When I Fall in Love (Christiansen Family) (13 page)

He laid his ingredients on the chopping board and started peeling. The sun was already high
 
—he’d slept in until seven this morning, at first opting out of a beach run for the luxury of lying in bed, opening his sliding door and listening to the waves.

In the wan morning light, with the furnace outside tempering the chilled hotel room air, for the first time since he’d arrived in Hawaii, the darkness had found him, burrowed inside.

Yes, he liked Grace way too much. So much that he found himself wishing for more. For a life beyond these three weeks. He’d like to look up in the stands and see her cheering as he stole the puck, made the score. Wanted to know she waited for him after a game, maybe with something homemade simmering on the stove.

He could even imagine a little girl with Grace’s blonde hair, her
pretty blue eyes . . . and that’s when he got out of bed and changed into his running shorts.

He fought the images with a cruel workout, then showered and found Grace already on the breakfast terrace reading. He wanted to throw her book in the ocean. Instead, he sat down with her and outlined the game plan for the day.

“We’ll start with some Hawaiian basics
 
—you already learned lomi-lomi and poke, poi and haupia. I’ll teach you manapua and loco moco, and then we’ll start mixing it up. The Honolulu Chop competition is all about using Hawaiian ingredients
 
—some everyday, like Spam
 
—”

“Spam?”

“They love it here. The Hormel company actually produced a limited-edition Hawaii can of Spam once.”

“Ew.”

“Also, I’ll teach you about alaea sea salt and saimin
 
—a sort of Chinese noodle. They’re very thin and quick cooking. There’s bound to be fresh pineapple and coconut on the menu, and any number of the exotic fruits, so we’ll go over those.”

“Wow, Max, I just have to ask one more time
 
—are you sure?”

He smiled because his voice was too eager and nodded.

Now, with manapua on the menu, she brought back her ingredients, started her yeast fermenting. “So do the guys on your team know you cook?”

He slid crushed garlic into a pan. “Uh. I don’t know.”

“You don’t have them over to cook for them?”

He reached for a carrot, began to peel it. “No. I mean, I’ve always been pretty serious about hockey on the ice, but after Owen left, I took it off the ice also. Started upping my workouts, my practice, and that meant no time for friends.”

“No time for friends?” She looked at him with what appeared to be real horror. “Then who will you eat with?”

You?
He didn’t say it, though, just julienned the carrots.

“Well, when we get back, you need to have at least one party. Invite your friends . . . or better yet, your family. I’m curious
 
—do your mean cooking skills run in the family? Was your dad a chef?”

He knew she hadn’t meant to walk into that one, so he kept his voice soft. “My mom was the chef. My dad passed away when I was thirteen.” He glanced up, giving her a smile that he hoped made it all right.

But she had an expression that could break a man’s heart if he let it. “Oh, Max, I’m so sorry. Please tell me he got to see you play hockey.”

Funny, she always knew just what to say to take off the sharp edge of his grief. Or regret. Or fear.

“He did. He was my biggest fan, I think.”

“Did he have cancer?”

He cut some green onion, added it to the pan. “No, he died of pneumonia.” A truth that helped him hide the real cause.

“Oh, that’s terrible.”

“I remember him coming to my game that last time. All bundled up in a blanket, sitting in a wheelchair. My uncle Norm rolled him right up to the glass, and every time I looked over, I saw him. I had a hat trick that game.”

“Wow. I’ll bet he was so proud.” She sifted in the rest of her ingredients.

“Told me that he expected me to be in the Hall of Fame someday.”

She began to stir. “You know, the US Hockey Hall of Fame
Museum is in Minnesota, in Eveleth. Only three hours from my house.”

“Then someday you’ll be able to visit my monument,” he said, only half-kidding.

She laughed. “What is it about men that they have to have monuments built to them?”

Was she kidding? “It means you left your mark on something. Then people know you were there.”

She looked up at him, her hands coated in dough as she kneaded. “Silly man, people know you were there because of the people you’ve loved.”

He looked away. “Of course. But it would be nice to be in the Hall of Fame.”

She kneaded the bread into a golden ball. Set it to rest. “I am sure, Max, that you will be remembered by a host of people beyond your fans.”

“I just want to be strong, like my dad. Have his kind of faith. It wasn’t until he died that I really thought about eternity, but that moment told me I needed help. On earth and in heaven.”

“I think we all need that moment in our lives, right? I figured out I needed Jesus when I was pretty little, and I’ve been following Him since. It helped to hold on to my faith when Owen got hurt. What about your family? Do you have siblings?”

“I have a brother, fourteen years older than me. He’s a big fan. Has a wife and a baby girl.”

“Sweet.”

“Mix together the wine, oyster sauce, soy, water, sugar, and cornstarch with your favorite whisk.”

“On it, boss.” She found another bowl. “So . . . what will you do with your half of the ten thousand dollars?”

“My half? It’s all going to you, Grace.” He poured oil into a pan and added the vegetables.

She set down the blended liquid. “No, it’s not. You get equal share of our win.”

He shook his head.

“Hey, I know. You could use it to come back here and teach. Or better, put a down payment on that vacation house.”

He added the mushrooms, kept frying. Didn’t look at her.

“What did you mean by ‘everyone who gets to have dreams should reach for them’? Don’t you get to have dreams, Max?”

He reached for her sauce and poured it in, stirring as it thickened.

“Every time you talk about the future, you act as if all you have is hockey. But there is more to life than that.”

He turned off the heat, removed the pan from the burner. “This has to cool while the bread rises.”

But she wasn’t moving. She stood so close, her eyes holding a sort of hypnotic power over him. “Max, did someone hurt you once? Jace said that you never date. Why?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Swallowed. “Let’s get some lunch.” He turned, but she put a hand on his arm.

“Max
 
—”

Fine. “I just don’t date, okay? I’m not interested in dating
 
—ever. It gets in the way of hockey and my goals
 
—”

“The Hall of Fame.”

“Yes, if you must know. This is all I am, all I have. And I’m not going to waste it falling in love, having a family
 
—it would only make me weak.”

She stared at him just as he knew she would, with the half-pitying, half-horrified expression that every woman projected when a man said he didn’t want a family.

He sort of felt it too. But he couldn’t go there, so he softened his tone. “I’m not heartbroken, Grace. I’m just focused. God gave me one job to do on this planet, and that is to play hockey. And I’m doing that to the very best of my ability. I don’t have time for a serious relationship, and I don’t want anyone to get hurt or get the wrong impression. So . . . I don’t date. And I’m perfectly fine with that.”

She nodded, the sadness still in her eyes. “I get it, Max. I really get it.” She slipped her arm through his. “I’m your swim buddy, after all.”

He wanted to wince but instead took her hand on his arm. “Yeah.”

See, this competition was exactly what he needed to help him draw the lines around their relationship. Keep it inside the boundaries.

They walked out of the kitchen, and he unknotted his apron, threw it in the bin. He turned just as she was unknotting hers. She lifted it over her head, but it tangled in her hair bun.

“Let me help,” he said and reached for the mess. As his hands worked the apron over her head, the bun fell out, her hair silky and soft. She pulled it the rest of the way free and turned as he tossed the apron into the bin.

He couldn’t breathe. Not when she was looking at him with those beautiful blue eyes, when he could still feel her hair cascading through his fingers.

Oh, she was pretty
 
—the kind of pretty that made a man just stop and drink it in. Want to spend every day with it. The sun had only darkened those adorable freckles.

Again, like on the plane, he had the strangest sense of falling.

“Ready? I’m dying for some ceviche,” she said, breaking the magic and heading for the door. Saving them both from disaster.

“I have to admit, I never thought I’d hear those words from your mouth.”

Amazingly, he sounded unfazed. Maybe he could pull off his words:
I don’t date. And I’m perfectly fine with that.

She turned at the door. “Oh, I’m full of surprises. And I’m just getting started, 9A.”

Then she winked. And Max was very afraid.

R
AINA NEEDED MEDICAL ATTENTION,
maybe a therapist to help her figure out this annoying attraction to the Christiansen men.

It wasn’t like she went looking for them. They motored right up to the door of her heart and knocked. But what was her problem that she kept letting them in? A girl who’d been burned, who’d watched her pride walk out the door in arrogant Owen Christiansen’s back pocket, should be a little more savvy. Should actually pay attention to the warning signs when her heart gave an extra thump at the sound of a motorcycle.

She shouldn’t even give Casper a second look after her behavior with Owen. In fact, she’d tried to put it out of her mind, tried not to think about the humiliation, the fact that she’d so completely stepped over her own rules, the ones she’d recently set in her desire
to start over. But could she help it if Casper could charm an audience with his laughter, his rousing anthem to victory over this upcoming oversize canoe race?

She hadn’t a clue what a dragon boat was, or why it might be so important to win the annual Deep Haven dragon boat race, but she felt the battle cry form deep in her chest. So when Casper had turned to her and said, “You’ll paddle for us, right?” she couldn’t help but nod. Really, what else could she say?

I’ve never touched a paddle? I can barely swim?
No, those words hadn’t breached her lips. Just a swift, enthusiastic nod.

Yep, she needed medication, or perhaps a quick, rousing slap to wake her up to her own terrible addiction to men with curly hair and mesmerizing blue eyes who rode motorcycles.

She refused to walk back into her too-vivid mistakes. But something about Casper’s chivalry, getting her out of the mud, not betraying her pizza thievery, had spoken to her. She could give him a chance not to break her heart.

A small, tentative chance.

Raina looked in the mirror at her outfit. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been wearing a pizza uniform, so certainly anything would be an improvement. She wore a yellow athletic shirt and a short black workout skirt. She’d pilfered Liza’s closet for swim shoes and a white tennis visor.

Yes, she appeared a bona fide athlete, a picture of paddling perfection.

Grabbing an over-the-shoulder bag, she shoved a towel in
 
—he did mention water, right?
 
—and headed toward the door.

Maybe she didn’t have to steer clear of the Christiansens just because she’d made one mistake. A mistake no one would ever have to know about. Sure, she’d mentioned Owen once when she’d
mistaken Casper for his brother, but she’d kept quiet after that. Maybe the Owen mistake could leave town with Owen.

“Hey, Raina, are you leaving?”

Her name from Liza’s mouth stopped her on the stoop, and she went back inside, where she found her aunt sketching at the kitchen table.

“Working on some new designs?” Raina said, leaning over her shoulder. Liza had built a tidy business and now shipped her one-of-a-kind pottery around the nation. She’d set up a kiln and throwing bench in the garage of her former home, an apartment above the Footstep of Heaven Bookstore and Coffee Shop. Now she displayed her work at the local gallery and art fairs and held occasional open houses in her quaint, story-and-a-half bungalow just off Main Street.

“Yes. How do you like this?” She showed Raina a rainbow of colors against a red clay background, the word
Abundance
etched into the rainbow.

“Beautiful.”

“I’m basing everything on John 10:10, the idea that Jesus came to give us life and to give it in abundance.”

Raina smiled. Liza had this way of working God into everyday conversation. As if she actually believed God cared about her. Raina didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Although if God really existed, maybe He did care about somebody like Liza, a good person who spent her time investing in other people. A person without Raina’s mistakes, her past. Yeah, maybe that verse worked for people like Liza who had earned the right to ask. To live abundantly.

A girl like Raina had to make her own future.

“I’m headed out to . . . uh, dragon boat practice, and I’ll be back
 
—”

Liza put the sketchpad down. “Since when do you dragon boat?”

“Since I got invited to be on the Evergreen Resort team.”

Liza nodded, a smile in her eyes. “The Christiansen team. Is Darek leading it this year?”

“Darek? No, it’s Casper.”

Liza went back to her drawing. “He’s a charmer, that one.”

Oh? Raina sat at the table, the smile in her day dimming.

“It’s not that he’s a womanizer. It’s just that, out of all the Christiansens, Casper inherited the Casanova gene. He’s dated a small population of Deep Haven girls, and although none of them would speak a word against him, I fear he’s left too many pining.”

Raina swallowed down the darkness pitching her throat.

Liza got up, went to the fridge, and opened it. “Not that he does it on purpose. I’ve seen that smile. Oh, boy, right?”

She gave a small nod as Liza pulled out a bag of baby carrots.

“Casper is a great guy, raised by this wonderful Deep Haven legacy family. I’m just saying . . . guard your heart, honey.”

Raina stared down at those silly swim shoes, wishing she wasn’t so needy, so terribly gullible. Wasn’t the girl who gave her heart away with the slightest hint of attention.

“But you’ll love dragon boating. It’s a blast.” Liza had put some carrots in a baggie and now handed them to her. “Just don’t go in the drink. It’s still pretty cold.”

Cold. Yes, well, she probably needed to put her emotions in deep freeze anyway. Just until they could find a cure for her addiction to heartbreak.

“Who else is on the team?” Liza sat down again.

“Um. This deputy guy, Kyle, and a cute girl named Claire
 
—”

“Ah, I’ll bet Jensen is paddling also. And Emma?”

Raina lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know.”

Liza leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. “But you will, Raina.
You’ll make friends, and you’ll see
 
—you belong in Deep Haven. We’re a family here, and it won’t be long before you’re one of us.”

Raina tried to answer with a smile.

But she hadn’t belonged anywhere, hadn’t had a family for so long, that she’d forgotten what it felt like.

And frankly, she wasn’t getting her hopes up.

Today he reclaimed the helm of his life.

Casper stood along the long, low pier that anchored his dragon boat in the Deep Haven harbor and imagined himself crossing the finish line, leading his boat of twenty paddlers to victory.

The sun sparkled on the deep-indigo water of Lake Superior, droplets turning to diamonds, the air cool and tangy with the scent of fresh-cut lawn. Seagulls cried greeting, and a hint of campfire smoke from the harbor campground tinged the air.

He wasn’t sure why winning this year’s race had surfaced such an inexpressible need in him, but he could almost taste the success.

Finally.

He went down to the boat, checking the seats, the drum. He’d already tested the rudder and repainted the head and tail last week, after he transferred the boat to the cement slab that had once held the resort’s garage. Thankfully, they’d stored the Evergreen vessel with other local dragon boats in community storage or they would have lost it to last year’s fire.

But it emerged, fierce and bold, armed with a fresh coat of paint and ready for victory.

Just like Casper.

He climbed out of the boat, gathered up the life jackets and
paddles, and set them on the grassy shoreline, then looked up at the sound of a couple car doors slamming.

Kyle and his wife, Emma, walked across the parking lot, dressed in shorts and T-shirts, water shoes. Behind them were Kyle’s parents, Eli and Noelle, similarly attired.

He’d dug deep for this year’s team
 
—it wasn’t easy to cajole twenty people into giving up their time to practice, especially on a Saturday. He’d cast the net wide, starting with his own family, then out to his father’s best pal, Nathan, and his family, and then to Jensen, Darek’s best man, and his wife. Then wider to Emma and Kyle, who played in Claire’s band. Finally, he’d roped in Pastor Dan and Joe Michaels and their wives.

Nineteen. He was short one paddler.

And then he’d come upon pizza girl Raina Beaumont. Eating
his
pizza, no less, and he had to smile at that.

She’d mustered up with them, joining in their plans to paddle to victory. He’d invited her to practice today, and a big part of him hoped she showed up.

And not just because he needed people. Yes, it might have something to do with her long, raven hair and golden-brown eyes, but also the way she seemed to adopt his enthusiasm for the race.

If he could inspire a stranger, maybe he could inspire the team.

Although she didn’t seem like a stranger. He’d seen her around town, and she’d looked familiar
 
—and then it came to him. The wedding.

He couldn’t dig out of his mind the memory of her words as he’d walked up to the car:
Oh, for pete’s sake, I know, okay? Go away, Owen!

Clearly Owen had done something stupid. Maybe even hit on her.

What Casper did know, however, was that he wasn’t Owen. And he would erase whatever bad impression Owen had left.

Casper heard more car doors slamming and saw more of his team arriving. Claire and Jensen, his parents with Amelia, Nathan and his wife and oldest two kids. Even Tucker Newman had shown up, taking a break from his snowboarding training.

He sat on the edge of a picnic table as they gathered round, found paddles and life jackets. No Raina. He tried not to let that bother him.

“Okay, gang. I know Darek isn’t here yet
 
—he’ll be back once he and Ivy return from their honeymoon. But he’s put me in charge of practice, and we need to get the hang of paddling together, so we’ll start without him. I know that many of you have done this before, but for some of you, it’s new.” He picked up a paddle. “Just a few paddling basics. You start with the reach. You’ll be extending your paddle as far as you can
 
—ideally ahead of the bench of the paddler in front of you. By doing this, you’ll maximize the amount of time you pull through the water, and thereby increase your force. The farther our reach, the stronger our pull.”

He demonstrated, reaching out. It was then that he saw Raina walk up, quietly, in the back. She had her pretty black hair in a ponytail, wore a cheerful yellow shirt. For a second, the sun broke through the clouds.

He cleared his throat. “Then you want to catch the water. This is done by digging in, like you would with a shovel, all the way to the top of the blade.”

Raina had picked up a paddle, was mimicking him.

“Now you pull back through the water. Keep your stroke as straight as possible.”

Again, he demonstrated, glancing back at her. She met his eyes but didn’t smile.

He offered one anyway.

“Keep the stroke short. This isn’t a canoe paddle action, but rather a quick stroke in front of the body. The power of your stroke is through the trunk action of your body, moving it from the reach, through your knee and thigh, and then a quick exit out of the water.”

He demonstrated again from his seated position on the table. “It’ll be easier to understand when we get into the boat. The key is to stay together, and that means we need to listen to our drummer.” He gestured to Emma, who held up a mallet.

“Let’s jump in the boat and see if we can get this.”

As his crew dispersed, he caught up to Raina. “Hey. I’m glad you made it.”

She gave him a cool smile. “Sounds fun.” But then she moved away, and he couldn’t quite ignore the unsettling stab of disappointment.

He put Noelle Hueston and Annalise Decker, his parents’ friends, at the bow, the first row. “You’ll set the pace. Listen to Emma’s call.”

“You just want us here because you think we’re the weakest,” Annalise said. She wore her blonde hair in a braid, under a hat that said
Decker Real Estate
.

“You won’t say that after five minutes of paddling at top speed,” he promised, but yes, he prayed they didn’t quit on him.