Disney World, where he could be happy and have fun all day.

Instead, the lusterless, water-stained stucco and gray concrete exterior looks more like a prison than an adult-care facility. The only thing missing to make it so would be barbed wire around the perimeter.

I turn off the engine and pull myself out of the low-slung Corvette I bought a couple of weeks ago. The electric-blue color stands out almost gaudily against the dreary-looking building where Billy lives.

Pocketing my keys, I head to the entrance. The lobby area is huge and the first thing I notice when I enter is that it’s as dull as the outside: light gray walls with peeling paint and white tiling that’s yellowed over time like coffee-stained teeth. At least an effort has been made to brighten up the place with colorful prints and vases of silk flowers dotting the lobby. There’s an abundance of furniture for people to sit and visit in but it’s cheap and mismatched. The reception desk has seen better days and has scarring around the bottom which I bet comes from wheelchairs bumping up against it. There’s an old piano in one corner and a middle-aged man sits at it tapping on the keys.

Several residents and their family members are hanging out in the lobby. Some are in motorized wheelchairs, others are being pushed. Some residents use braces, and others walk just fine on their own. Most of them look incredibly content but then again, they are with their family members for a visit.

A kind-looking older woman sits behind the reception desk, her hair a cap of tight gray curls pinned close to her head.

“Can I help you?” she asks with a bright smile.

“Yeah…I’m here for the art auction.”

Rather than direct me to where I need to go, the woman’s eyes flare and then round into big orbs of pure shock. “Oh my God. You’re Erik Dalhbeck.”

My lips start to curve up into a charming smile that I would bestow upon any fan but I nearly jump out of my skin when she shrieks, pointing a finger at me. “Oh. My. God. You’re Erik Dalhbeck.”

All the people in the lobby—patients, family members, and nursing aides alike—stop what they’re doing and turn to stare, not at the woman who just shrieked, but at me.

The limelight is nothing I’ve ever shied away from. Being a professional hockey player obviously brings about a certain level of notoriety and fame. Living out in Los Angeles when I played for the Demons, that was multiplied by a hundred. I partied with rock stars and actresses and had a few flings with them in between. Paparazzi always had cameras in my face. I was often on either an entertainment channel or sports show, usually with a beautiful actress or socialite draped along my side.

But something about standing in this dingy group home with a woman old enough to be my grandmother, shrieking with excitement over me, causes my cheeks to burn hot. Thankfully, she realizes the ruckus she’s made and drops her voice about forty decibels. “Oh my God. You’re Erik Dalhbeck,” she whispers.

Yeah…got that the first two times.

“That I am,” I tell her in a low voice, hoping it encourages her to keep hers down.

I consider extending my hand to her to shake but before I know it she is up and around the reception desk, practically throwing herself into my arms. She squeezes me hard around the waist, the top of her head barely coming to my collarbone, and exclaims, “You’re my favorite player on the Vengeance.”

Chuckling, my arms reactively come around the woman’s back and I give her a light squeeze. When she pulls back, I look down at her to see perhaps the brightest smile I’ve ever been bestowed in my entire life. I have met all kinds of fans from all walks of life and from all age ranges, and yet the look on this old woman’s face is actually a little humbling.