I picked her up at eleven. We’d decided to take my car since she still wasn’t overly comfortable with the different modification system in her new car, and she wouldn’t let me pay for the same system she’d had before. I had every intention of wearing her down on that score before too much longer, using the argument that she was carrying my baby. I needed to be sure they were both safe, and that would be easier to achieve if she had equipment she was comfortable operating. I bent down and kissed her when she opened the door, lingering over the taste of her, but not so long that her neighbors would get annoyed with our public display if they were watching out their windows.
“You planning to kiss me like that in front of my daddy?” she asked.
“Does he have gun?”
She laughed and wheeled over to get into my car.
It was a nice day, so two of the kids were playing outside in the front when we pulled up and parked in the driveway. One of them—a little girl with brown curls—raced to open London’s door before I’d even cut the engine.
“Can we pop a wheelie?” she demanded, full of exuberance that made me like her immediately. Maybe becoming a father was making me softer around kids. That and spending as much time with Harper as I had in recent months. I’d never been around children much before her, so I’d always been a bit standoffish, not knowing what to do with them.
“Let me get my chair, and we’ll try to do a few before your mommy sees and tries to stop us,” London said, reaching into the back to start the assembly process.
I stayed out of their way, standing off to the side, as London put the girl on her lap and rolled down into the street. She picked up some speed and then shifted her weight backward, bringing the front wheels up off the ground. The little girl giggled. It sounded a lot like the way Harper giggled when I tickled her toes with my beard.
I was so engrossed with watching them that I didn’t notice when a man walked up to stand beside me. “It’s good to hear them laughing, isn’t it?” he said, and I tried not to jump and show my surprise.
“Yes, it’s good,” I said slowly.
He held out a hand. “David Hawke. I’m London’s father.
“Dmitri Nazarenko,” I said, shaking his hand.
He had a grip much like my father’s had been, strong and weathered, like a man achieved from a life full of hard work. He gave me a thorough once-over, but then he smiled at me. “Come on inside and meet the rest of the family. London’ll bring Erin in once they’ve had a bit more fun.”
Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared.
SIERRA HAD BEEN giving me the stink eye since the moment I’d come through the door with Erin on my lap. She hated the fact that her kids adored me. She hated that I could do things with those kids that she couldn’t.
Even worse than the way she was treating me, though, I’d noticed that she was giving Dima the same look. It was like she was bound and determined to hate him, simply because he had anything to do with me. Maybe she thought me bringing home a big, Russian hockey player would steal even more of her thunder. I didn’t know what it was about me that got her goat, but it made me mad.
I could deal with her dislike and jealousy of me, but it left me feeling stabby when it came to Dima. She had my hackles up, and I doubted I’d calm down about it any time soon. Not the best way to spend a family day, particularly when it was Dima’s introduction to them. These were the people he would have to deal with for the rest of his life, and I’d hoped they could make a good impression on him. Sierra was doing her best to accomplish the opposite.
At the moment, Dima was holding Baby Finn, who was just as entranced with Dima’s beard as Harper always was. Finn kept reaching up and patting Dima on the chin or the cheek, and Dima would wiggle his face until Finn started giggling.
“He’s good with babies,” Dad said, sitting down next to me and passing over one of the two huge glasses of sweet iced tea he’d just brought in from the kitchen.
I winked. “You have no idea. One of his teammates has a little girl who had colic. They couldn’t ever get her to calm down unless he came over. He’d rock her and tell her stories in Russian, and she would rip out his beard hairs one at a time, and she’d finally calm down. Tallie and Tori call him the baby whisperer.”
“Might come in handy.”
“Yeah.” I leaned back, a warmth spreading throughout my body and culminating in a smile. “It definitely could.”
Sierra was watching the two of them like a hawk, though, never letting Dima out of her sight.
He picked Finn up in the air and let him drop a few inches, catching him and holding him close. Finn cackled harder than ever.
“That’s enough,” Sierra said, stomping over and snatching her son out of Dima’s arms. “He’s a baby. You can’t toss him around like that.”
Never mind the fact that I’d seen Gray do that very thing with all four of his kids when they were Finn’s age, countless times. What did she think Dima was going to do? Drop the baby? I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking, but I’d never been more upset with her than I was in this moment.
Dima started apologizing even though he hadn’t done a darned thing wrong, but Finn had started crying after being pulled away from him so suddenly, so Sierra stalked off without even listening.
“Why does she have to be so blatantly rude to him?” I hissed at my father.
“I don’t think she knows any other way of being. It’s just something we’re going to have to deal with because your brother married her.”
“Well, we didn’t marry her. I don’t see why we should have to face the consequences of his bad taste.”
“That’s how it goes. You don’t get to choose your in-laws.”
I let out a hmphing sound at that. If Dima and I got married, I wouldn’t have any in-laws, unless you counted Svetka and Sergei—and I did—but they were fabulous. They could very well factor into my decision if he asked me to marry him, not that I was going to tell him that. It would play in his favor, anyway, so there was no need to let him get worked up over it.
“Your mother tells me you had an ultrasound last week?” Dad said, leaning in and effectively redirecting my thoughts away from Sierra and her poor treatment of the man I had come to love.
“Is that a hint that you want to see it?”
“Grandpas always want to see the ultrasound. Get used to that.”
I dug into my purse and found the envelope holding the printout. Dima had one, too, that he’d taken up to practice the next day and shown to all his teammates who would humor him, but I hadn’t shown many people yet. Mainly just Terri and a couple of the counselors at work. For the most part, I was keeping it to myself. I wouldn’t keep it from my father, though. Especially not when he’d flat out asked to see it.
I passed it over to him, and he slipped the picture out of the envelope, holding it up so the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows would light it up for him.
Mom looked up from across the room. “Is that the ultrasound?” Then she and Gray came over to take a look, too. Within moments, the three older kids had all crowded around to see the black-and-white fuzzy image. Everyone had gathered around my dad except for Dima, Finn, and Sierra. Dima winked at me, watching the way the family crowded together. But then Sierra walked in from the kitchen with Finn still fussing in her arms. He reached for Dima as soon as he saw him, but she wouldn’t let him go.
“Oh, good grief,” she said. “It’s just an ultrasound. You can’t even tell what sex the baby’s going to be yet. You can’t tell anything yet. It’s nothing to get excited about. Just one more way London is trying to get all the attention on her.”
I was about to tell her to shut up and act like a decent human being, even though she clearly wasn’t one, and it looked like Gray, for once, was gearing up to do the same thing, but Dima beat us both to the punch.
“Attention? London doesn’t want attention. This is family.” He stood there looking at her like she was a crazy wom
an—or woo-woo bonkers, as he’d taken to saying lately. Considering what family meant to him, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind of the weight his words carried.
Dad reached over and squeezed my hand. When I looked at him, he winked at me, nodding. That was his sign of approval. He liked Dima. Something in my chest swelled.
“Oh, please,” Sierra said, rolling her eyes. “You clearly don’t know her very well yet, so if you’re smart, you’ll get out while you still can. Sadly, I’ve already married in and have to deal with her all the time. And now she’s going to shove her kid to the front of the line so it can get more attention than mine do, too. She treats the rest of us like we’re second-class citizens in this family.”
“Only one treats people like they’re not good enough is you,” Dima said, getting all growly and fierce, the way he did when the two of us argued over something.
It was probably bad that the only thought in my mind while he fought with her was that he was even hotter when he was mad and I wanted to take him home so he could look at me in private with those angry eyes.
Sierra scoffed, gearing up for another round, but Gray cut her off before she could wind up.
“Would you just let it go already?” he shouted. “I’ve been telling you for years that you’re projecting your own issues onto her unfairly. But it’s never been more apparent than now.”
“My own issues?”
“It’s the same as you’ve always been with your own sister. You can’t stand that she came along after you and was the baby, so she always got more attention than you did. Stop beating London up because you feel inadequate. Just let it go.”
Erin broke out into song, channeling her inner Elsa and breaking through the tension. Mom laughed, and Kennedy joined in with Erin. Sierra stomped off down the hall, carrying Finn with her. The door to her bedroom slammed a few moments later.
“Sorry,” Gray said. “She’s just getting worse with it. I don’t know…” He shook his head, at a loss.
“Why she thinks London wants attention?” Dima asked, clearly flabbergasted.
“Because she gets attention,” Dad explained. “She always has. When she was younger, she got noticed because she was at the top of her sport. Then she got attention because of her accident, and we all had to make adjustments because she was in a wheelchair.”
Dima gave a disgusted look. “She’s paralyzed. Not trying to get attention. Doesn’t want the attention she gets just because of wheelchair.”
“Which any reasonable person understands,” Dad agreed.
“Still,” I said. “You might want to take her advice and get out while you can.” I winked to let him know I was teasing.
“No chance.”
“No?”
“No more running away,” he said.
“Good,” Dad said. “Because if you don’t marry my little girl, I’m going to come after you with a shotgun.”
“Daddy,” I argued in a bit of a whine at the same time as Dima said, “Want to marry her. Don’t know if she’ll marry me.”
I blinked a couple of times, trying to get my brain to catch up with everything that had just happened.
“Why wouldn’t she marry you?” Gray asked.
“Ask London.”
Everyone turned expectant eyes on me.
“I…” needed a minute to breathe. “Are you seriously asking me right now?” I demanded.
“You want to argue instead?” he asked in a teasing tone.
“Well, you haven’t even told me you loved me!” I pointed out.
He let out a string of Russian curse words. At least he’d said them in Russian and not English, because I had no doubt my nieces and nephews would memorize and repeat everything he said. They could be ornery like that. “Maybe you’re woo-woo bonkers,” he said. “Been in love with you a long time. What you need me to say?”
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “That’s good enough. I just needed to hear the words.”
“I love you. Okay? So will you marry me?”
“You sure you want to marry into this family?” I asked, half-teasing, half-serious. “You’ll be stuck with Sierra.”
“What about Miller?” he asked.
“If he ever gets his act together, you might end up stuck with him, too.” But I honestly didn’t know if Wade would straighten himself out. I’d told him the ball was in his court when I’d gone to see him, finally. Either he could accept the help that was available to him and be my friend—and only my friend—or he could move on with his life without me in it. But no matter what he felt about Dima, I made sure he understood he didn’t have any say in that matter. I hadn’t heard from Wade since I’d left his house, and I honestly wasn’t sure if I would ever hear from him again. I wanted to be there for him, but he was putting more than just his own life at risk, so even though it broke my heart, I had to make a break in order to protect myself.
Dima scowled at my response.
“I wasn’t kidding about the shotgun,” Dad warned.
“Be nice to have a family,” Dima conceded.
In the end, that was all the answer I needed. I blinked again, this time to hold back my tears. “Yeah, I guess I will then.”
“Good.” Dima winked. “Now let me fix your car.”
I rolled my eyes, but eventually I relented. Compromise, I reminded myself, required both of us to make concessions. It couldn’t be all on his end. I didn’t want it to be all on his end, even, because making changes to give Dima what he needed actually gave me what I needed.
Love. Passion. Companionship. A healthy argument every now and then.
He made me want to be a better version of myself. And together, we were definitely better than we were apart.
“You can upgrade the hand controls on my car on one condition,” I said, thinking fast.
He raised a skeptical brow. “What condition?”
“Move in with me.” It was something I’d been thinking about more and more often over the last few weeks. Most nights, he came to stay with me anyway. It was easier to be at my house than at his since mine had been designed with wheelchairs in mind. He’d started leaving a few things there. First a toothbrush and some body soap and shampoo that didn’t smell girly, as he put it. Then I’d shifted things around in my closets and drawers, giving him some space in both.
Dima grinned—something that was starting to look more natural and less forced on him. “Thought you’d never ask.”
“I STILL CAN’T get over you not leaving with a different girl on your arm every night,” Drew said, tossing a roll of stick tape in my direction from across the locker room. “Don’t know what to make of you anymore.”
“Dima’s a fucking beardless, monogamous wonder these days,” Razor added. “Tori can’t contain herself with calling the son of a bitch a good man.”
“Yeah, but she thinks you’re a good man, too, so clearly she has impaired judgment,” Zee pointed out as he walked past us, and half the guys in the room snickered.
I had no intention of getting into an argument with any of them right now. Arguing with London was a hell of a lot more fun, especially because we typically ended our arguments with a feisty bout of makeup sex. I just put my head down and taped up my stick, getting it ready for tonight’s game.
It was the last home game of the season. As expected, we weren’t moving on to the playoffs, much to the disappointment of our delusional team owners. They seemed to be under the impression that a year or two was long enough for us to suddenly come to prominence within the league, which was as ridiculous a thought as any I’d heard. Chances were high that they’d end up selling the team and getting out of the hockey world long before the Thunderbirds would be truly competitive.
“Leave the man alone,” Hunter said, putting on his pads. “If you ask my little girl, she’d tell you he’s a good man, too.”
“Your little girl wouldn’t tell me anything other than goo goo ga ga,” Drew said.
“Whatever. Babies and animal
s can sense these things, though, and my baby loves the guy.”
“You gonna let Harper run off and marry him?” Drew asked.
“Last I knew, she wasn’t running anywhere,” Huggy Bear put in.
“I think his fiancée might have something to say about that.” Hunter threw a water bottle at Drew’s head.
Drew ducked just in time to avoid being hit with it.
It was going to be a long summer, and I would definitely miss the way the guys always gave each other shit all the time. I’d be plenty busy, though, getting ready for the arrival of my own baby.
London’s due date was in late September, around the time everyone would be coming back to get ready for training camp and the new season, and we were planning to have a small wedding here, with Svetka and Sergei flying in to join us, next month. Even Wade Miller intended to come. I just hoped he didn’t do anything that would force me to throat-punch him at my wedding. I wasn’t convinced he’d be on his best behavior, but London and I were all about compromising these days. I had to agree to let him come in order to get her to agree to marry me before the baby was born. I wanted the baby to have my name, and for there to be no question at all about who the father was.
Spurs came into the locker room with Mr. and Mrs. Jernigan at his side, and the boys all got quiet. Mr. and Mrs. J were the aforementioned delusional team owners, so we all tried to be on our best behavior around them. Mrs. J was constantly trying to get us to clean up our acts by instituting a swear jar and other ridiculous things of that variety. None of her efforts had panned out yet, but that didn’t stop her from trying.
“We just wanted to thank you all for your effort this season and wish you well on your time off,” Mr. Jernigan said. He was a preacher at a massive local church.
His wife caught my eye. She tensed up and inched closer to his side. She wasn’t my biggest fan, to say the least. Mainly because I refused to watch my language around her. I tended to throw a bunch of money in her swear jar at the beginning of each month, to cover my bases. It was easier to pay than to watch my mouth. Most of the other guys followed my example, too, so she always acted like I was a hooligan.
Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) Page 26