WILD ZONE, A Rough Riders Hockey Novel

by Skye Jordan

  He felt that little tick festering in the pit of his stomach, a mix of jealousy and self-doubt. And he’d done a decent job of dousing the smoldering ember with logic and rationale. Now, he was just holding out for the end of the party, when he hoped he could convince her to come home with him—if not for the entire night so he could wake up with her, at least for several hours where they could be alone. Where Tate could lavish some attention on her and what would soon be—if they weren’t already—sore muscles. Where Tate could get his fix.

  Because he needed an Olivia fix.

  Badly.

  The fact that this was a big fucking problem with her exit coming so soon was a constant thread of tension he just keep shoving to the back of his mind to deal with later. He didn’t have a hell of a lot of options.

  His cell chimed. He pulled it from his back pocket and found a text from his agent Dave Burnett. Tiffany and I will be home from Greece in a few days so we’ll be at your Afterschool Advantage dinner next weekend. I bought the tickets online today. Tiff said you have a great party planner. Can I get her info? I need to set up a series of dinners for a handful of college kids I’m recruiting for NBA and NFL in a couple of weeks. Just dinners, accommodations, sight-seeing trips. Thanks.

  He texted his agent back. Fantastic. Look forward to seeing you both. My planner is great. I’ll send her info in a few.

  Pocketing his phone, Tate searched the deck for Teresa. She was sitting in a small group with her back to him, chatting with Tina Croft and Betty Bradfield, a longtime neighbor of the Crofts who occasionally babysat Lily in a pinch. He wandered that direction, waiting for the right moment to interrupt.

  At a table nearby, he collected another empty dish and said hello to a couple of the Croft’s friends.

  “A lovely couple,” Teresa was telling Betty. “It’s the first grandchild on both sides of the family and relatives are traveling from Italy for the christening.”

  “How lovely,” Betty crooned.

  “They’ve having the ceremony at St. Patrick’s—”

  Tina gasped. “Oh, I love that cathedral.”

  “I know,” Teresa said. “So gorgeous. It’s going to be a stunning event. I’ve reserved District Whiskey’s rooftop terrace for the reception.”

  “That’s one swanky christening,” Tina said, an edge of humor in her voice. “Beckett’s lucky he made it to the neighborhood church. I’d have been just as satisfied to dunk him in the nearest pond as soon as the ice thawed and make the sign of the cross on his forehead.”

  Tate was chuckling to himself, already planning how he’d repeat that to Beckett when Quinn approached the women. Tate saw his opening and started around the chairs toward the front of the seating arrangement.

  “Oh, Quinn, honey,” Teresa said. “Can I have a minute?”

  Tate’s feet stopped.

  Teresa excused herself and stepped just a couple of feet away with Quinn. Tate waited patiently. If he didn’t get the information now, he’d forget and never send it. And the way Teresa’s calendar was filling up, it would be too late for Dave to get in with her.

  “What’s up?” Quinn asked.

  “I just got an email from Senator Dioli’s wife, Angela with a signed contract. She’s bringing the deposit check by the warehouse tomorrow.”

  “Wow.” Quinn didn’t sound anywhere near as excited as Teresa. “What’s the date of the christening?”

  “August—“ Someone walked between them and Tate didn’t hear the date.

  “Isn’t that the same weeked as the Devoy wedding?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes, but the wedding’s on Sunday, the christening’s on Saturday.”

  “But we’ll be preparing for the wedding all week.” Stress lifted Quinn’s voice an octave. “We’ll need Saturday to set up—”

  “Honey, don’t worry about those details now. With the payment from that christening, we only need one more decent sized job to pay off the balloon payment.”

  Balloon payment. The women continued to talk, but Tate’s mind rolled back in time. He only had negative associations with balloon payments, because he’d had one on the house he and Lisa had been renovating when they divorced. From what he could remember, balloons were generally used for quick turn around sales or less than favorable borrower arrangements. And he knew they carried significant risk.

  Now Tate’s mind veered to Olivia’s love for her childhood home. To how deeply connected the house was to Olivia’s memories of her father. A father she’d lost too soon. The thought of how she’d feel if her mother and sister lost that house…

  “Excuse us.” The voice belonged to an older couple passing between Tate and Quinn and Teresa. Everyone’s gaze shifted. Teresa and Quinn locked eyes with Tate, and he instantly saw the oh-shit pass through their expressions.

  By the time the elderly couple hobbled their way past, Teresa had collected herself. “Well, hi, Tate. Enjoying the party?”

  “Very much.” He glanced at Quinn then back to Teresa. “I didn’t mean to interrupt—”

  “It’s fine,” Teresa said, but her expression said something different.

  Tate pushed forward. “My agent is looking for a planner to help him arrange some events for a handful of college kids and their parents he has coming into town in a couple of weeks. He says they’re being recruited to the NBA and NFL.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Tate nodded. “He’ll need someone to be the liaison for the families, find them accommodations, create a schedule for them that includes time with my agent and various tours as well as some down time with tourist type activities that fit their preferences.”

  “Sounds very doable.” She glanced at Quinn and nodded. Quinn shrugged, nodded. Teresa smiled at Tate. “Yes, yes. If you’d like to give me his number, I’ll call him in the morning.”

  “I’ll get you his email and his number. He’s vacationing in Greece, but he’ll be back in a few days. And I’ll pass your information onto him as well.”

  “Thank you so much for thinking of us.”

  Tate nodded and started to turn, but Teresa reached out and squeezed his arm gently.

  When he met her gaze again, Teresa murmured, “Please don’t mention…” she paused, selecting her words carefully “what you overheard with Olivia. There’s no point in upsetting her so close to her return to France when everything is going to turn out just fine.”

  Tate darted a look at Quinn, but she was gone. He told Teresa, “Of course.”

  He couldn’t quiet describe the bizarre sensations churning in his gut as he picked up another empty tray from a nearby table and started toward the kitchen, only that they were uncomfortable and conflicted.

  Quinn intercepted him, also carrying empty trays in the same direction. She stopped and smiled at him. “Great minds?”

  She’d been unusually warm to him today, a surprise given the tone of their discussion last night and how cold it had ended. “I’ll go with that. Here,” Tate said gesturing to his arms, “pile those on top. I’m going in.”

  “Thanks.” Once the trays were settled on top of his, she offered a random, “Olivia and I talked last night.”

  Tate wasn’t sure if he should be hopeful or wary. “She’s been so busy, I haven’t gotten a chance to say more than two words to her today. Was it a good talk?”

  Quinn smiled. “It was. One we should have had a long time ago. I think things are going to get a lot better. At least…between us.”

  Relief slid along his shoulders, loosening muscles Tate hadn’t realized were tight. He wanted to know what she meant by “between us” but this wasn’t the place to ask, so he said, “That’s great.”

  “Thanks. If it weren’t for you…” She shrugged. “You’ve been good for Liv.”

  That took Beckett off guard. Olivia had done so much for him, she’d added so much to his life, he hadn’t stopped to consider that he might have been good for her in any way. “You think?”

  Quinn nodded. “If your banquet had been
anyone else’s banquet, I’m sure she would have told us she couldn’t do it. Staying forced her to look at the situation longer, to stay and unearth some problems. But I think her relationship with you has helped her actually do something about it. She’s more open. More willing to get involved. So Yeah, I think.”

  Tate smiled. “Thanks. Hey, about that thing you and your mom were talking about—”

  “Honestly, there’s nothing Olivia could do to help that she isn’t already doing. So telling her about it would only cause useless stress and probably create more problems and set us back rather than move us forward.”

  He could see how that might happen. But he still didn’t like them keeping it from her. Though she’d also moved away and dropped out of their lives, so he wasn’t sure she had a right to know. Either way, it was a family matter. So he nodded.

  Quinn started back to the party and Tate headed inside. Even before he got halfway to the kitchen, he heard his father’s deep laughter, then Olivia’s lighter, bubblier one. The combination turned his mind and his mood in a completely different direction, and he smiled. His father was a people person, generous to a fault, intelligent and gregarious, yet Lisa had never warmed to him. That should have been Tate’s first clue she was bent upstairs.

  “Another horrible mistake,” his father said as Tate came around the corner, “oh, I think you’ve heard this one son,” —Olivia turned, took the trays from his arms and put them into the sink while listening to his dad— “was when my reservation at a conference hotel got messed up and I had to take what I could find. It was at a tiny, tiny hotel on a side street.”

  She nodded to Joe to indicate she was listening, then stroked her hand almost absently over Tate’s arm with a soft, “Thanks for bringing those in” before refocusing on his dad, who had continued to tell his story.

  “…so I get up to the room and the air conditioner is broken. All right, no surprise. I go downstairs and find a very pretty housekeeper, early fifties, blonde, beautiful bone structure, anyway, she doesn’t understand English.” Joe’s grin grew, and he glanced expectedly at Tate. “Did I tell you this?”

  “I don’t think so.” Tate rested against the counter and Olivia did the same, so close her hip pressed against his. And then stayed there for the rest of the story. Such a simple thing, yet such a sign of deep comfort and intimacy. And it felt as good to his heart as sex with her felt to his body. “While I’m trying to tell her about the air conditioner, instead of saying J'ai chaud,” he looked at Tate to translate, meaning I’m warm, I said—”

  “Oh no,” Olivia’s eyes went wide. “You didn’t.”

  Joe started laughing. “I did.”

  Now Olivia was laughing so hard she bent and crossed an arm over her stomach.

  Joe looked at Tate and finished the story, “I said Je suis chaud,” —he choked on another laugh— “Which means I’m horney.“

  A fresh wave of hysterical laughter rolled out of Olivia. She grabbed Tate’s arm to stay upright. Tate was chuckling, too, but getting a lot more pleasure seeing Olivia so happy than out of the joke itself.

  “For the longest time,” Joe went on, “I couldn’t figure out why people would look at me funny when I pronounced branler as branlee when I asked directions.”

  Tate had no idea what that meant, but he didn’t care. He was loving the sight of happy tears streaming from Olivia’s eyes.

  “Stop.” She straightened and grabbed a napkin and patted her eyes dry. “Oh my God.” She took deep breaths as she tried to get ahold of her laughter. “I’m going to burn dinner if you don’t stop.”

  She checked the oven, adjusted the temperature and moved to the refrigerator, pulling out bags from every shelf.

  While she laid things out on the counter, Joe asked Tate, “How’s the camp going?”

  “Great. I’ve got another bunch of awesome kids.” Tate gave his dad some of the hockey specifics, lining out the skills he was teaching the kids, and where the kids played during the year. “Will you be able to make it for the dinner?”

  “I’m planning on it.” He grinned at Olivia. “Olivia must not be a hockey fan. She’s way too quiet.”

  She pulled a white casserole dish from the cupboards and set it on the counter, then moved the cutting board so she could face them while she worked. “I told Tate I watched a lot of hockey with my dad as a kid. He passed away and I moved overseas, and I sort of lost track of the sport.” She grinned at Tate. “But you can bet I’ll be watching this season.”

  “I’m sorry about your dad, hon,” Joe said.

  “Thanks. Yeah, great man. I wish I’d had more years with him.” She smiled at Joe while she laid out big fat tomatoes and log of buffalo mozzarella on the cutting board. “You two would have liked each other.”

  Olivia sliced tomatoes, then moved onto the cheese. Her speed, skill, and grace were mesmerizing and both Tate and Joe watched her layer a broad basil leave on a thick slice of tomato all on top of a generous slab of mozzarella before standing it on it’s side in the dish. She repeated that pattern, filling the casserole dish with two bright rows of red, white and green salad within minutes.

  “Are you going to be here tomorrow?” Olivia asked Joe. “I was thinking of making his boys lunch and bringing it to the rink. If you come with me you could tell me what the heck’s going on.”

  Tate’s heart was doing acrobatics. She’d just combined two of the most important things in his life together—hockey and family—in a casual morning outing that held no benefit for her. If he wasn’t so jaded, he’d think he was falling in love with her, right there on the spot.

  “I have an afternoon meeting,” Joe said. “Then I fly out, but I’m free until eleven, and that’s the best invitation I’ve had since I got here.”

  “Hey, now,” Tate joked. “You’re here aren’t you?”

  While Olivia washed the cutting board, Joe said, “Now, if you’re just starting culinary school, where’d you learned to do all this?”

  She grinned over her shoulder. “On the job training.” She dried her hands and whipped together a vinaigrette dressing, then drizzled it over the top of the dish and set it aside. “I’ve been cooking for years. I learn as I go.”

  “Then why school? You’re obviously skilled and experienced. Why not just start a catering company?”

  “Probably because I’ve worked for quite a few and I know how difficult they are to run. In fact the whole event planning business is a real struggle. I was trying to explain that to my mom last night. Her business has been sort of limping along for ten years. It can often be a feast or famine environment. And competitive. Mom and Quinn are really good at what they do, but most of the time it’s not what you can do, it’s—”

  “Who you know,” Joe finished for her.

  She nodded. “And thanks to Beckett and Eden and Tate and all these other great people here, Essex has gotten a second wind. But what I learned from living the work and watching the way company after company after company like Mom’s and Quinn’s ran is that there are a variety of reasons businesses fail, and some of them are the opposite of what you’d expect. Like growing too fast. I’d rather watch others make the mistakes instead of jumping in and making them myself.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think that’s called lazy.”

  “I think,” Tate said, “that’s called smart.”

  She offered a soft smile and moved to the fridge again, returning with more bags. She drew a pan from the lower cupboard. “I also don’t want to get stuck cooking at a greasy spoon all my life because I didn’t go after a degree. As a cook you make a little more than minimum wage. As a chef with a reputable culinary school’s name behind you, life opens up. You can work as an executive chef, personal chef, run your own business, develop a food-based company.”

  “Do you know what you want to do?” Joe asked.

  She sighed, leveled a light, careless smile on Joe and said, “Nope.”

  Joe and Tate laughed together.

  “All right, son,
we should stop distracting her.”

  “Thanks for keeping me company,” she told Joe. “I’ll get your number from Tate and check in tomorrow.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Tate, do you have a minute? I had a couple of ideas on the menu for your event.”

  “Sure.”

  Joe’s gaze cut between Olivia and Tate. A nanosecond of hesitation followed before a big smile broke over his face. “I bet there’s nothing like seeing Paris from a local’s eyes.”

  “That’s truly the only way to see Paris,” Olivia agreed. “Next time you’re there, please call. I’d love to get together.”

  He nodded and glanced at Tate. “Maybe we ought to take a trip later this summer? Before your season starts, son. It’s only a seven hour flight.” Joe glanced back at Olivia. “He’s never been.”

  Olivia smiled up at Tate. “I hope we can change that.”

  His heart surged. Hope tumbled through him. But logic wasn’t following. He was wondering why his father would encourage such a thing as Joe wandered onto the deck and Olivia checked the oven one more time.

  When she turned toward him, Tate was going to ask if there was anything he could do to help her, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the back of the kitchen. “Your dad is so sweet.”

  “What are we doing?”

  She pushed open the door to the pantry, stepped in and pulled Tate in behind her. “I haven’t had a minute alone with you. And I’m dying here.”

  Closing the door, she pushed him against it, then leaned into him. And sighed. “Better.”

  Tate wrapped his arms around her, smiling. “Yeah?”

  “A little.” Her hands circled his neck.

  “Only a little?”

  “This will make it a lot better.” And she pulled his head down to kiss him.

  Tate groaned before his mouth even touched hers, but when he felt her and tasted her, another sound of deep pleasure rolled from his chest. The way she opened to him, the way she tilted her head and licked into his mouth, like she was as starved as he was, lit him up instantly. Olivia pushed up on her toes, rubbing her body along his and giving Tate’s hands complete roaming access. And he took full advantage of it.