by Lisa Childs
He flinched, as if remembering his own experiences.
“Will you do it?” she asked. “You’ll have to wear a suit and tie,” she warned him.
“As a chaperone?”
“We all dress up.”
“So you’ll dress up, too?” he asked. That spark of mischief was back in his dark eyes.
“I’ll wear a dress,” she said. No matter what her sister tried to get her to buy at the mall, she planned to wear her “black sack.”
“You’ll give me Erik back?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll do it.”
She chuckled at the expression of dread on his handsome face. “To make this sacrifice to get a player back, you must really love the game.”
“Hockey’s been my life for most of my life.”
“Is coaching enough?”
“Until I can play again, it has to be.”
And now she had her confirmation that the minute he was reinstated, he would be back on the ice and far away from Trout Creek. After seeing him with the baby and with his brothers, she’d thought she might have misjudged him—that maybe he’d be able to stay in his hometown now that he was older and could appreciate the love and support it offered. But then, he hadn’t come home for the same reasons she had.
Chapter Nine
Sweat dampened Brooks’s palms as he waited in Coach Cook’s living room. He hadn’t been called to the house, the way he had all those times when he’d been on the Trout Creek High hockey team. This time he had asked to see the coach, but nerves tightened the muscles in Brooks’s stomach, anyway.
A clunk and rattle of metal drew his attention to the arched doorway. His jaw dropped at the sight of Coach Cook shuffling across the hardwood floor behind a walker. His daughter, Sonya, held his elbow, steering and supporting him more than the walker.
“B-B-Brooks,” Coach stammered, his speech slurred from the stroke that had changed the man from the intimidating giant Brooks remembered into a frail skeleton.
After a brief hesitation, he covered his shock and stepped forward. “It’s great to see you, Coach.”
Half the older man’s mouth lifted. “N-n-no, it’s not.”
“Well, not like this,” Brooks admitted. “I was sorry to hear about your health.”
“W-wish I had my health,” he said.
The coach’s daughter helped him into a well-worn leather recliner and then smiled at Brooks. Lines of fatigue creased her face, and circles darkened her eyes, making her look much older than her forty-some years. “He appreciated that you sent the card and the DVDs.”
“E-everybody else sent d-damn flowers,” the coach said.
Brooks laughed. “Yeah, I didn’t figure you for the flower type, Coach.”
“O-or fruit. I can barely move my mouth and p-people’ve b-been s-sending me a-apples….”
And Brooks had worried that sending hockey DVDs had been insensitive. “So how are you doing now?” he asked.
“He’s doing much better,” his daughter replied with another smile, this one forced.
“N-not good enough,” the coach protested. “H-had that damn stroke…”
“It’s just been a few months,” Brooks reminded him. “You gotta give it time. Give yourself some time.” He had to remind himself of that, as well—to give fatherhood and coaching time. He couldn’t expect to handle something he’d never done—and had never expected to do—easily.
“S-seven months ago,” Coach corrected. “Had to have the damn wr-wrestling coach finish out last season for me. B-but you didn’t come here to talk about my health, Brooks.”
“I intended to come by to visit,” he insisted, “but I got busy.” Busier than he had thought he could ever be in Trout Creek.
“Took my job,” the old man complained, but his faded blue eyes twinkled. “You’re coach now.”
Brooks shook his head. “I haven’t earned that title yet.”
“Y-you will….”
“I’m not sure how to coach like you did.”
“Y-you can’t,” his former hero informed him. “You can only coach your own way. Th-that’s how you’ll reach the kids.”
“These kids can be reached?” he asked with a chuckle. “Maybe with a stick upside the head.”
The coach’s mouth twisted into that half smile again. “R-Ryan does remind m-me of you.”
“To my father’s great disappointment,” Brooks said.
Coach shook his head. “Sheriff Hoover is v-very proud of you.”
Maybe as an athlete, but Brooks had yet to prove himself as a man. That was why he still insisted on caring for Faith himself as much as he could. The town tried to help, the way Brooks knew they had with Coach. But a man had his pride, had things he needed to do on his own. “I’m trying to figure out this whole coaching thing,” he admitted. “But I need help.”
“I—I can’t…take the cold anymore. Can’t walk around a rink…”
“I’d love your help,” Brooks admitted. “But I know that’s not possible for a couple more weeks.” He winked when the old man grinned at his faith in him. “While I wait for you to get better, I could use Debbie’s help.”
“Debbie?” the girl’s mother asked. “But she quit the team.”
“Do you know why?” he pressed.
The old man thumped his chest. “I—I’m the reason….”
“You made her quit?” Brooks asked. That surprised him less than the fact he’d let a girl play.
Coach Cook shook his head, his mouth moving as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t manage the words. So his daughter spoke for him. “He thinks Debbie quit so she could help me take care of him.”
The fiercely independent man that Brooks remembered would have hated that. “Do you think she’s ready to play again?”
While the coach nodded as vigorously as his weak muscles allowed, Debbie’s mother hesitated. Maybe she needed her daughter’s help and wouldn’t appreciate Brooks’s interference.
A door opened, and a female voice called out, “Who’s here?”
“Brooks Hoover,” Sonya called back.
Debbie hurried into the living room, her cheeks flushed from the cold. “Hey, Mr. Hoover. Did you bring the baby with you?”
He shook his head. “No. Miss Andrews is watching Faith for me.” He could have asked someone else. Myrtle had promised to be available whenever he needed her. Even his dad would have taken her. But there was something about the expression on Priscilla’s face when she looked at the baby, that mixture of pain and longing and wistfulness, that told Brooks Priscilla needed to watch her.
“Faith?” the girl asked. “That’s her name?”
“Yes.”
“It’s pretty.” She blinked. “And Miss Andrews has her?”
“Yes. She agreed to look after her while I came over to talk to you.” Albeit she had agreed almost as reluctantly as she had the other time he’d asked her to take care of the baby. But he’d pointed out that bringing an infant around the coach might be too much for the old man, especially if she started crying or fussing. Brooks had also lied and told her no one else was available.
“Miss Andrews is great,” Debbie said. “She’s so nice. And smart and pretty.”
Brooks’s heart slammed against his ribs as he realized the truth of the girl’s words—and the fact she must have assumed Priscilla was babysitting because they were seeing each other. He swallowed hard and agreed, “Yeah, she’s great.”
He couldn’t remember if he’d ever met anyone like Priscilla, someone who cared so much about everyone else. Every student at Trout Creek High mattered to her; she felt responsible for each of them, from trying to secure their academic future to ensuring their health with her free flu shot program. He winced, remembering that she had even persuaded teachers and coaches to participate. Despite all the stitches he’d had over the years, or maybe because of them, he hated needles. But she’d talked him into it with the argument that he didn’t want to bring germs home to Faith, and
she’d stood by as Nurse Trudy administered the injection in the office where he’d spent too much time growing up.
He shook off thoughts of the beautiful assistant principal and focused on the teenager. “You’re great, too, Debbie,” he praised her. “I’ve watched footage of last season.”
“We sucked,” she murmured, then reddened as she glanced at her grandfather.
The old man smiled that lopsided smile and nodded. “Hard to make a team with only a few good players.”
“You were one of them,” Brooks told her.
She lifted her broad shoulders in a shrug.
“If you came back, I think we might have a chance of winning. Brad’s playing now.” He was proud that his youngest brother had made the varsity team his freshman year. “He’s really good. And Ryan—”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t.”
Damn, Priscilla was probably right about the girl’s crush on Ryan. “Can’t or don’t want to?”
“Can’t,” she insisted. “Miss Andrews pointed out that my grades are more important, especially now. This is my junior year. Colleges will be looking at these marks when I apply.”
The only thing colleges had cared about with Brooks was how he’d played.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hoover, I have to think about my future.”
She wasn’t the only one….
HORRIFIED BY WHAT SHE SAW, Priscilla could only stare, eyes wide with shock, stomach knotted with dread. A cry burned in her throat, but she couldn’t utter it or she might awaken the sleeping baby nestled in her arms.
Although the quality of the video was gritty, Brooks’s image was clear. First his helmet flew off, skittering across the rink. Then he fell back, and his head slammed onto the ice.
Her breath caught, a gasp slipping through her lips. He lay there, not moving. The camera panned to his face, where blood trailed from his ear, across his cheek, and trickled onto the ice. “Oh my God,” she whispered. He’d cracked his skull.
“Sports Central obtained footage of this practice from five weeks ago, of a fight between Brooks Hoover and a teammate resulting in an injury that has sidelined Hoover for the season,” the commentator reported. “According to a source at River City Memorial Hospital, Hoover was in a coma for days and may have sustained permanent brain damage from his fractured skull.”
Her hand shaking, she grabbed up the remote and paused the digital recorder on the image of Brooks lying there lifelessly. Even when she’d caught him sleeping in his office, he hadn’t been completely still. There’d been a tension to his body, in the line of his square jaw, in the flash of the dimple in his cheek.
There was no tension, no spark, no trace of his energy and indomitable spirit in that body lying on the ice. The image blurred as tears welled in her eyes. The press might have been sensationalizing the story some, but she didn’t doubt he’d had a close call, closer than any other in his reckless life.
As if sensing her emotional state, the baby whimpered and stirred. “Shh, Faith,” she murmured softly, lulling the child back to sleep. “It’s okay. He’s okay.”
A knock drew her attention away from the TV, but before she could lift the baby from her lap, the door opened and Brooks stepped inside, shaking raindrops from his damp curls. He flashed that grin, the one that had the dimple piercing his cheek and mischief dancing in his eyes.
Her breath hitched, and she tried to curve her lips into a smile in response. But instead of seeing him now, vibrantly alive in front of her, she saw him lying on the ice, the blood pooling beneath his head.
“Everything all right?” he asked, dropping to his knees in front of the couch. He leaned over the baby on her lap and ran his fingertip along the delicate line of the infant’s jaw.
She nodded. “Great. She’s been sleeping since you dropped her off.”
“Sheesh, woman, I need to bring you home with me.”
Priscilla’s heart rate sped up. “Why—why would you say that?”
He grinned. “Because you’re about the only one who can get Faith here to sleep. The boys think she’s a werewolf, that as soon as the sun goes down she starts howling at the moon.”
“That’s probably why she’s sleeping now,” Priscilla pointed out. “She’s all tired out.”
He shook his head. “The more tired she is, usually the more fussy she is. But with you, she must feel safe. That’s why she sleeps so well over here.”
Priscilla couldn’t look at him, couldn’t let him know how his innocent comment had affected her. Faith shouldn’t feel safe with her—of all people.
“It’s no wonder if you’ve been holding her the whole time,” he said. “You didn’t have to. I brought her foldout bed.”
He had set up the portable crib for her, but Priscilla couldn’t bring herself to lay the baby in it. She’d needed to watch her—until the special report from Sports Central had broken into the six o’clock news. Only that footage had pulled her attention from Faith.
“I didn’t mind holding her,” she said, then tensed in surprise at her admission. While she was nervous and hypervigilant, she wasn’t as scared as she’d been the last time she’d watched the baby. Faith had been fine then. And she seemed fine now.
Better than Brooks.
“Well, your arms are probably sleeping as soundly as she is,” he said, lifting the baby from her. He cuddled her close for a moment, pressing a kiss to her forehead, before he rose and carried her to that portable crib. “She gets heavier the longer you hang on to her.”
“I’m fine,” Priscilla said.
He turned back to her, studying her face. “You don’t look fine. What did I say that upset you?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t what you said.” She picked up the remote. The television had gone into standby mode, the logo for the satellite company bouncing across the dark screen. But she clicked the play button and his image reappeared.
“Damn it.” He uttered the curse with a ragged sigh. “I didn’t know anyone recorded that.”
“It looks like cell-phone footage,” she said, as if it mattered. Nothing mattered but him. “Are you all right?”
“I was,” he murmured, dropping onto the couch next to her. He took the remote from her hand, his own shaking slightly, and rewound to the beginning of the report. More curses slipped through his lips.
“You didn’t want anyone to know how badly you were hurt,” she said.
He clicked off the TV and tossed down the remote. “I wasn’t hurt as badly as they said.”
“As I saw?” she asked. “You were bleeding….” Fear rose up to choke her, but she swallowed it down. “You have a head injury. You were in a coma.”
“Not as long as they’re saying.”
“But you were in a coma.”
“For a few days.”
She nodded. “I remember the sheriff leaving town for a while several weeks ago. Myrtle stayed with the boys.”
He grinned. “Yeah, my dad was there. I woke up with a hell of headache, probably because he was yelling at me for being a fool. I mean, going out on the ice without my helmet strap clasped. I’d bench any of my team for doing that.”
She nodded in sudden understanding. “I remember hearing you yell at them once about that. You’re very safety conscious with them.” It was just another thing about which she’d misjudged him.
“Yeah, Coach Hoover’s number one rule—do as I say, not as I do.” Brooks pushed a hand through his still-damp curls. “Now everyone’s going to see what an idiot I was.”
“You weren’t the one who started that fight,” she reminded him. “Your own teammate attacked you.”
“He didn’t attack me. He just shoved me. If I’d had my helmet on right, I wouldn’t have been hurt at all.”
And here she thought he was a man who didn’t take responsibility. “If he hadn’t shoved you, you wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“Graham’s a friend,” he said, defending the goalie. “And I actually did start the fight.”
<
br /> “But you’d just skated out on the ice…”
“It was about something I did off the ice.”
Realization dawning, she asked, “Or someone? Was that fight over a woman?”
“It was stupid,” he said. “I was stupid.”
“Was she someone special?” Priscilla murmured.
“To him. I didn’t know that, though, or I wouldn’t have…”
He didn’t have to spell it out for her. “Has any girl ever been special to you?”
His gaze slid over her before he glanced to the baby sleeping in the crib.
Helpless and beautiful, Faith made it impossible for a person not to care about her, even though Priscilla had tried. She couldn’t get attached, for so many reasons. Brooks wasn’t going to stay in Trout Creek, and he’d take his daughter with him when he left. Or the baby’s mother would return to claim her.
Either way, the baby wasn’t going to stay in Priscilla’s life any more than Brooks was. “She’s special,” she admitted, but when she turned back to him, he was staring at her.
“I was actually thinking about you.”
“Me?” Her voice squeaked.
His dimple flashed, and his eyes brightened despite the dark circles beneath them. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that kiss.”
She hadn’t stopped thinking about him since then, either. Just talking about it now had her lips tingling again. Suddenly, she realized how close they were on the couch, his hard thigh pressed against hers. His arm rested across the back, just behind her shoulders—not touching, but so close she could feel the heat of it, just as she did his leg. Her pulse quickened and her blood warmed.
Then her heart stopped beating altogether when he said, “And I haven’t stopped wanting you.”
Chapter Ten
Priscilla stared at Brooks, her green eyes wide with doubt. “No, you don’t.” Her breath shuddered out. “You can’t want me.”
The doubt, even more than the vulnerability she betrayed every time she looked at Faith, twisted his stomach. “How can you not believe me?”
The corners of her mouth lifted but didn’t quite form a real smile. “You’re you.”