My pulse skipped a few beats.
Nate set our suitcases on the ground and closed the distance between us, cupping my face between both hands. He kissed me, soft and sweet, in the way he tended to do to calm my nerves. “Bring your car. You can leave whenever you’re ready to go. I just want to hold you for a while longer.”
That was all the encouragement I needed. I headed for my car and followed him to his house. Once there, he carried our bags inside. I debated asking him to go ahead and put mine in my trunk, but stopped myself. I could take it out later, so there was no reason to pick an argument with him now over something so minor.
Then we spent far too long wrapped up in each other, making out on his couch while we watched The Hunger Games together. I fell asleep with my head resting on his lap, his fingers combing through my hair.
When I woke hours later, I didn’t have it in me to wake him up only so I could go home. He was spread out on the couch, his head lolling back against the cushions. He might be more comfortable in his bed, but I got the sense he needed the sleep more than comfort. Instead, I rearranged the throw blanket he’d draped over me so it covered him, too, and adjusted my position in the hope that we’d both be more comfortable. The lamp was still on, though, so I stretched to turn it off.
Despite my efforts to keep from waking him, his head popped up before I reached the lamp, and he gave me a sleepy smile. “Going home?” he asked, blinking a few times.
“Trying to make you more comfortable.”
“No such thing as more comfortable as long as I’m touching you.”
I rolled my eyes.
“We could move to the bed,” he suggested. “To sleep,” he added before I could start to panic. “You could go home, too, but I’d like you to stay.”
I wanted to stay, too, so I nodded. “Let’s do that.”
A few minutes later, he’d stripped down to his boxer-briefs and was offering me a T-shirt and some shorts to change into. I refused, still not ready for him to see that much of me. It wasn’t exactly comfortable to sleep in all my clothes, but it was a choice between doing that or going home, the way I saw it.
When we crawled into his bed, he curled up behind me, one arm around my waist keeping us tucked in together like spoons in a drawer. All thought of my discomfort over sleeping in my clothes slipped away. Being so close to Nate all night would far outweigh anything like that.
Maybe it was a good thing he’d brought my suitcase in rather than transferring it to my car, after all. That toothbrush would come in handy in the morning.
THE NEXT DAY, Jim Sutter and his assistant, Rachel Campbell, took the day off entirely—something that was as out of character for either of them as I’d seen in the time I’d been working around the Storm organization. They took the time off for me. Or for my show, to be more precise.
Ben, Dave, and I were set up to film at Mr. Sutter’s house by midmorning, before the Campbell and Zellinger families were due to arrive. It was quiet while it was just me and my crew along with the general manager and his wife, Elaine. I took the opportunity to focus in on the two of them, seating them on the couch while I asked a few questions.
“So you two were married once before, but then you were divorced for a number of years. Is that right?” I asked.
“A couple of decades, actually,” Elaine said.
“I made some big mistakes,” Jim added. He winked at his wife and took her hand. “Really big.”
“But even after all those years, we still loved each other.”
“How did you get back together again after so much time had passed?” I asked.
“It came down to Laura Weber and a bunch of my players’ wives,” Jim said before delving into the story.
I’d picked up on bits and pieces of it last season, when I’d been covering the team for the local sports network, but the full story was even more fascinating than what I’d already gleaned. The Storm WAGs had placed an ad for him on a dating site. Elaine had run across it and responded. Then she flew halfway across the country to surprise him at Christmas, and the rest was history.
She’d gone back to Minnesota for a few months, preparing to pack up her life and make the move to Portland. A couple of weekends a month, she’d flown back to be with him here, so they could go through the process of getting to know each other again. Then last summer, they’d remarried during the few days between the NHL draft and the opening of the free agency period.
“Elaine was forgiving enough to take a rain check on the honeymoon,” he said, winking at me.
“But only because he promised to take me to Europe this coming summer. Before the draft, so I can have all his attention.”
“And your son?” I asked after hearing the full story, unable to stop from putting myself in his shoes. I couldn’t imagine I’d be happy at all if my parents decided to get back together again now. But then again, they hadn’t loved each other for most of the time they’d been married. They’d only stayed together because of me, which was in some ways worse than it would have been if they’d split up while I was still in school. But since these two still clearly loved each other… “How’s he dealing with the reunion? Is he thrilled to have his parents back together?”
“He’s…coming around,” Elaine said cautiously.
Ouch. I must have hit on a sore point.
“Dillon blamed me for a lot of things,” Jim said. “And he was right to do so. I’ve had a lot of wrongs to right, and he has every reason to be angry with me.”
“But he’s starting to let Jim back into his life, a bit at a time. We even went—as a couple—to Dillon’s wedding a few months ago.”
Before I could delve any deeper into Mr. Sutter’s strained relationship with his son, the doorbell rang. All hell broke loose when Elaine opened the door and let the Campbells and Zellingers in. In no time, the living room was filled with four more adults and seven kids—five of them under the age of five—plus toys, food, drinks, laughter, tears, and the insanity of family.
I took a step back and let my cameramen do their jobs, situating myself on the brick hearth by the fireplace so as to be well out of the way. This was about filming the day as it happened, messes and all.
And there were plenty of messes.
Three-year-old redheaded twins Sidney and Peyton Campbell were constantly into everything. Tuck and Maddie, their older siblings, did their best to keep them out of harm’s way, but Rachel was constantly following behind her toddlers with wet wipes and a garbage bag, trying to keep the mess contained, even if she couldn’t completely prevent it.
Eventually, Tuck gave up since his mother was tackling the job of toddler wrangling. He took out an iPad and started playing a game, oblivious to everything around him.
Maddie also stopped chasing after the kids before long. She buried her nose in her cell phone, but it didn’t look like she was playing a game. Probably texting a boy, based on the way she was blushing.
Brenden took a seat in the dining room so that the little ones would stop trying to climb him like a jungle gym. That was where Elaine took it upon herself to wait on him. She brought him food and drinks, homemade cookies, and anything else she could, until he complained that while his shoulder had been dislocated, his legs still worked perfectly well, thank you very much. That slowed her down in terms of spoiling him rotten, but it didn’t stop her completely.
Eric Zellinger—the former Storm captain, current Tulsa Thunderbirds captain, and Brenden’s best friend—sprawled out on the floor in the living room and let his little ones crawl all over him while he caught up with Mr. Sutter. Eric’s wife, Dana, alternated between changing diapers as needed, refilling snacks and drinks for the kids, taking the toddlers to the bathroom every three minutes, and trying to convince Mrs. Sutter to stop babying Brenden—who happened to be Dana’s brother.
Having been an only child, I found this whole situation to be as wonderful as it was unfamiliar. Not to mention slightly uncomfortable. I’d been somewhat overwhelmed w
ith the two Johnson kids that day a few weeks ago. This was more than I’d been prepared for.
I definitely wasn’t ready for Dana to deposit her infant son with Elaine before coming to join me on the brick hearth. “You’ve been putting together a great show,” she said, but I could barely hear her above the cacophony surrounding us.
Still, I swelled up a bit with pride. It was nice to have my hard work acknowledged. “You’ve been watching?”
“Wouldn’t miss it! Eric and I tune in every week as soon as it goes live, as long as we’ve already got the kids down for the night. We spent so many years here that it’s kind of like being back with the family.”
“Well, that’s nice to hear.” Especially since I’d been focusing so much on the family aspect of the team. She was taking from it exactly what I had hoped would come across. It was hard to believe in my judgment, though, when my boss was so completely against the choices I’d made.
“I was kind of worried,” she admitted conspiratorially. “Before we started watching, that is. I mean, we all follow the news, so everyone knows about all the things going on around the team lately. We’ve been dealing with enough of that on our own, lately, after what happened with Eric and Drew Nash in the last game of the season.”
Nash had taken a skate blade to the neck and, rather than let him bleed to death on the ice, Zellinger had immediately used his own hands to put pressure on the wound. In the aftermath, it came out that Nash was HIV positive, so the Thunderbirds had been dealing with their own hullabaloo over that.
“He’s okay, though, right?” I asked.
“Tests are normal so far, but sometimes it doesn’t show up for a long time. So we have to keep testing and taking precautions. Anyway, I was sure you were going to focus the show more on the external stuff, which would have been a shame. We get plenty of that just from turning on the news. That’s not what the show should be about, you know?”
“You could have taken those words right out of my mouth when I met with my boss the other day,” I said. Then I wished I hadn’t said so much. It was one thing to talk to Nate about how I would be losing my job. It was something else entirely to bring someone from the outside in.
“Well, like I said…I’m glad. You’re showing exactly what I want to see.” Then she grinned. “My brother tells me you and Ghost are an item lately. I had a feeling that could happen from watching the way you two flirted all the time whenever you interviewed him. It’s good to know my radar still works, even though I’ve got mommy-brain. You should have brought him along today.”
I felt heat rush to my cheeks. Good thing my skin would hide the blush. “I’m working today,” I pointed out.
“Yeah. And? No one here would’ve cared if there was one more person around.”
“He’s coming to dinner tonight with my father, so this might have been too much for him for one day, anyway.” But then again, he might be more used to being around all these kids than I was, considering about half his teammates had little ones.
Maybe I should start to get used to them.
Just then, Brenden let out a pained sound, and we all turned to find both of his little redheaded twins trying to climb his arm—the same arm that he’d injured yesterday.
“Damn,” Dana said, jumping to her feet, but Rachel and Mr. Sutter beat her into the dining room to pry the little girls off their father’s arm.
My guys leaped into action, shifting the focus of their filming without me giving them any direction. I followed, keeping my distance as I observed the action. Maddie and Tuck hauled their little sisters away to play in the living room with their Zellinger cousins while Dana and Eric worked together to resituate Brenden’s arm in his sling. Elaine bounced the baby and moved him out of the way. Mr. Sutter went into the kitchen and came back with an ice pack.
But my eyes landed on Rachel and wouldn’t leave her. I slipped up behind Ben and whispered in his ear to be sure he was filming her, preferably at an angle where he could capture Brenden’s reactions, too.
Fat tears rolled down her cheeks as she took the ice pack from her boss and strapped it to her husband’s shoulder with an ACE bandage. “I know you’re not ready, but will you please consider retiring this summer? Because I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
Brenden didn’t respond, but his eyes said everything: he wasn’t ready to call it quits, even if his body already had—but he didn’t want to torment his wife anymore, either. Or his kids.
My heart broke for them both.
Dana got up and came back over to me. “Did you get all that?” she asked quietly.
I nodded. “I think so.”
“Good. Because this is the story you’re telling. The human story.”
She was right about that.
MY PALMS WERE sweating. Completely cliché, and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop it from happening as we pulled into the driveway at Anne’s father’s house for dinner.
“Promise he won’t bite,” she teased. She was wearing a dress again—a soft pink thing that showed off a bit of arm and a bit of leg, but not too much of either. Hell, there was even some chest showing, although not anywhere near as much as I’d like to see. We definitely weren’t entering cleavage territory, but that did nothing to negate the fact that she had a heck of a lot more skin showing than I was used to seeing. And I liked it.
“Does he have a dog that’ll do the biting for him?”
“Nope, and no cats, either.” She grabbed her purse from the floorboard and climbed out of my car, not giving me any more time to delay the inevitable.
I opened my door to follow her. “You do realize this would be a hell of a lot less awkward if we hadn’t—” Already had sex died on my tongue as her father opened the front door, and she rushed ahead to hug him.
“Dad, this is Nate Golston,” she said when she backed away. “Nate, my father, Brian Dennison.”
I climbed the steps, still nervous as hell. “Dr. Dennison. Nice to meet you, sir.”
“Brian’s fine,” he said, holding out a hand for me to shake.
I wished I weren’t sweating, but I wiped my hand on my pant leg as discreetly as possible before taking his.
In no time, he had whisked us both inside the house, which smelled deliciously of steak and potatoes, and was offering me my choice of beer or wine. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
He opened a beer for himself, too, and headed into the kitchen to flip the steaks on his grill pan. Anne followed him and started putting together a salad, both of them looking much like this was something very familiar to them.
“Tough game last night,” Brian said.
“You were watching?” I wondered if it was just because of Anne dating me, or if he was actually interested.
He winked in his daughter’s direction. “I like to stay on top of things when it comes to my little girl. But I also needed to know what happened before I went in to work this morning. My nurses are all diehard Storm fans. One of them is half in love with the one… Oh, what’s his name again?” He looked over at Anne for help. “I told you before.”
“The one Lacey has a crush on? Or do you mean Brenda?”
“Lacey. He’s the new one.”
“Leif Sorenson,” Anne said, winking at me.
I laughed. “I’d say I could introduce them, but I don’t think his wife would like it too much. Or his little girl.”
“Probably better to pretend you don’t know about her crush, then, if you ever meet her,” Brian said.
To my complete surprise, the night progressed much along the same pattern. Anne had been right—there was no reason at all to be nervous about meeting her father. He was as normal and down-to-earth as they came, very similar to my own parents, as far as I could tell. He might be a doctor and be much better-educated than them, but I saw a lot more similarities than differences. He made me feel right at home.
Halfway through dinner, though, the doorbell rang.
Anne looked over at her fath
er. “Were you expecting someone else?”
He shook his head, wiped his face with a napkin, and pushed his chair back. “Probably someone going door to door for one of the candidates. I’ll get rid of them.” Then he turned to me. “Sorry about this.”
“Don’t be sorry on my account,” I insisted.
He disappeared down the hall, but he wasn’t gone long. And he wasn’t alone when he returned.
“Anika,” a woman with a heavy accent said. She was wearing a colorful sari and head covering, and she set a purse down on the table.
Anne dropped her knife and fork on the table, eyes furiously wide. “Mother,” she said coldly. “What are you doing here?” She passed accusing eyes over in her father’s direction.
“She called me over the weekend,” he said. “Apparently I let it slip that you’d be here tonight without realizing it, and she thought that would be her best chance at intercepting you. I’m sorry.”
“What are you wearing?” the mother demanded, sounding scandalized. “All that skin showing. It’s indecent.”
“It’s as far from indecent as she could get,” Brian said, rolling his eyes. “She looks beautiful.” I wanted to give him a fist bump or a good slap on the back. Anne’s father was definitely someone I could get behind.
“She looks like a slut,” the mother said, and Anne recoiled.
“Now stop right there,” I put in. “You’re way out of line with that. She might not dress in a way you approve of, but that doesn’t make her a slut, and it doesn’t make her inappro—”
“And why?” the mother cut in, glaring in my direction. “Why must you go on with this man? Going all over the place with him. Kissing. Touching. Disgusting and brazen, the way you’re behaving in public. But what should I expect from this athlete? He doesn’t even have a college education, but you think—”
“Don’t do this, Mother,” Anne said. “Just don’t. I think it’s time for you to go.”
Game Breaker (Portland Storm Book 14) Page 20