On the Fly (24 page)

I sat down facing the rink and laughed
some more because Jamie and his brothers already had Tuck out
there. He was still wearing his mask and cape, but someone had
thought to give him a helmet, too. Jamie had both Tuck’s hands and
was skating backward, pulling Tuck behind him fast enough that the
cape was flying.

“
Looks like he’s having a
good time,” Brenden said. He sat down beside me and pulled his
skates out of his gym bag.

I shook my head. “Looks
like he’s having a
great
time.”

“
Fair enough.” Brenden
pulled another pair of skates out of his bag—skates that were much
too small for him. He held them out to me. “Size six. That’s what
Jim told me.”

“
Oh, but I—”

“
You thought I was going to
let you just sit here and watch? Not a chance.” He pushed the
skates into my hands. “Lace them up tight. If you hurt your ankle,
I’m just going to have to carry you around a lot more than I
already have been. I might just carry you home with me.”

A couple of the guys were walking past
us, and they looked over and pulled faces when they heard what
Brenden said.

“
Leave my girl alone,
asswipes,” Brenden said to them. Then he turned back to me, his
eyes roving over me. “Sorry. It’s just like being back in middle
school around here with these jokers sometimes.”

My pulse kicked into high gear from
the look in Brenden’s eyes. He’d clearly already brushed his
teammates and their teasing from his mind and had other things
there instead…like me. I took the skates from him, hating that my
cheeks flushed more at the thought of being wrapped up in his arms
again than from the way the guys had been trying to fluster me.
Boys will always be boys, after all.

“
Not that that’s such a bad
idea,” he said a little more quietly—just for my ears and no one
else’s. “Having to carry you around some more, I mean. I like
carrying you around. I like holding onto you.”

I bent over to take my shoes off. “I
like being in your arms,” I whispered, shocking myself with my
admission. Why did I keep telling him these things? I couldn’t seem
to stop myself.

“
Good.” He leaned over and
gave me a loud, wet smack on my cheek.

By the time I started putting my feet
into the boots, Dana and Maddie were already making their way out
to the ice. Maddie was wobbling on her skates a bit as they walked,
but Dana had a good grip on her, helping to steady her. She went
onto the ice first and held both of Maddie’s hands as she carefully
put one foot over the barrier. I watched until Maddie was all the
way out, smiling as they started to glide together, and then I
focused on tightening my laces.

I still couldn’t quite believe I was
going to get out there with Brenden, that I’d given in without
putting up much of a fight at all. The thought of ice-skating
intimidated the heck out of me since I hadn’t even been roller
skating since before I’d gotten pregnant with Maddie, but as long
as he was with me I would be okay.

I was starting to feel that way about
everything, not just about ice-skating, and that was a dangerous
thought. He looked over at me with a smile that could easily melt
the ice, and I pushed the thought away.

“
Ready?” he asked. His hand
was out, waiting for mine.

I took it, letting his hand envelop
mine and wrap me in his warmth. “Not really, but as close as I’m
gonna get.”

Brenden chuckled as he tugged me to my
feet. I lurched, throwing out my other arm to the side so I could
steady myself. He pulled me to him, putting his free arm around my
waist and holding me close. “I’ll take care of you.
Okay?”

The way he was looking at me, his eyes
boring all the way through to my toes, made me wonder if he was
talking about more than just keeping me upright so I didn’t do a
nosedive on the ice.

“
Okay,” I agreed. And then
I fleetingly wondered if I was agreeing to more. I wasn’t really
sure. I was even less sure if it would be such a bad thing—letting
him take care of me in more ways than just on the ice.

He gripped my hand tight enough that I
felt secure, and then he guided me the last few steps onto the
rink. I nearly lost my footing the second I had both feet on the
ice, but Brenden held me until I was steady.

Sara Thomas zipped past us, spinning
around as she went to wave at me. “Tuck’s a rock star out here
already,” she shouted. “Daddy’ll be trying to recruit him to play
for him in no time.” Then she spun again and went on ahead of
us.

“
Scotty might try to use
Tuck to replace me, after that last game,” Brenden said. He only
half sounded like he was joking.

I finally felt steady enough to try to
move, so I pushed off with my left foot, gliding for a second on
the right. “He’ll have to wait a few years, I’m afraid. I’m not
ready to let him go.”

“
I’ll let you be the one to
break the news to Scotty.”

“
Deal.” The further we got
from the boards, the less I felt like I could concentrate on
anything but keeping my feet solidly beneath the rest of me.
One-word responses might be all I could manage.

Brenden kept gliding along beside me,
moving at my snail’s pace without complaint. I could barely keep my
eyes off the ice, certain that the second I looked away I’d end up
on my ass. Dana and Maddie swooped around us—I knew it was them
because I could hear Maddie chattering a mile a minute as they
went.

“
Bend your knees some,”
Brenden said, twining his fingers through mine. “It’ll
help.”

“
Shush.” I needed to focus,
and not on the sound of his voice or the strength of his hand, and
definitely not on the heat radiating from him as he tugged me
closer to his side.

“
You look cute when you’re
concentrating.”

My left foot took off on its own,
heading way out to the side until I feared I might fall into a
split. I teetered and tottered, jerking Brenden’s hand and nearly
pulling him down on top of me. He spun around in front of me and
tugged me close to his chest, putting both arms at my waist and
grinning, almost like he was laughing at me.

I swatted his chest with my free hand,
huffing so hard my hair flew. “You’re distracting me.”

“
If I really wanted to
distract you, I have much more effective ways of doing
it.”

I scowled up at him. “Like
what?”

“
Like this.”

He picked me up off the ice and held
me against his chest. And he kissed me. This time it wasn’t quick
and over almost before it started, not like the first time. He
teased me with his lips, brushing them over mine with gentle,
featherlight pressure that stole a gasp from my lungs. When my lips
parted, his tongue traced along the opening.

I wanted more, wanted to take the kiss
deeper and let myself feel these dark and needy things I hadn’t
felt in so long. I was on the verge of finding my courage and
sliding my own tongue out to meet his when Tuck squealed, “Mommy!
Look at me!”

We barely turned our heads in his
direction in time to see him skating straight toward us, both arms
flailing about wildly while his cape fluttered in his wake. Brenden
half lowered, half dropped me back to the ice just in time to stop
Tuck from crashing headfirst into us.

“
I skated all by myself!”
he shouted, his grin taking over his whole face.

I had to grab onto Brenden’s shirt
with both hands to keep my balance. He let out a grunting sound,
his eyes roving briefly over how I was holding him before moving
back to my eyes. “Now you need to learn how to use the brakes,
kiddo.”

I kept feeling
Zee’s eyes on me from across the ice, but I tried
to ignore it. For a couple of reasons. One, I had been enjoying not
having to share Rachel’s attention with her kids or anyone else for
the most part, and two, it seemed like the brotherly thing to do
for my sister to make him sweat it out a bit longer. Dana might not
agree, but that was beside the point.

In the last little while, Rachel had
finally started actually using her legs to skate, bending her knees
and propelling herself forward instead of letting the ice dictate
how she was going to move. She also wasn’t holding onto me like I
was a buoy anymore. She was just holding my hand, not clutching it
like her life depended on it.

Not that I minded either way. It just
felt good to have her holding onto me, however she was doing it.
Like when she’d fisted her hands in my shirt earlier. I’d had to
remind myself that we were in public and her kid was right there,
and so I couldn’t just toss her over my shoulder caveman style and
take her to bed, where she could be free to rip my clothes off me
if she wanted.

God knew it was what I wanted. I just
didn’t know if it was all in my head or if she wanted it, too. The
whole time we’d been skating, I’d had to keep reminding myself this
wasn’t the time or the place for those kinds of things.

It hadn’t been very easy.

That part might get a little easier
once we added Maddie to the mix. I didn’t mind that we would have
Maddie with us. Now that I understood what she’d been through, I
knew where she was coming from. I liked her. I liked both Rachel’s
kids a lot more than I had ever expected to. But I still wanted my
time alone with Rachel.

Rachel looked across to the other end
of the rink where Babs and his brothers were patiently teaching
Tuck how to pass a puck. Webs’s kids had joined them, too. Not that
it surprised me. Any chance Katie Weber and Babs got, they were
together, especially if Webs wasn’t around to glare at
Babs.

“
How old were you when you
learned to skate?” Rachel asked me. Her nose and cheeks were red
from the cold, which only made her fairy-dust freckles stand out
more than usual. It made me want to kiss them. I wanted to find
every freckle on her body and kiss it.

“
I don’t ever remember not
knowing how to skate,” I said, once again reminding myself that now
was not the time for thinking like that. “Dad was a hockey player,
so Dana and I grew up on the ice. Mom sometimes jokes that we could
skate before we could walk.” That probably wasn’t too far from the
truth, if you looked at old family photos.

“
Is Tuck too old to get
started?”

I held back a grin. “You’re never too
old to get started. You’re learning now, silly.” Besides, Sara had
been right: Tuck was taking to it like a natural. The kid was born
to skate. It’d be a good use for all his energy, too.

“
Is he too old to learn
hockey?”

“
You’re thinking about
letting him play hockey, even though hockey players are barbarians
who have unsportsmanlike fights?” I wagged a brow, teasing
her.

She shrugged. “He seems to be having a
good time.”

The way she said it, though, her voice
going all wistful, made me wonder just how much she blamed herself
for what had happened to Maddie. If she blamed herself at all, it
was too much. I pecked her on her nose, tiding myself over until I
could get her alone and do more. “Same as with skating,” I said.
“You’re never too old. You could learn to play now, too, if you
wanted to.”

Rachel smiled. “That’s good.” She
slipped again, gripping my hand tighter than she had been, but she
managed to regain her balance all on her own. “I think I’d better
leave the hockey playing to Tuck, though. And it looks like Eric is
ready for us to go snag Maddie.”

“
I was hoping you wouldn’t
notice that,” I grumbled.

“
Too bad. I
noticed.”

I looked around until I spotted my
sister. She still had Maddie with her, but they weren’t alone.
Monty’s two little girls had joined them, as well. Stéphane
Montfort was the most veteran defenseman on the team. Even though
he’d lived in the States for a decade or more, his kids spoke
better English than he did.

Monty and his wife were nowhere in
sight. Great, that meant I had three little girls to collect now. I
turned us around, heading over toward the benches where someone had
stashed a few sleds for the kids. Once we got over there, I grabbed
the biggest one and set it on the ice. “Hop on.”