On the Fly (4 page)

He didn’t have to finish that
thought.

“
Anyway, you’ll have to
find a way to feed yourself for a week,” I said, making a joke
instead of focusing on the fact that, once more, I was on my way
down to the minors. It was easier to laugh off my frustration than
to face my fears.

Zee hung his pads neatly in his stall,
proving himself to be just about the perfect human once again. His
perfection would probably annoy me more if he wasn’t my best
friend, but I’d spent more than half my life witnessing it. “You
can come hang out with me and Dana some,” he said. “She misses you,
and then you won’t have to starve.”

Babs blushed, which only
made him more adorable than he already was.
Adorable
wasn’t a word I’d usually
use about another guy, but this kid slayed me.

“
Yeah, all right,” he
said.

I was glad they were going to look
after him. He may not need a babysitter, but he could definitely
make good use of a personal chef.

Before things got even more awkward, I
figured it was better for me to just head out. “Yeah. Anyway, I
have to be there in the morning. Better go pack so I can get on the
road.” It was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive so there was no
point in flying.

I headed toward the garage, but
halfway there I saw that redhead, Rachel Shaw, coming down the
stairs. She had her head down and was talking to herself, having
this whole long, drawn-out conversation back and forth. Well,
conversation probably wasn’t quite the right word. It was more like
an argument. Out loud. Every step of the way down the
stairs.

I’d never seen anything more adorable,
and that included Babs and his fucking blushes and dimples. I moved
into position at the foot of the stairs and waited for
her.

Once she was close enough
for me to hear what she was saying, I realized she had the most
fascinating southern accent I’d ever heard. I must not have heard
her say enough when I’d run into her earlier, or I surely would
have noticed it. “…But it isn’t
for
me,” she muttered. “It’s for Maddie and Tuck. I
can accept it for them. I have to.”

She almost walked straight into me,
which would have made us even. Plus, it would have given me a great
excuse to touch her again, to put my arms out and help steady her.
Right before she would have barreled into me she realized I was
there, nearly jumping back in shock.

“
Who’s winning?” I asked,
giving her a smile that had never failed to make girls melt in the
past.

“
Winning what?”

Yeah, so Rachel Shaw didn’t melt.
Instead, she narrowed those green eyes on me, and she had to crane
her neck back to see my face. She couldn’t be taller than five feet
or so. Definitely not my usual type. Besides, she was eyeing me
like I was the most suspicious man on the planet. This chick wanted
nothing to do with me.

I couldn’t seem to help
myself, though. I wanted to talk to her, to keep hearing that
southern accent. “The argument. Are you going to take
it—whatever
it
is—or not?”

She pulled the strap of her purse over
her head to rest on the opposite shoulder. I let my eyes follow the
line it made, angling down her chest, between her boobs. I
shouldn’t have done that. But I’m just a man like any other, and as
such there are few things in the world that will draw my eye like a
good pair of boobs. Rachel Shaw definitely had a pair worth looking
at to go along with her cute ass.

Hell, I had to stop thinking like
that. I didn’t know the first thing about her.

She didn’t answer my question. She
glared at me, which she absolutely should have done since I was
staring shamelessly at her rack. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said,
pushing past me and heading toward the parking garage. “I have
somewhere to be.”

Since I was already on my way out to
the garage, I figured I’d walk with her. She was much faster than
me, faster than she should’ve been, considering how short her legs
were and how long mine were. I’m six foot four, but I couldn’t walk
at anything resembling a leisurely pace if I wanted to keep up with
her.

Which I did—I wanted to keep up with
her, keep talking to her, keep hearing that drawl.

I didn’t really understand it. Not at
all. I mean, she was adorable with her freckles and all, but there
ought to be a lot more involved in gaining my interest than
appearances, shouldn’t there? “Where do you have to be?” I asked
despite myself.

She slowed down enough to give me an
exasperated look, but she didn’t stop. “I have to pick my kids up
at school.”

Kids?
Shit
. I took a quick look down at her
hand, but there was no wedding ring. But kids just meant
complications—time spent with them, dealing with exes—and I had
enough complications of my own. Not that it should matter to me. I
wasn’t interested. I mean, not
really
. She wasn’t my type. Other
than her breasts. They were nice and perky still, even though she
had kids. Not too big, but more than enough to play
with.

I had to remind myself that I had no
business thinking about playing with her boobs. This business with
getting sent to Seattle was obviously fucking with my head. That
didn’t stop me from saying, “School doesn’t get out for a few
hours. Can I buy you lunch?” Okay, so maybe I was
interested.

She didn’t slow down. “No.”

“
Coffee, then? That won’t
take too long. There’s a place right down—”

“
Not gonna happen.” This
time, she stopped suddenly and spun around to face me. “I don’t
even know who you are. I’d appreciate it if you’d back off.” Then
she started her sprint-walking again.

We’d made it into the garage, and the
heels of her flats were clacking along on the concrete. She pulled
her keys out of her pocket, holding the long car key in front of
her like a weapon.

Every time she shot me down, my
interest only grew. How the hell did that work? I wasn’t used to
being rejected, not by women. Just by hockey teams lately. “Brenden
Campbell,” I said, holding out my hand, but she ignored it and kept
going. “What is it? You have a boyfriend or something? A
husband?”

Yeah, there was no ring, but it had to
be something like that.

She stopped in front of a gray Ford
Taurus that might have seen better days at one point but it was too
beat-up-looking at present for me to be sure. The backseat was
littered with toys and a couple of kids’ booster seats. She put the
key in the lock and turned it, then opened the door and got
in.

I put my hand on the door, stopping
her from shutting it. “Just let me take you out. One date.” One
date would be more than enough for me to work my charm on
her.

I had no clue what the look she was
giving me meant.

“
I don’t date,” she said
emphatically. Then she jerked the door out of my hand and closed
it, started the engine, backed out of her spot, and drove off. I
stood there watching her Texas license plate fade away into the
distance.

She didn’t date?

I could have handled
something along the lines of
I don’t date
athletes
, or maybe
I don’t date cocky bastards who don’t know how to take a
hint
. I could have figured out a way to
work around those excuses, to break down her defenses and get her
to see reason. But
‘I don’t
date
?’ No dating—period? That one
statement, complex in its simplicity, had me standing in the
parking garage scratching my head for a few minutes after she
left.

I finally started making my way up to
my car on the next level, but then I remembered I hadn’t gotten my
hotel information from Martha. I would rather get that now than
come back to the practice facility before heading out of town, so I
made my way back into the building.

When I got to the second floor and
arrived at her desk, Martha didn’t even look up from her computer.
Again. She just reached over to a letter tray, picked up an
envelope, and handed it to me. “Your hotel reservation and other
pertinent information is inside, Campbell. Any questions, just call
me.”

“
Thanks, Martha.” I started
to walk off, but then my curiosity got the better of me. I came
back to her desk. “Actually, I do have one question for you. Who’s
Rachel Shaw?”

For the first time in my experience
playing for the Storm, Martha stopped what she was doing and really
looked at me. “She’s my replacement. I’m finally going to retire
and travel with my husband. She starts training next
Monday.”

“
Yeah.” I nodded, trying
not to seem too interested. “Thanks, Martha.”

Next Monday. I’d be back in Portland
by then.

I was still
shaking with excitement by the time I picked
Maddie and Tuck up from school that afternoon. They were easy to
spot in the crowd of kids coming out of the building and swarming
toward me. Both my kids had my same bright-red hair, and they both
hated it just as much as I had when I was their age. Redheads get
picked on all the time, and being called “carrot top” is nowhere
near the worst of it. At least it hadn’t been back when I was in
school. I doubted things had changed much over the
years.

As soon as I saw them, I raised my
hand as high as I could and waved until they saw me.

Tuck ran straight at me and leaped
into my arms with a ginormous hug. He dropped his backpack at my
feet and let me lift him up into the air. “Guess what?” he said,
grinning so big that the two holes where his front teeth should
have been were gaping at me, one on top and one on bottom. “Two and
two is four!”

“
You’re right,” I agreed. I
kissed the freckles on his cheeks and mussed his hair as I set him
back on the ground. “Did Mrs. Christenson teach you
that?”

He wasn’t yet six, and Mrs.
Christenson was his second kindergarten teacher. I worried that
uprooting the kids in the middle of the school year would hurt
their education, but I worried more about what would have happened
if we had stayed.

“
Nah. I learnded it
myself.” He was still learning how verbs worked, how to conjugate
them properly. I loved how he would say things like
learnded
and
burnded
and
fakeded
. All too soon, he
was going to know the proper way to say these things. He was
growing up too fast. They both were. I sometimes wished I could
freeze certain moments in time and keep my kids just as they were
right then.

That wasn’t possible, though. They
were going to grow up and experience whatever life had to throw at
them. No matter how much I wanted to protect them from the ugliness
life might bring, I couldn’t. Not completely. That wouldn’t stop me
from trying, though.

I laughed and picked up his backpack,
putting the straps over his shoulders. Then I smiled at
Maddie.

She was hanging back like she did so
often lately. Maddie didn’t smile much anymore. She used to be
completely uninhibited like Tuck, giggling and saying silly things
and making me smile. A few years ago, that all changed.

At first, I thought she was just
getting older and it was normal. We all become a bit more
inhibited, a bit more guarded, as we age. But not like
Maddie.

I finally found out what was behind
the change about six months ago. I had come home from work one
night and relieved Jason so he could go home. Jason was my
ex-husband, Maddie and Tuck’s dad. We shared custody, and he would
stay at my apartment with the kids while I worked every night. By
the time I’d get home, they’d be asleep in bed, and he’d leave.
We’d been doing it that way for years, ever since the divorce, when
I had started working so I could provide for them.

But one night, when I opened the door
to Tuck’s room to check on him, he wasn’t asleep. That shocked me,
because Tuck was the soundest sleeper I’d ever known. He was crying
these big, huge, gut-wrenching sobs. At first I’d thought maybe
he’d had a nightmare. But it had been nothing as simple as that.
Jason had spanked him because Tuck had come to investigate the
cries coming from Maddie’s room. He’d gone to see what was wrong,
and he’d found his father in the act of molesting my little
girl.