Taking the body watkins.., p.1
Taking the Body (Watkins Glen Gladiators #4), page 1
One’s from Flushing, New York, the other from Ambroise, France. Worlds, wit, and passions are about to collide!
Phil Greco is that player that every opponent and their fanbase hates but secretly wishes played for their team. Greck is a mouthy guy, high-spirited, and able to tweak nerves with relative ease. Having grown up with a large family he’d learned early that you had to fight for what you wanted. This is how a short, undrafted guy from Flushing made it as far as he had. It had taken no small amount of bull&*#*, grit, and plenty of wit. Generally that wit and grit was enough to get him on the top of the pileup but that’s not the case with Henri Gaudion, owner of Gaudion Winery. Ever since they’d met sparks have flown, and for the life of him, Phil cannot understand what it is about the suave, well-dressed, handsome French vintner that makes him so edgy. They have nothing in common aside from a love of Watkins Glen, so why does he keep finding himself so drawn to the lean man with the rapier wit? Sure, he was pretty, and did keep him on his toes, but Phil’s not the kind of fella to be drawn to such a fancy pants rich boy. How stupid would it be to think that a hoodlum like him could ever catch a man like Henri? Not that he wanted to catch the stuck-up winemaker…
Henri Gaudion has no time for shenanigans or those who engage in them, especially boorish braggarts on skates. Yes, he enjoys the game of hockey and having the Gladiators hockey team and the local gentry at his chalet overlooking Seneca Lake every Sunday for brunch, but that’s solely for keeping up appearances. Since the death of his father, he has devoted his life to ensuring the lands bequeathed to him produce the finest wines and champagne in the Finger Lakes district. Henri is a lonely, heartbroken man when the blinds are drawn and the erudite mask is dropped. He also has no room in his life for rowdy little men with bright smiles, cheeky winks, and heavily accented, fanciful tales about his large Italian family back in, of all places, Flushing. The pull that he’s feeling for Phil Greco must be some sort of glitch, or perhaps he’s been spending too much time in the tasting rooms. Whatever the reason, he is not about to let his attraction to Phil grow. It would be impossible for two such incompatible men to fall in love. Wouldn’t it?
Taking the Body is a low-angst, opposites attract queer hockey romance with a mouthy hockey player, a refined vintner, a whole lot of forced proximity, on-ice action, evenings spent sipping wine, a nosy butler, even nosier teammates, a large loving family, and a perfectly aged happy ending.
A V.L. Locey MM Hockey Romance
Taking the Body (Watkins Glen Gladiators #4)
Copyright © 2023 V.L. Locey
Edited by Kathy Krick
Cover by Meredith Russell
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
PUBLISHER: Perky Rooster Press
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
Not AI written. No parts of this novel may be used in any way for any AI generated works.
If you happen to find any errors such as typos, missing punctuation, or, horror of horrors, factual blunders, please report them to my assistant, nolakimpa@gmail.com. She’ll let me know about them. Please do not report them using the reporting feature on your e-reader. This can have consequences for authors if we don’t see them and reply quickly enough as we’re not always notified in a timely manner!
Acknowledgments
To my family who accepts me and all my foibles and quirks. Even the plastic banana in my holster.
To my alphas, betas, editors, and proofers who work incredibly hard to help me make my books the shiniest we can make them.
Contents
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen
Coming next in the Watkins Glen Gladiator series…
A note from the author…
About the Author
Other Books by V.L. Locey
Chapter One
Phil
Yeah, this door looked spank as shit.
I sat back, my ass on the floor of my best back home buddy Bobby Delongo’s body shop, and admired the smoothness of the sanding I’d just done. Once I got the doors done, we’d be good to start taping and painting. When she was prettied up all cherry red—the gloss so deep it would be like gawking at yourself in a mirror—she’d be ready to roll. Mostly. Still needed tires and an inspection but those were inconsequentialities. Uncle Raymond had a friend who did inspections in exchange for hockey tickets or various sundry odd jobs one might be willing to perform. My cousin Mackie would order the tires for me at the employee discount he got working at Tire Emporium and Valve Stem Heaven over on Ash Avenue beside the kabob house.
It had taken me years of digging around in various junkyards all over the five boroughs of the Big Apple, not to mention the Finger Lakes region of New York, to gather all the required parts for my grandfather’s Olds Rocket 88, first produced back in 1949. Pops had always talked about fixing it up with me, but then he died at forty-two from a massive coronary and the car had sat in some field next to a pile of cow shit until I was cash ready enough to have it towed to my friend’s body shop three years ago. Now here she sat. Sexy as hell. Close to being done.
Ma was going to split her pantaloons when she saw this car. She talked all the time about being a young girl and riding around in her father’s Olds back in the day. Her dad, like mine, had died far too young. Men in our family tended to keel over while still in their prime. Not sure why. It’s a known fact that Italians live longer than most other people. It’s the food and wine. ՚Course my father wasn’t 100 percent Italian exactly. He was half Italian and half Irish, which was just barely good enough for my mother’s parents to accept him into the family. Ma said that was why I had the twinkle of a leprechaun in my eyes. Might account for the red tint in my hair and whiskers too. Oh, and the gift of gab, but in all honesty, no lie, the Italian side of my family could talk nonstop too, so who knew why I was so communicatory? Genetics, I liked to say.
So maybe it was the Irish blood that clogged up his arteries? Probably not. Probably it was all the tar in those cigarettes he puffed that did him in so young. Sighing, I glanced at the signs all over the wall telling people not to smoke on the premises. It was kind of a thing with me, smoking, and sometimes I got vocal. Just sometimes. Rarely. Like hardly ever. Always.
I smiled at the car door, my head moving to the sound of Bon Jovi when suddenly, like a bolt from the sky, the garage fell silent.
My head spun like I was an owl to find Bobby standing by the old boombox, looking as guilty as a sheep farmer caught in the barn with his pants down.
“Yo, Bob-O, what the deuce, man?” I shouted and then ran my fingers over a rough patch that I’d missed. “Turn that back on. You know my brain works better when there’s classic music playing.”
“I thought classic music was Bach and that Beethoven guy,” he replied but didn’t turn the tunes back on.
“Nah, that’s spinet shit.”
“Oh, okay.” Bobby was an agreeable sort. “Your ma just called the front office,” Bobby said, hustling over to me, nearly tripping over the bumper for a Prius that was slated for his first job of the morning. That got my attention. I shot to my feet, slapping at the rusty dust coating my T-shirt and shorts, the fans in the huge bays sucking the dirt and debris into a filtration system of some sort. Shame it didn’t suck the dirt off me.
“She okay?” I asked, hearing the panic in my voice. Ma and I were close. It had been just me and her sharing a one-bedroom apartment, rent free, over my aunt Mona’s bakery for years and years. I worshipped my mother as any good Irish-Italian boy should.
“Oh yeah, she’s good. She said you left your phone on the kitchen table again so she couldn’t get ahold of you other than calling my sister in the office. Clarice didn’t mind.” Bobby motioned to his younger sister sitting in the cramped office, waving a phone with a short cord over her black curls. Bobby had those same curls and deep brown eyes. At one time me and Clarice dated, but it didn’t work out. She wanted to find someone who would get her out of Flushing. And that someone wasn’t me.
I was happy calling Queens my home in the off-season. Clarice didn’t want to live here or in Watkins Glen, she had aspirations. Like a career in film and a rich husband who played for the Lakers, not a goof who never went to college and had to claw his way into playing for a minor league hockey team. Whatever. People who were stuck-up rubbed my goolies raw. Not that Clarice was stuck-up all that much. Just a pinch. I knew some people who were way more nose in the air. People who sat on high like a pigeon deciding whose head to shit on that day. Snooty people got my goat. People like Henri “Look at my sexy French self” Gaudion back in Watkins Glen. I’d trade him in for a gum wrapper most days. Shaking off Mr. Gaudion and his fancy silk suits, I snapped back to the here and now.
“…your place back in Watkins Glen had a
I gaped at Bobby. “Small leak accident?”
“Yeah, that’s what she said.” He rubbed a hand over his curls to stimulate his brain into action. His memory was atrocious. Which was why the bumper for the Prius was still in the box and not on the Prius. “Something about the bathtub in the apartment above yours falling through the floor and into your living room.”
“It did what?!”
I made the dash to the office in record time, skidding up to the old metal desk Clarice sat so brazenly at, her long lashes fluttering with impatience.
“You know this ain’t a free secretarial service I’m providing here, right?” She cracked her gum for emphasis. “Like, I love your mom and all, but next time make sure you have your phone with you. Pops would shit a brick. He would say ‘This ain’t your clubhouse. This is a business and you jabbering on my phone is costing me cash.’” She pretend spat into the corner of the office.
That made me chuckle. She did the best imitation of her father I had ever heard. Aldo DeLongo looked just like Nelson Fox from the Brooklyn Dodgers, always walking around with a wad of chewing tobacco in his face.
“Yeah, well, I pay for my time here by charming his daughter.”
“Get your face out of mine. You stopped being charming after you graduated sixth grade,” she parried, but the words had no real bite. “Just make sure you have your phone, you goof ass.”
“You do know that my ma is best friends with your ma, right? Also, and this ain’t no small point, your ma is my godmother and my ma is your godmother so I’m like your big brother in the loosest terms so you should respect my age and not give me grief about my phone.”
“You got the brains of a hood ornament,” she fired back, waving a bright pink ceramic fingernail at my nose before handing me the phone, and then left the office to go give Bobby orders. Poor guy. Not that he didn’t need someone to steer him through the day, but Clarice was a taskmaster. Even Aldo jumped when Clarice barked.
I had to smile just a little. “Hey, Ma, what’s going on with my place?” I asked as soon as I got the receiver to my ear.
“Philip Darragh Greco, why are you talking to your godsister like that?” Ma asked as I moved around the desk to sit. The rolling chair squeaked loudly as my ass hit it.
“Ma, there ain’t no such thing as a godsister, and she needs to be reminded that I’m older than her and quite the charmer.”
“By eight months, Philip,” Ma reminded me.
“She’s been a real stinker ever since I informed her that her new boyfriend had the smarts of a hood ornament.” Which was a true statement. How Marco Giovannetti ran five furniture stores was a mystery that the French detective with the skinny mustache wouldn’t be able to solve.
“Philip, be nice to family. Nothing is more important than family. Where would we be if your aunts and uncles hadn’t taken us in when your father died?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Living on the streets,” I filled in by rote. “Fine, I’ll be nicer to Clarice, but I make no promises about her boyfriend. Also, since we’re chatting about things all nice and cozy, what the hell happened to my place back in the Glen?”
“A tub fell through the ceiling and into your living room. Did you have renter’s insurance through your cousin Larry?”
“Sure I do it’s just…pardon me just a second, Ma.” I laid down the phone, rose, and walked out into the garage and then outside where I stood on the curb and cussed at the sky for a good thirty full seconds.
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” a fat guy driving a newspaper delivery van shouted at me.
“Every day. You kiss your mother with that face?” I yelled back. He gave me the finger. I double birded him, two middle fingers in the air followed by both hands chopping into my pelvis in the world-wide and well-known motion for him to suck it. The light changed, and the van sped off. Ah man, I fucking loved Queens. It brought out the very best in an expressive person such as myself. Barely a day went by that someone didn’t have something snide to toss out, which needed a comeback. Once I had the bad words purged, I went back into the body shop, slipped into the office, and closed the door on Clarice berating her brother.
“Okay, Ma, I’m back.” I sat down slowly, my gaze flicking to a wall calendar from a local parts store that went out of business in the late 80s. It was covered with a fine coating of dust but Bobby’s father had a thing for the young miss in the skimpy bikini holding up a can of body filler. “Someone needed to sort out a guy in a van. So, did the landlord say anything about my stuff?”
“You’re such a good boy.” I nodded because, yeah, I agreed. “All he said was that you should get to Watkins Glen so you could talk. Oh, and to contact your insurance carrier if you have one. You do have one, right?”
“Yes, Ma, please, I have renters through Cousin Larry, I just…” I had to take a moment. The thought of all my belongings being soaked through made me so freaking sad. “I’ll call him.”
“No need, your aunt Maggie is here now, and she got him on the phone as soon as the call came in.”
“Ah okay, well thank Aunt Maggie for me. I’ll be home shortly, so I guess I’ll head to Watkins Glen to see what’s what.”
“I made some food for you for the trip,” Ma said, and that made me smile.
Like she had to worry about her boy wasting away on the five-hour drive from one place to the other. Hell, I’d been home for three weeks and packed on five pounds already. Which was going to have to be worked off before training camp opened. Gone were the days of hockey players rolling into camp in terrible shape and hungover. Nowadays, most players spent the majority of their off-season honing their bodies to perfection or as close as one could get. A couple of years ago, I’d crested thirty years old so the honing was harder, but I was up for the challenge. I’d get my rump moving. I’d better or my mother and aunts would have me fed up like a fair hog and that would not secure my spot on the roster. Sure the fans loved me. Well, the home fans. And the team and staff all liked me. But performance was what kept you on the roster.
“Just pack up a little bit of your gnocchi and a slice of Aunt Mona’s torta caprice con le noci for the drive.”
She assured me she had me covered.
An hour later, I was toting several containers out of my mother’s rowhome. A home that I’d bought for her ten years ago with my first signing bonus with the Gladiators. I did not buy it outright—I wasn’t The Great One or anything—but I did have enough for the down payment, which got her out of that tiny place above my aunt’s bakery and into a home of her own. One that she shared with her mother, my grandma Rosie. Sure, it made things a little tight at times what with me paying rent in Watkins Glen and the mortgage on the place in Queens, but for my mother, I’d sell both my kidneys and a spleen to make her safe and happy.
Aunt Mona, a short, round woman with olive skin, ebony hair cut into a bob, and a temper as hot as her bakery ovens, handed me a box.
“Just something to nibble on the way,” she said, patted my cheek, and toddled off to her bakery across the street from where all five sisters lived. All in a row, next door to each other, with matching yard statues of the Virgin Mary in their postage stamp front lawns. I peeked inside the pink box to see a half dozen fresh cannoli.
I looked at my mother, who could have been Mona’s twin, just an inch shorter. All five sisters had the same build, looks, and lively personality, which is probably where I got all my charm. “What? You need to keep up your energy. By the way, Mona said Bentley came in today with his sister. I think you should call him up, Phil. He’s got a cute car and his mother is part of the prayer group at the church. Father Thompson thinks he has lots of potential, and he was a wonderful mule in the living nativity last year.”
“Ma…”
“Just saying. Now kiss me and get going. Watch the traffic leaving the city. It’s getting late. Grandma is going to be heartbroken that she didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“Where is she?” I asked after placing the treats in the front seat for easy access.
“She went on that bus trip to New Jersey.”
