This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

Delay of Game

Copyright © 2014 by Catherine Gayle

Cover Design by Kim Killion, The Killion Group

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

For more information: catherinegayle.author@gmail.com

Dedication

Acknowledgments

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Roster

About the Author

Other Catherine Gayle Titles

For CG, AB, RC, AM, CM, DF, BH, PS, BG, CS, DM, RB, MF, KM, CH and so many, many others.

A huge thank you to Erin Bolen, my NHL rules guru.

Trademark Acknowledgment

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

NHL: National Hockey League

AHL: American Hockey League

LA Kings

Phoenix Coyotes

Vancouver Canucks

Pittsburgh Penguins

Washington Capitals

Portland Trail Blazers

NO MATTER HOW many of those stupid sticks I peed on, they all said the same thing in the end.

Which meant two things. One, I was royally fucked. (Oh, the irony.) And two, Daddy was going to absolutely murder me.

Granted, he would only kill me if he found out. Since I’d only learned just now that I was pregnant, I definitely didn’t have a game plan yet. I didn’t know what I would do, so I supposed that called for a third thing it meant, too—that I was scared out of my freaking skull and didn’t know what to focus on first. But whatever I decided on, I had at least a little bit of time. Daddy wasn’t the most observant person in the world, at least when it came to anything that wasn’t hockey related. I didn’t have to make any sort of rash decision that I might later regret, beyond the one I’d already made and couldn’t take back.

Anyway, with this, I could take the time to figure out what was best. If there was such a thing. I wasn’t convinced there was.

There wasn’t time right now to worry about it, though. My father was Scotty Thomas, a legendary coach in the National Hockey League who was currently finishing up his second season coaching the Portland Storm. Legendary because he’d started coaching when he was only twenty-six, after being forced to retire as a player early, after a slew of injuries. He’d coached his first NHL team to the Stanley Cup Finals. They’d lost in seven games, but in the twenty-eight years since then, he’d won the Cup four times as a head coach. That put him in some pretty rare company, and the Storm organization hoped he could lead them to the same end. It might not happen this year, but they were closer than they had been in a while…and a lot of that was because of him.

Today was the final game of the regular season, and since I was Daddy’s personal assistant—he’d officially hired me when I’d turned eighteen so he could justify paying me a salary—I had to get him out the door in time so we wouldn’t get stuck in traffic on our way to the Moda Center. Personal assistant was really just a glorified title meaning I made sure I got him where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there, but the pay was pretty damn good for an insanely easy job that I had already been doing for years, anyway.

With trembling hands, I shoved the pee sticks and their boxes and plastic wrappings and instruction booklets into a brown paper bag and crushed it all, then buried it in the trash can in my bathroom. For good measure, I took that trash bag out, put a fresh one in, and took the evidence down to the main trash can in the kitchen. No reason to leave that stuff lying around where our housekeeper might find it and tell Daddy. I doubted Rose would do something like that, but you just never know about people. Better to take precautionary measures than have to sort out the consequences later.

Oh. Haha. Yeah, that was kind of what was going on. Except I had taken precautionary measures. I’d been on the pill since I was sixteen, and I never did the deed without a condom. But there was that one night a little over a month ago, with Brad, when the condom broke. And the pill isn’t fail-safe.

Clearly.

It had been a bad date. It hadn’t even been good sex. Definitely not worth ending up a freaking out, shaking, preggers mess over.

I still don’t know why I’d slept with him. I mean, he was hot, sure. And he wasn’t a hockey player, so that was a huge bonus in his favor, at least with me. I’d spent my entire life around hockey players, almost constantly. I didn’t want to have a relationship with one of them beyond working for my father. I didn’t even want to have a one-night stand with any of them. So when a guy who didn’t play hockey asked me out, I tended to jump on it whether I was really attracted and interested or not.

That was what had happened with Brad. He’d hit on me at the gym. But this guy, the hot-but-boring non-hockey-playing biomechanical engineer who couldn’t find my clitoris with a detailed map, step-by-step instructions, and a compass? There was no chance in hell I was ever going to go out with him again after that night. I’d known it from the moment he’d pulled the car up in front of the Red Robin at Cascade Station.

Who takes someone to a cheesy chain restaurant like that for a first date? They weren’t even cheesetastic. They were the bad kind of cheesy, like those plain-Jane slices of processed crap they called American cheese.

But it had been so long since I’d had sex—real sex with a hot guy who took care of himself and his body, not a late-night date with my vibrator—that I’d gone along with him when he’d suggested we take things back to his place.

And the condom had broken.

And now I was pregnant.

Crap. I didn’t even have his phone number anymore. I’d deleted it from my cell almost the moment I’d gotten home. Not that I had a clue what I’d say to him even if I did have his number. Hey, Brad. Long time no talk. So, I know I brushed you off and all that, but guess what? You’re my baby daddy! Congratulations!

I tried to shake all that out of my head. Now wasn’t the time to freak. I had work to do.

“Daddy?” I called up the stairs.

No answer.

He was probably holed up in his office watching film of the Canucks, despite the fact that his cardiologist had told him he had to reduce his stress and get some rest when he could. This would have been a perfect time for the whole rest-and-relaxation thing—an afternoon off before a game. All of his players were resting right now, taking their pre-game naps. But not Daddy.

I headed down the hall and knocked on the open door, trying not to let myself get upset about it. That wouldn’t do either of us any good.

He looked up. “Time already?”

“Yeah. You’d better get your suit on so we aren’t late.”

Daddy paused the video he was watching and got up from his desk, grabbing the cup of coffee sitting beside him.

“Have you checked your blood pressure today?” I asked. I didn’t like to nag, but someone had to or he’d never do some of the things he needed to do. If it wasn’t directly related to coaching hockey, he was generally oblivious. I’d taken over looking after him when my mother abandoned us to run off with one of the players on Daddy’s team years ago. I’d only been ten, but I had done a better job of looking after him in all the intervening years than she’d ever done. By now, thirteen years later, it was second nature to me.

“I’ll do it once we get to the arena,” he promised.

“Your doctor says you need to check it two or three times a day, Daddy. And you’re supposed to reduce your stress and get more rest. And drink more water and less coffee.” I took the mug away from him and headed back to the kitchen so I could dump its contents down the drain.

He followed along behind me, grumbling half-heartedly the whole way. “The playoffs start in three days. How do you suppose I’m going to be able to do any of those things right now?”

I arched a brow at him from the other side of the kitchen island. “Drink less coffee and replace it with water. Then you’ll sleep more. That’ll kill a few birds.”

“And I’ll have more stress because I won’t be as prepared as I need to be for the first round because I was too busy sleeping.”

I sighed. “I don’t want to argue with you about this right now, Daddy.”

“I know, Sara.” He sounded defeated. He came around and kissed my forehead. “I’m trying to do better.”

If I’d been anyone else, he would have been yelling at me right now. I knew that. It was just one more thing I was trying to help him stop doing, because it was all going to add up and kill him. He might drive me crazy sometimes, but I wasn’t ready to lose him. He was my only family. He’d given me the only job I’d ever had. And now I was pregnant and single and scared shitless.

I couldn’t lose him now.

I nodded and washed his coffee cup, then grabbed a towel from the bar under the sink to dry it. “I know you are. Go get dressed.”

While he did that, I put together a snack for him—peanut butter on a toasted multigrain bagel, a banana, and low-fat yogurt with a serving of chia seeds stirred in.

When he took it from me, he scowled at the little black seeds in his yogurt. “What are you trying to kill me with now?”

“Doc suggested them for your cholesterol. They’re chia seeds. Full of omegas and fiber and protein—all the good stuff you’re supposed to be eating every day.”

Doc wasn’t my father’s heart doctor. He was Dr. Larry Mitchell, the head doctor of the Portland Storm. Doc’s focus was mainly on keeping the players in peak physical condition, and his background was more in sports injuries than the heart, but I figured all doctors had to know a thing or two about heart health after all those years in medical school. He was the only person involved with the team I’d talked to about it. Daddy still wasn’t happy that I’d gone to Doc at all, but I needed to know everything I could about how to help keep my father alive, and it couldn’t hurt to have someone else aware of the situation—someone who would be around him when I wasn’t.

Daddy lifted a brow.

“You can’t taste them, so don’t give me a hard time about this. I already tried them to see.” I grinned so he would know I was teasing him. “Just eat it, and let’s get out of here.”

“You spend too much time worrying about me. Who worries about you?”

“You do,” I answered, quickly brushing off yet another not-so-subtle hint that he wanted me to be dating someone. Ever since the issues with his heart had cropped up, he’d been trying to convince me to get involved with some guy or another. It felt like he was trying to be sure I wouldn’t be alone once he was gone. My focus was on making sure he wasn’t gone anytime soon, though. “And I get paid to worry about you, in case you forgot,” I added.

“Can’t forget that since I sign the checks.” He finally did what I asked without any more complaints, and then we made our way to the arena. When we arrived, I went with him to his office for a minute. His assistant coaches, Mattias Bergstrom and Daniel Hamm, were already there doing whatever it was Daddy expected them to do before games.

I kissed my dad on the cheek and said, “Remember to check your blood pressure,” and then I left him to do his thing. I don’t think he or anyone else would ever say boo to me if I stayed down in the coaches’ offices or headed into the locker room for a bit to say hi to the guys, but it was habit for me to go straight up to the owner’s box and hang out with the players’ wives and girlfriends during the games. I’d been doing that since I was a baby, so I didn’t see any reason to change my routine now.

On my way out the door, though, I bumped into Cam Johnson, one of my father’s players. He reached out and caught my arms, gently steadying me. “Sorry, Sara. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Jonny was a big guy, a fighter. He was six foot four and towered over my five foot seven frame, but his height wasn’t the truly intimidating thing about him. The guy was 240 pounds or more of solid muscle. The suit he was wearing only emphasized his broad shoulders and beefy arms, and the buzz cut he always had made it easier to see the muscle even coming down his neck. Who the hell had a muscled neck? How did he even build muscle there?

The really pathetic thing was, I was crazy attracted to him. Had been for a while. I didn’t want to be because he was a hockey player, of all things, and I didn’t want to be with a hockey player. And he was one of Daddy’s players. And that meant he was completely and totally off limits. But every time I was around him, I got these little tingles of awareness.

I hated those tingles. I wanted to throw them into the pit of Mount Doom like they were the One Ring. Mainly because I only felt them when I was around Jonny, never when I was around anyone else. I’d hoped I might feel them with that guy Brad. Same hair. Close to the same height. Fit, but nowhere close to as built as Jonny—but who was?—but it was no good. No tingles. Bad sex.

And now a baby on the way.

Fuck me.

The tingles were going into overdrive right now, since Jonny was so close to me. He had his hands on my upper arms and I could smell his amazing cologne, and I didn’t want to move a muscle other than to maybe lean in a little closer so I could sniff his collar, which would be totally weird and not even remotely all right.

Jonny gave me a concerned look. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

Oh yeah. He’d asked me a question. I totally spaced on that, thinking about neck muscles and those damn tingles. “No, I’m fine. Sorry. I was off in another world somewhere.”

“Okay.” He dropped his grip on my arms, and I wanted to sob. Then he took a step back from me and grinned—at least it was as close to a grin as this guy ever showed. “You look nice tonight. Did you do something different? A new top or something?”

“I…” What? In all the encounters I’d ever had with Cam Johnson, that might be the most he’d ever spoken to me, and he wanted to know if I’d worn a new shirt tonight? Where the hell had that come from? The only thing different about me was that I had learned I was an incubator for a tiny human. “No, nothing’s different,” I hedged. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone about that, and definitely not this guy.

He just nodded and backed away some more, letting his gaze travel all the way down my body and cause a shit-ton more tingles. “Well, you look nice. Maybe it’s your shoes. Those are really nice shoes. I’ve got to go talk to your dad now. See ya later.”

I nodded and spun on my Manolo Blahniks, desperate to get away from him so I could make the tingles stop. Come to think of it, I’d only worn these shoes a few times. Weird that he’d notice something like that. I shook it off and hurried up to the owner’s box as I’d intended to do when I’d first left Daddy’s office.

Dana Campbell—team captain Eric Zellinger’s fiancée and his best friend Brenden Campbell’s kid sister—was the only other person up there when I arrived, which was utterly perfect.

Dana was one of the best friends I’d made since Daddy had come to Portland to coach, and she was the primary reason I’d spent as much time around Jonny lately as I had. He had taught her some self-defense techniques. They still worked out together sometimes, and she liked having him around, so she always invited him along if we were doing something that wasn’t just the girls. Anyway, talking to her would help me get my mind off all the Jonny-tingles and baby daddy crap going through my head.

I plopped down in the seat right next to hers. “Let’s talk wedding details. I need something to make me smile.”

“How about this?” Dana tucked a curl of her long, blond hair behind her ear and leaned closer to me. “Brenden and Rachel agreed to do a double wedding. We’re going to have it in Providence this summer so Eric’s mom doesn’t have to fly.”

Yep, a double wedding was just what the doctor ordered. I pulled both my legs up so I was sitting cross-legged on my seat and settled in to dish.

ULTIMATELY, THE RESULT of tonight’s game wouldn’t matter.

This was game eighty-two of the NHL’s eighty-two game season. My team, the Storm, was playing the Vancouver Canucks. No matter which team won this game, and no matter what happened in any of the other thirteen games going on around the league on this final day of the regular season, we already knew our fate and the Canucks already knew theirs.

The Storm would finish in third place in the Pacific Division. We were going to the playoffs, our first postseason appearance in five long years. I’d been here for four of them after spending a few years playing for the Baby Storm—what I’d always called the Seattle Storm, Portland’s minor league affiliate. I knew better than most how long overdue a trip to the dance was around here.

Also regardless of tonight’s outcome, the Canucks would finish in second place in the division. They had gotten into the postseason more often than not in recent years, but they had never won it all.

Those positions meant we would face each other in the first round.

So in a few days’ time, the two teams playing each other tonight would play again—and it would be all-out war for about a week or two. Best of seven. Winner moves on in the toughest tournament in all professional sports to compete for the Stanley Cup. Loser gets to call it a summer early and go home to work on the perfect golf swing.

The only things that mattered now were setting expectations and establishing a tone. We may not have gotten into the playoffs in the last five years, but we had no intention of going down easy, and they planned to make us pay for every inch of ice we wanted to take. For both teams, tonight was all about sending a message about what was to come in the first round.

The matchup would be interesting from a sports network perspective—the perennial playoff contender who had never won the big prize against the team made up of young players hungry to prove themselves and a few aging vets hoping for another shot at the Cup before they retired. It should make for an intriguing series from those storylines alone, but there was a lot more at play than just that.

The season series between our two teams had grown more and more contentious with every game. We didn’t like them; they didn’t like us. That went back pretty much twenty years or so, well before any of the players on the ice were in the league yet. Sometimes it seemed like we’d loathed each other since even before the Storm came into existence. It was a mutual, decades-old hate fest, and things had gotten progressively nastier each time we’d faced them over the course of the current season. The fact that we would have to play an entire seven-game series against them in just a few days had only served to intensify that hatred, if that were even possible.

It was still a scoreless game in the third period, and it had been filled with more than just a few hard—not to mention dirty—hits. On both sides. There was no pretending our play hadn’t skirted the line of legality just as much as theirs had. Anyone who tried to argue otherwise was full of shit.

But what was happening right before my eyes went beyond merely hitting.

I didn’t see what started it—something in the corner behind our net, where several guys from both teams had converged, it seemed—but I heard a bunch of angry shouting, and a scrum broke out in the blink of an eye. Each of our five guys paired off with a Canuck. Everyone in the building got on their feet—both benches, all the fans. No one could sit with that kind of tension on the verge of seriously boiling over. Our goaltender, Nicklas Ericsson, skated away from his crease and off to the corner so he couldn’t get dragged into the fray.

That made me breathe a little easier. Nicky had already missed quite a bit of action this season with a concussion. And really, the last guy you ever want fighting in hockey is your goaltender. The more distance he put between himself and all the shit going down on the ice, the better. That was the way I looked at it, at least.

Every guy on our bench was yelling and tapping his stick on the boards. The coaches paced behind us, screaming at the refs to get the melee under control and cheering our boys on just like the rest of us were.

But then the shit hit the fan.

One of the guys in visitors’ white took Andrew Jensen down hard. Jens was our number one defenseman and my road roommate this year. He wasn’t a fighter, but he had answered the call out there just like any of our boys would do in a pinch. Now he was flat out on the ice and not moving a muscle.

All the guys on the bench went berserk when we saw Jens on his back like that. The linesmen were trying to deal with a couple of the fights that were heading out toward center ice. One of the refs was down on the ice with Jens, and the other was trying to help Eddie Masters, our head trainer, get to Jens since it looked like he was in some serious trouble. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the stretcher come out for him, and that was something you never wanted to see. It almost always meant extremely bad news.

With all that going on, though, no one was doing a goddamned thing about the asswipe in white who’d just taken out our best fucking defenseman.

“Stay on the fucking bench,” Scotty Thomas yelled from close behind me. “No one leaves this bench or you’ll never see another fucking minute of ice time as long as I’m the coach here.”

The assistant coaches were shouting similar shit at us. They just wanted to be sure we all followed the rules. Back in the day, the NHL had experienced issues with bench-clearing brawls, so harsher punishments were instituted now for anyone who left the team’s bench in a situation like this. Automatic suspensions and fines for the player. Fines and possible suspensions for the coaches. Even heftier fines for the teams.

We all knew the rules.

I knew the fucking rules.

But I also knew it was my job to protect my teammates. I could score a goal here and there. I was a serviceable fourth-liner and penalty killer and I could move up the lineup when they needed me to, but I wasn’t going to kid myself. One of the main reasons the Storm kept me on the payroll year after year was because I didn’t let fuckers like that take out the star players on my team. Sometimes doing what was right was more important than following the fucking rules. I knew it. The coaches knew it. The league knew it. Everyone in the whole damn building fucking knew it.

Center Antoine Gagnon was holding his own with a guy who had a reputation as a fighter, much like I did. Good on the kid. Gags was a second-year guy, really young, who was still trying to establish himself as a regular. I’d never thought of him as a fighter before, though.

Keith Burns, our other defenseman on the ice for this shift, had his guy pinned against the glass, and they were both trying to catch their breath after a heavy bout. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went another round before the linesmen got to them to break things up. I hoped for Burnzie’s sake they didn’t. We needed him able to play, especially if Jens was going to be out for a chunk of time.

David Weber was in a big tilt with his guy—another heavyweight fighter for the Canucks—but Webs was a wily veteran who’d been in more fights in his career than just about anyone else on the team other than me. I didn’t need to worry about him.

Henrik Markusson had never even been in more than a shoving match before, though, at least not to my knowledge. Hank wasn’t holding up well. The guy he’d paired off with was pummeling him with one right hook on top of another. I could only hope Hank wouldn’t get hurt like Jens had. We couldn’t afford to lose either one of them right now with the playoffs being right around the corner. Someday soon I needed to take Hank aside and give him a few fighting pointers just in case he got stuck in a situation like this again. When a line-brawl starts, you don’t always get to pick which players are out on the ice for it.

But fighting tips would have to wait. This was happening in the here and now. I made notes in my mind, taking down numbers of the guys in white who would need to be dealt with when I finally got the chance—and I would get my fucking chance, since we were going to have a whole playoff series against each other starting in a few days.

But then I saw it: a streak of white, out of the corner of my eye, heading straight in Nicky’s direction. The same fucker who’d laid Jens out was going for my goddamn goaltender.

Nicky didn’t have to fight him, at least not according to the rules in place. He could refuse. But if this asswipe started throwing blows, what the hell was Nicky supposed to do? He would have to protect himself, and then he’d be fighting, and that was not something I could let happen.

“Stay the fuck where you are. No one leaves this fucking bench.”

I heard Scotty’s shout, and I knew he meant for me—for all of us, really—to stay put and be good little soldiers.

“That means you, Jonny,” Bergy bellowed from right by my ear. “Keep your ass on the bench. Don’t you fucking put a skate over the boards.”

Yeah, that one was definitely directed straight at me and no one else. Bergy knew me well since he’d still been playing when I came into the league. I actually fought him once, so he knew exactly what I was. Hockey player. Fighter. Some people called me a goon. I wasn’t a goon, but I couldn’t sit back and let certain things happen.

Things like this fucker making a beeline for my goaltender.

I felt Bergy’s hands on the back of my jersey, trying to physically restrain me and keep me on the bench.

I didn’t give a shit.

All that mattered at that moment in time was that it was my job to protect my teammates.

So that’s exactly what I did.

BY THE TIME the rest of the team left the ice following our two to nothing loss, I’d already taken off all my gear, showered, and put my suit on to get out of there.

I’d been kicked out of the game for what I’d done, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone, me least of all. That’s what happens when you blatantly disobey the rules, jump over the boards in the middle of a fight, and beat the shit out of the guy who’d just taken out your top defenseman and was on his way to do the same to your goaltender.

I was okay with the consequences of my actions. I’d known going in what they would be, so I couldn’t complain about any of it after the fact—not even the automatic ten-game suspension I was going to have to serve.

One thing I hadn’t considered was the timing of it, though. This wasn’t a good time for a suspension, not that there is ever a good time for one. But this really was bad timing with the playoffs starting in a few days. We needed all hands on deck, but I’d have to sit out of the first ten playoff games we were in. If the team got eliminated before we played ten games in the postseason, the suspension would carry over to the regular season next year.

Either way, I was going to be sitting in the press box for a long time, and that was not where my team needed me to be. They needed me on the ice. They needed me in the locker room between periods. They needed me doing all the things I’d done all season, but now I couldn’t. I’d helped them out in one way, but I’d royally fucked them over in another way. But there was no time for regrets, even if I’d felt any.

Scotty would be even more pissed off at me than usual. I knew that. I was prepared to let him yell as long as he needed to in order to get it out of his system. I was prepared to sit in our general manager Jim Sutter’s office tomorrow and hear how disappointed he was in me, even though I hated that worse than anger. It made me feel like I was letting my mom or one of my sisters down.

I’d have to try not to let Jim’s disappointment get under my skin too bad. Especially since I knew I’d done the right thing, even if the right thing was against the rules.

What really bothered me was the idea that I might have let my teammates down. We were a band of brothers, however cheesy that might sound, and now I couldn’t be out there holding up my end of the deal for a while. Granted, Nicky would still be able to play—and he was more important to the team’s success than I was. That was the whole reason for me doing what I’d done, wasn’t it? To keep him healthy because we absolutely needed him in the playoffs if we were going to have a chance in hell of doing well.

Gradually, the boys trickled into the locker room. No one said much. We’d stood up for ourselves, and we’d protected each other out there as best we could, but the Canucks had still delivered us a walloping on the scoreboard. That wasn’t exactly the message we’d intended to send leading into our first-round meeting.

I was sitting in my stall as they came in. They tapped me on my legs with their sticks as they went past me, and a few of them—Webs, Eric “Zee” Zellinger, and Brenden “Soupy” Campbell—gave me a little whack on the head or the shoulder with their gloves.

Those were signs of respect around here, not disappointment. It was their way of thanking me for doing what needed to be done. I nodded to acknowledge them. They got it. They might still be disappointed in me because of the suspension, but they knew why I’d done what I had. There wasn’t any need for me to say anything. When Nicky passed me, he held out a fist for me to bump before heading to his stall.

In the end, they hadn’t taken Jens to the hospital. He’d come to on the ice, and they’d carted him off on the stretcher so they could evaluate him. Nothing was broken. He said he didn’t have any headaches or anything like you’d expect with a concussion, but he was still going to have to go through the league’s concussion protocol since he’d been knocked out cold on the ice. That meant he’d be out at least a week, but if he was lucky, it wouldn’t be any longer than that. Not like me.

Bergy and Hammer, our two assistant coaches, came into the room after the boys did. Bergy caught my eye, his lips pressed into a thin line. A quick jerk of his head was the only response he gave me, letting me know his take on the situation. It wasn’t all that long ago that he’d been a player, too. He may not be happy with me, but he understood. Hammer didn’t acknowledge me in any way.

Scotty was the one who would be livid. Because of what I’d done, he was going to be automatically suspended, too. The commissioner would rescind his suspension, of course. That was what they always did in these cases, unless they thought that the coach had sent the player out there. If there had been any cameras focused on the bench, and I was positive there had been, then they would have caught him yelling for us to stay put, and they would have captured the fact that Bergy was trying to physically restrain me. There was no reason to think that Scotty’s suspension would be upheld. His fine would, as well as the one for the team, but the fines weren’t that bad. Not when you made two million a year like Scotty did or had a team owner like Jackson Engels, who had money seemingly growing out of his ears.

Sure enough, when Scotty came through the big double doors into the locker room, his red-faced glare was directed straight at me. He hadn’t been physically exerting himself on the ice like the boys had, but his forehead and neck were covered in enough sweat to make it seem as though he had just run a marathon.

“You!” he shouted. He marched across the room, even stomping over the team logo in the middle of the floor—sacred ground in any NHL locker room that’s never supposed to be walked on—and not stopping until he was standing right in front of me. I could feel his wrath as much as hear it. “What in the name of fuck were you thinking? You fucking directly disobeyed me—all of the fucking coaches—and you fucking got yourself suspended.”

With his right hand, he reached up and rubbed his jaw, like all his shouting was causing him pain. And his breathing was coming in short gasps, but that didn’t stop him. It only slowed him down for a minute.

I kept my trap shut and took it. He was the coach. He had to get it out of his system, and I had to deal with it. That’s just how it goes. But he seemed even more worked up than normal, and that was my fault.

“Ten fucking games! Automatic! A fucking appeal won’t do any fucking good on something like this. You got—”

Scotty had just been getting up a good head of steam when all of a sudden he stopped screaming at me, flexed the fingers of his left arm, tensing and relaxing them over and over again, and swayed like he was going to pass out.

“Scotty?” Bergy zipped across the room and pulled Scotty’s arm around his shoulder. “Get Doc in here right now!” he shouted, trying to ease our head coach backward and to a chair.

“On it.” Hammer blew through out of the room, and half the team was on their feet trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and what to do.

“I’m… I’m fine,” Scotty argued, but anyone could tell that he wasn’t anything close to fine. He wasn’t breathing normally. He was sweating even more profusely than he had been at first. And the look in his eyes was terrifying—wild and darting from side to side as if he couldn’t slow them down or focus on anything.

Within seconds, Dr. Mitchell burst into the room with the arena’s emergency medical team on his heels. They wheeled a stretcher in, plus some other cart loaded with medical paraphernalia. They forced Scotty to lie down on the stretcher, everyone crowding around to work on him until none of the guys on the team could see him or what was going on.

What the fuck had I done? I knew I’d pissed him off, but now it looked like I’d gotten him so upset that he had a fucking heart attack or something. Was that what this was? Was this what a heart attack looked like?

“Sara,” I croaked out, but I didn’t say her name loud enough that anyone else could hear me over all the voices of the men dealing with our coach. But shit, I didn’t know if Scotty was literally dying in front of our eyes. I knew fuck all about what was going on, other than that I was the one who’d caused it, but his daughter ought to be here. She ought to know. She ought to be with him.

I cleared my throat and tried again. “Sara. Someone needs to get Sara.”

Hammer came back through the double doors just as I said it. “Jim’s on it, and he’s heading in here, too. He’ll be here in a minute. They both will.”

Doc’s voice filtered through the room and reached me as he spoke to the EMTs. “He’s having a cardiac event.”

He was having a heart attack. I slumped down on the bench in front of my stall, unable to process it all. A few of the other guys had heard Doc, too, and the whole room was filled with rumbles as one guy told the next and everyone questioned what was going to happen. I could only stare.

I’d just killed Scotty. I’d just killed Sara’s father. He was the only family she had, and I’d just gone and given him a heart attack, and now he might be fucking dying while all I could do was sit there and watch, and she was going to be all alone in the world.

Bergy whistled to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s stay out of their way. Everyone step back and let the professionals do their jobs.”

The boys backed away, slowly taking off their pads and skates and the rest of their gear. I still hadn’t moved a muscle. I was too stunned by what I’d just witnessed to do anything more than remember to breathe.

They’d put an IV in Scotty’s arm and hooked him up to monitors and God only knew what the fuck else, and they were starting to roll his stretcher out of the locker room. But Sara still hadn’t arrived from the owner’s box. With all the fans trying to leave the arena, that could easily take several more minutes while she tried to fight her way through the exodus.

“Sara’s not here yet,” I said. “Doc, you have to wait for her.”

He didn’t even slow down or look over at me. “We can’t wait. He’s got to get to the ER right now.”

Right. Because I’d just caused my fucking coach to have a goddamn heart attack and he might be dying. Fuck. “What hospital are you taking him to? I’ll bring her.” I was already dressed. I could leave as soon as she got down here.

“Kaiser,” he shouted over his shoulder, and the doors closed behind them.

Hammer and Bergy were talking, trying to calm the boys down even though you could tell they were just as worked up as all of us were. Hammer especially. He’d worked alongside Scotty for more than a decade. Each time Scotty had been hired by a new team, he’d insisted that Hammer had to be one of his assistant coaches. Bergy had played for them for several years, too, and had been coaching with them for two seasons now.

Whatever they were saying completely went in one ear and came out the other with me. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think about anything but Doc’s words: He’s having a cardiac event.

Sara came running through the doors, wild-eyed and on the verge of tears with her long brown hair flying behind her.

I didn’t wait for Hammer or Bergy, or even Jim, to tell me I could go. “Come on,” I said to her. “They’re taking him by ambulance already.” I took Sara by the elbow and guided her out to my truck. I’d fucked this up; now I had to find some way to make it right.

“IS HE HAVING a heart attack?” I asked Jonny. He was walking so fast that I practically had to run to keep up, which wasn’t easy to do in my pumps. Why the hell had I even worn them to a game? It was just the other girls and a bunch of hockey players who would see me at the Moda Center. Who was I trying to impress? “Please tell me he was just having some sort of panic attack, something from stress. Not a heart attack.”

Jonny didn’t slow down for a second. “I’m sure the doctors can explain things to you better than I can.”

“I already know he’s having issues with his heart,” I said. “Just fucking tell me, Jonny.”

We’d gone through the glass doors leading to the parking garage already, but he still didn’t slow down. That only made my anxiety increase. Why was he in such a hurry? Why had they taken Daddy in the ambulance without waiting for me? They knew I was here. They knew I was on my way down. I’d left the owner’s box the second Jim had called Rachel and told her something was happening with my father.

Jonny finally came to a stop in front of his pickup truck, a huge monstrosity of a thing, and opened the door for me. Even with my pumps, he had to give me a boost to climb up into the beast. Once I got into the seat, he stared at me with his always-serious hazel eyes, not saying a word.

“It is a heart attack,” I whispered. Tears stabbed at the backs of my eyes, and I tried to blink them away. If it wasn’t something to do with Daddy’s heart, Jonny would have just told me as much. He wouldn’t stand there staring at me like that—silent. His silence told me everything.

“I’ll get you there as quick as I can. They only left a few minutes ahead of us.” Jonny shut my door and raced around to his side to climb in. He managed it a lot easier than I had, and he was backing out of his spot and driving us away in no time.

I brushed the back of my hand over my eyes to dry the tears. I couldn’t cry. Not now. I needed to hold it together until I knew whether there was a fucking good reason to cry or not. But I couldn’t seem to make the stupid tears stop. It was probably because of my stupid hormones. Stupid, fucking pregnancy hormones. I’d been all kinds of stressed out and easily upset lately, and it pissed me off. I wanted it to just stop, but I was afraid it was only going to get worse from here.

Jonny kept giving me these worried glances while he drove, so I tried even harder to buck up and get myself together. I didn’t need him freaking out because I was crying. It wasn’t any use, though. Every time I tried to blink back some tears, new ones pressed to the surface. Fucking tears. Fucking tears and fucking hormones.

A few minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot by the ER and screeched into a parking spot. I still had those damn tears in my eyes, and I fumbled with my seat belt so much that he had to come around to open my door and unlatch the stupid thing for me. He didn’t even wait for me to attempt to climb down; he put both hands on my waist and lifted me out of his truck, setting me on my feet in front of him. Then he took my hand in his and led me into the ER lobby. It was as though he was in an even bigger hurry to get there than I was.

Doc met us as soon as we got through the automatic sliding doors, detouring us to the waiting room. “We paged his cardiologist on the way. He met us as soon as we got here and took your dad back, but you can’t go in there right now.”

“He’s having a heart attack? For real this time?”

“I think so.”

“You think?” Think wasn’t good enough for me. I needed to know.

“His heart wasn’t beating in a normal sinus rhythm by the time we got him into the ambulance. We had to shock his heart—”

“Oh God.” The room was spinning, and I was suddenly glad that Jonny had a firm grip on my hand. “He’s going to die, isn’t he? I can’t—”

“Slow down, Sara,” Doc said. “We shocked his heart, and that brought it back into a normal rhythm. He was alert and aware the whole time, and he got immediate care from the cardiologist who already knows his history. I can’t say with certainty that what he was experiencing was a heart attack, but he was having a cardiac event of some sort. We’ll know more once they’ve run some tests, and then we can come up with a game plan.”

“So he’s not going to die?” I needed someone to tell me that or I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

“You know I can’t promise you that, especially since I don’t know for sure everything that’s going on in his body. But he’s got a much better chance of coming out of this and living a long time than he might have if he’d been at home. Other than being in a hospital, a hockey arena is one of the safest places he could have been. We had doctors on site, EMTs, a defibrillator—everything we needed to get him the care he needed as soon as possible.”

“Come on,” Jonny said. He tugged me over to a row of chairs. “You should sit. It may be a while before we hear anything else.”

I let him ease me down into a chair. He sat next to me, still holding my hand. I didn’t want him to let go of me. His hand, his immense presence, helped me feel safe at a time when I felt as though the rug was being pulled out from under me. He was keeping me upright. He was keeping me steady.

“Exactly,” Doc agreed. “And remember, there’s no reason to worry until they tell us there’s a reason to worry.” He excused himself and went to talk to the others who had come to the hospital with the ambulance.

Except there was every reason to worry. Daddy’s cardiologist had already told him that if he didn’t make changes, a heart attack was likely. He’d said Daddy needed to make those changes before it was too late. Had we already crossed that barrier into too late territory? Had he done too much damage to his heart?

We had a prolonged silence, Jonny and I, during which I ran through a litany of things in my head that I could have done better to make certain my father lived a longer life. I could have forced him to quit eating red meat; I could have started making changes to his diet years ago, once I started noticing he was gaining some weight; I could have made him go to see a counselor to reduce his stress once I’d noticed it was getting out of hand. There were a thousand things I should have done that I hadn’t.

“I’m sorry, Sara,” Jonny said, interrupting my mental berating of myself. His voice was soft. He was always quiet when he spoke, and him speaking much at all was pretty rare, at least around me. Until today, it seemed. Maybe he talked more when I wasn’t around, but I couldn’t know that.

I shook my head. “There’s nothing you have to be sorry about. Daddy did this to himself.”

“No, I—” He stopped so abruptly that I looked up to see why. He was staring at me with those damn serious eyes, big hazel orbs full of words that refused to come to his lips. “Just know that I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen.”

Color me confused, but I didn’t get a chance to sort out what he meant by that. As soon as the words left him, the door opened and the waiting room was flooded by pretty much everyone involved with the Storm—players, coaches, wives, girlfriends, trainers, equipment guys, even some of the kids—all of them here to wait for news about Daddy and to keep me from going insane. Or at least to try to do that. I doubted it would be any use trying because I was pretty close to having crossed that line already.

Jonny let go of my hand and went over to the coffeepot next to the wall. As soon as he left his chair, Dana took it. Laura Weber, who was like a den mother with all the players’ wives and girlfriends, sat on my other side. Other women filled in around me—Laura’s daughter, Katie, and Rachel Shaw, who pulled her little girl, Maddie, onto her lap. These were my girls. They were the ones who were always there for me, who had become my Portland sisters in this crazy life.

They didn’t even have to say anything; I just needed them to be there with me.

I was surprised when Noelle Payne joined us. Noelle was new to our group. She was dating Liam Kallen, a guy we called Kally who’d only joined the team about six weeks ago, at the trade deadline. We’d tried to welcome her in, but Noelle was a little different. I’d always thought of her as a hippie-dippie kind of chick. Not that I didn’t like her. I just didn’t really know her yet.

That was why it surprised me when not only did she come over to sit with us but she plopped down on the floor by my feet, her long, flowery skirt making a pool around her.

“He’s not going to die,” she said. “I would feel it…”

I could only stare at her and blink in my confusion. She would feel it? What did that mean?

But Jonny came back over, holding out a bottle of water. “The coffee looked stale,” he said.

“Thank you.” I took it and held it in my hands.

He nodded and walked away since my girls had taken his seat. I followed him with my eyes. He found a quiet spot in the corner, near Zee and Soupy and a few of the other older guys on the team, the leadership group. He didn’t sit, though. He stood with his back against the wall, this big, hulking, solid presence. And he stared at me.

“Did he tell you?” Laura asked. “God, he probably blames himself.”

I sipped from my bottle and glanced at her in question. What on earth was she talking about? She nudged her head in Jonny’s direction, her lips turned down.

“Tell me what?” I asked. The man almost never spoke. Besides, there was no reason Jonny should blame himself for Daddy’s health. If anyone was to blame, it was me for not making sure he’d done all the things the doctors had told him he needed to do. The only thing he’d told me was that he was sorry. That he needed me to know he was sorry.

Oh God. I dropped the cap of my water bottle on the floor. It rolled away from me, not stopping until it had settled near Soupy’s feet across the way. Jonny did blame himself. But why?

“The guys said Scotty was yelling at Jonny for leaving the bench,” she said. “That he was really laying into him for doing that even though they had told him not to.”

Daddy had been visibly upset ever since that moment in the game. I knew; I’d been watching him instead of the game because I was so worried about him getting too stressed out. He’d gotten up on the bench behind the players, screaming. His face had turned purple. He’d been rubbing his jaw and yelling more than normal and hadn’t been able to calm himself down after that.

Well, fuck.

I shot my head up again, staring at Jonny from across the waiting room. He was still just staring back at me with those too-fucking-serious eyes. Most of the time, I found it hard to stop myself from melting into those eyes. I was always daydreaming about how they would change if he was fucking me. It was safe to daydream about that—not safe to act on it. He was still a damn hockey player, and I didn’t want anything to do with any more hockey players. There were already too many of them in my life, damn it.

But now he was the hockey player who had just set off my father’s heart attack. I knew it wasn’t rational to blame him for it, but the ability to let reason make my decisions for me seemed to have left my body the minute I’d seen those stupid lines on the pee stick.

I got up and headed in his direction without the first fucking clue what I was doing.

SHE FLUNG HER bottle of water in my face.

The water was cool, not cold, but the actual temperature of it wasn’t important. It splashed all over me like a bucket of ice water.

I’d known Sara would be mad. She had every right to be mad. Her dad, the only family she had, was in the hospital after having a heart attack and it was all my fault. I deserved a hell of a lot worse than a bottle of water tossed in my face.

She apparently agreed with that sentiment.

The water had barely started to drip before she started in on me. “You fucking son of a bitch,” she said, but the words came out through tears. Those tears killed me. The fact that she was crying like that hurt me a hell of a lot more than a little water ever would.

I didn’t do anything to try to convince her I wasn’t to blame, nothing to try to mollify her. I stood there and waited for her to get her anger back. She needed to yell some more so she could work it out of her system. Just like Scotty…

That was what I always did to defuse anger that was directed me, at least when I wasn’t in a game-time situation. I stood back and allowed whoever was angry to let it all loose, taking whatever they had to give, until they were done. It was easier that way.

Sara had every right to be angry with me, to take it out on me. She deserved the chance to beat me to a bloody pulp, if that would make her feel any better. I doubted it would, but I was more than willing to let her try. I didn’t even flinch when she drew her arm back, her little hand balled into a really poor fist that she was sending in my direction. But Zee came up behind her and tried to pull her off, gripping her arms in his hands.

I shook my head. “Let her go. Let her hit me.” Mad was a hell of a lot better than broken. I could handle her being pissed at me, especially when I’d earned it as thoroughly as I had.

I was afraid that as soon as she worked the initial rush of anger out, she’d just be a crying mess. That was how my mom had been after my father left her—after he’d left us, actually. She’d been furious, for a while, because he’d walked out and left her with no job, four kids, and a mortgage she didn’t know how she’d pay. But once all the anger had gone, she was just beat-down for a while. Crying all the time. Lonely. Sad. Essentially hopeless.

She’d done the best she could for us, no thanks to him. But if I ever saw him again, I’d probably hit him the way Sara was trying to hit me, only I wouldn’t just be trying to do it, and I’d be sure to do a hell of a lot more damage than she could. I knew how to hit to hurt. Someone ought to teach Sara how to do that, actually. She needed to be able to defend herself, and what she was doing wouldn’t cut it. One of these days I’d give her lessons—if she would let me. Or maybe I should just ask Dana do it. Pushing my luck with Sara right now would be stupid.

Even though I’d asked him to let her go, Zee didn’t do it right away. What had been a manic assault of fists flying at me quickly turned into defeated sobs when his strength outmatched hers. Big, heaving, gut-wrenching sobs, like the kind that Cadence, my youngest sister, had always cried. The kind that tore my heart out. The kind that made me want to rip the head off the asshole who had brought them on, but in this case, I was the asshole.

Fuck. This was exactly what I was not prepared for. You’d think that with three younger sisters and a mother who’d been treated like shit for years and then left by my asswipe of a father, I’d be better prepared to deal with crying like this. But I wasn’t. Not from Sara Thomas, at least. It wasn’t so much that her tears made me uncomfortable. I just felt fucking useless when a woman I knew—even if I didn’t know her well—was that upset and I couldn’t do anything to fix it.

I hated seeing Sara like that. I knew it wouldn’t be happening if not for what I’d done during the game earlier, and there wasn’t a goddamn fucking thing I could do to make it better. I couldn’t undo her dad’s heart attack or cardiac episode or whatever the fuck the doctors wanted to call it. I couldn’t turn back time and make a different decision in the game so he didn’t get so worked up and this wouldn’t have happened. I couldn’t do anything, and that left me feeling powerless.

I fucking hated feeling powerless.

That had to be what Sara felt, too. Helpless. No control. A passenger, waiting to see what would happen.

Zee finally let go of her arms, but Sara didn’t hit me like she should have. She didn’t run back to the other women she’d been sitting with before coming to beat the snot out of me. She didn’t start cussing me out again. Instead, she collapsed against me, falling into my arms and grabbing both of my lapels in her hands. She pulled me closer to her and buried her face in my chest while these massive sobs wracked her body.

I did the only thing I knew how to do in a situation like that: I put both my arms around her, drew her close, and held on tight. It was the only thing I’d ever been able to do with Mom or my sisters. I had never managed to come up with the right words to say at a time like this. I wasn’t the kind of guy who could make a joke and get them to laugh and then everything would be all right again. All I could do was hold them until it stopped, however long that took. So I held Sara, and I would keep holding her until she wanted me to let her go.

Zee gave me a nod, like he approved of what I was doing, and then he backed off. Fucking lot of help he was. Not that this was a mess he’d had anything to do with creating. This was all on me, so I supposed it was only right that I should be the one cleaning it up.

And I couldn’t deny that I liked the feeling of having Sara in my arms. Not that I ever would have wanted it to be for a reason like this.

It didn’t matter that she’d made a water-drenched, snotty mess of my suit; I was crazy attracted to her. She was always walking around in her skinny jeans and flirty skirts and designer tops and fuck-me shoes, and I couldn’t stop myself from looking. And wanting.

But what I wanted didn’t matter. She was the coach’s daughter, which made her as off-limits as they come.

That was why I’d never done anything stupid like ask her out. Besides, I wasn’t anything close to the right guy for her. She liked to party, to go out dancing and clubbing and all sorts of other things that were much more Burnzie’s scene than mine. Burnzie was a guy who was the absolute life of the party anywhere he went. But me? I was more often the designated driver, the guy who made sure everyone got home alive, if I went along for something like that in the first place. I didn’t mind having a beer every now and then, and a night with a few of the guys sometimes was fine, but partying held no interest for me.

Probably because of my father, come to think of it, not that it mattered right now.

Nothing mattered except for the fact that Sara was in my arms, crying so hard she was practically hyperventilating from the force of it. Not only that, but every fucking eye in this waiting room was focused squarely on her. I knew they didn’t mean any harm, that they were just worried about both Scotty and Sara and couldn’t help staring because she was so upset. But I also knew that she would be embarrassed once she stopped crying if she turned around and found them all staring like that. We were in the corner of the room, but that wasn’t really giving us any privacy.

I didn’t stand there thinking about it any longer than I had to. I put one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, picked her up, and carried her out of the waiting room.

She lifted her head, her eyes bloodshot and puffy, her nose red. “What…?”

There were chairs scattered throughout the emergency room lobby, and only a couple of people waiting to be taken back. Better yet, none of them were people who knew Sara, at least as far as I knew. I found a quiet corner and sat down with her on my lap.

“I thought you could use some privacy,” I explained. The table next to me had a box of tissues on it. I picked up the whole thing and handed it to her.

She sniffled and tugged two tissues from the box. “Why are you being nice to me? I was just awful to you.”

“I deserved a lot worse than that.”

Shaking her head, she blew her nose. “No, you didn’t. No one deserves to have water thrown on him like that. I just flipped out for a minute. God, I was going to hit you. It’s all these stupid h— Never mind. Nothing excuses my behavior.”

There was nothing that could absolve me from what I’d done. I didn’t want to argue with her about it right now, though. I just wanted to comfort her in whatever way I could.

Her tears had slowed, and her sobs had dropped off until she was hiccupping from the crying jag, so I knew the worst was over. At least for now.

Sara made no move to get off my lap, and I was definitely not in a hurry for her to leave it. I had one hand on her thigh, just above her knee, and the other was sliding up and down her spine in slow, steady movements. She rested her head on my shoulder.

After a minute, she grabbed another tissue and blew her nose again. “You’re still all wet. God, Jonny, I’m sorry. I’m not normally such a bitch.”

“Don’t call yourself that.”

“If the shoe fits…”

“That shoe doesn’t fit you.” And all that talk about shoes just made me think more about hers. I’d never paid so much attention to anyone’s shoes as I did to hers. I didn’t even normally pay much attention to my own. But with Sara? I always looked to see what shoes she was wearing. I’d even taken a sneak shot of a pair of them with the camera on my phone a while ago because they were hot as sin.

She sat up a bit and moved her head back so she could look at me. The puffiness around her eyes was starting to go down a little, but her mascara was smeared all over. Her lips were turned down in a frown. “You think a lot better of me than you should, you know that?”

“I don’t know anything of the sort.”

“Hmph.”

I’d rarely seen anything as adorable as the pout she was giving me. I had to look away because my thoughts turned to kissing it right off her face. That would be just about the worst thing I could possibly do. Because whether she was on my lap or not, she was still my coach’s daughter, and he was in the ER right now thanks to a heart attack I’d caused.

We fell into silence then, which was a hell of a lot more comfortable for me than having to figure out what to say to her. I far preferred having my actions speak for me.

“Jonny?” she said after a minute. The hand she had wrapped behind my neck was massaging me lightly, similar to how I was stroking her back. Slow. Soothing. Addicting.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Please don’t apologi—”

“No, I need to. No matter how scared I am, I shouldn’t have thrown my water on you, and there is never any call for me to hit you. You didn’t have anything to do with whatever’s going on with Daddy. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry.”

“It is my fault,” I said.

“No, it’s his fault. Or mine. Or God’s fault or nature’s fault, or I don’t even know. But you didn’t do anything to make this happen. He’s known he needed to make changes for a while now. You didn’t do this.”

She could tell me that until she was blue in the face, but I doubted I’d ever be able to believe it. I’d been there. I’d seen it go down.

But Sara had stopped crying, and her hiccups had gone away, and she was still here in my arms. Not trying to leave. It was starting to feel cozy and comfortable, and that was a dangerous thought.

Doc came around the corner from the waiting room area and cleared his throat, announcing his presence.

Sara nearly leaped up to her feet. “Can I see him?”

“He did have a heart attack, Sara.”

Doc sat in the chair across from me, and she rushed over to sit next to him. I felt hollow without her in my arms. Her eyes filled with fresh tears, and I wanted to be holding her, stroking her back, trying to console her. But she wasn’t my girlfriend, so I had no business wanting anything like that.

“They’re keeping him in the ICU tonight, and he’ll undergo bypass surgery tomorrow morning.”

“Oh God. Single bypass?”

“At least double. Maybe more. They won’t know for sure until they finish running all the tests tomorrow and see what they’re working with.”

She sucked in a breath. I could see the struggle in her, the way she was fighting to hold herself together. Trying to be strong for her father. I recognized it in her because I’d spent so many years doing the same for my mom and my sisters.

But then she took a deep breath and she nodded, and I knew I’d just witnessed Sara steeling herself against whatever was to come. She believed I thought too highly of her, but she was wrong. She didn’t give herself anywhere near enough credit.

“Can I see him? I need to see him, Doc.”

He nodded. “They’ll let you go in for just a bit. Not too long, though. He needs his rest.” He stood, and Sara was instantly on her feet. They headed off down a long hallway and through a set of double doors, and I was left alone and wondering how I could ever make this right.

After a few minutes, I got up and went back to the waiting room. Doc had already returned from leaving Sara with her father, and he’d delivered the news to the others. Several of them were gathering their things to go home, as there was nothing any of us could do but wait and hope for good news tomorrow.

Jim met me by the entry. “I know now’s not the time you want to think about this, but the League has requested a telephone hearing with you at one o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Why don’t you take the morning off from practice to prepare yourself? You can come in before the conference call.”

What was the point of even holding this hearing? There wasn’t anything I could do to change what I’d done, and the rules were fairly cut and dry. “Not sure anything I say will change things. The suspension is automatic.”

“It is. But it’s procedure. They can’t give you a suspension without a hearing of some sort, even in cases like this where it is automatic. They have to give it due process.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “I just got off the phone with your agent, too. He’ll be part of the conference call, and so will I. Bergy and Hammer are planning to sit in for Scotty, since…”

There was no need to finish that statement.

“Yeah, all right,” I finally said. “I’ll be there before one.”

“Just head up to my office. I’ll have Rachel get us set up somewhere. She can fill you in once you get there.”

I nodded and said good night, and he made his way out along with a number of the others who’d been waiting.

They didn’t all leave, though. Zee inclined his head toward me, in an apparent invitation to join him and Dana. I headed in their direction.

“How will Sara get home tonight?” he asked. “We can wait and—”

“I’ll take her home.” I’d been the one to bring her here, leaving her car behind. Besides, I didn’t have to be at practice in the morning. It wouldn’t matter how late I was here with her. I needed to be sure she got home all right.

I DIDN’T TELL Daddy what I’d done to Jonny. The last thing he needed right now was to know that I was behaving like a lunatic. Instead, I told him how pretty much the entire Portland Storm organization had come to see about him. I told him that I loved him. I told him all the good things and none of the bad—nothing that would upset him.

I’d done my best to dry my eyes, sort out my makeup, and hide the puffiness, but I hadn’t been able to really mask the fact that I had been crying. That, of course, was the first thing he saw when I got to the ICU.

“Don’t worry about me, baby girl.” He looked tired, the lines on his face much more pronounced than usual, and his eyes kind of sunken in because of the grayish pallor his skin had taken on. He patted a spot on the bed beside him.

I didn’t need any more invitation than that. I rushed across the room and sat where he’d indicated, being careful not to dislodge any of the tubes and wires connected to him. That might have been the scariest part for me—seeing him attached to all of those machines while they beeped and whirred and made other creepy hospital sounds.

This was all still new for me—the thought that his health wasn’t where it should be and that I needed to worry about him. He’d always been so big and strong, like an ox. I’d never really thought about the fact that he wouldn’t always be around. He’d always been able to do anything, to be everything I needed. It seemed like a thing most little girls did, thinking their dads could hang the moon. I supposed most little girls realized their fathers were just men a little sooner than I had, like when they were still little girls. I was only now coming to terms with the fact that Daddy was a mere mortal like the rest of us.

It had been much easier for me to think of him as superhuman, somehow.

“I always worry about you,” I said. At least these days I did. He was the only person I had to worry about other than myself, and I would much prefer to avoid thinking about my issues at the moment.

“Doc said Jonny took care of you. That he brought you here and looked after you.”

I nodded, feeling even worse about the fact that I’d just assaulted him in the waiting room. He had taken care of me at a time when I hadn’t been able to take care of myself. What a way to repay him for his thoughtfulness.

“Make sure he knows this wasn’t his fault, Sara.” Daddy sat up a little straighter in his bed, putting his arm around my back.

My mind instantly brought back the sensation of Jonny’s hand touching me there, soothing me and helping to calm me down. I had to shake that thought from my mind. Ideas like that didn’t belong in my head.

“He knows it wasn’t his fault,” I said. Didn’t he? He had to, even though he had apologized for it and said he’d caused it. That was just because I’d blamed him at first, but I hadn’t been serious about it. That was just my hormones talking. But maybe I should try harder to be certain he knew he wasn’t to blame. I supposed he deserved that much.

No, I knew he deserved that much.

“Even so, I need you to talk to him.” He sighed, and it sounded as beleaguered as I’d ever heard from him. “And I need you to have Jim come talk to me in the morning before my surgery. And Hammer and Bergy, too.”

I shook my head. “Not gonna happen. The last thing you need to think about is work.”

“I’ll just call Jim myself—”

“Not if I take away your phone.” I did just that, taking it off the rolling table in front of him and stuffing it in my purse. I ignored the way he was scowling at me. “You need to rest. You need to recover. That’s going to be my one goal: to make sure you actually do that this time, Daddy.”

“I have a job to do.”

“Your job is to get better so that you can do your job later. That’s it. Someone else is going to be coaching the team for a while because you can’t do it right now.”

He didn’t look like he had any intention of giving up on the thought that he still had work to do. I didn’t know how long it would take for him to recover, but there was no chance he would be getting back on the job until this year’s playoffs were a thing of the past.

At least he didn’t try to argue with me about it anymore, though. No, now he went a completely different direction—starting in with something else to upset me.

“Why don’t you have someone take you ho—”

“I’m not leaving.”

He might as well get that thought out of his head right this instant.

“Go home. Get some rest. You can come back tomorrow.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m leaving your side until you get to come home, too.”

“Sara…” The way he said it just crushed me, like a ten-ton slab of concrete crashing down on top of me.

But I couldn’t go. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I went home, anyway, so what was the point? I’d just be panicking about him non-stop, wondering if anything else had gone wrong and if the doctors would be able to get to him in time.

“Don’t ask me to leave you at a time like this,” I said.

“If you don’t leave—”

“They can bring a cot in for me.”

“And you wouldn’t use it because you’d be hovering over me,” Daddy countered. “Baby girl, I need you to go home and sleep in your own bed so I won’t worry about you. And we both know that won’t do me any good.”

That was probably the only argument he could have come up with to convince me to leave. I could worry about him whether I was here or at home. Leaving wouldn’t change that. But I didn’t want him to think about anything but getting better. Definitely not me.

I still didn’t like the idea, though.

I frowned at him. “All right. I’ll go. But I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

“Not before lunch. They won’t finish until well after then anyway.”

“But I need to see you before you go in. Not negotiable.”

One good thing about our relationship was that we were pretty good at coming to compromises most of the time.

He scowled, but he nodded. “Fine. But go home now.”

I kissed him on the cheek and told him I loved him, and then I made my way back out to the waiting room. I was half expecting to find the whole lot of them still there. Jonny was the only person I recognized, though.

A couple of strangers, an older man and woman, were huddled together next to the window. They looked up fretfully when I came through the door and quickly deflated upon seeing me. They had probably been hoping I had been a doctor coming to explain what was going on with their loved one.

Jonny was seated near the coffee pot, his arms resting on his knees, and an anxious expression knitting his brows together.

He stood up and crossed over to me, tucking his hands in his pockets. “You all right?”

No. Not even close. “Yeah.” I crossed my arms, suddenly self-conscious since he was the only person still here. “Did Dana and Laura— Did they all go home finally?”

“I sent them home. Told them I’d wait for you.”

“Oh.”

“Should I— Are you ready to go home?”

I nodded, even though it wouldn’t feel like I was going home. How could it be home if Daddy wasn’t there? Not that staying here would feel like home, either. Nothing sounded appealing.

Jonny put an arm around my back, resting his hand on my waist as he’d done earlier. Some crazy part of me—probably due to the pregnancy hormones—wanted to curl into him and grab on.

Instead, I let him lead me out of the hospital. He helped me climb up into his truck and shut the door.

I didn’t even have the energy left in me to cry after all of that.

WE’D BEEN SITTING in the driveway in front of the house for at least five minutes with neither of us saying a word. It might have been even longer than that. It was hard to tell with the way my thoughts were running through my mind at a million miles a minute. Jonny still had the engine of his truck running. He’d put it in park once we got there, and then neither of us had moved a muscle.

If we were just going to sit there, he should probably shut the ignition off. He had to be wasting a shit-ton of gas by idling it like that, and I didn’t want to go inside. Not yet. Not alone, at least.

That house felt too big and open and empty even from the driveway for me to be there by myself tonight. It was weird—when the team was gone on a road trip, I never had any problem being in Daddy’s house without him. But everything felt different now. Probably because my father was supposed to be here tonight, but he wasn’t. He was spending the night in the ICU with IVs poking into him and machines attached to him and everything beeping.

How much time would have to pass before he could come home? Hell, depending on how his surgery went tomorrow, he might never come home again. Then I would have this big, empty house and no one but myself to fill it up.

Myself and a baby.

Oh God. The baby. For just a little while, I’d gotten so caught up in everything going on with Daddy that I’d forgotten I was pregnant. I’d forgotten that I had my own issues to sort out in addition to my father’s heart problems.

Out of nowhere, my stomach flipped, and the most intense bout of nausea hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t sure if it was the pregnancy and hormones and whatnot that made me feel sick to my stomach or if it was the fact that I’d completely let all of that slip my mind, but I had to fling my door open and lunge out of Jonny’s truck or else I knew I might puke all over the interior.

“Sara?” He sounded panicked, but he couldn’t feel as panicky as I did with the thought that I might toss my cookies in front of him.

I guess I forgot just how massively humongous his pickup was, too, because I dropped to my feet and flopped over onto the grass beside the driveway in my haste to get down. My knee struck the concrete hard.

“Damn it!” The only good thing about the sudden, sharp pain was that it drove away my nausea, at least for the moment.

I’d barely rolled onto my back before Jonny was hovering over me, almost completely blocking out the ginormous full moon in the sky. All I could make out was his silhouette—a colossal shadow looming over me like an angel. No, like an avenging angel. That seemed more accurate. But the more I stared up at him, the more I saw Thor—only minus the flowing, golden locks. Haha…avenging angel or an Avenger?

This buzzed-off, dark-haired version of Thor was working for me way better than the movie version, though. He was making all sorts of things stir inside me that had nothing to do with the about-to-puke stuff from a moment ago. Hell, maybe I’d hit my head and not just my knee, because godlike presence or not, Jonny was still a hockey player.

“Are you hurt?” he said. Or grunted. Or something.

I could only blink in response. My brain was too caught up in debating whether his shoulders were bigger than Thor’s for me to be able to do more than that.

“What hurts?” he asked, as though I had actually managed to form a coherent response instead of blinking at him like an idiot.

“My right knee,” I somehow got out.

“Fuck, Sara.” His words were muttered under his breath, and he kneeled down beside me. In an instant, he’d picked me up and was carrying me to the front door. “You can’t get hurt right now. Your dad’s already going to kill me.”

The way he was holding me allowed me to put an arm around his shoulders and rest my other hand on his chest. He was more Captain America than Thor, now that I could examine his pecs up close. Not that either Captain America or Thor had carried me around before, but still. There were definite differences in their builds. Thor was more muscle mania, body builder-esque. Captain America was buff and lean, designed to be able to move with all that strength.

Jonny was definitely more on the Captain America side of that equation.

“Where are your keys?” he demanded, sounding all bossy and put out.

Maybe in temperament he was more like a quieter, not-even-remotely sarcastic version of Tony Stark. Or like the Hulk, only minus all the giant green dude and temper tantrum stuff.

“Sara? Your keys?”

I tried to shake off my daze and focus. He was standing on the front porch, just by the door, with me in his arms. Keys. Where were my keys? I patted my hand over my right pocket, but it was empty. I never put my keys in the left pocket—only my cell phone ever went there. I felt the weight of it now, but there was no chance I’d shoved my keys in there with it. “Shit.”

“You don’t have them?”

“I think I put them in my purse…” But now the question became, where was my purse? I couldn’t remember having it at the hospital, but I might have. In the lobby? In the waiting room? Had I had it when I went back to see Daddy in the ICU? Hell, I didn’t even remember if I’d had it when Jonny drove me to the hospital, so it might still be up in the owner’s box. Wouldn’t one of the girls have grabbed it before coming to the hospital, though? But if they didn’t know I’d left it behind…

“Do you have a spare hidden somewhere?” Already, Jonny was looking around as though he was trying to find a potted plant we might have a key hidden beneath. Daddy had never liked the idea, and I hadn’t wanted to do it behind his back—even if it might come in handy someday—so there wasn’t any point in Jonny searching like that. He wasn’t going to find a damn thing.

“No.” I tried to shrug my way out of his arms, but he just held me tighter. “Have you ever picked a lock? Or maybe we could break a window or something.”

“I’m not breaking into your dad’s house. I already gave him a fucking heart attack tonight.”

“You didn’t—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Jonny spun around and headed back toward his truck. “Whether I did it or not, I can’t break into your house. Not gonna happen.” He opened the passenger door and set me on the seat. He’d done it all like lugging me around was the easiest thing in the whole world.

“We could call a locksmith?” I suggested hopefully.

“You know many locksmiths that will come out this late on a weekend?”

I scowled up at him. It almost felt as though he was determined to shoot down my ideas before I could even form them. Which wasn’t entirely fair. He had a point. It had to be well past one a.m. on a Sunday night. There were locksmiths who kept emergency hours, of course, but we might have to wait until nearly dawn for one of them to get here.

“I guess you could take me to Zee and Dana’s for the night,” I said after a moment. They had extra rooms. I doubted they would mind too much, and Dana could help me hunt down my purse tomorrow morning before taking me back to the hospital in time for Daddy’s surgery.

Jonny looked at his watch and shook his head. “Not at this hour. Zee has to be at practice in the morning. They’re probably already in bed.”

“Oh…yeah.” I hadn’t really thought about that. Zee and Dana would be able to get to sleep tonight, unlike me. I doubted I’d be able to sleep at all until Daddy came home. Or at least until I knew he would be okay.

“I’ll take you to a hotel and get you a room,” he said. Before I could respond, he’d closed my door and walked around the front of his truck to get in. He hadn’t even shut off the ignition before he’d gotten out earlier. It was still running, the idling motor making a sound like a tiger’s purr.

He looked over at me before he backed out of the driveway. I must have looked an absolute wreck, because he scowled. “You don’t want to go to a hotel.”

It wasn’t a question.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to be alone.” Without having someone else around, my worries would run away with me. Somewhere, deep down inside, I knew it was ridiculous of me, but the idea of Daddy not coming home tonight, on a night when he was supposed to do just that, brought up all of my old abandonment issues from my mom. I’d thought I’d gotten past them—until now. Now I knew they were still very real. Damn it. Daddy wasn’t leaving me, but it still felt like he was for some reason. But at least if someone else was with me, I’d have the possibility of a distraction.

Jonny didn’t say anything. He just grunted and checked behind him before putting his truck into reverse.

He was probably taking me to a hotel anyway, even though I wasn’t too keen on the idea. Really, there wasn’t a good reason why he shouldn’t. Then he’d just be one more person abandoning me. I let my head rest against the window and closed my eyes, trying to redirect my thoughts away from all the awfulness of tonight.

I stayed just like that until he brought the truck to a stop. We hadn’t been moving long, so I figured he’d taken me to one of the hotels near our house in the Irvington district. We lived on the northeast side of town, not too far from the arena.

When I opened my eyes, though, I had to blink a few times because what I saw wasn’t even close to what I’d been expecting. We were parked on the street in front of a house, not a hotel. There was so much landscaping in the front—trees and bushes and flowers of every variety I could imagine—that I almost couldn’t make out the house behind it. It was painted in some dark color that blended in with the surroundings and didn’t stand out in the dark.

“What… Where are we?” I asked, turning to face him.

“My house.” Jonny switched off the ignition, and the truck stopped rumbling beneath me. “So you don’t have to be alone.” It all came out in such a matter-of-fact manner that it was like he’d never thought about taking me anywhere else.

“I don’t understand.” I’d behaved like an absolute bitch to him earlier. I threw my water on him—after he’d brought it to me, trying to be nice. Why would he bring me to his house now? Hell, why had he stayed behind at the hospital? Why had he done any of the things he’d done tonight? None of it made any sense…and it threw all my silly ideas of him abandoning me back in my face.

“There’s nothing to understand.” He opened his door and came around to help me out, but I was still in such a stupor that I couldn’t seem to get my body to cooperate. After a moment, he undid my seatbelt and lifted me out, easing me to my feet before letting me go. His hands hovered by my waist, close enough that I could feel their heat. Close enough that I wished he would take hold of me again. He stared at me for a minute before heading up a path toward his porch. “Come on. We should put some ice on your knee.”

No, it didn’t make any sense at all. Especially not my reaction to him—because I should be thinking about my dad being all alone at the hospital tonight, or worrying about his bypass surgery tomorrow, or trying to sort out what I would do about the baby growing inside me, but all I could think about was the way Jonny’s cologne tickled my nostrils and made me want to slide closer to him.

I was a mess.

But Captain America was holding his door open for me and some yippy black-and-white spotted dog was running excited circles around him.

“You coming?” Jonny asked. He kept staring at me, those intense eyes boring into me even from this distance.

I closed the truck door and started up the same path he’d just traveled. Not because I wanted to spend the night with him. More because I was so confused about everything that it was easier to just do what someone told me to do.

That was one thing Jonny seemed to get about me, at least—that I needed someone to just take over right now and tell me what to do and where to be. I climbed the steps of his porch and went through the door, his cologne teasing me and making me shiver as I slipped past him. He closed the door behind me while his dog tried to climb my legs. Now that I was closer, it looked like a Pomeranian—all fluff and excitement and oodles of energy. That was the last sort of dog I ever would have expected Jonny to have. I would have thought he was more the pit bull type, since in many ways, he seemed like one himself.

“Sit down.” Jonny disappeared through an open doorway into the kitchen, and his dog followed. I guess that command was meant for me, then. I thought about following him, but sitting seemed like a better idea. My knee was definitely achy—the steps leading to his porch proved that, even if nothing else had—so I dropped down onto the couch without any further prodding.

I heard the back door open and close. He must have let the dog out. A minute later, Jonny came back into the living room with a reusable gel ice pack and a kitchen towel. He lifted my right leg and put a pillow on the coffee table before setting my ankle on it. He put the towel over my knee and then the ice pack on top of it. “Keep that in place. I’ll be right back.”

“Thank you, Jonny,” I managed to get out before he started up the stairs.

“Cam,” he said over his shoulder without slowing down.

I didn’t want to call him Cam. My dad called him Jonny. All of his teammates called him Jonny. Dana and Laura and all of the other players’ wives and girlfriends I hung out with called him Jonny. Sticking with the nickname the guys had given him reminded me of the fact that he was a hockey player. He was one of Daddy’s players. He was completely off-limits and I wasn’t interested, even if he was nice to me when I didn’t deserve it, and even though he looked like a mix of the best parts of all of the Avengers rolled up into one.

I hadn’t settled my thoughts yet by the time he returned carrying a T-shirt.

He handed it to me. “You can stay in the guest room down here tonight. Bathroom’s on the left.” Without pausing, he went back into the kitchen and opened the back door again. The dog rushed in and leaped up onto my lap as if there was nowhere else it would rather be. When Jonny came back out, he had two bottles of water in his hands. “Sorry. That’s Buster. He can be overly friendly. You gonna throw this on me if I give it to you?”

I was pretty sure he was teasing me, not upset, but it was hard to tell. His expression never seemed to change.

I shook my head, petting the dog to see if I could calm him down. “I won’t throw it.”

He tossed one of the bottles toward me, and I caught it one-handed. He’d unscrewed the lid on his and guzzled about half of it before I had even loosened the cap on mine.

“Why are you doing this, Jonny? Why are you looking after me like this?”

“Cam,” he repeated. He took another long swallow, leaning back against the doorway and staring at me with those unwavering eyes. He shrugged. “It’s just the right thing to do. Good night, Sara.” He crossed over and took the dog off my lap. “He can’t hear, but he’ll want to come with me, and he’s too excited about you being here to pay attention.”

Then he headed up the stairs again, his almost empty bottle of water in his hand. Once he set Buster on the floor, the dog chased him up the stairs, passing him at about the halfway point.

I didn’t know what to make of all this. Big, tough Cam Johnson, a guy no one in the NHL wanted to mess with, had a deaf Pomeranian and was trying to take care of me.

I DON’T KNOW what possessed me to bring Sara to my place, but it was way too late to have second thoughts. That didn’t stop the second thoughts from coming, though—or third thoughts, fourth, seventeenth.

But whether I was rethinking it or not, she was downstairs in the guest bedroom I always kept ready for my mom.

Sara was a mess over her dad. She had likely at least bruised her knee from practically falling out of my truck. She needed someone to look after her right now, and that responsibility was falling on my shoulders.

The remembered sensation of holding her so close to me, though—the thought that she was so near—was going to keep me up all night. Add that to all the shit that had gone down in the game and the immediate aftermath, and I might not sleep for a week.

I knew what Jim Sutter would tell me if he were here right now. He’d say I needed to get some rest so I’d be ready for tomorrow’s phone call with the League. But nothing I would say to them would matter, so what was the point of worrying over it? I had Sara to worry about. And her father.

At least Buster was sleeping. It had taken him a little while to settle down after we got back, especially because I’d brought Sara with me. Buster loved people, and he loved being the center of attention. When a stranger came around, he would do anything and everything in his power to get them to love on him, and that always brought out his excitable nature. Now, though, he was curled up by my side and kicking his legs in that deep doggy-dream way they had, as though he was chasing a cat or something. He would run off and chase anything if I’d let him, but since he couldn’t hear me when I called, I had to keep him on a leash most of the time.

That was the main reason I had this house. I didn’t need this much space just for me. But it had a fenced backyard, so he could go run around all he wanted. I’d put in a doggy door in the kitchen so he could go out whenever he wanted, too. He used it when I was gone, but for whatever reason, when I was home he would always wait for me to open the main door. I think he just liked to make a running leap on his way out, which wasn’t as easy to do if he had to nudge the flap out of the way with his head. When the team was in town, I took him to the park as often as I could, and my dog sitter did the same when we were on the road. I really wished it were safe to take him to one of the no-leash parks, though, and trust that he would be okay and come back to me.

Maybe someday.

I was lying there on my back, listening to Buster breathe in his almost-snoring sort of way, when a knock on my bedroom door startled me. I must have jumped because Buster jolted awake, barking like a loon.

I grabbed him so maybe he would calm down and stumbled out of bed. Buster squirmed in my arms, but his barks turned to excited whimpers.

“Jonny?” Sara’s voice was muffled through the closed door. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”

I whipped the door open. “It’s okay. What’s wrong?”

The moonlight shining through my window hit her in all the right ways, and my T-shirt didn’t hide any of her curves. I wished I’d given her a robe or something more substantial because looking at her like that, her legs stretching down for days, had me thinking about taking care of her in ways I had no business even thinking about.

She licked her lips, but I wished she hadn’t. I couldn’t look anywhere else. Even though I was standing there in a wifebeater and shorts, Sara wasn’t looking at anything but Buster. Damn dog, stealing all the attention again. I wanted to feel her eyes on me the way mine were on her.

“I just— I can’t sleep. I can’t stop worrying about Daddy, and I don’t know if maybe I should go back to the hospital anyway, even though he said—”

“You can’t help him there right now,” I cut in. Buster barked, as though he was agreeing with me, and his damn fuzzy tail was whipping back and forth against my arm, creating more breeze than a ceiling fan on high. “He’s got a whole hospital full of doctors and nurses who are trained to help him with whatever he needs.”

“I know that.” She put out a hand to let Buster sniff her, and then she rubbed his ears.

I couldn’t help but wish she was looking at me like she was looking at my dog, that she was touching me instead of him. She kept rubbing him until he was too worked up for me to hold on to him anymore. I set him on the floor, and he raced circles around Sara’s legs.

She laughed, and then her eyes flitted up to meet mine and they turned somber again. “I do. I know I can’t help him and he’s in good hands, but I just can’t shut my brain off and I don’t know what to do.”

I knew all too well what it was like to not be able to stop thinking. I’d been doing it myself for well over an hour, ever since I’d made my way up the stairs. If I couldn’t stop thinking long enough to sleep, I didn’t have a clue how I could help her do that.

She’d said she hadn’t wanted to be alone—but there’d been something wild in her eyes when she’d said it that made me realize it probably went a hell of a lot deeper than what she’d said. That was easy enough to understand. Corinne had had a hard time shutting off her brain and sleeping, too, after our father left. She was the oldest of my younger sisters, the one who remembered the most about how things had been, just like me. Sometimes, just sharing a bed with me or Mom or one of the younger girls had been all Corinne had needed to get to sleep. I supposed it was just the presence of someone else more than anything that had helped her. The realization that she wasn’t alone. That she hadn’t been abandoned by everyone in her life—just by our father.

Without thinking it through any further than that, I reached out and took Sara’s hand, and I tugged her into my room. “Come on. You can sleep in here with me.”

For the first time in the two years I’d known her, she looked uncertain and shy. I didn’t like seeing her like that. Sara Thomas had always been one of the most fucking confident and sure of herself women I knew. It oozed out of her, usually, rubbing off on everyone around her. It was one of the things that made her sexy as sin. One of the things that always gave me a fucking hard-on just looking at her and her big doe eyes and pouty lips. I never wanted to see her looking like this, like she was afraid of making the wrong decision.

Like I was the wrong decision.

She shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t think—”

“Just to sleep,” I clarified. “I’m not going to try anything. You’re Scotty’s daughter. I’m not an idiot.”

Only maybe I was. I was a giant fucking idiot. I had to be if I was even thinking about getting Sara to sleep in my bed with me, but that was exactly what I was attempting to convince her to do.

“Just to sleep?” she repeated hesitantly, meeting my eyes again. Hers had dark circles under them. She’d run herself ragged with worry.

“Just to sleep.”

Finally, she nodded and let me lead her over to the bed. She sat on one side and laid down, pulling the blankets over her while she was so close to the edge I worried she might fall off. I went around to the other side and got in, and Buster leaped up to get between us. He settled in the very center of the bed.

That was good. With him there, I shouldn’t do anything stupid in the middle of the night. I’d already done enough stupid shit tonight to last me a good year or two.

I lay there wishing I’d bought the king-sized bed when I moved into this house instead of the queen. Then there would be more room between us. More negative space so maybe I wouldn’t be able to smell the peppermint scent that was Sara, so maybe I couldn’t feel her warmth. So maybe I could stop thinking about her legs wrapping around me.

I rolled over to face the windows, hoping that would help me stop thinking about her, so maybe I could get my fucking hard-on under control. That wasn’t likely, but still.

“Jonny?” she said softly.

I wished she’d call me by my name. I didn’t care if the guys all called me Jonny. Nicknames are just part of the gig when you play hockey. But Sara was different.

“Yeah?” I replied.

“Thank you. For everything.”

She shouldn’t be thanking me. She should be hitting me and screaming at me and throwing a hell of a lot more than just a bottle of water all over me.

“Go to sleep, Sara,” I finally said. If she didn’t, there was no chance in hell I would be able to.

I WOKE UP at dawn with Sara’s firm bottom pressed into my groin. Somehow I was even harder than I had been last night when I was trying to sleep, and the way we were curled into each other—like spoons in a drawer—wasn’t helping matters any. She’d pulled my arm over her waist and her fingers were threaded with mine. Buster, the little bastard, was snuggling on the pillow with her, one paw resting on her cheek. He was supposed to be between us. He was supposed to be that buffer, so I wouldn’t end up like this.

I tried to ease myself away from her without waking her up, but I’d barely moved an inch when she shot up in the bed and started flinging the blankets off.

“Shit! Bathroom?” Her voice was high with panic.

“Through that door,” I said, but she’d already tumbled off the bed and was running directly for it. The door slammed closed, but that couldn’t do anything to hide the sounds of her puking her guts up.

This was just fucking great. So now she was sick on top of everything else?

The toilet flushed, and then I heard the faucet running, so I knocked on the door. “Sara? Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine,” was her terse response.

Fine my ass.

“I’m going down to let Buster out. I’ll make you some toast.” Toast and hot tea had always been Mom’s answer for an upset stomach.

She still looked green ten minutes later when she sat down on one of the barstools and reached tentatively for the saucer I’d put her toast on.

“Do you want anything on it? Butter? Jelly?”

Sara shook her head cautiously, as though every movement was a challenge. That was probably better anyway. Dry toast, plain rice—bland things. Those were safer than any other things.

I heated up a mug of water in the microwave and set out some teabags for her to choose from. “Will the smell of coffee bother you?” I asked.

“I don’t think so.” Earlier, she’d seemed panicky. Now her voice was weak. I didn’t like the sound of either of them on her. They didn’t fit her, and hearing her that way only served to piss me off. I couldn’t be mad at anyone but myself, though.

While I brewed my coffee, she put a teabag in her mug and let it steep, all the while picking at her toast, barely eating any of it.

“You don’t look so good,” I said. “Maybe you should stay here and rest.”

“I’m going to the fucking hospital.” Sara’s blue eyes sparked at me, a combination of defiance and sass. That was the first time she’d looked like herself since everything went down last night. Hell, it was the first time she’d sounded like herself. That didn’t mean she had any business going to the hospital and making her father sick, though.

“If you’re sick, it might be better for you to stay home. You don’t want to get your dad sick.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Bullshit.” I took down another mug and filled it with my coffee. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to infect him with whatever bug you’ve got right now?”

She still had a bit of toast in one hand, but she tossed it down to her saucer and crumbs went flying for Buster to clean up. “Fuck you, Jonny. It’s not a bug. I’m not going to get him sick.”

“Then what is it?”

“None of your fucking business is what it is.”

“I doubt his doctors would appreciate you passing on whatever you’ve got.”

“Last I checked, pregnancy wasn’t fucking contagious. I can’t sneeze and put a baby in your belly.”

Pregnant? Hell.

I didn’t think she had been dating anyone. Not seriously, at least. Not baby-making serious. She was always going out on dates with some dickwad or another. None of them were good enough for her, at least the way I saw it. This son of a bitch, whoever he was, definitely wasn’t good enough for her if he hadn’t even bothered to be with her last night. My right fist itched to teach him a thing or two about how to treat a woman.

“Fuck,” she muttered, fresh tears in her eyes. She clambered off the barstool and rushed out of my kitchen.

“Sara, wait,” I said, but she didn’t stop.

She slammed the door to the downstairs bathroom and locked it. By the time I got there, it was too late.

“I didn’t know.”

“Nobody fucking knew,” she said. She was full-out crying now—I could hear her sniffling and hiccupping through the door.

Twice in less than twelve hours, I’d made her cry. God, I was the biggest fucking ass in the world.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

Maybe she realized the asshole who’d knocked her up didn’t deserve her. I still wanted to rearrange his face, though.

“Is he—”

She ripped the door open so fast I almost fell through onto her. “I don’t want to talk about this.” Her eyes were still filled with tears and her face was splotchy, but a fierce resolve had returned to the set of her jaw and the hardened line of her lips.

“Okay.”

“And you don’t know a fucking thing. I swear to God, Jonny, if anyone finds out without me telling them—”

“I won’t say anything.”

Her glare never wavered. After what felt like an eternity, she nodded.

“Come on,” I said. “You should try to eat.”

Sara sniffled again, but she walked past me and returned to her barstool in the kitchen. Buster was hanging out by her stool, hoping for more crumbs. I followed her in with a thousand questions I couldn’t ask racing through my head. She was right, though. It was none of my fucking business. I kept my questions to myself. Well, most of them.

“Do you think you can eat anything other than toast?”

“I don’t want to try right now.”

I nodded and took another sip of my coffee. “Will the smell make you sick if I fix my breakfast?” I didn’t know the first thing about morning sickness.

She shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

I took out some eggs and fruit, trying to put together a reasonable breakfast for myself. I might not be able to play for a while, but I still had to keep my body ready. That meant I had to keep fueling myself like I would if I was playing, and I had to get in enough workouts to mimic the physical output of being in games. It wasn’t going to be easy. Ten games in the playoffs could be two or three weeks, maybe more. If the Storm got eliminated before those games were up, I’d have to finish serving my suspension next season, but if the guys kept us in the playoffs for a while, I could be called on to play again sooner rather than later.

Sara was still picking at her toast and sipping her tea, not really making much of a dent in either. She wouldn’t look at me.

“I thought I’d take you to the hospital and then see if I can track down your purse before my call with the League,” I said. “I can come back to get you after.”

Her eyes flickered up to me for a moment. Just long enough to pierce me. “You don’t have to do all that, Jonny. I’m sure Dana can come get me to take me to the hospital. Or Laura—”

“I’m sure they could, too. But I want to.” There were a lot of things I needed to make right. Being sure Sara was looked after was only the tip of the iceberg. Especially now that I knew she was pregnant.

She sighed, a huge, heaving breath. “You really have to stop trying to make up for last night, you know? It wasn’t your fault.”

She was still wrong about that.

In the end, she let me take her to the hospital. I stayed with her until they took her back to see Scotty, and I stuck around a little longer—until Dana showed up to wait with her. Then I headed to the Moda Center. Jim wasn’t expecting me at his office for a couple of hours, so I had plenty of time to find out if Sara had left her purse at the arena. She had. The security guards all knew me and Sara both, and they’d heard what had happened with Scotty last night, so it was easy enough to convince them to give it to me. It had been under her seat in the owner’s box when the crew went in to clean up after the game. In her haste to get down to her father, her purse had surely been the last thing on her mind.

I sent her a text message to let her know I had it and would bring it to her that afternoon. Then I headed over to the practice facility.

When I got upstairs, Rachel Shaw was on her phone just outside Jim’s office. His door was closed. She lifted a finger in my direction, begging for just a moment of my patience. I nodded.

After she hung up, she said, “Jim’s meeting with Bergy and Hammer right now, Jonny. They’re sorting out who’s going to take over for Scotty for now.”

“I’m early anyway.” I just didn’t know what else to do with myself.

She gave me a kind smile. “Brenden and a few of the other guys are in the weight room. You can go spend some time with them.”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hang out with the boys right now. I didn’t really want to be with anyone. They’d just try to convince me that everything was all right, but it wasn’t.

She opened a file drawer in her desk and filtered through it, searching for something. “How’s Sara doing?”

Awful. “She’s as good as can be expected.” Considering I’d nearly killed her dad. And he was having surgery today. And she was pregnant.

I couldn’t talk about that, though.

Rachel bit her lower lip in concentration and nodded, her eyes roving the files in her hand. “That’s good. Brenden is going to watch the kids tonight so I can go be with her for a while. We don’t really want her to be alone right now…”

I understood that better than she could ever know.

“Do you mind if I just take a seat and wait out here?” I asked, indicating a few chairs along the wall near Jim’s office.

She shook her head, a curl of red hair falling free from her ponytail and dropping in front of her eyes. She brushed it away distractedly. “Do what you need to do, Jonny.” Her phone rang, and she went back to work.

I took a seat and waited for Jim to finish up with the coaches. The whole time, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sara. About what she’d do if she didn’t have her father. About the baby she had on the way and the son of a bitch who wasn’t there for her right now when she needed someone the most. About how I could make sure she was taken care of. Sara was twenty-three, the same age as Corinne, four years younger than me. I tried to imagine what I would do if my sister were in the same position as Sara, but it only made me angrier.

Finally, almost an hour after I got there, Jim opened his office door and waved me in.

“Come on, Jonny. Let’s talk before we get the call.”

I nodded and lumbered in. Jim clapped a hand on my shoulder, and both Bergy and Hammer stayed in their seats with commiserating expressions. Jim closed the door, and I sat down across from the coaches.

“You’ve never been suspended before,” Jim said. He skirted around his desk and took a seat in his chair. His glasses were folded and sitting next to his computer monitor. “You play on the edge sometimes, but you don’t really go over the line. I don’t know if that will be enough to get them to cut down on the suspension, but we all think it’s worth a try.”

“I thought it was automatic.”

“It is,” Bergy said. “But a hearing wouldn’t be part of the deal if there wasn’t at least some small chance we could change things.”

Hammer nodded. “So that’s what we’re going to try to do. Because we’re already going into the playoffs down a head coach. We need you.”

“Right,” I said. There wasn’t a chance in hell the League would rescind or shorten this suspension. The rules were as plain as day. Maybe it made these guys feel better to try to change things, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

“So let’s lay out our game plan,” Jim said. He pulled out a legal pad and pen, and we got to work.

DADDY KEPT TRYING to smile for me, to reassure me, but he was in too much pain for the smile to really come through. I’d only been with him in the ICU for five minutes, but he was already exhausted. He could hardly keep his eyes open. This had all been too much, even just a few minutes of talking with me. He had collapsed back against the pillows despite the bed keeping him somewhat upright, and his hand was loose in mine.

I supposed that was to be expected—the overwhelming exhaustion—since he’d just undergone triple bypass. The surgeon had assured me while Daddy was in recovery that all was well, despite the fact that it had been a triple bypass and not the double they’d initially hoped he would require. Better to do it now, while we’re already in there, he’d said to me, as though that could somehow comfort me. I was beyond any reassurance until I saw him.

“How long will he have to stay?” I asked the nurse who was in the room with us. I had already asked the doctors, but nothing had sunken in. Until I had seen my father and known that he was still alive and breathing, nothing had broken through the fog.

The nurse was still situating all of the tubes and wires around his bed, making sure the beeping machines were beeping properly, it seemed. “Two more days here in the ICU,” she said. “After that, he’ll be moved to a regular room for the rest of his stay—probably another three to five days after the transfer.”

Pretty much another week, then, in total. I nodded. A tear slipped free, and Daddy squeezed my hand. Only the way he gripped me wasn’t normal. Usually, when he would squeeze my hand, I could feel all his strength in the touch. His grasp felt weak just now, as if I was the strong one. I didn’t want to be the strong one.

I doubted I could do it. I could maybe pretend to be for a little while, but it would only be an act.

He always told me that I was stronger than I thought I was, that I was the one who had helped him get by after my mother left. But that wasn’t really strength. That was coping. That was putting one foot in front of another because there wasn’t a possibility of moving backward.

He’d always been my strength.

With my free hand, I brushed the damn tears away, angry with myself that I kept crying so much in the last day or so. I needed to get a fucking grip.

The nurse finally stopped fiddling with everything and headed toward the door. “If you need anything, Scotty, push that button on your remote that I showed you. Even if you don’t think you need anything, we’ll have someone coming in to check on you every hour, take your vitals.” She gave me a kind but stern look. “Ten more minutes, hon, and then you have to go. He needs his rest.”

I had to choke back a laugh at the absurdity of her comment. Still, I nodded my agreement. The longer I stayed with him now, the longer he would fight to stay alert. That was the last thing he needed to do right now.

When I faced Daddy again, he had a bit of a grin creeping over his face. “She’s lost her damn mind if she thinks anyone can rest in this place with all that beeping.”

At least he hadn’t lost his sense of humor. I bent over him and kissed his forehead, using my fingers to brush his hair back from his eyes. It had grown too long. We needed to take him in to get it cut sometime soon, but that wouldn’t be easy to do for a while. His skin felt clammy to the touch.

“Are you hot? Cold?” I was already on my feet to adjust the thermostat in his room, or get him another blanket, or—

“I’m fine.”

“Liar.”

“At least we know you come by it honestly.”

No, he definitely hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

He curled his fingers of hand toward his open palm, a silent entreaty for me to come back to his side. I sat and took his hand between both of mine.

“You look tired,” he said. “You didn’t sleep?”

“I slept.” Some. How little sleep I got wasn’t important. I wouldn’t have gotten the bit that I did if not for Jonny, but that wasn’t really something I wanted to talk to my father about.

“Liar,” he returned, raising an eyebrow.

“I did. Maybe not enough, but I slept.” The bit I had gotten had been good sleep. I’d felt warm and safe with Jonny’s arms around me, like he could make everything all right. But I’d always thought Daddy could do that, too, and now there were things going on that my father couldn’t rescue me from. When I was ten, he could solve any problem. Now it looked like I was going to have to start sorting them out on my own.

“You have to do better,” he said. “I need you to be healthy, baby girl.”

“I am. I’m taking care of myself so I can take good care of you.”

“I’d feel a lot better if there was someone taking care of you.” His eyes got misty, and I wished he would stop talking like that. He always kept bringing it back to him wanting me to have a man in my life, when the only man I knew beyond any doubt I wanted in my life was him. Not only that, but my father wasn’t supposed to cry. I was doing enough of that for the both of us.

“There is someone taking care of me,” I said and immediately wished I could take it back. I didn’t know what to say to my father about Jonny. I didn’t know how I felt about what had happened with Jonny.

Daddy cocked his head in question, almost like a dog would.

Shit. Now that I’d gone there, I figured I’d better keep going.

“Jonny,” I forced out. “He took me home last night and brought me back today.” I conveniently neglected to mention the fact that he’d taken me home with him last night. To his house. And that I’d slept in his bed. And that I hadn’t been home at all, not even to change clothes from yesterday. And a thousand other things that Daddy didn’t need to be worried about right now. I was just thankful that he never seemed to notice little details like what I was wearing. That kind of thing just slipped straight through his head because there were so many other details crammed in there, like what line combinations he wanted to try next or which of his players were struggling.

He gave me a nod, but what little energy he had was disappearing fast. “That’s good. Jonny’s a good man. I’ll have to find a way to thank him when I’m better.”

All I’d done to thank him was cry all over him, throw water in his face, try to punch him, puke in his bathroom… The list seemed to go on and on, and none of it came across as being very gracious.

“I’ll take care of it, Daddy,” I said, even though I didn’t have the first clue how to make up for all that I’d done. “You just rest.” I squeezed his hand again, and his lips curled up a bit. By the time I got to the door, he was already half asleep.

I was expecting to find Dana in the waiting room when I got there, and maybe Laura and Katie. It was early enough in the day still that Laura’s other kids shouldn’t be out of school yet, and Katie went everywhere with her mom right now. They’d started up this new arrangement after Katie’s first chemotherapy treatment a couple of months ago. She’d been diagnosed with leukemia not long before that, but things were looking up. Her treatments were going well, and I didn’t think she had to go through too many more of them.

The three of them were in the waiting room—but they weren’t alone. Jonny was there, too. He looked insanely out of place, an enormous man cramped into a tiny chair in the middle of three women, none of whom were even half his size. My purse was on his lap, and he met my eyes when I came in but stayed quiet. He was always quiet. The only way I knew he’d noticed me at all was that he gave me a slight nod. Well, and he’d met my eyes. Subtle cues were all I ever got from this guy.

Laura and Dana immediately crossed over to me and started trying to take care of me. Laura pulled me in for a hug, and Dana pushed a bottle of water and a granola bar into my hands. Katie stayed put at Jonny’s side, a hot-pink throw blanket over her lap and a turquoise scarf that matched her T-shirt and brightened her blue eyes was tied around her head. She waved and smiled.

“See?” Laura said. “He came through all right. He’s going to be just fine.”

“You need to eat something,” Dana said. “You haven’t eaten a bite since I got here, and that was hours ago.”

They were tugging me over to where they’d been waiting, and my feet were moving, but I wasn’t processing a damn thing. Laura pushed me down into a chair—right next to Jonny—and she and Dana kept fussing over me. I let them because I didn’t know what else to do.

Laura got started talking, and once she really got going, there was no chance in hell she would quit anytime soon. “We’ve got your keys now, so we can take care of getting your car back to your house for you. And you’re not going to have to do anything alone. I’ve already started working out a schedule with all the players’ wives and girlfriends, we’re all going to help.”

“It’ll give us all something to do other than worry about our boys, anyway,” Dana said.

“That’s right.” Laura’s cell phone beeped in her pocket. She pulled it out and started texting as she talked. “They can worry about themselves for a while. God knows that’s all they’ll be concerned about, with the playoffs starting up in a couple of days. All of us, we’re going to worry about you. And your dad. You won’t have to worry about a single thing because we’re going to take care of it all before you even realize you need something.”

“But eat that,” Dana said, gesturing toward the bar she’d handed me a moment ago.

I opened the wrapper and took a bite, numb to everything. It was easier to just do what I was told than to try to figure anything out. Maybe it was for the best that Laura was already taking over.

That was when she was in her element, anyway—when she could be in charge of something, organizing people, making sure everyone was on task and every detail was taken care of. That was when she thrived.

She kept talking, but I couldn’t focus on any of it. My head was swimming. Too many things were happening at once.

I don’t know how long I was just sitting there and staring dully, attempting to eat the granola bar, when I felt Jonny’s big, strong, steady hand come down on top of mine. For the first time in hours, my lungs filled with air. I shot my head up so I could look at him.

He leaned down so his mouth was near my ear, and his warm breath fluttered over my neck. “Are you all right?”

I nodded, despite the fact that I wasn’t even close to all right.

His presence was helping with that, though. The heat from his hand gradually moved through me, flooding my body with a sense of calm that I hadn’t felt in almost twenty-four hours.

“You’re not,” he said. “You aren’t a very good liar.”

Dana narrowed her eyes at me. “You need rest. And real food.”

“And a shower,” Katie added.

“Right,” Laura said, eyeing me shrewdly. “Jonny, since you’re here, why don’t you take her home?”

He grunted, which could have been either a confirmation or a denial. It was impossible to tell.

Laura seemed to take it as him agreeing to do what she’d asked. “Dana, Katie, and I can take care of getting your car sorted out while you shower and change and all of that. Then Katie and I’ll have to go get the other kids after school, but Dana can keep you company. And later, we’ll bring you dinner. And wine.” While she talked, she took my purse from Jonny, dug out my keys, and twisted the car key off the ring. I should have been upset that she would just go through my purse like that, but that took too much energy.

I didn’t really want all of them hovering around me all day, and I couldn’t have wine since I was pregnant, but I wasn’t up to arguing. Not right now. I took my purse when Laura handed it back to me, and I shoved my remaining keys in my pocket.

“That all right with you?” Jonny asked.

His voice seemed to rumble through me the same way his heat had, making a gradual path through every inch of my body until it pooled in my toes.

“Yeah, that’s okay,” I said.

Laura was on her feet in an instant. “Good. We’ll meet you back at your place in a bit.”

Katie and Dana followed her out, with Katie waving over her shoulder as they went.

Jonny’s pensive eyes stayed glued to mine. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

Something in the way he asked threatened to unleash more tears, but I fought them down. “Let’s just go,” I bit off.

He carried my purse for me, and he didn’t let go of my hand the whole way out to his truck. Even then, he only released me so he could get a grip on my waist to help me up into the monstrous thing.

“Maybe I should get some running boards,” he mumbled.

He’d only need those if he was going to be driving me around more, though, and that wasn’t likely to happen.

ON THE WAY to my house, I finally forgot about my own concerns long enough to remember that Jonny had some pretty heavy shit of his own that he’d had to deal with today. He hadn’t said a word about any of it. He’d only been concerned about me and my issues, and so had I. He had to think I was the most self-absorbed person on the planet right about now. Lord knows I did.

“How did the hearing go?” I asked, hopeful that I could get him to talk. Jonny was generally a relatively taciturn person, dealing more in grunts and nods than actual words—so much so that I’d actually started being able to interpret his nonverbal forms of communication. At least sometimes I could. Not always.

“Fine.” He kept his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road. Monosyllabic responses were a step up from grunts, but only just.

“Just fine? Will they reduce the suspension at all?”

“They’re rescinding your dad’s.”

Daddy wasn’t going to be able to coach for quite a while, so that didn’t really matter. His suspension was the last thing on my mind…and it wasn’t what I’d asked Jonny at all. He was avoiding my question. “But what about yours?” I prodded. “I get that they have to suspend you at least for a couple of games after that, but isn’t ten games over the top?”

“Ten games is automatic.”

“But they know you were just—”

“I broke the rules, Sara. I have to pay the price.” There was a muscle, just behind his ear, that kept tensing and releasing when he spoke. I had a strange urge to massage his shoulders, to try to release some of his stiffness. Instead, I looked out the window as the neighborhood rolled by.

“I’m sorry, Jonny,” I said after a minute.

“Don’t be sorry. I made choices. Now I have to live with them.” He made the turn onto my street. “I wish you’d call me Cam.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want me to call you Cam? Everyone calls you Jonny.”

“Not everyone,” he said gruffly, but he didn’t elaborate. He pulled up in front of the house and parked on the street, probably so Dana and Laura could get my car in the driveway when they arrived. I pulled my purse strap over my shoulder and unfastened my seatbelt. After he shut off the ignition, he came around the front and helped me climb down without falling the way I’d done last night. His hands lingered near my waist, close enough that I could feel their heat but far enough that I almost strained for their touch. I had placed my hands on his biceps when he picked me up, and they were still resting there. His muscles rippled beneath my fingertips.

Almost inadvertently, I leaned in closer to him as though I needed him to keep me grounded. We were so close that each time one of us inhaled, our chests touched briefly in a moment of featherlight contact that made my heart pound like a battering ram.

He backed away all of a sudden, so fast that I nearly lost my balance even though we’d barely been touching. Then he closed the door of his truck. “Do you have your keys still?”

I pulled them from my pocket and crossed the lawn ahead of him, trying to get my pulse to slow down. I really couldn’t allow myself to continue reacting to him like this, but the more time I spent around him, the more it was happening. He might be suspended, but he was still a hockey player—and he was definitely still one of Daddy’s players. None of that had changed, regardless of the fact that my father was in the hospital and wouldn’t be coaching in the near future. And, hell…I was pregnant with some random guy’s baby. Not exactly the right time to be starting a new relationship.

My hands shook as I tried to unlock the door.

“Let me,” he said from right behind me.

I nodded and let him take the keys from me. In no time, he had the door open and returned my keychain. Our fingers brushed in the transfer, and I shivered from the electric charge passing between us from that brief connection.

“Thank you, Cam,” I said. It felt weird using his real name. It felt too personal.

He backed down the steps, running one hand over his buzzed hair. The movement stretched his T-shirt taut over his chest, and I couldn’t seem to remove my gaze from his pecs and the way the muscles in his arms worked together.

“I, uh…I should get out of here,” he said.

If he left, then I’d have to be alone in this big house. I still wasn’t ready for that.

I didn’t know how I would get through a whole week without my father coming home. His presence was big enough that he filled up all the empty spaces. And I know I was usually ready for him to leave on a road trip before he’d been home for too long—it was nice to get some time to myself—and with him recovering from his surgery, I’d probably be sick to death of him in a few days, tops, once he came home, but at the moment, the emptiness was more than I could bear. It was such a contradiction—I missed him when he was away, and I could only take so much of him when he was home. But that was our relationship. It had been that way for so long, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if it changed.

Right now wasn’t the time for me to find out. “Don’t go,” I said. “Not yet. Unless you have somewhere you have to be,” I added when I thought better of it.

“I don’t have to be anywhere.”

“Then come in. Please.” I adjusted my purse strap because it felt as though he was staring a hole through me and I needed to do something.

For a moment, it looked like he was waging an internal debate, but then he shrugged. “Okay.” He came up the steps again and held the door to let me precede him inside.

I headed into the kitchen and set my purse and keys on the island.

“Dana’s right,” he said, startling me with how close he was behind me. I jumped. I hadn’t heard him moving. I hadn’t heard a damn thing since the front door had closed. How had he come all the way into the kitchen without me hearing him move? He was bigger than Daddy. He ought to have a personality that was big and lumbering and loud to match his size, too, but Jonny was the absolute opposite of that. He was gentle and quiet.

“Right about what?” I asked, mentally reminding myself that he was Cam, not Jonny. That was what he wanted me to call him, and after all he’d done for me, the least I could do was call him by the name he wanted.

“You need to eat. You’ve only had a few bites of toast and then, what, half a granola bar?”

“Why are you worried about how much I’ve been eating?”

Again, with the prickly, bitchy thing. I seriously needed to stop that. He didn’t look like it had bothered him, but nothing ever looked like it bothered him. It was bothering me, though. Insane hormones or not, there was no cause for me to treat him like shit.

I took a calming breath. “Sorry. I’m just on edge.”

“I know. It’s all right. I’m worried because I care.” The way he said it—that he cared—sent a series of flutters tickling through my veins. Cam pulled open the fridge and scoured its contents. “You’re not still nauseated, are you?”

“That passed hours ago,” I said, shaking my head.

“How about a sandwich, then?” He took out deli meat and cheese and the like without waiting for me to answer.

“I just don’t have an appetite with everything that’s been going on.”

“You have to eat. You’ve got to keep up your strength. For you. For your dad.” He didn’t mention the baby, but his eyes dropped briefly to my stomach and I knew he was thinking about it.

I went to the cabinet and took out some plates. He was right. Dana was right. Everyone was fucking right. I was starting to feel like I needed a damn keeper. Hell, that was essentially what Cam had been for me in the last day, and it was what Laura was attempting to organize. I had a whole freaking army of keepers. You’d think I’d be able to just do what they told me to do and focus on what I needed to focus on, but I guess that wasn’t really how I rolled.

I handed him one of the plates and grabbed a loaf of bread from the pantry. “You’re a lot nicer to me than I deserve lately.”

“I’m just trying to treat you how I would hope someone would treat one of my sisters.” He spread some mayo on his bread. “It’s not easy to think of you like a sister, though.”

“Because I’m acting like a bitch?” I joked.

He lifted his head, and his gaze met mine and seared straight through me. I couldn’t remember a time that I’d ever seen his eyes so expressive or anything other than simply serious. I melted into the floor, as though every bone in my body had turned to goo.

“Because you’re definitely not my sister,” he finally said, in such a way that all the nerve endings in my body jolted to life and started to dance.

“Oh.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so sexually aware. Particularly not when I hadn’t even been touched or kissed or anything, just looked at.

I forced my muscles to quit the whole boneless-jelly thing and respond, going through the motions of building my sandwich. When I finished, I carried my plate to the table and sat down. A minute later, Cam sat across from me. The fact that he was there made it difficult to think about anything except the way he made me feel, but somehow I managed to get most of my sandwich down.

We were both almost done with our meals before either of us spoke again. I was too busy trying to rein in all the tingling, jangling, out-of-control vibrations racing through my veins. I suppose he was too busy eating.

“Why isn’t he as worried about you as I am?” Cam asked, jolting me out of our silence with the outrage in his voice. “Why the fuck isn’t he here with you when you’re going through something like this?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The son of a bitch who fucking got you pregnant! If you were my girlfriend, I sure as fuck wouldn’t be leaving you to deal with it on your own. Even if I couldn’t be with you, I’d be on the phone with you constantly, texting… I’d be making sure you fucking knew you could count on me, that you weren’t alone. And if some asshole like me got too fucking close—”

Cam cut himself off, shaking his head. He pushed back from the table and took his plate back to the kitchen, leaving me altogether too responsive to his presence and tingling with awareness. I couldn’t eat anymore. I could hardly breathe. The way he’d just spoken, the heat in his eyes when he looked at me—it was a lot more than I’d bargained for. The attraction I felt toward him was supposed to be one-sided, and it was supposed to be something I would never act on.

Cam was throwing a huge wrench into that.

“I’m sorry,” he said from behind the sink where he was now rinsing a plate that didn’t need to be rinsed. “It’s none of my business. We already established that, so I shouldn’t—”

“Cam?”

He turned off the water and looked up.

“He’s not in the picture.” I don’t know why I told him that. I kept revealing more to Cam than I wanted anyone to know. Him, least of all.

For a long time—too long—he just stared at me, those damn unblinking eyes making my blood ping like pins and needles as it raced through my veins.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

He ripped a paper towel off the holder beside him and dried his hands. “There’s no reason I need to go hunt him down?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if there was.”

His face was one big, massive scowl, but he didn’t get a chance to respond. Dana, Laura, and Katie let themselves in, their chatter rendering it impossible for us to continue our conversation.

Thank God. I needed that line of discussion to end, pronto.

Laura never seemed to stop talking. “We have to leave in just a— Oh, you haven’t showered yet? I guess you did need to eat. Shower next, though. Or maybe take a long bubble bath to relax? It’ll make you feel better. Katie and I have to go get the other kids in a minute, but we’re going to pick up dinner and wine for you, and we’ll come back later. Rachel’s coming over after she finishes up at work, too.”

Cam brought me a glass of water, his eyes not meeting mine. “I’ll go now that Dana’s here.”

There was a part of me that wanted to beg him to stay again, to tell him I would prefer him to be with me than the girls right now. They were my best friends, but it was like a tornado of energy and movement followed Laura everywhere she went sometimes. Cam was the exact opposite. Everything seemed to slow down, to settle, when he was with me. Right now, that seemed like what I needed more than anything else.

I couldn’t make any words come out of my mouth, though, and I didn’t like the thought that I needed him.

He headed for the door but stopped when he passed Laura. “She doesn’t need wine tonight. She needs rest.”

Laura let out a laugh. “Wine’ll help her re—”

The look he gave her cut her off mid-word.

“Okay. No wine tonight, then.”

Cam turned and caught my eye. “Call if you need anything.”

I nodded, and he headed out the door.

The girls swarmed into the dining room and took seats around me. “What was that about?” Laura asked.

“I don’t know,” I hedged.

“You really aren’t a very good liar,” Katie said, brightening. “I could give you lessons. It’ll give me something to do.”

“Don’t let your father hear you talking like that,” her mother said.

“Why?” Dana asked, winking at me. “Because he’d know who she got her mad lying skills from?”

“Exactly.” Laura shuddered dramatically. “Seriously, though. Wine tonight, or no?”

“Just rest, I think. At least for me,” I said, despite the fact that a glass of wine sounded like just what the doctor ordered. Once again, Cam had been right. Being a preggo meant no wine with the girls.

For months and months.

Damn it.

“CADENCE IS WORRIED sick about you,” Mom said.

I sighed into the phone, flinging my free arm back against the pillow over my head while I lay in bed. That movement dislodged Buster, and he whined as he shifted into a position where I wasn’t halfway on top of him. “She’s paying too much attention to the hockey media,” I said. “She knows better than to do that.”

“She’s seventeen. Everyone at school is talking about it, about what you did. What did you expect?”

I expected that as my sister, she knew me well enough to know why I’d done what I’d done. But Mom and my sisters all lived in a suburb just outside of Winnipeg, one of the most hockey-obsessed places they could possibly live, and the hockey media had been absolutely skewering my character in the last day or so. I could only imagine how much worse the Canadian media was painting the picture than here in the States. It couldn’t be easy for my sister at school right now.

“I’m sorry, Mom. Tell her to call me tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll talk about it.” It was too late to talk now. Cadence was already in bed since she had to get up early for figure skating practice before school.

“You should talk to Chloe, too. And Corinne.”

I usually talked to my mom and each of my sisters several times a week. Sometimes every day. But since everything went down this week, this was the first time I’d had a chance to talk to any of them.

“I will,” I promised. “I’ve just had a lot going on.” And a great deal of it had very little to do with anything my family was aware of. So much of it was centered on Sara.

“I know you have, Cam.” Mom sounded tired. She always sounded tired, even though I sent her money to help pay for the mortgage and Cadence’s figure skating and Chloe’s college expenses—I’d sent money for Corinne’s education, too, back when she had been in nursing school—so Mom wouldn’t have to work so hard. She never slowed down, though. Mom never took time to take care of herself.

“Chloe has a boyfriend,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

There wasn’t a chance in hell it was an afterthought.

“Do I know him?”

“No, but she wants you to. She wants to plan a big family thing so you can meet him whenever you come home, but it’s hard since we don’t know when that’ll be.”

“Sounds serious.” My sisters usually tried to keep the guys they dated away from me because I could be pretty intimidating. I wouldn’t ever hurt one of them unless they’d earned it, but the guys tended to run off before it ever came to that once they met me. If Chloe actually wanted me to meet this guy, she’d probably already been with him for months, if not longer.

“I think she’s hoping for a ring soon,” Mom said. “I’m not sure Dylan will give her one until he’s met you, though.”

“Is he good for her?”

“Yes.” Mom’s smile came through in her voice. “They’re good for each other.”

“Will she finish college before the wedding?” I didn’t want my sisters to ever have to rely on men for their livelihood. It was something Mom and I had both agreed for as long as I could remember. We didn’t want the girls to end up in the same sort of situation Mom had been in when our father walked away.

“Dylan is just as insistent about that as we are. She’ll get her degree.”

“I promise I won’t take his head off until I’ve actually had a chance to get to know him, then.”

Buster whined again, much louder and more insistently this time. He probably needed to go out, but he never wanted to do that on his own if I was home.

“Sounds like you need to take him out,” Mom said. “I’ll let you go. I know you have a lot on your plate, Cam.”

“Yeah. I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too. Call your sisters.” With that, she clicked off, and the line went dead.

I tossed my phone onto the nightstand. As soon as I sat up on the bed, Buster made a flying leap off it and raced for the stairs. I’d barely made it to the bedroom door and I could already hear him running in circles and yapping excitedly in the kitchen. “Stupid pup,” I mumbled to myself. He knew good and well that he could go through his doggy door whenever he wanted.

“All right, all right. I’m here,” I said. I don’t know why I talked to him. I’d known he was deaf since the day I got him, and not once had he ever reacted to a word from my mouth. He’d been a gift from Mom and my sisters back when I signed my first pro contract—a little piece of them to keep with me when I was so far from home. I supposed I talked to him because he was the only one around for me to talk to.

He raced through the door as soon as I opened it, diving headfirst under a hedge and disappearing into his own private jungle oasis. His happy barking almost drowned out the soft knock at my front door. In fact, I thought I’d imagined it at first, but a moment later I heard it again.

Who would be at my door at this hour? It was well after ten on a weeknight. Anyone I could think of who might drop by would be far more likely to call first, but even that list was pretty short.

I had stripped down to a pair of jeans not long after dinner, and for half a second, I thought about going upstairs and at least pulling on a T-shirt, but whoever was outside on my porch knocked again, and I scrapped that thought.

I crossed into the living room and flipped the switch for the porch light before dragging the door open.

Never would I have expected Sara to be the one knocking, but there she was—big, blue eyes looking up at me, and a loose, oversized sweater pulled tight around her body, her arms crossed over her chest to hold it in place.

I must have stared without saying anything for too long because she turned around and started heading back down the steps.

“Wait. Sara, stop,” I said to no avail. She kept walking, her fuzzy house shoes surely getting damp on my lawn since it had rained earlier in the evening. That was when I noticed she was in a gold nightgown underneath the sweater—no pants, just some sort of long, satiny nightie that ended just below her knees. What the fuck?

I started after her, the wet grass cold under my bare feet. If I was cold, she had to be freezing out here dressed like that. “Sara.” I caught up to her before she got to her car and took her hand.

“I don’t know why I came here,” she said. She stopped walking, but she didn’t turn to face me. “I wasn’t thinking. I just—”

“Look at me,” I interrupted. I needed to see her eyes. I needed to get some visual clues about what was going on in her head so I could figure out how I was supposed to react, what I was supposed to do. This was one of those moments when I was extremely glad I’d grown up surrounded by women. It gave me a leg up on figuring out how to understand them. The most important lesson I’d learned from my sisters was that it was all in the face.

Slowly, Sara turned…but she stared down at the ground. I tipped her chin up so I could see her eyes. They were slightly wild, more pupil than iris in the yellowish glow of the streetlights.

“Are you all right?” I asked. She didn’t look like she’d been hurt, but sometimes you just couldn’t tell. Things might have gone downhill with Scotty. Maybe she was ill, or there could potentially be a problem with the baby. Was she miscarrying? A thousand different possibilities raced through my head.

She shook her head but said, “I’m fine. I should go. I shouldn’t ever have come.”

“Did you need something from me? Can I help?”

“It’s nothing. I’m just being silly, is all.”

“Tell me.”

She shivered. The rain had brought cooler weather, and Portland could be chilly enough at night in the spring. She should have put on some real clothes before coming out like this, and definitely a good pair of shoes.

I scowled. “But come inside first.” I turned around and started back into the house, Sara’s hand still in mine. She followed more easily than I’d expected she would. I sat her down on the couch and went into the guest bedroom downstairs, taking a spare blanket from the closet. When I returned to the living room, I draped it over her.

“Now tell me. What’s going on?” I sat down on the other end of the couch so she’d have plenty of space.

She tugged the blanket up higher. “I just couldn’t stand being in that house alone tonight. I was okay while the girls were there with me, but Rachel had to go back home to her kids, and Katie was worn out and needed to go to bed, so Laura took her home, and then Dana wanted to go be with Zee for a while before the team leaves for Vancouver tomorrow. And so it was just me and a big, empty house.”

“So you came here,” I finished for her.

“Yeah.” One side of her mouth turned down in the most adorable pout. “I told you it was stupid.”

“You said it was silly.” I would have remembered if she’d said she was stupid. I would have corrected the shit out of that.

“Same difference. Either way, I shouldn’t have come.”

“Why not?”

The telltale flapping of the doggy door met my ears about a half second or so before Buster ran in to join us, barking like mad with his tail wagging hard enough to create a breeze. He jumped up onto Sara’s lap and started kissing her face as though she was his long-lost love.

“Sorry,” I said, leaning over to grab him. He did the same thing to my face when I pulled him over to me. “He’s a little overly friendly sometimes.”

“He’s okay. I don’t mind.”

I hoped she meant that because Buster squirmed free of my grip and bounded back over to her. I’d never seen him get quite so excited over anyone other than Cadence when she was younger. With Cadence, it had always seemed like he was nuts about her because she was closer to his size and would get down on the floor and roughhouse with him. I wasn’t sure what drew him to Sara beyond all the things that kept drawing me to her—and those things didn’t make a lick of sense for him.

He gave her a big slurp right on the end of her nose, and she giggled. That was good to hear. She’d been so down, so unlike herself since her father’s heart attack.

I got caught up in watching her laugh with my dog going berserk over her for so long that I almost forgot I still didn’t know why she thought she shouldn’t have come to my house.

“You can always come here,” I said, and her eyes shot up to meet mine. “I like having you here.” I liked it a hell of a lot more than I should.

“Really?” She gave me this look, as though I’d lost my mind, which obviously I had. “You don’t mind me barging in like this?”

“I’d rather have you here with me than home alone and miserable.” The thought that she might spend another night in my bed was in equal parts a source of exhilaration and torture.

But it would be even greater torture to ask her to leave.

SOMEHOW I’D ROLLED over and wrapped myself around Cam during the night.

Before going to bed, we’d decided not to bother with me even attempting to sleep in his guest room since it hadn’t gone so well last night. He’d said that Buster would probably stay between us, despite the fact that he’d worked his way up to snuggle with me on my pillow last night. Cam had sworn that was just a fluke, that Buster preferred to be right in the middle of the bed. He’d also promised that he wouldn’t touch me—that we could just share the bed like siblings—even though neither of us felt like we were siblings. I’d promised the same. I might dream about unleashing the crazy sexual tension between us, but I would never act on it. Or so I’d told myself. And him.

Apparently, my sleeping self didn’t want to cooperate with my waking self, and Buster had no intention of doing what Cam expected him to do. Sleeping me had other ideas about what to do with him while we were in bed together, and Buster had disappeared to somewhere near our feet, if the heavy breathing I felt on my toes was any indication.

It was still pitch black in Cam’s bedroom other than the faint moonlight coming in through the window, so God only knew what time it was. My legs were twisted with his, my right arm was draped over his abs, and I had somehow buried my head in the space between his chest and shoulder.

He hadn’t put a shirt on before we went to bed, either. He’d just changed from jeans into some long gym shorts, the kind he wore when he and Dana went to work out with their boxing or whatever it was they always did together. The smattering of hair on his chest scratched lightly against my cheek and nose.

It felt amazing, the way we fit together, like we were two pieces of a puzzle—a risky thought.

But I wasn’t the only one of us grabbing onto the other. His hand—the whole big, strong thing—had settled on my ass as if there was nowhere else it would make sense for it to be. And because of the whole tangled mass-of-limbs situation with our legs, my nightgown had edged up higher and higher until the hem was nearly at my waist.

I didn’t have any panty material to speak of providing a barrier from his hand since, as usual, I was wearing a thong. This one was lacy. Come to think of it, I’d bought it before that ill-fated date with Brad so I’d have something new that made me feel sexy in case things had gone well.

If I’d thought it through before leaving my house tonight, I would have changed into some briefs—some of my period panties—and probably at least a pair of shorts or something to cover them with. I hadn’t been thinking at all, though. I’d just been itching to leave that big empty house, and had let a mild bout of insanity take over.

Cam’s palm was on my ass cheek, skin to skin, scorching me.

The recognition of how we were jumbled together had jolted me wide-awake, but Cam was still sound asleep. His deep, even inhalations lifted his chest, and the exhalations fluttered my hair away from my forehead. His hand squeezed my ass just a little, tugging me even closer to him until I was practically on top of him. The inside of one of my thighs brushed against him, and his shorts didn’t hide a damn thing about how hard he was. Or how big. It wouldn’t take anything for him to be ready for a long night of sexytimes.

Goddamn fucking hell, this could not be happening between us.

Then he bent his arm, sliding his hand over the satin covering my back. My skin zinged at every point of contact, electricity surging between us.

It felt good having him touching me like that. No, scratch that—it felt fucking amazing to have him touch me, which was all the more reason I needed to extricate myself from that position and find a way to keep it from taking place ever again.

I hadn’t come here for a booty call. I’d come because I was a neurotic mess and he was the only thing that made me feel sane in the whirlwind that was currently my life.

I tried to roll away from him, but his other arm came around my back, and he tightened his hold. Even in sleep, he had to be as strong as the Incredible Hulk. I squirmed a little, trying to free my legs, and one of them finally jerked free from the pile. I accidentally kicked Buster, though, since I’d been so concerned about getting away from Cam that I’d completely forgotten about the fact that his dog was at our feet. I didn’t kick him too hard, but he barked and jolted Cam awake.

“What’s wrong?” he said, his voice gruff with sleep. I had hoped he wouldn’t wake up until I’d somehow pulled myself free, but Buster had made sure it was too late to do anything about that now.

“Nothing’s wrong.” I tried to roll away again now that he was awake and could cooperate with my attempts. “I was just trying to get back to my side of the bed.”

He dropped his hands to his sides almost immediately as though I’d burned him. Maybe he felt the same inexplicable heat everywhere we touched then, too. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Not nearly as sorry as I was about the fact that he wasn’t holding on to me anymore. I might not want to be falling for Cam, but I sure as hell enjoyed the sensation of touching him. I’d never had the pleasure of skimming my hands over Captain America’s torso, but if I ever got that opportunity and it was even half as nice as Cam’s, I’d be a drooling mess in no time.

I disentangled my legs and slid back to the opposite side of the bed, instantly mourning the loss of contact and shivering from the lack of Cam’s body heat. He rolled over to face me as I went. I could barely see his eyes in the dark, but I could feel them on me.

Staring.

Hard.

So hard he stole my breath. It felt like he was devouring me with them. I might like that—being devoured by him. Except for the fact that he was out of bounds.

Fuck, I needed to look away so I’d stop thinking about all the things I’d love to do to him and love for him to do to me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t turn my head. I couldn’t close my eyes. I was completely mesmerized by the way he was blistering me with his gaze.

“I was dreaming about you,” he said. “About touching you.”

“It wasn’t just in your dreams.” It had been in my dreams, too. And we had been touching.

“I know.” His voice was hardly more than a croak, as if he was in physical pain. “I still feel the ghost of your skin on my hand.”

I could still feel the ghost of his hand on my ass. I wanted the real deal again. “Would it be awful of me to ask you to touch me again?” I asked, ignoring the sirens going off in my head, telling me to back off and stay back. I couldn’t do it, though. I saw the yellow caution tape, the barrier that said Do Not Cross, and yet I was ripping it in two and stepping into forbidden territory.

“Don’t tease me, Sara.”

Cam Johnson was a man I would never dream of teasing.

“I’m not teasing.” Also, I wasn’t thinking. I mentally put a pillow over the stupid sirens and stifled them.

Right now, here, in this moment, I didn’t care that he was a hockey player. I didn’t care that he was one of my dad’s players. I didn’t care that I was pregnant. I could ignore the fact that if I went through with this, I would be doing to my father exactly what my mother had done—sleeping with one of his players. Okay, maybe not exactly, but still.

I had to ignore all of that, because I would go crazy if I couldn’t feel Cam’s hands on me again.

I lifted up onto my elbow, still on my side, and reached for him with my free hand. With the backs of my fingers, I grazed his jaw and cheeks. He didn’t pull away, so I splayed my hand and furthered my exploration. The pulse in his neck thundered beneath my fingertips, and I moved down over the sinewy, corded muscles in his shoulders and chest.

A low moan rumbled from inside him, urging me on.

The ridges and planes in his abs were endlessly fascinating to me, rippling and rolling beneath my touch. I traced a circle around his belly button with one finger, over and over again. He sucked in a breath as he trapped my wrist in his grip, preventing me from moving lower still.

“Touch me, Cam.” I needed to learn the strength of his hands, the power of his thighs, the gentleness of his lips. I needed him. I didn’t want to need him, but I couldn’t ignore the sense that whether I wanted it or not, I very much did need him.

He didn’t let go of my wrist even though I was straining to get it free so I could explore his body some more. “I will touch you,” he finally said. “But first I need you to understand something.”

His tone was as serious as the expression in his eyes always was. No nonsense. Quietly intense. Eternally focused.

“Okay.” I was so winded with need and lust and anticipation that my words were barely a whisper in the breath of space between us.

“I don’t do one-night stands or casual flings or friends with benefits, or any of that other bullshit. I’m not going to be okay with fucking you and moving on like nothing ever happened between us. I won’t walk out of the picture like the asshole who got you pregnant, and I won’t make it easy on you if you decide you want to shove me out of your life, instead.” He shifted his grip until our palms were touching and his fingers were laced with mine. “For me, it’s all or nothing. I can’t half-ass this. If we do this, I will pursue you like no man has ever pursued you before. And even after I’ve caught you, I plan to continue pursuing you like my life depends on it. If you’re not prepared for that, if you’re not ready to be treated as something special and treasured and precious, then I need you to roll over, go back to sleep, and pretend none of this ever happened.”

SARA DIDN’T RELEASE my hand.

She didn’t freak out.

She didn’t roll over and show me her back.

She didn’t tell me to take a fucking hike or that I was full of shit, and she didn’t scoff at the idea that I would pursue her.

She definitely didn’t go back to sleep like a small part of me had been praying she would.

Instead, she leaned across the space between us and kissed me—something I never expected, but that a huge part of me had been hoping for, for what felt like an eternity.

Her lips were soft and pliant, deliciously warm, and they moved over mine with deliberate purpose. She moved toward to me, rolling me onto my back and coming down over me so that her breasts pillowed on my chest, and she sucked my lower lip between hers, using her teeth to tug it down until her tongue could gain entry.

She tasted both sweet and dangerous at once, like everything forbidden, like dark chocolate and red wine and smooth dark coffee, like taking a bite of sin while standing just this side of the pearly gates.

What the fuck was I thinking? I shouldn’t have told her I’d been dreaming about her. I should have just apologized and rolled over and done my damnedest to forget the sensation of having her wrapped all around me like that. I should have gotten out of bed and made myself a pallet on the floor, so she could still be in here with me but I wouldn’t be able to pull her into my arms like that again.

I had no business getting involved with Sara Thomas, but I’d just told her I was going to do a hell of a lot more than simply get involved with her. And I’d meant every fucking bit of what I’d said.

She pulled herself fully onto me, straddling my waist with her thighs. Her hands went to either side of my head, her small left hand still clutching my right, and she pushed herself up so she was looking down over me. Cautiously, tentatively, I slipped my other hand onto her thigh. The silken texture of her nightgown glided beneath my fingers, and she shivered.

I bent my knees, and Buster voiced his displeasure at being relocated from his comfortable position by my feet with a series of barks.

“Shit.” I brushed some hair away from Sara’s face, tucking it behind her ear, and I flipped us over so she was on her back against the pillows and I was leaning over her now. Buster darted out from under the blankets and barked indignantly at me. He was about to get a hell of a lot more indignant. I kissed the tip of Sara’s nose. “Don’t move.”

When I climbed off the bed, Buster yapped and raced out of the bedroom in front of me, as if he expected me to take him outside. But I just closed the door. He liked to be in the middle of everything way too much. I couldn’t think of anything that would kill the mood quicker than that little bastard trying to help.

Sara was up on her knees on the bed when I turned around, the faint moonlight pouring through the window and bouncing off her satin nightie, enhancing all of her curves in a way that made me groan. It looked like liquid gold, the way it moved over her.

“He’s going to feel left out,” she said.

“He’ll have to get over it.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, and she inched close enough to me that I could touch her if not for the fact that she was behind me. Every cell in my body was screaming for me to push her back onto the bed to how I’d had her only a moment before, to slide that gold nightgown up her body and replace it with me. But I didn’t want to rush this.

“I can’t help but think we’re crazy,” she said. “For this.” She didn’t let that stop her, though. Her hands came down on my shoulders, and she kneaded my muscles. She couldn’t take away my tension. Nothing would relieve that but finishing what we’d started.

“I’d rather not think about that.” Thinking would give me too much time to regret what I hadn’t even done yet.

She slipped her hands up my neck, and her thumbs worked at a spot just behind my ears while she used her fingers to massage my scalp. “Okay. No thinking, then.”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting her to do, but it wasn’t this. She lowered her head and kissed me where my neck met the back of my shoulder, swirling her tongue in circles before nipping me lightly with her teeth.

I sucked in a breath and fisted my hands in the bedding beneath me. It was the only way I could prevent myself from spinning around on her and taking things into my own hands. I wanted to give her this chance to take the lead, to see what she would do.

Her lips followed the same path as her fingers, up the side of my neck and behind my ears and back down the other side. My pulse was already pumping as fast as it did after skating a hard shift, as intensely as after a fight.

“Lie down for me,” she murmured in my ear.

I would do anything she asked of me right at that moment. I shifted so my head would land on the pillows, and I slipped back, reaching for her almost before I was fully flat.

Sara shook her head. “On your stomach. I want access to your back.”

I groaned, but I rolled over. My dick was hard enough to karate chop a fucking board. I put my arms under a pillow, gripping it tight, and turned my head to the side so I could breathe.

As soon as she straddled my hips and sat down on my ass, whatever ability to breathe I’d thought I had was gone. Her hands were like a drug, dangerous and addicting as she slid them over my back. The massage she gave me was too gentle, too sensual, too engrossing. She didn’t limit herself to using her hands—her elbows, lips, tongue, teeth all got in on the game—and she took her sweet, torturous time about it.

She reached my waist, and I thought maybe her torment would be at an end, but she shifted her hips back and tugged at the waistband of my shorts. I had to grab the rails of the headboard to keep from putting an end to her sweetly delivered agony and beginning what I had in mind.

“God, your ass is so tight,” she said. Her hands kneaded and squeezed my cheeks, which only turned me on more. With her tongue, she licked a path down the center of my back, all the way to the top of my crack.

That nearly pushed me over the edge. I flipped over, dislodging her in the process, and reached for her.

Sara shook her head. “Not yet.”

“You’re killing me.”

Her lips curled up in a seductive smile, and she finished removing my shorts. She tossed them onto the floor and bent over me, and her hot, wet mouth took me inside, and I nearly arched up off the bed.

My hips rose up to meet her, and she used her hands in conjunction with her lips and tongue.

“Fuck, that’s so good,” I said, or groaned, or something. I kept holding on to the headboard because if I let it go, I would fist my hands in her hair and drive my hips into her, keeping that sweet mouth right where I wanted it until I came.

This was her game, though. This was her show. And that was not how I needed to go about pursuing her the way I’d promised I would.

She slipped one hand down to massage my balls, gently tugging until I groaned. Then she slid her hand back farther, using a fingertip to circle my anus like she’d done earlier with my belly button, and I was done for.

I nearly came right then and there.

No woman had ever touched me like that before. I don’t know if it was more because I wasn’t prepared for the sensation or more because I was just really that sensitive there, but I had to put an end to her agonizing attention or I would make a fool of myself.

I reached down to take her face in my palm, and she came up for air with a Cheshire cat grin. She was definitely going to fucking kill me. I might not even make it through the night.

“Come here so I can kiss you,” I said.

She slithered up my body in that slinky nightie, and I pulled her down to my chest and rolled over her until I was pressing her into the bed. I crushed my mouth to hers, tasting myself, tasting sex, tasting life, tasting everything that I could ever imagine wanting or needing, all of it on her tongue.

Tiny, breathy sounds kept coming from her throat, somehow turning me on more than I already was. My hands glided down her body, smooth over the gold satin. I drew her legs apart, and she wrapped them tight around my waist and held on, not allowing any separation.

It was as though she wanted to be close to me as much as I needed to be close to her. No, I needed to be inside her. Part of her. I needed us to be one.

One heartbeat.

One breath.

One.

I COULDN’T GET over how he could be so big and strong and yet he was so gentle with me. Every time he touched me, it was so tender, almost reverent.

He shook me to my core.

Cam smoothed his hands up my sides, his thumbs hooking beneath the hem of my nightgown and drawing it up over my head. The satiny fabric combined with him bracing his weight on his elbows allowed it to move easily. He stopped kissing me long enough to slip it over my head and toss it to the floor, where it joined his shorts.

He trapped my wrists while I still had them overhead and guided my hands to the headboard. “Hold on. Keep your hands there, because it’s my turn.”

I shivered from the promise in his eyes, but I took the rail directly above my head with both hands and gave him a nod.

Gradually, he eased off me, and I ached for him to come back. My skin was overheated, slick with sweat, and without him covering me, the cool night air left me shivering. I followed him with my eyes as he shifted toward the foot of the bed and lifted one of my feet to his mouth.

He kept his gaze locked with mine as he kissed the underside of my arch and then flicked his tongue in the same place. “I love your feet,” he said, his voice gravelly and a little rough, kind of like his tongue. “They’re so fucking soft.”

And they were so fucking sensitive. Every minuscule touch had me kicking slightly in response—not to get away, just because I couldn’t stop my reaction.

He sucked my big toe into his mouth, which initiated a flood of liquid heat in my core. “Do you get pedicures, or do you paint them yourself?”

“Pedi…pedicures,” I said, panting. How was he doing this to me?

“I like that. And your shoes.” He moved his attention upward, an inch at a time, his hands and mouth traversing every bare inch of my legs.

“My house shoes?” My brain wasn’t keeping up. I was too distracted by the way his fingers were tickling the backs of my knees.

“All your shoes,” he growled. “The bright-red heels. The gold ones that show off your toes. The thigh-high boots with the buckles all over them. The blue sandals with the strappy backs.” He bent my leg back and replaced his fingers with his tongue, twirling it over the hypersensitive flesh.

I didn’t know whether to be confused or impressed by the fact that he knew so much about my shoes. At the moment, I was having enough difficulty just keeping myself from coming unglued.

By the time he reached my upper thighs, his touches had grown more insistent, his kisses more intense, and my need had reached a fever pitch the likes of which I’d never experienced before.

“Cam,” I complained, still dutifully keeping my hands where he’d told me to keep them, even though all I wanted to do was grab him and tug him until he gave in and got on top of me.

Finally, he tugged my thong down my legs and slipped a finger through my slickness. I nearly came when that same finger brushed my clit, light as a feather. My hips bucked up, and I let out this deep-seated moan, and I knew I would orgasm the second he put his mouth on me.

He didn’t, though. He slid up my body, angling himself alongside me, and stretched his arm out to the nightstand, bringing back a condom. At least one of us was still thinking, because I sure as hell wasn’t able to.

He ripped the wrapper open and put the condom over his cock, and then he came over me again, settling himself between my open thighs. “Hold on tight,” Cam said.

I didn’t know if he meant to keep holding the bed rails, or to hold on to him or what. It didn’t matter. The head of his cock was at my entrance, hot and hard and teasing me. He kissed me again, one hand between us to guide himself inside.

That moment when he pushed into me, just the head…that was when I broke. My legs clenched his hips. My sex shattered and splintered and fractured into a million pieces that dissolved. Disintegrated. Melted away.

I wasn’t aware of releasing my grip on the headboard. I wasn’t aware of wrapping my arms around Cam’s waist and grabbing his ass with both hands and pulling him to me. I wasn’t aware of anything but him being inside me, deep and steady, and the frantic pulse at the base of his throat, right where my lips had landed.

For minutes or hours, or maybe even for glorious days, he drove into me, varying his pace and his angle and the way he caressed my body. Sometimes, he whispered things in my ear, like, “You’re so beautiful when you come.” Other times, his voice was harsher when he told me things like, “If you keep scraping my back with your nails like that, I’m never going to be able to stop fucking you.”

I couldn’t say anything. The words just wouldn’t come.

Then his thrusts came faster, harder, until he stilled with a loud groan into the pillow beside my head. Almost instantly, he rolled over, drawing me on top of him. I was too exhausted to do anything but rest my head on his chest. While we both fought to recover, he kept sliding his hands up and down my back, and he kissed the top of my head and my temples.

“I didn’t hurt you?” he asked after a few minutes. “I wasn’t too rough?”

He’d been anything but rough. Every touch had been gentle, almost spiritual. I was the one who had been rough with him. I’d never lost control like that with a man. I’d never been so wild before, so animalistic in my need.

“You didn’t hurt me.”

With one hand, he tipped my chin up so I was looking at him. “The baby?”

Something else inside me shattered, only this time, it was a piece of my heart. “I’m sure the baby’s fine.”

“But do you know?” His serious eyes were back, the passion that had darkened and softened them melting away. “I didn’t think…”

“Pregnant women have sex all the time,” I said, since I didn’t know. “I’m sure everything is fine.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right,” he said, releasing my chin. I tucked my head into that space between his neck and his shoulder where it seemed to fit so perfectly, and he started stroking my back again. “But I’d still feel better if you found out for sure. When are you going to the doctor?”

With everything going on with Daddy, I hadn’t done anything about scheduling an appointment for myself yet. “Soon,” I replied.

“Okay.” His hands stilled on my back, and he fell quiet for a minute. “Go really soon. I’d ask to go with you, but I don’t want you to wait for me. So ask lots of questions. Actually, I’ll give you a list.”

“A list?” My voice almost failed me. He wanted to come with me? He had questions for my doctor?

“I have a lot of questions, Sara. I need answers.”

Something in his tone made it clear that some of those questions were intended for me, not for my doctor.

Yes, it was true that he’d told me in no uncertain terms that he intended to pursue me…but this went beyond anything I’d prepared myself for. I was pretty sure I was in over my head.

SARA’S MORNING SICKNESS the next day was even worse than it had been the first time I’d been around for it. Since she’d already been up and puking, I’d made her some dry toast again to calm her stomach and then hard-boiled a couple of eggs for my breakfast, hoping that I wouldn’t have to bother her with the aromas.

That didn’t pan out the way I had hoped it would. She turned green the moment I started to peel the shells, and she raced off to the bathroom. I ate my meal quickly in the hopes that the smell would dissipate. She didn’t come back for about fifteen minutes, and when she did, she still looked pale and shaky. I wished there was a way for me to take this discomfort away from her, to make her feel better. It was just one more thing that was outside my ability to control.

“I’m sorry,” I said when she sat down at the bar again and picked at her toast.

“Don’t be. I didn’t know the smell would affect me like that.”

“I know. Neither of us knew. I’m still sorry, though.” I didn’t know the first thing about pregnancy, so I made a mental note to call my mom sometime soon and pick her brain. That, plus the list of questions I was going to send with Sara to ask her doctor, might be enough to prepare me. At least more than I currently was. I had never liked to have things sprung on me at the last minute. I liked to be ready for whatever was to come.

I might talk to a few of the guys, too. Some of the ones with kids.

Buster came in through his doggy door and camped out at Sara’s feet. He’d gotten over being shut out of the bedroom quick enough this morning, at least as far as she was concerned. He still hadn’t completely forgiven me. He’d been giving me the evil eye all morning, as though I’d broken his heart. Now I was about to leave for a few days. He might not let me off the hook for a while.

Sara pushed her saucer away with a grimace. “You probably need to head out for practice soon, don’t you?” She wouldn’t look at me when she said it. Was she having second thoughts about sleeping with me? I studied her, but her face was expressionless, leaving me no answers to my questions.

Maybe I’d rushed her, pushed her for too much, too soon. Hell, maybe I’d rushed myself, even.

I hadn’t thought anything through. I’d just acted.

That was becoming a habit, and one that I needed to break.

I glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was already after eight. “Yeah, I’ll have to head out soon.” I finished loading all of my breakfast dishes into the dishwasher and closed the door.

A suspension didn’t mean I was off the hook for the rest of my responsibilities to the team. I still had to participate in every practice and stay late on the ice in order to keep myself in game shape. I had to travel with the team. I had to attend every game and watch from the press box. I had to be involved in all of the team meetings.

After my phone call with the League this afternoon, I’d had a long talk with Jim, Bergy, and Hammer. They were all adamant that I still had a big role to play with the team even if I couldn’t be out there on the ice.

“The boys all feel a lot calmer when you’re around,” Bergy said. “Most of these guys haven’t ever seen a lick of playoff action, at least at the NHL level—”

“Neither have I,” I interrupted.

“Doesn’t matter,” Hammer said. “You still calm them down. So many of them are so young. When you’re around, they all just seem to play their game and not let anything get under their skin.”

Jim nodded and leaned in, forming his hands into a steeple in front of him. “Exactly. You’re a leader on this team, Jonny. You might not have a letter on your chest, but every guy in that room hangs on every word out of your mouth. They value what you have to say.”

“I almost never say anything, though.”

“But when you do, they all sit up a little straighter, and they listen a little harder.” Bergy narrowed his eyes on me. “You haven’t noticed that? You should pay attention next time you do speak up. You command a lot of respect in that room.”

“And we’re already without Scotty,” Hammer added. “Maybe you can’t play, but you can still help us out. The coaches, in particular. We need you to help keep all the boys focused on the task that’s in front of us.”

Those guys seemed to think a lot more of me than I did. Especially right now. They were forgetting the fact that the only reason we were missing our head coach was because of something I’d done.

All of that made it seem even crazier that I’d gotten involved with Sara at a time like this. Would a guy who had clearly lost his mind—to the point that he was screwing the head coach’s pregnant daughter after he’d caused the man to have a heart attack—fit the impression the coaches and GM had of me? I doubted it. If they knew the whole story, their opinions would change, and fast.

I’d done what I’d done, though, and I couldn’t go back in time and undo anything—even if I wanted to. This thing with Sara, whatever it was, I didn’t want to undo…even if I had jumped the gun.

I walked around the bar to the back door, ignoring Buster’s excited yapping. He’d just fucking come in from outside, and he had his own fucking door he could use any time he wanted. I wasn’t opening the big door for him again right now. All I intended to do was grab a spare key from the magnetic strip I had hanging on the wall there.

I set it down on the bar next to Sara’s saucer of barely eaten toast.

She spun on her barstool, her eyebrow cocked in question. “What’s this?”

“I’ve got to fly out with the team this afternoon.”

“I know that.” She slid the key closer to me, eyeing it like it might jump up and bite her. “If you think I’m going to move in with you… If that’s your idea of pursuing—”

“I don’t want you to have to be alone in your house. It’s still going to be a while until your dad’s out of the hospital.” Fuck, I kept screwing everything up with her. She already had too much to deal with, and I just kept adding more to her pile. “I’m not asking you to move in. Just thinking you might want somewhere else to stay for a while.”

“I can go stay with Dana if I can’t handle being at my house. Since you boys are all leaving, she’ll be alone. Zee won’t care.”

That might be the better option, anyway, because at least she wouldn’t be alone. I didn’t like the thought of her getting lonely, and while Buster obviously adored her, he wasn’t the same as a human connection. Still…I wanted her to have the option.

“Just take the key, Sara. Even if you don’t use it.”

Buster barked, as if he understood what was going on.

“He might need some company,” I said, in case that might sway her.

She scowled, but she added it to her keychain.

I threw out the rest of her toast because it didn’t seem like she was going to be able to eat any more of it, and I added her saucer to the dishwasher. Since I wouldn’t be home for several days, and I didn’t know if Sara would take me up on staying at my house or not, I added some detergent to it and turned it on even though it wasn’t full. Then I headed upstairs so I could pack for the road.

When I came back downstairs with my suitcase, she was on the couch with Buster curled up on her lap. She’d put that gold nightgown on again when we got up this morning, which, now that I’d seen and touched and held all that was underneath it, only made her more beautiful.

She’d let me hold her all night. I’d never done that before with any of the women I’d dated. Typically, after sex, either she would go home or I would go home. Sara was the only woman I’d ever shared my bed with that way. The only one who had ever stayed and cuddled and let me get the sense of what the future might be like. She was the only one that had ever really mattered, and seemingly out of nowhere, she mattered to me more than I was prepared for.

I set my bag by the front door and shoved my hands into my pockets. “I have to go.” I wanted to kiss her first. I wanted to pull her into my arms and promise her that everything would be all right, that I would take care of everything so she wouldn’t have to worry. I couldn’t promise her that, though. No one could. How could I make everything all right when so much of it had to do with things like Scotty’s heart and the baby growing inside her?

“Okay,” she said flatly.

“I’ll call you. Every night.” Just to hear her voice. “And I’ll text you.”

She nodded.

“Will you let me know what’s going on with your dad? Keep me updated?” Knowing all of that might be the only thing she would give me to let me know how she was, at least if the way she was acting this morning was an indication of where things stood between us.

Sara shrugged. “I’ll try.”

At least she hadn’t said no.

I nodded. “All right. I have to go.”

Her head shot up, and the ghost of a smile was trying to make its way to her lips. “You already said that.”

She was right. I had. Talking, conversation—those had never been among my strengths. “Yeah,” I said, taking my hands out of my pockets and grabbing the handle of my carry-on bag. “All right, then. I’ll talk to you soon.” I wanted to leave it with that and not with good-bye. I opened the door and headed out to my truck.

I couldn’t leave things like that between us, though. It didn’t feel right.

I put my bag in the passenger seat and headed back inside. Her eyes shot wide when I came through the door. They were all wet, as though she was about to start crying. Fucking hell, I couldn’t seem to go a day without making her fucking cry.

I crossed over to her, shoved Buster out of the way, and straddled her hips, slanting her against the back of the couch and taking her face in both my hands. She gasped, and I slid the tip of my thumb between her lips, pulling the bottom one down.

“I couldn’t leave without one more kiss.”

“Oh,” she said, but it was mainly just a puff of hot breath escaping her.

Her eyes stayed locked with mine, and her hands grasped my ribs, and I could feel her shaking. Or maybe that was me.

I kissed the bridge of her nose and the corners of her eyes and the sensitive space under her chin. When my lips met hers, she was open and warm, and she let me take the kiss as deep as I wanted. Then she deepened it further. She slid her hands up my chest and grabbed on around my neck, and she angled her head, her tongue swirling and stroking mine until we were both panting and needy.

When I finally pulled back so we could breathe again, I kissed her face all over. Lingering. Trying to make it last.

“Cam?” Her voice was as shaky as I felt.

I kissed the backs of her eyelids. “Yeah?”

“You have to go.”

“I know.” After a dozen more kisses, I finally tore myself away.

Buster immediately got back on her lap and barked at me with an annoyed look in his eyes. I forced myself to cross the room to the front door. Then I walked out and got in my truck before I couldn’t find it in me to go.

AFTER PRACTICE AND lunch with the boys at Amani’s, a family-style Italian place that had been our go-to restaurant since before I’d made the team, there was just enough time left for me to make a trip to the hospital.

Quite a few of the guys were using that time to go say goodbye to their wives or girlfriends. A few of them—the younger, single guys like Jamie Babcock, better known as Babs, and Ray “Razor” Chambers—went home to pack, since they hadn’t bothered to do that in advance. Babs probably would have preferred to spend that time with Katie Weber—Webs’s daughter and the girl Babs wanted to be dating—but she had a chemo treatment scheduled. She never wanted him around for those or immediately after, since she usually got sick from them.

There was some pretty heavy shit on my mind, though. Heavy enough that I had to confront it before we left.

Scotty was still in the ICU, but the hospital staff agreed to let me go in and talk to him for a few minutes. He didn’t look good when I went into his room—pale and pasty, not robust and red-faced like I was used to seeing from him. He pushed a button on his bed remote and raised himself up a little when I came in.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here,” he said. It seemed odd to hear him talking in a normal voice, not yelling. He always yelled at me. And he wouldn’t be so glad in a minute. Not once I’d told him what I’d come here to say. And then, he’d probably start yelling at me again.

I ran a hand over my face, but I looked him in the eye. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry—”

“You don’t have a fucking thing to be sorry about, Jonny.”

“No, I do.” The list of reasons why only seemed to keep growing, too. I sat down in the chair near his bed, even though I really felt like pacing. I felt like a piece of shit for what I was about to do to him, but when the time came that he learned about the baby, I didn’t want him to be mad at Sara. I wanted him to be mad at me. I figured this was a good way of making sure that happened—the only way I’d thought of, actually—and it would protect her from the brunt of his anger.

“Sara told me you were looking out for her the last couple of days,” he said, waving my words aside as though they were insignificant. “She said she’d be sure to thank you for me, but I wanted to do it myself.”

I shook my head. “Don’t thank me. Not until you hear—”

“No, let me.” He struggled to sit more upright in his bed, grimacing in pain as even more color leached away from his face. “She’s always worried about me and trying to take care of me, and I worry that she doesn’t have someone doing the same for her. I—” He cut himself off and struggled for air. This had been too much already, and I hadn’t even said what I’d come to say. “I haven’t done a very good job being her father. It’s been all about the job for so long that sometimes I forget she just needs a dad. Sometimes she needs to not have to be the parent in this relationship. She shouldn’t ever have had to be.”

He looked as though he might cry, which had me squirming. I was fine with most people crying, but the idea of my coach being one of them just felt all kinds of wrong.

“She does have someone looking out for her,” I said, hoping to curtail any waterworks. “Me. I have been for a while.”

Scotty’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head like he was going to say something.

If I let him start talking now, I might not be able to get it all out. I kept going before he could interrupt me again, bracing myself for the yelling that was sure to follow—because I was sure as hell about to earn a good yelling session, after what I was about to do. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. Sara and I have been seeing each other behind your back for a few months. I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t think you’d like the fact that one of your players was dating your daughter.”

He blanched to an even paler white than he already had been, but his eyes flashed with the anger I’d been expecting. Good. He should be angry. That was the whole purpose of this—to get it directed at me so it would deflect away from Sara.

Anger seemed to be the way Scotty functioned, the way he got through life. I couldn’t understand why she adored him so much if he treated her the way he treated everyone else, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was different with her. If so, I wanted to keep it that way.

“She wanted to tell you,” I said before he could interrupt. “She didn’t like keeping secrets from you, but I made her promise not to say a word. I thought you might bench me or try to get me sent down to the AHL to try to force me to break up with her. But with everything that’s happened, I need you to know the truth. I’m crazy about her, and I’m going to keep seeing her, and there’s nothing you can do to me that will make me change my mind about that. But I just don’t want to keep lying to you, and I don’t want her to have to lie to you any longer, either.”

He wouldn’t stop staring at me, but he didn’t say a word. Not a single fucking word. For the first time, I realized that he and Sara had the same eyes. Clear blue. Bright. Full of some emotion that I couldn’t fucking interpret. Anger, yes. There was definitely some anger there. But there was more, and it was the more that was confusing me.

A nurse came in and walked over to the other side of his bed carrying a new IV bag. “Visit’s over,” she said to me. “He needs to rest.” She set to work changing the bag.

I wished he would say something before I left. Anything. Anything at all. He could tell me to go fuck myself. He could threaten to kill me. He could curse me and rail at me and do all the screaming and yelling I’d come to expect from him. At least then I’d know where I stood.

Granted, I doubted the nurse would be too happy with me if he started doing anything like that. That was what got him here in the first place. It didn’t matter what she would think about it, though, because he didn’t even attempt to do any of it.

I shook my head and got up to leave, a frustrated breath working its way out of my lungs.

He grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong for as weak as he looked. “Jonny.”

I turned back to face him.

“Don’t you dare fucking hurt my baby girl. You keep looking out for her.”

Whether what I’d told him was true or not, he ought to be fucking livid with me about it, but he seemed okay. No, with the way he was reacting, it almost felt as though he approved, which was the last fucking thing in the world I would have ever expected. The anger was still there, of course, but it seemed like that was more because we’d been keeping the truth from him than from the fact that I was dating his daughter. I didn’t know how to take that. His reaction caused a giant fucking lump to form in my throat that wouldn’t move in either direction.

“I’m not going to hurt her, Coach,” I ground out. That much, at least, was true. I was doing everything I could to make sure she wouldn’t get hurt at all.

He nodded. “Get the fuck out of here. I need to rest, and you have a plane to catch.”

DADDY WAS IN a really odd mood the day the guys left. I was pretty sure it was because his team—his players and coaches and the entire group he’d had a hand in preparing all season—was leaving to go play in the postseason and he was stuck in the hospital. It probably didn’t help that Dana had come to visit him with me. He tended to get kind of quiet when other people were around, at least when he wasn’t screaming his head off.

I didn’t mind that he wasn’t feeling very talkative, since I was in a mood of my own. Everything that had happened between me and Cam just left me feeling confused and conflicted, and I didn’t really want to be around anyone until I was able to sort out what I was feeling.

Dana and I didn’t stay long. None of us really had much to say, and Daddy had his grumpy face on. We stuck around until the cardiologist came in and told us that Daddy would be moving out of the ICU the next day, barring any complications, and then we left.

Once he was out of the ICU, they wouldn’t have him under such strict visitation limits and I’d be able to spend more time with him. I’d be sure to go up on my own then so we could talk about whatever was bothering him.

In the meanwhile, I headed back to Dana’s house with her.

The dining room table was covered with wedding stuff—invitation designs, lookbooks from florists and decorators, pamphlets from potential venues, color swatches. You name it, you could find it on that table.

Dana took one look at all of it, shook her head, and curled up on the couch in the living room. She toed off her shoes and tucked her legs up beside her. “Mom’s flying in this weekend to help us plan. She’s bringing cake samples from the baker we agreed on.”

I sat down next to her, sinking back into the cushions. I grabbed one of the throw pillows from the corner and tugged it onto my lap, holding it over my belly. “Will there be enough for me to help sample?” I tried to mask the fact that I was fishing for an invite to be involved in the wedding stuff, but I totally was.

“I was counting on your input,” she said, laughing. “And if you can get enough time away from your dad, Rachel and I want you to come help us when we go dress shopping. Laura and Katie have already signed on, too.”

“I’ll probably need some excuse to get away for a little while by the time you do that.” Daddy would be getting discharged sometime over the weekend, most likely. Then it would be the two of us, all day, all the time. I wouldn’t even have him going to work to break it all up. That was going to be way too much daddy-daughter time. For both of us.

“Good.” She shifted around until she was sitting cross-legged like a kindergartener during story time. “Rachel wants Noelle to come with us, too.”

Noelle was an odd cross between a bohemian and a fortune-teller or something, totally out there not only in demeanor, but in her clothing choices. I’d never seen her wearing anything other than bright-colored, long, floral skirts. She was not exactly the height of fashion. In fact, she might be the total opposite. That said, she was possibly the sweetest and most selfless person I’d ever known. That girl was eternally kindhearted, always trying to help everyone around her out even though she might need more help than anyone. She infuriated me in the best way.

“She’s not going to let Noelle influence wedding dress choices, is she?” I didn’t want to be rude, because I really did adore Noelle. But I would never let her decide what I was going to wear.

“Nah. Rachel just wants her to be included. Just so we can all get to know her better.”

“Okay.” That sounded like a great plan since none of us had really spent much time with her yet, and I expected that she and Kally would be around for at least a few seasons.

“Maybe we can look at bridesmaid dresses while we’re there, too.” She just left that hanging between us, as though I hadn’t been dying to know who she wanted to have as her bridesmaids.

“And who would you be shopping for those for?”

“Hopefully you. I was going to ask you after the game the other night, but then things…everything…happened. And Laura and Katie. Noelle, if Rachel can convince her. Maddie and Tuck are going to be our flower girl and ring bearer, of course.”

Tuck was Maddie’s little brother, Rachel’s son. The whole lot of them were petite, redheaded, freckled bunches of adorableness, but Tuck pretty much always stole the show. He had a big enough personality to take over Hollywood, New York, and Bollywood all on his own, all at the same time.

“Of course,” I said, laughing. “So you really want me to be one of your bridesmaids?” I don’t know why it surprised me so much. Maybe because I’d never been in anyone’s wedding party before, other than as a flower girl for one of my mother’s friends back when I was so little that I didn’t remember it. I only knew I had been in the wedding because of the pictures.

“We do.” Dana leaned in, tucking her blond hair behind her ear. “Me and Rachel, both of us. We decided we’d share everything in the wedding. The guys are, too. They’re picking out a set of joint groomsmen, since they would each choose the other if we weren’t doing the weddings all at the same time.”

“You realize that’s all sickeningly sweet, right? Like, almost on the verge of certifiable?”

“So you’ll do it?”

“You know me,” I said. “‘Cotton Candy’ is my middle name.”

“I don’t know. I was thinking you were more ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame.’ A bit of melodrama and a lot of tears.” She winked when she said it.

I laughed. “You don’t even know the half of it lately.”

“You’re right. So tell me.”

“I don’t even know where to start. I don’t have the first fucking clue…”

Dana pulled a throw pillow out from behind her back, tossed it at me, and then leaned back against the arm rest. “How about you start with whatever’s going on with you and Jonny? I don’t have the first inkling what it is, but it looks hot. The way he was staring at you when we got to your place? Wow.”

Hot didn’t even begin to describe it, whatever it was. And that kiss this morning before he left…

I wasn’t going to be able to keep this shit from Dana and the other girls for long. Hell, I didn’t want to keep it from them. Maybe they could help me to figure out what was going on in my head. Lord knew I wasn’t getting there on my own.

“Okay.” I took a breath and grabbed the pillow she’d tossed at me, adding it to the one I was already holding onto. “So he’s kind of… Well, he calls it pursuing me.”

Over the next hour or so, I told her everything that had happened in the last few days, or at least the parts of it that I could manage to talk about—the fact that I’d slept with Cam, the way he was so fucking gentle with me, how I didn’t know if we were a couple or if he just wanted us to be a couple, that he’d said he wanted to go with me when I finally got around to going to the baby doctor but didn’t want me to wait so instead he was sending me with a list of questions…

Which, of course, meant I had to tell her I was pregnant. And confused. And scared.

I hadn’t admitted that last part to anyone but myself, not until I told Dana. But I was. I was scared to death because my mother had been the worst example in the world of what a mother should be, so how the hell was I supposed to be able to do this? And how the fuck could I do it alone? I didn’t think I could, but I was even more positive that I couldn’t give the baby away or have an abortion or anything else they said was an option for women in my position. I couldn’t hold it against anyone who chose to do either of those things, but I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t do that.

I wanted a baby.

I wanted a family.

I wanted to have more than just Daddy, especially now that I had to question how much longer I would have him in my life. But at the same time it scared me. Anytime I let anyone but my father in that deep, they left.

Was that a good enough reason to have this baby, though? I just didn’t know.

Dana sat there and let me pour all of this out on her. She didn’t try to solve my problems for me. She didn’t judge me. She just listened and hugged me and got me tissues when I needed tissues. I didn’t have any more answers when I was done, but I felt a lot better that I’d gotten it all off my chest.

“Well,” Dana said when I finally stopped blubbering about my problems, “I guess we have to tell Laura that she’s going to have to keep the wine to herself for a while.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“But that also means we’ll get to plan a baby shower soon.”

I wished I were able to get more excited about that. Maybe someday. Hopefully someday in the not too distant future.

I COULDN’T BRING myself to stay at Cam’s house without him there, but I figured, since he’d given me a key, I could go over and hang out with Buster for a while. Or at least I told myself that was why I was currently on Cam’s couch. Yeah, Cam was supposed to have a dog sitter coming to check on Buster, walk him, feed him… But that fluffy little dog seemed to really like me, and it couldn’t hurt him to have more attention and affection, and it wasn’t like it was a hardship for me.

He was standing on his two back paws on my lap, trying to lick my face, when my phone rang. It wasn’t one of my special ring tones, so I had to fish the phone out of my pocket to see who it was. Cam. Hell. So I guess he’d been serious when he’d told me he intended to call me every night.

For a moment, I debated letting it go to voice mail, but that would be really cowardly of me. I slid my thumb across the screen to answer and held the phone up to my ear. “Hello?”

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left.”

Buster barked, since I’d stopped scratching his head.

“Are you at my house?” Cam asked.

“Yeah. I came to see Buster.”

“Lucky dog.” He didn’t sound facetious in the least.

“I’m going back to Dana’s in a bit,” I said. For whatever reason, I didn’t want him thinking I was going to stay here.

“Too bad for Buster. He’d love to share the bed with you.”

That statement led to all sorts of memories of the last few nights, especially with the needy tone in Cam’s voice, and I got all hot and flustered and needed to change the subject. “So you guys got in all right?”

“Yeah. In the hotel now. Jens left with a few of the guys, so I thought it would be a good time to stay behind and call you.”

“Oh. Jens is your road roommate?” I knew that in the NHL, until a guy reached a certain level of seniority, he had a roommate when the team traveled. I guess I’d just assumed that Cam had already reached that point in his career. I hadn’t really thought about it much, though. Andrew Jensen was a young, hot shot defenseman who was new to the team this year. He wasn’t too young, though, and he wasn’t one of the guys who liked to party all the time like Keith Burns, so I supposed that was as good a fit for Cam as there was on this year’s team.

If Jens was with the team on the trip, he must not have been hurt too badly in that fight, I realized. I hadn’t even spared him a thought since the end of the game, when they’d taken him off the ice on a stretcher. My mind had been too busy with other concerns.

“All season long,” Cam said. “He still can’t play for a few more days—concussion protocol. He’s not having any symptoms, but he was out cold on the ice.”

“That’s good. I’m glad he’ll be okay.”

“Jens is a good guy to room with, all things considered. Doesn’t snore. Keeps things tidy. Doesn’t talk so much I want to punch him just to shut him up.”

“You wouldn’t punch him.”

“Nope. Not as long as we play for the same team, at least. But a few of the boys sometimes need a good punch in the face.”

“You know, a few of them might think the same thing about you sometimes.”

“They are welcome to punch me anytime they want, as long as they’re willing to face the consequences. I never hit a guy without thinking through what will come of it.”

“Even when you went after that guy in the last game?”

Buster finally settled down and curled up on my lap. I lazily petted him, running my fingers through his fur and rubbing his ears. He let out a contented sigh.

“Even then.” Cam fell silent for a moment. “There were a few consequences I hadn’t anticipated, though.”

He must still blame himself for Daddy’s heart attack, then. I wished I knew how to convince him otherwise.

“So, about your doctor visit,” he said after a moment. “I have a list. Questions. Have you made an appointment yet?”

“Thursday. They managed to work me in after I begged. I wanted to do it while Daddy is still in the hospital. I don’t want to have to deal with him finding out until I’m ready.”

Cam didn’t respond right away, and when he did, he merely said, “Yeah.” That was odd, the way he had to think about that for so long. “I’ll text you my questions after we hang up.”

“I’m sure I can come up with enough questions on my own,” I argued.

“Maybe. But I still want answers to the questions I have. Are you going alone?”

“Dana’s coming with me.”

“Good. I don’t want you to be alone.”

The way he said it made me tingle all over, the way I so often did when he looked at me. “How do you do it?” I said, only realizing after the fact that I’d spoken aloud.

“How do I do what?”

Fuck. “How do you make me feel like that?”

“Like what?”

I pressed my eyes closed, as though he could see the mortification on my face as I answered him. “Like my whole body is filled with these racing electrical currents.”

“The same way you make me feel like I finally have the answer to what my life is supposed to be about. The same way I get hard just from the scent of your hair or the sound of your voice or the sight of your shoes. The same way I forget how to speak or breathe or function as a human being when you walk into a room.”

My tingles weren’t just tingles anymore. They were lightning bolts, striking all over my body repeatedly. My breath caught in my throat.

“Sara?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s going to be torture, not being able to hold you tonight.”

It would be torture to not be held.

“SO HOW LONG were you planning to keep it a secret from me?” Daddy asked. My whole body tensed in response.

I placed the last of the clothes I’d brought for him in the drawer and closed it. “Keep what a secret?” There were only a couple of things he could be talking about, and only Cam and Dana knew any of them. Dana had just learned, and she and Cam had both promised me they wouldn’t say anything to anyone.

I intended to tell Laura and Rachel tomorrow, and probably Katie, too, since she went everywhere with Laura these days. We were going to get together for dinner after Rachel got off work, and I was going to fill them in on everything, including the doctor’s appointment I would have that afternoon. Those three didn’t know anything yet, though.

So who else would have told my father anything that could be considered a secret? I wasn’t, generally, a secretive person. Especially not where my dad was concerned. I tried to push down my anger, at least until I had a justified reason to be angry. At least until I knew who to be mad at and why.

The hospital had just moved my father into a private room, and they’d told me I could bring some more of his stuff from home—his own clothes to wear instead of the hospital gown, some books, his laptop—and I was helping him to get settled in before the game tonight.

Yeah, that’s right. The game.

He’d gone behind my back and somehow finagled himself a room that had all the sports channels so he wouldn’t have to miss it or any of the pre-game and postgame commentary. That was how we were going to spend our time together tonight—watching the boys. I understood his desire to watch it and see how they did, but I wasn’t so sure it was the best thing for his recovery. At least we were still in the hospital for this first game or two, though. If things didn’t go well in the game, if he got too worked up over anything and caused himself more problems with his heart, there really wasn’t a better place we could be. And maybe then, the doctors would forbid him from watching any more.

A girl could hope, at least.

“Jonny came to see me yesterday before the team left,” Daddy answered, and a massive knot formed in my throat.

Cam had lied to me, then. I don’t know why that should hurt as much as it did, but I felt completely betrayed. Not to mention blindsided.

“Did he?” I impressed myself with my ability to keep my voice smooth and calm. That was no small feat, considering all the emotions roiling underneath the surface. I went over to the sink to organize Daddy’s toiletries and to give myself an excuse to not look at him while we talked. I didn’t want my face or my behavior to give anything away beyond what Cam had apparently already revealed.

“He told me about the two of you. That you’re a couple.”

Were we a couple? Could we be one already, just after one night of sex? I supposed that was what Cam wanted us to be. Maybe I did, too. Or maybe I had until he’d gone behind my back and talked to my father when he’d promised me he wouldn’t. I wasn’t so sure I could still want that after this turn of events.

At least he had only told that and not anything about the baby. Or I hoped he hadn’t told Daddy about the baby.

I set out his toothbrush and toothpaste. Almost immediately, I decided I didn’t like where they were and it would make more sense to move them to the left side of the counter since his razor and shaving cream were on the right, so I flipped them around. Yes, I was just trying to kill time and avoid looking at my father. Sue me for being chicken shit.

“You don’t have anything to say about it?” Daddy said.

“I didn’t think you needed to know yet is all. It’s still really new. I don’t know where it’s going yet, so I didn’t think there was any reason to upset you.”

“Several months is really new? You’ve been seeing a guy that long and you don’t know where it’s headed?”

Months? What the fuck kind of lies had Cam told him? And what might be the far more important question, why? Until I had answers, it was probably best to just go along with the lies as best I could. That would be a hell of a lot easier to do if I had had some sort of warning, though.

I turned around so I could face my father. “I just didn’t want to upset you, Daddy.”

“Why would I be upset to know that you’re dating a good man?”

“Because Cam’s one of your players.” Just as the son of a bitch who my mother had run off with had been. That made me no better than her. It made me just like her, actually, and left me hating myself for what it would do to my father.

“Yeah, he is. Which means I know him. I know what kind of man he is.” He curled the fingers of his hand in toward his palm, urging me to come sit by his bed. “You know I want you to be with someone. To have a life of your own and not have everything so tied up with me.”

“I know you don’t want me to be alone if anything happens to you.” I took his hand as I sat, letting mine be swallowed up in his. “But I don’t intend to let anything happen to you, so—”

“It’s more than just that. I want you to be happy, baby girl. I want you to really live. That’s why I’ve been trying to get you to go out more. I should have tried harder to convince you to go off to college, you know. To start your own life. I shouldn’t have ever hired you as my assistant.”

I hated hearing him talk like this. I could have—and would have—gone to college if I’d thought it was right for me. But I hadn’t. I’d stayed with my father because he was all I had. Or at least all I had that mattered. “I don’t think I can be happy if I don’t have you.”

“There’s no reason you can’t have me and a relationship, too.” He reached across his chest with his other hand and grimaced against the pain of the movement, but he didn’t let it stop him from touching the side of my face. It was too soon after open heart surgery for him to be pushing himself in that way. “I want you to love.”

“I do. I love you.”

“We both know that’s not what I mean. Do you love Jonny?”

I shook my head, but what came out of my mouth was, “I don’t know.”

The corners of Daddy’s lips quirked up. “Do you not know because you don’t want to love him, or do you just really not know yet?”

“I just don’t know.” I shrugged, but I knew there was more that I wasn’t saying. He was right. I didn’t want to love Cam.

For a thousand, million reasons.

“Okay.” He brought his hand back down to his side and leaned back into his pillows, his other hand still holding mine tightly. “Promise me something, though, Sara.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Promise me that you won’t fight it. If you wouldn’t fight against it, if you would let him love you, I wouldn’t have to worry about you so much.”

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Bullshit. You’re my daughter. Worrying about your kids is one of the primary aspects of a parent’s job.” He let go of my hand and adjusted the bed so he could lie down a little flatter. “But one of the best parts is when you know there’s someone else to share the load. Jonny wants to share the load. He wants to be there when I can’t be.”

I had to turn my head away so he wouldn’t see that I was fighting back tears. What the hell did Cam say to my father to make Daddy think all this? What was he trying to do?

“Sara?”

“I don’t know how to not fight it,” I said.

“Don’t I know it,” he muttered. “You fight everything. Maybe that’s why I think Jonny will be good for you.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because he’s as stubborn as a fucking mule and maybe the most determined man I know.” He sighed. “I think I’m going to take a nap before the game. Are you going to watch it with me?”

“Yeah, I figured I would.” I had told Dana that I wouldn’t be back at her place tonight until after it was over. Being here with him while he watched would help me to relax because I’d be able to see his reaction for myself.

“Why don’t you go get some dinner and come back after?”

I nodded and got up, leaning over him to kiss him on the forehead. “Get your rest.” Then I headed out to the parking lot.

If I thought he’d answer, I would call Cam right that very instant and give him a piece of my mind. He was probably on the team bus from the hotel to the arena right now, though, or maybe they were already in the locker room getting ready for the game. It would have to wait until later. This was important time with the boys.

Maybe that was for the best, anyway, not being able to call him and cuss him out right in the heat of the moment. It’d give me plenty of time to come up with all the things I wanted to say to him.

HALFWAY THROUGH THE game, there still hadn’t been too much carryover from the nastiness that took place in that last game of the regular season. A couple of late hits, which the refs had called almost immediately, a few slashes, and a hooking call.

The officials were doing their best to keep a tight clamp on things, it seemed—making sure that nothing boiled over like it had only a few days ago. That was probably the most intelligent thing they could do since tonight’s game was only the first of the seven-game series. If they lost control now, it would be an all-out war.

Up until that point in the game, there also hadn’t been much scoring.

With over eight minutes to go in the second period, the score was tied at one. Vancouver had struck first, getting a power play goal past Nicky near the end of the first period. Less than a minute into the second, Babs got that one back with what might have been the prettiest goal of his young career, which was saying something. The kid was going to score, and score often, for a long time to come.

He’d just come over the boards on a line change and was hovering right by center ice when one of the Canucks D had tried to chip the puck past him into the zone. Babs got his stick out in just the right spot, and then he was off to the races.

Maybe it was just because I was watching from the press box and not down on ice level with the boys, but I don’t think I’d ever seen Babs move so fast. He skirted around the defenseman he’d stolen the puck from, split right between two other Canucks who tried to block his progress—they crashed into each other, and he got through them unscathed—dropped the puck between his legs and passed it to himself, and somehow elevated it on a nasty backhand shot. The goaltender didn’t have a chance.

The boys and I—those of us stuck up in the press box, that is—whooped and hollered, not that Babs and the guys on the ice could hear. It didn’t matter. That was our team. Whether we were playing tonight or not, those guys down there were our friends, and in some cases, like family.

Jens was sitting up there with me, as were Stéphane Montfort and Aaron Ludwiczak. Monty was still recovering from a broken arm, but he’d started skating again almost a week ago. They might even clear him to play before the next game. And Luddy had suffered from a couple of concussions this season. We didn’t know when he’d get back in, especially since he’d tried to come back too early the last time.

Those three guys were out due to injury, unlike me and my suspension.

We had one more guy keeping us company, too—Kyle O’Roarke, better known to the team as Chunk. I honestly didn’t know how he’d come by that nickname, but it had stuck, and he’d probably carry it for the rest of his career. He was the one healthy scratch out of the bunch of us, and based on the way the boys on the ice were playing, unless someone else came out with an injury, Chunk would probably still be in the press box for the next game, too.

Since Babs had scored, it had been a chip-and-chase sort of game: dump the puck into the zone; try to get control of it; get off for a line change before you overstay your shift. That was true for both teams, for whatever reason. Neither wanted to take too many chances in case the other team capitalized on it. That was no way to succeed, though. That was fear, plain and simple. Playing afraid was no way to play hockey, especially in a game that mattered as much as this one did. Both teams were playing to not lose, not playing to win.

It was understandable, to an extent, especially for our guys. An awful lot of them had never been in the playoffs before. This was a whole new brand of pressure, and it was going to take a little time to adjust. I just hoped they didn’t take too long to make that adjustment or else our season would be over a lot sooner than any of us wanted it to be.

The refs blew their whistles, halting the game, because the puck got knocked over the glass and out of play. Some guy in the lower bowl leaped up and caught it, sloshing the beer in his other hand all over the row of fans below him.

“Fucking waste of a good beer,” Jens muttered beside me, and the other guys murmured their agreement.

The officials got a new puck and signaled for the coaches to decide which players they wanted on the ice. Since we were the visiting team, Hammer and Bergy had to make that decision before the Canucks did. They sent Zee, Soupy, and Babs over the boards for the forwards, Burnzie and Peter Nylund for the defense. That prompted Vancouver to send out their checking line since Babs, in particular, was one of the only guys on the Storm who had been noticeable in this game.

It didn’t seem as if it was going to matter who went out there, though. Once again, after the puck hit the ice, it was back to dump and chase, dump and chase, dump and chase.

Those final eight minutes of the period ticked by in tedious fashion with the tension in the press box only growing. The longer it went on like this, the more it would favor the home team. They were going to wear our guys down and then, finally, pounce.

As soon as the horn sounded, signaling the end of the second period, I got up and excused myself from the other guys so I could go down to the locker room. Not that I had a clue what I was going to say. But someone or something needed to knock some sense into the boys. Playing to not lose was a recipe for losing.

The guys had already gone into the room and the doors were closed, but the guard outside recognized me and let me in.

Almost complete silence met me when I walked inside. A couple of the guys looked up, but most of them were just trying to suck in air so they’d be ready for the third.

Zee was re-taping his stick. Soupy was taking his skate off to send away with Drywall Tierney, the head equipment manager, for repairs. Babs had his head back against his stall, his eyes closed. Webs and Burnzie were both talking to the trainers, getting some minor injuries dealt with. Nicky had even put some fucking headphones on and was in his own little world, oblivious to everything around him. He was a fucking goalie, though, so whatever. I couldn’t hold that against him. He needed to stay sharp, focused—whatever was required to keep him there, he should do. Kally was the only guy in the room who met my eyes and nodded. He’d been in the league for a long time. He sure as fuck felt happening what I felt; I could see it in the set of his jaw.

Yeah, they were getting ready for the third, all right. Ready for more of the same. Ready for a fucking beating. Ready to get their asses handed to them on a silver fucking platter.

Bergy caught my eye and raised a brow. I knew that expression. So, you’re here. What the fuck are you going to do now? That’s what he was saying to me with that look.

Good question.

I put my hands in my pockets and looked down at the center of the room—the spot where, if we were in our home locker room, the Storm logo would be. I could picture it in my mind’s eye, and I knew the rest of the boys could see it, too. We’d looked at that same logo countless times.

“I went to see Scotty yesterday, before we left,” I said.

The silence in the room grew much louder as every single guy looked up at me. I heard the door open again, and Jim Sutter slipped into the room. He just nodded at me, too, as Bergy had done.

I figured I’d better keep going. “Pretty sure he’s watching tonight in the hospital. This isn’t the kind of hockey he had us playing all year. This isn’t our game. Scotty had us playing a speed game, five guys working together in all three zones. Controlling the pace. Taking some fucking chances so that we happened to the game instead of the game happening to us.” I shifted my feet because it was fucking uncomfortable having the guys hang on my every word like that. It didn’t sit well with me. “I don’t know how proud he’d be right now. And I don’t know about you boys, but I’d rather play the game he expected us to play and lose than play like this kind of shit, whether we won or lost.”

That was really all I had to say, so I turned around and headed back out. Jim slapped a hand on the back of my shoulder as I passed him, but I kept going, not stopping until I got back up to the press box.

The guys up there gave me questioning looks, but none of them asked me where I’d gone or what I’d done. I wasn’t particularly interested in telling them, so I didn’t offer anything.

I sat up there, my hands folded and my chin resting on top of them, and waited. Wondering. Impatient.

The boys came out for the third, and I could see a little more jump in their steps. Kally and the rest of the top line—Riley Jezek and Viktor Ellstrom—got in place at center ice for the face-off. RJ won the draw, and Eller and Kally used their wheels to zip past the Canucks D and into the zone.

With the puck. They carried it in, instead of chipping it over the line and fighting to get control of it. They just fucking kept it in their possession, just like we’d been fucking playing all year.

Eller passed the puck behind the net and Kally went over to keep it away from the Canucks defender. He slammed the fucker into the boards, a huge body check that made the glass rattle. I could hear it all the way in the press box. The crowd roared, but not as loud as my pulse. That wasn’t Kally’s game. He was a skill guy. He used his speed and his shot to break the other teams down, usually. But not right now.

Our whole bench was up, shouting encouragement, as Kally tried to dig the puck out of the corner. RJ joined him back there, and one of Vancouver’s forwards, until the puck finally popped free. Razor had to pinch in down the wall to keep the puck in the zone. He shot it wide of the net, and Eller picked it up on the other side, trying for a wraparound.

The goalie got his pad over just in time, and the rebound sent the puck flying out of the zone. Everyone had to chase it, and one of the Canucks forwards—one of the Sedin twins—got there first.

Now the game looked more like our style of hockey.

Now, whatever the fuck happened, Scotty could be proud.

SARA’S PHONE WENT to her voice mail when I called after the game. No, scratch that. It went straight to her voice mail. It didn’t ring once. Did that mean she was avoiding me, or was her phone just turned off for whatever reason?

By now, surely she knew that I’d talked to her father. I didn’t know how she would respond to that—Sara’s reactions to things were a little more unpredictable than what I’d come to expect from my mom and sisters—but I was prepared for any number of reactions. Except the silent treatment. As long as she was willing to talk to me, even if talking was really more like yelling, it was something I could work with.

I waited for the beep after her greeting, impatiently tapping my hand against my thigh while lying on the bed in my hotel room.

“Hey,” I said once the tone ended. “Call me whenever you get this. Doesn’t matter what time it is. I want to hear your voice.” I debated for a moment whether it would be a good idea to just end it there. I couldn’t, though. I needed to tell her more. “I miss you. I can’t stop thinking about you, Sara.” Then I ended the call before I said too much, pushed too hard. There seemed to be a very fine line with her, at least in terms of how I was pursuing her, between how much was enough and when I’d gone too far.

Her voice was almost all I’d been able to think about for well over an hour. It was an intensely sexy voice, kind of low pitched like you might expect from a woman more than twice her age. A voice that had lived and seen and experienced. A voice made for the bedroom.

Once the game had ended—a three-to-two overtime loss—all I’d wanted to do was get somewhere quiet and call her. Instead, I’d had to go down to the locker room along with the rest of the guys who’d been up in the press box so we could wait through all the postgame stuff. Then the team as a whole had gone out for a meal after the guys finished cleaning up, and I’d just finally gotten back to my room.

Like last night, Jens had headed out with a few of the guys for a beer once we returned to the hotel. They were trying to drown the sting of the loss more than anything, but it might be better to let themselves really feel it. That sting could be an excellent motivator. They’d asked if I wanted to go with them. A lot of nights, I would have gone if for no other reason than to be sure everyone got back okay. Things were different for me now, though. Because of Sara. Because she had a baby on the way, and I had to find a way to get her to let me in.

I tossed my phone on the nightstand. Had it been too late for me to call? Maybe she’d already gone to bed and didn’t want to be woken up, and that was why she’d turned her phone off. But then again, maybe her battery was dead. It wouldn’t do me any good to worry about all the things that might have happened to her if that was the case. There was nothing I could do about anything from Vancouver.

My phone beeped with a text message, and I shot upright to see if it was from Sara. It wasn’t. It was from Cadence.

Tough loss tonight. I thought Burnzie was going to win it for you in OT when he caught them on a bad line change. Sorry! I love you, Cam.

She’d peppered the message with all sorts of emoticons, almost more of those crazy-looking faces than there were words, making it obvious that it came from a teenaged girl. I chuckled to myself. Then I glanced at the time before responding. It was eleven thirty on a school night, and she had figure skating practice she had to be at every day, well before first period was even a thought. Neither her coach nor her partner would be very happy with her if she wasn’t well rested and prepared.

I love you, too. Go to bed. You have to be awake and able to function at zero dark thirty.

I’d barely hit “send” before my phone was ringing. I didn’t have to read the name to know who it was. The picture that flashed up on my screen was more than enough—a sneak shot I’d taken of Sara’s strappy purple stilettos, the ones she’d worn to this year’s Casino Night.

I couldn’t even describe how turned on I’d been, watching her walk around in those shoes and her designer kimono-style dress. It had hugged every curve. All of her sexy bits had been covered, but I’d never been more fascinated by looking at a woman.

I’d known well before that night that I was far more attracted to Scotty’s daughter than was wise, but that was the night that I knew beyond any doubt that I was fucked. I’d never be able to get that image of her out of my head, and I’d doubted any woman would ever entice me half as much as Sara Thomas did.

So far, they hadn’t. They hadn’t even come close.

“I’ve been going crazy needing to hear your voice,” I said as soon as I answered.

“What the fuck did you tell my father,” she demanded with no preamble, “and what in hell made you think it was okay to fucking tell him anything?”

The fact that hearing her rant at me like that made me hard probably just proved I was a sick, twisted bastard. I shifted on the bed, adjusting myself with my free hand, as though that could make the erection go away. It’d probably piss her off even more if she knew I was aroused because she was mad at me.

I’d known this was coming. Ever since I’d stepped foot inside Scotty’s hospital room, I’d been waiting for this moment to hit. I never got into a fight without thinking through the potential consequences, whether on the ice or off it, and this was sure as fuck going to be a fight.

“I was trying to protect you,” I said as calmly and coolly as possible. One of us had to keep a level head, and I knew it was going to have to be me. Sara didn’t do level, and her emotions were running on high right now.

“Protect me? How in fuck is telling my father that we’ve been a couple for months—months, Jonny—supposed to fucking protect me? How is fucking lying to him outright supposed to do anything but create a huge mess?”

“You’ve been calling me Cam,” I reminded her softly.

“You don’t fucking get to be Cam right now. Cam is what I call you when I fucking care about you, and right now all I want to do is punch you in the fucking throat. That was a dick move—”

“You can,” I interrupted. “You can punch me in the throat or the nose or anywhere else you want the next time you see me. You can kick me in the balls. Whatever you need to do. I won’t try to stop you.”

“And that just pisses me off even more. I want you to fucking fight back.”

“I won’t ever hurt you, Sara.”

“Too fucking late, Jonny. You already hurt me.”

I listened closely, trying to determine if she was crying. I didn’t hear sniffles, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

“Is your dad…is he okay?”

“Yeah.” She sighed heavily. “Yeah, he’s all right. They moved him out of the ICU today.”

“He’s not mad at you?” I held my breath so long it hurt my lungs.

“Not mad, no. He’s upset that I supposedly have been lying to him for so long. That I kept our relationship a secret for so long.”

I finally released my lungs. “That’s good. You— You got my list last night? My questions for the doctor?”

“Screw your questions, Jonny. You lied to me. You promised you wouldn’t tell my father—”

“About the baby. That’s what I promised not to tell him. I didn’t lie to you.”

“Maybe not, but you still went behind my back.”

“It’s all worth it to me as long as he’s not angry with you.”

She let out a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, right. There’s a problem with your plan, though. He’s going to be pissed once he finds out I’m pregnant. He’ll lose his shit.”

“I’m sure he will. But he’ll direct that at me, not at you. So it’s not really a problem.”

“Wh—”

I could practically feel her confusion through the phone. She fell silent for a minute, and I had to just sit there and wait.

“That’s why you fucking did this? Isn’t it? You fucking lied to him, you told him we’d fucking been together long enough that he’ll think this is your fucking baby. You want him to think you knocked me up.”

“Yes.” That was all I could say.

“You son of a bitch. You fucking son of a bitch.”

The line went dead.

Well, that went well.

DECEMBER TENTH. THAT was when my baby was due. It seemed like a long time away, but with the fog in my brain right now, it might pass a lot faster than I was prepared for.

I’d scheduled another appointment in four weeks for some tests and a follow-up, and my first ultrasound would be about another month after that. In the meanwhile I had to start taking prenatal vitamins, which I’d been expecting, plus an iron supplement, which I hadn’t been expecting. My doctor had informed me during the visit that I was anemic. She’d said that could pose serious risks to both me and the baby, so we had to be sure I was getting enough iron to support us both.

That would be easier to do, of course, if I was able to keep my breakfast down. Most cereals were high in iron, she’d said, as if that could be the solution to all of my problems. The morning sickness was making it next to impossible to eat anything until around noon or so each day, though, so I wasn’t so sure cereal would solve anything. She gave me a list of iron-rich foods so that I could make sure I was eating some of them every day in addition to taking the supplements.

Even though I had no desire or intention to talk to Jonny right now, I did ask the doctor some of his questions. The fact was, I wanted to know the answers to some of them just as much as he had.

I was glad I’d taken Dana with me, too. I could have asked someone else to come with me, of course, like Rachel or Laura, but they’d both already been through more than one pregnancy. I wasn’t sure they were the best choice for me on that front. There were some things that they would never think to ask because they already knew the answers. Dana, though? She was as clueless as I was about things like how to combat morning sickness, how soon I would feel the baby moving inside me, and if there were certain sexual positions that were safer than others. Actually, she’d been really interested in that last bit, making me curious if she and Zee were planning to jump on the baby train soon after the wedding. I knew her mom wanted to push them in that direction.

I personally had no intention of having sex anytime soon—whether with Jonny or anyone else. Sleeping with a man for all the wrong reasons was what had gotten me into this boat. I didn’t need to continue with that, even though I already had the other night…at least somewhat. Falling into bed with Jonny had been way too easy to do, and now? Now that I knew how he was trying to manipulate me into having a relationship with him, I was starting to regret the sex.

That was why I hadn’t answered his calls or text messages. I wasn’t ready to talk to him. Not after what he’d done. Truth be told, I had no earthly idea when I’d be ready to talk to him again. Maybe not for a long fucking time. Maybe not ever.

I didn’t like being fucked around with, and that was what he was doing.

The really screwed up thing was that I missed hearing his deep voice. I missed sharing his bed with him. How the hell could I already miss that? I’d only spent two nights at his place, but those two nights, he’d made me feel so taken care of. Not just sexually, either—even though the sex had been some of the best of my life. It was more about the way he held me. There was a certain tenderness, something much more intimate than sex, that I felt when I was with him. He’d talked about making me feel treasured and precious, and then he’d somehow done it. I’d never had that with another man. No one but my dad, at least, and that was a completely different ball game. It scared me a little. No, it scared me a lot, but mainly it made me feel shielded from the outside world.

Despite missing him, I wasn’t ready to give in and talk to him.

When I’d had dinner with the girls last night and told them about everything, they’d all said I was being too hard on him. That I should give him another chance. That he’d only done what he’d done because he was trying, in his own way, to help me.

I couldn’t wrap my head around how going behind my back was ever supposed to be helpful. No matter how I looked at it, what he was doing was still a form of manipulation. They didn’t quite agree.

Laura, in particular, was adamant that I needed to get over myself and give Jonny another chance—to give him the opportunity to make things right. He didn’t really break his word to you, she’d said. Maybe he didn’t go about things the right way, but he’s trying to be the kind of man you deserve to have in your life.

He was trying to force himself into a space in my life that I wasn’t prepared for him or anyone else to occupy. He was trying to make it so I would never be able to fully kick him out of my life if I decided that was what I wanted or needed to do.

Because if Daddy thought Jonny was the father of this baby, whether I wanted to have anything to do with him or not, Daddy would insist that he be involved.

This whole pursuing thing was getting way out of hand.

I already told you I think it’s kind of hot, Dana had said.

She wasn’t the one being pursued, though. I’d reminded myself of that repeatedly this afternoon, while I was hanging out with Buster. His owner might be on my shit list, but I liked the dog. I’d left Daddy at the hospital so he could get a nap, and then I’d taken Buster out to the park so he could run around on his leash and get some fresh air.

No fewer than four men who were out jogging in the park stopped to flirt with me. I had to wonder what kind of reactions Jonny got from women when he took Buster out. Not that it should matter to me. Fuck, I was supposed to not care about him.

To my credit—and yes, I was keeping track of these kinds of things because so little of my behavior lately would warrant credit—so far, I’d managed to keep how upset I was over the whole thing away from Daddy. I didn’t want to have to try to explain it to him because I wasn’t ready to reveal the whole shebang. It wasn’t something I normally did—keeping secrets from my father—but I was going to have to come to terms with whatever I decided in regard to Jonny before I could know how to approach my dad.

If I intended to tell Jonny to shove it, then I could just tell Daddy the truth. The whole truth.

I didn’t know if that was the best thing to do, though.

And if I didn’t go that route, then I was going to have to get to a point where I could forgive Jonny and try to deal with his efforts to pursue me.

Neither of those options sounded very appealing right now, especially since I had more important things on my mind—namely, my father’s health.

Daddy had gotten through the first game without any negative consequences—his blood pressure had stayed down and he hadn’t gotten too upset even when the boys had been playing badly—so the doctors had agreed he could watch Game Two in his room.

I was on my way back up to the hospital to watch with him after having dinner. Not without making a quick stop at the Storm’s practice facility, though. There was something I needed to get from Daddy’s office.

He was awake when I got back to the hospital. He’d eaten about half of his dinner—more than he’d been eating at most meals since the surgery—and had pushed the table with the rest of his food away from the bed so he could sit up straighter.

“Catch,” I said, tossing the stress ball to him.

He caught it. That was a definite improvement from yesterday. I was starting to feel as though he would be okay if they discharged him in a couple more days like they kept saying they would. Just that afternoon, he’d let me walk with him as he took a couple of laps around the nurses’ station on his floor. It had taken forever and a day to do those laps, but he’d done them. That was what mattered.

“What’s this for?” he asked me skeptically. He could really be obtuse when he wanted to be. I supposed that was where I’d picked it up.

I shook my head. “It’s a stress ball, silly. You’re supposed to squeeze it when you get stressed.”

“What the hell do I have to be stressed about? I’m in the fucking hospital where they’re doing everything for me.”

“Yeah. You just keep thinking like that, Daddy.” I rolled my eyes. He tried to set it down on the table next to him, but I wasn’t going to have any of that. “Keep it in your hand. Just in case.”

“I’m not going to get stressed from watching the game.”

“Good! But I’m not going to hold my breath that they’ll win. It’s the playoffs.” Anything could happen. “And if they go down two games to none…”

He scowled at me, but he kept the ball on the bed with him, placing it next to the remote control that operated everything.

Before getting settled, I wheeled the table out of the way and grabbed the pudding cup he’d left untouched. He raised a brow, and I mimicked him. “What? It’s chocolate.” I snagged the spoon he’d left on a napkin and then did a little furniture rearrangement, sliding the more comfortable chair in his room over so it was beside his bed.

By the time I was done with that, the pre-game show had started. As of tonight, each of the eight playoff series throughout the league had at least gotten underway. Since we were on the West Coast, they were able to recap with highlights from some of the other games that had already been played tonight, and they even took us to live footage of a game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals that had just gone into overtime.

I ate my pudding and kind of paid attention, but it was really only half-assed attention on my part. I liked hockey because it was what Daddy did for a living, but I’d never been what anyone would call a die-hard fan. If it wasn’t his team, I didn’t really care. And when it was the Boston Bruins, I really didn’t care—they were the team that currently employed the dude my mother ran off with. He was a scout for them or something.

They switched to covering the Storm and the Canucks, finally, giving us a wide shot of the entire ice surface as both teams came out for their warm-ups. That was when I started to pay a little more attention. The commentator pulled Kally aside for an interview and asked him some idiotic questions about what the team had to do better tonight.

I could tell him what they needed to do better tonight. They needed to fucking play better, that was what.

Maybe it was a good thing I wasn’t a pro hockey player.

Kally gave the expected answers and winked into the camera for Noelle before skating off to finish warming up. I stole a glance over to see how Daddy was doing. The television had his rapt attention. He was hanging on every word, every moment.

When the camera remained on the Canucks’ side of the ice, he grumbled under his breath something about, “Trying to see who Bergy had fucking scratched.” It was good to know that even though he’d just had major heart surgery, Daddy would never change.

My phone rang. The generic ring tone again. I dug it out of my purse just to be sure it was who I thought it was. Jonny. Yeah. Not going to answer that right now. I pushed the button to reject the call and shoved the phone back in my purse.

“Who was that?” Daddy asked. The broadcast had gone to a commercial break, so he was able to focus on something else, at least for a moment.

“No one.”

“You can answer your phone, you know. It’s not going to bother me.”

It would sure as hell bother me, though.

“It wasn’t important,” I said, hoping he would just drop it.

The commercial break ended, and the commentator on the ice had shoved a microphone into Hammer’s face. That was all it took for Daddy to let it go. Hammer talked about how he and Bergy were splitting the workload with Daddy being out of commission for a while. He said they had called upon some of the older, more experienced guys to help out, too—Webs, Kally, Zee, and a few others. Daddy kept nodding his head with everything Hammer said. They cut back to the studio then, updating on the overtime game in Pittsburgh.

Then Daddy’s cell phone rang. He looked down at the screen with annoyance, drawing his eyebrows together. Most people knew not to call him when he was watching a game.

I expected him to do like I had done and press the button to reject the call, but he surprised me by putting the phone up to his ear.

“This is Scotty,” he barked into it. He stayed quiet for a minute, grunting here and there. I got up to put my pudding cup and spoon on the rolling table along with all the rest of the remains from Daddy’s dinner. None of it looked terribly appealing. No wonder he hadn’t finished it. He grunted again, a little louder. “There’s nothing wrong with her phone other than that she isn’t answering it. Hold on.”

My heartbeat slowed to a stop. What the fuck? I didn’t answer his calls, so Jonny decided to call my dad?

“Here,” Daddy said, holding the phone out to me. “Take this. Go out in the hall and talk to your boyfriend so I don’t have to hear things I don’t want to hear. I’ve got hockey to watch.”

My hand shook when I took the phone from him.

IT WASN’T FEAR or nerves or anything like that causing my hand to shake as reached for Daddy’s phone. It was anger. Or maybe rage would be closer to the truth. I couldn’t remember a time in my life that I’d been more pissed off with anyone than I was with Cam Fucking Johnson right at this particular moment.

I let the door to Daddy’s room close gently behind me, even though every nerve ending in my body was begging me to slam it, before putting the cell to my ear. “What do you want, Jonny?” If the hall hadn’t been filled with people—nurses, orderlies, family members visiting patients—I wouldn’t have kept my words nearly as nice and profanity-free as I did, but there was no hiding the acid in my tone. Granted, I hadn’t attempted to hide it. I wanted him to know just how upset I was.

“Just to talk to you.” He sounded calm. Too fucking calm. It just made me want to let my pissed-off-ness boil over, but that wouldn’t be anywhere close to satisfying since he was just on the other end of the telephone and not right in front of me where he could really feel it.

I headed toward the stairs so I could get to the exit. I’d feel a lot better about saying whatever the hell I ended up saying to him if I was outside and away from all these people. “So why don’t you fucking talk, then?”

“Okay,” he said. “My dog sitter said you’ve been to see Buster some more. Thank you for that.”

“Don’t fucking thank me. I didn’t do that for you.”

“Okay.”

“I did it for your damn dog.”

“Okay.” Still, with the calm thing.

“I didn’t see any point in being pissed off at Buster just because I’m pissed off at you.” I was sucking in breaths as though I might never get another full one by this point, heading down the second flight of stairs. Daddy’s room was on the sixth floor. I could have taken the elevator, but I wanted the chance to walk off some of my mad. Plus the stairs were as good as deserted. I didn’t have to watch my language so much.

“That seems reasonable,” Jonny said.

What the fuck kind of response was that? For that matter, why was I the one talking?

“I thought you wanted to talk,” I bit off, huffing and puffing.

“We are talking.”

“No, I’m the one fucking talking, and you’re saying shit like ‘Okay,’ and ‘Mmm-hmm,’ and it’s pissing me off.”

“What would you rather I say?”

“I’d rather you tell me why the fuck you thought you’d call my dad’s phone to get to me when clearly I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Because we can’t work through anything if you won’t answer your phone.”

One more flight of stairs to go. I’d broken out in a sweat about two flights ago, but I couldn’t slow down now. “We don’t have anything to work through.”

“Don’t we? Because I was under the impression that you were angry with me.”

“See? You’ve already worked that out for yourself. You don’t need to fucking talk to me to understand that, and you don’t need to use sneaky, underhanded methods to get me to talk to you. Methods, by the way, that will only serve to piss me off even more than I already am.” I made it to the hospital’s main lobby, my heels clacking on the floor and echoing in the cavernous space as I marched toward the exit.

“What shoes are you wearing?” he asked.

How the hell could he hear my shoes on the phone? “None of your fucking business.”

“Okay.”

Again, with the fucking one-word responses. “What shoes am I wearing? A new pair with razor-sharp stiletto points I could use to stab you with if you were here, that’s what.”

“Sounds like you’d be really hot in them.”

How could he keep responding like that when I was threatening him with bodily harm? Not that I would go through with it even if I was wearing shoes like the ones I’d described and not the sensible pair of pumps I was actually wearing, but why wouldn’t he fucking fight back? I dropped down on a bench beneath a tree and let out an indignant and thoroughly undignified grunt.

“How did your doctor’s appointment go?” he asked when I stayed silent.

“Fine.” Two could play the one-word-answer game.

“Did you ask my questions?”

“Some.”

“Are you going to fill me in?”

“Nope.”

“Why are you trying to goad me?”

“Because.” Because if I couldn’t get him to react, to fight back, then I was the only one out of the pair of us behaving like a child, and I didn’t like that thought. I might actually be more upset with myself at the moment than I was with him simply for the fact that I was allowing him to get so completely under my skin.

“Okay.”

“Don’t you have something you have to do right now?” Something besides driving me up the wall with being so fucking rational and calm?

“I’m doing it,” he said. “I’m sitting in the press box with a few of the other boys, and we’re watching the team warm up on the ice. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Maybe you should pay more attention to that and less to me.”

“What do you think I need to watch for? It’s just the warm up.”

Yeah, so he had a point there. Damn it.

“Why did you talk to my dad without coming to me first?”

“Because I know you,” he said. “I’ve watched you for two years, and I see how you won’t let anyone in. Not men, at least—only the girls and your father. The rest you push away before they get close enough to matter.”

I was glad he wasn’t here to see the way I was blinking back tears. I didn’t want him to see how easily he could get to me. “That’s so not even close to t—”

“It is true,” he interrupted. “You’ve had this revolving door of men coming and going from your life, none of them sticking around for more than a date or two. I’m not willing to let you push me away so easily, and I thought the best way to be sure you can’t is to get to you through your dad.”

“Behind my back.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Behind your back. Because you’re stubborn as hell.”

That part was the truth, at least. I had to grant him that much. I was pretty sure Daddy was the only person I knew who might be more stubborn than me. Although, I might have to give Jonny a position on the stubborn scale. Somewhere below me, though.

I could only sit there, sulking.

“Sara?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s make a compromise.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but I supposed if I didn’t at least hear him out, I’d still just be acting like an immature brat. “What kind of compromise?” I muttered.

“I agree not to do anything behind your back anymore, to come to you first. And you agree not to shut me out.”

I’d prefer to stick with just the first part of that, but that wouldn’t exactly be a compromise. “Okay. Deal.”

“Will you be at my house when I get there late tonight?”

“I don’t know.” The whole team would be back after the game tonight, which meant that Zee would be home with Dana again—at least once they got in at whatever ungodly hour their flight would land. She’d want to have some time alone with him. I really shouldn’t stay with her again tonight, but I didn’t want to go to my house, either, as long as Daddy was still in the hospital. Stupid abandonment issues. That wasn’t a good enough reason to go to Cam’s place, though, and I had a lot of good reasons to stay the hell away from there.

“Okay,” he said after a minute. “If you’re not there, I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”

He made it sound like a promise.

OTHER THAN BUSTER, my house was empty when I got there at some time after four in the morning. He ran circles around my legs, almost tripping me while I tried to get my suitcase inside, yapping excitedly the whole time.

“Yeah, I know. Out of the way.” I shoved him back with my foot since he wouldn’t have a clue what I was saying. Once I closed the door and let go of my carry-on bag’s handle, he was practically trying to climb up my legs. I bent down and picked him up, and he licked my face all over, plying me with his dog breath. The whole time, his tail kept wagging so hard I worried I might drop him. He might be seven years old, but he still acted like a puppy. “Calm down, bud.” I scratched behind his ears, but that only got him more worked up.

Times like this, I hated that I had to leave him alone so much. I’d tried boarding him early in my career, but at that point I hadn’t figured out how to train him properly because of his deafness, and he had been more than a handful, especially considering his size. It was easier to find one person I trusted to come and take care of him in familiar territory than it was to send him to a strange place with strange faces.

Granted, some people might say that I still hadn’t trained him, considering how I let him run all over me so often.

I plopped onto the couch and spent a few minutes petting him until he finally calmed down a bit. It was easier to deal with my disappointment that Sara hadn’t come over while being on the receiving end of such unconditional love, even if it was just from a dog.

I really needed to get to bed, though, so I got up and took him outside so he wouldn’t start whining before I was ready to get up in the morning. Once he was out back and racing through the yard like the lunatic he was, I shut the door and took my bag upstairs.

Mom had always made it a habit to unpack as soon as we returned from a trip, and I’d picked that up from her. Even after all these years of living on my own, I’d never been able to break myself of it.

I opened the bag, took out my suits, and hung them in the closet. I’d only gotten half of my stuff out by the time Buster came racing in. He leaped up onto the bed and dove headfirst into the suitcase, nosing a couple of things out with his enthusiasm.

My phone charger dropped to the floor from his efforts. When I retrieved it, I set it on the nightstand beside me and glared at my dog. “You’re lucky that you’re cute, you bastard.”

He barked as if to signal he agreed.

I finished putting everything away and forced Buster out of the suitcase so I could put it on the shelf in the closet. He stayed put in the center of the bed while I did that and then changed my clothes. I washed my face and wished I could shave. My beard was already getting scratchy, and it had only been a few days of letting it grow.

Shaving wasn’t going to be an option for a while, though—hopefully. I might not be playing in the playoffs right now, but my team was, and that meant I was going to do whatever I could to keep them there. Yeah, playoff beards were a stupid superstition, and they didn’t have a damn thing to do with what happened on the ice. But superstition or not, they were tradition, and I damn sure had no intention of breaking a tradition.

Especially not after the boys had won tonight. We had gotten behind early due to a couple of miscues in our own end, but the boys had clawed and fought their way back into the game until they’d forced another overtime. Once we were there, Nicky had shut down the Canucks’ offense until the second OT period, when Jared Tucker—JT—had snuck in a garbage goal just by hanging out in front of the crease and getting lucky with a rebound bouncing off his ass and going into the net.

It was a hell of a lot better going home at night after a win.

It would have been even better if Sara had been here waiting for me.

I crawled into bed, and Buster grumbled at me for disturbing him. He’d already settled into his usual spot, right smack dab in the center of the bed, and was halfway asleep. I tried to get to sleep, too, but I didn’t get there easily.

Even though she’d said she didn’t know if she’d be here, I had allowed myself to hope that she would. Disappointment rose up like bile in my throat, and nothing seemed capable of washing it away.

SHE DIDN’T ANSWER her phone when I called after practice. It wasn’t a complete surprise. Yes, she’d agreed to the compromise I’d suggested, but even when we’d discussed it, I hadn’t gotten the sense that she would hold up her end of the bargain. I’d hoped she would. I liked to believe that people would do what they say they would do. But I hadn’t fallen into the trap of trusting it would happen this time.

Like I’d told her that night on the phone, I knew her. That meant I knew just how ridiculously inflexible she could be sometimes, especially when it came to pushing people away before they got too close. My guess was I’d already gotten closer than she’d wanted to let me, and that had scared her, so she was pushing back.

Now I had to figure out how best to go about breaking down her defenses. I tossed my pads into my stall and grabbed my duffel bag, debating my next step.

“Jonny!” Burnzie called out from the other side of the locker room. “Come have lunch with me.”

A lot of the boys had already left for the afternoon, but he and a handful of the others were still hanging around. Burnzie hadn’t been involved in today’s practice. He’d had a maintenance day today, coming in for some physical therapy to treat a lingering knee injury that had been plaguing him for the last couple of months.

He was the kind of guy who couldn’t stand to be alone. He needed people around him all the time or he would start to go stir-crazy. Considering that, I’d never understood why he didn’t at least have a roommate to keep him company in his enormous home. Burnzie owned what might be the biggest house in all of Portland, although calling it a house didn’t come close to doing it justice. It was really more like a massive mansion, built into the side of the Willamette River. It was big enough that my whole family—Mom, all three of my sisters, and I—could easily live there together and never run into each other, but it was just him and his dogs in all that space. He was always having parties there, with as many of the guys from the team as would come, plus God only knew how many other people from around the city. Probably so it wouldn’t feel so big and empty all the time.

Of all the guys on the team I might choose to go have lunch with, he was pretty much the last I would have thought of. It wasn’t that I disliked him. I just wasn’t so sure he and I really lived in the same world all the time. I liked my peace and quiet. I liked my modest house. To me, there was a time and a place for a party, and it wasn’t every single weekend in my home.

I had to eat lunch, though, and I didn’t know where I would find Sara since she hadn’t answered my calls. I’d been thinking about going up to the hospital to visit Scotty and see if I would run into her there, but whether she’d be there right now or not was a crapshoot. Going out with Burnzie seemed like as good an option as any. I could try calling her again after, and hopefully then she would answer.

“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” I said, shrugging on a T-shirt.

He wanted to go to Kells, an Irish pub in Old Town that he claimed had the best shepherd’s pie known to man, and the corned beef and cabbage was supposedly good enough to write to his Irish grandma about. I didn’t particularly care where we went. I wasn’t picky. We left my truck at the practice facility since it would be on his way home after we had lunch.

He parked in the lot across the street, and when we walked through the door of the pub, the host greeted him like an old friend.

“Your usual booth?” he asked, grabbing two menus from behind his stand and heading toward the back corner of the bar without waiting for an answer.

“When have you ever known me to sit anywhere else, Tony?”

“Never. It’s still polite to ask.”

The bartender looked up and waved at him as we walked by. They were treating him like he was family or something. How the hell often did he eat here?

There were only a handful of other patrons in the place at this time of day, even though it was a Saturday. It was later than most people would eat lunch but too early for the dinner crowd. We slid into our booth, the one closest to a small stage in the corner. It looked like they had live music, probably regularly, and all of the TV screens over the bar were tuned to sports news.

“It’s been packed in here during your games,” Tony said. “Standing room only. Nice to see the Storm back in the playoffs.”

“Not as nice as it is to be back in the playoffs,” Burnzie said. He’d been with the Storm a couple of years longer than I had. Long enough that he’d actually seen some playoff action early in his career. I’d only seen the playoffs from back home in Winnipeg, watching it on TV. That was nowhere near the same thing as playing in them. I was a little closer now and could tell that without even touching my blade to the ice.

“They gonna shorten your suspension?” Tony asked me. I must have given him an odd look because he kept talking, trying to explain himself. “You’re Cam Johnson, right? They can’t really suspend you for ten whole games. It wasn’t that bad, what you did. Besides, it’s the playoffs, man.”

“It was that bad.”

“But come on. Ten playoff games? I thought they always treated suspensions so that two regular-season games were the equivalent of one playoff game. That’d mean you should get off after five. You could maybe be back before this series is over.”

I didn’t see any point in discussing this. The suspension was automatic. The hearing had already come and gone. “It is what it is,” I said.

“You could appeal to the commissioner,” Burnzie said.

Which was exactly what my agent, Jim, and the coaching staff had all encouraged me to do. That wasn’t me, though. I wasn’t the kind of guy who thought he should get off easy for whatever reason. I preferred to take the consequences handed down to me, whatever they may be, and move on with things.

I looked at my menu to redirect the conversation. That kind of talk made me uncomfortable. Burnzie took the hint, and we ordered our food. Tony headed off to inform the kitchen what we wanted and to bring us our drinks.

“So.” Burnzie sat back against the bench, taking up a casual position that looked anything but casual. “Some of the boys are worried about you. Zee, Soupy, Webs, me…a few of the others, too. I wanted to see where your head’s at.”

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what it sounds like.” He shrugged. “Look, I’ve been suspended before. Zee has, too. We know what it feels like, how it can make you beat yourself up. Plus, you’re not really hanging out with the boys right now. Jens said you were pretty much always up in your room on the road unless something was going on that you were required to be at. You wouldn’t go out for a beer. You didn’t tag along even though you weren’t going to drink or go find some guys to hang out with in some other capacity.”

That was about Sara, though, not about beating myself up. I didn’t know how she’d feel about me telling anyone else what was going on with us, though. She’d probably told Dana and the other girls by now, but that didn’t mean that any of the guys knew, and it didn’t mean she wanted any of the guys to know.

Besides, then there was the whole issue of how the boys would feel about me being with the coach’s daughter.

I shook my head. “I’m not beating myself up.” Except over what to do about Sara, but that was another matter entirely.

He raised a brow. “Then what’s going on?”

Tony came back and delivered our drinks. “A couple more minutes on your meal.”

When he was gone, I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. “Nothing’s going on.”

“Bullshit. I’ve known you four years. You’ve never been like this—so withdrawn from the rest of the guys. You’ve always been quiet, but this is different.”

It was different. He was right about that much.

“There’s a girl,” I finally said, steering clear of who that girl might be.

His eyes lit up with that, and he gave me one of his trademark smiles that always seemed to make women melt. “Nice. So at least you have a good reason for avoiding us, then. Sexting, that sort of thing.”

I gave him a noncommittal grunt in response. It seemed like that was enough, at least to appease Burnzie.

Tony brought our meals out, and soon we were eating and talking about the Trail Blazers’ NBA playoff series, and all thought of me and whatever was going on with me was pushed to the side.

At least for now.

WHEN THE MEETING with Daddy’s doctors was over and he was settling in for a nap, I pulled my cell out of my purse and powered it on while the elevator took me down to the ground floor. I hadn’t wanted any distractions so I could focus on what they were telling us about his at-home care, since they were still planning to discharge him tomorrow, so I’d shut it off completely. Now, though, I had the rest of the day free to do whatever I wanted. Daddy had come really close to forbidding me to return to the hospital today. He said I was hovering.

My phone was fully on by the time the elevator doors opened to the sunlight pouring in through the massive windows lining the front of the hospital. The bright light blinded me so much I couldn’t make out anything on the screen, so I shoved my phone into my pocket and headed out to the car.

Once I had the engine running, I took my phone out again and looked to see if I had any messages. No new texts, and email-wise the only new things were spam. But the voice mail symbol was lit up. I punched in my password and turned on the Bluetooth in the car, then backed out of my parking spot.

Jonny’s voice greeted me. “I thought we’d agreed you weren’t going to avoid me anymore. Call me when you get this so I don’t have to go back on my end of our deal, too.”

Well, shit. I wasn’t intentionally avoiding him, but of course, it had to look that way.

I deleted his voice mail and turned onto the access road to get on I-84. Then I tried to pull up his number in my contacts list while I was getting up to speed. I finally found it and hit “send.”

“Sara?” he said, almost before the phone had a chance to ring.

“I was in a meeting with Daddy’s doctors,” I explained. I turned on my blinker to merge. “I wasn’t avoiding you.”

“Okay.” He didn’t sound angry. I was beginning to think that nothing at all would make this man lose his cool, which was equal parts fascinating and infuriating.

I tried to put my phone on the dash mount so I could have both hands free, but it slipped out of my grasp and went down under my feet into exactly the wrong spot. “Shit.” If it stayed there, I might not be able to brake properly. I tried to edge it over using the toes of my left foot. It wouldn’t budge. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

This was absolutely the worst possible moment something like this could happen. I shot my head up to see what the traffic in front of me was doing, just in time to see brake lights everywhere. I slammed my foot down on my brake pedal.

“What’s wrong?” Jonny asked.

My airbag blew up in my face as I crashed into the car in front of me.

I HEARD A long, loud crash and Sara moaning, and then the line went dead. And I went numb. “Oh God.” The phone dropped from my hand and clattered against the wooden table.

“What is it?” Burnzie asked, suddenly serious. He’d just finished paying our bill, and we had been about to return to the practice facility for my truck when Sara had called. When my phone rang, he’d seen the image of her heels flash up on my screen, and he’d heard me say her name…and he’d smirked knowingly, wagging his brows and mouthing the words, That’s who you’re sexting with? But all of that teasing was gone now, fled as quickly as all sensation had fled from my extremities. “What the fuck is it? Did Scotty have another heart attack or something?”

I shook my head, trying to remember how to speak. “Sara,” I choked out. “I think she was just in a car wreck.”

“Where was she?” He was on his feet before he finished getting those three little words out, pulling his keys out of his pocket and grabbing my phone off the table. “We can call an ambulance and get to her, or meet her at the hospital, or—”

He was still talking, but he’d already headed out the front door of the restaurant and my mind wasn’t processing anything he said. I forced my feet to move, one after the other, following behind him. When I caught up and climbed into the passenger seat of his car, he looked at me long and hard.

“She’s the one?”

I nodded. She was the girl who had me so fucked up. She was the one I couldn’t stop thinking about. She was the one. There was no denying it now, not to him, and not to myself.

“Was she leaving home? The hospital? Where was she?”

“I think she’d just left the hospital.”

Burnzie nodded and put his car into gear. Only a few minutes passed before we were on I-84 heading toward the hospital—and we saw a big, multi-car pile-up stopping traffic heading the other direction. Flashing lights were speeding to get to it through the traffic that was attempting to merge into the left lane so they could avoid the wreck. The EMTs would get there before we would. Burnzie got off the highway at the next exit to loop around and move straight toward the accident.

I craned my head around as we passed the wreckage, praying I wouldn’t see Sara’s car.

But there it was. The light-blue Lexus her dad had given her. Right in the middle of it all. Crushed in the front and from behind…sandwiched between several other cars.

“Fuck.” My stomach was in my throat.

“It’s her?” Burnzie asked. “You’re sure?”

As sure as I’d ever been about anything. My heart sank to the floorboard. I don’t know if I responded to him or not. I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t feel. Couldn’t do anything but picture her dead. Bleeding. Dying.

Most of the cars in front of us were staying on the service road since the accident had happened in the acceleration lane, but Burnzie drove us onto the ramp to enter the highway. He pulled up on the shoulder behind the accident. I didn’t even wait for him to come to a complete stop. I whipped my seat belt off and was out of the car before he’d put it in park.

Six vehicles were involved, and some of the other drivers were out, trying to help each other. The paramedics had arrived and were attempting to get a handle on the situation and sort through all of the people involved.

But I didn’t see Sara. She wasn’t out and moving about like the others.

I worked my way through the crowd to her car. She was slumped over in the seat, her head resting against the steering wheel.

“Sara?” I tried to open her door, but it wouldn’t budge.

Neither did she. A trickle of blood streamed down the side of her face.

Fuck. “Can I get some help over here?” I shouted. “She needs help.”

Burnzie was on the opposite side of her car, trying those doors. I tried to get into the back seat behind her, but the car was so smashed that none of the doors would release.

“I can’t get them to open,” Burnzie said.

“We need help over here!” I shouted, louder this time.

A couple of paramedics finally came over. “You’ve gotta move out of the way,” one of them said to me. I’d barely stepped back before he raised a metal tool into the air and broke the glass in the rear window.

“Shit,” Burnzie said, watching the glass spray everywhere. My thoughts exactly. Some of it might cut Sara, but a few more cuts were the least of my concerns about her health. We had to get her out of there. She had to get to the hospital.

More rescue workers streamed in, some of them on the opposite side, and Burnzie stepped back, as well. They broke out all the windows, and then they used the Jaws of Life to cut through the metal and remove the driver’s side door.

The whole time they were working, I watched Sara. She was breathing. Her chest was rising and falling steadily. But she didn’t wake up through it all.

They wheeled a stretcher over and immobilized her head before pulling her free. I couldn’t stop myself. I got in their way and took her hand in mine while they were strapping her down to it. It was warm and sticky with blood, and she moaned.

Moaning was a good sign. A really fucking good sign.

“Sir, you’ve got to—”

“She’s my girlfriend,” I interrupted, my eyes flashing up to meet his. There was no fucking way I was letting them take her away from me right now, no chance I was being left behind. “And she’s pregnant. And I’m coming with her.”

The paramedic across from me met my eyes. “Okay, but if we tell you to move so we can help her, you have to move.”

I nodded. I’d move, but I wasn’t fucking staying behind. I wasn’t letting her out of my sight.

They finished strapping her to the stretcher and started wheeling her toward the ambulance.

“What hospital are you taking her to?” Burnzie shouted after us.

“Providence,” one of the emergency workers responded.

“No,” I said. “Kaiser. Her dad’s at Kaiser.” The last thing she needed was to be taken to a different hospital than where Scotty was.

“It’ll be quicker to keep heading in this direction than to try to turn around,” he said.

“It’ll only take two minutes to get turned around. Her father just had a fucking heart attack. That’s where she needs to be.”

They agreed to change their plans. It was only after we were in the back of the ambulance that I realized I’d been making fists with my hands and taking on a fighter’s stance, as I would on the ice.

Burnzie headed back toward his car, shouting over his shoulder, “I’ll follow you there.”

I nodded to let him know I’d heard, not that he would see that since he was running in the opposite direction, but I couldn’t look away from Sara for even one second. She was grimacing, but she hadn’t opened her eyes yet, and those pained moans were coming with more frequency. It scared me that she was in so much pain, but being in pain meant she was alive.

I had to let go of her hand so they could get the stretcher into the back. I climbed in and took a seat next to her, taking hold of it again in both of mine. They closed the doors and turned the siren on, and then we were in motion. The two guys in the back with us set to work, putting an IV in her arm and taking her vitals and checking all the different places she was bleeding to see how bad her wounds were.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she blinked a few times before settling her gaze on me.

“Cam?”

I’d never been happier to hear her say my name. “I’m right here,” I said. And right at that moment, I made up my mind that I would always be there.

I’D BEEN RIGHT by Sara’s side through every moment in the emergency room until now. I’d held her hand and talked to her, trying to keep her calm through everything. She had a pretty nasty concussion, and she kept asking me what had happened. Time and again, I had explained that she’d been in a car accident and she was in the hospital where they were going to take care of her, and I wasn’t going to go anywhere. But then a few minutes later, she would ask again, and we would have to start over from the beginning.

This was probably the one and only time in my life that I was glad I’d been around guys with concussions so many times. Her behavior didn’t freak me out like it would have if I didn’t know what to expect, if I hadn’t already seen things like this on numerous occasions. Brain trauma was a scary business.

They’d already tried doing an ultrasound to check on the baby, but she was still so early in her pregnancy that they weren’t able to see enough through the traditional method. The doctors had decided to go in to do one vaginally, but they were also concerned about other possible internal injuries, so they were going to do an MRI first. If they couldn’t determine enough about the baby through that scan, they’d stick an ultrasound wand up inside her. That didn’t sound very pleasant to me, but I wanted them to do whatever was necessary to make sure she and the baby were both going to be all right.

So now they were wheeling her off down a long hallway to get her MRI, and they weren’t letting me go along for that. An orderly directed me to the waiting room and said they would come to find me when they were done and I could be with her again.

I was pretty sure I would find Burnzie there, since he’d said he was going to follow us to the hospital when we’d gotten into the ambulance. For whatever reason, I hadn’t been expecting everyone else, though.

Dana and Zee were there, as well as Rachel, Soupy, and her kids. Webs and Laura had brought all three of their teenagers. Kally was watching Noelle, who had flopped down on the floor, her long skirt spread out all around her, and was playing cars with Rachel’s redheaded little boy, Tuck. Even Babs was there, and he’d dragged Razor along with him. Razor had his nose buried in a Nintendo DS, though, oblivious to everything going on around him.

It wasn’t the sight of any of them that stopped me in my tracks. For the most part, these were Sara’s people—the girls she spent her time with and their families. They were the ones who would be worried about her, who would want to be here with her. It made sense for all of them to be here.

What surprised me was that Scotty was sitting there in a wheelchair.

I don’t know why that took me aback. I’d insisted that we come to this hospital because it was where he was. It only made sense for someone to have told him what had happened. I still wasn’t prepared for the sight of him, though. Of him sitting upright.

I met his eyes and swallowed hard.

He angled his head and jerked it, in a get-your-ass-over-here sort of motion. “Come push my chair, Jonny. Take me for a walk.” I must have hesitated because he barked, “What the fuck are you waiting for? They take forever around here to run these tests. We have plenty of time, so get your ass in gear.”

I nodded and moved behind his wheelchair, making sure everything was properly situated with the IV pole before moving him. “Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere. Just away from all these ears so we can talk.”

Fuck. The thought of talking to him right now, one-on-one, made my stomach churn. I pushed him out the waiting room door, though, and started down the long hall toward the cafeteria.

“How is she?” he asked once we were well out of earshot of the others.

“She’s got a concussion. And she’ll need stitches in at least a few places. They’re doing an MRI now to see what’s going on internally.” That was all the information I felt comfortable sharing with him—that I didn’t think she would be upset with me over.

A series of windows stretched as far along the hall as I could see, looking out over the parking lot. I looked out them, but I didn’t see anything. All I could see was Sara’s pained, confused face and the streak of drying blood on her cheek.

“And the baby?” he asked.

His question startled me so much that I actually stopped moving.

Scotty cleared his throat. “Burnzie told me that you’d made sure the paramedics were aware she was pregnant. That it had been the first thing you’d thought of. That was one of the first things he said when he came up to tell me what was going on—that you were making sure they looked after the baby, too. He thought I knew and was trying to reassure me. I pretended I did so he wouldn’t realize he’d spilled the beans.”

At least it was Burnzie who’d told him and not me, but the only reason Burnzie knew was because I’d screwed up and mentioned it in front of him. I just hadn’t been thinking clearly. I started walking again, trying to weigh each word before I said it so I wouldn’t reveal too much. “They did an ultrasound, but it’s too soon to see anything that way.”

“Will the MRI show them what they need to know?”

“They hope so. If not, they can do an internal ultrasound.”

Scotty nodded, letting it all sink in. I kept waiting for him to blow up at me. To lose his shit, like Sara had said he would. To start yelling and cussing at me because that was how I was used to him communicating with me.

He didn’t, though. He just sat quietly in his wheelchair, letting me push him down the hall. Maybe he liked toying with me. Maybe he was trying to lull me into thinking that he was okay with the fact that I’d knocked up his little girl, and then—wham!—he’d start acting like I’d expected him to in the first place.

“When were you two planning to tell me?” he asked after a minute.

I really fucking wished I could talk to Sara about this. She should be involved. She should be the one deciding how much to tell her father and when—especially after the promise I’d made to her. But she wasn’t. And he was asking questions. And I couldn’t put him off.

“We haven’t known very long at all. We were trying to decide those kinds of things. How to go about it. When.”

He nodded. For a long time, he stared out the windows at the sea of cars. “Is that why you finally told me you were dating her?”

Yes, but not for the reasons he assumed. But he didn’t need to know the whole truth. “Yeah, it is. I thought you’d need to digest that before you’d be ready for this.”

We got to the doors leading into the cafeteria, and I turned his wheelchair around for the return trip. They would probably be done with her MRI soon.

Scotty’s silence was killing me. He hadn’t sounded even a little bit angry since I’d wheeled him out of the waiting room. I didn’t know how to interact with him when he wasn’t blowing up at me or someone else. It made me more uncomfortable than I could ever remember being, walking along behind him and having a normal conversation like two rational human beings.

“When… Ah, shit.” I didn’t know how to say what I was trying to say. “When they’re done with Sara’s tests, you should go back with her,” I finally got out. He was her father. She adored him. She’d want him in there with her, at least a hell of a lot more than she wanted me. It would kill me not to be with her, but this wasn’t about me.

“I don’t think that’s such a hot idea,” he said, laughing. How the fuck could he be laughing at a time like this? I was starting to think there was a hell of a lot I didn’t know about Scotty Thomas. He tapped his hands on the arms of his wheelchair. “I’d be in the way more than I’d help. You go back in with her.”

“But you’re her father. You’re her family.”

“For twenty-three years, that’s been my job—to be the one by her side, holding her hand and making sure she felt safe and loved and protected. Not anymore. Now it’s your job. I’ve got to learn to let go. No time like the present to start.”

Out of all the reactions he could have had to discovering that Sara was pregnant, this was the last thing I expected. “I’m not… I don’t… Fuck, Scotty, she’s still your little girl.”

We were nearly back to the waiting room. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to slow down or speed up.

“Yeah, she’s my baby girl,” he said. “But now I have to trust you to take care of her. She’s going to have a family of her own, and you’re going to be part of that. I’m choosing to put her in your hands because she’s chosen you. Don’t make me regret it.”

She hadn’t chosen me, though. Not really. Not yet.

I’D NEVER FELT claustrophobic before, but this fucking MRI machine was quickly changing that. There was hardly room to breathe in here, as it was, and it felt like the thing kept closing in on me, and I just wanted the fuck out of there.

“How much longer?” I asked, trying hard not to move so I wouldn’t screw anything up.

“One more minute, Sara,” a disembodied female voice said into the chamber. “Hold really still for me. Just keep breathing.”

Breathe. Right. I could do that, if not for the fact that every time I filled my lungs, I felt a sharp, stabby pain in my side. Shallower breaths worked better; they didn’t make me want to twist and writhe and scream.

I couldn’t remember anything up until just before they put me in this machine. I had been on a hospital gurney, and they’d been wheeling me through some hall or another, and I’d asked what had happened.

“You were in a car wreck,” they’d told me. “We’re taking you for an MRI so we can see what’s going on inside you and check on your baby. We’ll get you back to your boyfriend as soon as we’re done, and he can help to explain everything.”

I hadn’t been able to make sense of that at first, but then I vaguely remembered Cam holding my hand and telling me he wasn’t going anywhere. That he would take care of me. Had we been at the hospital then? I couldn’t make it all out in my head. Was he in the car wreck with me? Was he okay? My head was throbbing, and not just because of trying to figure out what was going on. Was this what a concussion felt like?

“All right,” the woman said into the intercom. “All done. We’re going to get you out of there now, so just sit tight.”

All I could do was sit tight, so her instruction seemed kind of redundant. Telling her that right now wouldn’t exactly be helpful, though, so I kept it to myself.

A few minutes later, they wheeled my bed into a hospital room, and Cam was there waiting for me. He looked like he was worrying himself sick, but at least he didn’t seem to be hurt.

The nurse parked my bed and adjusted the wheel locks, then reconnected an IV bag to the port they’d put in my arm. “The doctor’s going to look at the results, and then he’ll be in to talk to you. In the meanwhile, he’s sent for someone to come stitch you up.”

I nodded that I understood, but the motion made my head hurt worse. I groaned.

“Can she have anything for pain?” Cam asked. He’d been standing off to the side while the nurse got me situated, but now he moved back over to sit beside me. He reached for my hand, and I let him take it. It felt warm and secure and right. I immediately felt calmer.

“I’ll ask the doctor and see. I don’t know what they’ll say because she’s pregnant.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

When she left, I rolled my head over so I could look at him better, really look at him this time. He definitely didn’t seem hurt. No cuts or bruises. He wasn’t all banged up like I was. “You weren’t in the wreck?” I asked.

He shook his head and brushed my hair back from my forehead. “No. You had just left the hospital from a meeting with your dad’s doctors. We were on the phone when it happened.”

“Oh.” Yeah, I remembered that. Daddy was supposed to be discharged tomorrow. Hell. How was I going to take care of him now? How was I going to get him home? The car— “How bad is my car?”

“It’s totaled. They had to cut you out of it. But don’t worry about the car right now.”

“Okay.” It really did sound like a good idea, to not worry. I didn’t know how easy it would be for me to do that, though. A shiver raced over me.

“You’re cold?” Cam immediately tugged the blanket up higher on me, tucking it in by my side. I sucked in a sharp breath from the contact. His eyes shot up to my face. “Sorry. You hurt there?” His hand was gentle as he slid it over my rib cage, tenderly probing with his fingertips.

“Yeah, that hurt a lot.”

“Probably a broken rib or two. The seat belt might have done it.” He moved his hand away from my side. He shivered, too. “Why do they keep it so cold in here? I’ll see if the nurse can bring you another blanket.”

“Daddy likes it that his room is cold.” Oh hell. Daddy. “Does he know what happened?”

Cam nodded. “I told him he should come in here with you, but…” He shook his head as he trailed off.

“But what?”

He gave me a look—the kind that made me certain I wasn’t going to like anything that came out of his mouth after it.

“What, Cam? Just tell me.”

“He said that’s my job now.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. Why the hell would Daddy say something like that? It didn’t make any sense, no matter how I tried to sort it out in my mind.

“Because of the baby.”

“Daddy doesn’t know about the baby.” Unless Cam told him. Which he promised me he wouldn’t do. He’d said he wouldn’t do anything behind my back anymore.

“He does know,” Cam said. “Burnzie let it slip.”

I could feel my anger building, a big ball of mad rising up from my stomach and threatening to come out as puke, and it made my head throb like nobody’s business. I tried to sit up straighter, but that only made the stabbing pain in my side burn like a motherfucker. I sucked in a breath, and Cam made to try to help me until I ripped my hand away from him. That only made my side hurt worse. I really hoped they would be able to give me something for pain because holy fucking hell, it hurt. Everywhere. I hurt abso-fucking-lutely everywhere.

“How the fuck did Keith Burns, of all people, know?”

“He heard me tell the paramedics. He thought he was helping your dad not to worry so much.”

The door opened before I could tell him to go fuck himself, and a doctor came in with a wheeled tray of supplies. “Why don’t we get you stitched up?”

Cam backed away from my bed so the doctor could get in and do his work. I glared at him while he stood off in the corner. Being mad at him right now would help me get through getting the fucking stitches, at least. It’d give me something to focus on beyond the pain.

“Has anything been determined about whether she can have something for the pain?” Cam asked, pissing me off even more. Why the hell did he have to be so calm and thoughtful all the time? Why did he have to be worried about me? It would be a hell of a lot easier to stay mad at him if he wouldn’t pull shit like that.

“Her primary doctor should be in soon. He can answer that, but I’m sure we’ll be able to give her something to help.” He set to work cleaning a cut on my cheek that I hadn’t even noticed I had.

I winced because whatever he was using to clean it with stung.

“Sorry. It won’t take long. I need you to be really still. I want to do everything I can to prevent a scar up here, okay?”

“Mmm-hmm,” I murmured, not taking my eyes from Cam.

“She’s cold, too,” he said.

The doctor looked up at him briefly. “There should be a spare blanket in that cabinet next to you.” Then he turned back to his work on my cheek.

Cam got the blanket and unfolded it, bringing it across to me. I didn’t want him to put it on me. I wanted to stay mad at him and not let him do kind things for me, but I couldn’t move right now so I couldn’t very well stop him. He carefully placed it over me, loosely, not tucking it in this time so he wouldn’t hurt my ribs.

Despite myself, I murmured, “Thank you.”

Cam just nodded and went back to the corner, standing and staring.

In all my anger, one thing was still really bothering me. “Why would it be your job to be in here with me?”

He stared a long time, so long I thought maybe he was just going to do the silent caveman staring thing and not answer me at all. But then he shrugged. “Because now I’m going to be your family.”

TWO CRACKED RIBS, a concussion, more than a dozen stitches placed in three different spots, plus more minor cuts and bruises than anyone was going to attempt to document. All of that combined to make me feel like a freaking hockey player. Then I wondered why the hell hockey players kept going back for more if this was how they felt. I don’t think I had ever hurt so much before in my entire life. Maybe if you added up all the hurts I could remember and threw them all at me at once—maybe then. But otherwise, not so much.

The good news was that there was nothing so badly wrong with me that the doctors felt the need to admit me. I was going to go home. The better news was that they sent me with a prescription for painkillers that they said would be safe for the baby, and they’d given me a dose of it intravenously before discharging me. That had helped tremendously, but I still hurt all over.

All signs pointed to everything being fine with the pregnancy, but they told me to take it easy for the next few weeks, not to overexert myself, and that if anything unusual happened, I should go see my OB-GYN as soon as possible.

That was all well and good except I didn’t know how I was going to manage to take it easy. Daddy had just had heart surgery, and he was due to be discharged tomorrow. I was supposed to be the one taking care of him…and he definitely wasn’t going to be able to take care of me. The two of us made quite a pair.

The meeting I’d had with his doctors before the wreck today had made it abundantly clear to me just how much assistance he was going to need in order to get through daily life. Even simple things like getting up from a chair were going to be hard for him. He wasn’t supposed to lift anything that weighed more than five pounds. He needed to get up and walk several times a day, but he couldn’t do it alone. I was supposed to be the one right there with him in case he needed someone to lean on, but how could he lean on me now that I had cracked ribs?

At least I’d only cracked them, and they weren’t fully broken. I couldn’t even imagine the pain of that right now. Anything worse than this seemed impossible.

They’d allowed Daddy to come in to see me for a few minutes earlier, an orderly pushing him in a wheelchair. He hadn’t stayed long—really only long enough to see that yes, I would be all right, and to tell me that he loved me and he’d see me tomorrow—before they’d taken him back to his room because he needed to rest. Simply sitting upright as long as he had today, not to mention worrying about me, had nearly done him in. How was I ever going to manage this?

All of that was running through my head while the doctors delivered my aftercare instructions. It was probably a good thing that Cam was listening, even though I really wanted to kick him out of my room, because I sure as hell wasn’t taking any of it in. Especially not now that my medication had kicked in, dulling not only my pain but also my ability to pay attention.

Cam excused himself after they were done giving the instructions. “I’ll go tell everyone in the waiting room what’s going on,” he said.

I let myself breathe—really, truly breathe—for the first time in hours once he was gone. He’d stolen my breath from me the moment he’d told me he was going to be my family. Fuck that. Daddy was my family. I didn’t want Cam Fucking Johnson to be my family. I wanted him to stop being so damn nice and let me really be angry at him. But he wouldn’t.

The nurse removed my IV and helped me to change into some clothes that Dana had picked up from my house earlier. The ones I’d been wearing when they brought me here were spotted with blood from all my cuts. Not really something I wanted to wear out of here. When the nurse was done with me, an orderly helped me ease down onto a wheelchair so he could take me out. Only I didn’t know how I was going to get home. My car was totaled. I didn’t think I could drive, anyway, with the way I was feeling. Probably a bad idea after the pain meds, too.

He wheeled me to the hospital entrance, and Cam was waiting there for me in the drive, standing beside his enormous truck. I supposed a couple of the guys must have gone to get it while he was with me, since he’d come to the hospital in the ambulance when they’d brought me in.

He was the last person I wanted to see right now. He’d hardly left my side the whole time I had been in the emergency room, and he just kept taking care of me, making sure I had everything I needed and being so fucking perfect I would have punched him if I didn’t hurt so much everywhere. Punching him would be a colossally bad idea, anyway. He was as hard as cast iron. I’d probably break my hand if I tried it, which wouldn’t feel very good considering I’d already busted some ribs.

And here he was again, being nice to me. Behaving thoughtfully. Acting completely sensible and rational, and fucking with all the ideas I had in my head about him.

He opened the passenger-side door and held out a hand to help me from the wheelchair. The last thing in the world I wanted to do right then was take his hand, but with the way my ribs hurt, I didn’t know if I could get up on my own.

That didn’t stop me from trying.

The orderly locked the wheels of my chair, and I set my feet down on the concrete sidewalk, trying to get my bearings. I attempted to push myself up, pressing down on the arms of the wheelchair, but it hurt so much I almost started crying.

Cam moved toward me, taking my left hand in his and putting his other arm around my waist—on the opposite side of the broken ribs—practically lifting me to my feet. “It’ll probably be easier to get you in the truck if you let me pick you up,” he said.

I blinked and nodded. As painful as it had been simply trying to stand up, there was no way in hell I was going to be able to pull myself up into that monstrosity right now. It would pull on my ribs and stretch my torso, and I just didn’t think I could do it. Not with the way doing something as simple as breathing made it feel like someone was jabbing a fork between my ribs from the inside.

In no time, he had me up in the air and was placing me gingerly on the seat, always careful of my ribs. “I’m pretty sure it’ll hurt to wear the seat belt, but you’ve got to. Just until we get you home.” Before I could brace myself against the pain of attempting to fasten it myself, Cam had pulled the belt out and reached around me, securing it in place. He barely touched me at all in the process, and when he had it latched, he eased it until it was snug against me. “Too tight?” he asked.

Yes, I thought to myself, but there was nothing he could do about that. Anything touching my torso right now, anything at all, was too much. I shook my head, biting down on my tongue against the pain.

He kissed the end of my nose. “I’m sorry,” he said, as though he could read my thoughts. “I’ll get you home as soon as I can. It won’t hurt for too long.”

He didn’t try to force me to talk on the way there. That was a good thing, since talking would require breathing, and breathing hurt like a son of a bitch. I was doing everything I could to avoid as much of that particular activity as possible.

“Your friends all worked out some plans to help while you were with the doctors,” he said when we were about halfway to my house. I twisted my head so I could look at him. “Laura and your dad were spearheading it. Most of them left ahead of us so they could get to your house and get things ready.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I was with you. I just know that your dad told me I was welcome to stay with you guys while the team’s in town. So I can be close to you. So I can help you. And he said Buster could stay, too.”

“Daddy hates dogs.” I don’t know why I said that when what I should have said was something along the lines of, Why the hell are you all making decisions about me and what I need without bothering to consult me? or, I don’t want you to be at my house all the time to help me, and I definitely don’t want you staying there, or, Since when are you and Daddy all buddy-buddy? But I didn’t say any of those things. I only told him that my father hated dogs.

The pain meds must be affecting me even more than I realized.

“He’s the one who suggested it. And it was his idea for me to stay there. Not mine.”

“I don’t know if I want you to stay.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not sure I like the idea of you being at my house all the time. Especially not once Daddy comes home.”

“All right.”

“Damn it, Cam. Are you ever going to argue with me? About anything?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Why?” I hated the pouty sound of my voice. I hated that he could bring this side of me out. I hated that I couldn’t act like a freaking adult, like he was.

“Because my dad constantly argued with my mom, and worse, when I was a kid, and I know what it did to me. I know what it did to my sisters. I know what it did to my mom.” He turned onto my street. “I’m not going to be that kind of man. I’m not going to do that to you. So if you don’t want me to stay, I won’t, even though I know you need help and I want to be the one to give it to you.”

“You’re making it impossible for me to be pissed off at you. You know that?” I spun my head around to stare out the window. It was easier to pout and sulk and do all the immature things I wished I would stop doing if I wasn’t looking at him, if I couldn’t see the way he was looking at me.

“Good,” he replied as he parked in the driveway. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I detected a hint of laughter in his voice. He almost never laughed. At least it seemed that way.

He’d been right. There were tons of cars lining the street near my house. I didn’t have a clue how many of them must have come here from the hospital. Too many, when all I wanted to do was find a comfortable position somewhere and let the pain meds do their work.

“Don’t move,” he said, taking his key from the ignition. “I’ll come get you down.”

Even though he picked me up carefully and set me down with even more tenderness, I couldn’t stop the pained whimper that came from me. He stood there, his hands on my waist and his head bent down to mine, holding me steady while I tried to remember how to breathe.

“You okay to walk inside?”

“I will be,” I said. Maybe.

“All right.” He wasn’t impatient. He didn’t try to rush me. He just stood there for as long as I needed.

And I needed a long fucking time. Every tiny motion felt impossibly painful. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to do anything for myself. Whether I wanted his help or not, I needed it. I was going to need a lot of it, damn it.

Frankly, though, I would rather have his help than just about anyone else that was currently inside my house. I knew they all meant well, but it was just too much. With Cam, it was always the perfect amount at exactly the right time.

Having him around made me feel stable. I don’t know that I’d felt that much in my life. At least not since my mother left. Daddy had done his best, but he was as unstable as I was in many ways. Cam was solid. He was unwavering. He steadied me.

I didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Cam?” I said after a minute.

“Yeah?”

“I want you to stay.”

He didn’t respond. He just kissed my forehead.

We stayed like that for another minute or so while I tried to prepare myself for the pain of walking inside. When I was ready, he took my hand and stayed right with me. Strong. Steady. Quietly determined. He was like a rock at my side.

My rock.

I drew his hand closer to my side, squeezing it as we went through the front door and stepped into the chaos of Laura’s attempt to make order of my life.

IT FELT LIKE forever before Laura and her minions finally left. It probably wasn’t fair of me to call them her minions. Hell, half of them were my teammates. It just felt as if all she had to do was snap her fingers, though, and everyone rushed around to do her bidding. I shouldn’t begrudge that. She was going to make sure that Sara and Scotty were looked after all the time, and that meant I wouldn’t have to worry. I just hated that they had all been around so long today and that I hadn’t had any time alone with Sara to really talk to her, and now she was beyond exhausted.

They didn’t get the hint on their own that Sara had long since passed the point where she needed peace and quiet and sleep and had moved into the stage where she was getting loopy between her exhaustion and pain. Eventually, I had needed to put my foot down and kick them out.

For some reason, Babs, of all people, was one of the last to go. He’d been the one to leave the hospital with Razor this afternoon to get my truck. Razor had just gone home once he’d dropped Babs off at the practice facility. Then when everyone had arrived at Sara’s house with the keys, Babs had gone in and brewed a pot of coffee, which was surprisingly completely drinkable—Babs’s kitchen skills were horrible, including something as simple as brewing coffee—and he’d made sure there was always plenty ready for anyone and everyone who wanted some. And when we’d gotten hungry in the middle of Laura’s planning and scheduling, he’d been the one to sneak out—with Katie, of course, while her father wasn’t paying attention—to pick up take-out for everyone. I wasn’t positive, but I had a feeling he’d paid for it all on his own, too, not even bothering to ask everyone else to ante up. Later, he’d volunteered to go over to my place and grab Buster and some of my clothes so I wouldn’t have to leave Sara. Every time I turned around, he’d been quietly doing something that was necessary without a word of complaint.

Sometimes it felt like I didn’t have a lot in common with the kid, but after today, I sure as hell had a ton of respect for him. Babs had spent the entire day working in the background, and it seemed as though he’d accomplished more than the rest of us combined. So when he kept hanging around as everyone else was finally slipping out, I couldn’t help but wonder what was up.

Burnzie was about to leave when Babs stopped him, and he was blushing like a fucking idiot when he did.

“I, uh…” Babs shrugged, and he looked over at Sara. She was propped up by a bunch of pillows on the couch, half dozing but mostly in pain, with Buster curled up by her side. Then he blushed some more. “I was just thinking… Scotty can’t really be going up and down the stairs when he comes home tomorrow, not even with help. At least not for a while. He’s going to need to sleep downstairs. We should find somewhere to put a bed for him down here.”

That made a ton of sense. Just sitting upright in that wheelchair most of the day today had been too much for Scotty, and I’d seen how difficult it was for him to get up and do the little bit of walking that he’d had to do. Stairs would be next to impossible. He’d be able to climb them again someday, but not anytime soon.

Burnzie grunted in agreement and cuffed Babs on the back of the head. “You should do that thinking thing more often, you know? Use your noggin for good, not for evil.”

I practically snorted at that. “When has Babs ever done anything evil?” I doubted he’d ever even walked out of the movie theater with his 3-D glasses instead of dropping them in the recycle bin. Hell, it was legal for him to drink when he was home in Ontario, but just stepping into a bar with the boys here in Portland made him uncomfortable.

“Whatever,” Burnzie said. “Let’s figure out where we can put his bed.”

We’d all been hanging out in the main living areas the whole afternoon, not really venturing down the hall to see what else they had going on beyond the bathroom closest to us. I debated asking Sara for suggestions, but she looked like she might finally be getting to sleep and I didn’t want to disturb her, so the three of us went off together to explore.

The first room we came to was clearly Scotty’s office. He had a desk and computer set up on one side of the room, and the other side was dedicated to video sessions—a big La-Z-Boy chair in front of a huge flat screen TV with lots of other equipment hooked up to it. No wonder he was so stressed out all the time. It looked like he brought a lot of work home with him. There wasn’t much room for us to put a bed in here, though, not without doing a lot of furniture rearrangement, so we moved on.

The next door opened up to a ton of storage—boxes and boxes of paperwork, old files, lots more video equipment, framed photos of Scotty with the Stanley Cup and the various teams he’d coached over the years, and even a few things from his playing days. There wasn’t really any furniture to speak of in here other than some shelves that were filled to bursting with all that crap, but the room was packed to the gills. If it came down to it, the office would be easier to reorganize for him.

There was one more room we hadn’t checked out on the ground level. We made our way to the very end of the hall, and I opened the door.

I’d been expecting it to be a game room of sorts—maybe it would have a pool table or a pinball machine, things along those lines. Never in a million years would I have expected what we found. It was like a shrine to everything from Sara’s life. Where Scotty’s memorabilia room had been a mess, one thing stacked upon another without any rhyme or reason to any of it, this room was immaculate.

There was a trophy case along one wall, filled with participation ribbons and figure skating medals and bowling tournament trophies. Next to that was a wall of her various uniforms from over the years, all in frames—everything from hockey to softball to gymnastics to karate. She’d done it all. Right in the center was what must have been her prom dress, a long goddesslike thing in a blue like the color of the Caribbean Sea. Another wall was lined with framed photos of her—her first school pictures, ballet recitals with her in a cute little tutu, the works.

One photo, right in the middle of the wall, had Sara with her dad on a camping trip. Her brown hair was pulled into messy pigtails and she was missing three of her four front teeth, but she had on the biggest grin ever while he had her hoisted up on his shoulders.

Once I looked closer, I realized a lot of the photos had Scotty in them, not just the one in the middle—and in each of them where he was present, his smile was as clear and true as hers. He wasn’t just proud of her; Scotty Thomas was completely enamored of his little girl. This room proved beyond any doubt that there was a hell of a lot more to him than I’d ever imagined.

“Wow,” Babs said. He sounded as awed as I felt. “Never would have guessed.”

None of us would have. All we ever saw of Scotty was the stressed-out coach. We never really got to see the father, the man. Even when he came to team events like our annual Casino Night or the charity auction Kally had just hosted for his Light the Lamp Foundation recently, Scotty was typically gruff and red-faced, at least when it had anything to do with any of his players.

It was starting to make a little more sense why Sara was as attached to him as she was. And, for that matter, why he was reacting to me being in her life the way he had been.

“Well,” Babs said, “I’d say this is probably the best room for a bed.”

There wasn’t really any furniture in the room other than the big trophy case along the far wall, so a bed would easily fit. We would even be able to bring a nightstand down and some of his clothes. We could make this into a real bedroom, even if it was only temporary.

I nodded. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

We made our way out into the living room. Buster lifted his head when we went past him, and when he realized that we were on our way upstairs, he bounded off the sofa to follow us. That movement jostled Sara, and she moaned. Damn. I was hoping she’d sleep through all of the commotion we were about to cause.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice still groggy from the sleep and pain medicine. Her eyes were narrowed on the three of us.

“Moving Scotty’s bed to the room at the end of the hall,” Babs said. “So he doesn’t have to go upstairs.”

She shifted slightly and then winced. “Oh. That’s a good idea.” She tried to move again, but the pain that washed over her face nearly buckled my knees.

“We’ve got this, Jonny,” Burnzie said. He and Babs kept going up the stairs, and Buster raced along ahead of them yapping like the freak he was.

That was the only encouragement I needed to leave them to it so I could go take care of Sara. I went down the few steps I’d already gone up and crossed over to her. “What are you trying to do?” I asked.

“I’m trying to get up.”

“Why?”

“So I can help.”

I sat down next to her and cautiously put my arm around her shoulders. I did that for two reasons—one, I liked being able to touch her, and two, the weight of my arm would anchor her to the sofa so she couldn’t get up. Her struggles had to stop. I couldn’t let her wear herself out. That was the whole purpose of me staying here—so that I could take care of things for her, do what needed to be done.

“The only help you can give us right now is telling us exactly what we should move down for him,” I said.

“Which would be easier to do if I could point it all out.”

“But you need to rest, so you can just tell me and I’ll make sure we take care of it all.”

“You should go ahead and figure this out right now,” she said, scowling up at me. “I don’t do the whole damsel-in-distress thing. I don’t sit by and let other people take care of everything. That’s my job—doing what needs to be done for my father.”

“And you’re being put on a leave of absence so you can recover and go back to doing that job the way you usually do it.” I slid my hand over her hair, tangling my fingers in her silken tresses. “I’m going to be your replacement for a while. Me and Dana and Laura…” And about a dozen other people, too. Hell, it might take that many of us just to keep her from doing too much. I had no doubt that if I hadn’t come over to keep her where she was, she would still be struggling against the pain of her cracked ribs to get up and order the three of us around.

The guys were coming down the stairs carrying the bed frame now, with Babs in the lead, walking backward.

“Why aren’t you the one fucking going backward?” he grumbled at Burnzie. “You play D. You’re used to doing things backward.”

“Not everything, bro. Just don’t fall and kill yourself.”

It didn’t take them long to get it down the stairs and set up in what would be Scotty’s makeshift bedroom, even with Buster running along beside them the whole time.

When they had disappeared up the stairs again, Sara turned to look at me. “Cam?”

I couldn’t even begin to put into words how glad I was that she was calling me by my name again and not Jonny. It put this big knot of warmth in my belly that spread out to consume every inch of me. “Yeah?”

“I don’t know how to feel about all of this. About you,” she clarified. “I feel like you’re sneaking past all of my defenses, and I don’t like it.”

“I know.”

“It scares me.”

“I know.”

Sara never let men into her heart. Never. She had to be terrified right now.

She looked at me, long and hard, her eyes filled with an emotion that fell somewhere between resignation and dread. But then she let her head fall back against my shoulder and she snuggled into me, and she let me be the one to fend all her fears off—at least for right now.

It wasn’t much, but it was progress.

NOTHING IN THE world could have prepared me for the pain of a sudden bout of morning sickness while recovering from a couple of cracked ribs. I’d been essentially living on the couch since I’d come home because it hurt my ribs too much to lie on the bed. All night long, Cam had stayed there with me, holding me until my exhaustion had finally won. I had woken up still feeling safe and warm in his arms, but then I’d been overwhelmed by nausea.

Cam barely got me up off the couch in time for me to race into the bathroom before the vomit came up. He stayed behind me, holding my hair back from my face and dampening a washcloth to wipe over my brow as I puked and sobbed in equal measure. When I was finished, he helped me ease back onto the couch and made me a cup of tea, and then he got me a dose of my pain medicine.

It had worn off in the night, and the pain was excruciatingly bad now. I didn’t know how I was going to get through today. For that matter, I didn’t know how I would get through the next five minutes. But I drank my tea and ate the toast that he’d fixed me and sat there with him smoothing his big hand over my hair and murmuring quietly in my ear until the nausea finally passed.

Eventually, he had to get up and prepare for the day. The guys had a game tonight, and so he had to go to morning skate. He’d just barely gotten out of the shower by the time the doorbell rang, and he opened it to let Noelle in—along with her puppy. She’d brought the little boxer puppy Babs had adopted for her a while back that she’d named Puck.

“I’m going to stay with you while the guys have practice,” she said cheerfully to me. “I thought Puck could play with Buster, if that’s all right.”

As soon as she set the puppy down on the floor, he took off chasing after Buster, who barked and started racing around like mad. Puck was already almost twice Buster’s size, and that was going to continue to multiply for a while. But for now, they could be buddies and chase each other.

I doubted I’d ever seen Noelle when she wasn’t all light and airy and full of delight. She was probably the exact opposite of me, which made her the perfect person to spend the morning with when I was in such a miserable mood myself.

Cam kissed me on the forehead before he left. “I’ll be back before they bring your dad home.”

All I could do was nod. At least for now, it seemed as though they had taken every decision, every bit of responsibility, away from me. I might not be happy about it, but there was at least a small part of me that knew it was for the best. There was a slightly larger part of me that felt immense relief. Especially because of the concussion. They always tell the guys not to make any big decisions while they’re recovering from a concussion. Now I knew why. It felt like my head was in a constant fog, and I was pretty sure that was due to more than just the pain medicine.

I looked over at Noelle. In the time that I’d known her, she and I had never spent any one-on-one time together. The other girls had always been around. So that should make for an interesting day today, if nothing else.

She moved around a lot while she was with me, picking up and cleaning the few messy bits that had been left behind by everyone last night, arranging some wildflowers that she’d brought with her in a vase—Every house should have fresh flowers—and flopping down on the floor to wrestle with the two dogs and let them lick her face.

When another bout of nausea hit me, she helped me up and rubbed my back while I prayed in front of the porcelain throne, and she helped me to settle on the couch again when the worst of it had passed.

“Do you have any ginger in the refrigerator?” she asked. “Or maybe some ginger ale?”

“I think there’s a little left in the crisper drawer.” Honestly, I couldn’t think about that right now. I just wanted the nausea to go away. I didn’t know if it was worse because of the concussion or if I was just hitting a stage of morning sickness that was going to intensify.

She got up and went into the kitchen to dig around, and a few minutes later she came back with a piping hot cup of tea. “With ginger in it,” she said, passing it over to me. “The ginger will help the nausea. I’ll be sure to tell Jonny, too, so he knows.”

I took a sip and eyed her over the cup. She might be a hippy-dippy chick, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sure enough, the tea helped to soothe my stomach and stop the flip-flops it had been doing.

We spent the rest of the morning talking, and before long she’d helped me to forget about all my aches and pains, at least for a while. I even laughed a little when she told me how just that morning, she and Kally hadn’t gotten Puck outside quick enough, and Kally had slipped and fallen on the river of pee the puppy was leaving as he tried to rush him out the door. I had to force myself to stop laughing, though, because that hurt almost as much as puking had.

The hours passed a hell of a lot faster than I’d been expecting them to, and in no time, Cam was back.

Apparently, Babs was the one who’d been nominated to go to the hospital after the morning skate to pick Daddy up and bring him to the house. Several of the guys came over with a bunch of food instead of going to Amani’s like they usually did for lunch, and they helped get Daddy settled in to his new downstairs digs.

When it was time for Daddy to get up and go for a walk, Babs walked with him through the house. He let Daddy grab on to his arm, and he didn’t complain once about the decrepit snail’s pace they had to move at for the three laps they made around the living room, dining room, and kitchen. I knew because I hadn’t been able to look away the whole time they were doing it. Even though I wasn’t the one taking care of my father right now, I felt like I still needed to supervise. It wasn’t an easy thing to give up. I’d been doing it for so long, I didn’t know how to let it go.

After the guys left for their pre-game naps, and Noelle and Puck went along with them, Cam helped Daddy get to his new room to lie down, and then he returned to me. He tried to situate me the same way we’d slept last night, with me leaning my back against his chest, and his arms wrapping around me.

“You should go lie down in a real bed,” I told him. “You need some decent rest.” He had to be miserable after sleeping on the couch with me all night. Lord knows I felt awful.

“I won’t be playing tonight,” he replied. “I don’t need a nap. I just need to be with you.”

The way he kept saying things like that was driving me crazy, mainly because I was starting to feel the same way. Damn him. I didn’t have it in me to argue with him, so he stayed and held me until he had to leave for the game.

Before going, he helped Daddy walk a few more laps around the house and get settled in his favorite recliner to watch the game, and then Laura showed up with all three of her teenagers to keep us company. They’d brought dinner—a salad and a casserole that she threw in the oven as soon as they arrived. For once, she hadn’t brought wine. I wasn’t sure what to think of that. A night with Laura had always meant a night with wine for as long as I’d known her. Even if I couldn’t have any, there was no reason she couldn’t.

It looked like it was going to be a great game for the Storm. They scored early, and they seemed to be holding on to the lead well. It was the first time since Daddy’s heart attack that they’d really played the way he’d had them playing all season long.

That meant I didn’t have to apologize constantly for him cursing in front of Laura’s kids, but even if he had cussed a lot more than he did, at least they were teenagers and not little kids like Rachel’s two. They probably let quite a few of those words fly themselves when they thought their mother wasn’t listening. Or maybe even when she was listening.

During the first intermission, Laura helped Daddy up and had him walk, despite him grumbling about how he wanted to listen to what those yahoos on the network had to say about his boys. Laura’s younger kids, Luke and Dani, had brought their homework with them, and they worked on it halfheartedly during the break.

“They wouldn’t focus any better at home,” Laura told me when I suggested that maybe it would be better if they all went back to their house, that Daddy and I could be all right on our own for a little while. She laughed all my arguments off. “It’s been like this since they were little. If Dave’s in the playoffs, that’s all that matters to these guys. School takes a backseat.”

Babs scored on the power play in the second period. He got a nice deflection of a slap shot from Burnzie at the point.

Luke and Dani made faces at Katie and teased her about her boyfriend. She blushed, but this time she didn’t try to deny that he was her boyfriend. That was a first, too, much like Laura leaving the wine at home. I got the impression that Babs and Katie didn’t know what they were. With Katie still being sick and in high school, maybe they were just waiting, or maybe they were trying to keep things low key around Webs…but it seemed as though it was getting increasingly more difficult for them.

Babs also got the empty-net goal at the end of the third, when the Canucks made a last-ditch effort to tie it up. The Storm held them off, though, keeping the lead throughout the whole game and winning it four to one.

The four of them stayed with us until Cam got back after the game, even though it was late for Luke and Dani to be out on a school night. Cam made sure they all got safely to Laura’s car before helping Daddy get to bed.

“Can you help me up?” I asked him when he came back out.

He was at my side almost immediately. “Bathroom?” he asked, as though that could be the only reason on earth I would want to get up after being stuck on that stupid couch almost nonstop for more than twenty-four hours.

“I want to try to sleep in my bed tonight. And in case you haven’t smelled me yet, which I don’t know how you’ve managed to avoid it if not, I haven’t had a shower since yesterday morning, and I’m getting ripe.”

He leaned down, putting his hands on my waist and his head right by mine, so close that the spicy scent of his cologne hit me and made me tingle all the way to my toes, and he sniffed. “You smell amazing. You always smell good to me.”

That should have pissed me off, but all it did was make me tingle everywhere, damn him.

He lifted me up off the sofa and set me on my feet before I could brace myself against the pain of getting up. I gripped his biceps, holding on until the initial wave of discomfort passed.

Cam didn’t release my waist. His fingers dug in slightly, holding me firm and steady. “Do you want to try the stairs on your own, or should I carry you?”

At this point, I didn’t know what would hurt worse. “Let me walk,” I finally said, annoyed with myself over how long it had taken me to make a simple decision.

He let go with one hand, sliding the other around until it was resting on the small of my back. Every step of the way, he was right beside me. His touch was barely there, but it left my nerves jangling from the electricity between us.

By the time we were halfway upstairs, I wished I’d let him carry me. It might have hurt worse while he was doing it, but it would have probably been over by now. Each breath I took was agony. Each step was torture. I let my posture sag, but then I regretted it because it only intensified the aches.

When I finally reached my bathroom, I didn’t know if I had enough strength left in me to shower. I closed the door and sat down on the toilet to see if I could rest long enough that I could manage it.

I guess I sat there too long because Cam’s voice came through the door. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice shaking.

“You need help?”

“No?” Why the hell did it come out like a question?

He cracked the door open. “I’ve seen you naked, you know. I can help you shower. This wouldn’t be any different.”

He was wrong because everything had been different since that night, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it all. That said, I didn’t think I could manage to shower on my own now that I was up here, and I really did need a shower.

I still didn’t answer him, but he pushed the door open all the way and came in, his big frame seeming even more massive in such a small space.

“Come on,” he said, helping me to stand. Within moments, he’d loosened my shirt and slipped it over my head, and he’d undone the string keeping my sweatpants up and lowered them, having me hold on to his shoulders while I stepped free from them. My panties and T-shirt bra followed in quick succession. He turned on the water, allowing it to heat up while he stripped himself down, as well.

Somehow, even though we were both naked and we hadn’t seen each other like this since the night we’d slept together, this didn’t feel sexual. He was hot as hell, don’t get me wrong, but when he reached for me to help me climb into the shower, it was different. He touched me with such tenderness, such care, that I nearly melted into him, overwhelmed by the sweetness of everything he was doing.

I wasn’t used to men treating me with such concern. I wasn’t used to the idea of Cam being so gentle. He was a warrior on the ice, an enforcer. Everything he did there was with brute power, but with me, he was a puppy dog.

The heat of the water was calming, soothing. I lathered up my sponge and soaped my body—or at least as much of my body as I could reach without straining my ribs. Cam took the sponge from me and finished the job, cautious around my stitches.

He didn’t touch me himself; only the sponge made contact with my skin. I couldn’t help but feel aroused by the most mundane of touches, though—the tickle when he soaped the backs of my knees; the gentle, accidental scrape of his fingernail on the small of my back; the ripple of his shoulder muscle beneath my palm as I held on to him and he washed my feet.

I wasn’t doing myself any favors, being turned on by this. If I could barely walk up a flight of stairs without wanting to cry out in pain, there was no chance in hell I could survive a romp in the sheets with him.

I wasn’t the only one feeling it, though. His erection brushed against my hip when I turned, which only made me hotter.

I let my head drop back under the spray. When I came up out of it, Cam poured some shampoo into his palm. He gently turned me around and massaged it into my hair and scalp until I wanted nothing more than to relax back into him and for this to never end. He nudged me to move under the showerhead and rinse, his fingers still working through the strands to ease the soap out of my hair before repeating the entire process with my conditioner.

“No wonder you always smell so good,” he said. “This stuff makes me want to just eat you up.” Once it was all rinsed away, he shut off the water and carefully wrapped a towel around me. I tucked the ends in over my breasts so the towel would stay put.

“Sit down for a minute,” he said, which I thought was an excellent idea. I practically collapsed onto the toilet seat, and he took another towel to secure around his waist. It didn’t do much to hide his hard-on. I could barely take my eyes off him—the definition in his chest and abs, and the sheer size of his arms. “Where’s your hair dryer?” he asked.

My hair dryer was the last thing in the world I wanted to be thinking about when he was standing there all dripping wet and wearing nothing but a towel. A towel that actually hid nothing from the imagination. And I had a very good imagination.

“The cabinet over your head,” I finally responded despite my thick tongue. “But there’s no way I can keep my arms up that long.”

He smirked—a sexy grin that made heat-shivers race all over my body—and reached up to remove it. “All you need to do is sit there. My arms can manage just fine.”

“Oh.” It came out as a kind of awed, whispery sound, which made me feel all of twelve years old. He was going to dry my hair? He’d already bathed me and washed and conditioned my hair. No one had done any of those things for me since I was a little girl unless I was at the salon and paying them to do so. He wanted me as much as I wanted him, there was no hiding that, but he hadn’t done so much as attempt to steal a kiss, let alone touch me.

Cam plugged the hair dryer into the outlet and picked up my vented brush from the counter, and the next thing I knew he was blowing my hair dry like an old pro, even spinning the brush to curl the ends under.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked.

“I have three little sisters. Goes with the territory.” By the time he was done, I was dry all over. Well…almost everywhere. He helped me into one of my satin nighties, and he pulled on the same boxers and undershirt he’d taken off before helping me shower. “You sure you want to try sleeping in your bed tonight?”

I didn’t know if I’d be able to manage it, because lying down flat with these cracked ribs had been about the most excruciating kind of torment I’d ever experienced before, but I nodded anyway. “I want to at least try.” Sleeping upright wasn’t exactly easy to do. Too many nights of that and I would be just this side of loopy.

Who the fuck was I kidding? Nothing was easy right now, and I was well beyond loopy.

“Do you want me to stay or go?” he asked.

I didn’t have to think about that. Not this time. Everything I did hurt, but somehow he made me feel better. About everything. Damn it. Damn him.

Damn me.

“Stay,” I whispered.

Cam went over to my bed and pulled the covers down, and he climbed in. I sat on the opposite side and tried to lie on my side—the good side—without crying out in pain. I managed that, but not without cussing beneath my breath.

He brushed the hair away from my face and tugged me to his side. “Tell me if it starts to hurt too much. Tell me if you need to move.”

I nodded, focused on trying to will away the pain. He rolled onto his back and edged slightly closer still, and I inched over until I could rest my head on his shoulder. I put my hand on his stomach, and his dick jerked.

“You’re going to kill me, you know,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I know.” I was going to kill him, and he was going to pamper me. Not quite a fair trade-off, but he didn’t seem to mind too much.

Buster jumped up into the bed and burrowed under the covers, worming his way all the way down until he reached my feet. He propped his chin on one of them, let out a contented doggy sigh, and settled in for the night.

At least one of us would be comfortable.

SLEEPING LYING DOWN wasn’t comfortable with these damn injuries, but it wasn’t any more uncomfortable than sleeping upright on the couch had been last night. The part that truly was troublesome, however, was waking up with Cam halfway on top of me. Even though he was only pinning my good side, I moaned. That was more than enough to jolt him awake, though.

“Shit,” he said, rolling us until he was on his back and he’d pulled me partially onto him. He brushed my hair back from my face and searched my eyes. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

Our change in position woke Buster, who grumbled and whined with his cute little doggy voice. He got up and walked in a circle three or four times before settling down again with what I swore sounded like an indignant huff.

I shook my head. “Nothing permanent,” I mumbled in my pained sleep haze.

The crazy thing was that I couldn’t stop thinking that if I hadn’t had those stupid cracked ribs, there was no way I would rather wake up than with Cam on top of me. I didn’t know where that idea came from, but judging by the erection pressing into my belly, I was pretty sure he felt the same way.

“You’re sure I didn’t hurt you?” He kissed my forehead, smoothing both hands over my body as though he was assuring himself that he hadn’t broken me.

I didn’t want just a little peck on the forehead. I wanted more. I stretched up until I could touch my lips to his, and I straddled my legs around his waist to keep me solidly in place. Amazingly, lying in that position eased some of the discomfort on my ribs. I was able to support some of my weight with my legs, which kept the worst of it away from my core.

It was a slow kiss at first, sleepy and languorous, but it wasn’t long before things got a lot more heated. Too heated, actually, because I needed to take deeper breaths than were comfortable, and I had to pull away and end it.

“You are going to kill me,” he said, his voice gravelly and scratchy like his facial hair had become due to that stupid playoff beard superstition guys all over the NHL seemed to believe in. He kissed my cheek, letting his lips linger. “God, Sara.”

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure why I was apologizing. It just came out.

I wasn’t sorry for kissing him, that much was for sure. If anything, maybe I was sorry that I couldn’t follow through with what I’d started. Yeah, that part stung. For both of us, actually.

I lay my head on his chest while we worked on remembering how to breathe, and he brushed his hands over my head, my hair, my back—always gentle, in an almost loving manner. I shouldn’t let myself think like that. Words like gentle were fine; words like loving belonged in an entirely different arena, practically on a different planet. We weren’t starting to hang out in the realm of love. Were we?

He grunted. “Don’t be.”

Buster shifted around under the covers and finally stilled just beside my foot again. Then Cam let me shift and squirm until I got into a comfortable position. Long after I’d gotten situated into my spot, my head resting on his pecs and my legs draped over either side of him, he was still lazily touching me. He trailed his fingers through my hair, and he let them tease my back and hips and thighs, and eventually we drifted back to sleep.

I could get used to sleeping like that. Even though his body was hard all over, he was like a pillow beneath me—a big, warm, firm pillow that cradled my body in just the right ways to keep most of my pain at bay. The thought of how easy it had all been scared me. A lot. Definitely a lot. Until Cam, there had never been a man who was an all-night, stay-in-bed-together sort of man for me. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it all.

Somehow, we settled into a routine after that night, even though it wasn’t anywhere close to the sort of routine I would have ever expected to have. Not just me, Cam, and Daddy, either. There was a whole army of people surrounding us and foisting these changes upon me.

When the guys had practice or a game-day skate, either Noelle or Dana and her mom came over to hang out with Daddy and me. Dana was great about making my father get up and move like the doctors had instructed him to do. She’d spent a number of years working as a personal trainer before she’d moved from Providence to Portland to live with Zee, and she was still more than able to whip out that in-your-face, take-no-prisoners sort of tone that someone as muleheaded as Daddy sometimes needed.

The days that she came with her mom, we spent a lot of time working on wedding plans. Even Daddy got in on the act. Well, at least he had when we’d been deciding on cake samples.

He was particularly fond of the one that had both a lemon curd filling and some sort of raspberry jam. “That’s the one,” he insisted. “None of the others even come close to comparing.” Then he went back in to finish that particular sample off despite my reminders that he was supposed to be eating better and staying away from empty fat and calories. One thing that undoubtedly qualified as empty fat and calories was cake. He responded by licking his fingers and smacking his lips at me, which made both Dana and Mrs. Campbell grin at him as though he was some big comedian.

Regardless of his participation in the cake decision-making, he didn’t get anywhere near as involved when talk turned to floral decorations or color schemes. He even got up from his La-Z-Boy on his own and claimed he needed a nap when we started looking at fabric swatches for the bridesmaid gowns.

Buster followed him down the hall at that point. I didn’t see either of them again for hours afterward while we continued talking about wedding attire. In fact, I was fairly certain he let Buster nap with him, which seriously screwed with all of my ideas about Daddy not liking dogs.

Since I wouldn’t be able to go with the other women when they went dress shopping because of all my injuries—trying on dress after dress sounded like my own personal idea of hell at the moment—we did a lot of looking online to get ideas in advance. Mrs. Campbell made an executive decision that they would FaceTime me when they had Dana and Rachel in gowns they were considering so I could give my input, and it was determined that each bridesmaid would have a dress that suited her own personal style, but they’d all be made from the same fabric so we would look like we belonged together.

The days that Noelle spent with us couldn’t have been more different from those with Dana and her mother. Noelle brought her puppy, Puck, for each visit, and it seemed as if he was bigger every single visit. For large chunks of those days, we wasted a lot of our time watching Buster chase Puck or, alternatively, watching Puck chase Buster. There was a lot of laughter during Noelle’s visits, especially from Daddy.

Nothing could have surprised me more. He’d never allowed me to have a dog when I was growing up, so I’d given up hope of ever having one—at least not as long as I lived with him. But I had always assumed that his refusal was because he didn’t like dogs. That didn’t seem to be the case at all, considering how he was acting with these two around.

In fact, Daddy was a lot more active during the hours that Noelle and Puck joined us than at any other time. He was happy to let both dogs jump up on his lap, and he didn’t even complain when they got up in his face and gave him doggy kisses. He laughed—more than I could remember him laughing in years—and I could see in his eyes how much he wanted to get down on the floor to play with them. The only thing that stopped him was the postsurgical pain. The light in his eyes was like that of a little boy. When he walked his laps through the living areas while Noelle was with us, both dogs raced circles around him, staying right by his side the whole time and barking excitedly. That only made him laugh more.

She brought flowers with her fairly regularly, either that or some homemade potpourri she was experimenting with, and she was always tidying things up, perpetually in motion. Whereas Laura could be a whirlwind of talk, Noelle was more like a tidal wave of action. She usually stayed just this side of driving me insane because she never held still.

After a couple of days hanging out with us, at one point when she was helping me to get up so I could use the restroom, she completely threw me for a loop.

“I really like your father,” she said.

Most people didn’t like Daddy. He was so different around everyone else than he was with me, usually. But then, he was different around Noelle than he was with other people, too. Maybe because she was different. Hell, she wasn’t anything like who I’d initially pegged her to be.

“I like him, too,” I said cautiously, unsure where this was going.

She walked alongside me up the stairs in case I had any problems along the way. “My parents died a few years ago. Would you mind if I adopted him? Even if it’s just for however long we’re all here.”

“Oh.” I’d never imagined anyone else would want that sort of relationship with my father. I’d been an only child, and I hadn’t even had to share him with my mother for over half my life. The idea of sharing him with Noelle, though, didn’t sting like it might have. She was too sweet for me to begrudge her something like that. And for that matter, I would never begrudge my father having someone like her in his life. It was like a giant lightbulb followed her around everywhere she went. I shook my head. “I wouldn’t mind. Not at all.”

“Really? You’re sure?” Noelle turned huge eyes on me, bright with tears despite the smile lighting up her face.

“I’m sure.”

Before I could prepare myself, she wrapped both her arms around me and drew me in for a hug—tight enough that I had to suck in a breath from the pain. Only it wasn’t just the pain that stole my ability to breathe. It was also the fact that she was hugging me at all. I had never really been the touchy-feely sort. At least outside of the bedroom. I kind of liked the fact that she was hugging me, though.

“Oh!” She let me go almost as quickly as she’d grabbed me. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “If you adopt Daddy, then you’ll be like a sister or something.” Which was a weird thought. Not a bad thought. Just weird.

You would have thought I’d hung the moon based on the smile she gave me then. Granted, that just seemed to go with the territory where Noelle was concerned. I made a mental note to try to get used to the sensation, to the idea that she could think I was awesome. It looked like I was going to be experiencing a lot more of it in the near future. And maybe in the far future, too. Who could know?

The biggest adjustment in all of this, though, wasn’t having the girls around. It was having Daddy home all the time—and Cam there with us as often as he was gone. Sometimes it felt like he was there more than he was away.

Surprisingly, it hadn’t been as weird or awkward to have both Daddy and Cam staying in the same house as I’d expected it to be. There was definitely a surprising dynamic between the three of us, though. Cam and I were both trying to take care of Daddy, and Cam and Daddy were both trying to take care of me, and yet neither Daddy nor I were really up to doing much of anything to help the other, and so Cam ended up doing almost everything.

The only times he complained were when we essentially got in his way and made whatever he was trying to do more difficult for him. Even then, his complaints were quiet, and not really worded like complaints. You know, if you’d go back and sit down in your recliner, Scotty, I could fix her some ginger tea and bring you some water, or, I’m not sure your dad will appreciate it if you puke on his bed while you try to help him get up in the morning. If it had been either me or Daddy and not Cam, we would undoubtedly be saying something like, Get the fuck out of the way and let me do this, you idiot. He was a lot nicer than we were. That just proved he didn’t belong in my life, didn’t it?

We could probably make things a lot easier for him if the two of us would stop being so stubborn, trying to do more than we should, but I doubted that would happen any time soon. Maybe Obstinate should have been our last name instead of Thomas. It had a certain ring to it, at least.

But it was those moments when the three of us were just hanging out together that felt the…well, the oddest. Odd because they were comfortable.

The nights when Cam was home with us, in particular, were just nothing at all like what I’d been dreading. He would go into the kitchen and make something for the three of us to eat. Cam was a surprisingly good cook. Not a gourmet chef or anything like that, but he could make tasty meals that fit the doctors’ recommendations for Daddy’s diet, and he didn’t burn the house down in the process. It shouldn’t really be surprising that he could cook. He’d been living on his own for years now, and most guys figured it out eventually. And it shouldn’t be surprising that he knew how to make relatively healthful meals because that was what athletes needed to eat to stay in peak physical condition. Nevertheless, color me surprised. I just hadn’t been expecting it, I guess.

After we ate, he would sit with us in the living room so Daddy could watch the game footage that he’d recorded. Cam sat with me on the sofa and let me lean into him, and Daddy never said a word about how Cam kept his arms wrapped around my waist, or how he planted little kisses on my head, or how he twined his fingers with mine and whispered horribly inappropriate and delicious things in my ear so quietly that Daddy couldn’t hear. Or at least I prayed he couldn’t hear.

I can’t wait until I can taste you again, he’d said one time, and I’d had a hard time keeping my face from flooding with heat since Daddy was in his recliner only a few feet away. Cam had put both his hands over the backs of mine, wrapping our doubled-up arms around my waist and tugging me closer to him. Next time, I’ll taste all of you, including that sweet pussy. I’ll make you come so hard you’ll forget your name.

I nearly forgot my name just from listening to his promises.

Another time, he’d leaned his head down so his lips brushed against my ear, on the side opposite of where Daddy was sitting, and whispered, Your breasts drive me insane in the best possible way when you’re sleeping. They’re these perfect pillows, and I can’t stop thinking about getting my hands on them.

When he said things like that to me, those tingles he had always been able to cause in me took over, racing up and down my spine and leaving goose bumps in their wake. It made my breath turn shallow and my pulse sprint like a racehorse, and all I could think about was getting him alone.

None of that could have prepared me for what he said to me Wednesday afternoon before he left for Game Four, though.

The three of us were hanging out in the living room, Daddy on his recliner and Cam and I on the couch, watching NHL Network. The commentators were analyzing everything that had happened in Game Three and giving their opinions on what both the Storm and the Canucks needed to do in order to win the game tonight. I wasn’t paying much attention to the TV, though. All of my energy was wrapped up in sensation. Cam had me leaning against his chest like he did so often, our thighs melded together, and his arm was around my back so that his hand was able to rest on my lower ribs. He wasn’t putting any pressure on them, of course. He was always careful to avoid anything that might cause me pain. But the way he was holding me allowed him access to my side, which he teased with his fingertips. They danced along my skin, tickling me and leaving prickles of awareness in their wakes.

I was just starting to squirm from the sensation when he brushed my ear with his lips again and whispered, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Then a giant ball of confusion welled up in my chest and traveled up to my throat, where it lodged itself, and I could barely catch my breath for the frustrated tears welling in my eyes.

Love? When had this become about love? I’d never factored that into the equation, and the thought of solving for Y only filled my head with X’s and O’s.

SOUPY AND BABS dropped Rachel and her kids off to stay with Sara and Scotty during the game. The guys came in with them. Babs lived in the same building as them, right across the hall, actually, and the two of them were going to take me with them tonight so we could head out to the Moda Center together for Game Four.

I chuckled at the way Tuck walked in like he owned the place, dropping his Lightning McQueen backpack just inside the door and heading straight for Scotty and his recliner. Without even a moment’s hesitation, he climbed right up onto Scotty’s lap.

“Elbows, Tuck!” Rachel said, but not in time to stop her son from digging his elbows into Scotty.

Scotty winced a little, but he quickly masked his discomfort.

“Sorry,” Tuck said, blushing until his face was as red as his hair. “Mr. Coach? Mommy said I’m in charge of you tonight.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. She said we have to make you feel better, and I always feel better when I cuddle with Mommy, so I’m gonna cuddle you all night. ’Kay?”

Pinning Scotty to his chair with a little boy seemed like an excellent way to keep the man from trying to overdo it. I had to admire Rachel’s style. She winked at me while she was helping Maddie get her backpack off. “I have to use the tools in my tool belt,” she said, laughing.

I hummed in assent. “I think in this case, Tuck is more like a weapon than a tool.”

She didn’t deny it.

Babs and Soupy carried some bags with groceries into the kitchen and set to work putting things in the fridge or out on the counter. Rachel got her daughter situated at the dining room table with some books.

I turned around to find Sara coming down the hall from the bathroom. She looked a little green, as though she was nauseated again. In the last couple of days, morning sickness had been hitting her at random times, not just in the morning anymore, but she was starting to move around on her own a little better despite the pain of her injuries, just like Scotty was. I crossed over to her, putting one hand on the small of her back.

“Are you sick?”

“Just nausea. Nothing’s coming up. It just feels like it might.” She leaned into me a little, laying her cheek against my chest.

I’d been worried that she was going to freak out on me after what I’d said to her earlier. I hadn’t thought it through. The words just came out before I could think about them and what kind of reaction they might provoke. And really, who tells someone they might be falling in love with them? What a crock of shit. Adding might into the mix only proved that I was a fucking coward because if I’d had any balls at all, I would have just flat out told her I loved her. But because I’d thought she would flip when I told her that, I’d softened the blow a little—only not really.

But even though she had definitely been uncomfortable hearing what I’d told her—there was no way for her to hide how she’d tensed up in my arms or the fact that she hadn’t responded at all, whether to laugh in my face or tell me to shove it or to say she might be falling in love with me, too—she was still letting me hold her, still curling in toward me, still seeking my comfort when she didn’t feel well.

She just wasn’t ready to love me. Or at least not to admit that she might. I knew that. She’d built too many protections around herself over the years, kept pushing men too far away, so it was going to be a long, slow process getting through all of that. I knew it. I was okay with it.

I put my other arm around her and kissed the top of her head. The peppermint scent of her shampoo tickled my nostrils. “Get Rachel to make you some ginger tea,” I said. It had been helping more than anything else Sara had tried. “And rest. I’ll see you after the game.”

“All I do is rest,” she grumbled into my chest, her nose brushing against the lapel of my suit. Then she tipped her head up to pout at me.

I couldn’t resist. She looked so fucking adorable like that, I had to bend my head down and steal a real kiss, stopping it a hell of a lot sooner than I would have liked because Scotty cleared his throat in warning behind me. “Good,” I said. “That’s the plan.”

Once Babs and I were able to pry Soupy away from Rachel, we left. Babs seemed anxious tonight, which wasn’t normal for him. He bopped his legs around in the backseat of Soupy’s SUV, kicking into the back of my seat every now and then.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I groused after the fourth time he kicked my seat.

“Nothing.”

Soupy scowled into his rearview mirror and then glanced over at me. “He’s been like this for three days. Every time I’ve seen him, he’s fucking dancing around like a ticking bomb that’s about to go off.”

Now was not the time for Babs or any of the boys to give in to nerves. We were up two games to one in the series. We needed everyone to dig in and keep doing what they’d been doing, not fall apart.

No matter how hard Soupy and I tried to get him to tell us what was up on the way into the arena, though, he just bit his lip and refused to say a fucking word.

That was not a good sign.

Once all the pre-game stuff was finished, I headed up to the press box with the rest of the guys who’d been scratched for tonight. Jens and Monty were both in the lineup again, so Cody “Harry” Williams—a big redheaded kid who looked like he could be related to Rachel if not for the fact that he was twice as tall as her—and Radek Cernak—a Czech call-up from the AHL who knew a grand fucking total of three words of English—were the ones joining me, Luddy, and Chunk tonight.

Early on in the game, it was pretty clear that Vancouver wasn’t happy with the way they’d played the last couple of games. Unlike the first game in the series, where they’d dictated the style of play almost entirely, in games two and three our boys had imposed their will upon the other team. Not so tonight.

Our game was all about speed and puck possession, and Vancouver preferred to play more of a crash and bang style. They came out with the intent to make our boys hurt in the first period, laying out some pretty vicious hits on both RJ and Eller within the first few minutes of the game.

It didn’t take long to realize that they were targeting our younger skilled guys. Halfway through the first period, Dan Hamhuis, one of their defensemen, slammed into Babs from behind. Babs’s head hit the glass hard, his neck bending in a way that was never a good sign. Hamhuis had been able to see Babs’s numbers the whole way in, and he didn’t let up at all. Textbook boarding, but the refs didn’t make the call.

Not only did the refs blow the fucking call, but Babs was still lying on the ice while Hamhuis stole the puck from him and passed it up to his forwards, and they took off toward the other end. They scored before Babs was able to get to the bench for a change. He kept cringing while he was talking to the trainers, trying to turn his head this way and that.

All of the boys with me in the box were up in arms about it. There wasn’t a fucking thing any of us could do from where we were sitting, so I didn’t bother yelling. I preferred to let my fists do the talking in cases like this, but all I could do right now was hope one of the other boys would take care of it for me.

Picking your spot for retaliation in a game like this was imperative, though, so they couldn’t just drop the gloves immediately. They had to be sure they weren’t going to make the situation worse.

Babs went down the tunnel with the trainers, and the game went on.

The targeting of our skill guys didn’t let up. Every time I blinked, it seemed like one of their guys was banging into one of our guys’ bodies. The hits kept coming, harder and more frequently, and it was taking a toll.

Webs and Burnzie did a little body checking of their own, trying to turn the tide. Zee and Soupy got in on it, too. But that only meant we were letting them drag us into playing their style of game—and it was working. For them. Two minutes before the first period ended, the Canucks’ Sedin twins grabbed the puck when one of their big-bodied defensemen forced RJ to cough it up, and they scored again.

Heading into the intermission, Babs still hadn’t returned to the bench, we were playing their game instead of our own, and no one had done a damn thing about how they were pushing us around.

I was fuming, but that wouldn’t help a fucking thing. I wasn’t sure how to stop, though.

One of the Canucks’ beat reporters was streaming a radio broadcast of the game through his laptop while he typed up his notes, loud enough that I could hear every fucking word.

“The Canucks are absolutely bullying the Storm,” the broadcaster said, “completely having their way with them. And no one, not a single guy on that team, is doing anything to put an end to it. They let Hamhuis put Babcock through the boards. He hasn’t come back to the bench yet, and no word on whether or not he will tonight. They’re letting the Canucks’ checking line run roughshod over the Jezek, Ellstrom and Kallen line. This is the way to lose this series, not the way to win it.”

“You know what they need out there?” another voice on the radio said. “They need Cam Johnson.”

“But Johnson took himself out of this series before he ever got in it,” the first guy said.

“He did, but he’s exactly the thing Portland needs if they’re going to be able to play this kind of game with the Canucks. They either need to figure out how to force Vancouver back into playing their style of hockey, or they’re going to have to get someone to channel Johnson—the energy he brings to the ice, the way he can hit them back just as hard as they’re hitting the Storm’s stars.”

“Who do you see out there that could bring something like that to the table?” the first guy asked.

“No one. That’s the problem. That’s why the Storm will lose this series.”

I’d heard enough. I pushed back from my seat, glaring at the back of that fucking beat reporter’s head, and left the press box. If I had to sit in there and listen to that bullshit for one more minute, my head was going to explode.

THE STORM LOST Game Four in spectacular fashion, five to one, leaving us tied with the Canucks in the series at two wins apiece. It was all going to come down to a best of three. Win two games and move on; lose two games and go home to work on your golf swing. It was as simple, and as daunting, as that.

Babs had rejoined the boys on the ice at the beginning of the second period. The doctors had run a bunch of scans on him and had determined that even though he’d strained some muscle or another in his neck when Hamhuis had smashed him into the boards, going back out there to play some more shouldn’t make it any worse than it already was. It would just hurt like hell. They gave him a shot to numb it up against the pain. Babs went out and played through it, just like almost any guy on our team would do. It was the playoffs. That meant you had to push through, whether you wanted to or not—and he had.

Vancouver had continued to target him, maybe even more so because they knew he was hurt. I don’t think I’d ever seen Babs take so many licks in even a week’s worth of games combined, but he’d just kept getting up and going back out there for more.

Even so, he’d been the one to score the only goal for the Storm, too, busting through the Canucks’ D like a bull in a china shop and barreling in on their goaltender in the third period. It was as though he was one of the players in his video games and someone had switched on Beast Mode. He’d been an incredibly talented hockey player since long before he was drafted, but these days he was really starting to come into his own. Now that his body and his strength were catching up to his skill, there would be no slowing him down. He couldn’t have had more perfect timing for it to all come together like this, and his mind-set was lining up perfectly with his physicality in that regard.

There’d been one point during the game tonight when Canucks defenseman Kevin Bieksa had been trying to shove Babs out of the space in front of the crease, but Babs had dug in and refused to budge, and somehow Bieksa had been the one to end up sprawled out on the ice with his ass and skates in the air. Last year at this time, it would have been a completely different story. Give him another couple of years, and Babs would easily be one of the most dangerous players in the league. Hell, he wasn’t far from it now.

More and more in this series, Babs was the only Storm player standing out in a good way. And whether I had liked hearing what those fucking broadcasters had said or not, they’d been right about one thing: the way the boys were playing was not a recipe for success. If the Storm kept playing like this, we’d be packing up for a long summer in less than a week.

I sure as hell wasn’t ready to be done. I wanted my chance to get back on the ice, and that meant we had to at least get to the second round. I didn’t think anyone else on this team was ready to call it a season, either, but you’d be hard-pressed to know that after watching how the boys had played tonight.

I didn’t know what to say to them afterward to help them figure their shit out. I went down to the locker room along with Luddy, Chunk, and the other guys who’d been healthy scratches, and we all stood along the walls with our hands in our pockets, shuffling our feet. Hardly anyone in that room was looking up and meeting anyone else’s eyes. They almost all had their heads hanging, like fucking dogs that had been whipped. It was painful to see.

“Go home. Get some rest tonight, boys,” Hammer said without any sort of preamble. He sounded as beat up and dejected as they all looked. “No practice tomorrow. We fly out at ten.”

“This was just one game,” Bergy added. “That’s it. One fucking game. We leave it here and don’t let it carry over to the next one. We go back to playing our way. Our game. The way Scotty has had us playing all year long. We force them to play our style instead of letting them roll over us like that.”

The two of them walked out of the locker room and headed into the coach’s office, and all of the trainers and equipment managers followed them, until it was only the players left in the room. I stood there, waiting for Zee or Webs or Burnzie—one of the older guys, the team leaders—to say something. They didn’t, though. They just sat there shaking their heads, looking down at the fucking floor beneath their feet as though it could give them some answers.

Granted, I didn’t have any answers; I couldn’t very well expect them to.

A few of the guys finally started to move again, taking off their gear and hanging their pads up in their stalls. It was only when a couple of jerseys hit the laundry bin in the middle of the locker room that someone spoke.

“Shut the door, Jonny. Lock it. We need to have a fucking meeting.”

My head shot up to see who’d said it, and it was Babs whose eyes met mine. His lips were pressed together, his jaw locked. I’d never seen him look so serious.

I wasn’t the only one curious about this turn of events. Almost every guy in the room was staring at Babs, waiting to hear what he had to say. He wasn’t usually one to speak up. He seemed to always sit quietly, waiting for someone else to take charge. But not this time.

No point in putting it off. I grunted and crossed over to close the door like he’d asked.

When I turned around, Babs shot a nervous look over to Zee, but Zee just nodded for him to go on. He’d never been the sort of captain who thought everyone needed to listen to him and only him. He was always open to allowing anyone and everyone a voice. If a guy thought he had something to say, Zee wanted to hear it. That was just one of many reasons he commanded so much respect among the guys: he didn’t think he was better than anyone else in that room.

Babs shrugged, buying himself a little more time before finally saying whatever it was that was eating at him. “When I was—” He cut himself off and cleared his throat, then started again with more confidence. “When I left the ice at the end of Game Three, one of their guys made sure to bump into me so he could deliver a message. I was one of the last of us to leave after we won, and he made sure I knew they were coming for me tonight. All of us, really, but me specifically because I’d beaten them a couple of times in that game.”

Well, that explained the nerves he’d been dealing with. If he thought they were going to goon things up like they had during the last game of the regular season, he had a very good reason for being apprehensive heading into tonight. I wished he had said something before the game, though. Anytime over the last few days would have worked. It wouldn’t have stopped them from doing anything that they’d done, but the boys could have been aware it was coming. They could have mentally prepared themselves to deal with it. Hell, if he’d said something to the coaches, they could have gotten Jim to call someone up from the AHL, a fighter, who could have been out there to answer the bell.

But Babs hadn’t said a damn word. And really, that shouldn’t have surprised me or anyone else. Shit like that gets said on the ice all the time. It was just one more way to play mind games with your opponent, and sometimes the mental aspects of the game were more important than the physical.

“Who the fuck was it?” Webs demanded. He looked as livid as I felt. “Hamhuis? Bieksa? Sestito?”

“It doesn’t matter who said it. What matters is that they all followed through. All of them. Every single guy on that team was out there throwing checks at me and at anyone else on our team whose feathers they thought they could ruffle. That’s their game plan. They’re trying to rough us up and get under our skin. They’re trying to get us off our game so they can capitalize on our mistakes, and that’s exactly what they did tonight.”

Even though I was halfway across the room from Webs, I could hear him muttering beneath his breath—all sorts of choice curses about what he wanted to do to those asswipes for going after Babs. Despite himself, and despite his overprotective ways with Katie, Webs was starting to care about Babs. No, that wasn’t right. It was more that he wasn’t trying to keep the whole world from realizing that he cared about Babs.

“I spent three days worrying about what they were going to do,” Babs said. “Three fucking days. They shoved us around some, and they fucked up my neck, but that’s what playoff hockey is. If we’re going to keep going, we’re going to have to take a hell of a lot more than what they’re giving us.” He reached over his shoulders and pulled his jersey up and off, and then tossed it into the laundry bin. One sleeve hung over the outside. “Hell, if we make it to the next round, we’re all going to be black and blue by the end of it, no matter which of those teams we face.”

That was the truth. The Coyotes and the Kings were currently beating each other to a pulp, and whichever team won that series would face either us or Vancouver.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m trying to say other than we need to fucking man up. Our game isn’t a hitting game—we’re all about speed and possession, about playing to our strengths—but that doesn’t mean we can’t hit. It doesn’t mean we can’t fight back. It doesn’t mean we let them dictate how the game is going to go, that we can’t merge our game with what they’re trying to make us do and use it against them. It doesn’t mean we can’t exploit their weaknesses like they’ve been doing with ours. It doesn’t mean we have to roll over and take whatever the hell they want to dish out to us, but that’s what we did tonight. I don’t know about you boys, but I’m done with fucking rolling over. I’m not going to play dead. I’m done with all of that bullshit. I’m just fucking done with it.”

No one else really needed to say anything after that. Babs nailed it with his speech, and the fact that it came from him—from one of the boys out there on the ice and in this locker room, maybe even more so because he was the youngest guy on the team—was all it took for it to sink through all their thick skulls.

By the time the team got done hitting the showers and talking to the media, the air in the locker room wasn’t quite so thick anymore. It was a little easier to breathe than it had been, but I was still antsy to get out of there.

I wanted to get back to Sara’s place. In about twelve hours or so, I’d be gone again for a few days. I wanted to spend what time I could with her before then. Standing around and waiting for Babs and Soupy to finish up was driving me crazy, especially since I didn’t really have anything to do. Several of the boys were going to head out to Kells for dinner and drinks—surely Burnzie’s idea—and Nicky came over to ask if I wanted to join them.

“Nah,” I said. Usually, I would go. I didn’t have anything better to do. But my life wasn’t the same as it had been before.

“Come on,” he said, draping his arm over my shoulders. “I’ll take you home after. A night out would do you good.”

“Some other time.”

He gave me a you-are-totally-pussy-whipped sort of look while shaking his head.

And maybe he was right. Maybe I was pussy-whipped. If that’s what this was, I was okay with that.

My phone beeped with a text message, saving me from having to further explain my disinclination to go along with the rest of the boys. I pulled it out of my pocket, and Nicky walked away still shaking his head.

It was from Cadence. And tonight was another school night.

Cadence: Well, that was quite a game.

Me: You liked that, did you?

Cadence: Sorry, forgot to use my sarcasm font.

She followed that last one with a slew of goofy emoticons that made me snort.

Me: Aren’t you supposed to be asleep right now?

Cadence: Yeah. They needed you out there tonight. But they’re going to figure it out, Cam. I know they will. You probably didn’t see it, but they showed it on TV here. When Babs came back in the second, they showed a close-up of him on the bench. He looked like he was ready to put the whole team on his back and carry them to the next round. He’s going to do whatever it takes.

Me: Yeah, he is. But go to bed.

Cadence: I am. I love you, Cam.

Me: I love you, too.

I was just putting my phone back in my pocket when it beeped again.

Cadence: Cam?

Me: Yeah?

Cadence: You know how sometimes rumors fly about NHL players and everyone talks about them at school here and believes they’re true?

Shit. Yeah, I knew all about that kind of thing. And the way she asked it made me one hundred percent certain that whatever rumors she’d heard were surrounding me.

Me: Yeah, what about them?

Cadence: Are you really dating Scotty Thomas’s daughter? They say you got her pregnant, but that doesn’t sound like you. You haven’t even mentioned her to us before. I don’t know what to say when kids talk about you like that at school.

Talk about someone letting all the helium out of my balloon. I hadn’t been prepared for that. I wasn’t planning on talking to my mom or any of my sisters about everything going on with Sara and me until I had a better grasp on it myself—until we had decided what our plan would be moving forward. I didn’t know what to say to my teenaged sister about this.

I mean, she was right. It wasn’t like me. I wasn’t the kind of guy who would date the coach’s daughter. Not normally. This thing with Sara wasn’t something I’d planned. And I sure as hell wasn’t the kind of guy who went around getting women I wasn’t committed to—fully, irrevocably committed to—pregnant. I didn’t want Cadence, or any of my sisters, to think that sort of behavior was okay. I wanted them to be in healthy, long-term relationships before they ever thought about making babies, and I was their example. I was the one they could look up to and see the right way of doing things.

Until now. Now I was the guy who went and knocked up the coach’s daughter and was being talked about all over freaking hockey-mad Canada. If it was already all over the place, though, she deserved to hear the truth. All of my family did. I just didn’t know how to tell them.

Spilling the beans via text message wasn’t exactly high on my list, but Cadence had taken the options out of my hands.

Me: I am dating her, yes. Her name’s Sara. And she’s pregnant. That much is all true.

Cadence: So the baby’s yours? You’re going to be a daddy? You conveniently neglected to comment on that part.

More emoticons. I got the impression she was using them since there was no such thing as a sarcasm font.

Me: I want the baby to be mine.

Cadence: Wow.

Me: Wow? And that means…?

Cadence: Does this mean I get to be an aunt?!?!??!?! Squeee!!!!!

Me: Go to bed, Cadence. We’ll talk about it at a reasonable hour. I’ll call you after school tomorrow.

I supposed I’d have to call Mom before that, plus talk to Corinne and Chloe at some point in the not too distant future. If Cadence was hearing this shit at school, then Lord only knew what they’d been hearing. I was going to be on a plane for a few hours tomorrow, so I’d have to work it all in somehow. Hell, I probably should have already talked to at least Mom about it so we could decide together how to go about telling the girls, but it was all happening so fast.

I hadn’t talked to any of my family as much as I should have since this all started. Not since that final night of the regular season. They were probably putting it off to the team being in the playoffs, and maybe me being upset with myself over the suspension, but it was so much more than that. It was Sara, and Scotty, and the baby, and all of these things that I didn’t know how to talk to them about.

Cadence: Kk. Love you lots.

Me: I love you more. Go to sleep.

Cadence: No chance. I’m gonna be an aunt. I can sleep later.

I was chuckling as I slipped my phone back into my pocket. She never ceased to surprise me with her reactions to things.

“Sexting with Sara again?” Burnzie asked on his way out with the guys. He had a shit-eating grin on his face. “Not that I blame you, man. I’d be doing the same and more if I were in your shoes.”

“Not sexting. And not Sara.” Not that I owed Burnzie any explanation at all.

“All right. Have it your way.” He walked backward through the open doorway so he could continue talking to me, and he winked, which irked me. I didn’t like anyone thinking about Sara like that, even though I knew Burnzie was harmless where she was concerned. “Just thought that with the whole broken rib thing, a little harmless sexting would be the only action you’d see for a while…”

I groaned inwardly. He had no idea.

IT WAS SO late by the time Cam and the guys got back to the house that both Tuck and Maddie had passed out where they were. That meant Tuck was fast asleep on Daddy’s lap with Buster snuggling right alongside the pair of them, and Maddie had stretched out on the sofa between me and her mother. Her head was resting on Rachel’s lap and her feet were brushing against the side of my thigh, tickling me lightly with her toes every time she moved so much as a muscle.

Soupy went to pick Maddie up, but she came awake as soon as she felt his presence and got up on her own. Babs lifted Tuck off Daddy’s lap and high up into the air. True to form, that little boy didn’t stir at all. I’d never seen anyone sleep as hard as Tuck could, the complete opposite of his sister. He just wrapped his arms around Babs’s neck in his sleep and held on tight, as though this happened all the time. For all that I knew, it did happen all the time. Tuck adored Babs more than he loved ice cream—and that was saying something—and Babs seemed to like being around those two kids a lot. He’d make a good father someday, but for now he could be everyone’s favorite pseudo uncle.

Cam plopped down beside me on the sofa as soon as Maddie had evacuated the spot, putting his arm around my shoulder and kissing my cheek. I was surprised that it didn’t bother me, especially because Daddy, Rachel, and some of Cam’s teammates saw the whole thing. But it didn’t. Not in the least. It felt comfortable and right, like there was nothing else he should be doing—and that was a scary thought. Maybe even scarier than the whole idea of him possibly falling in love with me.

Rachel gathered up all of her stuff and the kids’ backpacks, and they were all about to head out the door when Daddy stopped them.

“Babs,” he said, and they all turned around in the hallway. Daddy nodded slowly. It was his approving nod, one I’d seen dozens of times over the years when he was proud of me. I doubted it was one that his players saw very often. He seemed to hold it back with them more often than not. It’s not my job to stroke their egos, he’d said to me more times than I could count when I’d asked him why he didn’t do the same things with his team as he did with me. I’m not here to pump anybody’s tires. I’m trying to get the most out of these guys that I can. Sometimes, though, that little bit of approval could go a long way in getting more out of someone.

“Good game tonight,” he said now. “I’ve known you had that guy in you since the first day you stepped foot in Portland, when I picked you up at the airport. Nice to finally see him come out to play.”

Babs shuffled his feet and blushed, but he was grinning so hard his dimples came out. I wished Katie were here to see it. She’d probably melt and fall to pieces all over me. Understandably, though. Those dimples were lady-killers. For some reason, I doubted he’d figured that part out yet so he could use it to his advantage. He gave Daddy a little nod. “Yeah, thanks, Scotty.” Before my father could say anything else to embarrass him, he spun around and headed out to the car, toting Tuck along with him.

“I’ll see you boys tomorrow,” Cam said as the rest of them followed Babs out the door.

“That kid’s going to be this team’s captain someday,” Daddy said to Cam once the door closed behind them. “Maybe not when you or I are still around, but mark my words. He’s a born leader.”

“You don’t even know the half of it,” Cam said, and he proceeded to tell us all about how Babs had called a players-only meeting after the game tonight and all that he’d said.

After that, we all sat there for a while watching all the post-game coverage and listening to the talking heads wax poetic about how the Storm just weren’t going to hack it this year, that they’d gotten into the playoffs but they were poised to flame out and head home in a couple more games. “Next year will be a better year for the Portland Storm,” they kept saying, over and over again. But Daddy and Cam didn’t want to hear about next year. They hadn’t given up on this year yet.

Eventually, Daddy got frustrated with all the commentators and flipped the TV off. “Help me up, Cam. I’m ready to hit the sack.”

Cam? When had Daddy started calling him that and not Jonny? Or had it already been going on for a while and I hadn’t noticed? All of these developments were happening a hell of a lot faster than I was comfortable with, so I sat there chewing it over while Cam helped my dad out of his chair.

Daddy waved him off when he tried to accompany him down the hall. “I’m all right with the rest of this on my own. Good night, you two.”

He didn’t attempt to shoo Buster away when he trotted along beside him. Was he going to let that dog spend the whole night with him? That might be enough to turn my world on its head.

“’Night, Daddy.”

He went off on his own, walking easier than I was able to do most of the time. Every time he would get up to go do his walking lately, I was starting to feel the urge to get up and do it with him because he seemed to be further along in his recovery than I was. But then I would try to get up and the pain in my side would convince me it was better to stay down, and so I’d let him do it on his own.

He hadn’t been acting as if he was tired. I could only guess that he was trying to give me and Cam time alone together, and I honestly didn’t know what to make of any of these changes in my father’s behavior. I doubted bypass surgery could have been enough to bring all of this on.

“What’s that pout about?” Cam asked when he came back to the sofa. He sat beside me with a sexy, smirky sort of expression that did a number on my girly bits—because there might be any number of things that Cam Johnson frequently did, but smirking was definitely not one of them. He was usually stoic. I rarely had any luck naming any expression he bore on his face. But this? This was definitely at least close to a smirk.

It looked insanely hot on him, especially with the growth of facial hair lining his jaw. I wasn’t used to seeing him like that yet. As long as I’d known him, he was always smooth-shaven. But now the buzzed hair on his head was actually shorter than the hair on his face.

Before I had time to think about what I was doing, I lifted my hand and let my palm slide over the scratchy surface of his jaw, trembling from the rasp against my skin.

His hand came up and caught mine, and he shook his head. “You’re trying to distract me. Why are you pouting?”

I hadn’t thought I was pouting before, but now I definitely was and there was no point in trying to deny it. “Because Daddy doesn’t need me. He’s healing faster than I am. I still need help, but he’s doing so much more than I’m able to do right now, and I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“I know how I feel about it.”

I had a hard time not rolling my eyes. “And how is that?”

“Glad. Because it means you need me.”

The way he said it and the look in his eye combined to make me shiver all over.

“I don’t know how I feel about that, either,” I said.

“About what?” He brushed my hair away from my eyes, tucking it behind my ear.

“Needing you.” It felt normal—almost unnaturally so—to tell him that. Like there was nothing else I ought to say to him at that moment.

Cam grunted, or maybe it was a moan. It was hard to discern over the white-water rush of my pulse in my ears. “I need you, too,” he said.

Such a simple statement, only four little words, shouldn’t have had such an effect on me. They shouldn’t have been able to turn my insides to mush, to make my belly flutter with the force of a thousand moths heading toward a flame, to cause all the air in my lungs to stop in place and refuse to budge, but that’s exactly what happened.

I licked my lips and watched his eyes follow the path of my tongue. “I think we’re talking about two different kinds of need.”

The corners of his lips curled up. “You need me that way, too. Just as much as I need you.”

He was right about that. So fucking right.

Over each of the last few days when he’d helped me to shower, his touches had grown bolder, and I hadn’t been able to resist touching him in return.

Each night when he’d been with me in my bed, I’d let my hands roam over his chest and arms and abs. I’d kissed him. A lot, actually. I’d kissed him as deeply, as hungrily, as desperately as I could and for as long as I could manage, until my pain had taken over and I’d been forced to stop. Even then, he’d held me and splayed his big hands over my body, and the feverish burn inside me had only intensified.

I needed him as much as I needed my next breath. Maybe more.

Damn him.

I DIDN’T MAKE love to Sara that night, despite the fact that I could tell she wanted it just as much as I did. Her skin was flushed and pink and glistening with a sheen of sweat even though she had just been sitting there on the sofa. I didn’t touch her other than where my hand met her wrist. That, combined with the fact that her eyes locked onto mine, her pupils dilated until her eyes were more black than blue, proved I was right; she was just as hot and bothered as I was.

How much we wanted to be together didn’t really matter at that point. She was still in too much pain for what we wanted. Besides, the thought of doing more than kissing her here and touching her there while we were in her father’s house, while he was just down the hall from the living room, really didn’t sit well with me. Even taking her upstairs wasn’t good enough, wouldn’t get us far enough away from him. The thought of him somehow walking in on us was more than enough to cool me off for a while.

Instead, I’d helped her climb the stairs and assisted her in changing into one of those silky nighties she always seemed to sleep in, and then I’d held her all night long.

Sara had this funny breathing sound she made when she was sleeping that was like a fluttery little hum, and her breaths tickled my chest and neck with each exhalation. Every night since I’d been staying at her house, I would lie on my back and she’d drape her body over me, anchoring herself with her legs on either side of me because it kept her from rolling into overly painful positions in the night.

It also kept me in a near-constant state of both arousal and hyperawareness, at least as far as she was concerned. I knew every breath she took. I could feel the beat of her heart against my chest. Sometimes the fast-paced movements of her eyes when she fell into deep sleep were enough to catch my notice, since her face was usually pressed tight to the sensitive skin of my neck and her lashes would tease my skin so much that I nearly laughed out loud from the delicate touch. I could sense when she’d been in the same position for too long and was in too much pain to move herself, and I knew the precise moment she would start to wake up.

More than anything, I knew the sensual expression in her eyes just before she would kiss me. I knew that one so well it would undoubtedly haunt my dreams during the team’s upcoming road trip, because she kept waking up and putting her lips to mine before either of us really knew what was happening. I knew better than to complain about that—I would take her kisses anytime and any way she wanted to give them—but there was a part of me that wished she would kiss me sometimes when she was fully aware of herself and what she was doing. I needed to know that she wanted it as much as I did, and so far the only time she would initiate a kiss or a touch was when she was still half asleep.

Maybe soon, though. She was coming around to me in more ways than I’d expected. I kept reminding myself to be patient because her whole world was in upheaval right now.

It was a little while after the sun rose the next morning when I felt the soft brush of her eyelids teasing the spot just behind my ear, signaling that she was beginning to rouse. She wasn’t fully awake yet when she slid her hands up my sides and murmured something in her hazy, sexy dream-voice about Captain America’s chest while her fingertips explored the skin and muscle lining my ribs.

I laughed out loud, which jostled her awake. She lifted her head and glared at me. “What’s so funny?” she grumbled.

“I think you just called me Captain America.”

She blushed—something Sara Thomas never, ever did. She didn’t get embarrassed. She was usually too confident for that, too sure of herself and everything she did.

I couldn’t resist teasing her about it even more because her discomposure was so rare and she was so beautiful despite it. “I’m Canadian,” I said. “Captain America doesn’t exactly work.”

“Fine. You can be Thor, then.”

“Um, no. I think Captain America fits better. Canadians are practically Americans. At least that’s what Americans like to think. I’m not so sure about the whole Asgardian, alien-race thing.” Besides, Thor was a cocky ass, and I didn’t want to think of myself that way.

“Oh, shut up. I’m not ready to be awake yet and I’m not allowed to have coffee.” Ever since her first doctor’s visit, she’d been acting surlier than was called for about having to forego her morning coffee, especially considering the fact that I didn’t get the impression she was going through caffeine withdrawals. It was more that she really enjoyed having a cup in the morning as a way to start her day than that she really needed it.

I couldn’t bring myself to mind her hostility over the coffee ban, though. Mainly because she was so fucking cute when she pouted that I just wanted to kiss her on the end of her nose. In fact, that’s exactly what I did.

As soon as I backed off, she tugged a pillow from behind my head and whacked me with it, but then she immediately groaned. She must not have been thinking about her ribs when she did it—a good sign, really, because it meant in general terms that her body was starting to heal.

“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked, easing her off me and onto her back so I could tend to her. I kept my weight on my elbows so I wouldn’t crush her as I leaned over her, brushing her hair back from her face.

“Yes. Damn it.” There wasn’t a tear to be found in her eyes, though, so the pain couldn’t be too bad.

Her sulky mouth looked so damn kissable that I couldn’t resist, even though, yet again, I was the one initiating it. I had to have a taste of her. She parted her lips almost the instant mine touched hers. I forced myself to keep the kiss light and playful, to not take it as deep as I wanted, but God, that was a kind of self-inflicted torture I didn’t think it was possible to really be prepared for.

“Better?” I asked when I managed to pull away.

She didn’t answer—not with words, at least. Her pout was gone, and in its place was a heated look that would melt my flesh if I didn’t get up and get started with my day.

I rolled off her to do just that, and she turned onto her good side, as though to come along with me.

“Cam?”

My legs were over the edge of the bed, my feet on the hardwood floor. I stayed like that, waiting for her to continue with her question before I got up, but she stayed quiet. “Yeah?” I finally said.

“I don’t know how or why this has happened, but I’m going to miss you. When you’re gone. I don’t want you to leave.”

I’d been waiting to hear that or some variation of it from her for a while, but for some reason it didn’t feel as good as I’d imagined it would. Maybe because she didn’t sound like she was happy about it. In fact, she sounded completely, thoroughly dismayed by the idea that she would miss me while I was gone.

That wasn’t even in the same ballpark as me telling her I was falling in love with her. But then again, it was something. And this was Sara. I should take what she’d give me and be happy about it.

“I’ll miss you, too,” I said after a moment. Hell, I missed her already, and she was still in the same room as me. I bit my tongue before I screwed this up by telling her that I loved her—really loved her, not just that I thought I might be getting there. She was still grappling with the fact that she liked being with me. If I pushed too hard, she would push back even harder.

Could I be pussy-whipped like Nicky had claimed if I wasn’t getting any? I was starting to think that was the case.

WHEN I CALLED Chloe that afternoon to tell her about my relationship with Sara, she admitted how serious her relationship with this Dylan guy was. I already knew at least some of that because Mom had clued me in, but it was good to hear about it from her.

She went on and on about how he was so good to her, how he treated her like she was a princess. He had damn well better treat her at least that well or else he would have to answer to me. Chloe knew all of that, though, and so I was left to wonder if he really did treat her as well as she claimed, or if she was just trying to mollify me so I would be more likely to approve of him when I finally got to meet him.

“He makes me want to be a better person,” she told me at one point during our conversation. “I like who I am when I’m with him better than who I am without him.” That was possibly the one and only thing she could say to me that would really sway my opinion of him. That, more than anything else, made me feel good about it. At least until such time as I met the man and could form my own opinions.

But then the thought struck me that love should be like that. Was I a better man when I was with Sara? Did being with her make me want to be better or make me like myself more? And did I do the same for her? That was something I was going to have to spend some serious time thinking about, and sooner rather than later. We were too far into this for me to start to look backward and question what we ought to be together, now that Scotty thought I was the father of her baby and we were pretty much living together.

When the topic switched to my romantic life, Chloe might have been even more excited about my being in a serious relationship than Cadence had been, and that was saying something. She literally squealed in my ear multiple times, particularly when I confirmed that Sara was pregnant.

“Are you going to get married? Of course you’re getting married,” she said, and then kept talking over herself without letting me get a word in edgewise to tell her that we weren’t even close to talking about marriage.

Earlier, when I’d talked to Mom and Corinne, they had both suggested that all of them—even Dylan—could come to Portland to see the Storm’s next home playoff game and meet Sara, and so that I could meet Dylan. I wasn’t sure that was such a hot idea, but convincing those four women of anything when they already had their minds set on something else was not exactly the easiest thing to do.

That didn’t mean I should give up. I tried again with Chloe. If I could get at least one of them to see things my way, it would be easier to convince them all that I was right. I had to get someone on my side, though, and I didn’t really care who. “So has Mom mentioned the idea of all of you coming down to Portland this weekend to you yet?”

“Yep. Dylan’s already working on getting Friday and Monday off, hopefully Tuesday, too, so he can come—”

“He really shouldn’t take time off work for this.”

“Cam, your team is in the playoffs. The Stanley Cup playoffs. For the first time in the history of ever.” She was using the ugh-you’re-an-idiot voice that she usually reserved for Cadence and definitely never used on me. “We’re coming.”

“But you and Cadence have classes, and Mom and Corinne and Dylan all have jobs—”

“And you’re our brother, and this is the biggest thing to happen in your life.” She let out an exasperated sound, and a car horn honked in the distance.

“Are you driving?” The image of Sara slumped over the steering wheel of her mangled car smacked me in the head, and I had to fight down bile. That was a different situation. Just because it had happened to Sara, that didn’t mean it was going to happen to Chloe.

“I’m on Bluetooth. Don’t change the subject. I don’t have any classes on Fridays ever, and I haven’t missed a single class all semester. Cadence has Monday off for a teacher in-service day, plus she’s got her tutor who travels with her for figure skating competitions. He can come with for this, too, if needed. Mom and Corinne have some vacation time they’ve been saving up for exactly this sort of thing, and Dylan wants to meet you sooner rather than later.”

“If I was actually going to be playing it would be different,” I reasoned, ignoring the fact that all of her arguments made sense. “I’m going to be in the press box.”

“Would you knock it off?” she nearly shouted at me. “You never fight with any of us if we take time away from work and school to support Cadence at one of her competitions. Why should it be different just because it’s you? And the fact that you won’t be playing? Doesn’t matter. It’s still your team. We still want to be there for you. By Game Six, it might be the last playoff game you’re involved in. Or it might be the one that gets the Storm to the next round where you will get to play again, finally.”

She let out a frustrated sigh, and I could picture the look on her face because I’d seen this very look so many times over the years. Without a doubt, she had her brows pinched together and her lips turned down, and she was trying her best to scowl. None of my sisters could ever pull off a scowl, though. There was too much sweetness in them for it to come across as believable.

“Cam,” she said finally. “You know it’s not just about the game. That’s not the reason we want to be there. That’s not what I was talking about when I said it’s the biggest thing in your life.”

And that only made my heart jump up into my throat and lodge itself there. “But this thing with Sara is too new. I don’t want to scare her off by having all of the other women in my life descending on her. Not yet.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.” I had never been able to lie to any of my sisters, and I wouldn’t want to lie about something like this.

“Does she love you?”

That was the million-dollar question. “I don’t know.”

“Then that’s all the more reason for us to come. If she can’t see what a good man you are, then she doesn’t deserve you.”

“That’s not the issue.” I didn’t think it was, at least.

“Then what is it?”

“It’s just…complicated.”

“Complicated?” Chloe sounded dubious. There was some interference on her end for just a second, and then I heard the distinct sound of her car door closing. Good. That meant she wasn’t driving any longer, at least.

“Yeah. Complicated,” I said.

“Sounds like you need us to come and un-complicate things for you, then.”

I heard a door close, followed by the very distinct sound of a kiss. “I’ve got to go,” I said, quickly putting an end to the call. The last thing on earth I wanted to do right now was listen to Dylan making out with my sister.

DANA AND MRS. Campbell had come to stay with us while Cam and the rest of the team were in Vancouver. I’d done my best to convince them that they didn’t need to be here overnight, that it wouldn’t be a problem at all for them to spend that time back at Zee’s house, but my arguments fell on deaf ears.

“And what good will that be if something happens to one of you in the middle of the night?” Mrs. Campbell had demanded. “There’s no point in having us halfway across the city when we can be right here.”

“Besides, this will give us more time for wedding plans,” Dana added, prompting Daddy to excuse himself so he could go look for something in his office.

Honestly, though, my father and I were both getting to where we were doing a lot better. We both improved every single day, but it was starting to feel as though the people helping us were trying to hold us back from fully improving. Maybe it was just me who felt that way, but I was getting frustrated.

Daddy had been doing more on his own each day and would soon start walking slowly on a treadmill since his recovery was progressing so well. As for me, it still didn’t feel good to get up and down on my own, but I was fighting through the pain so I could do it, and I’d begun walking some laps of my own through the living areas when they weren’t fussing over me and keeping me down. Mainly because I couldn’t stand the thought that Daddy could do more than me. He’d just had freaking open heart surgery. I’d only had a stupid car accident. I should be able to do more than him.

I’d turned it into a bit of a competition between the two of us, actually—not that I had let him or anyone else in on that fact. If he knew we were competing, then he would start to push himself harder than he really should be at this point in his recovery, and he might suffer a setback or two. If any of the others figured it out, they would likely try to put the kibosh on it and make me stop. That said, as long as I kept it to myself, it was good motivation for me to push beyond what I thought I was ready for, beyond what felt good.

After the guys left for their flight, Dana, Mrs. Campbell, and I spent all of Thursday together going over invitations and thank-you cards and other design elements for the wedding. I was starting to realize just how imperative it was that Dana’s mom was as involved in the planning as she was, since she could give input for one party of each of the two couples. Plus, she had great taste. That was a definite bonus.

That evening, Dana and her mom were in the dining room, still looking at the different types of paper for the invitations, and Daddy turned on the TV in the living room so he could watch the Coyotes-Kings game—Have to stay on top of the team the boys will face next—so I went into the kitchen to fix myself a snack. I’d gone the whole day without any nausea—the first time that had happened in a long time—and I figured it was as good a day as any to indulge a little. I’d just taken out a tub of strawberry cream cheese from the fridge to spread on the bagel I had toasting when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out and saw a text message from Cam.

Can we talk without everyone hearing? There’s something I need to tell you in private.

Why did it matter if anyone heard what we were talking about? As far as I could tell, all of our secrets were out in the open now, other than the fact that Daddy still didn’t know the baby wasn’t Cam’s, but that didn’t seem like something he’d want to discuss right now. Especially not over the phone. There wasn’t anything I could think of that would warrant him being worried about who was within hearing distance.

It didn’t seem like a good idea to take a chance, though. A lot of the things he’d done lately had taken me completely by surprise. I wouldn’t put it past him to shock me again.

Me: Later? There’s still a lot going on here.

Cam: Call me when you’re alone, no matter what time it is.

Me: Okay. Give me an hour or so.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket and got the bagel out of the toaster, focusing on my snack and pushing all thought of Cam’s cryptic text message from my mind. When I finished putting together my food, I took it with me over to the table so I could put in my two cents on design ideas every now and then. We got so caught up in discussion that we almost didn’t even notice Daddy’s occasional curses at the TV screen.

We’d been at it for quite a while already when Mrs. Campbell said, “I don’t think you should settle on colors for the invitations until you’ve settled on the colors for the wedding itself. Don’t you want it to match?”

Dana looked up at her mother, her mouth set in an O.

“Good point,” I put in. “You’ll finalize all of that on Saturday when you go dress shopping, right? So by early next week, we can settle all of the details for the invitations and thank-you cards and get that order put in. That’s still plenty of time.”

“A few more days shouldn’t be a problem,” Dana murmured, but I could practically see the lists flying through her head of all the things they were going to have to finish up in the next few days. Her mother was only staying through the middle of next week.

“Good,” Mrs. Campbell said. “We can call it a night, then.”

Call it a night? I glanced up at the clock on the microwave. It had been more than three hours since I’d told Cam I would call him in about an hour or so. Good grief. I hadn’t even thought about calling him until just now.

“That sounds like a good idea,” I said, pushing back from the table and carefully rising. It was easier to get up from a hard chair like those in the dining room than it was to get off the sofa or bed. I carried my saucer and glass into the kitchen and bent over to put them in the dishwasher, hissing in a breath at the pain that position caused.

“You should have let me do that,” Dana said from behind me.

“I wanted to do it myself.”

“You’re not doing yourself any favors by pushing so much.”

I shot her a look.

She put her hands up in surrender. “All right. Backing off…at least for now.”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to be so testy.” I washed my hands and dried them on a kitchen towel, then tossed it onto the counter. “I think I’m going up to bed.”

“Need any help with anything? Mom’s working on getting your dad to go to bed, too, and we all know that might take a while since they’re still covering tonight’s games.”

I shook my head. “Nah. I think I can handle it on my own tonight.” I didn’t say anything about the fact that I needed to call Cam and didn’t want anyone listening in. If she came up to help me, I’d be able to change clothes and settle in a lot faster, but I wouldn’t be able to call him as soon as I would otherwise.

“Okay. Holler if you need anything.” Dana picked up a canister of cleaning wipes and started wiping down all of the counters.

I made my way up the stairs as quickly as I could without having to breathe too deeply and shut the door as soon as I was in my room. Once I was alone, I pulled out my phone and hit the button to call Cam. I’d finally given him a preset button so I wouldn’t have to search through my list to get to him quickly.

He answered before the phone rang on my end. “Hey. What happened to about an hour?”

“Sorry. I got caught up helping Dana and her mom with wedding invitations and stuff like that. I almost forgot to call you.”

“It’s okay. Jens is still out with some of the boys, at least for a little while.”

It was unreal how something as simple as hearing the deep rumble of his voice on the other end of the line was enough to make me tingle.

I sat down on the side of my bed cautiously, careful to sit close enough to the edge that I would be able to get up again without too much effort. “So what’s going on? Why did you need me to be alone when I called you?”

“Because you might get mad at me, and I didn’t want anyone else to hear us arguing.”

Well, hell. “What did you do to upset me this time?”

“It’s just… Apparently, word is already making the rounds about us, so my sisters know, and they want to meet you. And my mom, too.”

“I…” What the hell? I was almost groaning to myself, trying to figure out how to respond to that. Because he’d said that they know about us. Which meant that there was an us to know about. Which meant that this was moving along a hell of a lot faster than I was prepared for. I didn’t know how to feel about any of this other than frustrated. “Well, I suppose we can plan a time that I can meet them after Daddy and I have recovered and once the team is out of the playoffs.” That would give me time to adjust to the idea and figure out how I felt about it all.

“Yeah,” he said, and I got the distinct impression that there was something else he had to say. “I thought about something like that, too. But the thing is—”

This could not be good.

“—they all have it in their heads that they should come to Portland. Now. So they can take in a playoff game when they meet you.”

A whoosh of air flooded through my lips, and I nearly slipped off the bed. That would have been bad, because it would have hurt like hell to get myself back up again. “Now?” I managed to squeak out. I couldn’t handle a visit now. I didn’t know what Cam and I were together. I didn’t know what I wanted us to be. I’d barely adjusted to the fact that there was a baby growing inside me, and his mom and sisters thought they needed to be here now?

“Yeah. I tried to change their minds, but they’ve already booked flights. They’ll be in Portland by tomorrow afternoon, before the game.”

Now seemed like a good time to start panicking.

SARA WAS SO silent on the other end of the line for so long I worried that she’d stopped breathing. Was she furious with me? Nervous about meeting my family? Unsure of what to say or how to feel? A combination of all of the above? I wanted to know so I could figure out what my next move should be, but she wouldn’t say a word.

“Talk to me,” I said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I just… I can’t… Tomorrow? You won’t even be here tomorrow.”

“We’re flying back after the game.” But Mom and the girls would still get there hours and hours before I would. “They’ll go to my house when their flight gets in. Mom has a key.”

“I don’t have to meet them without you?”

I hated how she sounded so damn skeptical and unsure. It didn’t suit her, which only further proved to me that my nerves over the girls’ idea of coming now was absolutely the wrong thing for this point in my relationship with Sara.

“No, you don’t have to meet them without me. Do you want me to come to your house when we get in, or should I go home?” I hoped she would tell me to come to her house. In a very short amount of time, I’d adjusted to sleeping with her wrapped all around me, and the thought of going without for any longer than I had to would eat at me.

Before she could get a word out, Jens came through the door along with what seemed like half the team, all of them talking over one another and creating a massive amount of noise—so much of it that I wouldn’t be able to hear her response.

“Shit,” I said. I caught Jens’s eye and nudged my head toward the door. “Can you guys give me a couple more minutes?”

I didn’t have a clue what was going on or why he’d brought them back to our room. He didn’t normally do anything like that. He would hang out with the guys, and when he was done, he’d come back to our room alone. Neither one of us was the sort who liked to have a party in our room. This was completely out of character for him.

But then I realized that the boys weren’t all laughing and joking around. This was no party; they looked as serious as we all had the night Scotty had a heart attack right in front of us.

Jens shook his head and said something, but the only word I was able to make out among the cacophony in the room was, “Nicky.”

Fucking hell. What the hell had happened to Nicky?

“I’ve got to go now,” I said to Sara. “I’m sorry. We’ll talk about it more tomorrow.”

I couldn’t hear whether she responded or not before I hung up the phone. I tossed it onto the nightstand and sat up straighter against the headboard, every muscle in my body on high alert like I was preparing for a fight. “What the fuck is going on with Nicky?”

They finally all shut up, probably because I’d yelled and I wasn’t a yeller. Now was not the time to be quiet, though, and every now and then yelling was called for.

Kally sat down on the foot of my bed. “We were all out having dinner and drinks, and he started acting like he was drugged. Same thing that happened that night we were in San Jose, when you were with us.”

My whole body went cold, like someone had just sent ice through my veins. That night was seared into my memory, stored right alongside some of the worst moments of my childhood involving my father. “Someone drugged him again?”

How the hell could something like that happen? Especially twice in such a short time, to the same guy? It wasn’t uncommon to hear about girls having drugs put in their drinks at parties by assholes who wanted to make it easier to rape them, but this was an entirely different situation. Nicky Ericsson was a big, fit man, and he’d been drugged twice in two completely different cities in the span of about a month.

Thank God the boys had been with him tonight. I didn’t want to think about what might have happened if he’d been alone.

Zee shoved his way past a few of the boys, shaking his head. “I don’t think anyone drugged him, Jonny. I was right beside him the whole night. The only time he was out of my sight was when he was in the bathroom.”

If no one drugged him, then… “You think he took something?” Why the fuck would Nicky do something like that? We were in the middle of the playoffs, for fuck’s sake, and he was our number-one goalie. He had a great life, a great career. I didn’t get it. No matter how many times I tried to make it make sense, no matter how many different ways I analyzed it, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Zee didn’t answer my question, but the look on his face said it all. “They’ve taken him to the emergency room to get sorted out. Hunter’s starting tomorrow night, and Jim’s already put in a call to get someone from Seattle to come back him up.”

Well, that was perfect. Just fucking perfect. Not only could I not play, but now we were going with our backup goaltender in the playoffs. That was definitely not a recipe for success.

Nothing against Hunter, of course. He’d done a great job this season when we’d needed him during the stretch that Nicky was out due to his concussion. But at a time like this, you really wanted your top guy in the net.

So now my Mom and sisters were going to see the Storm lose and scare Sara off, and my suspension would end up carrying over until next season and my life might very well turn to shit.

That all sounded great.

I’D BEEN LYING in bed for over an hour trying to fall asleep, but I hadn’t been able to. Hell, I hadn’t even gotten close. No matter how much I twisted and turned, I couldn’t find a comfortable position without Cam. Plus, there was the fact that he’d just screwed with my mind by telling me that his family was coming here tomorrow because they wanted to meet me. How the hell did they already know about us? Why did they want to meet me?

I’d never been a meet-the-folks sort of girl. I wasn’t usually even with a guy long enough to be considered a girlfriend; I was just the girl they went on a couple of dates with and slept with a time or two. After that, they were too close for comfort and I put an end to it. I was definitely not the girl a guy would take home to his parents.

But his family wanted to get to know me, and Cam wanted me to meet them, and it was all going down tomorrow. Granted, he’d said they were going to his house and not coming here when they got in, so I wouldn’t have to technically meet them until Saturday, but still. Saturday was only one more day beyond tomorrow. That left me without anywhere close to enough time to mentally prepare myself for the idea of meeting them. So, at the moment, my thoughts were running away with me.

And then he’d had the nerve to ask if I wanted him to come here or go spend the night with his mom and sisters when the guys got in tomorrow night. I’d been this close to telling him I wanted him here with me, too, before he’d cut me off and hung up on me.

I didn’t want to want him. I just couldn’t seem to make myself stop.

I rolled over onto my good side and tucked my knees up near my chest, hoping that would ease the ache a little. The crazy part was I wasn’t entirely sure the ache was all related to my ribs and not the more emotional things going on in my life. There was a niggling voice in my head telling me that the ache was because Cam wasn’t here with me, but I didn’t particularly feel like listening to that voice. That voice could go fuck off.

Just before I gave up on that side position, my cell phone buzzed, the screen lighting up in the dark room and nearly blinding me. I squinted to read the text message.

You still awake?

The bastard. Did he have some sort of Spidey-sense telling him that I couldn’t stop thinking about him or something? And now I was adding Spider-Man to the long line of comic book heroes I was comparing him to. That shit had to stop.

Still, I’d told him I wasn’t going to avoid him. I figured I’d better respond.

Yeah, I’m awake. Thanks to you.

And not just because he’d texted me, either. I’d barely hit “send” on that message before my phone was ringing. I didn’t even bother looking to see who was calling. There was no chance it was anyone but him at this hour.

“What do you want, Cam?” I didn’t even attempt to hide my irritation.

“Sorry I had to hang up like that earlier. Nicky’s in the ER.”

“I— Oh.” I’d been all prepared to give him a serious tongue-lashing, but that took the bite out of my bark. “Will he be all right?”

“Yeah. Probably. Maybe.”

“That was really convincing.”

“He was drugged again. Or maybe he took something. I don’t know.”

The latter seemed more likely than the former, even though Nicky had never seemed the type. But none of them ever seemed the type once you realized which guys were self-medicating to deal with things. Over the years, I’d known a few of my father’s players to have some issues with drinking and drugs. There had been a few really high-profile cases around the league in recent years, too—guys who’d accidentally overdosed on something and died, or a couple that had taken their own lives after struggling with their addictions.

Usually it was a prescription, something they started taking to deal with pain from injuries or maybe to help them sleep because of the odd schedule professional hockey players had to put up with. But in my experience, it had always seemed more likely to be a guy like Cam who ended up with those problems—a fighter—or maybe a guy like Soupy who’d had so many injuries and setbacks. Not a starting goalie.

“Are you okay?” I asked after a moment. Finding out a friend and teammate was dealing with something as serious as this couldn’t be easy for anyone.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

I didn’t miss the fact that he’d said he would be, not that he was.

Well, this made my worries about meeting Cam’s family all seem incredibly inconsequential and silly.

“I wish I could be with you tonight, though,” he said.

“So do I.”

“When we get back to Portland tomorrow night, do you want me to go to my house, or should I come to yours?” There was a hopeful tone in his voice. No, it was more than just that. Hopeful, but also a little wounded.

I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hold him until that wounded part disappeared. “Come here,” I replied. “If you don’t think your mom and sisters will mind, at least.”

“They won’t mind.”

“Okay. Then come here when you get back.”

“I will. Sara?”

The way he said my name caused my breath to lodge in my throat. There was so much more to what he was saying in that one word, things that I wasn’t ready to give a name to, things I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.

“Yeah?” I replied when I found my voice again, even though I was 99.9 percent positive I didn’t want to hear whatever he was about to say.

“I love you. I’m not just falling in love with you, and it’s not something that I think is happening but I just can’t be sure of it yet. I love you.”

I’d never heard such loud silence as what fell between us after he said it. That was exactly what I hadn’t wanted him to say. I felt as though all of his weight was crushing me beneath him, as though he was standing upon my cracked ribs and making it impossible for me to breathe or form a coherent thought or do anything but wish I could go back in time and hang up before he had a chance to say those words.

“I know you’re not ready to hear that yet,” he said. “I’m not sorry I said it, though, because you need to know. You need to know that what I feel for you and what I want for us is big. That’s why they’re coming.”

“Your family?” I was still wrapping my mind around the first part of it and he was already moving on to something else, and I didn’t know if I could keep up. It was as though we’d switched personalities or something. He was usually quiet and hardly said three words, and I was the one you often couldn’t shut up. But right now, I was struggling to make sense of all the words coming out of his mouth. “Your family is coming because you told them you love me?”

“Not exactly. I didn’t tell them. They just knew.”

He waited a beat, but it wasn’t long enough for me to prepare myself for the bomb he was about to drop on me next.

“They want to love you, too.”

That wasn’t going to happen, though, because I wasn’t the girl you took home to meet your parents. I was the one who got knocked up by some random guy and now their son, their brother, was taking the fall for it.

They weren’t going to love me. They were going to crucify me.

FOR ONCE, I decided to actually pay attention to the game on Friday night because it would be easier to sit with Daddy and do that than to be in the dining room with all the girls. And yes, I did mean all the girls. Dana and Mrs. Campbell were still staying with us until the guys got back, but since it was a Friday night and the kids didn’t have to go to school the next day, Laura had brought Katie and her whole brood with her, Rachel had brought her two younger kids, and even Noelle had come, along with her puppy to play with Buster.

Luke and Dani claimed spots on the floor in the living room with video game handsets keeping them busy, and Tuck made himself at home on Daddy’s lap again. Maddie curled up at the opposite end of the couch from me and kept her nose buried in a book, only looking up at the TV screen whenever my father and the kids would make noise, good or bad, about whatever was going on in the game.

The rest of the girls stayed in the dining room where they could all go over wedding details together, discussing the various items that Dana and her mother had decided upon during the week and debating the things that were still up in the air. They’d tried to get me to sit with them so I could weigh in, but I’d claimed my ribs were hurting too much to handle sitting upright tonight.

No, they really weren’t hurting that badly. Yes, it was a chickenshit move on my part.

I just didn’t know if I could handle an interrogation from the lot of them when it came to Cam, and Laura had always been able to see right through me. She would surely see everything on my face and try to wheedle it all out of me, and then I would be crying and blubbering all over the place. Which would hurt my ribs, damn it. And it would upset Daddy. And I didn’t want to go there.

I hadn’t even told Dana about what Cam had said to me last night. I didn’t know how to talk about it since I was still in shock and hadn’t settled on how I felt about it. He’d said he loved me, for God’s sake. How does a reasonable person react to something like that when it had been taking all of my spare energy to avoid falling in love with him?

So I stayed in the living room watching the game as a means of avoidance.

Sure enough, the backup goaltender Hunter Fielding was the guy in the net tonight, and they’d brought Sean Roberts in from the Seattle team to back him up. No sign of Nicky. Hunter had done a completely respectable job for the team throughout the season, but this was his first real test in a high-pressure situation as a pro. I was on edge to see how he would handle it.

I wasn’t nearly as on edge as Daddy was, though. He’d been cursing a blue streak all day, after I’d told him what had happened with Nicky, and he’d only forced himself to stop when Rachel and Laura showed up with their kids.

Whether he’d manage to keep himself from cursing in front of them if things went sour was anyone’s guess. He’d never even attempted it when I was a little girl, which was probably why I had a mouth like a sailor. I was even worse than half the guys sometimes, but it was what I’d always known. Still, I usually kept a lid on it around kids—a lesson I’d learned as a kid, myself, when Daddy had coached the Bruins years ago. The players’ wives weren’t exactly thrilled with me and my potty mouth being around their children.

Daddy, though? I supposed we would have to wait and see…and we might not have to wait very long, either. That would all depend on whether the guys came out and played like they had in Game Four, or if they decided to go back to playing the way that had gotten them into the playoffs in the first place. Hunter would be a determining factor, too. If he rose to the occasion, Daddy’s blood pressure would likely be kept at a much more reasonable level than if he let the big stage intimidate him.

Only a few minutes into the game, it was easy to see what Daddy and Cam had been talking about as far as Babs was concerned. He was a man on a mission, running over anyone standing in his way. In his first three shifts, it was impossible to take my eyes away from him to watch anyone else out there. He was stealing pucks, creating turnovers, laying out big hits. Pretty much the only thing he didn’t do was score, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. He’d gotten a couple of nice shots off, and he nearly scored on a deflection from a big, booming slap shot Burnzie sent in from the point.

But eventually, all of Babs’s hard work paid off. The Canucks were paying so much attention to him, often double-teaming him in their coverage, that both Zee and Soupy were often left uncovered. Neither of those guys is someone a team should ever forget about, and Soupy made them pay. He’d been hanging out behind the goal while Babs fought to get the puck free along the boards with two of the Canucks’ defenders going against him. Jens pinched in to help him out, and somehow Babs squirted the puck out from the mess and straight to Jens’s stick. He one-timed it but angled his shot so it was more of a pass to Soupy. Soupy didn’t mess around; he backhanded it so it would hit the back of the goaltender’s pads. It rebounded into the net before he had a chance to get his glove on it. Soupy was the one who got the goal, but no one would doubt it was Babs that made it happen.

At the first intermission, the Storm were up one to nothing. Hunter hadn’t been tested too much so far in the game. The guys had done a great job of maintaining possession and keeping the play in the Canucks’ zone for the most part, and Daddy hadn’t let any curses fly.

The girls had stopped talking and looked up at a few points, keeping themselves up to speed on the game, but for the most part they were so absorbed in their wedding plans that they were oblivious to everything going on in the living room, which suited me just fine.

Right around the first intermission, I’d started having some mild cramps in my abdomen. Probably just gas, but I didn’t want Laura to see anything weird in my face and flip out.

I got up carefully, easing myself off the couch as well as I could, and went upstairs to my bathroom. It was only when I was in there, all alone, that I had a small freak-out moment. There was a tiny pink spot on my panties. My OB-GYN had told me that a small amount of spotting was normal and not anything to worry about in most cases, so I tried not to let it bother me. But I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I wasn’t just spotting—I had that discomfort in my abdomen. What if it wasn’t gas?

My paranoia made me wish Cam were here. He was always able to calm me down. Usually the fact that he could do that pissed me off, but at the moment it seemed necessary.

I spent several minutes upstairs trying to slow my pulse and refocus my thoughts before returning to the living room. Once I thought I’d finally reined in my panic, I headed down the stairs.

“You almost missed the start of the second,” Daddy said when he saw me walking gingerly back to my spot on the sofa. “I was getting worried.”

He looked worried, too. His brows were drawn together, his lips pinched.

I smiled and shook my head, trying to brush him off. “Just a bit of nausea. Morning sickness at night. No big deal.”

He grunted, but then he turned his attention back to the television since the commercial break had ended and the official was about to drop the puck at center ice.

Maddie set her book down and climbed down from the couch. A minute later, she came back with a bottle of ginger ale that she handed to me. “It always helps me when I have an upset tummy,” she said. She got back into her spot and picked up her book just as one of the Sedins scored off the rush up ice for Vancouver.

“Well, that’s just f—” Daddy cut himself off just in time.

Tuck looked up at him with big eyes. “Mommy says I can’t say that word, Mr. Coach.”

“That’s right,” Rachel called out from the dining room. “You can’t. But he didn’t actually say it. Even if he does, though, you still can’t.”

“This time he didn’t,” I mumbled, and Daddy shot a look in my direction.

After that, we all went back to doing what we’d been doing. The action in this period was back and forth, up-tempo hockey. This sort of game was definitely better suited to the Storm than the Canucks, but it didn’t matter. Neither team managed to get another goal in the rest of the second, but it wasn’t for lack of opportunities. Hunter held up really well under a barrage that lasted nearly two full minutes near the end of the period, where our guys weren’t able to get off for a change but the Canucks kept the shots coming. He made a highlight-reel-worthy save with only two seconds left before the buzzer, sending the boys into the locker room with the game tied and one more period remaining in regulation.

By that point, the cramping sensation in my abdomen had stopped, so I was able to convince myself that I’d been right in the beginning: it was only gas. Nothing to worry about. Before the end of the second intermission, the girls finished up all of their planning in the dining room, and they came out to join us in the living room for the third period. Katie, Dana, and Noelle all joined the teenagers on the floor. Rachel picked Maddie up and settled her on her lap, and Mrs. Campbell sat between us on the sofa. Laura took the other recliner.

When the action on the ice resumed, I don’t think any of us could take regular breaths. The whole series—hell, the Storm’s playoff lives—were really hinging on the outcome of this game. Yeah, it was still best of seven, and tied at two games each. But they couldn’t afford to go down a game at this point in the series. We could all feel that, I suppose.

The fast-paced, north-south game from the second period carried over into the third. You could see it was starting to wear down the Canucks, especially because their coach had shortened their bench and was really only playing three forward lines and two defensive pairings. I supposed he didn’t trust his bottom-end players enough in a track meet like this, but the rest of his team was gasping for air like it was going out of style every time they climbed over the boards and sat on the bench.

Halfway through the period, the Canucks’ fourth line finally got a chance to play—the first time since about eight minutes into the second period—and they took advantage of it. Zack Kassian, of all people—a guy who might score one goal a year if he was lucky—somehow knocked the puck off Monty’s stick and turned up ice with it. Monty tried to get back, and he made a diving play for the puck but missed and tripped Kassian up just as the Canucks’ forward got off his shot. He scored what had to have been the flukiest goal of his career, putting them up by one.

Hunter visibly deflated after letting that one in, but Monty and the other guys on the ice went over to him, patting him on top of his mask and tapping his pads with their sticks. When they skated away, he shook his head as if he was shaking it off, tapped his goal stick on each of the posts, and got set for play to resume.

The minutes ticked by with the Storm absolutely dominating play again. The Canucks just couldn’t keep up with their speed. Hammer and Bergy were rolling all four lines, all six D, keeping the attack coming in waves—but no one could get anything to go in the net.

With just over a minute left, Bergy signaled for Hunter to get to the bench for an extra attacker, and Kally dove over the boards to join Zee’s line. Somehow in the interchange, the puck got past Jens at the point, and he and Burnzie both had to turn on their jets to get back and keep Vancouver from getting an empty-netter. Burnzie corralled the puck and quickly turned it back up ice. He passed it to Jens, who passed it to Babs, who took it deep into the zone, bulldozing a winded Canuck in his effort to get to the net.

He shot it. The goalie stopped it with a kick save, but he couldn’t control it. The puck was loose. Soupy tried to jab it in, and just about every guy on the ice for both teams converged on the crease. It was utter chaos, with the referee hanging over the back of the goal with his whistle pressed to his lips, ready to blow the play dead.

Tick. Tock. Seconds kept slipping by, but the goalie couldn’t cover the puck. That meant there was hope. The red light started flashing with 4.3 seconds left on the clock, but I still didn’t have a clue what had happened to cause it. The TV switched to a different camera angle, showing the puck just on the other side of the goal line.

The Storm had tied it up. Now for overtime.

Just in time for that cramping to start up again.

WE WON THE game late in the first overtime period on a crazy bounce, so now we had two more games to win one final time in this series. If we could do that, we would move on to the next round. We’d dominated play throughout much of Game Five, so if we could maintain that, it shouldn’t be hard to do what needed to be done.

In the overtime period, Hamhuis had been trying to clear the puck out of the Canucks’ zone after a long shift, but one of our guys, Antoine Gagnon, had fresh legs. Gags had put a ton of pressure on Hamhuis, and he’d just barely gotten the blade of his stick in the way of the pass when the puck had taken a strange hop. Then Hamhuis had tried to help his goaltender out by blocking it. That had proved to be a poor decision on his part. It’d deflected off him, hit a rut in the ice, and somehow it had gone into the net. The officials had credited Gags with the goal, despite the fact that he hadn’t really shot the puck; he’d just been the last Storm player to touch it, and therefore it was his. Now he belonged to that exclusive list of players who’d scored playoff overtime goals. Considering he only had twelve career NHL goals, that was quite a feat.

I was just glad our boys had managed to finish off the job in a single OT period. That meant we didn’t have to hang around in Vancouver until God only knew what time in the morning. As it was, it was after three a.m. by the time we got back to PDX. I left there to go straight to Scotty and Sara’s house. I’d told my mom earlier in the day that I would be going to their place and not to my house, so she and the girls weren’t waiting up and expecting me. I really wasn’t keen on meeting Dylan until I’d had some sleep, anyway, so it was probably for the best. Then I could meet Dylan at the same time they all met Sara.

The team had the whole day off tomorrow. No practice. No meetings. Hammer and Bergy wanted us to just go home and get some rest, recharge for Game Six.

Even though it was insanely late when I got to her place, Sara was still sitting up waiting for me. Dana had stayed with her—she’d let her mom take her car since Zee could come pick her up—and they were sitting together on the sofa, talking about Lord only knew what. Zee had followed me there in his SUV and was waiting for Dana in the driveway.

I left my suitcase in the hall closet. There was nothing in it that I needed tonight, and I was beyond exhausted.

Once I came through the door, Dana got up. “Eric’s here?” she asked.

“Waiting outside with the car still running,” I confirmed.

“Talk to you tomorrow,” Dana said over her shoulder to Sara on her way out.

Sara stretched her arms over her head, yawning. “Tuck somehow managed to stay up all the way through the end of the game. I barely made it that long. I don’t know how that kid did it.”

“But you’re still up now.” I sat down next to her, and a surge of electricity raced through me when she almost instantaneously fell against me, resting her head on my shoulder. I could really get used to holding her like this.

She waved a hand as though that could wipe the implication away. “There have been way too many overtime games in this series.”

“As long as we win, I’m okay with that. I’m sorry you had to be up so late, though. You didn’t have to wait up for me. You need to rest.”

“Yeah. I just… I felt a little funny after everyone left. And it gave me a chance to talk to Dana.”

“Funny how?”

“Just…” She shrugged, shaking her head. “Just funny. It’s nothing.”

There was definitely more to the story than she was telling me, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to push and prod right now. I’d already been worried that I’d gone too far when I’d told her that I love her. It was too soon to push harder than that. As it was, I was slightly surprised and a whole hell of a lot amazed that she still wanted me to be here with her tonight, that she hadn’t tried to push me out of her life the second I’d been real with her about how I felt.

“Okay,” I said, dropping my head down so I could get a whiff of that minty shampoo she always used.

“How’s Nicky?” she asked.

“Still in the hospital.” Still saying he hadn’t taken anything—that someone must have put something in his drink. The fact that he was denying it was the most worrisome part, as far as I was concerned. That meant he didn’t recognize or want to admit that maybe he had a problem, and that only made his problem bigger. I was scared for him. “They’re keeping him in the hospital for a few days to be safe.” Part of me wished they’d keep him longer. Yeah, the team needed him—but we needed him healthy and with his head on straight, not when he thought he needed to take something to get through the day.

She nodded. “That’s probably for the best.”

“I missed you.” I had missed everything about her—even the way she could be prickly with me. It was amazing how much better I felt the instant she’d curled into my side.

She stayed quiet for so long that I feared she wasn’t going to say anything at all, that maybe I’d pushed her too far, even though I’d been trying to do the opposite. But then she yawned again and tipped her head back so she could look at me with sleepy, dreamy eyes. “I missed you, too. I didn’t sleep very well without you. Couldn’t get comfortable.”

Maybe she hadn’t reacted as badly to my admission as I’d thought she would. This was about as far from the response I’d expected as was possible. “Well, you don’t have to sleep without me for a while,” I said. I wished I didn’t have to sleep without her ever again. In my line of work, that wasn’t a possibility, though.

Sara gave me a soft smile. There wasn’t anything remotely suggestive about it, but my dick didn’t seem to care about the intention behind the smile. It rose to attention as though she’d just done a striptease in front of me.

Tonight was going to be hell.

“We should go to bed,” she said through a yawn.

Yeah. Bed. Where I could hold her but not be inside her. Where she could give me lazy kisses, but I couldn’t take them any deeper because her father was downstairs. Where her body would be pressed tight against mine, all of her delicious curves hugging me and driving me crazy with want, but I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it for fear of hurting her. She had been hurt enough already.

I nodded and helped her up. “Where’s Buster?” I hadn’t realized he was missing until right at that moment. I only thought about him then because having him in bed with us would possibly help to put a damper on my lust.

“He went to bed with Daddy again,” Sara said as we slowly climbed the stairs.

Well, fuck. My dog was abandoning me in my hour of need. Damned traitor.

I flipped on the light in her room and closed the door behind us, expecting Sara to go over and sit on the edge of the bed until I came to help her change. She didn’t; she moved behind me and put her arms around my waist, resting her head against my back.

Every nerve ending in my body came to life from that simple touch, and I felt like the sun was shining on me on a hot day. I leaned my head against the doorframe, keeping both hands fisted at my sides while I tried to get control of myself. If I gave in to my needs right now, I was bound to hurt her. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to make love to her, to take things slow and steady and have her writhing beneath me because it felt good, not because she was in pain and trying to get away. I wanted her to want me because she loved me as much as I loved her. She didn’t, though. It was still more lust than love on her end.

I’d almost gotten my breathing under wraps again when her hands slid down. “Sara.” Her name came out as a groan, but at least it had the desired effect of stopping her downward movement before she was could touch my dick. I couldn’t handle that right now. If she touched me, however limited the contact may be, I might lose it.

Her cheek was still pressed to my back, resting just below my shoulder blade, and her hot breath filtered through the layers of my suit coat and my shirt and seared my skin. “I want to be with you, Cam,” she breathed, and everything inside me clenched. My stomach. My lungs. My heart.

She may be past the point of exhaustion, but she wasn’t still half asleep this time. What was happening between us right now? This was Sara initiating things, and it was more than just a kiss in the morning. This was exactly what I’d been wanting, wasn’t it? I wanted her to take a step toward me, to meet me in the middle so the physical part of our relationship wasn’t entirely one-sided. But it was too soon after her accident. And we were in her father’s house. I couldn’t let it happen, no matter how much I wanted to take her up on her suggestion.

Releasing one of my fists, I put my hand over the pair of hers and held them, drawing her closer to me. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

“It doesn’t have to hurt. We can find a way to keep it from hurting.” She tugged one of her hands free, slipping it inside my jacket and running her fingers over my abs. “I can be pretty creative, you know.”

Did I ever. The first night we’d been together had surprised me in more ways than I could count.

I shook my head, determined to make her see reason. “We can find positions to make it hurt less, but it’s still going to hurt. I know. I’ve bruised my ribs in fights before—just bruised them—and even just masturbating caused some crazy pain.”

The act of sex itself might not hurt too badly depending on how we went about it, but if she came to orgasm that would be some fucking intense pain. And if she didn’t get to the point of orgasm, what the fuck was the point of having sex in the first place?

“It would be worth it,” she murmured against my back. “I didn’t just miss you while you were gone. It was so much more than that. You being gone made me recognize just how much I want to be with you.”

She’d missed me and more. She wanted to be with me. Granted, that didn’t mean she loved me, but it was closer than we’d come so far. I closed my eyes, trying to focus on inhaling and exhaling, on keeping my heart from pounding so hard that it leaped out of my chest. The deeper I breathed, the more of her scent invaded me until she absolutely consumed me.

“You want me, too,” she said. “I can feel your heartbeat even in your back. It’s racing as fast as mine. Maybe faster, even. Definitely harder.”

I’d wanted her for a hell of a lot longer than she could possibly know, but that was beside the point. This wasn’t a good idea. “Your father—”

“Is downstairs. And asleep. He sleeps like a rock. Always has. And he already knows we’ve had sex, since this is supposedly your baby inside me, and he also knows that you’re sharing my bed every night. If he had a problem with us having sex, he wouldn’t let you stay in his house.”

I was still working on formulating another argument when she stretched her free hand away from my body, reaching all the way past me, and turned the lock on the doorknob. On the return trip, she deftly undid the buttons of my jacket with that same hand and then tugged it down over my shoulders.

“Fuck, babe.”

“That’s the plan,” she said wryly. She was already undoing the knot of my tie while trying to free her other hand from my grip.

Never mind the thought of me hurting her; I had to slow her down or she’d hurt herself. Hell, she might even hurt me. She whipped my tie free and let it follow my jacket to the floor, and I spun around. As soon as I faced her, she was stretching up to kiss me. I let her do that because it was easier than trying to convince her to do slow down for a minute, and I put both hands at her waist so I could gently guide her backward. Her tongue swept inside my mouth to tangle with mine. Everything in my body was screaming to let her have her way with me; everything in my head knew that was the worst idea I could have.

When we reached the bed, I sat down on the end and carefully drew her between my legs. She grabbed at my shirt, pulling it free from my pants and fumbling with the buttons.

“Wait,” I said. I put my hands over hers again.

Her blue eyes, dark with need, flickered up to meet mine, filled with impatience and hunger, and something a little softer. Something more vulnerable and beautiful and, frankly, more shocking. Vulnerability had never been something I’d associated with Sara before.

It made me want to take her face between my hands and kiss the vulnerability right out of her, but at the same time, I wanted to thank any god that would listen that she was finally letting me past her barriers. Instead of doing either of those things, I lowered her hands to her sides, letting my fingertips skim the denim covering her hips. “Let me do all the work. Save your energy for when I make you come.”

I couldn’t believe I was going along with this, but she wasn’t going to give in without a fight.

Even though she’d surely spent the entire day at home, she was wearing a sparkly top—something I’d expect her to wear to a club, not the kind of clothes you laze around the house in. Her jeans didn’t appear to be old, comfortable, lounging jeans, either. They were skin tight and sexy as hell. Come to think of it, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her in anything grungy or less than impeccable. Unreal.

I slipped my hands beneath the band at her waist and slid the shirt up. My fingers grazed the sides of her breasts as I moved past them, not entirely unintentionally. She shivered and inched closer to me.

When I got the shirt free, I dropped it and cupped her cheek with one hand until she met my gaze. “Keep your eyes on me.”

Sara sucked in a soft, gasping sort of breath and nodded.

I took my time undressing her, exploring every new inch of skin I uncovered with my palms. With my fingers. With my lips and teeth and tongue.

In no time, her skin was flushed, her breaths shallow, her legs trembling. “Cam?” Her fingers dug into my shoulders, and she swayed.

I shouldn’t have left her standing like that for so long. “Sorry.” I put my hands on her hips and lay her on her back on the bed, watching her eyes intensely for any sign of pain. There was nothing but need reflected back in her gaze. I lay beside her, propped up on an elbow with my other hand tracing patterns over her skin as though she had tattoos covering her body. There was nothing permanent on her, though. Her skin was flawless. Smooth as her satin nighties. Just tanned enough to appear healthy and vibrant—even her breasts.

I slid down the bed and tugged her panties over her legs. I took my time going about fulfilling my earlier promise, licking and sucking her until she came, hard. Maybe too hard. Her legs and stomach were clenched, and then they shook uncontrollably while she let out soft moans.

Fuck. That kind of muscle contraction had to hurt.

I should have stuck to my guns. I should never have gone along with her plan. But it was too late now for regrets.

DRAGGING CAM INTO bed with me like that last night probably hadn’t been my brightest idea ever, because he’d been right. My ribs ached more today than they had in a little while. But it was a good fucking ache.

After he’d given me the most fantastic oral experience of my life, I’d tried to convince him I was okay enough to finish the deed properly. He hadn’t fallen for my bravado, though, and it was probably for the best. I might be in a world of hurt today if I’d had my way. For once, I was okay with letting him be right.

As it was, today was likely going to be painful enough without any added discomfort, particularly since that cramping sensation kept coming and going. Sara, Rachel, and all of the others were going wedding dress shopping, and I was going to stay home with Cam and Daddy…and meet Cam’s mother and sisters. Perfect.

I really wanted a fucking cup of coffee to help me face today, particularly since I hadn’t gotten anywhere near enough sleep in the last couple of nights, but caffeine was off-limits. Both Cam and Daddy reminded me of that when I tried to fix myself a cup.

Daddy even took the mug out of my hands and put it back into the cabinet just before I poured some coffee into it. “You’re not going to do anything that the doctor says you shouldn’t do. Not with my grandchild in there.” Then he fucking winked at me, even though he knew good and well that doing something like that would only piss me off.

I barely had a chance to properly glower at him because the doorbell rang, and all I could do was freak out about the fact that, while I had showered and put some clothes on at least, I hadn’t bothered with a bra or brushed my teeth or put on a decent pair of shoes. I was still wearing my well-worn, grungy, fuzzy house shoes.

The spoon in my hand clattered to the counter. “I’m not ready.” For the day. To face his family. For any of it. Not even close to ready. I had to fight the urge to race up the stairs and shut myself in my room and lock the door so no one could come in to bother me.

I really, seriously hated this part of myself—the part that was always running from the shit that I wanted.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Cam said quietly from directly behind me, “I’m not sure I’m ready, either.” He kissed the crown of my head then followed Daddy to answer the door.

That didn’t make me feel any better at all. This was his family, damn it.

I picked up the spoon and used the back of it like a mirror to be sure I didn’t have anything stuck in my teeth and my hair wasn’t sticking out in crazy ways. Fuck. I hadn’t put on any makeup yet. I’d hoped I would have a chance after I ate breakfast. Maybe I would have if we hadn’t slept so late today. There was no time to do it now, though, because I could already hear them, feminine titters and squeals combined with Buster’s excited yaps filling the entryway like I would expect if the wedding dress shopping party had descended upon us.

That would have been welcome. I could have handled that, and I wouldn’t care in the least about what shoes I was wearing if they were the ones here. They didn’t care about things like that. They let me just be exactly how I was. I never had to worry about making an impression with them, let alone making the right impression.

Right now, I couldn’t help but feel as though the deck was stacked against me before I ever met them. They knew I was pregnant, but did they know it wasn’t Cam’s baby? Was that going to be a bone of contention? Were they willing to keep that a secret from my father?

Talking about those sorts of things probably would have been a much better use of our time last night, now that I thought about it.

Every inch of my body was shaking as Cam and my father came down the hall, leading a group of dark-haired women and a fit, blond-haired man. One of the women was tall, like Cam, but the rest of them were petite. They were all smiling, and I tried to do the same, but before I could fix my head around it those women were all crossing over to me with their arms outstretched like they were going to hug me.

I shot a silent plea for help over to Cam with my eyes, but all he did was say, “Careful of her ribs,” the bastard, and then they were all talking at once, speaking over each other while they wrapped me up in the middle of the group and I tried not to hyperventilate, because, hello, that was way too touchy-feely considering I didn’t even know who was who yet. I silently cursed their mother for giving them all names that started with C since it would only make keeping them straight more difficult for me.

Times like these made me wish I’d had a mother who’d given a shit. Maybe then I could handle this part of being female a little better. Most of the players’ wives and girlfriends—my girls—knew I wasn’t much of a hugger. They didn’t try to get all grabby with me. Not like these women were.

I’d grown up surrounded by Daddy and all of his players and assistant coaches and other men, and men didn’t tend to be anywhere near as physically demonstrative as women. Definitely not as much as Cam’s family. How on earth had he come from the same family as all of them? He was always so soft-spoken and easygoing, and they were anything but. Then again, he might be quiet because he was never able to get a word in edge-wise.

“I’m so glad we finally get to meet you!”

“We’ve been waiting for Cam to meet someone.”

“When can we give you a baby shower?”

“Give her a chance to breathe, Cadence. Slow down.”

Yes, I needed them to slow down. They were coming at me from all directions, and I couldn’t get my bearings. Before I knew what was happening, the youngest one had taken my hand and was guiding me into the living room, and they settled me on the couch with my pillows and plopped down all around me, and I was trapped.

I glanced over my shoulder to see if Cam or Daddy, either of them, would come to my rescue. No such luck. The pair of them had taken the blond man into the dining room where they could be away from all of us.

Traitors.

When I faced the women again, my panic must have been evident on my face because Cam’s mom gave me a sympathetic smile.

“Sorry. We can be a little overenthusiastic,” she said.

“Some of us more than others,” one of the older sisters added with a nod toward the youngest, who responded by granting her elder sister a goofy expression.

“It’s all right,” I forced myself to say, and then I worked on making myself mean it. “This just came up a little sooner than I was prepared for.”

The third sister, who looked to be the oldest, probably right around my age, nodded with a wry expression. “We sprang this on you pretty fast, but there’s not much time to waste since you’ve got a baby on the way.”

Fast didn’t even come close to what this felt like. Hell, everything was happening too fast. Being pregnant. This relationship with Cam. The whole falling-in-love thing. As soon as I adjusted to one new aspect in my life, four more hit me over the head. I couldn’t find a comfort zone, a place to settle in and breathe for a minute, and that just left me flailing and praying for a soft landing.

“And we’re only here for a few days,” their mother added, “so we don’t want to waste any time. We just want to get to know you.”

“But you can come back to Winnipeg with Cam this summer,” the youngest piped in. “At least for a little while. Then we can spend more time together.”

A trip home with him this summer? Oh yeah. The train just kept picking up speed. It was already moving too fast for me to safely jump off.

A fresh cramp hit my belly, and I closed my eyes against the pain. That gave me a second to try to let everything settle in my mind, to pull my thoughts together. I took a breath and opened my eyes again, fixing my gaze on Mrs. Johnson.

“So, what do you want to know?” I asked.

“Everything!”

“When’s the baby due?”

“Is it going to be a boy or a girl?”

“Can we help name the baby?”

“Are you going to marry Cam?”

“When’s your birthday?”

“What’s your favorite dessert? Because if it isn’t something with chocolate, we can’t even be friends, let alone sisters.”

“If she doesn’t like chocolate it just means more for you, silly. Ugh.”

I wasn’t sure what left me feeling dizzier—all of their questions, or the renewed cramping on top of my rib pain.

“SHE TOLD ME upfront, right on our first date, that she would never marry a guy that you didn’t approve of.” Dylan leaned against the back of the dining room chair, relaxing a little for the first time since they’d all arrived a couple of hours ago.

Mom and the girls still had Sara in the living room, but it looked like maybe Sara was starting to let go of her tension some, too. Every now and then I heard her laugh—hers was lower and richer than theirs, a lot like her voice. I knew this was still about a million miles outside of how she’d prefer to be spending her day, but she wasn’t fighting it. She wasn’t trying to run away from it.

That gave me a little hope.

My conversation with Dylan was giving me hope, too. He had a job as a junior broker with a big investment firm in Winnipeg, but he was also in graduate school part time, working on a Masters of Finance. He wanted to move up within the company and become a financial analyst. He wanted to be able to provide well for his family.

And he wanted Chloe to be his family. He’d made that part abundantly clear.

I grunted, letting his statement sink in. “So are you asking me for approval? Is that what this is?”

“No,” he said, throwing me for a loop. “Not yet. I don’t want you to decide you approve of me—of us—two hours after you met me. You don’t know me well enough to make that kind of decision. Frankly, if you gave it to me now, I’d be pissed off at you.”

I liked this guy more by the moment. Chloe had chosen well.

“That’s smart,” Scotty said. He’d just come back to sit with us a few minutes ago after walking around for a while. “On both your parts. Don’t want to decide anything off first impressions. They’re important, but they’re not everything.”

Sara’s phone rang. It was still on the kitchen counter where she’d left it when my family arrived and hauled her off to have their way with her. I got up and grabbed it for her. Dana was trying to send a FaceTime call through, so that must mean they were ready to show her some wedding dress options.

I’d never seen her look more relieved than she did when I handed her the phone. She hit a button and answered the call.

“You ready?” Dana asked.

“You have no idea,” Sara responded, and I chuckled.

Cadence and Chloe raced around behind the sofa so they could look over her shoulders and see everything on the little screen, and Corinne and Mom both leaned in closer from the side. I headed back to the dining room, leaving them to it.

Half an hour later, Dana and Rachel had settled on their wedding dresses and picked out the color and fabric for all of the bridesmaids to wear, and they’d decided on a style for Sara’s dress. Apparently all the bridesmaids were getting different styles. Whatever. It was all done, and all the women in the house here were gushing about how gorgeous and perfect and amazing everything was going to be.

All I knew was I was starving and no one had done anything about putting lunch together. Scotty’s stomach rumbled right around the same time as that thought crossed my mind.

“Unless you’re hiding an alley cat in there, we need to eat,” I said, raising a brow in his direction.

He laughed—something he’d been doing around me more and more lately. I still wasn’t sure how to react to it, but at least he was loosening up around me some. Maybe I was loosening up around him, too.

“I was wondering when anyone else was going to notice,” Scotty said. “I hate to say anything since I haven’t been able to help out much.”

“No helping out today. You up to going out or should I order something to bring in?”

“If I don’t get out of this damn house—” he glanced at Dylan with an apologetic look on his face, even though he’d limited himself to damn instead of fucking like he would usually say “—sometime soon, I’ll go crazy. I’m sure Sara’s feeling the same way. Let’s go.”

At least he’d kept his voice down and hadn’t cursed in front of my mother. It wouldn’t have surprised her, but that didn’t mean I wanted her to hear it. I was pretty good about keeping a lid on it around her. That was something most hockey players—hell, probably most athletes—learned at a young age. Language like that was fine around the guys but not around your mothers.

We got up and filled all the girls in on the plan—Sara gave me another look that said I was rescuing her—and got everyone organized to head out. Sara still didn’t have a bra or real shoes on, so she headed upstairs to get a pair.

“Oh! Can I come with you?” Cadence begged, clapping her hands together and practically hyperventilating in her excitement over seeing Sara’s shoe collection. “Cam told me you have lots of shoes, and I’m absolutely dying to see them.”

“I don’t see why not,” Sara said, but I couldn’t interpret her tone.

I wished she’d been facing me when she’d spoken, but she was already heading down the hall toward the stairs with Cadence racing after her. The pair of them came back down a few minutes later. Sara had put on a dusting of makeup—not that she needed it—and was in a pair of bright-pink pumps that made me salivate. Not that it mattered what shoes she put on. These days, just looking at her in anything or nothing at all was enough to cause that reaction in me.

Scotty went with Mom, since the SUV she’d rented had running boards which would be easier for him to get in and out of than my truck, but that meant Cadence had to come with Sara and me.

I helped Sara in, and she carefully slid over to the middle. She winced while she did it, though. I knew I shouldn’t have gone along with her idea last night. We’d probably set her back in her recovery. Now wasn’t exactly the best time to talk about how I shouldn’t have given her oral and made her come, though, since my barely seventeen-year-old sister was clambering up to sit beside her.

“You’re going to look amazing in that bridesmaid dress,” Cadence gushed. “With your boobs? Hello, cleavage. What shoes are you going to wear with it?”

Sara shot me a look that was equal parts mortification and bemusement. I shut the door after Cadence got settled, chuckling the whole way around to the driver’s side and wondering about Sara’s shoes just as much as my sister was. Even if I’d had months to try to prepare Sara to meet my family, it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing in the world could prepare a person for Cadence.

On the way to Amani’s—the only place I could think of that would be able to handle a large group on a Saturday at a moment’s notice—Sara leaned into my side.

Small victories. I had to appreciate them when I recognized them.

Maybe today hadn’t been too difficult for her yet.

SPENDING THE DAY with Cam’s family hadn’t been horrible. Far from it, actually. I’d definitely been overwhelmed at first, but the more time I spent with them, the more I wanted to.

Mrs. Johnson made me think of Mrs. Campbell a lot, the sort of mom who would give you a homemade cookie or brownies or something equally soothing and bad for you after a crappy day. She was easy to talk to, and even though she asked a lot of questions, it never felt like she was prying—she just wanted to get to know who I was beyond whatever the Canadian news had to say.

Corinne was the oldest sister. She was petite, like Mrs. Johnson, and had some natural curl to her long, brown hair. She worked as a nurse at one of the major hospitals in Winnipeg, and of all the Johnson women, she was the most reserved—kind of like me, in that regard. It wasn’t that she didn’t want me to know anything about her; she just wanted to be cautious about how much she shared and why. I got the impression that her trust didn’t come easily, but once you’d earned it, you had it for life. That was something I could relate to.

Cadence, the youngest, was possibly Corinne’s exact opposite in every way, other than their height and hair color. She was a bundle of exuberance and curious about everything, but not in a way that felt intrusive. I honestly wasn’t sure how she pulled that off, because with anyone else, I’d be wanting them to back off. Cadence’s endless questions just made me laugh, though. She was still in high school, and she was a pairs figure skater who was hoping to be selected to Canada’s national team in the next year or two so she could compete internationally. From everything they told me, she probably had a good shot at that.

Then there was Chloe, the tall, middle sister with lighter, sleeker hair that had been cut in a sassy bob and the gorgeous boyfriend. The whole time we’d talked about wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses, Chloe had been the most into the conversation. She didn’t have a ring on her finger, but it was pretty obvious she was hoping for one sometime soon and was trying to soak in all the details so she was prepared to make those decisions for herself. She was an undergraduate majoring in elementary education. I couldn’t imagine having a career that would require being surrounded by kids all day. I didn’t dislike kids—hell, I was about to have one of my own—but the thought of being surrounded by so many of them all day long was enough to make me break out in hives. She seemed like the type who could pull it off, though—smart, funny, energetic. If anyone had the tools for that job, it was probably her.

After we’d come back from lunch, they had all stuck around while the wedding dress party came over to do some modeling in person. It wasn’t long after that before Soupy, Babs, and Zee had showed up with Rachel’s kids, and we’d had a house full of people the rest of the day. Someone ordered pizza around the time Kally and Webs showed up with the puppy and the Weber teenagers, and then the house was so full I couldn’t hear myself think.

At one point, I sneaked up the stairs to have a few minutes of quiet, using the bathroom as my excuse. When I came out, Cam was waiting for me in my bedroom.

“How did you know I was up here with all that insanity going on?” I asked.

“I’ve been watching you. All day.” He held out his arms, and it was the easiest, most natural thing in the world to go into them. He knew just how to hold me to ease all of my stress away. “This hasn’t been too much for you, has it? They’ll all go home soon.”

I shook my head, my nose brushing against his shirt as I did. “It actually helped to have all the others come over.” They gave me a buffer—a way to get to know Cam’s family without it being strictly just me and them. I felt more like myself, too, when I was around Dana and Laura and the others. I didn’t feel like I had to put on a show. I could just be me, and then Mrs. Johnson and her girls could see who I really was without all my nerves and anxiety poking through to the surface and making me prickly.

He bent his head down so his nose was buried in my hair, and he breathed in deeply. “How are your ribs?” Even as he asked, he placed the palm of his hand on them, just where the pain was always at its worst.

How the hell could he make that sound sexy?

“Not too bad,” I said. “Better than this morning.”

“Then why have you been cringing all day?”

I shook my head and pulled away from him. “It’s nothing.” Just gas. That was what I kept telling myself, at least. I headed for the door.

“I don’t like it when you lie to me, Sara. I wish you trusted me enough to tell me the truth.”

It wasn’t about trust, though. It was about fear and about my own belief that if I didn’t speak my fear aloud then maybe it wouldn’t come true. I went down the stairs and rejoined the party, and I tried to push it all out of my mind. That wasn’t easy to do, though, because the rest of the evening I felt Cam’s eyes on me. It was as if he was trying to stare through me in order to get to the bottom of things.

Eventually, everyone started to trickle out and head home for the night. The team had practice in the morning, so they needed to get some rest. Maddie and Tuck needed to get to bed, and Noelle’s puppy had been fighting sleep for so long that his head looked like it was about to fall off his body. Having this many people around had proven to be way too much excitement for the little guy. Dana, Zee, and Babs had been the last to leave. They’d stuck around to help tidy up the mess. It was almost ten o’clock before the three of them headed out the door, leaving the house suddenly empty and quiet.

Now that they’d all gone home, I realized just how exhausted I was—physically, emotionally, and in every other conceivable way. What might have exhausted me more than anything else was what Cadence asked me right before they left to go back to Cam’s house.

“Do you love him? Because he really, really loves you, Sara.”

She’d asked it quietly, when no one else was right beside us. That might have been the first quiet thing she’d said the whole day, actually.

I knew she was right about her brother and his feelings for me. It went beyond the simple fact that he’d told me he loved me. Everything he did, the way he treated me—it all added up to love. Lust wasn’t enough to account for his actions. Neither was any sort of misplaced guilt he might feel about Daddy’s heart attack. There wasn’t any good, reasonable explanation that fit. He might have initially told my father that he was the one who’d gotten me pregnant for some reason other than love, but everything else? The way he was so careful with me. The way he gave up all his free time to take care of not only me but also my father. The way he was willing to risk his position on the team in order to pursue a relationship with me, the coach’s daughter. The way he bathed me and washed and dried my hair and held me at night, all night, without thought to his own comfort. These were the actions of a man in love.

A man in love with me.

But did I love him, too? Hell, did I even deserve him? I wasn’t sure. Of any of it.

“I don’t know,” I’d said to her. “I care about him, more than I ever expected to. I don’t want to do anything to hurt him. But I also don’t want to lie and tell you what I think you want to hear. I don’t want to say it unless it’s the truth, unless I know it’s the truth and I believe it with everything that’s in me.”

I’m not sure what reaction I’d been expecting, but it definitely hadn’t been the big grin she’d given me. “Okay,” she’d said. “But when you do figure it out, you should tell him first. He deserves to know.”

At the moment, as Cam was taking me upstairs so we could go to bed, that was the question that kept racing through my head: Do you love him? Falling in love with him hadn’t been in my plans, but then again, not much of anything that had happened lately had been in my plans. Maybe I didn’t know what was best for me in this case, and maybe falling in love with a hockey player wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

At least it wouldn’t be if it was Cam.

He closed the door behind us, and he kissed me—a slow, languorous kiss that shouldn’t have turned me on like it did. And, like he had every night since coming to stay here, he helped me change clothes, all the while being cautious of my injury. But it was more than just caution. There was love in every movement he made, as though he was being careful with me not just so he wouldn’t hurt me but because I was precious.

He was taking such tender care in helping me that it brought tears to my eyes. My arms were up over my head so he could pull my shirt free, and I tried to brush the stupid tears away before he noticed. I should have known that wasn’t possible, though. He noticed everything about me, always.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked as I lowered my arms. He tossed my shirt onto the bed and cupped my cheeks, using his thumbs to brush away the wetness that was continuing to fall.

I shook my head, wishing I could make myself stop crying, but it all just kept building within me.

He slipped his arms around me, holding me close like he had that night in the hospital after Daddy’s heart attack. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head again. What I wanted was for someone to sift through everything that had been going through my head over the last couple of weeks and tell me what it all meant. Did I love him? Would it come between me and Daddy if I did? How would I be able to handle it if there were two men in my life—two men who I loved—and one of them had to go to a different team, a different city? Hockey players and coaches moved around all the time. How long would I have with both of them here, together, in Portland?

I’d never wanted to date a hockey player, but for the first time in my life I was starting to come to terms with the reasons behind that refusal. Only now, it might be too late for me to be coming to this realization.

“Okay,” Cam said softly. “It’s been a long day. We don’t have to talk about it right now.” He sat on the edge of the bed, pulled me onto his lap, and held me until the tears stopped.

After sniffling for a few minutes and reveling in the way he held me, his hands moving gingerly along my back, repeatedly, in a manner that both soothed and inflamed, I tilted my head up so I could see him. His hazel eyes were staring down at me, worried.

I stretched my neck so I could kiss his chin, despite the two-weeks’ growth of scratchy facial hair.

“Don’t go asking me to hurt you again tonight,” he warned.

I shook my head. While sex wasn’t far from my mind, it was definitely not in the cards for tonight. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Anything.”

“Why do you love me?” I sounded so damn vulnerable when I asked him that, and I fucking hated to be vulnerable. I never wanted anyone to see me when I was weak, but Cam could do that to me. He made me feel fragile, but in a way I’d never experienced before. It was as though being open with him in this way gave me a different kind of strength. I hadn’t wrapped my head around it yet. I was almost afraid to.

“Why do I love you?”

Was it possible for him to come across as both fierce and soft at the same time? He looked like an avenging teddy bear, like a man determined to love me into submission until I couldn’t help but love him back.

He might not have to try too much harder, either.

“I love you because you have the sexiest pout in the world. I love you because you won’t get mad at me if I accidentally curse in front of you, since you probably curse more than I do. I love you because you’re even more stubborn than I am. I love you because even when you frustrate the hell out of me, you fascinate me. I love you because you might be wary about letting me and my family love you, but you have good friends and you keep them close, and that means you’re loyal. I love you because you let me hold you when you cry and because you wake up wanting to kiss me. I love you because you went to visit my dog when I was gone. I love you because you would do anything for your father and that means your family is important to you. I love you because you’re you, Sara.”

If I hadn’t already melted into a puddle of goo when he’d told me he loved me because I was stubborn, not in spite of the fact that I was, the way he kissed me when he got to the end of that speech would have done the trick. He put every bit of that love that he’d professed into it, one hand cupping my cheek as his lips brushed gently across mine and the tips of our noses rubbed together.

My heart felt like it was going to thunder out of my chest because of all the feels he was making me feel, and my hand shook as I lifted it to press his closer to me so I could feel more of his touch.

He slipped his hand back toward the nape of my neck and eased me forward so he could kiss my forehead. “Come on. Let’s finish getting you ready for bed.”

There was no chance I was going to fall asleep anytime soon. Not with that frantic pulse and the thousands of thoughts racing even faster through my mind.

My whole world had been tipped on its axis in the last couple of weeks—but I was starting to think that maybe I didn’t mind too much.

SARA HAD BEEN squirming and trying to find a comfortable position every few minutes for hours. The sun was already starting to come up, but she probably hadn’t even gotten a good hour of sleep the whole night with all the tossing and turning she was doing. Which meant I hadn’t gotten any sleep to speak of. I couldn’t because I was so worried about her. I’d spent the whole day knowing I’d caused her pain, and now she was in so much distress that she couldn’t sleep.

I was an ass. Especially since I’d known what kind of shape she would have been in yesterday, and yet I’d asked her to go through a full day of dealing with my family. She hadn’t been up to that, but she’d gone along with it, and now she was even more miserable than she’d been before. I wished there was something I could do to take some of the pain away. Anything. But all I could do was hold her and try to make her as comfortable as I could.

What really worried me, though, was when she started moaning in her sleep—a painful sound, followed by a whimper.

That was it. I couldn’t take any more. I eased my hand along her back, hoping the movement would rouse her gently and not startle her awake. I’d learned in the last couple of weeks, though, that she could be a pretty heavy sleeper—she woke when she was ready to wake and not before then—and now was no exception to that rule.

“Sara?” I said, my mouth next to her ear. “Wake up, baby.”

She whimpered again, and I rolled us until she was on her back and I was on my side next to her. Her eyes popped open, and she blinked a couple of times before moaning and pulling her knees up to her chest.

Fuck. If it was her ribs bothering her, getting into that position would only make it hurt worse. Was it a really bad case of morning sickness or something else like that—something to be expected? Or was something wrong with the baby? That thought made me feel nauseated.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, brushing her hair out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ear. “Talk to me. Let me help.”

She shook her head and struggled to get up, heading straight into the bathroom and closing the door behind her, shutting me out. It felt like an eternity went by with just odd sounds coming from the other side of that door, nothing I could distinguish. It didn’t seem like she was puking, but that realization didn’t exactly calm my nerves.

Finally, I heard the swish of the toilet flushing and the flow of water from the sink. A moment later, she opened the door.

“I think I need to go to the hospital,” she said just before bursting into tears.

I’d never felt more useless than I did at that moment.

I COULDN’T SIT still. Everyone kept telling me I needed to calm down—doctors, nurses, Scotty, Mom—the whole lot of them wanted me to sit and be calm and patient while we waited. But I couldn’t.

So I paced.

Corinne went with me to walk outside, trying to calm me down. “She might not have miscarried,” she said. “Spotting is normal in early pregnancy. Lots of women have that. It’s nothing to worry about.” She said a whole lot of other things, too, but none of them had helped because it had been a hell of a lot more than just spotting. There was also something else I’d overheard Corinne telling Chloe and Cadence weighing on my mind: fifteen percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Maybe a lot more than that.

After a while, she gave up on the idea of getting me to talk about it, and she went back inside. I went in, too, when I realized that the fresh air wasn’t helping. Nothing would help but seeing Sara, knowing that she was okay. Until then, I would continue to feel like someone was ripping my heart out from the inside. It had started back in Sara’s bedroom when she’d broken down in tears. The big kicker, though, had come when we’d arrived at the ER and she’d told them she didn’t want me to stay with her.

She didn’t want her father, either. Hell, she’d refused to let anyone at all in the examination room other than hospital staff until Dana and Zee had arrived. It was only when Dana had threatened to never speak to her again if she didn’t let someone come in and sit with her that she’d relented. So she had Dana, at least. Sara wasn’t alone, even though she was trying to be.

I glanced at the sea of faces staring at me in the waiting room without seeing any of them, and I went over to the coffee station to fix myself a cup. My hands shook so badly that I spilled half the sweetener on the counter, which pissed me off so bad I crushed the Styrofoam cup and threw it at the wall.

“Here, let me,” someone said beside me. Not just someone. Scotty. He reached over and took another cup from the stack. “How many?” he asked with his hand hovering over the tin of sweetener packets.

Why was he helping me? He had to be just as worried as I was. Maybe even more. Sara was his little girl.

“Two,” I finally got out.

He ripped open two packets and emptied them into the cup. “Sara’s mom miscarried—before Sara was born. Twice, actually. We’d almost given up on the thought of having a baby because it was so hard when we lost one. You just feel helpless.”

This was worse than that. Because I knew something was wrong yesterday. I could feel it. She wouldn’t tell me about it, but I knew. She could have come in yesterday, gotten help. Maybe they could have done something to stop the miscarriage. Maybe—

“You’re beating yourself up with what-ifs and maybes,” Scotty grumbled, interrupting my thoughts. He finished fixing my coffee and handed it to me. “Don’t shake so hard you spill that,” he added in an offhand way. “What if she’d come in last night? What if she hadn’t been in that car wreck? You can’t keep doing that. That’s not going to help her, and it’s not going to help you.”

It was all I had, though, because she wouldn’t let me see her. She wouldn’t let me be with her. She wouldn’t let me hold her hand.

She wouldn’t let me in.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so honest with her last night when she asked me why I loved her. I might have been too real, and now she was pushing back at a time when she was at her most vulnerable, trying to push me away like she always did with men. I’d seen it happen enough times to know it was her pattern. I’d broken through more of her defenses than any of the rest of them had, and she was scared. And this was how she fought back.

“You know what she’s doing, right?” Scotty asked.

I looked up and met his eyes. They were just as blue as Sara’s, just as expressive. He stared hard, almost through me.

“She’s trying to push you away.”

That wasn’t news. I scoffed and turned to walk away, but he clapped a strong hand down on my shoulder.

“Hold on. Hear me out.”

I spun around again.

“She’s trying to push you away because she thinks you’ll go. She’s starting to care too much, and she’s scared because everyone in her life that she’s cared about as much as she cares about you—everyone except for me—has left her in the end. She’s sure you’re going to leave her, too, so she’s trying to beat you to the punch. She’s trying to force your hand, to make you fit the mold of what she expects you to be and push you into doing what everyone else has always done.”

“Well, she’s already won, then, hasn’t she? She won’t let me in. She won’t give me a chance.”

“She’s pretty stubborn, isn’t she?”

As stubborn as anyone I’d ever met. I’d just told her that was one of the things I loved about her. Usually, I did…when that very same stubbornness wasn’t driving me insane.

“She’s at her most stubborn when she’s most wrong.” Scotty poured a cup of decaf and took a sip, eyeing me over the cup. “That’s a trait she inherited from me, so I should know. You’re not, though. You’re at your most stubborn when you’re most right. Or at least that’s how it’s always seemed to me. Maybe it’s time to show her that she’s not the most stubborn of the pair of you. If you can’t figure out how to out-stubborn her, I’m not sure you’re the man I thought you were, and I don’t know if you deserve her.”

“WE PUT A rush on that bloodwork,” the nurse told me as she prepared my gurney to be wheeled through the hospital. The ER doctor was sending me to OB for an ultrasound. He’d said there was a possibility that I was miscarrying, but the labs and the ultrasound should give them a better idea of what was going on in my body.

So much for the idea of it just being gas. But then again, I’d never known gas to cause spotting, and what I’d found this morning was more than just a little spotting—plus there was the crazy cramping, worse even than I normally had with my oh-so-favorite time of the month.

The nurse hooked the IV bag on a pole that was sticking up somewhere behind my head, raised the back of the bed so I was in more of a sitting position, and unlocked the wheels. “Want your friend to come with you? That’d be all right. They won’t allow more than one person to be with you, but she can come.”

She inclined her head to indicate Dana, who was standing next to me. She’d been standing there for almost an hour, never leaving my side despite all of my grumpy insisting that she should go. I’d never been anywhere that it took longer to get things done than a hospital emergency room. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to see the inside of one again for a long time. They made me crazy, all the sitting and waiting, and then rush, rush, rush to wait some more. None of it had fazed Dana, though. She’d just stood there and held my hand through it all. She hadn’t let go of it once since she’d come back into the exam room to stay with me, no matter how much of an ass I’d been.

I didn’t want anyone to be in there with me if the result was what I expected it to be, but I doubted I could go through something like this alone. I swallowed hard and nodded.

“All right then, off we go. You can just follow alongside her, honey,” she said to Dana. “But if we come to narrow doorways, let me move the gurney through and then you can catch up.”

“Got it,” Dana said.

We’d barely gotten out into the hall when my gurney came to a sudden stop. Cam was standing in the way. There was no room to move around him—he’d have to step to one side or the other—but he had his arms crossed over his chest and his feet planted shoulder-width apart, and he didn’t look like he had any intention of going anywhere until he was good and ready. He looked as immovable as a boulder.

“Mr. Johnson,” the nurse said sympathetically, “she’s already said she doesn’t want you present. I’m sorry, but you have to go back to the waiting room or I’ll have to call sec—”

“You don’t need to call security,” he interrupted. He was speaking to her, but he was looking at me. Piercing me, more like. His expression was full of every emotion in the book—fear, anger, desperation, worry, frustration. And love. Always love, damn him. “I’ll go and I won’t give you any more problems, but I want two minutes first, Sara.”

If I didn’t give him that, I had no doubt he would refuse to budge, and the nurse would have to call security to have him removed. Cam had proved over and over again that he would break the rules to do what he thought was right, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he would do the same thing right now.

“Fine,” I bit off. “Two minutes.”

The nurse gave me a nod, Dana squeezed my hand, and they both backed away when Cam came over to the side of my bed.

All he had to do was kiss my forehead and my tears started falling.

“I love you,” he said gruffly. “That’s not going to change, and you’re not going to run me off. I told you up front that I was an all-or-nothing kind of guy. That I intended to pursue you and that I wasn’t going to walk out of your life. I told you I wouldn’t make it easy on you if you tried to shove me out. Do you remember all of that?”

I blinked, but that only made more tears fall. I remembered it all too well. He’d said all of that and more the night he’d first made love to me. He brushed away some of the wetness on my cheek with the pad of his thumb, rendering me speechless. I nodded.

“None of that has changed. None of it will change. I understand that you’re scared, and you’re trying to push me away, but I’m not going anywhere. You need to get that through your thick skull. I’m not going anywhere.” He bent down and brushed his lips over mine for the briefest of moments, just long enough to make me shiver, before backing away.

He was right. I was scared. I was scared to let myself love him. No one but Daddy ever came through for me, so it was easier to not get too close because, no matter how much he promised me he wasn’t going anywhere, I didn’t think I could believe that. Life had proven him wrong. I was scared that I was losing this baby, and that would probably be the end of us, whatever we were. Yeah, I was fucking terrified.

“I love you,” he said one more time, walking backward down the hall.

I hated how much I was crying. I hated that my vulnerability was on full display around him and that I couldn’t seem to keep it in check. I finally got a handle on my tears and found my voice again, just in time to call out, “You might be in luck. You might be off the hook,” just before he disappeared around the corner.

“Maybe it’s just me,” the nurse said when she and Dana returned, “but he doesn’t seem like a man who wants to be let off the hook.”

Dana took my hand, but she was frowning. “It’s not just you.”

I started crying again, dozens of hot, fat tears spilling down my cheeks at a rapid clip. “God, why am I such a bitch?” I’d just said something awful to him, with the intention of hurting him. So he’d break things off before I loved him any deeper than I already did, because I didn’t think I could handle it if it happened later. I didn’t think I would survive it if I fell any more in love with him and then he realized he didn’t want me as much as he seemed to think he did right now.

“The crazy thing,” Dana said, “is he loves you anyway.”

And he still hadn’t given up on his crazy idea of pursuing me. Maybe he really wasn’t going to walk away.

But it hurt too much to let myself hope that could be the case.

“WE’RE GOING TO admit you so we can monitor you overnight,” the doctor said. “We’ll run the blood work this evening, in the middle of the night, and again in the morning to see if your HCG levels are changing at all.”

I nodded, but I was numb all over. They hadn’t found a heartbeat when they’d done the ultrasound. The technician had even used a long wand that went up my hoo-ha, saying it would be more accurate and she’d be more likely to find the heartbeat that way. But…nothing.

She’d tried to reassure me that it didn’t mean anything, that I was still early in my pregnancy and there could be lots of reasons why she couldn’t find a heartbeat, but I just… I knew. When the doctor delivered the results of my blood-work after that, it only further confirmed what I already believed.

I was miscarrying.

“There’s nothing you can do?” Dana asked. “To stop it, I mean?”

“I’m afraid not,” the doctor said. “We can help make her more comfortable, and we can offer counseling to help with the loss, but there are any number of reasons why a woman’s body might reject a pregnancy. That doesn’t mean you won’t ever be able to have a baby,” he added, turning back to me. “Most women who suffer a miscarriage go on to have perfectly healthy babies afterwards.”

Yeah, a chance. A very slim chance, it sounded like, based on everything they’d told me so far. My HCG level—some sort of hormonal indicator of pregnancy—was lower than it had been when I’d first gone to visit my OB-GYN, and they said it should have been essentially doubling every few days.

The doctor closed up my chart and tucked it under one arm. “Do you have any more questions for me right now?”

I shook my head.

“They’re getting a room ready for you. It shouldn’t be much longer. You can bring more of your family back here with you while you wait, if you want.” He left the exam room before I could blink, probably heading off to see some other patient. The ER had been hopping today.

Dana pulled a chair over closer to me, since they were done poking and prodding me for a while. “You want me to go get your dad? Or Cam?”

I didn’t want anyone else to be here. I was having a hard enough time keeping it together with just Dana around. If anyone else came in, I was going to completely lose it. “Not right now.”

“Will you be all right for a little while if I go fill them in? Lots of people out there are worried about you, you know.”

“Yeah, go on.” If she left for a little bit, I could fall apart and then put myself back together again before she returned. Or at least I could try to.

She squeezed my hand before she got up.

As soon as the curtain drifted closed behind her, I curled into a fetal position and let my tears fly. I made so much noise with my sobbing that the nurse came in to check on me, thinking I must be in pain. And I was, but it wasn’t the sort of pain she could give me some drugs for. Morphine wouldn’t touch this. She brought me a box of tissues and left them on my bed, and then she left again.

I’d almost gotten the worst of it out of my system when an orderly came in a little bit later.

“Your room’s all ready,” he said. “I’ll take you up and get you settled in. Should we wait for anyone to come back before we go?”

I was about to tell him Dana should be back any minute now, but there wasn’t any need to wait. She walked back into the exam room…with Daddy beside her. At least she hadn’t brought Cam. Still, I scowled at her so she’d know I wasn’t happy about it.

“Oh, excellent timing,” the orderly said. “We were just about to head up to her room. You can both come with us.”

Dana picked up the bag with my clothes and my purse, and off we all went. Before long, the orderly had gotten me settled into my room and the nurse on the floor had poked her head into the room to introduce herself. I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted the doctors and nurses, and the rest of the hospital staff to leave me be. I wanted Daddy to go home. I wanted Cam to take his family and go back to his house. If Dana was going to insist on staying, I wanted her to sit in the chair farthest away from me and watch TV or read a book or do anything but try to get me to talk.

None of that seemed very likely to happen, though. If I knew anything about hospitals—and after the last couple of weeks, I was getting to know a lot about them—it was that they never left you alone. There was always someone coming in to draw more blood or change an IV bag or check your blood pressure. It didn’t matter if you were asleep; they just came in and did what they needed to do, and you had to deal with it.

At the moment, I was not in the right frame of mind to deal with it.

Daddy took a seat in the chair closest to my bed, and Dana found a drawer to put my clothes in, then sat out of the way near the window. Once the nurse and orderly had everything situated and they left, Daddy said, “The boys had to leave to go to practice a little while ago.”

The boys? Just how many of them had been here? That meant one good thing, though—that meant Cam was gone, at least for now. He couldn’t come barging in here, forcing me to have the nurse kick him out.

“You should really go home, Daddy. There’s nothing for you to do here but worry.” Nothing but make me feel like crying again, at least. The longer he sat there beside me, the more it built within me. He knew how much I hated getting emotional. He and I were both far more comfortable being pissed off about something than we were about letting our feelings out. That was how we’d always dealt with things, and I saw no reason to change it now.

“There’s nothing for me to do at home but worry, either,” he said. “But…why don’t you let Cam come and sit here with you, and I’ll see if Dana will take me home?”

Cam? He shouldn’t be here still. He should be gone with the rest of the guys. “You said the boys all left for practice.”

“The rest of them did. The coaches and Jim and I all talked about it, and we agreed that he was needed here a lot more than he needed another day of practice.”

“Hell of a lot of good he’ll do anyone sitting around in the waiting room. He’s not coming in here with me.” If he wasn’t at practice with the boys, then he should be with his family. They’d come all the way from Winnipeg to see him. And to meet me. I quickly brushed that thought away.

Daddy stared at me for a long time, giving me the sense that he was waiting to see if I’d break. I couldn’t break. I was already broken.

“Well, be that as it may, I sincerely doubt he’ll be leaving this hospital until you do.”

“It wasn’t his baby,” I blurted out. “He wasn’t the father. He was just trying to protect me.” I was so shocked that I’d said it that I sucked in a breath and held it. What was I doing? Why would I tell Daddy now?

“I know that,” he said after what felt like an eternity.

“You knew? How could you have known?”

“I never believed the story he fed me about dating you behind my back. Not even for a second. Cam might not always follow the rules someone else tells him he has to follow, but he has his own code, and he sticks to it. He’s a stand-up man.” Daddy took my hand. “There are a lot of men who would run for the hills if a woman they were interested in was pregnant with someone else’s baby. He didn’t. He ran straight for you without any sort of an escape plan. That told me he wanted you—all of you—no matter what else that entailed. This baby might not be his, but he wants it to be his. Because he wants you, and he loves you. And he’s hurting just as much as you are right now. Maybe not physically. But in here.” He tapped his other hand over his heart. “Where it matters—that’s where he hurts. And that’s why he’s not going to leave, baby girl. Because for him, there’s nothing in this world that’s capable of easing that hurt but you, and I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the world that can ease the hurt inside you but him.”

He carefully got up from the chair and squeezed my hand before releasing it. “Dana, how about that ride home? I can help you put together a bag to bring back for her.”

“Of course,” she said. The two of them got up and left. I was tempted to throw my pillow in frustration, but then I would be without a pillow. Plus, it would probably just cause me more pain. Damn it.

EVEN THOUGH SARA still refused to let me in to be with her, I didn’t leave the hospital. I couldn’t. The thought of being anywhere else while she was going through something like this, even though she wouldn’t let me go through it with her, tore me up in ways I had never imagined before.

I had hoped she would have let me come back while Dana was taking Scotty home, but that didn’t happen. She asked the nurse to keep me out of her room, as she would rather be alone than talk to me.

Mom, the girls, and Dylan stayed with me most of the day. They’d come to Portland to spend time with me, after all, though it wasn’t turning into a very good visit. Part of me wished they hadn’t come at all, but really, I was glad they were here. They kept me grounded. They kept me sane. Dylan, in particular, was proving to be more than what I’d expected him to be. He didn’t try to make me talk about any of it like Cadence wanted me to do. He didn’t hover like Mom. He didn’t look at me like I was going to blow at any moment like Chloe and Corinne did. He was just there, a steady presence when I felt like the rug had been ripped out from beneath me and tossed over my head for good measure.

Several of the guys came back after practice and brought us lunch so we wouldn’t have to eat cafeteria food. When Noelle arrived in the early afternoon, she went up to sit with Sara for a while so Dana could have a break. Rachel and her kids didn’t come to the hospital—instead, they went to sit with Scotty at his house. That was probably a better place for the kids to be at a time like this, anyway.

Each time the hospital ran the labs, Sara’s HCG levels had dropped further.

After the guys and my family left for the evening, leaving Dana and me the only ones still at the hospital, I tried to get comfortable so I could sleep upright in one of those horrible waiting room chairs. At one point, a nurse took pity on me and brought me a cot, a pillow, and a blanket. I was too heavy for the cot, though. It collapsed under me before I even got back to sleep, so I moved over to the chair again. At least I had the blanket and pillow.

By morning, the doctors confirmed that Sara was miscarrying. They sent her home with a prescription for pain, since her cramping had only intensified, and said it shouldn’t last much longer than a day or two more. She was supposed to rest for a week. Then it would all be over…only it wouldn’t be. Not really. The physical part of it would eventually come to an end, but that barely scratched the surface.

When she was discharged, she begrudgingly let me take her home—but only because all of her other options were busy. The guys were all at the morning skate since Game Six was that night; Rachel had dropped her kids off at school and gone to work; Katie was getting what should be her final chemo treatment and so, of course, Laura was with her; Dana had to take her mother back to the airport; and Scotty still wasn’t allowed to drive. That only left me.

The whole way to her house, she wouldn’t speak to me. She just stared out the window of my pickup truck while tears fell down her cheeks. When I pulled into the driveway and put the truck in park, she climbed down without waiting for me to help her and headed straight for the door.

Scotty had invited my family to come over for the day, so they were all there waiting. Sara took one look around the living room and headed up the stairs without a word, locking herself in her bedroom. She was supposed to rest, so I knew she wouldn’t be coming to the game that night. Mom and the girls were all going, and Dylan, too. Scotty intended to stay home to look after Sara while we were gone since I couldn’t stay, not that she was letting me do anything while I was there. I got the impression that she wanted to call the cops to have me escorted off the property, but the house belonged to Scotty, and he told her I was his guest. That was probably the only thing stopping her.

When I had to leave for the game, Scotty reached for my hand before I could get to the door. I took his, and we shook.

“Will you be coming back tonight?” he asked.

I looked up to the top of the stairs while I debated my options. Eventually, she was going to have to come out of her room. If I was around enough, at some point she would have to talk to me, even if it was just to tell me to get out of her way or ask me to reach something she couldn’t. It didn’t matter what initiated the conversation between us. If we were going to talk, if we were going to work through this and come out on the other side of it, I had to be around. I nodded.

“Good man.”

Most of the usual suspects were up in the owner’s box when we arrived, along with a few other out-of-town family members like mine. I got Mom and my sisters settled, making sure they found people they at least recognized to talk to before I headed off to do my thing, and Dylan planted himself right by Chloe’s side. He was one of very few men up here, but Babs’s dad had come even if the rest of the Babcock family was still back home in Ontario. Cadence and Katie had really hit it off over the last couple of days, so I was glad to see Katie was there. I hadn’t been sure she would be since she’d had to go in for a treatment only that morning.

I sat through the pre-game meeting in the locker room. I went up to the press box with the other guys who’d been scratched tonight—including Nicky. He’d apparently been sent home from the hospital in Vancouver finally, but he still wasn’t cleared to play. I didn’t know when he would be, but it felt awkward to ask him. This wasn’t a typical injury or illness situation. This seemed more like an addiction. My father’s addictions had broken my family apart and forced me to take on his role for my sisters. That didn’t leave me with a good taste about addictions. But Nicky was one of the boys—one of my friends. I just didn’t know how to proceed with that, so I figured it was best to leave it for him to determine.

He sat down next to me in the press box, but we didn’t really talk. We just watched. Everyone up there was on edge tonight. If the boys won the game, then we’d win the series and move on to the next round. If they lost, we’d have to head back to Vancouver for one more game to sort it all out.

It turned out to be a great game, one I wished I’d been able to focus on better. I couldn’t get my mind off Sara, though, and how I was going to get her to come around. What could I do to convince her to stop pushing me away? Nothing came to mind, and before I knew it there were only a few minutes left in the game, and the Storm were up three to one.

Nicky nudged me in the ribs. I’d hardly said a word to him even though we had been sitting next to each other all night long. “Come on, Jonny,” he said. “We need to go put on our gear.”

“Put on our gear?”

“For the handshake line.”

That was one of the longest-standing traditions in the NHL. When a playoff series came to an end, the two teams met at center ice after it was all over, and everyone shook hands. If the boys held on to this lead for these final few minutes, that would be happening soon. I ought to be excited about that. I ought to feel something. Anything.

I stumbled after the other boys and went down to the locker room. They had some TVs playing in there so we could keep up with the action while we changed. With three minutes remaining, the Canucks pulled their goalie for an extra attacker and they promptly scored, pulling within a single goal.

As soon as they got possession of the puck again, they tried for a repeat performance. Their attack was relentless. Our defenders were winded. Hunter somehow held on, and the clock ticked down to zero.

We’d won.

The boys with me in the locker room went nuts, celebrating together before we got out to the ice with the rest of the team. I gave them high fives and that sort of thing, but I couldn’t seem to get my excitement to where it ought to be in a situation like this.

I followed the guys down the tunnel. I celebrated with the team on the ice. I went through the motions of the handshake line, not hearing a single thing any of the Canucks said to me as I skated past them.

We still didn’t know which team we’d face in the next round. LA and Phoenix were heading to a game-seven situation. Whichever team it was, if we managed to get to five games, I’d get to play again. I’d get to go back on the ice and do the job I was paid to do.

But none of it seemed to matter because I couldn’t celebrate it with Sara.

AFTER THE GAME was over and they’d aired the handshake line, they moved on to analyzing the Storm’s chances in the next round. We’d been watching that for a while, but then Daddy surprised me by turning off the TV and climbing up the stairs.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making sure Rose left the guest room ready for someone to stay in it tonight when she was cleaning today.”

Oh. He’d probably worked out who would be coming to spend the night with us tonight while I was in the hospital or hiding out in my room earlier. I might have been able to handle spending the day with Cam around, if not for the fact that his family had been there, too. That had just been too much for me, too many people trying to make me feel better when there was nothing at all that could possibly make me feel better. I hadn’t wanted anyone trying to hug me. I hadn’t wanted to talk about it. I hadn’t wanted to do anything at all, and so I’d gone into my room and done just that.

It had only been after they’d all left, when it was just me, Daddy, and Buster remaining in the house, that I’d been able to face the thought of coming out of my room. Daddy knew better than to push me into talking about things until I was ready, and Buster was possibly the perfect companion for a time like this. All he wanted to do was cuddle, which was fine with me. That was what we’d done through the whole game, and he only stopped now to race after Daddy on his way up the stairs.

I was fairly certain that it wouldn’t be Cam coming back to the house after the way I’d brushed him off the last couple of days. Maybe Dana or Noelle was coming. Either of them would be fine.

But then…why would Cam have left his dog here if he wasn’t planning to come back? Surely he wouldn’t have, would he? I got up and went into the kitchen to fix a cup of tea. The whole time I was doing that, I attempted to sort out how I would feel if Cam walked through the door in a little bit.

You might be in luck. You might be off the hook.

I still couldn’t believe I’d said something so cold and heartless to him. More than that, I couldn’t believe he hadn’t completely turned his back on me afterward.

Was that what I’d been hoping for when I’d said it? That he would think I was as much of a bitch as I felt like I was and that he’d walk away? He hadn’t. The nurses at the hospital told me he’d slept in the waiting room all night, that he’d been unwilling to leave. One of them had encouraged me to let him come into my room, but I couldn’t face him after saying such an awful thing to him. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing the hurt on his face. Even when he’d brought me home today, I’d carefully avoided looking at him, but I could feel his pain creeping into the space between us. That had only made me hurt more than I was already hurting.

When Daddy came back downstairs, he opened the back door to let Buster out and then joined me in the kitchen to fix himself a snack. He reached for a banana from the fruit bowl and opened the fridge to find something to go with it. “So how long are you planning on hiding from him and trying to push him away instead of talking to him?”

“I’m not trying to push him away.”

“Could have fooled me.” He came away from the fridge with a small tub of yogurt. “I’ve known you for twenty-three years, Sara. Your whole life. This is how you always react when someone gets too close. You lash out. You try to hurt them before they can hurt you. You try to make them leave you because you believe they will.”

“You’ve never left me.” I stared into my cup of tea, trying to quell a fresh wave of tears.

“No, I’ve never left you. But the only person who has ever left you without you trying to run them off is your mother. The rest of them were your doing.” He removed the foil lid from his yogurt and grabbed a spoon from the drawer. After he took a bite, he looked at me for a long time. “I don’t think Cam’s going to be as easy to run off as the rest of them were. But you should really stop trying to hurt him, baby girl. You’re hurting yourself in the process, too.”

The front door opened, and Cam came through it. He was still in his suit, but his tie was loose and hanging limply from his neck, and he looked like hell. As soon as he saw me, he stopped, stiff as a board, his eyes boring into me.

“You two need to talk. I’m going to bed,” Daddy said. He let Buster back inside, took his banana and yogurt with him, and went down the hall. “Good night, you two.” Buster barked excitedly and followed him.

“Hi.” Cam moved further into the kitchen. He took a glass down from the cabinet and filled it with water, keeping a little distance between us.

I couldn’t help it. Now that we were alone, and the world wasn’t racing by out of the car windows, I couldn’t stop myself from looking at him. At the worry creasing his brows. At the pain pinching the corners of his lips. At the anger tensing his shoulders. I’d caused all of that. Daddy was right. I was hurting Cam, and that was hurting me, but I didn’t know how to stop it.

“Hi,” I finally replied. Just that one little word was almost enough to force those tears to start falling, the ones that had been on the verge of spilling over since Daddy had started in on me.

He downed his water and set the glass on the counter, then took off his jacket and tie, laying them beside the glass. “Listen, I…” He scrubbed a hand over his buzzed head with a tortured sigh. “I can’t do this.”

Daddy might have been right about me, but he hadn’t been right about everything. Cam was going to leave. I’d gone too far, I’d fucked up too badly, and he was going to run out of my life even faster than he’d come into it.

I dumped the last of my tea down the drain and put my mug in the dishwasher. There were a couple of other random dishes in the sink, so I started loading them, as well, hoping to distract myself enough with mindless tasks that I wouldn’t break down in front of him. I could hold out. I could wait until he was gone, and then I could shatter.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I was awful to you, and I acted like a bitch, and you didn’t deserve that,” I started, still facing the other direction. “I’m sorry I said those things to you. I never should have, and you deserve so much better than—”

“Sara,” he interrupted. He was behind me, close enough that his breath feathered through my hair and made me shiver, and he put his hands on my upper arms. “Don’t ever try to tell me I deserve better than you. There’s no such thing as someone better than you, at least not for me.”

That simple touch felt so good, so calming, I just wanted to lean back against him, to melt into him and let him take all my pain away. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t as simple as that, no matter how much I may want it to be.

“I was horrible to you,” I said.

“You were hurting.”

“That doesn’t excuse it.” There was nothing that could excuse what I’d done, no matter how much pain I had been in, no matter how emotionally distraught and confused I may have been.

His hands slid down to my elbows and lower, until he could link his fingers through mine. “But it does explain it. I knew why you said it as soon as the words left your lips.”

“You should hate me for that.”

“There’s nothing in the world you could do that would make me hate you. I definitely can’t go from loving you so much it hurts to hating you in the time it takes you to snap your fingers. It doesn’t work that way. I’m sure as hell not as fickle as that.”

A hot tear dropped from my cheek to land on my shirt. “You said you can’t do this, though.”

“I meant I can’t handle loving you so much and knowing you’re hurting, but you keep pushing me away. I can’t handle the silent treatment, Sara. I can’t deal with you not letting me love you through it.” Still holding my hands, he wrapped our arms around my body, hugging me close to him from behind. He had to feel the tears that kept falling from my eyes. Half of them were landing on our arms. “I’m not going anywhere. I wasn’t looking for a way out. I just want to love you.”

“I want to love you, too,” I admitted on a sob. “But I don’t know if I can.”

“Why not?”

“I’m s-s-scared.” Fucking hiccups.

“Tell me what you’re scared of.” His lips pressed to the crown of my head, and he slid the pads of his thumbs along the sides of my hands. “Let me help.”

“You s-say you’re not g-going anywhere, but if I l-let myself love you, you will. You’ll l-leave. Everyone leaves me.”

“Your father hasn’t left you.”

“Everyone else h-has. My mother. All the p-people I got cl-close to with Daddy’s t-teams over the y-years. I was just s-starting to fucking love the idea of this b-b-baby, and now it’s fucking g-gone, too. I can’t—” I couldn’t keep talking. The massive sob that rushed through me buckled my knees.

Cam had me in his arms in an instant. He carried me to the sofa and sat down, drawing me onto his lap and letting me snot and blubber all over him. I cried so long and so deep and so hard that my head was throbbing and my eyes felt raw, and still the tears wouldn’t stop. He held me through it all. Not once did he tell me it would all be all right. He didn’t try to fix anything for me. He didn’t try to foist a bunch of tissues on me in the hope that it would stop. He just held me and let me get it out.

When it slowed to a drip instead of an outright flood, Cam tipped my chin up so I would look at him. “I know you’re scared. But I promise you, I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not going to stop loving you. You can’t make me.” He said the last part of that with his lips quirked up, teasing me.

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to let myself love him, this man who was so good to me even when I behaved like a shrew toward him, who had wanted to be the father of the baby I would no longer have, who was so unlike any man I’d ever let myself get close to.

I really wanted to.

But right now, my fear was bigger than my love. It was as though all the fear inside me just kept expanding, blocking out the love that was trying to seep through.

“I’m too scared to let myself love you,” I whispered.

Cam kissed the end of my nose, and then he kissed me full on the lips, even though I was disgusting from just crying up a storm. “Then I’m just going to have to work really hard so I can prove to you that I’m not going to leave you.”

TUESDAY MORNING, MY family flew back to Winnipeg and returned to their schools and jobs and all the things that go along with everyday life. That night, the Kings beat the Coyotes in a thrilling Game Seven, but they needed three overtime periods to accomplish it. Our team was dead tired heading into the next round, but the Kings were going to be even more exhausted than we were; their series against Phoenix had been a virtual bloodbath, fast and physical, and they’d gone to the full seven games. Even though they were the higher seed and everyone expected them to walk all over us, we knew we had a chance. As long as we played the type of game we’d been built to play.

We had a few days before the second round was going to get started, and so I spent all of my free time during those days with Sara. I still had to go in for practices and team meetings, and Hammer was really pushing me harder on the ice when I stayed late after practice than he had been, since there was a possibility I would be able to play again soon. Even with all of that, I had plenty of time to prove to her that I wasn’t going to leave her. Three days after her trip to the emergency room, the cramping from her miscarriage stopped. Her tears didn’t, though. The tears probably wouldn’t stop for a long time.

She wasn’t crying constantly, at least. Every now and then, overwhelming grief would strike her out of nowhere and she’d have to let the tears run their course. I cried with her sometimes, like on the night she couldn’t get to sleep because she couldn’t stop thinking. She would cry for a while, and then she would stop, and just when I thought she was about to fall asleep, a fresh wave of tears would start up. After the third time that happened, it had just been too much for me, and so I’d cried, too. I’m not sure if she’d noticed or not. Her sense of loss was far more profound than she’d expected, it seemed, and occasionally, she got so deeply lost in it that she didn’t notice what was happening around her. That would get better with time. At least that was what the counselor we’d gone to see on Wednesday had told us.

Sara hadn’t initially been very keen on the idea of counseling, but the doctors had strongly encouraged it, and I thought it was a good idea for both of us. It was only when her dad told her he’d gone through counseling for years after her mother had left that she decided to give it a try.

One of the things I’d brought up in our sessions was the idea of her coming to live with me. When she was ready, of course. I didn’t want to rush things or for her to make a decision she wasn’t fully comfortable with, but that was the direction I wanted our relationship to be moving in. Right now, I was still staying with her and Scotty because she needed him as much as she needed me. He’d been her one constant in life. In all the moving around they’d done, from NHL city to NHL city, he’d been the one person she’d known she could count on. I wouldn’t take that away from her, not even to move her across town to stay with me, even if I hoped she would start to count on me a little more, too.

She wasn’t trying to push me away anymore, though. She let me hold her when she cried, and she didn’t completely clam up when I asked her what was going on in her head. I was pretty sure the counseling had a lot to do with that, because in our sessions, she heard what I was thinking and feeling. She knew now that I had some of the same fears, although they manifested in different ways. We spent a lot of time talking about my father, how he’d abandoned my family to go party and drink and use drugs. We talked even more about her mother, how she’d left not only Scotty to go run off with one of his players, but how she hadn’t ever tried to be part of Sara’s life even once since then. How she’d had other kids with that man—half siblings whose names Sara wouldn’t even know if not for the media. Her mother had never called or sent a birthday card. That woman had written Sara out of her life just as completely as drink and drugs had written my father out of our lives. Maybe even more thoroughly.

I’d always coped by trying to be the man he hadn’t been for my sisters. Sara had coped by doing everything she could to not be like her mother in any way. Different methods. Different results. Same fears.

I knew she was trying hard to sort her feelings out, but her ribs were healing more quickly than her heart was. She was getting up and around pretty well on her own. It was still best if she avoided doing any sort of heavy lifting or hardcore exercise, but there weren’t a lot of everyday things she couldn’t do anymore.

That meant she didn’t need to sleep with me as her body pillow any longer, although we hadn’t stopped sleeping that way. I doubted either of us wanted to change it. When she was draped over me like that, it was as though she was actually a part of me, as though we existed as a single entity. Once we’d been lying together like that for a few minutes, our hearts beat at the same pace and our breaths filled our lungs simultaneously, and the rest of the world drifted away until it was just the two of us. Sleeping that way had become a habit now, and I had always been a creature of habit.

I wasn’t sure how she would take it when I had to leave with the team to fly down to LA. I’d promised her I wasn’t going to leave her, and I’d told her I would prove that to her…but I still had a job to do, and sometimes that job required me to be apart from her, at least physically. She knew that. Sara had grown up around the NHL, so she knew how these things worked. But I still worried, since it was so soon after her miscarriage and since her emotional state was so fragile, that she might not be ready for us to be separated.

The team was going to fly out Thursday so we could be well rested and as mentally prepared for Game One on Friday as possible. When I started to pack my bag, Sara came up to help me. We worked silently—her taking items out from the small bit of closet space she’d allowed me in her room and laying them on the bed, me organizing them all in the single carry-on bag I always used for short road trips. She picked out the shirts and ties I would take, selecting colors that she liked together. I started to put a pair of shoes in the bag, but she shook her head and took them from me, handing me a different pair. Since I liked her taste in her own shoes so much, I figured I should trust her when it came to mine, too. I put them in the bag.

With the two of us working together, it didn’t take long before we were done. I didn’t have to leave for the airport for another half hour or so, but I didn’t have anything else I needed to do first. I’d barely zipped it closed before Sara came to me, burying her head against my chest and wrapping her arms around my waist.

The peppermint oil from her shampoo tickled my nostrils, and I breathed it in deep, as though that would help me hold on to her scent when I was gone. Somehow, we ended up back in bed, me on my back and Sara by my side, resting her head on my shoulder. I kept trailing my fingers through her hair, and she traced the plaid patterns of my shirt over my chest.

“What do you want to do after hockey?” she asked me after a minute.

“Go to college.” I didn’t even have to think about that. I’d chosen to play major junior hockey to get experience and be seen by scouts, and I’d gone straight from there to the AHL and then finally the NHL. My education had been put on hold for the sake of my hockey career and my family. Cadence might end up doing figure skating’s version of the same track, but education was important to my whole family.

“Yeah?” Sara looked up at me, her eyes filled with curiosity. “And then what?”

“I don’t know. Something business related—maybe still in the hockey world, but maybe not.” I had time to figure that part out still.

“But you’d want to settle down and find a place to call home?”

I nodded, trying to see beneath the surface of her question. I’d always had a place to call home. We’d grown up in Winnipeg, and my mom and sisters still lived there. I’d moved around some—from Halifax in juniors, to Seattle during my time in the AHL, and now to Portland—but Sara had spent her whole life moving from city to city every few years. Wherever Scotty’s coaching career had taken him, that was where she’d gone, as well.

“Yes,” I finally said. “I want to be grounded somewhere, not always on the move. I want a house where Buster can play and where my kids can grow up.” I wanted that place to be home for Sara, too.

We stayed like that, talking about whatever came to mind right up until the point that I had to leave for the airport. Every night while I was gone, she called me to talk before going to bed. Sometimes she cried. A couple of times she laughed.

The Storm managed to win Game One, but it was a tight game. We only beat them by a goal, and it was a fluke goal at that. Two nights later, they came out playing with more energy, and they pushed us to overtime and won. We came back to Portland tied at one win each.

I was thrilled that both teams had taken at least one game, even though the rest of the team would have far preferred for us to be up two to nothing in the series. This meant there wouldn’t be a sweep. The series would run through at least five games, and that meant I would have finished serving my suspension and could get back on the ice. I was going to be able to help my team again in a tangible way, not just by providing moral support.

Sara was in bed already by the time we got back to Portland, probably fast asleep. I tried my best not to wake her when I went into her room to change clothes, but she sat up in the bed almost immediately.

“Hey,” she said, but her voice was scratchy as if she’d been crying again.

I dropped my jacket and tie on the dresser and sat down on the edge of the bed, cupping her face with my hand. Her cheeks weren’t wet right now, but her eyes were swollen and puffy.

“Wanna talk?” I asked.

She shook her head, but she started talking anyway. “It’s silly. Don’t worry about it.”

“I do worry about you, though. Don’t tell me it’s silly.”

“It’s just that since the Kings won, that means you’re going to have to go back to LA with the team next week, and you’ll be gone, and I miss you when you’re gone.” She sniffled and shook her head, pulling away from me. “I told you it was silly.”

I didn’t think that was silly at all. It meant she was starting to admit to me how she felt about us. Maybe she wasn’t ready to tell me she loved me, but she couldn’t believably deny that she cared an awful lot. I kissed her cheek and told her I loved her before changing and getting into bed.

Then she kissed me so hungrily for so long that I knew I wouldn’t be getting to sleep anytime soon. Not that I minded. Not at all. The woman I loved was slowly coming to terms with loving me, too, and there was nothing that could make me happier.

“ONCE YOU MOVE back to your house, we’re going to have to get Daddy a dog,” I said. “He’s way too attached to Buster. Those two have gotten to be almost inseparable. I think it’s been good for him, too, having a dog around. I think it’s helping his recovery.” Hell, Buster was helping with my recovery, too.

“Once we move back to my house,” Cam corrected on the other end of the phone. He was in LA again for Game Five of the Storm’s series against the Kings. “I don’t want to go home without you. I want you to come with me.”

My breath still caught when he would say things like that, but it was different somehow. Maybe because not only did I believe that was what he wanted but it was starting to be what I wanted, too. Maybe he would always have the ability to steal my breath that way. That might not be such a bad thing.

It was early afternoon, and the game would be tonight—the first game Cam would be able to play in a solid month, since the night of Daddy’s heart attack. His suspension was over. He’d served it and it was in the books, and now he was going to get back on the ice to do what he did best.

We didn’t have long to talk right now. Soon, Jens would be getting back to the room they were sharing on the road, and they’d both be turning in for a pre-game nap. The Storm had beaten all the odds in winning the first game of the series, but things had taken a decided downhill turn after that point, losing each of the three games after that. They hadn’t lost any of them badly. They’d all been one-goal games, with two of them being decided in overtime. The Kings had just been the team getting all the bounces so far, and Cam hoped his return to the lineup would help them to turn the tide. Otherwise, they’d be shaking hands in a few hours and gearing up for a summer of golf, starting tomorrow, and that wasn’t what anyone in the organization wanted.

“Should we get him a puppy, or would he do better with an older dog?” Cam asked.

He never let too much time pass after he would say something breath-stealing before he moved on to something else. I got the impression that he didn’t want to give me the time to linger on those things and get panicky. The panic, the need to push back—that was all starting to ease, though.

I let a smile creep over my lips, even though he couldn’t see it. “I bet Noelle could help us find a rescue that would be a good fit.”

After a few more minutes of talking about random things, he had to go. Jens had returned, and it was nap time.

“I love you,” he said before we hung up, just like he always did.

This time, I said, “I love you, too.” And I meant it. I meant it so much that it warmed my belly and spread out from there, until my whole body was filled with this insane tingling sensation, and I wanted to say it over and over again until it sounded natural to my ears.

I was pretty sure that this time, I was the one to steal his breath. I was more than okay with that.

CAM HAD BEEN so amped up to get back on the ice that Hammer and Bergy had sent his line out to start the game. Usually, they’d start RJ’s line or maybe Zee’s line, especially since offense had come at a premium in this series. But at least for this time, they thought it was best to get Cam out there and let him burn off some of his pent-up energy.

It paid off. He scored a goal on his first shift, mainly by taking the Kings completely by surprise. It set a tone for all of the boys, and they followed his example the rest of the game. The Storm didn’t run away with it by any stretch of the imagination. It was yet another close game, but they won it two to one, and that meant they’d staved off elimination, at least for now.

Since there was only one day off before the next game, they flew right home after the game. I tried waiting up, but since I didn’t sleep well without him in bed with me, I hadn’t gotten much sleep at all the night before. I ended up going to bed with the assurance that he’d wake me as soon as he got in.

He did…with kisses. He crawled over me, supporting his weight with his arms and legs, and he brushed his lips over mine repeatedly until we were both feverish and frantic and I was tugging him down to me by his tie. I never wanted to come up for air. I just wanted to feel the weight of his body, the strength of his arms, the tease of his tongue.

“You played well tonight,” I said when he moved his kisses to the side of my neck.

He grunted and kept kissing me, using his tongue to tickle the sensitive spot below my ear until I was giggling and trying to shove him off me.

“Did you mean it?” he asked as he rolled us over, bringing me on top of him so I had to straddle his waist to keep myself steady. “When you said you loved me?”

I studied his eyes in the dim light shining in through my window, holding his head between both my hands. It had been a long time since his facial hair had gone from being scruff to being a full-fledged playoff beard—the wildest of all the guys’ beards on the team, which was a stark contrast to his buzzed hair—and his whiskers tickled my palms.

“Yes, I meant it,” I replied.

He smiled, although it was difficult to make out beneath that beard. His eyes gave it away though. They crinkled at the corners and lit up in a way that was incredibly rare. “Tell me again. Tell me when I can see you.”

My heart picked up a fluttery rhythm, so different from the frenzied beating from moments ago. I bit my lower lip, watching his eyes drop there before flicking back up to meet mine. “I love you.” But I didn’t want to stop there, even though he looked ready to devour me whole upon that declaration. “I love you because you’re almost as stubborn as me so you’ll fit in well with me and Daddy. I love you because you understand that when I try to push you away, that’s when I need you to pull me closer. I love you because you shared your family with me even before I thought I was ready for them. I love you because you love my shoes more than I do. I love you because you’re this big fighter on the ice, but you’re not embarrassed to have a tiny, fluffy, deaf dog. I love you because you’re not afraid to do what’s right. But most of all, I love you because you see who I really am, and you let me see who you really are, and we don’t have to hide it when we’re together.”

He drew me down to kiss me then, deep and slow, unhurried. And that was exactly how he made love to me, too—slow and easy, the two of us spooning on our sides so it wouldn’t hurt me, with lots of gentle caresses and kisses and I love yous.

This time, we didn’t cause any setbacks with my injured ribs.

DADDY AND I had both healed enough that we were able to go to Game Six at the Moda Center. It was weird having my father sitting in the owner’s box with all the players’ wives and girlfriends and kids, but so many of them had been helping to take care of us over the last month that it ended up not being nearly as awkward as it otherwise might have been. Tuck Shaw decided not to play with the other kids that night, instead choosing to sit on Daddy’s lap throughout the game. He was asleep by halfway through the third period and didn’t wake up even when the goal horn blasted in overtime, when Zee scored to win the game and force Game Seven.

Once the guys started trickling up to the owner’s box to get their families and Babs took Tuck from my father’s lap, Daddy excused himself for a few minutes to go talk to Jim Sutter. Cam came up and planted a big, wet kiss on my lips as soon as Daddy walked away, not stopping until my father cleared his throat behind us.

We both looked over at him with eyebrows raised, but neither of us let go of the other.

“Want to fly to LA with the team tomorrow?” he asked.

Traveling with the team had never been high on my priority list before, not since I was forced to do that when I was a kid—Daddy couldn’t leave me home alone back then—but it was funny how fast things could change.

“Yeah, let’s do that,” I said.

Cam pulled me closer and kissed me again. “I guess dating the coach’s daughter comes with a few unexpected perks.”

I supposed it did.

IN THE END, the Kings won Game Seven and the series. They got to move on to compete for the Western Conference Championship, and the Storm headed home for the off-season.

The playoff run that our boys put together, though, helped put the team back on the map as a contender, a team that others would have to look out for. We hadn’t been to the playoffs in five years, so a lot of people had written us off. Our group of guys—Scotty’s boys—proved that overlooking us was a big mistake, not only to ourselves, but to the world.

Every game in the series against the Kings had been decided by a single goal, and three of those games went to overtime. LA was a team that most of the oddsmakers had put down as the heavy favorite to win the Stanley Cup even before the playoffs had started, but the Portland Storm had stayed right with them, toe to toe, for seven whole games.

That meant we were able to go home with our heads held high and the knowledge that next season had the potential to be even better.

Jim told us to take the day after Game Seven off, but then everyone had to go in the following day to clean out our lockers and go through exit interviews with the coaches. On the flight back to PDX, Jim had asked Scotty to come in that day, too—not to take part in all of the exit interviews, but to talk about his own future with the team—so I took him to the practice facility with me. We asked Sara if she wanted to come, too, but she, Dana, and Noelle had some plans for the day.

Exit interview day was always bittersweet.

When it rolled around, it meant you got to take a break, finally. It meant getting to go home and see your family, the place where you grew up, maybe taking a vacation to somewhere you’d never been before. A lot of guys got married in the summer, as Soupy and Zee were planning to do, and Babs was excited because the next Babcock brother, Levi, was getting ready to go through the NHL draft.

But we also had to say good-bye to the guys we’d spent so much time with over the last eight months or so, and we knew that not all of us would be back next season. There were always trades, free agent signings, retirements… Our family was going to change, bit by bit. As it was, the team we’d put on the ice this season looked drastically different from the one we’d had only two years ago. Jim was shaping us, molding us into his vision of what a winning team should be. So far, it had been working, too. But I had to wonder where I fit within his plans for the future. My contract was up at the end of this season. I was still a restricted free agent, so he could make sure I stayed here with the Storm if that was what he wanted. God knew it was what I wanted. But all he’d said to me or my agent throughout the season when we’d talked about it was, Let’s wait until the off-season to discuss it.

Well, now it was the off-season.

I spent some time talking with Bergy and Hammer, who were pleased with how I’d come back into the lineup and played the kind of game they expected of me. They suggested I work with a speed skating coach in the off-season because if there was one area I could use improvement in terms of the direction the team was heading, it was that I needed to be a little more explosive with my first two or three strides. Then I finished packing up all of my personal effects and I did a stint in front of the media, answering questions about my suspension for the bazillionth time.

I was about to find a spot to talk to a few of the guys while I waited on Scotty to finish up when Jim called to me from across the locker room.

“Jonny! Got a few minutes?”

I nodded and followed him up to his office. Rachel grinned at me when we went in, but she was on the phone so she couldn’t talk.

Jim shut the door behind us. “How are you feeling about next year?” he asked.

“A lot better now that I know I don’t have any of that suspension carrying over.”

He smiled and took off his glasses, folding in the earpieces and setting the specs on his desk. He sat down next to me. “Do you still want to be a member of the Storm?”

There wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be or anything else I’d prefer to be doing. I nodded.

“Good. We want you to be here, too.” He crossed one ankle over his knee, sitting back in the chair. “I’ll work it all out with your agent over the summer, but I wanted to be sure we were all on the same page first. We’re looking at probably a three-year deal if that sounds agreeable to you.”

Guys like me—enforcers—were a hell of a lot more likely to get a one- or two-year deal than anything. I couldn’t complain about being offered three to stay with the team I loved.

“That sounds great,” I said, trying not to let too much excitement seep through. There were still negotiations to be had, after all, and this was a business decision.

“Good, good. Things are going to be different next year, though. You should know that Scotty just stepped down as the head coach.” He must have noticed my tension, because he rushed to add, “He’s still going to be in the organization. We’re just going to find a lower-stress place for him, something where he doesn’t have to travel so much and where there isn’t as much pressure on a day-to-day basis. But that means there will be a new head coach. I’m sure you’ll do just fine with whoever we bring in, though.”

I would. Coaching changes never affected me too much because I knew my job. It was to protect my teammates. That wasn’t going to change, no matter who they brought in.

“All right,” Jim said. “Have a good summer, Jonny. Don’t let Sara give Scotty too much grief.”

I got up and shook his hand, and by the time I got back to the locker room, Scotty was down there holding court with some of the boys. It still amazed me to see how much looser he was around the guys these days. Sometimes, even though I’d been living with him and seen a completely different side of him, I still expected him to start yelling at us and turning red in the face.

Eventually, we started making our way out of the building, but it was slow-going. I promised Zee and Soupy I’d see them in Providence in a little over a month for their weddings. Scotty grabbed Babs by the neck and pulled him aside for a few minutes, telling him God only knew what because it left the kid blushing with those dimples popping out. Nicky and Kally were talking in Swedish off to the side of the room, but they both came over to shake my hand.

“I’m going to sort my shit out,” Nicky promised, and I nodded, hoping I could believe him.

The last guy I talked to on my way out the door was Burnzie. He leaned a hip against the wall, his arms folded over his chest. “Since you’re with Sara now, you think she can convince you to come over on the weekends more than you usually do?”

He was quickly running out of single guys on the team who weren’t pretty much as young as Babs. Everyone was getting married and starting families, and that changed the dynamics of his parties.

I laughed and shrugged. “Maybe?” There weren’t many things I wouldn’t do for her, if she wanted me to. Once she figured that out, I was going to be in some serious trouble.

“All right.” Burnzie flashed his trademark grin at me and shook my hand. “Have a good summer, Jonny. Don’t get so caught up in Sara you forget to work on your golf swing.”

“My golf swing doesn’t need any work,” I replied.

Scotty had finally finished talking to Babs, and he and I headed out. “You know what does need some work?” he asked me. “Your slap shot. You need to get down lower to the ice, get some more torque on it.”

He might not be the Storm’s coach anymore, but I doubted you’d ever be able to take the coach out of him.

Sara was waiting for us when we got back to his house—and she wasn’t alone. She had a German shepherd by her side, and Buster was doing his best impression of a yappy puppy, racing circles around the other dog and barking up a storm. The bigger dog just looked down at him like he was an idiot. I could understand that sentiment.

“What’s this?” Scotty asked.

“This,” Sara said, scratching behind the German shepherd’s ears, “is Coco. She’s four years old, and she’s healthy as a horse and completely loveable, and her previous owner died. She was left all alone. But now she’s yours. Noelle helped me find her for you.”

Sara crossed over to her father and gave him a peck on the cheek. But then she came into my arms. The kiss she planted on me could never be called a peck. I was a little embarrassed to be kissing her like that in front of her father, actually, but it felt too perfect for me to put a stop to it. Because she came to me. She initiated it. I put both my arms around her waist and held on for the ride.

And then, when Scotty cleared his throat and Sara eventually backed away, I couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot. I knew what this meant: Sara was ready to move in with me. I may have broken a few rules along the way, but it was all working out in the end. Captain America may have missed his date, but Captain Canada got the girl.

Catherine Gayle is a bestselling author of Regency-set historical romance and contemporary hockey romance with a New Adult feel. She’s a transplanted Texan living in North Carolina with two extremely spoiled felines. In her spare time, she watches way too much hockey and reality TV, plans fun things to do for the Nephew Monster’s next visit, and performs experiments in the kitchen which are rarely toxic.

If you enjoyed this book and want to know when more like it will be available, be sure to sign up for Catherine’s mailing list. You can find out more on her website, her blog, at Red Door Reads, at Hockey Romance, at Facebook, on Twitter, and at Goodreads. If you want to see some of her cats’ antics and possibly the occasional video update from Catherine, visit her YouTube account.

DELAY OF GAME is the fourth book in the Portland Storm series. If you enjoyed it, please look for the other books in the series: BREAKAWAY, ON THE FLY, TAKING A SHOT (a novella found in the SEDUCED BY THE GAME anthology), and LIGHT THE LAMP. Another novella, DOUBLE MAJOR, will release in September, 2014, and the fifth novel in the series, IN THE ZONE, will release in November, 2014.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Trademark Acknowledgment

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Roster

About the Author

Other Catherine Gayle Titles