On the Fly (18 page)

He took a step to the side and leaned
against the wall at an angle. “Thank you for letting
me.”

With his close proximity, the scent of
his cologne crossed the divide between us and tickled my nostrils.
That same scent had hit me at various intervals throughout the
night, each time acting like a lure to draw me closer. I forced
myself to swallow. “It was really nice of you. And Jamie,
too.”

“
I didn’t ask you to come
with us to be nice.”

I knew that all too well. Hearing him
say it only made my pulse more frantic.

“
I like being with you,
Rachel.”

I liked being with him, too. I liked
it more than I ought to, and that scared me—because what if
whatever I felt for him was clouding my judgment? How could I
protect my kids that way? They deserved better.

But they deserved to have a good
man—maybe even good men—in their lives.

I was just confusing myself—trying too
hard to protect them from every danger, when I couldn’t even see
what the real danger was anymore. “I don’t think—”

Brenden’s finger pressed down over the
center of my lips. “Don’t say it.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what I had been
about to say, let alone what he assumed it to be.

The tip of his finger scalded me, like
a brand burning into the flesh of my lips. “Okay,” I mouthed
against the pressure of his touch.

The corners of his lips curled upward
just a bit. “I like spending time with all of you. Tuck and Maddie,
too. But I know you don’t trust me.”

I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to
fully trust him, even though some part of me wanted to. Actually,
the bit that wanted to trust him was growing by the day, seemingly
against my will. I was losing the battle.

Not that I had any idea who was
winning it.

He moved his hand and tucked a stray
curl behind my ear, the gentle touch of his fingertip trailing
against the sensitive skin back there. I shivered.

“
I want to kiss you again,”
he said.

My lips parted to let a sharp breath
stab my lungs. In anticipation? Or was it more in shock? Either
way, it didn’t matter.

“
I’m not going to, though.
Kiss you. Not until you trust me.”

Before I could process it, he
straightened up, backed away from the wall, and crossed over to his
door. “Good night, Rachel.”

I had to take a few minutes to myself
out in the hall to compose myself before going inside to deal with
my kids.

The next
afternoon
, while my mind was still reeling
from those moments out in the hall, Jim Sutter and the entire team
left for a road trip. They were gone for over a week, which was way
too much time to let my mind wander about Brenden.

Their absence made for a lot of quiet
time in the office, which made it much easier for Martha to teach
me what I needed to know to function in my new position. After only
a couple of days, I realized that even without Jim coming in, there
would be more than enough work to keep us busy every
day.

Other team executives would stop by
and deliver items for him, which we then had to examine and
determine whether he needed them immediately or if they could wait
for his return. At least a couple of times a day, he would call in
with tasks for us to complete, and it wasn’t at all unusual to
receive emails with more work he needed done. On top of all that,
his phone rang frequently, requiring us to take messages or direct
the caller to his cell phone.

Before long, I had started to feel a
lot more comfortable and confident in my ability to meet the
demands of my position. Martha was essential in that, helping me to
create my own system of organization, similar to hers but still my
own.

Friday morning, after the Storm’s
first game on the road, Martha came into the office with a frown on
her face and a crease between her brows. “Did you watch last
night?” she asked me.

I nodded. After going to the
Winterhawks game with Brenden and Jamie, it had been easier to
watch and understand what was happening on television. I had some
new questions for him now, too—but they’d have to wait until the
team returned.

“
It was an ugly one, but
you know that,” Martha said, her lips pursing together. She took
off her coat and hung it and her purse on the rack behind her desk.
“Ericsson flew with the team to Washington last night, but the
doctors have ruled him out for a while with a concussion, so we
have to arrange transportation to get him home.”

“
Does that happen often?” I
asked. One of the Tampa Bay Lightning players had run straight into
Ericsson, knocking him out cold in the process. They’d had to bring
in paramedics to take him off the ice on a stretcher. I was
thankful that it had happened when the kids were doing their
homework, so they couldn’t see. It was scary enough for me to
watch.

“
Running the goaltender
over? Or concussions?”

“
Either, I guess,” I said
with a shrug. “And arranging to transport injured
players.”

“
Keep watching the games,
and you’ll get a better feel for it.” Martha booted up her computer
and took a seat. “Plus, it gives you a heads-up about what you’ll
be walking into the next day. But no, goalies don’t get run over
too often because the rules protect them from it. Concussions
happen more often than we’d like, but it’s a contact sport so
there’s only so much you can do to protect the players. Same with
injuries that require transportation home in the middle of a road
trip. You just can’t predict these things, but we have to be ready
for them when they happen. So…I want you to handle that,
okay?”

I nodded. “What should we do
first?”

“
Pull up the player
information file for him and then make a call down to Lynn Barnes.
She’s the team’s travel agent. Have her book a flight and arrange
for a car to take him from the team hotel to the airport. Once you
have all the details, call Ericsson on his cell and give him the
information he’ll need.”

I hadn’t met Ericsson. I hadn’t met
many of the guys on the team yet, other than the ones who’d been at
Eric Zellinger’s house when the kids and I went for dinner that one
night. Each time I did meet or talk to a player on the phone,
though, it seemed awkward. I was the GM’s assistant, but there was
also the relationship I had with Brenden, whatever that was turning
out to be. I wasn’t quite sure how to keep it all separate, or if I
even needed to try.

None of that mattered at the moment. I
had a job to do. I put in the call to Lynn and got Ericsson’s
transportation arranged, and then I dialed his cell
number.

“
Hello?” he answered after
the second ring. His file said he was from Sweden, but he didn’t
sound like he had an accent. But then again, it could be hard to
tell just from a single word.

“
Hi, Mr.
Ericsson.”

“
Nicky,” he
replied.

I didn’t even really hear what he was
saying, though. I tried to just push through with what I was
calling him for. “Mr. Ericsson, this is Rachel Shaw, Jim Sutter’s
assistant. I’ve got travel arrangements for you.”

He laughed, a deep, rich sound
followed by a groan. “Sorry. Laughing makes my head hurt.
Everything makes my head hurt right now.” He still didn’t sound
like he had an accent. It made me curious how long he’d been in the
country because he sounded thoroughly American. “You can call me
Nicky,” he repeated. “But you’re Soupy’s Rachel, right? You have to
be with that southern accent.”

“
I…” I didn’t have a clue
how to respond to that. To my knowledge, I wasn’t
Soupy’s—Brenden’s—anything. He’d kissed me once, and he’d told me
he wanted to kiss me again, but that didn’t come close to making me
his girlfriend. I could feel my cheeks heating, and the look Martha
gave me confirmed that I was blushing like crazy. She hitched a
brow and grinned, as though she knew why I was blushing.

“
You have travel
arrangements, you said?” Nicky prodded when I remained silent for a
little too long.

“
Yeah, right.” I rattled
off the details of his flight and the car that would take him to
the airport and waited while he repeated them back to me. He had
everything right, so I asked if he needed anything else.

“
Just your cell
number.”

My jaw dropped but not a sound came
out of my mouth.

“
For Soupy,” he added. “He
wants to call you.”

“
I can’t… I
don’t…”

My gaze shot over to Martha, and I
couldn’t miss the laugh she was unsuccessfully attempting to
smother.

Nicky didn’t give up. “He’s a good
guy. Give him a chance. Give me your number.”

Before I thought better of it, I was
rattling off the digits.

“
Got it,” he said. “I’ll
see you at the Christmas party if I don’t meet you before
then.”

Then we hung up.

“
Campbell’s persistent,”
Martha said with a laugh. “He’s asked me for your number twice
already since the team left. I told him I couldn’t give it without
your permission.”

The heat in my face doubled. “I
shouldn’t have given it to him. I don’t want to encourage
him.”

“
Why not? You could do a
lot worse, you know. Jim’s known Campbell’s family for decades.”
She pushed a stack of correspondence aside, took her glasses off,
and settled them on top of her hair. “I don’t know who hurt your
kids or what they did, but I can tell you this: that man’s not
going to hurt them. Not after what happened to his
sister.”

I was curious what she meant about
Brenden’s sister, but it felt intrusive to ask. It didn’t matter,
though. “I don’t think it’s really appropriate for me to have a
relationship with one of the players. Is it?”

“
I don’t see why not,”
Martha said. “He’s a man. You’re a woman. He’s not your boss or
anything.”

“
Hmm.” I’d really been
hoping she would tell me to steer clear, to run the other
direction—not encourage me to let it happen.

Later in the afternoon, just before we
were going to call it a day and head home, a tall man with longish
blond hair and sunglasses on came around the corner from the
stairs. He had a bouquet of white and yellow daisies in his
hands.

Martha glanced up at him, but her
focus was still primarily on her computer monitor. “I know those
aren’t for me, Ericsson.”

Now I had a face—a very handsome
face—to put with the name. The goaltender’s mask he wore when he
played obscured his face almost entirely, and then all the
paramedics and trainers who’d surrounded him on the ice had made it
impossible for the cameras to focus in on his features.

“
Next time,” he promised
smoothly. He bent over when he arrived at her desk and planted a
loud
smack
on her
cheek, reaching for a cookie before he pulled away. “These are for
Soupy’s girl.”

“
I’m not Soupy’s girl.” My
face had to be redder than my hair.

“
Okay,” he said without
skipping a beat. “He still wants you to have them.”

I took the flowers.

Maddie helped me
arrange them in a glass when we got home. I hadn’t
bothered to buy any vases yet. Who would be buying me flowers,
after all?

We put them in the center of the table
so we could look at them during dinner and if we were lucky,
Pumpkin wouldn’t eat them. I didn’t think daisies were poisonous
for cats, so even if he did it shouldn’t hurt him.

“
They’re from Mr. Soupy?”
Maddie asked.

“
Yes.”

“
That was nice of him,” she
said.

“
I like Mr. Soupy,” Tuck
put in. “He’s nice. But Mr. Jamie is more fun.”

I laughed. Tuck’s response hadn’t
surprised me in the least, since Tuck and Jamie were practically
inseparable. “What do you think of him, Maddie?” I asked after a
minute. I knew she had to be at least somewhat comfortable with him
or she never would have asked for a jersey with his number on
it.

She held her fork still over her plate
for a few moments, thinking hard before she answered. “He’s nice. I
like that he takes care of you. You take care of me and Tuck, so
someone should take care of you, too.”

I had to force back startled
tears.

That night, a
little while after I got the kids to bed, my phone
rang. It was an unfamiliar number, but I knew it had to be Brenden.
I was tempted to let it ring, to avoid answering it and let the
voice mail pick it up, but after the fourth ring I hit the answer
button.

“
Hello?”

“
Did Nicky bring you the
flowers?”

“
Yes. Thank you.” I didn’t
know why I’d lost the ability to breathe from nothing more than
hearing his voice. “You really shouldn’t have, though.”

“
Why not? I haven’t been
able to stop thinking about you.”