School and Rock (Raptors Book 5)

by RJ Scott

  “I’m surprised you don’t have a number for the local S.W.A.T. team on there,” I observed, and turned in time to see him making a note. “I was joking.”

  He stared at me, then down at the list, and then back at me. “I’ll add it anyway.”

  “May as well get NASA on speed dial in case of alien invasion,” I mumbled, and didn’t repeat myself when he prompted me to. “Next?” I asked instead.

  He went through a list that took nearly ten minutes, and I tried not to interrupt. When I’d nannied before I’d had lists from parents who were quite happy to leave them in my care. This however was a list made by a man who had no idea at all and was covering all the bases. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it was for someone like Colorado to bring a baby into his hedonistic lifestyle. I knew nothing about hockey, only that it was grown men on skates pushing and shoving and getting into fights, and that there was a certain amount of obsession in Tucson with a hockey team. I’d seen posters, giant ones on the sides of the Santa Catalina Arena, tall, studly jocks who would never have taken a second look at a science nerd. Never in the history of human existence, or at least my existence, had nerds and jocks co-existed in a friendly way, and I was speaking from experience. Come to think of it, on those posters, I don’t remember seeing Colorado up there, but then I didn’t even recall the name of the team so that wasn’t a good start.

  “Okay that’s it,” Simon muttered, and shut the clipboard before opening it again and thrusting it, along with the pen, toward me. “Can you sign at the bottom to say you’ve understood the dangers?”

  I took it wordlessly, and read the list I’d just been given.

  “You want me to sign to say that I’m aware she might be allergic to shellfish, and that I should use different colored towels, in rainbow order, at each bath time? I’m not here long, why the hell would I sign that. And oh my god, you actually added S.W.A.T. to the end.”

  “The towel thing was Colorado’s idea about fostering a sense of fluidity of something or other.”

  “Wait, so it was you who added shellfish?”

  He blinked at me and then wrinkled his nose. “Whatever, just sign the damn list.”

  I did as I was told, because yeah, I could readily agree that I wasn’t going to let sheep, goats, and/or other livestock into the nursery or do any one of the thirty or so things on the list—up to and including calling for a S.W.A.T. team. Then I took the paper and turned it over, and scribbled my own proviso, and handed it to him. “Your turn to sign.”

  He cleared his throat and began to read. “I, Simon something or other,” he stopped and looked at me. “Brennan. Simon Brennan.”

  He sounded as if he was doing a James Bond impersonation but I couldn’t be sure.

  “I, Simon Brennan, do hereby agree not to ask Joseph Jackson Leigh to sign lists that have the acronym S.W.A.T. on them. I also agree to stay out of Joseph Jackson Leigh’s way unless there is a level ten emergency as determined by the Joseph Jackson Leigh emergency scale.” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What Joseph Jackson Leigh emergency scale?”

  “Level ten is where I ask you for help, one through nine is where you let me do my job.”

  We stared at each other, and I waited for him to lose his cool, but then he snorted a laugh, signed the form, and then closed the clipboard cover. “I like you, Joseph Jackson Leigh.” He held out a hand and we shook, and it hurt because he was a bear of a man and I had hands more used to making models of planets than facing down someone like him.

  “Stay out of my way, and I might end up liking you, too.” I tilted my chin, and all he did was laugh again, clapping a meaty hand on my shoulder, which nearly pushed me to the floor.

  “This way,” he said and walked out of the door, expecting me to follow. I wasn’t ready to leave Maddie just yet, I needed to know the rhythm of her sleeping, and to acquaint myself with what kind of baby she was, but when I stepped just outside the room, he had the opposite door open and I could see my bag on a huge bed with a purple and orange quilt. “This is your room, and there is surveillance in Maddie’s room, that you can check in on with the laptop on the desk.”

  “A nanny cam, okay.”

  He looked affronted. “It’s not a nanny cam, it’s surveillance, five cameras, with split screen and crisp audio.”

  “I didn’t see any cameras.”

  “I know,” he said smugly, then cracked his neck. “I’ll leave you to it, last I saw C was asleep on the sofa by his piano, I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  Only when he’d gone did I explore my surroundings. The nursery had views out across the extensive back yard, terraced and flowing down the hill. I could see the pool from there, and the heat shimmer on the various plants attempting to offer shade. It was a typical rich man’s yard, with weird sculptures, but it also had chairs and tables everywhere which made me think that having lots of people to visit was a thing. When I crossed to my room I heard vacuuming, and voices at the bottom of the stairs, along with Simon’s laughter, so I assume that the cleaners had arrived, but up here it was pristine. All the damage and chaos had been kept to the downstairs, which was a blessing because my room, complete with garish comforter, was an oasis of calm.

  I unpacked my bags, keeping an eye on the door and across to Maddie, and also checked out the laptop which really did give clear views inside Maddie’s space. Within a few minutes, using my love of all things math and perspective, I’d worked out where the cameras were; tiny little dots in the corners of Maddie’s room, and then without anything else to do for the moment, I settled on the mattress there and began working my way through the next book in the pile on my bedside cabinet. This one was A new paradigm for advanced planetary field geology developed through analog experiments on Earth, and it was utterly fascinating. I stopped reading when Maddie woke, I changed her, fed her, burped her, and we took a grand tour of the house, which was now tidy and clean. The place was massive, room after room, one small one was completely devoid of furniture, and faced the garden. The AC kept the place cool, even as the Arizona sun beat down outside.

  “This would be the perfect place for a sofa,” I explained to Maddie, and circled to show her it all. “A small table for drinks, a book, and this room would be the best place to study. Maybe a desk and somewhere for my resources, and I could get this degree done in the year. Not that I’m here a year.” She blinked up at me, her tiny bow-shaped mouth open, and her eyes wide. She could see me from there, but I sat on the window ledge and cradled her so she could check me out better. “Emma would love to meet you,” I said, and I traced her soft rounded cheeks and then flattened her fluffy hair. She didn’t look much like her dad, although I couldn’t tell that much about Colorado underneath his scruffy stubble and long disheveled hair. He was tall, muscled, thick thighs, tanned, and not that I’d been looking, but his pants left nothing to the imagination. I’d need a better peek, up close, and maybe I could pet his arm and reassure him that everything would be okay, then maybe he would be anything but a jock, and actually give me the time of day.

  Talk of the devil, I heard a clattering and then Colorado ran into the room and slid almost the full length, fear in his expression and a wild look in his eyes.

  “You. You’re…”

  “Here,” I finished. Simon strolled into the room at a much more sedate pace.

  “What in hell’s name are you doing, C?” he asked.

  Colorado shook his head. “I thought… I woke up, and I was in the room and she wasn’t…” He scrubbed at his eyes.

  “Get some rest, Mr. Penn,” I said. “I’ve got this.” After some hesitation, he left the room at more of a crawl than a run, and Simon followed, taking his looking-after-Colorado task seriously.

  Colorado slept through dinner, in fact he slept all night, and I moved bedding into Maddie’s room and slept on the mattress which had a kind of funky patchouli kind of scent, but was incredibly comfortable. The idea that people were watching me sleep was unnerving, but I just needed to be i
n here tonight. I recalled the first nights with Emma, when both of us had slept in the same room, me waking at every sniffle or snuffle. It was like this here, but around three a.m. after a feed, I managed to sleep.

  And so did Maddie.

  “Hey? Dude, you alive? Joseph? Joe?”

  I cracked open one eye, Colorado right there, up in my space. First things first, he was way too close. Second, he’d had a shower, his hair scraped back from his face, and his eyes a lot less red than yesterday. He waved something under my nose. “Cold coffee?”

  “Mr. Penn?”

  “Call me Colorado.”

  “Uh huh.” I attempted to focus. Then I wriggled to sit up, and took the mug gratefully, not caring if it was only lukewarm, just that it was caffeine. Sleep deprivation was a thing, but this had been one night and I was wrecked. Back with Emma it had been night after night. It was all about the rhythm of sleep and feed, and once I mastered it, then everything would be fine.

  Colorado picked Maddie up out of her crib. “Wake up sleepy Boo head,” he sung as he scooped Maddie around the room before settling on the mattress beside me. He’d showered in some fruity citrus shower gel, wore faded jeans and a T-shirt proclaiming shut your five hole with a picture of what I knew was a hockey guy in his pads and with a stick and a helmet. That was my limit of hockey knowledge, but I’d seen the ads on the television.

  “Is that you?” I asked, and pointed at his shirt.

  He glanced down and huffed a laugh. “Pretty much.” Then he pointed at the Marvin the Martian shirt I’d not changed out of. “Is that you?”

  “Pretty much,” I repeated, and cleared my throat. He was an intimidating guy, and even though he wasn’t leaping sofas in one bound, or threatening me this morning, he still looked as if he could handle a situation. One thing though, he didn’t look wide-eyed and strung-out, and there was a peace in him that was markedly different from yesterday.

  He slid down the wall, and brought up his knees, settling Maddie against him and counting her tiny toes along to a throaty rendition of “Ten Little Piggies”. I felt something shift inside me; a tug of something weird, and pressed a hand to my belly. It felt an awful lot like attraction, or at least appreciation for a good-looking man, but it had to be mostly because he held his daughter gently and with so much love.

  “Was she good for you?” he finally asked as I sipped at the coffee and watched his strong capable hands hold his daughter.

  “She was, she’s a good girl.”

  “Of course she is,” Colorado murmured, then unbuttoned her sleeper and picked her up to blow raspberries on her belly. “She’s way cuter than her dad.”

  We sat in silence for a while, then he sighed, and chucked Maddie under the chin. “I have to go to work,” he said and there was regret in his voice. “I don’t want to, not that I don’t love my job, I mean I’m fu—fudging awesome at it, and the Raptors need me, and I need them, but I don’t want to leave my little Sweet Pea.”

  “She’ll be fine with me, we might go for a ramble around the garden.”

  “You’ll make sure she’s covered up with lotion and all? Don’t—”

  “It will be fine, I know my job.” That may have sounded rude, but it was as if he needed the reminder.

  He looked as if he wanted to say something, then bit his lip, and I was drawn to the way he held then released it and abruptly realized I was classifying his lips as plump and kissable. Also, he was really close, and hell, he was holding a baby. I might’ve framed everything in my life with science but kids were the one bit of non-scientific chaos I craved.

  “Okay then,” he agreed, then wrinkled his nose. “Look, Simon didn’t want me say anything, but he told me you think we should have S.W.A.T. on call. Is that for real, because I know this cop, and he’s a big fan, comes to all the games and he could pass a message to them? I know people that can do me favors if I can get them something they want first. It’s kind of cool.”

  He sounded proud of that, but I didn’t like to point out that he was securing their help first. It wasn’t cool, so much as sad. What the hell, where did that thought come from?

  “No, we don’t need S.W.A.T. on speed dial.”

  “Also, I have this friend Stan, big loud Russian, he plays for the Railers, now he really knows people. Guys who could be here if there was issue with… whatever.”

  “You mean guys to help me with changing diapers and watch me stroll around your backyard?”

  He flushed and dipped his gaze. “I don’t want anything to happen to her. I don’t know who her mom is, but if she came back, if I lost her…”

  I gave a reassuring nod to indicate I understood. For a while when we’d first had Emma, Bobby’s parents had wanted a say in who raised her and we’d had to fight them for mother’s rights. They were still in our lives, on the periphery, waiting for us to mess up, so I got how he was feeling. I held out my hands for Maddie and after a small hug, he passed her to me. “Go work, we’ll be here when you get back.”

  “Simon is staying here, Vlad is picking me up, he’s the captain. He’s got this bee in his bonnet about me getting to practice.” He rolled his eyes, but carried on talking. “I’ve got conditioning, gym work, other… stuff… I’ll be home by four.”

  “And we’ll be here.”

  “Then we need to start packing for the road trip to Dallas.”

  “Dallas—”

  “So if you could get your things sorted, and pack whatever you need for Maddie.”

  “Dallas?”

  “We’re playing two games there, you need to come too. It’s in the contract.”

  “I just assumed the words travel as needed implied a maybe.”

  He appeared confused. “No, it’s on, we’re in Dallas and you and Maddie are coming with.”

  Okay then. “I’ll get Maddie’s things ready.”

  “There are a hundred of these teeny tiny sleep suits in the cupboard by the front door, Raptors ones, we should take some.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “And we need to—”

  “Go. We got this.”

  He pressed a kiss to Maddie’s head, and I had the insane need to brush back the hair that had come free from his loose ponytail. Maybe he needed looking after as much as Maddie did, but he was a grown-ass man.

  He stood in the doorway. “Bye.”

  And then before I could reply, he was gone.

  Seven

  Colorado

  “Colorado, you’re leaning on my arm again.” I drew back, moved my elbow from Andre’s forearm, and mumbled an apology. My backup goalie waved it off. “I’m pretty sure you’re not going to see their plane from this plane.”

  “Yeah, I know. You sure you can’t switch seats?”

  Andre’s gray eyes grew to dinner plate size. “No, no, you know we can’t switch seats. We are always in row fifteen which are the goalie seats. Me in seat one and you in seat two because one-fifteen is my birthday and why I wear number fifteen. If we move and you sit by the window, that would be much bad luck. No, sorry, no, we cannot move seats.”

  “Yeah, I know.” As frantic as I was about Joe, Simon, and Maddie flying to Dallas to meet us, moving seats might call the bad luck trolls out. Fuck knows I did not need to push my luck. The Raptors had barely managed to claw their way to the second round, a flunky, bouncing goal from Ryker Madsen the only reason we were jetting to Big D instead of the Vegas team. I’d sat on the bench throughout that series. Andre had done a fantastic job in the crease, but I wanted my net back.

  “It’s asking for the rotten luck just by having Tate go back and play his old team,” Andre whispered, stroking the beaded bracelet his sister had made for him. It was his good luck charm. Crafted out of moose antler to imbue the wearer with the strength and stamina of a bull moose, or some sort of Canadian folklore bracelet thing. “It feels bad off.”

  “It’ll be fine.” I said it but deep down I wasn’t sure. Tate, who was sitting next to Vlad, appeared tense. If he wa
s off then the rest of the team would pick up that vibe and it would run through the ranks like a bad case of the shits. “It’ll be fine.”

  Andre returned to looking out at the clouds. I tried to compose a song for the new album but was getting nowhere. How damn long could it take to fly from Tucson to Dallas? It was insane to be in the air for… oh, only an hour had passed. Fuck. We still had another hour. I shifted and wiggled around for that hour then literally shoved Ryker and Alex aside to get off the shitty plane and sprint to the charter bus.

  More delays, but at least I could maintain a solid cell connection now. Joe hit me back to inform me they were already at the hotel and Maddie was taking a nap. He’d snapped a picture of her snoozing in her little portable playpen.

  “Hey, look at this face. Look at those little lips,” I shoved my phone into Henry’s face as he passed by my seat in the coach. I was again next to Andre who was by the window, and yes, in row fifteen.

  “Oh yeah, she’s cute. She looks like you when you fall asleep on the plane and drool all over yourself.”

  Andre snorted.

  I chuckled. “Yeah, she has her dad’s pipes and his saliva production.”

  Roaming through the bus to show the team, and Coach, the picture of my sleeping kid took up quite a bit of time. The married players had to show me pictures of their kids because that was what proud papas did. When we pulled up to the Dallas Embassy Hotel, I rushed the door then had to wait until the bus came to a complete stop before I was let out. Stupid safety rules.

  Check-in was quick and I was on the fifth floor of the ten-story hotel in a blink. I scanned my card and slipped into the blue and tan suite which was attached to Joe’s room. Tossing my bag to the bed, I then kicked off my sneakers, whipped my shirt and suit pants to the corner, pulled on a sheer fuchsia robe to go with my ragged Levi’s and rapped gently on the door separating our rooms. Joe opened it with a finger over his lips. I snuck into a room that looked exactly like mine, save for the playpen.