“The only help you can give us right now is telling us exactly what we should move down for him,” I said.
“Which would be easier to do if I could point it all out.”
“But you need to rest, so you can just tell me and I’ll make sure we take care of it all.”
“You should go ahead and figure this out right now,” she said, scowling up at me. “I don’t do the whole damsel-in-distress thing. I don’t sit by and let other people take care of everything. That’s my job—doing what needs to be done for my father.”
“And you’re being put on a leave of absence so you can recover and go back to doing that job the way you usually do it.” I slid my hand over her hair, tangling my fingers in her silken tresses. “I’m going to be your replacement for a while. Me and Dana and Laura…” And about a dozen other people, too. Hell, it might take that many of us just to keep her from doing too much. I had no doubt that if I hadn’t come over to keep her where she was, she would still be struggling against the pain of her cracked ribs to get up and order the three of us around.
The guys were coming down the stairs carrying the bed frame now, with Babs in the lead, walking backward.
“Why aren’t you the one fucking going backward?” he grumbled at Burnzie. “You play D. You’re used to doing things backward.”
“Not everything, bro. Just don’t fall and kill yourself.”
It didn’t take them long to get it down the stairs and set up in what would be Scotty’s makeshift bedroom, even with Buster running along beside them the whole time.
When they had disappeared up the stairs again, Sara turned to look at me. “Cam?”
I couldn’t even begin to put into words how glad I was that she was calling me by my name again and not Jonny. It put this big knot of warmth in my belly that spread out to consume every inch of me. “Yeah?”
“I don’t know how to feel about all of this. About you,” she clarified. “I feel like you’re sneaking past all of my defenses, and I don’t like it.”
“I know.”
“It scares me.”
“I know.”
Sara never let men into her heart. Never. She had to be terrified right now.
She looked at me, long and hard, her eyes filled with an emotion that fell somewhere between resignation and dread. But then she let her head fall back against my shoulder and she snuggled into me, and she let me be the one to fend all her fears off—at least for right now.
It wasn’t much, but it was progress.
NOTHING IN THE world could have prepared me for the pain of a sudden bout of morning sickness while recovering from a couple of cracked ribs. I’d been essentially living on the couch since I’d come home because it hurt my ribs too much to lie on the bed. All night long, Cam had stayed there with me, holding me until my exhaustion had finally won. I had woken up still feeling safe and warm in his arms, but then I’d been overwhelmed by nausea.
Cam barely got me up off the couch in time for me to race into the bathroom before the vomit came up. He stayed behind me, holding my hair back from my face and dampening a washcloth to wipe over my brow as I puked and sobbed in equal measure. When I was finished, he helped me ease back onto the couch and made me a cup of tea, and then he got me a dose of my pain medicine.
It had worn off in the night, and the pain was excruciatingly bad now. I didn’t know how I was going to get through today. For that matter, I didn’t know how I would get through the next five minutes. But I drank my tea and ate the toast that he’d fixed me and sat there with him smoothing his big hand over my hair and murmuring quietly in my ear until the nausea finally passed.
Eventually, he had to get up and prepare for the day. The guys had a game tonight, and so he had to go to morning skate. He’d just barely gotten out of the shower by the time the doorbell rang, and he opened it to let Noelle in—along with her puppy. She’d brought the little boxer puppy Babs had adopted for her a while back that she’d named Puck.
“I’m going to stay with you while the guys have practice,” she said cheerfully to me. “I thought Puck could play with Buster, if that’s all right.”
As soon as she set the puppy down on the floor, he took off chasing after Buster, who barked and started racing around like mad. Puck was already almost twice Buster’s size, and that was going to continue to multiply for a while. But for now, they could be buddies and chase each other.
I doubted I’d ever seen Noelle when she wasn’t all light and airy and full of delight. She was probably the exact opposite of me, which made her the perfect person to spend the morning with when I was in such a miserable mood myself.
Cam kissed me on the forehead before he left. “I’ll be back before they bring your dad home.”
All I could do was nod. At least for now, it seemed as though they had taken every decision, every bit of responsibility, away from me. I might not be happy about it, but there was at least a small part of me that knew it was for the best. There was a slightly larger part of me that felt immense relief. Especially because of the concussion. They always tell the guys not to make any big decisions while they’re recovering from a concussion. Now I knew why. It felt like my head was in a constant fog, and I was pretty sure that was due to more than just the pain medicine.
I looked over at Noelle. In the time that I’d known her, she and I had never spent any one-on-one time together. The other girls had always been around. So that should make for an interesting day today, if nothing else.
She moved around a lot while she was with me, picking up and cleaning the few messy bits that had been left behind by everyone last night, arranging some wildflowers that she’d brought with her in a vase—Every house should have fresh flowers—and flopping down on the floor to wrestle with the two dogs and let them lick her face.
When another bout of nausea hit me, she helped me up and rubbed my back while I prayed in front of the porcelain throne, and she helped me to settle on the couch again when the worst of it had passed.
“Do you have any ginger in the refrigerator?” she asked. “Or maybe some ginger ale?”
“I think there’s a little left in the crisper drawer.” Honestly, I couldn’t think about that right now. I just wanted the nausea to go away. I didn’t know if it was worse because of the concussion or if I was just hitting a stage of morning sickness that was going to intensify.
She got up and went into the kitchen to dig around, and a few minutes later she came back with a piping hot cup of tea. “With ginger in it,” she said, passing it over to me. “The ginger will help the nausea. I’ll be sure to tell Jonny, too, so he knows.”
I took a sip and eyed her over the cup. She might be a hippy-dippy chick, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sure enough, the tea helped to soothe my stomach and stop the flip-flops it had been doing.
We spent the rest of the morning talking, and before long she’d helped me to forget about all my aches and pains, at least for a while. I even laughed a little when she told me how just that morning, she and Kally hadn’t gotten Puck outside quick enough, and Kally had slipped and fallen on the river of pee the puppy was leaving as he tried to rush him out the door. I had to force myself to stop laughing, though, because that hurt almost as much as puking had.
The hours passed a hell of a lot faster than I’d been expecting them to, and in no time, Cam was back.
Apparently, Babs was the one who’d been nominated to go to the hospital after the morning skate to pick Daddy up and bring him to the house. Several of the guys came over with a bunch of food instead of going to Amani’s like they usually did for lunch, and they helped get Daddy settled in to his new downstairs digs.
When it was time for Daddy to get up and go for a walk, Babs walked with him through the house. He let Daddy grab on to his arm, and he didn’t complain once about the decrepit snail’s pace they had to move at for the three laps they made around the living room, dining room, and kitchen. I knew because I hadn’t been able to look away the who
le time they were doing it. Even though I wasn’t the one taking care of my father right now, I felt like I still needed to supervise. It wasn’t an easy thing to give up. I’d been doing it for so long, I didn’t know how to let it go.
After the guys left for their pre-game naps, and Noelle and Puck went along with them, Cam helped Daddy get to his new room to lie down, and then he returned to me. He tried to situate me the same way we’d slept last night, with me leaning my back against his chest, and his arms wrapping around me.
“You should go lie down in a real bed,” I told him. “You need some decent rest.” He had to be miserable after sleeping on the couch with me all night. Lord knows I felt awful.
“I won’t be playing tonight,” he replied. “I don’t need a nap. I just need to be with you.”
The way he kept saying things like that was driving me crazy, mainly because I was starting to feel the same way. Damn him. I didn’t have it in me to argue with him, so he stayed and held me until he had to leave for the game.
Before going, he helped Daddy walk a few more laps around the house and get settled in his favorite recliner to watch the game, and then Laura showed up with all three of her teenagers to keep us company. They’d brought dinner—a salad and a casserole that she threw in the oven as soon as they arrived. For once, she hadn’t brought wine. I wasn’t sure what to think of that. A night with Laura had always meant a night with wine for as long as I’d known her. Even if I couldn’t have any, there was no reason she couldn’t.
It looked like it was going to be a great game for the Storm. They scored early, and they seemed to be holding on to the lead well. It was the first time since Daddy’s heart attack that they’d really played the way he’d had them playing all season long.
That meant I didn’t have to apologize constantly for him cursing in front of Laura’s kids, but even if he had cussed a lot more than he did, at least they were teenagers and not little kids like Rachel’s two. They probably let quite a few of those words fly themselves when they thought their mother wasn’t listening. Or maybe even when she was listening.
During the first intermission, Laura helped Daddy up and had him walk, despite him grumbling about how he wanted to listen to what those yahoos on the network had to say about his boys. Laura’s younger kids, Luke and Dani, had brought their homework with them, and they worked on it halfheartedly during the break.
“They wouldn’t focus any better at home,” Laura told me when I suggested that maybe it would be better if they all went back to their house, that Daddy and I could be all right on our own for a little while. She laughed all my arguments off. “It’s been like this since they were little. If Dave’s in the playoffs, that’s all that matters to these guys. School takes a backseat.”
Babs scored on the power play in the second period. He got a nice deflection of a slap shot from Burnzie at the point.
Luke and Dani made faces at Katie and teased her about her boyfriend. She blushed, but this time she didn’t try to deny that he was her boyfriend. That was a first, too, much like Laura leaving the wine at home. I got the impression that Babs and Katie didn’t know what they were. With Katie still being sick and in high school, maybe they were just waiting, or maybe they were trying to keep things low key around Webs…but it seemed as though it was getting increasingly more difficult for them.
Babs also got the empty-net goal at the end of the third, when the Canucks made a last-ditch effort to tie it up. The Storm held them off, though, keeping the lead throughout the whole game and winning it four to one.
The four of them stayed with us until Cam got back after the game, even though it was late for Luke and Dani to be out on a school night. Cam made sure they all got safely to Laura’s car before helping Daddy get to bed.
“Can you help me up?” I asked him when he came back out.
He was at my side almost immediately. “Bathroom?” he asked, as though that could be the only reason on earth I would want to get up after being stuck on that stupid couch almost nonstop for more than twenty-four hours.
“I want to try to sleep in my bed tonight. And in case you haven’t smelled me yet, which I don’t know how you’ve managed to avoid it if not, I haven’t had a shower since yesterday morning, and I’m getting ripe.”
He leaned down, putting his hands on my waist and his head right by mine, so close that the spicy scent of his cologne hit me and made me tingle all the way to my toes, and he sniffed. “You smell amazing. You always smell good to me.”
That should have pissed me off, but all it did was make me tingle everywhere, damn him.
He lifted me up off the sofa and set me on my feet before I could brace myself against the pain of getting up. I gripped his biceps, holding on until the initial wave of discomfort passed.
Cam didn’t release my waist. His fingers dug in slightly, holding me firm and steady. “Do you want to try the stairs on your own, or should I carry you?”
At this point, I didn’t know what would hurt worse. “Let me walk,” I finally said, annoyed with myself over how long it had taken me to make a simple decision.
He let go with one hand, sliding the other around until it was resting on the small of my back. Every step of the way, he was right beside me. His touch was barely there, but it left my nerves jangling from the electricity between us.
By the time we were halfway upstairs, I wished I’d let him carry me. It might have hurt worse while he was doing it, but it would have probably been over by now. Each breath I took was agony. Each step was torture. I let my posture sag, but then I regretted it because it only intensified the aches.
When I finally reached my bathroom, I didn’t know if I had enough strength left in me to shower. I closed the door and sat down on the toilet to see if I could rest long enough that I could manage it.
I guess I sat there too long because Cam’s voice came through the door. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice shaking.
“You need help?”
“No?” Why the hell did it come out like a question?
He cracked the door open. “I’ve seen you naked, you know. I can help you shower. This wouldn’t be any different.”
He was wrong because everything had been different since that night, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it all. That said, I didn’t think I could manage to shower on my own now that I was up here, and I really did need a shower.
I still didn’t answer him, but he pushed the door open all the way and came in, his big frame seeming even more massive in such a small space.
“Come on,” he said, helping me to stand. Within moments, he’d loosened my shirt and slipped it over my head, and he’d undone the string keeping my sweatpants up and lowered them, having me hold on to his shoulders while I stepped free from them. My panties and T-shirt bra followed in quick succession. He turned on the water, allowing it to heat up while he stripped himself down, as well.
Somehow, even though we were both naked and we hadn’t seen each other like this since the night we’d slept together, this didn’t feel sexual. He was hot as hell, don’t get me wrong, but when he reached for me to help me climb into the shower, it was different. He touched me with such tenderness, such care, that I nearly melted into him, overwhelmed by the sweetness of everything he was doing.
I wasn’t used to men treating me with such concern. I wasn’t used to the idea of Cam being so gentle. He was a warrior on the ice, an enforcer. Everything he did there was with brute power, but with me, he was a puppy dog.
The heat of the water was calming, soothing. I lathered up my sponge and soaped my body—or at least as much of my body as I could reach without straining my ribs. Cam took the sponge from me and finished the job, cautious around my stitches.
He didn’t touch me himself; only the sponge made contact with my skin. I couldn’t help but feel aroused by the most mundane of touches, though—the tickle when he soaped the backs of my knees; the gentle, accidental scrape of his fingernail on the
small of my back; the ripple of his shoulder muscle beneath my palm as I held on to him and he washed my feet.
I wasn’t doing myself any favors, being turned on by this. If I could barely walk up a flight of stairs without wanting to cry out in pain, there was no chance in hell I could survive a romp in the sheets with him.
I wasn’t the only one feeling it, though. His erection brushed against my hip when I turned, which only made me hotter.
I let my head drop back under the spray. When I came up out of it, Cam poured some shampoo into his palm. He gently turned me around and massaged it into my hair and scalp until I wanted nothing more than to relax back into him and for this to never end. He nudged me to move under the showerhead and rinse, his fingers still working through the strands to ease the soap out of my hair before repeating the entire process with my conditioner.
“No wonder you always smell so good,” he said. “This stuff makes me want to just eat you up.” Once it was all rinsed away, he shut off the water and carefully wrapped a towel around me. I tucked the ends in over my breasts so the towel would stay put.
“Sit down for a minute,” he said, which I thought was an excellent idea. I practically collapsed onto the toilet seat, and he took another towel to secure around his waist. It didn’t do much to hide his hard-on. I could barely take my eyes off him—the definition in his chest and abs, and the sheer size of his arms. “Where’s your hair dryer?” he asked.
My hair dryer was the last thing in the world I wanted to be thinking about when he was standing there all dripping wet and wearing nothing but a towel. A towel that actually hid nothing from the imagination. And I had a very good imagination.
“The cabinet over your head,” I finally responded despite my thick tongue. “But there’s no way I can keep my arms up that long.”
He smirked—a sexy grin that made heat-shivers race all over my body—and reached up to remove it. “All you need to do is sit there. My arms can manage just fine.”
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