Power Play (Portland Storm Book 16)

by Catherine Gayle

  I did love him.

  I loved him more than I knew how to handle.

  That was what scared me.

  “I’M GOING TO be a daddy!” I said as soon as I walked into the locker room the next morning.

  That wasn’t exactly how I’d intended to announce it to my teammates, and Mackenzie had asked me not to say anything to anyone yet, but I couldn’t keep it inside. I was almost literally bursting to share the news with anyone and everyone, so there was no chance I could keep it from my teammates.

  At least only half of them were here so far, so it wasn’t like I’d told everyone. Just almost everyone.

  Anne and her camera crew were here and filming, already, though, which I hadn’t bothered to notice before spilling the beans. Shit. But word would get out about Mackenzie’s pregnancy sooner or later, anyway, so I supposed it wasn’t the end of the world. I just hoped Mackenzie would see things the same way once I explained it to her.

  “Congratulations, Daddy,” a few of the guys said, chuckling to themselves.

  Ghost came up and slapped me on the back. “Not messing around, hmm? Getting shit taken care of.”

  “You should try it,” I teased.

  “Nah, not yet. Anne and I want to wait a bit longer.”

  “Not me. I want to have kids while I’m young enough to enjoy them.”

  “Good plan,” Hammer put in. “The older you get, the harder it is to move.”

  “And kids move a lot,” Soupy added. “I swear, chasing kids around is harder than playing hockey. Do it while you’re young enough to get up and down on the floor, Ghost. Don’t mess around and miss your chance.”

  A few of the other fathers in the room nodded in commiseration.

  “I’ll take it under advisement,” he said, winking at me before waggling his brows at his wife, who rolled her eyes but didn’t make a peep. She and her crew always did their best to remain in the background, never stepping into the foreground. Every now and then she ended up on camera since she wasn’t just the producer, but she was also one of the WAGs. But she did her damnedest to avoid it.

  Babs walked by without saying anything, heading for his stall with his head down. That wasn’t unusual for him, though. Not on a day like today.

  We only had three more games left in the regular season, this one tonight, and another tomorrow in San Jose, followed by a final game in Anaheim a couple of days later.

  The playoffs would be starting in just over a week, and if we won this one and at least came away with taking the next two to overtime, we would guarantee ourselves home ice not only in the first few rounds but throughout the playoffs, even if we made it to the Finals. Which, of course, was our intention, to be followed by the ultimate goal of winning the Cup. If we lost tonight, we might still end up with that result, but we’d have to win our final two games outright, and even then our fate would be in someone else’s hands.

  We’d prefer to make our own destiny, thank you very much.

  It was too soon to be thinking about the Cup, though. We needed to limit our focus. One series at a time. One opponent at a time. One game at a time.

  Bergy came over and shook my hand. “Congratulations. Exciting news. But don’t let it get in the way of what we’re doing here. I need your focus on the ice.”

  “You’ve got it.” Having a baby was huge for me on a personal front, but I knew better than to let my personal life intrude on my professional life and vice versa. At least not in any way I could avoid. Some intrusion was inevitable, but much was preventable.

  “I know I do.” Bergy slapped me on the back and headed over to Colesy’s stall to say something to him, gradually working his way through the room and talking to a handful of us one-on-one.

  That was one thing our coach had always been good at. He knew each of his players on a personal level. He followed along with our lives and helped us to find a way to focus even when that was the last thing we felt like doing.

  I tossed my gym bag in my stall and started getting myself dressed.

  Hammer came over and leaned against the wall near me. “So how’s Mackenzie handling the news? Is she excited? Scared?”

  “Probably all of the above and then some,” I said honestly. “I think she’ll adjust to the idea all right, though.”

  “Hope so. My ex never did.”

  “No? But you’ve got three kids.”

  “Three amazing kids. But Leah never wanted to be a mother. I wanted kids but she didn’t. She gave in, but she was miserable the whole time. That was what ultimately spelled the end for us. It drove us apart.”

  “Is that why she eventually left you?”

  “And why she doesn’t have jack shit to do with our kids, yeah.”

  “Damn,” I said. And then I worried about Mackenzie. Because she hadn’t seemed overly excited about the idea of being pregnant. I was ecstatic, but she’d just seemed…anxious. Yeah, we’d talked about it briefly before, but maybe I’d pushed her into the idea of having a baby with me. We needed to sit down and hash this out. And I had to be sure I wasn’t pushing my own desires onto her, compelling her to be excited about something that she was actually dreading, just because I wanted it so much.

  “Not saying that’s what’s going to happen with you and Mackenzie,” he said quickly. “Just saying you should make sure you’re both on the same page. You haven’t exactly known each other all that long.”

  That was putting it mildly, since we’d been married less than two months. “Thanks, Hammer. I’ll be sure we have a good talk about it.”

  He headed back to his stall, quietly going about his preparations for our morning skate.

  Then I spent the next couple of hours worrying that I’d pushed Mackenzie into pretending to be happy about our baby just because I was so excited I could barely stand it.

  Being married was hard work. Being married to someone who’d been a stranger only a couple of months ago? It was more difficult than anything I’d ever done before.

  But much like chasing the Cup, it was well worth it. Because I loved Mackenzie more than I ever thought I’d love another person. And I knew she loved me, too. She just hadn’t accepted it yet.

  She’d get there. I’d make sure of it.

  RILEY AND THE team had to fly down to San Jose after the game—a three-to-one win—for their next-to-last game of the regular season. They were going to be gone for three days this time, which wasn’t too bad, but it was more than long enough to have me wishing he could stay home with me and our growing menagerie of pets. I supposed I’d gotten spoiled by having him home for so long due to his injury, but now I was going to have to adjust to the way things would be under normal circumstances.

  He came up to the owner’s box after the game to give me a quick kiss good bye before hurrying to join the rest of the guys for the flight. “Go take care of our babies,” he murmured, his lips still against mine. He pressed a hand gently against my abdomen, even though there was nothing to feel yet. “All of them. And get some rest. Please. Do it for me.”

  “I’ll try to rest,” I promised.

  “Do better than just trying. You can’t take care of anyone else if you aren’t taking care of yourself first, okay? That’s how this works. Just sleep all day tomorrow if you have to.”

  “I can’t sleep all day if I have to be up every two hours to feed Phoebe. Besides, there’s no telling what Lola will get into if I’m not keeping a close watch on her. And Max isn’t exactly a perfect angel, either.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He was right. I did know what he meant. “I’ll do my best, but that’s all I can promise. I can’t know what’s going to happen until it happens.”

  “I guess that’ll have to be good enough.” He planted another hard, hungry kiss on me before heading out the door, stopping next to Brie Burns and Rachel Shaw on his way to say, “Make sure she gets some rest.”

  “Go!” they said to him in unison.

  Then Brie turned to me, rolling her eyes.
“I wish I could say that he’ll get better once he’s used to the idea of being a father, but that’d be a lie. He’ll probably just get worse.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” Rachel Campbell said, gathering up her kids and trying to shuffle them out the door. “Tuck, grab your sisters and let’s skedaddle. It’s a school night, and you’ve got a game yourself tomorrow.”

  “Who even says things like skedaddle?” he shot back, his preteen angst starting to make itself known. Which reminded me that babies grew up to be preteens and then teenagers. Were we ready to handle all of that? Or could we be ready in time?

  I wasn’t sure, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

  “I do, that’s who,” Rachel shot back. “Come on.” She rolled her eyes when he rolled his, but soon she and all her redheaded children were on their way out of the building and heading toward the parking garage.

  I was still trying to come to grips with the fact that I was pregnant and having Riley’s baby, but the realization that the entire team, not to mention their families, already knew had come as a bit of a shock. Especially since we’d intended to wait before telling anyone.

  But Riley had been too excited to keep it in, apparently, so now the whole world knew. Or they would soon enough, at least, since Anne’s crew had captured his revelation on camera and would be airing it in tomorrow’s webisode of Eye of the Storm.

  She did ask my permission first, even though she didn’t need it. Riley and the rest of the team had signed waivers allowing them to air anything they chose to use. But it was nice of her to ask, at least.

  He’d apologized, of course—profusely—and had made it up to me by giving me an earth-shattering orgasm last night, but he couldn’t go back in time and undo what had been done. I was just going to have to deal with the fact that the whole world would soon know way more about my private life than I wanted anyone but my husband to know.

  Would it really make any difference to keep it a secret now? I wasn’t so sure. Whether people knew I was pregnant or not, I was still going to have to learn all about parenting as I went. Maybe I could start by paying attention to the examples I had with the other Storm WAGs. I made a mental note to spend more time around them in an effort to pick up whatever tips and tricks I could.

  All the various moms around me gathered up their kids and herded them out of the arena. I was making my way along with them when Dani Williams and Katie Babcock caught up with me.

  “Since you’re still new to town,” Katie said, “I’m guessing you don’t have an ob-gyn yet.”

  “Um, no. I don’t have any doctors here.”

  She passed a business card into my hands. “That’s mine—Dr. Cahill. She’s the best. She’s been helping me try to conceive. We haven’t had much luck yet, but she’s gone above and beyond in doing everything possible to make it happen.”

  “You’re not—” I started, but then I stopped myself short when I remembered what Bea had said that day at the mall.

  Katie shook her head. “Still trying, though. But don’t mess around with this, all right? Give her a call. Tell the receptionist I referred you. They’ll probably get you in quicker that way. It can take a while if you’re not an established patient.”

  “Thanks,” I said, slipping the card into my purse. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Katie said. Then she deftly changed the subject. “How’s your kitten doing?”

  “Probably screaming for her supper right about now, which will have Max and Lola frantic for me to get back and feed her.”

  Katie grinned. “You need to get Anne to come film some of that. The Eye of the Storm viewers eat that kind of thing up. The segments when RJ and Ghost took Max and Lola to their swimming lessons are fan favorites.”

  “Those two are some characters, that’s for sure,” I said drily.

  “Do you mean the dogs or our husbands?” Anne cracked. “Because it fits, either way.”

  “I meant the dogs, but I can see your point.”

  “I still cackle every time I watch the one when Lola nearly drowned Ghost,” Dani said.

  I almost tripped over my own feet. “She did what?”

  “He was in the pool, and RJ tossed a ball for her. She took a running leap into the water and landed on Ghost’s head while he was looking the other way, playing with Max. Funniest shit I’ve ever seen right there. He was okay, of course, but he came up spitting mad. Cursed a blue streak at RJ. Anne’s team had to edit that one a lot to make the censors happy. I begged her for the uncut version as a wedding present.”

  I laughed, finally starting to feel at ease around some of these women. It had taken me a while, and I still didn’t quite fit in with them, but they were growing on me.

  Everything about my new life was growing on me, actually. Slowly but surely, I was beginning to feel as if I belonged in Riley’s world. Maybe I wasn’t an imposter or a poor replacement for his previous fiancée after all. Yeah, I knew that she’d cheated on him and had been horrible to him, but I still felt as if I had to compete with her in some ways. Probably most of that revolved around trying to figure out where I fit with the rest of the WAGs. But they were starting to accept me as one of them. Just like he was accepting me the way I was—warts and all, as the saying went.

  And it wasn’t just because I was having his baby, either.

  It was because he loved me.

  Now I had to come to terms with the fact that I loved him. Because he was right. I did love him. I loved him so much it was almost physically painful. And I wanted to trust in that love enough that I could let him know how I felt about him.

  For some reason, saying the words scared me more than it should.

  I knew he loved me. Somewhere, deep down, I knew it.

  I knew he wanted a family with me. He’d made that abundantly clear. And we were going to have a family together, regardless, since I was pregnant.

  But I was still terrified to let him know I felt the same way and wanted the same things.

  My inability to admit the truth made me feel pathetic and undeserving of his love. I had to get past it, somehow, someway. Just like I’d had to get past my fear of his dogs.

  The trick was going to be figuring out how to do that.

  GRADY’S TEXT MESSAGE woke me up. I’d been taking another catnap between Phoebe’s feedings, totally zonked out with both mastiffs curled up on either side of me on the bed, when my phone dinged. In my pseudo-zombie state, it took me a minute to realize it was the tone for a message and not the alarm waking me up to feed the kitten. Bleary-eyed and still wishing I was asleep, I swiped the screen to read the message.

  Grady: Minor emergency w/another client. Running late. Might be a couple of hours or so.

  Me: Worry about your other charges. I can handle these two.

  Grady: U sure?

  Me: Positive. Lola can’t walk far right now anyway. Still recovering from surgery. I’ll take them separately.

  Grady: Hi-5! C U 2morrow.

  Yawning and wishing I was still asleep, I glanced at the clock. Phoebe was due for her next feeding in ten minutes, so that would give me enough time to jump in the shower and throw on some clothes so no one else would realize just how much of a slob I’d become in the last few days.

  “Keep a good eye on your baby for me for a few minutes,” I said to Lola and Max as I forced myself to crawl out of bed.

  Neither responded, but their tails wagged happily as if they’d understood my edict.

  Twenty minutes later, I had fed the kitten and was refreshed, dressed in clean clothes, and ready to go. “Come on, Max. You’re first. Lola, you stay with your baby.” The kitten would just nap now, anyway, since she had a full belly.

  It seemed as if they understood me completely, because Max bounded off the bed and followed me downstairs, but Lola stayed put where she was. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and took Max’s leash off the hook by the door, affixing it to his collar.

  “You ready?” I asked
him.

  He barked in response, so I grabbed my keys off the hook and headed outside, locking the door behind me.

  We walked at a good clip until we got to his favorite dog park, and I let him off the leash so he could run and chase a few of the other dogs who were out today. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and I didn’t have the energy to run and play with him, so I was glad that some of his doggy friends were here for him to chase.

  He’d been romping around for about fifteen minutes when I realized a man I hadn’t ever seen here before was watching me.

  He wasn’t outright staring, so maybe the idea that he was paying close attention to me was only in my head, but a nervous tingle crept up my spine every time the man’s head turned in my direction. On top of that, he had on sunglasses and a ballcap, so I couldn’t quite make out his face. Something about him and the way he kept angling his head my way gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  I looked out at the dogs playing at the park, trying to match them up with their owners. I recognized the husky belonging to the older, gray-haired woman, and the golden retriever named Shasta often came here with the Hispanic couple seated near me on the next bench over. One at a time, I matched up the dogs at the park with their owners until I realized there were no more dogs who could belong with this strange man.

  And he was still watching me. Maybe even more closely than he had been before.

  I didn’t know who he was or what he wanted, but I wanted no part of it. I grabbed my water bottle and called out, “Max! Time to go.”

  Max bounded back over to my side, his tongue lolling and his tail wagging in excitement. I scratched his ears before hooking the leash back into place, and then I grabbed my water bottle and we headed for home.

  Every now and then, I checked over my shoulder to be sure the man I’d seen wasn’t following me, but there was no one there. I was probably making a bigger deal out of it than I should. Overreaction or not, though, as soon as Max and I got into the house, I shut and locked the door behind us.