Annette Blair (30 page)

Zane laughed with Jason’s every move, especially his turns, but each time Jason spun, Kira bit her lip, afraid they’d go down. Yes, she was worried about Jason’s knee, but she was more worried that Zane would find this one experience so exhilarating that he would become depressed over his handicap.

“I’m gonna go skate with them,” Travis said, and he was off, while Kira wondered where her skates were.

Jason, his grin as wide as Zane’s, was having an awesome time. The short spin he planned turned into a half
hour, Zane the center of attention, so high in the air, he waved to her over everyone’s heads every few minutes.

Kira loved Jason for that. Not that she was
in
love with him, precisely, though she might as well admit that she was in love with Travis and Zane.

But as for Jason and her, their rabbit-hole play meant nothing. They’d become quite close, physically and emotionally, though they hadn’t had sex, not quite, but she wanted to. Who wouldn’t want to, with a tender and generous lover like Jason.

He adored women. Women adored him. She was just another besotted fool . . . except that he only ever danced with her. She wondered if
he’d
noticed that. Though every event they attended seemed like a date, they were not dating, they were working.

Yes, they sometimes shared a bed, but they had only ever made one real promise to each other . . . and that was
not
to make any promises.

“Fitzgerald,” she said to herself as she watched Jason and the twins. “Get a grip. That smooth-talkin’ jock is the Big Bad Wolf of the fast-and-rich party set, and you’re Little Miss Muffet with an empty tuffet. He’s out of your league.”

Jason Goddard was a world-class charmer, a jock, the kind of guy she detested, the kind she was, unfortunately, attracted to.

“He creates fantasies,” she said. “This is one of them.”

Kira wanted to go and skate with them. She just needed to keep things in perspective. She and Jason were not a couple, and the boys were not theirs.

“Right,” she said as she went for her skates.

“HEY,
Fitz, you skate better every day,” Jason said after a few minutes of watching her strut her stuff, as glad as the twins that she’d joined them. The dozen other boys, who’d abandoned their sticks to entertain Zane, became more animated as they vied with each other to make Kira laugh.

“I practice a couple of times a week on my own, plus you make me skate at practically every practice; what do you want?”

“What do I want?” Jason said, considering his options as he skated in a circle around her. “Hmm. Let me think about that.”

“I’m getting dizzy!” Zane shrieked.

“Careful,” Kira said, “I don’t think you want him barfing on your head.”

Jason winced and looked up. “You okay there, buddy?” “Skate straight for a while,” Zane said.

“Will do.” Jason skated backward and winked at Kira. “Can I tell you what I want after hockey practice?”

“That would be now,” she said. “I think I hear the bus.”

“Okay, boys, that’s it for today,” Jason said, skating over and setting Zane down.

Zane threw his arms tight around Jason’s neck, that chest-tug Jason had felt at Travis’s adoption request turning to a full-blown ache.

“Thank you,” Zane said, pulling away, almost before Jason was ready.

Travis hugged him, too, activating the ache’s painful twin.

Jason ruffled the boys’ hair and swallowed. “We’ll set aside some time to do it again next week, okay?”

“Okay!” the identical carrottops said in sync.

“Boys!” Jason shouted, for more than the sake of being heard. “Get your gear together. Here’s Mr. Peebles.”

Jason watched the boys go, glad to get Kira alone. He took her hand, seeking the comfort of her touch, and skated her away. “I want,” Jason said, slowing, and pulling Kira into the circle of his arms, “what I’ve wanted for a long time, what I hope you want.”

They waltzed in place, her length bedeviling his. “I think we’ve danced around the subject often enough to know,” he said, waiting for her gaze to meet his, and when it did, hope flared in him. “Screw celibacy,” he said. “I want inside you, Fitz, and I hope to hell you want me there.”

Kira raised her arms around his neck, her cheek against his ear, her sigh impossible to read.

“I hope I didn’t catch you in my headlights,” Jason said, “by putting it out there, but I want
you
to decide.”

Kira nodded and Jason’s heart about stopped.

He pulled from her arms to see her face. “Did that nod mean, ‘Yes, I understand?’ or ‘Yes, I
want
’? Can you spell it out for me?” Jason said. “Use the words. I’m afraid to hope I got the right signal.”

“Yes, I want,” Kira said. “I want you inside of me.”

Jason released the heart-tripping breath he’d been holding and brought her against him. “Half an hour? My whirlpool?”

Kira smiled. “Yeah.”

They skated toward the bench, his arm and focus possessive. He helped her remove her skates, before he removed his own.

When they stepped outside, anticipation heating his blood, Jason was shocked to step in snow up to his calves. “I’m pretty sure,” he said, “that these are white-out conditions.”

“And I’m pretty sure,” Kira said, “there’s a bus full of boys over there.”

“I was trying ignore the sound of wheels spinning,” Jason said, sighing, as he went for his cell phone.

It rang before he could dial.

“They’re warning drivers off the road,” his grandmother said. “Sister Margaret called and asked if we could keep the boys overnight.”

The rowdy boys hanging out the bus windows gave Jason an idea of what they would be in for. “Keep them?” he repeated, sounding stupid, he knew, but his libido had just short-circuited.

“Mr. Peebles can stay in one of my guest rooms,” Gram said, “but you and Kira will have to take the boys.”

Jason snapped his cell phone shut. “They’re staying the night. I’d cry, but they’d make fun of me.”

Kira’s eyes dimmed. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “Oh.”

“Do you have enough bedrooms?” Kira asked.

“I can’t do that to Gram. Plus the rooms would need childproofing. And we’d never keep track of the boys, short of patrolling the halls all night. For everybody’s peace, and for safety and supervision, I’m thinking the boys should camp out on my living-room floor.”

“
Your
living room, with more bronze nudes than a French museum? Let’s leave their innocence intact, shall we, and bed them down on the floor in my living room.”

“Makes sense,” he said. “Piece of cake, right?”

“I wish. They’ve worked up quite a sweat.”

“Please,” Jason said, “you’re reminding me of the sweat I’d planned for
us
to work up. Your point?”

“Showers. While I look into feeding them,
you
have to supervise the boys’ showers, which shouldn’t be difficult in your bathroom. I’m thinking they could shower, three or four at a time.”

“That is
so
not the shower I planned.”

“Yeah, well, get over it, Ice Boy.”

“Are you over it,” Jason asked, “so soon?”

“No,” Kira said with a grin, “but I’m trying to rise to the occasion.”

“Funny,” Jason said, “I stopped doing that the minute we stepped outside.”

Kira patted his cheek. “Cute. You get them off the bus, and I’ll see what Rose has in the way of food, because we have enough provisions in our kitchen to feed two chipmunks and a field mouse.”

“Fitz,” Jason said, catching her arm. “For the record, we would have had a hell of a night.”

“Magic,” she said, turning to trudge through the snow toward the house.

Jason went over, raised a hand for Peebles to stop spinning his wheels, and boarded the bus. When he told the boys they were staying, the unruly horde gave a resounding cheer.

Half an hour later Jason had stripped the five youngest, their sweaty clothes in a pile. “Travis, Larry, Chet, and Grady, into the shower. Zane, you get the tub.” Jason removed his shoe brace and put him in. “Brad, you’re bath captain. Watch them.”

Jason got out towels, soap, and shampoo, heard the rush of his tub jets, and Zane’s giggle. Smiling, Jason handed Brad the supplies and went to find Kira.

She was trying to fit another casserole dish into a full oven.

“They’re naked and their clothes stink,” he said.

“T-shirts,” she said, “and socks, and turn up the heat. If
you don’t have enough shirts and socks, some of mine will fit the little ones.”

“How maternal of you.”

“How big poor family of me,” Kira said. “Put their clothes in a pillowcase and send them down to the kitchen. Gracie’s gonna wash and dry them for morning. Do you have a blow-dryer?”

Jason perked up. “Sounds kinky. What do you have in mind?”

“Drying the boys hair, you horny beast. Do you have one?”

“A horn, yes, and it’s lonely.”

“There’s a blow-dryer on the countertop in my bathroom. If you have one, set two of the older boys to drying hair.”

“Check,” Jason said. “What are we having for dinner?”

“Everything Rose had in the refrigerator.”

“Fair enough.”

Kira wiped her hands on her apron. “How many kids are clean?”

“Er, I’ll check.”

Another set of boys was in the shower, one of them trying to fill the sink across the room with the hand-held shower. “Cut that out,” Jason said, disconnecting it.

Zane sat on the toilet seat wrapped in a towel watching a volcano of suds erupt.

Jason stepped into the suds and turned off his tub jets. “What’d you put in there to make the suds?”

“The shampoo fell in,” Zane said.

“I hate when that happens,” Jason said on a grin, wrapping Zane in a huge, thick bath towel and picking him up. “Brad?” he yelled. “You’re supposed to be supervising, here.”

Brad returned and went to work cleaning the suds.

Jason found Chet and Travis wrestling naked and wet on his bed. He tossed Zane into the fray with a promise of clothes and retribution.

The older boys, waiting for their showers, were examining Jason’s bronze nudes with eager fingers.

Kira came in on Jason’s heels. “I don’t believe it,” she said, hands on hips. “Go watch the food, Jason. Okay, boys, in the bathroom.”

“Where’s Travis,” Jason called after them, but no one answered.

Jason went through Kira’s apartment into the hall, and found a wet towel by the elevator. “Great,” he said, hitting the Down button. “The kid’s naked and lost in fifty rooms.”

Twenty minutes later Jason returned to the kitchen with Travis wrapped in a blanket.

“I found Gram,” Travis said. “And boy, was she surprised.”

“I’ll bet,” Kira said with a grin.

The boys sat at the table, clean, dressed in T-shirts and floppy socks. It was a tight fit—some sat on stools, hassocks, and such—but like locusts, they ate anything not charred, except for the eggplant casserole. Kira picked up a black piece of . . . something, and shoved it in Jason’s face. “You were supposed to watch the food.”

“I had to find Travis, didn’t I?”

Kira threw a T-shirt and socks at him.

“I raided your underwear drawer,” she said, raising Jason’s brows.

“Yeah, man,” Brad said. “Thanks. Me and, er, the big guy were cold.”

“What is that?” Kira asked. “Some kind of testosterone code you’re all born with?”

Jason high-fived Brad, dressed Travis, and sat to eat. Kira gave the boy a chicken leg and macaroni and cheese. Him, she gave a congealed chunk of eggplant. “Yum,” Jason said.

After she scooped coffee ice cream between chocolate-chip cookies to make ice cream sandwiches for dessert, and everyone had their fill, Kira sent the boys to play in the hall to work off their excess energy.

“Don’t touch the buttons on the elevator,” she told them, “or step inside, do you hear me? And don’t open any of the doors off this hall. Disobey, and you can listen to Jason snore like a foghorn all night.”

Zane tugged on her sleeve. “How do you know he snores?”

Jason watched Kira’s freckles disappear. “I can hear him from my room.”

“Wow.”

“What
can
we do in the hall?” Travis asked.

“Look out at the snow; have a race . . . hey, you’re in stocking feet, run and slide.” And they were off.

While they played, Kira laid out fourteen amazing quilts—gorgeous, original works of art—thrilled they’d keep the boys warm. Some were squares, diamonds, circles, forming patterns; others depicted scenes: a lush green woodland; a winter cottage, smoke rising from the chimney; a spring garden, a city beneath a night sky with a quarter moon and stars.

The quilt Kira had given him was different. Each square revealed something about her, a classroom, cheerleading, her family, witchcraft. In the bottom corner a baseball bat in a red circle with a red line through it. No baseball players, it said, or no jocks. Some squares filled him with questions.

“They’re beautiful,” he said, “as vibrant as paintings.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I like the way you signed them.”

Kira straightened. “Where do you see my signature?”

“It’s the butterfly in the left corner of each, right?”