by Louise Hall
“You might want to think about changing your shoes,” Declan said, holding her trainers. She’d run out in her very impractical, spiky-heeled dance shoes.
“Thanks,” Cate gasped, flinging herself into her car. Kian had the Tank today. She checked her watch again and grimaced, “I’m so late.”
When she turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened. “It’s seriously not my day.”
“Come on,” Declan said. “I’ll drive you to the airport.”
“You don’t have to do that. You’re already doing me a huge favour by letting me miss training this afternoon.”
“It’s no big deal,” Declan shrugged. “My car’s parked over there.”
“Thank you,” Cate said gratefully.
As they drove to the airport, Cate tried to make herself look more presentable. She brushed her hair and tied it up in what she hoped was a relatively smooth ponytail, grabbed a pack of baby wipes from her bag and cleaned her face, put on a long belted cardigan, changed out of her sparkly dance shoes into a more normal pair of Converse trainers and popped in a breath mint.
“You carry all that in your bag?” Declan marvelled.
“I’m a mum,” Cate shrugged. “do you want a mint?”
When they got to arrivals, Liv was already there with the children. “Mama!” Mateo yelped, careening across the slippery floors towards her. Cate scooped him up and carried him back across to Liv. “Thanks for looking after them,” she gave her sister a hug.
“I’m seriously considering being sterilised,” Liv teased quietly. “I don’t know how you cope with three of them?”
“You manage,” Cate laughed. “Do you know if her flight has landed yet?”
Liv nodded, “about five minutes ago. I can’t believe she’s almost here.”
“Can you see her?” A crowd of people surged through the doors and holding on to both Mateo and Sierra, Cate struggled to see above the bobbing heads.
“What does she look like?” Declan asked, standing on tiptoes.
“She looks exactly like Cate,” Liv said.
“There she is,” Cate and Liv immediately spotted their half-sister as she came through the doors. “Excuse me,” Liv said, pushing her way through the hordes of jet-lagged arrivals. “A little room please, I’ve got a baby here.”
“I can’t believe you just used your child as a battering ram,” Ruby laughed, abandoning her luggage trolley so she could give them both hugs. “Ugh, I’ve missed you too much.”
“We’ve missed you,” they both assured her. “Where’s Mateo?” Ruby looked around.
“He’s over there with Declan,” Cate pointed them out.
“Oh,” Ruby stumbled. “What’s um, Declan doing here?”
Cate linked her arm through Ruby’s. “My car wouldn’t start. He gave me a lift.”
“Auntie Booby!” Mateo cried excitedly when he saw his aunt.
Cate winced. Some of the other passengers and their families were giving them really strange looks. “It’s Ruby,” Cate corrected him. “Auntie Ruby.”
Ruby scooped up her nephew and gave him a kiss, “I tell you what, why don’t you call me Auntie Bee instead?”
Mateo cocked his head to one side, as if he was thinking about it, “OK, Auntie Bee.”
“Declan, this is my sister, Ruby,” Cate introduced them.
“You’re such a bitch,” Liv said, spelling out the word because there were children present. “How can you look that good after a gazillion hour flight? I should really hate you.”
“It wasn’t too bad,” Ruby scrutinised Cate and Liv, “since somebody bumped me up to first class.”
“That was nice of them,” Cate laughed, reaching for Sierra’s stroller. She and Liv had jointly covered the cost of Ruby’s first-class plane ticket. She definitely deserved to be pampered after all the crap she’d been through with the sex tape.
“Is Lola at school?” Ruby looked around for her eldest niece.
“Oh no,” Cate cursed. She reached under Sierra’s stroller and retrieved the big, sparkly banner that Lola had made. “If Lola asks, will you tell her how much you loved seeing this when you came through the doors. She worked so hard on it; I can’t believe we forgot to hold it up.”
Ruby raised an eyebrow, “you want me to lie to your kid?”
“Yep.”
“I love it,” Ruby took the sparkly banner from Cate. “I’m going to hang it above my bed, I like seeing my name up in lights.”
When they got to the car park, they realised that Sierra and Mateo’s car seats wouldn’t fit in Declan’s car. “I can’t drive right now,” Liv said. “I need to breastfeed Sofia.”
“Cate, why don’t you take Liv’s car? Sierra and Mateo are going to have to go in Liv’s car anyway because of their car seats and at least that way, Liv can feed Sofia,” Declan suggested.
“But what about Ruby?”
“I can drive Ruby home.”
“Is that OK with you?” Cate asked Ruby. She shrugged, “yeah, I guess?”
As they drove home, Sierra woke up and started crying. “Darn it,” Cate cursed, they were on the freeway and so she couldn’t stop the car and calm her daughter.
“How is she?” Cate asked Liv, who was sat in the backseat with the children.
“She feels a little warm,” Liv said, touching Sierra’s forehead. “I’ll remove a couple of layers.”
She was still fussy when they got closer to home. “Would it be OK if you dropped us off first? I feel really bad about not helping Ruby get settled but I just want to check that Sierra’s OK.”
“Of course,” Liv waved away her protests. “I was going to invite you, Kian and the children to come to ours for dinner tonight, you know to celebrate Ruby’s first night here in Seattle.” Ruby was staying in Seattle for four weeks, the first two weeks she would be staying with Liv, Jax and Sofia and then the second two weeks she would be staying with Cate, Kian and the children.
“Won’t she be too jet-lagged for a big family dinner?”
“I was kind of hoping it would help to keep her awake. The absolute worst thing you can do for jet lag is to go to sleep too early.”
“OK, I know Lola’s really excited to see Ruby. I’ll call you once I’ve got Sierra settled.”
CHAPTER 31
When Kian got home, Cate was walking back and forth in front of the lounge windows holding Sierra who was still red-faced and grizzling. She’d changed her into a pair of loose pyjamas but she still felt warm and clammy.
“Is she OK?” Kian asked.
“I’m hoping it’s just a fever,” Cate shrugged. Every little cry was like a knife to her heart. It was horrible seeing her baby girl in such discomfort.
“What can I do?” Kian asked.
“Liv has organised a family dinner tonight at their house to welcome Ruby to Seattle. I can’t go with Sierra poorly like this but could you maybe take Lola and Mats?”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay home?” Kian said, looking at the ominous black clouds hovering above the Sound. “You’ll be on your own here. Nate’s got a training session tonight.”
“I’ll be OK,” Cate said. “The forecasters think we’re going to miss the worst of the bad weather.”
Kian raised an eyebrow, “they said that a year ago.” Sierra had been born in the midst of superstorm Sierra. Cate had gone into labour at Nate’s birthday party next door but she hadn’t been able to go to the hospital because the storm had brought down trees and power lines, blocking the roads. She’d been delivered right there in their lounge by Luke’s dad, who was an OB-GYN at Seattle Central.
“Give your Auntie Bee a big kiss from me, OK?” Cate made sure that Lola and Mateo were both bundled up against the freezing cold weather. She brushed her lips against Kian’s. “Drive safe, OK and will you apologise to Ruby and Liv again?”
“They’ll understand,” Kian said, shrugging on his thick coat. “I’ll text you when we get there.”
As the front do
or shut, Sierra let out another wail. “I know,” Cate tried, rubbing her back. She carried Sierra into the kitchen and got her water and a paracetamol. “I need you to drink this for me, sweetheart.”
After she’d given Sierra the paracetamol and persuaded her to drink some more water, Cate curled up on the sofa. It was really cold. Even though she had thick socks on, her toes felt like they were made of blocks of ice. She dug them in between the sofa cushions and picked up her phone. Kian hadn’t texted her yet to say that they’d got to Liv’s house safely. She looked at the clock; they should be there now. She decided that she’d give herself ten minutes and then she’d start worrying.
The house phone rang, which woke Sierra up again. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Cate cooed.
“Hello?” Cate asked cautiously.
“Good evening, Mrs Warner. It’s Jose at the guard station. We’ve got a Declan Yates here to see you.”
“Darn,” Cate slapped her hand to her forehead, with Sierra being poorly she’d completely forgotten that she’d promised to go back to the gym to catch up on rehearsals after Ruby had got settled over at Liv’s house.
“That’s OK, you can send him up.”
“Wow, it’s so cold in here,” Cate shivered. Her breath visibly floated through the air. She touched one of the radiators but it was stone-cold.
“Brilliant!” Her cell-phone beeped. It was Kian. He and the children had arrived at Liv’s. At least something tonight was OK.
There was a knock on the front door. Cate checked the security camera; it was Declan.
“I’m so sorry,” Cate said as she opened the front door. She was hit smack in the face with a gust of the coldest air she’d ever felt. Declan’s padded Parka was covered in snowflakes.
“It’s snowing?” She definitely shouldn’t have let Kian and the children go to her sister’s house tonight. “When did that start?”
“About twenty minutes ago,” Declan’s teeth chattered. “Can I come in?”
“Of course,” Cate stood back to let him in and then quickly shut the front door. “I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise,” Declan said, shrugging off his coat. “I just thought that rather than you trekking all the way to the gym, we could practice here and then you could still keep a check on Sierra. Wow, it’s almost as cold in here as it is outside.”
“I think the heating’s broken,” Cate said, snuggling Sierra closer to her chest. “I was just going to investigate.”
“I’ll do it,” Declan said, “you’ve got Sierra. Where’s your fuse box?”
When he came back, it wasn’t good news. “Have you got firewood?”
Cate nodded, “it’s over there. Kian brought some more in this morning. Why?”
The lights above their head flickered and went off. “The power’s down.”
Sierra started crying again. “It’s OK, baby girl,” Cate tried to soothe her. The darkness made everything seem scary. She found the torch they kept on top of the fridge and was then able to locate the candles and matches stored under the kitchen sink. When she walked back into the lounge, Declan was building a fire in the hearth.
Cate laid Sierra down on the sofa and surrounded her with cushions so she wouldn’t fall. She put the candles on the mantelpiece and lit them, giving the room a lovely, warm glow.
“How is she?” Declan asked, looking at Sierra who had fallen asleep again.
“She’s got a fever,” Cate said softly. The snow was still coming down thick and fast. Her phone beeped with another message from Kian. He and the children were going to stay at Liv’s tonight.
“I think you should do the same,” Cate said to Declan. “They’ve closed the nearby roads.”
She scavenged all of the pillows and blankets that she could find from the rest of the house. “Are your clothes wet?” Cate asked Declan. “You can borrow some of Kian’s? He won’t mind.”
“I’m OK,” Declan said, sitting on the rug near the floor with his back against the sofa. Cate wrapped herself up in several blankets and settled Sierra in her lap. She didn’t want to go too close to the fire in case it made Sierra’s fever worse.
There was a knock at the back door. Cate didn’t want to wake up Sierra so Declan answered it.
“Have you still got power?” Layla asked, her teeth chattering loudly. “You definitely don’t get cold like this in California.”
“We haven’t got power,” Cate said, “but we’ve got a lovely warm fire. Why don’t you stay here tonight?”
After Layla had texted Luke’s parents to let them know where they were – Allison and Eric were both stuck at the hospital – Layla and Luke wrapped themselves up in warm blankets and sat close to the fire.
“Where’s Lola?” Luke asked.
“She’s staying at her Auntie Liv’s house tonight,” Cate explained. She took Sierra’s temperature again, “I think it’s going down a little.”
After Sierra and Luke had both gone to sleep, Cate apologised to Declan again. “I’m so sorry I missed rehearsals this afternoon/evening. It’s going to be really tough learning two new dances.”
“We could always get some practice in now?” Declan suggested.
“It’s freezing cold and it’s the middle of the night.”
“What else are you going to do?” Declan asked. “It’s not like any of us adults can sleep.”
“I’ll look after Sierra,” Layla volunteered. “I’m bored of just watching the flames.”
“OK,” Cate stood up, “but if you make me take off this warm blanket, I might just have to kill you.”
“How about…” Declan thought about it for a moment. He tugged the blanket from around Cate’s shoulders and instead wrapped it around her waist. “You pretend it’s your Paso skirt?”
The two dances they had this week were the Paso Doble and then a group Swingathon.
“Wow,” Luke woke up as they practiced their Paso Doble routine. “That looks so cool. Will you teach me how to do that cape thing?”
“Sure,” Declan grinned. As he showed Luke how to work the cape, he suggested, “maybe you and Lola could go to dance classes together? It’s a lot of fun.”
“Lola?” Luke blinked a couple of times.
“Sure, why not?”
“Lola’s not a proper girl. She plays soccer with the boys.”
“Luke!” Layla admonished. “Just because Lola plays soccer with the boys does not mean that she’s not a proper girl. Your mom is one of the country’s best cardio-thoracic surgeons and most of the other top surgeons are men but that doesn’t mean that she’s not a woman.”
“Mom isn’t one of the best, she’s the best and Dad says it’s because she’s a cold-hearted bitch.”
“Luke,” Layla quickly handed Sierra back to Cate and led Luke through to the kitchen so that they could have some privacy. When they came back, Luke looked a little shame-faced. “I’m sorry I said a naughty word,” he apologised to Declan and Cate.
After Luke had gone back to sleep, Cate couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said about Lola. “I grew up with a single mum who was definitely a loud and proud feminist and I never once thought that I couldn’t do something just because I was a girl. I guess I thought that was the norm. I know that Luke’s just a child but what he said just now really scares me. I don’t want any limitations put on my children. Why can’t Lola be a girl and play soccer?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world,” Declan said. “People are always going to have their own opinions and prejudices. Do you know how many people automatically assume that just because I’m a professional dancer and I perform in fake tan and sparkles that I must be gay?”
“Stay away from my dad then,” Layla snorted. “As soon as he found out that my brother, Nate was gay, he kicked him out of the house. I haven’t spoken to him since.”
Cate looked down at Sierra, who was sleeping on her lap. “I just want my children to be happy and healthy, that’s all.”
; CHAPTER 32
“This is insane,” Declan said as they disembarked from the ferry and started the short walk to the Seattle F.C. Stadium. It was the final game of the regular MLS season and if Seattle F.C. got at least one point from tonight’s match against Portland, they would secure second place in the Western Conference.
“I definitely think we’re going to win today,” Lola clapped excitedly. She was dressed in a Seattle F.C. shirt with her dad’s number eight on the back and Liv had painted the Seattle F.C. crest on her cheek. Mateo was bundled up against the cold weather with his Seattle F.C. hat, scarf and gloves.
“I didn’t think football was that popular in America,” Declan marvelled at the crowds of Seattle F.C. fans all swarming towards the stadium. “It’s almost like going to Old Trafford or Anfield.”
“It’s definitely gaining momentum here in America,” Cate explained. “Seattle F.C. regularly gets home crowds of over forty thousand. I think with all the controversy about serious head injuries in American football, parents are beginning to push their children towards playing the “safer” soccer.”
“So who else is coming tonight?” Declan asked, carefully shepherding Mateo through the crowds.
“Who isn’t?” Cate laughed. She counted them off on her fingers, “Liv, Jax, Sofia, Julian, Ruby, Nate, Layla, Eric and Luke. It’s a good job Jax hired that private box for us.”
When they got to the box, Cate’s phone beeped in her pocket. She stepped away from the big, noisy group and looked out across the empty pitch which looked resplendent under the bright floodlights. “Do you remember the deal we had when we first got married?” Kian had texted.
Cate blushed. When she’d been pregnant with Lola, Kian hadn’t wanted her to go to any of his matches and so they’d had a deal that if he scored a goal, she would wait for him in their bed naked. Funnily enough, he’d scored more goals that season than any other in his professional career.