On the Fly (19 page)

“
Because I haven’t decided
to trust you yet.”

“
You trust me enough to
give Nicky your number.”

“
I’m not sure why I did
that.”

“
I can live with that. I
don’t understand why I can’t stop thinking about you, either, but I
can’t. I don’t want to stop thinking about you.”

Warm flutters raced through my limbs.
“Why do you want to date me?”

“
Because I can’t stop
thinking about what it would be like to kiss you again, but a real
kiss. Not just a little peck like I gave you before.”

My heart stuttered. Stopped. Jolted to
life again. It had been a long time since I’d been kissed—really,
truly kissed—not for more than four years, since Jason and I split
up. I’d been too busy taking care of my kids to date for many of
those years, and more recently I’d been too afraid of letting
anyone get close to my kids. But Brenden Campbell was making me
want to be kissed, making me ache for it like I hadn’t in so long.
It felt new again.

“
I want to kiss you long
and deep and hard, over and over again. I want to make you squirm,
to make you beg me for more. I want you, Rachel.”

I wanted him, too, which terrified me.
“I’m not ready to give you that,” I said, the shaking of my voice
betraying how needy I felt.

“
I know. I can wait. The
longer I wait, the more time I’ll have to plan all the ways I want
to touch you and all the places I want to taste you.”

I shivered all over, thinking of his
big hands sliding over my body. Of his tongue exploring me. Of
doing the same to him. I had to change the subject to get a grip on
myself again. “What happened to your sister?” I asked, and
immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”

“
She was raped,” he
interrupted. “Her freshman year in college. Three guys hauled her
into a janitor’s closet after a hockey game she’d played in and
ruined her life. After that, for years, she had panic attacks
anytime a man touched her—even me and our dad. I hated myself for a
long time because I was supposed to protect her, and I hadn’t been
able to protect her from that.” He fell silent for a minute. “I
wanted to kill Zee for touching her when they got involved, but he
gave me my sister back.”

So that was what Martha had meant when
she’d said Brenden would never hurt my kids—he might even be
protective of them, if he knew what Maddie had been
through.

At least he would understand my need
to protect her.

I wanted to tell him, but it wasn’t so
easy for me to talk about it. It was all still so fresh, so
raw.

“
I’m sorry,” I said after a
few moments. “That’s awful.”

“
It is. But we all have
awful things in our lives. She’s doing much better now, though, and
she’s got a hell of a lot more courage than I do. Dana faced her
fears head-on and came out ahead.”

“
Facing your fears is a lot
easier said than done.”

“
Yeah.” He sounded
resigned. “Rachel?”

“
Yes?”

“
I have to call it a night.
We have a game tomorrow afternoon, so it’ll be an early morning.
Can I call you again afterward?”

“
I don’t—” I stopped myself
from telling him no. It was second nature for me now to do that,
but maybe it wasn’t what was best for me or my kids. “Yes, you can
call me. I’d like that.”

“
Thank God.”

We said good night and hung up, and I
saved his number in my phone.

That night, he starred in all my
dreams.

Kissing me.

For the rest
of our road trip, I’d called Rachel every night.
She still hadn’t started opening up to me, not about whatever it
was that had her overprotective instincts kicked into high gear,
but she was starting to talk a little more. Each call, she’d stayed
on the line a little longer.

We’d talked about her love
of Texas barbeque—not that nasty stuff other states made and called
barbeque—country dancing, superhero movies, and the
Wonder Pets
, and she told
me that even just the sound of Elmo’s voice was enough to make her
want to gouge out her eyes with a dull fork.

I’d told her that I would
almost always prefer to read a book than watch a movie, that I
could go the rest of my life without another bite of chocolate and
never miss it, and that the fact that I could quote almost every
line in
The Princess Bride
did not mean I would ever tire of watching it.
Every time it came on, I watched.

We’d flown home Thursday night after a
game against the Florida Panthers, not getting in until two a.m.,
and so Friday morning’s game-day skate was optional. Babs decided
he was going to sleep in and skip the skate. I might have done the
same, if not for the fact that I wanted the chance to see Rachel,
and going in to the office was my best chance of getting some face
time with her as soon as possible.

The only other guys who showed up to
the skate that morning were Jonny, who was always fighting for his
spot on the roster just like I was, Jared Tucker, a rookie who was
barely holding onto a fourth-line position, and Shawn Nelson, the
goaltender called up from the AHL to fill in for as long as Nicky
stayed out with his concussion.

We probably weren’t the brightest guys
on the team to show up for an optional skate after such a late
night. No one ever said hockey players were smart,
though.

Hammer ran us all through some drills,
but he took it pretty easy on us for once. Mainly we just tried to
get the blood flowing in our legs again after sitting on a plane
for hours after a game. It was nothing like the skate he’d put me
through right before I was cleared for contact again. Thank God. I
didn’t think I could have handled that kind of skate
today.

When he let us go, we hit the showers
and got dressed. On game days, the media isn’t allowed in for an
official scrum until after the game, so I didn’t have to stick
around and answer any questions.

Jonny stopped me before I could head
out of the locker room. “Want to grab a bite at
Amani’s?”

“
Yeah,” I said. “I need to
head up to Jim’s office for a minute first, though.”

“
You mean Rachel’s office?”
He smirked, but he didn’t give me a hard time about it. Not like
some of the guys had been while we were out on the road.

I didn’t respond. I just made my way
up the stairs and around the corner. Martha saw me and gave me a
brief nod, but she kept doing whatever she was doing without any
other acknowledgment. Rachel was facing the other direction, so she
didn’t realize I was there.

She had her phone tucked between her
cheek and shoulder. Her fingers flew over her keyboard, frantically
typing while she listened to whoever was on the other end of the
line. “Yes, I’ll be sure that’s put in the notes.” She stopped
typing long enough to reach for a manila file that was buried
beneath a stack of mail and open it. Her eyes fell to the document
inside the file, and she started typing again. “Yes, sir, I’m
putting it in right now. You have a good afternoon as well.
Good-bye.”

She was still typing with the phone
receiver caught between her chin and shoulder for a few moments
after the call had been completed.

I moved over behind her desk and
lifted the receiver away. “You’ll get a crick in your neck if you
aren’t careful.”

She jumped but recovered herself
pretty quickly. Other than the blush. Red flames licked all over
her cheeks, and they only intensified when she spun in her chair
and looked at me. “What are you doing here?”

I put the receiver back on its cradle.
“I work here, too, you know. I’m just saying hi. It was too late
last night.” And then there was the fact that I didn’t trust myself
to keep my hands off her if I’d knocked on her door when we got
back last night. And I’d promised her I’d wait until she trusted me
to kiss her again. I had no intention of going back on that
promise.

“
Hi,” she murmured. An inch
at a time, she pushed her chair back on its rollers, until it ran
into her desk and she couldn’t go any further.

I could have backed up some to give
her a little more room. What was the fun in that, though? I liked
seeing her a little flustered…and knowing I was the cause of it. I
waited a few moments longer than I probably should have before
stepping back. “Are you bringing the kids to the game tonight? No
school tomorrow.”

“
Tuck would never let me
hear the end of it if we didn’t come.”

The thought that she’d be there left
me unreasonably giddy. I tried to shake it off, to react like it
wasn’t a big deal. “Good. Dana can’t wait to see you again. She has
big plans to latch onto you in the owner’s box tonight and not let
go.”

“
The owner’s box?” Rachel
shook her head, confusion turning her lips down into a cute pout.
“We’re just using the tickets I get for working here.”

Ah
. Yeah. I was getting ahead of myself. The players’ wives and
girlfriends all hung out in Mr. Engels’s box during the games—their
kids, too, if they brought them. He and his wife were probably
going to be there tonight, since he was in town for the Christmas
party tomorrow. In my mind, I was already placing her among
them.

“
Right,” I finally said.
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I’m just so used to my sister being up
there, but she’s Zee’s girlfriend…”

Martha let out a snort that she tried
to disguise as a cough. I shot her a look, but she didn’t even
bother to glance up at me. I really didn’t need the added
awkwardness of trying to get Rachel to go out with me—she may not
be my girlfriend yet, but I wanted her to be—while Martha listened
to my every move. I didn’t really have much choice in the matter,
at least not if I intended to keep going since I’d already
started.

“
Well, will you wait for me
after the game?” I asked. “I’ll come find you once I’m finished,
and we can take the kids—”

“
Home,” she interrupted me
firmly. “It may not be a school night, but it will be plenty late
by the time the game’s over.”

“
Okay. We can take the kids
home, and maybe I can stay and…and talk a while.”

She blushed again, and I
knew whatever she was thinking about, it wasn’t talking. “Maybe,”
she agreed. She spun her chair around again and started sorting
through the stack of mail I’d noticed earlier. “We’ll wait for you
afterward. But don’t make us wait too long. Tuck gets cranky if he
doesn’t get to bed soon enough, and if that happens,
you’ll
be the one dealing
with him.”

I worked my way out from behind her
desk. “That’s settled, then. It’s a date,” I said, taking off down
the hall toward the stairs again.

“
It’s
not
a date,” Rachel called after
me.

“
Sounds like a date to me,”
Martha put in.

That sealed the deal. Martha was
officially my hero.

I was gasping
for breath as I skated over to the bench, my hands
on my knees to aid the process of filling my lungs with oxygen. The
other guys on the ice with me seemed like they were in equally bad
shape. Scotty looked livid, his eyes practically bulging out of
their sockets and his face far redder than could possibly be
healthy. Hammer and Bergy—Mattias Bergstrom, the other assistant
coach—didn’t look any happier.