Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

About this Book

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

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Epilogue

Roster

Other Catherine Gayle Books

About the Author

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.

Ghost Dance

Copyright © 2016 by Catherine Gayle

Cover Design by Kim Killion, The Killion Group

Cover Photography by HeatherLynn Portraits

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: catherine@catherinegayle.com

For Logan.

He had it all.

And lost it in an instant.

The night Dmitri Nazarenko won hockey’s Holy Grail, he lost more than he ever bargained for. With a world of guilt weighing him down, Dima can never forgive himself for his tragic misjudgment. Turning his body into a shrine of past mistakes, he hides behind tattoos that memorialize his failures and a beard that masks his pain.

But London Hawke sees right through him. The fiery woman refuses to pity a man like him. No stranger to incurable injuries, London lets nothing stand in the way of living her life. Seeing an able-bodied man haunted by the ghosts of his past is a surefire way to trigger her annoyance, and that’s exactly what she finds in Dima.

When they face off, it becomes a battle of wills. Their constant bickering turns to an unavoidable dance between the sheets. But she won’t accept sharing a bed with the past for long. Will Dima learn to fight his demons, or will London leave him to dance with his ghosts alone?

GHOST DANCE is Book 3 in the Tulsa Thunderbirds hockey romance series, a spin-off from USA Today bestselling author Catherine Gayle’s Portland Storm series.

BURY THE HATCHET

SMOKE SIGNALS

GHOST DANCE

RITES OF PASSAGE

RITES OF PASSAGE will release on November 10, 2016.

Want to join in the discussion? Join Cat’s House, a reader group on Facebook for Catherine’s books.

Interested in buying your own customizable Portland Storm and Tulsa Thunderbirds jerseys, T-shirts, and more? Find out how here.

“THE LAKE WOULD freeze solid in the winter. Lake Baikal,” I said to Harper, gently rocking her in the chair next to her crib.

In between her whimpers, she made a soft cooing sound, as if to let me know that she’d understood. Not possible, of course, but the thought comforted me.

I always told the baby my stories in Russian, because there was no reason to bore Hunter or Tallie—her parents—with tales of growing up in Siberia. Besides, Harper couldn’t understand anything anyone said, whether they spoke in Russian, English, or Swahili.

I’d quickly learned it didn’t matter what I said. It only mattered that I spoke.

She had colic, and for some reason, tugging out the hairs of my beard and hearing the sound of my voice were the only things that soothed her these days. Tallie swore the deep rumble of my speaking voice did the trick. The vibrations or something. It could be. I didn’t know one way or another, but it meant I got lots of late-night calls from Hunter, begging me to come and rock the baby so everyone could get some sleep.

I didn’t mind it. Usually, I either lay awake in my own bed, like I had been tonight, or else I was looking for an excuse to leave the bed of whichever woman I’d gone home with that night. Rocking Harper was much better than either of those activities.

I couldn’t explain it, but holding her and talking to her soothed me, too. Not that Hunter or any of our other teammates needed to know. They’d only give me shit. But here, with this little girl, I could tell her everything and not worry what she might think.

“Once the temperatures dropped, the lake became a perfect sheet of ice, crystal clear. I could see all the way to the center of the Earth when I looked down through that ice, and that was where my father taught me to skate. He bundled me up in as many coats as he could fit one over another. He made me wear eight pairs of socks. Not just because of the cold but also because my skates were so big my feet swam in them. Then we would go to the lake. He made me skate the distance of two hockey rinks, back and forth, back and forth, until I thought my feet would fall off and I couldn’t feel my nose any longer. It was very cold there, in Siberia. Much colder than it ever gets here, kukolka. Colder than you’ll ever experience, most likely.”

We were in Tulsa, Oklahoma—about as far away from Siberia as we could get. I played hockey for the Tulsa Thunderbirds, the newest team in the National Hockey League, thanks to a recent expansion draft. Hockey didn’t help me forget, though. It only brought the memories back, as vivid and painful as ever. With Harper, I could forget. Or I could unburden myself. Or I could talk until I was blue in the face, even though it didn’t ease the pain.

When I’d first arrived and started talking tonight, she’d been screaming her head off, with enormous tears drenching her chubby red cheeks. Now her cries were down to nothing more than a whimper here and there. She tightened her fist in my facial hair and tried to pull herself up higher in my arms. I helped her along, both to save myself some pain and to give her what she wanted. I always gave her what she wanted. Not even four months old yet, and she already had me wrapped around her tiny finger. I supposed it was safe to let the baby get so close, not that I had any intention of letting anyone else. Not ever.

She settled again once I’d shifted her position, relaxing her grip but not releasing the hairs.

“You just like to hold on to my beard, don’t you?” I said softly. “We should tell your papa to grow a beard for you. Teach him to speak Russian. After that, maybe I can sleep in my own house every night.” Not that it would help me sleep.

“What is it you say to her?” Hunter asked quietly from the hallway beside Harper’s nursery.

I hadn’t heard him come up. I must have been too busy focusing on his little girl. I glanced over to see him leaning against the doorframe and watching us—me in the rocker, Harper with her grip on me, even with her head sagging into my chest.

“Nothing interesting,” I said in English. I hated how stupid I sounded when I spoke English. Even after almost a decade playing hockey in North America, I sounded like I’d just gotten off the boat. “Tell her about skating on lake in Siberia. Wearing lots of socks. She wants me to talk.” I glanced down to be sure the new voice hadn’t disturbed her.

Her eyes were starting to close. That was a good sign.

“Looks like she’s finally out. We could try putting her back in her crib. See if she’ll stay asleep.”

“Not yet.” I wasn’t ready to move her…to lose the comfort of her grip on me.

She’d barely closed her eyes, so she was still in the very early stages of sleep when she would wake easily. And besides, I didn’t want to stop talking to her yet. It was nice to be able to talk to someone, to tell her anything, and know that she wouldn’t hold what I said against me. I never felt that way in the real world. But here, I could bare my soul to this baby, and she still loved me anyway.

She might not love me, but at least she didn’t hate me. I didn’t scare her. She didn’t think I was the monster I knew myself to be. For some reason, this tiny creature felt safe enough in my arms to fall asleep in them. It seemed an awful lot like love.

It was the most unfamiliar sensation, almost unrecognizable but thoroughly addictive. A gift I would never deserve.

I couldn’t get enough.

“You’re sure?” Hunter asked. He sounded both grateful and uncertain. The guy might as well be dead on his feet. He and Tallie had both been up a lot in the last few weeks due to Harper’s colic. He needed sleep. And since he was the Thunderbirds’ starting goaltender, I needed him to be well rested. We sucked enough without our best player falling asleep on the job.

“Go to bed. I’ll stay until she’s sound asleep.”

“But your sledge game is tomorrow.”

I’d been planning a charity game to raise money for disabled athletes who played hockey on sleds instead of skates—here, in the U.S., they called it sled hockey, but the rest of the world called it sledge hockey. The plan was for some of my teammates and other big names I could convince to help out to get on those same sleds. Then everyone would be mixed up with the local team of sledge hockey players, and we’d all put on an exhibition to raise money for the sledge team. Those players would kick my ass whether I’d had rest or not.

I gave him a nod. “I’m fine. The game will be fine. You need sleep. You play like shit this week.”

He hesitated, dragging a hand through his hair and looking down the hall toward his bedroom. Then he faced me again. “Wake me when you’re ready to leave so I can lock up behind you.”

“Leave keys on counter,” I said. “I’ll lock the door when I go.”

He suppressed a laugh, but he walked away and his keys clanged against the kitchen counter. “’Night, Dima,” he said quietly on his way down the hall.

“Your papa is a stubborn man,” I said to Harper, once again speaking in Russian. I felt a grin coming on. “It’s not bad to be stubborn. You should try to be exactly like him. Stubborn. Determined. Get what you want.”

In her sleep, she fisted her hand in my beard and pulled, letting out a contented sigh. This little one already knew a lot about being stubborn, and it was helping her get her way. That was why I was here now, and why I spent more nights here than at my own house lately. She refused to sleep unless I was here, doing exactly as she demanded with her tiny hands and enormous voice.

“Smart baby,” I said. “You find ways to get what you want. You keep doing that. Don’t ever stop. Because I can’t have what I want. Sergei can’t have what he wants, and it’s all my fault. But you? You can have the world.”

She squirmed closer to me, and I tugged the blanket higher so it would keep her warm.

I stayed for another hour or more, long past the point when she was out cold. I told her about skating on the lake in the snow. I told her about playing hockey with my best friend, Sergei, after my papa died. I told her about winning the Stanley Cup in LA with Sergei at my side. I told her about the night I ended Sergei’s career and nearly ended both our lives. I told her how sorry I was, because she would listen to my apologies even though he wouldn’t. He’d heard more than enough of that, he’d told me dozens of times over the years. These days, if I tried to apologize again, he would walk away.

When my throat was scratchy from talking so long, I carefully moved her to the crib and tucked her blankets all around her. “Sleep well, kukolka,” I said, kissing her on the top of the head. “Don’t worry about me.”

I locked the door and went back to my house to spend the rest of the night alone with my demons.

I’D SHARED THE ice with some of the best hockey players in the world over the years—men and other women like me, both of the stand-up variety and those who played on sleds—but it was obvious that a number of my Prattville Para-Pythons teammates were star-struck. All it took was a quick glance around the ice to make it clear.

I was having none of it.

“Just because Ray Chambers can handle the puck when he’s upright, that doesn’t mean he knows a stinking thing about playing on a sled,” I said to Evan Foster, the sixteen-year-old phenom who’d just joined our ranks this season. The kid had a good chance of making the U.S. national sled hockey team in another year or two if he kept developing the way he had been lately, but at present, he was going gaga over a couple of the NHL players who’d deigned to strap in and play with us. “You’re going to skate circles around him today, and don’t think I’m exaggerating.”

Evan nodded, like he was taking in what I’d said and maybe even agreed with me. He kept blushing every time he looked at me, too. I hoped he’d get over that soon. Until he’d joined our team, he’d never had a female teammate. I kept waiting on him to realize I was just like the guys, other than the fact that I didn’t have a dick, but it hadn’t sunk in yet.

Usually, we played our games at the rink in Prattville, a suburb outside of Tulsa. Today, Dmitri Nazarenko, one of the Thunderbirds players, had organized a big charity event to raise money for our ice time, equipment, travel expenses, and all sorts of other things.

Unlike the NHL guys, sled hockey players had regular jobs to go to everyday, and sled hockey can be even more expensive than stand-up hockey. Not only that, but our games didn’t bring in enough money to cover all of the expenses. We usually did most of our big fundraisers for these things in the summer, but this wasn’t something we’d organized. It had to be on Nazarenko’s timeline. It was a nice gesture to help us afford to continue playing, but that didn’t mean I was going to fall down fawning over them.

Today’s game was being held at the BOK Center, which held a heck of a lot more fans than our dinky rink did. I doubted it would get very full, though—even with all the big names Nazarenko had managed to bring in. Fans wanted to see those guys playing stand-up hockey, not being strapped down in a bucket and unable to use their legs.

More people had already arrived than I’d expected to turn out. Maybe there would be a bigger crowd than I’d thought.

A few of Nazarenko’s teammates with the Thunderbirds were playing today, of course, but there were also several retired NHLers, and even the guy who’d lost a leg in a car accident right after winning the Stanley Cup several years back, Sergei Mironov. Sergei couldn’t play stand-up hockey anymore, but he’d been playing a lot of sled hockey like us. We’d played against him a few times before, not that Evan was with us then. That might explain his starry eyes now.

The plan for today was to split the Para-Pythons in half and add some of the celebrities to each team. In my opinion, those guys would only slow us down, but I supposed the big names were the reason people were willing to pay so much money for tickets. You needed your arms to skate on a sled, not your legs.

Sleds had bucket seats situated over a metal frame. The length of the frame varied depending on how long your legs were—if you even had legs. Amputees tended to have shorter sleds than the rest of us, which allowed them to make sharper, faster turns. A couple of skate blades were positioned beneath the frame to allow us to move. Once in place, we strapped in. Then you’d better watch out. We were just as fast as the stand-up hockey players.

We had two hockey sticks—shorter than the ones used in stand-up hockey—that had small spikes on the butt end that could dig into the ice for traction. To move, we flipped the sticks around and used the spikes to propel ourselves forward. This sport required a ton of upper body strength, especially in the shoulders, which meant my participation on a team full of men was irregular, to say the least.

Most of my usual teammates were already out on the ice warming up, along with a few of the intruders. When I glanced over to the doors again, Nazarenko himself was inching his sled out onto the ice to join us, and Evan’s jaw dropped.

He turned to me, wide-eyed. “Do you know who that is?” The kid looked like he was about to fall over in shock.

Sergei Mironov positioned his sled next to ours, and he winked at Evan. “That’s Dima. My best friend. He organized charity game.”

Evan’s face went bright pink. “Do you know who you are?”

Sergei and I both burst out laughing.

“I think he knows his own name, Evan.”

“Just hockey player,” Sergei said. “Just like you. We’re all the same.”

Despite myself, that was all it took to warm me up to Sergei.

At least he belonged in a sled out here, unlike his best buddy. Of course, I knew what had really happened in the accident that had taken Sergei’s leg. Everyone did, although kids like Evan might not have been old enough at the time to remember. It’d been all over the news for months.

About seven years ago, those two had won the Cup with LA. They’d gone to the bar with the rest of the team and gotten drunk. After the bars closed down, Sergei, Nazarenko, and a few of the others had gone back to someone’s house and continued the party until the wee hours of the morning.

Then Nazarenko had thought he was sober enough to drive home.

Needless to say, he hadn’t been. They were lucky no one had been killed, but both of them had come away with some serious injuries—particularly Sergei. His pro hockey career had ended that night.

“You’re still his best friend, huh?” I asked him while Evan continued to gawk at the NHL guys.

Sergei nodded. “Been friends too long to stop now. Grew up together in Russia, near Lake Baikal.”

Gradually, Evan crept closer to his idols, leaving me and Sergei alone.

I gave the big Russian man in front of me a long look. “You don’t ever—? No, never mind.” I shook my head, wishing I’d never started to ask the question.

“Blame Dima?” Sergei asked, raising a brow. “I was even more drunk. Neither of us should have gotten in car, but we did. Macho Russian idiots, both of us.” He grinned and winked. “Think we’re stronger than vodka. Vodka always wins. I don’t blame Dima. He blames himself enough for us both.”

“Yeah, but he was the driver.”

Sergei gave me a sly smile. “He was. But he’s the one who can’t move on with his life. Me? I’m fine. Dima is big, fat mess.” Then he pushed off to talk to someone else.

Couldn’t move on, could he? Interesting…

I headed over to find Evan deep in conversation with the very man we’d just been talking about. Evan’s cheeks were flushed. I’d hardly ever seen him so animated, excited beyond words to be spending time with one of his idols. Nazarenko’s expression was as dull and dour as ever. I figured he wore his beard so long and bushy to prevent any need to express himself. He nodded and murmured something every now and then, but Evan was clearly in control of that conversation.

One of Nazarenko’s NHL teammates came out and handed him a Tulsa Thunderbirds jersey and a marker, then shook Evan’s hand. Nazarenko signed the back and handed the jersey over to Evan, easily making the kid’s year. But Nazarenko didn’t even crack a smile—or if he did, it was so well hidden behind all that facial hair that no one would ever know.

Sergei thought his best friend couldn’t let go, did he? I could definitely see that.

And it pissed me off.

“EVAN!” I SHOUTED across the rink. I slapped one of my sticks on the ice to get his attention, since my voice alone hadn’t been enough. He had two guys in dark jerseys converging on him, but I was wide open.

He glanced up at the sound and passed the puck in my direction almost immediately, somehow seeing a seam anyone else would’ve missed. He got the puck underneath one of the dark jerseys’ sleds. By the time it reached me, Nazarenko was closing in, though. I pushed off to snag the pass before he could get there, edging my way around him.

“Too slow,” I said, laughing as I picked up speed toward the goal. It took him a moment too long to change directions and chase after me. I got off a shot from my backhand, and somehow the puck squeaked through. It flew between the goalie’s glove and the crossbar.

The goal horn went off, and the much-larger-than-expected audience got up and cheered. My teammates for the day—the guys in the white jerseys—gathered around me for high fives.

“That was sick,” Evan said when he reached my side.

“What, your pass?” I grinned. “How the heck did you even see that, let alone thread the needle the way you did?”

He blushed and grinned at my praise, sledding away from me. His girlfriend was a lucky girl. I hoped she knew it.

On my way back to the bench, I passed Nazarenko again. “How can a guy with big, strong arms like yours get beat by a girl?” I pushed my sled into the bench area before he could answer.

Through the plexiglas barricade, I caught his stare. Impenetrable, as always. Couldn’t ever tell what the guy was thinking or feeling. I expected that was exactly how he wanted it, too. Why else would he hide so much of his face with that scraggly beard? It wasn’t doing him any favors in the looks department, that was for sure. Left him seeming like a surly caveman.

But damn if it didn’t turn me on. Maybe I was coming down with a cold or something.

I tried not to snicker as he struggled to get his sled where he wanted to go. Shouldn’t he have gotten the hang of it by now? We were in the third period already, so he’d been using the sled for quite a while. If he’d had any sense, he would have practiced a lot before today, too. But laughing at him over that wasn’t kosher. It was one thing to poke at him on the ice. It was something else entirely to laugh when he was trying to learn how to do something that every single player out here had struggled with at some point in time.

We’d all been laughed at more than enough. No need to add to it.

“Why are you giving him such a hard time?” Evan asked, dismay written all over his face.

I shrugged to mask my sense of disappointment in myself. There was no reason for me to stoop to that level. “Someone needs to.”

“It’s good for Dima,” Sergei said before heading out to the ice to take his shift. “Needs to be teased. Someone make him stop taking himself so seriously. Make him laugh.”

Evan gave me a goofy look. “But… He’s Dmitri Nazarenko. He won a Stan—”

“I know who he is,” I cut in. “Being famous doesn’t wipe out his need for a good kick in the pants every so often, and I have no problem being the one to deliver it.”

“With whose foot?” Evan asked.

“Watch it, kid.” I shoved him playfully to the side, a bit harder than I’d intended and definitely with more force than was necessary. He had to turn his sled upright again. I tended to do things like that too often—trying to prove I was tough enough, strong enough to really hang with the guys. I was fully aware the issue was strictly in my head.

They’d accepted me as soon as I’d joined the team because I knew hockey as well as anyone—not to mention better than many of them—and because I fit in. It wasn’t uncommon for these guys to only start playing hockey after becoming disabled in whatever way—amputation, spinal cord injuries, and the like. I was an exception to the rule, because playing hockey had been the cause of my disability.

I still had both of my legs, but neither of them had worked like they should since the day I’d crashed awkwardly into the boards in a college game about four years ago. Spinal cord injury. They told me I’d never walk again, not that it had stopped me from doing everything possible to attempt it. I spent most of my life in a wheelchair these days, except for when I was in my sled on the ice. That was one of the first things I’d insisted upon, once I’d accepted that getting back on regular skates was probably never going to be in my future and I’d healed enough that I could start learning what my new life would be like.

I needed to be active, and I needed for hockey to still be part of my life, in some way or another. Having that come to an end wasn’t a possibility for me. I couldn’t live my life that way.

Even though there were tons of athletic teams for those with disabilities in my hometown, there hadn’t been any sled hockey teams within a hundred miles of where we lived. So when my brother and his family had moved to Tulsa for his career, I’d tagged along as soon as I discovered they had a sled hockey program.

These guys might as well be my family now, which explained why I was a bit overprotective of Evan.

Heck, I’d even dated one of my teammates for a while, a wounded Marine named Wade Miller. It turned out we were much better as friends. Besides, it had been too soon for him. His PTSD had been off the charts in those days. Now we had more of a sibling-esque relationship, and he was precisely as overprotective of me as I was of Evan.

Dana Zellinger, the coach for the white side, came over to kneel between me and Evan. I liked Dana a lot. She came from a hockey family and had played hockey in college, too, before marrying an NHL player. These days, she coached a midget team in the area.

She draped one arm around each of our shoulders, and Evan turned a hundred degrees of scarlet.

“We’re still down by one, and I do not want to lose to my husband,” she said, glancing over at the opposite bench, where the husband in question was coaching. “Going home with him gloating about who’s the better coach, when it’s my job, is not my idea of a good time. Think you two can work some more of that magic on your next shift?”

I winked at Evan and nudged him in the ribs with my elbow. “We’ve got this.”

“Y-yeah. Sure,” he stammered.

“I’m counting on you two,” she said before crossing over to say something to Sergei and a couple of the other defensemen.

“Not star-struck again, are you?” I asked once she was a couple of feet away.

“Just wasn’t expecting her to be so close.” Then he gave me a wide-eyed look. “Don’t say a word to Melody.”

“My lips are sealed, but don’t blame me if your girlfriend noticed how much you blushed on her own.”

When he gave me a questioning expression, I pointed up to the Jumbotron, where his face was lit up for all the world to see. Somehow, his blush intensified. Poor guy.

Wade and his line—all of them wounded veterans, a move intended to mimic the U.S. sled team—came off the ice, so Evan and I went back out, along with Andrew Nash, one of the Thunderbirds players who’d been drafted into playing today. Sergei and Ray Chambers followed us.

Once again, Dmitri Nazarenko was on the other side of the face-off circle.

“Watch out,” I said, bumping up against him. “Better look where you’re going or I’ll run you over.”

He met my eyes, but his were completely opaque. The guy was a freaking fortress, which drove me insane. I wanted to get under his skin, and I still hadn’t figured out a way to do it. Nothing I did or said elicited a lick of emotion from him.

They dropped the puck. Nash lost the faceoff to the dark jerseys, and everyone set in motion.

Nazarenko got open in the neutral zone along my wing, and the puck headed straight for him. So did I.

I bumped him right as the puck hit his stick, knocking it free.

He shot his head up in shock.

“Yeah. You got hit by a girl,” I said, getting the toe of my blade on the puck to zip it across the ice.

Evan had anticipated my move, so he darted over to gather up the loose puck before the NHLers trailing behind him could get there.

I untangled my sled from Nazarenko’s and propelled myself into the zone, but I could feel him behind me. Maybe he was starting to get the hang of the sled, after all.

Two dark jerseys converged toward Evan, leaving me open yet again. For some reason, men always assumed I wasn’t a threat out here. This time, Evan didn’t need any prompting. He passed it my way as I got close to the goal.

The only problem was that Nazarenko had closed in on me. He stretched out and used his longer arms to poke-check the puck out of my reach.

“I’m still faster than you,” I said, taking off to chase it down and prove my point.

But this time, he was on me every inch of the way. I got to the puck in the corner and pushed it out with my stick just before Nazarenko crashed into me, knocking us both sideways.

The game was still going, so I didn’t waste any time righting myself and getting back into the thick of things. He caught up to me again as I tried to streak in front of the goal, using his bigger, heavier body to bump me out of the lane I wanted to be in.

I snapped my head back so I could look at him.

He winked at me.

He freaking winked at me.

Using my stick blade, I shoved his sled out of my way with as much force as I could muster and went to the front of the net just in time for Nash to get off a shot.

I angled my stick and tipped the puck into the net. Tie game, and only minutes left. At least we were giving the crowd their money’s worth. Before I could get over to my teammates to celebrate, Nazarenko slipped up alongside me.

“Now who beats who?” he said, his accent as thick as his facial hair.

He propelled himself away before the grin reached my lips.

THEY’D TOLD ME there was a woman on the team back when I’d first arranged for the sledge team to take part in the event, but no one had ever mentioned the fact that she was a shit disturber. It would’ve been nice if someone had thought to bring it to my attention, not that it would have changed things.

Quite some time after the game had ended and I’d finished giving all the interviews expected of me, I was still stewing over how I’d allowed London Hawke to get under my skin. Not only that, but I hadn’t yet been able to leave the BOK Center, as Sergei hadn’t finished up.

The pair of us didn’t get to see each other too often these days, and I wanted to have dinner with him, spend some time catching up. He planned to stick around Tulsa until a few days before Christmas, but I didn’t see any reason to put off getting out of here so we could talk. Sergei was the closest thing to family I had now and had been since my father had died more than a decade ago.

It wasn’t taking him so long because he needed more time to change and adjust his prosthetic leg or anything like that. Sergei usually got dressed faster than I did. The problem was that he wouldn’t stop talking to the other sledge players around the room. All of a sudden, my best friend was everybody’s best friend.

That wasn’t fair of me. He’d always been the friendlier one of us, the popular guy in the locker room. Our wreck had only left me more sullen than ever, but if anything, Sergei had come further out of his shell. He tended to be the life of the party.

The room was full to bursting, not only with those who’d played in today’s game but with their friends and family, too. Zee and Dana had brought in all three of their kids to help celebrate Dana’s coaching win, even the baby, Patrick. Most of the sledge players had parents or siblings with them, and a couple of the guys’ girlfriends had dropped in. London’s corner was overflowing, with a man and woman, plus four kids of varying ages. The other woman held a baby on her lap, which made me wish Hunter and Tallie had come and brought Harper. If Harper were here, she could rip out a few of my beard hairs and help me forget my frustrations.

My focus went straight to London, though. Now that she didn’t have all her hockey gear on and I could see her face, I recognized her. She’d been in the news a few years back after an accident in a women’s hockey game. Her story had struck a chord with me, and once they’d started raising money for her treatment, I’d badgered my teammates at the time to give me money so I could make an anonymous donation.

With her family surrounding her, she was all smiles and laughter. Her face lit up the room when she leaned over to tickle one of the children. This was a very different side of her than what she’d shown out on the ice today. Not only that, but she might as well be my polar opposite.

I sat in my stall, brooding and wishing I were anywhere else. My only consolation came from the amount of money we’d raised for the Para-Pythons—something in the range of twenty-five thousand dollars. The Thunderbirds had promised to match everything we’d brought in, and they were organizing an auction for the signed, game-worn jerseys to raise even more. With all of that and what I’d haggled out of my teammates, we could possibly write them a check for close to a hundred grand. That money would go a long way toward meeting their expenses this year.

Viktoriya Chambers came in, cautiously scanning the room for her husband. Razor was deep in conversation with Sergei, so I thought I’d go over and talk to her for a few minutes. She was at least Russian, even if she wasn’t family. I needed to make sure Razor was still treating her right, anyway. It’d been a week or so since I’d checked in with her.

I hadn’t even made it halfway across the locker room when London Hawke wheeled into my path and glared up at me.

“Can I help?” I asked when she neither moved nor spoke. I didn’t want to help her. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her, because every time she stared at me, I felt like she could see all the way into my soul.

Most likely, she knew every detail about what had happened that night so many years ago. Seemed like everyone did. Maybe she had figured out that I was the son of a bitch who’d caused Sergei to lose his leg, and yet I was still playing in the NHL when he couldn’t. Hell, maybe she wanted to take out her own injury on me. Whatever it was, I wished she would just cuss me out so we could move on, both of us knowing exactly where the other stood.

“Yeah, you can help me.” Her eyes roved over me, up and down, before stopping on my face. Or really, my beard. She stared at it a long time before moving back up to my eyes. “You can buy me coffee,” she finally said.

That didn’t make any sense at all. “Why you want me to buy coffee?”

She raised a single brow, not wavering in the least. “Because I do. You ready? I’ll drive.”

I got the sense that she was determined to have her way, whether I liked it or not.

“I don’t want to have coffee. Sergei is coming—” At that very moment, I caught sight of Sergei following a group of the other sledge players out of the locker room.

He glanced back and caught my eye, waving. “We’re having dinner,” he said in Russian. “I’ll come by your place later.”

Well, there went my ready excuse.

“Looks like he’s got other plans,” London said dryly. “Come on.” Then she wheeled herself around and headed for the exit.

“Don’t you have plans with your family?” I demanded. Even though I was racking my brain for an excuse, my feet were moving along behind her.

Then I remembered she’d said she would drive, and I really didn’t want to go.

My trepidation wasn’t because she was in a wheelchair. I knew better than most just how many modifications could be made for accessibility. I just didn’t want to get trapped somewhere with her and not have a way to get out of it.

“I see them all the time,” she said, picking up speed once we were in the concourse. “They live five miles or so away from me, so I can hang out with them any time I want, and with the holidays right around the corner, I’ll be sick to death of them before too long. It was a fun day for my nieces and nephews, but they’re going home now. The older kids have homework to get done this weekend. So…I’m all yours for the rest of the day, and it looks like your plans got changed.”

This was not what I wanted. Not at all.

She’d parked her gray Chevy sedan in the handicapped spaces up front. When she angled her chair inside the open door, I almost asked if she needed help before stopping myself with memories of Sergei’s early days learning to walk with a prosthetic flashing through my mind.

She locked the wheels and easily lifted herself over into the driver’s seat. “I need a minute to get my chair in the back, but then you can get in,” she said, already halfway through the process before my brain had caught up. In no time, she had the wheelchair disassembled and stowed behind her. “There,” she said, grinning at me. “All set for you.” She pushed a few buttons, and the passenger seat slid backward so there was room for me and my long legs.

What the hell was I getting myself into? I didn’t know, but I still climbed in.

“So tell me,” London said, backing out of her parking spot. There was a pole next to her steering wheel that she used to brake and accelerate with nothing but her hands. She looked both ways before turning into the lane.

“Tell you what?”

“What are you trying to hide with that beard?”

She certainly didn’t mess around, did she?

THE QUESTION WAS barely out of my mouth, and he was already flinching.

Guess I’d hit a sore spot.

“Just like having beard,” he said after a quick recovery.

Straight to defensiveness. Not surprising. I took a right turn to get to the closest Starbucks and thought through a different tack. “I’ve seen pictures from before,” I said cautiously, easing into things. “You used to have such a baby face. I bet you still do, but no one can tell with all that hiding your smile.”

“No smile to hide.”

Indeed. “Why don’t you smile?”

“Why you ask so many questions?” Then he muttered something in Russian beneath his breath.

“No fair speaking in other languages. If you can’t say it to my face, then don’t say it.”

“Said fuck me, you’re shit disturber off ice, too.”

I burst out laughing as we arrived at Starbucks. Once I’d parked, I turned to find him glowering at me. I tried to put on a straight face, but it was no use, so I shook my head. “I think I like you, Nazarenko. Don’t ask me why, because I couldn’t tell you. But I like you.”

He climbed out and slammed his door before stalking off to pace on the sidewalk.

I quickly transferred my chair out of the car and reassembled it on the ground. In no time, I was ready to go in, but he still looked ready to bite my head off.

“Does caffeine improve your attitude?” I asked. “Can’t see how it’ll make it any worse, but occasionally I’m surprised.”

He held open the door for me. “Does caffeine put civil tongue in your mouth?”

“It hasn’t yet.” I winked as I wheeled in past him and headed straight for the line.

“I can hope it starts today.”

“Sure. If you want.” I shrugged.

Neither of us said anything else as we waited for our turn in line. When I got to the front, I ordered a venti skinny caramel latte and gave them my name. Instead of paying, I angled my head in Nazarenko’s direction.

“Espresso,” he bit off. “Double shot.” Then he glanced down at me. “No, make it triple.”

“And you can put Captain McGrumpy Pants on his cup,” I added. Then I left him to pay and found us a table in the corner, well away from the mom and her kids near the door. I didn’t trust either of us to keep a civil tongue, as he’d put it, so we would be much better off keeping out of the kids’ hearing.

He waited to join me until our drinks were ready, carrying them both over. He set mine in front of me before taking a seat. Once he set his cup on the table, I saw that the barista had followed my directions. There was no hiding my smile.

“You enjoy poking at me,” he said. “Sparking my temper.”

I met his eyes. “Poking the bear was always one of my favorite sports. Used to do it all the time with my brother.”

“Lots of practice. Lucky to be alive.”

“And practice makes perfect. Something you should keep in mind if you intend to play another sled hockey game. You were awful out there.”

He rolled his eyes, but I didn’t miss the life in them. Whether he liked it or not, I was getting a rise out of him. He was enjoying this back-and-forth as much as I was.

“Why you Americans always have to be different from rest of the world? Everyone else says sledge. Uses metric system. Makes more sense.”

“Why do you Russians always have to be macho assholes?”

“Why you can’t be feminine? Act like a lady?”

“I’ve never been very feminine, and I don’t have any intention of changing that for you or anyone else. I’m athletic. I work out. I play with guys, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”

“Could at least not talk like sailor.”

“Oh, so are you going to watch your mouth around me? I doubt it.”

“Men cuss, they’re just men. Women cuss, it’s—”

“Unladylike,” I cut in. “Yeah. I know. And I don’t fucking care.” I took a sip of my latte, never taking my eyes off him. “So what’s the deal with your beard?” I demanded again. “You never had one before the accident.”

“How would you know?”

“I remember when it happened. I was seventeen. I’d been watching you since you first came into the league. You always had a baby face and a big smile. Now you have that ugly beard and your hair’s too long. What are you hiding?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Maybe you don’t need to tell me, but you should tell someone.”

“Nothing to tell,” he said. Then he drank his entire triple shot of espresso in a single swallow.

“You wish that were vodka?” I asked, watching his grimace.

“Don’t drink vodka. Not anymore.”

“Not since the wreck?”

He stared at me, those dark eyes trying to bore holes through me. It was like he wanted to see if he could break me, make me blink first. I refused to back down or look away.

“I drank after wreck. Tried to forget.”

“So why’d you quit drinking?”

“Didn’t work. Couldn’t forget. Realized I needed to remember.”

“Is that what the beard is about? Trying to remember?”

“Nyet.” He sounded more exasperated with me than ever, the word coming out like a dog’s bark, and he clenched one hand into a fist. His right hand, which had something tattooed on the back of it in Cyrillic. He had a lot more ink than just that, too. His arms, back, ribs, legs, hell, even his neck had black ink permanently etched into it. He was a walking billboard. “Beard is just beard.”

“I doubt it. You gonna tell me your tattoos are just tattoos next? That they don’t mean anything?”

“Tattoos have meaning.”

“Yeah? What’s that one mean?” I nodded toward his hand.

“It’s personal.”

“Everything’s personal, Nazarenko.”

“Dima,” he corrected me. “Or Dmitri, if you want.”

“How about you answer a question, and then I’ll call you whatever the hell you want to be called?”

“How about you stop asking stupid questions?”

I gave him a sly grin over the top of my latte as I sipped. “Been asking them twenty-four years, if you ask my brother, and I haven’t stopped yet. I doubt you’ll have better luck than he has.”

“Why do you torture me like this?”

“Torture?” I winked. “If I really wanted to torture you, I’m sure I could find a much better way of doing it than having coffee in a public place.”

“I need more coffee. To put up with you.” He shoved back his chair and stalked away with his empty cup, ignoring my laughter.

I watched him as he stood in line, still as a statue. In annoyance, he crushed the cup. Then he tossed it in the nearest trash bin and crossed his arms, determinedly looking anywhere but at me. Once he’d finally received his order, he glared down at his cup and tromped back to our table.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, still not hiding my amusement.

He glared at me as he set the cup down between us. It read Sir Grouch-A-Lot this time.

I snorted from laughing so hard.

“Yeah, very funny,” he groused.

At first, I hadn’t been sure I was doing the right thing when I’d blocked him in the locker room and dragged him along with me. It’d just been a gut feeling, something that felt right, after watching him the whole day.

But now? Now I knew, without a doubt, that Sergei was right. Someone needed to needle at this man, to prod and dig and tease until he broke.

And while it might amuse me to no end to poke this bear of a man, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to be the one to keep doing it. I’d been going at him all afternoon, and he still hadn’t budged. Not even an inch.

Which told me he was dead set on staying exactly as he was.

Lost.

Lonely.

Angry.

Beating himself up over a past that could never be changed.

I wasn’t sure I had the patience to drag him out of that, but I doubted I could back away now.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out. “Have to go,” he said a moment later. “Need you to take me back to my car.”

“Something wrong?”

He shook his head. “Hunter needs my help.”

“Where? I can take you there.”

“Just need my car. Fast.”

“It’ll be quicker if we just go straight from here,” I pointed out. “I can take you back to your car when you’re done.”

He glared some more, then chugged his second triple espresso. Something told me he wouldn’t sleep for a week. But then he backed away from the table and headed for the door.

“Let’s go,” he said.

I followed him, a grin stealing over my face. On my way out, I gave the barista a thumbs-up. I was probably opening up a can of worms I didn’t really want to get into, but at the moment, I didn’t care. It was way too much fun to spar with this guy.

“YOU CAN GO home,” I said to London as she came to a stop in Hunter’s driveway. “Hunter can take me back to my car later.” The sun was already setting, anyway. No reason for London to stay out with me. Depending on how bad Harper’s current fit was, I might end up staying for hours. Besides, if London came in, Tallie would insist on adopting her like she did everyone, and I’d never get this woman out of my life. Hunter’s wife was relentless.

London put the car in park and shut off the engine. “It’s all right. I don’t mind.”

“So, no being subtle with you?” I groused, ripping open the door and climbing out. “I’m trying to tell you to leave.”

“I’m not done with you today,” she said before I could slam the door closed. She pushed the button on the passenger seat, bringing it forward so she could get her chair and wheels out from the back.

I was tempted to storm into Hunter’s house and leave her out here alone, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. She moved into her chair and gave me a look, then headed for the door in front of me. I hurried to get there first and ring the bell. It was only when we got there that I remembered the step.

I hadn’t yet decided what to do—whether I should offer to lift her up or angle the chair so she could somehow roll over the step—when I realized she was already taking matters into her own hands. She picked up speed and headed toward the step. Just before getting there, she tipped back to raise her front wheels, then leaned forward to bring the larger back wheels along with her.

I tried to act like I’d seen the same thing dozens of times before and she hadn’t just blown yet another of my ideas about her all to pieces, then rang the bell.

Tallie, as disheveled as I’d ever seen her, opened the door. She had purple circles under her eyes, and her usually perfect hair was frazzled. Not only that, but she was wearing some stained pajamas underneath one of her usual aprons.

“How long she’s been crying?” I asked, stepping inside without an invitation.

London followed us inside and closed the door, but I was focused on the sound of Harper’s screams coming from down the hall. I headed that way with Tallie.

“A few hours? I don’t know. I’ve lost track of time, it’s been going on for so long.”

I walked straight into the nursery, where Hunter was pacing back and forth with the little girl bouncing over his shoulder. She had a fist of his long hair tangled with her fingers, and her face was as red and wet as ever.

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

“Because you had that game today, dumb ass,” Hunter said.

I reached for the baby, and he readily passed her over.

“Game ended almost two hours ago,” I muttered, drawing her in close to me. Then I switched to Russian. “There you are, kukolka,” I said, patting her back. “Dima’s here.”

Within moments, she started to settle, so I took a seat in her rocker and pushed us into a gentle motion. Since she calmed so soon, I was almost positive she’d already cried herself out before I got there, but I didn’t want to tell Hunter and Tallie that. My time with Harper was as much a balm to my own soul as it was to hers, and I wasn’t ready to give it up.

Especially not after a day like today, when London Hawke had trampled all over the last of my frayed nerves. I needed this as much as the baby did. It might not be much longer before she didn’t need me anymore, but I would still need her.

“I’ll calm her down,” I said, since Hunter and Tallie were both standing near the doorway, looking on with hopeful expressions. “You send London home.”

“London?” Hunter asked.

“That’s me.” London’s voice came from the hall, and both of them turned around. “I drove him here. We were having coffee after the game.”

Just like that, Tallie turned around with a renewed gleam in her eyes that sent shivers racing up my spine. “Well,” she said, and it was clear she meant to be speaking to London even though she was looking straight at me. “Isn’t this a surprise? It isn’t every day that Dima brings one of his girls around.”

“She just dropped me off. She can leave now,” I argued.

Tallie gave me an over-my-dead-body sort of look. “Not if I have anything to say about it. Come on, London. Let’s go to the kitchen. You can help me make dinner.”

I stared Hunter down. “Make Tallie stop. London should go home.”

“I don’t think you understand, since you’re not married, but there’s no making Tallie do anything. Ever. If the thought strikes her that she wants something, then she and I both have to do everything required in order to be sure she gets it.”

“You owe me. Deal with it, or no more baby whisperer.”

He snorted on his way out the door. “Whatever, Dima. You’re smitten with that baby. All I have to do is text you, any time of the day or night, and you’re here in twenty minutes. You’re not going to cut her off just because I don’t make my wife kick your girlfriend out.”

“Not my girlfriend,” I called out to his retreating form.

He laughed.

I looked down at Harper, who had her big, wet eyes trained on me, her chin trembling as she grasped for my beard. “London isn’t my girlfriend,” I said to her in Russian. “She’s a thorn in my side. Why won’t your papa help me get rid of her, huh? We need to teach him to run people off before you’re a teenager, don’t we?”

She made a sound that was half whimper and half coo.

“If he doesn’t, I’ll do it. I’ll scare those boys away. Just the ones you don’t want in your life, though. I’ll only scare the good ones enough to make sure they don’t do anything stupid. You should learn now, kukolka, that boys are stupid. And even if they say they’re not just trying to get in your pants, they’re liars.”

The longer I talked, the calmer she became. Soon, I was telling her about the summer I was sixteen and my papa died, and how Sergei, who was two years older, had looked out for me. He’d gone on to play pro hockey, and he’d taken me with him. “In Russia, once you’re fifteen, they leave you to be on your own if you have no parents. Most of those kids end up in bad situations, little one. Very bad. And that was to be my fate. But Sergei wouldn’t leave me all alone. He took me with him and helped me find my own way. I don’t know where I would be if not for Sergei. I’ll bring him over someday for you to meet. He doesn’t have a beard for you to pull, but he can talk to you in Russian and tell you stories about me as a boy. Stories that will make me glad you don’t understand, probably.”

Before long, her fussing stopped and she fell asleep in my arms as she so often did. I didn’t stop talking, though. If I put her back in her crib, I’d have to go out and join the others. London’s voice was still ringing out through the house every now and then, so clearly Hunter hadn’t done a thing to help me on that front.

Not just her voice. Her laughter. All three of them seemed to be enjoying themselves out there. I didn’t have to step into the kitchen to realize Tallie had already pulled London into the fold, the way she tended to do.

Frankly, I wasn’t ready to face her again. That woman irritated me like no one had done in so long I’d almost forgotten I could get this worked up over something. Someone. I hated that she had that kind of power. I hated that I gave in to it. The easiest thing would be to simply never do anything again that would mean running into this woman, but now that I’d been stupid enough to bring her here…

Her eyes shut tight, Harper let out a huge, sleepy sigh.

“I feel the same way,” I said softly. “Help me find my way out of this mess, kukolka. And promise me you’ll grow up to be much smarter than your Dima.”

“Well, this is an image I never expected to see,” London said, wheeling into Harper’s nursery.

My irritation shot straight up to high again in the space of an instant.

“Quiet,” I grumbled. “Don’t wake the baby.”

“If talking was going to wake her up, she wouldn’t have fallen asleep with you griping at her the way she did.”

“I don’t gripe at Harper.”

“Nope, you only gripe at me. So I expect you were griping about me to her.”

There was more truth to that statement than I wanted to concede, even if it hadn’t only been about her.

“What do you want?” I demanded.

“In life? Or right at this moment?”

I glared in response.

“Tallie says dinner’s ready, and she wants to know if you’re willing to put the baby in her crib so she can feed you. She says it’s a Southern woman’s responsibility to feed everyone who comes to visit, even if they’re growly bears.” London gave me a pointed look. “She only added that part because I told her how grumpy you’ve been all day.”

“Only reason I’m grumpy is you.”

“That may be the case, but somehow I doubt it.” Then she backed her wheelchair out into the hall. “Whether you come or not, we’re eating. You should probably join us. All that caffeine you had is going to wreak havoc on your system without some food. And you could use some protein after working your arms the way you did in the game today. I doubt espresso fits that bill.”

“Make me another promise,” I said to Harper, once more speaking in Russian. “Promise me you’ll never grow up to be a mouthy woman like her.”

HARPER WAS STILL sleeping after we finished dinner. I helped Tallie clean the kitchen while Hunter and London talked hockey in the living room, half hoping the baby would wake up and start screaming her head off. That would give me a good excuse to slip back into her bedroom and rock her until—hopefully—London took the hint and left without me. To my chagrin, the baby was still sleeping like a rock once every dish had been washed, dried, and put away.

Tallie wiped her hands on a dish towel and took off her apron, giving me the sort of look she always gave people before convincing them to spill their guts to her.

“Don’t start,” I said.

“I started while you were rocking my baby.”

“Then stop now.”

“Fat chance of that happening.” She tossed her apron on the counter and crossed her arms, hitching her hip against the sink. “So you seem to have your knickers in a knot around London. What’s that about?”

It didn’t take too much to understand what she was asking me, even though I didn’t have a clue what knickers were. “Don’t like her.”

“Yeah. Sure.” She rolled her eyes. “Next time, remember to load your brain before you go shootin’ your mouth off around me.”

That sounded like another insult. I wished Tallie would speak regular English around me, but it wasn’t likely to happen any time soon. “Don’t like her,” I repeated.

“Well, I do. And I think you do, too, even if you don’t want to admit it. So why’d you bring her over, anyway?”

“She drove me.” Crazy, I thought to myself. She drove me absolutely crazy. Admittedly, my usual state wasn’t too very far from there, but still.

“Where’s your car?”

“At BOK Center.”

“So you left your car behind to go somewhere with someone you don’t like, huh? Yeah, sounds real smart to me.” She crossed over to take a glass down from the cabinet and fill it with water from the refrigerator. “I may not know you very well, Dima, but I do know you’re not an utter moron. Why’d you go out for coffee with her?”

Without thinking, I said the first thing that popped into my head. “She kidnapped me.”

“Oh, that’s rich. A woman in a wheelchair kidnapped you.” She eyed me up and down, as if I didn’t understand how much stronger I was than a woman, let alone a woman who was paralyzed. “Wait till that gets around the locker room.” She took a sip and then gave me a pitying stare, followed by a gale of laughter that completely undid any seriousness she was trying to convey. “Maybe you don’t want to like her, but I don’t believe there’s much you can do to stop it.”

“We’re oil and water. Never mix.”

“Maybe you need a bit of vinegar thrown in, then. Something to shake it up. Something to shake you up.”

I feared that was already happening.

“Something tells me you might be more like matches and gasoline,” she said, heading back into the living room with her glass.

Lovely. So one of us was ready to blow the other up. Tallie might not be too far off the mark with that one, although I wasn’t certain which was the explosive and which was the spark.

AFTER WAITING ANOTHER hour with the hope that Harper would wake up and need me to calm her down, London and I left together so she could drive me back to my car. All my arguments had fallen on deaf ears. Hunter hadn’t seen any good reason to leave and drive me up to the arena when London was perfectly willing, and he and Tallie had gently but firmly pushed me out the front door.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” London asked after several minutes passing in silence.

I’d preferred the silence.

“What wasn’t hard?” I groused.

“Having a polite meal together. Sitting and talking like normal human beings without biting each other’s heads off.”

“Think half my tongue is gone. Bit it too hard to stop myself from biting you.”

The streetlights lit up her face when she faced me with a wicked grin. “Do you bite hard?”

“Hard enough.” I tried not to watch her, but I couldn’t stop myself from focusing in on her neck and thinking about biting her there, just over her pulse point. “Why you have to make it come across like sexy?” I demanded, getting frustrated with myself—even more frustrated than I was with her.

“You did that yourself.”

“Can do plenty more myself, too.”

“I have no doubt your hand gets a good workout, too. At least if you treat all the women in your life this way.”

“Most women are happy to help with that, thanks,” I said, and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

“Are they?” She stopped at a red light and gave me an appraising stare. “Good thing I’m not like most women, then, isn’t it?”

“Why you say that?” Again, should’ve kept my mouth shut. The smart thing to do would be to zip it and sit in silence the rest of the way to my car, because nothing I said was helping the situation any. In fact, everything either of us said was only making the gears spin in my head and all the blood in my body shoot straight to my groin. This was not the way I wanted to respond to this woman.

London gave me a coy smile. “Just because I have no interest in using my hand on you. Not when there are much better things I could do.”

Holy hell. Matches and gasoline. Tallie might be onto something.

The light changed. She returned her focus to driving, and I shifted in my seat, tugging my jacket over my lap to do what I could to hide the raging hard-on I was sporting. I caught her looking over and down, and she chuckled. I should’ve just stayed still.

She didn’t say anything else the rest of the way back to my car, and I was perfectly content to maintain the silence and try to think calm, boring thoughts in the hopes they’d act like a chill pill for my boner. There weren’t any other cars in the lot outside the BOK Center when we arrived. Not a big surprise since the charity game had ended hours ago. She drove up alongside my car and put hers in park before turning to face me again.

“Hey, Nazarenko?”

“What?” I grumbled, trying hard not to look up at her laughing eyes. I couldn’t stop myself, though, meeting her gaze head on. Her eyes were brown, like her sleek hair. Not just any brown, though. More like smooth, melting chocolate glistening in the garish parking lot lighting.

“Tell Sergei I tried, but there’s only so much I can do. I’m not Wonder Woman.”

“Tried what?” I demanded.

“He’ll know.”

I nodded that I’d tell him, not that I was sure I’d follow through with that. Why should I pass on messages for this woman, whose sole life purpose seemed to be to drive me insane in every conceivable way? Then I climbed out of her car and into mine.

Once my engine started, London drove away.

Good riddance, if you asked me.

I took out my phone and sent Sergei a text message, asking him where he was. He responded a few minutes later, while I was still sitting in the BOK Center parking lot.

At some bar with a few of the other sledge players. You can join us. I can get the address for you.

He made the offer even though he knew there was no chance in hell I’d take him up on it. I didn’t go to bars anymore. I didn’t drink.

Although, after the day I’d had, the temptation was strong.

My phone buzzed with another message, but this time it was from someone named Sasha. No last name. That meant she had to be one of the girls I’d gone home with at some point along the line. She hadn’t been important enough for me to put in her last name, but apparently I’d liked her well enough to keep her phone number stored in my cell.

It’s a cold night tonight. I sure could use you in my bed to warm me up.

My fingers started to type in a response, asking for her address. That would be one surefire way of easing the bother of my boner. But for some reason, I typed in something entirely different.

Not tonight. Not interested.

After sending the message, I started my engine and drove myself home. That was probably the smartest thing to do, anyway. We had a game to play tomorrow.

SOMEONE RANG MY doorbell. It was still dark out, and I definitely hadn’t rolled over yet, if it was even morning. I glared at the alarm clock on my nightstand, trying to make the bright red numbers come into focus. Not an easy proposition, since it was still dark, I was still half asleep, and I hadn’t had a drop of coffee.

The clock read 6:43.

In the morning.

On a freaking Saturday, when I didn’t have any plans for the day.

Whoever was outside my door had better be prepared to duck for cover, because I was sure as hell arming myself with something to throw at their head for waking me up so damned early.

The last couple of weeks had been crammed full of activities—work, the charity sled game last weekend, and a Christmas party with the other Para-Pythons. My time hadn’t been my own, even on my weekends off. But for the next ten days, my office was closed for the holidays, and I was supposed to get to sleep as late as I wanted.

I threw off the covers and transferred myself into my chair, remembering at the last second to drape a throw blanket across my legs. On my way to the front door, I grabbed a big jar candle and set it on my lap for easy access. It was more than heavy enough to do some damage, and I had some serious upper body strength—not just for a woman, either. The last few years of getting around in a wheelchair and a hockey sled had left my arms as strong as most men’s.

I left the chain locked, only undoing the deadbolt, and whipped the door open so I could peek through the crack.

Two sets of brown eyes twinkled at me—staring from about the same height as me.

“Do you wanna build a snowman?” my niece, Kennedy, said, in a perfect imitation of Anna from Frozen, with her older brother, Logan, at her side. My brother, Gray, stood behind his oldest two children. Logan was the eldest at eight. Kennedy, with her frizzy brown curls, was six.

“What are you doing here before the butt crack of dawn?” I demanded, still not undoing the chain. I was feeling way too grouchy due to my sleep being disturbed to give in to the cuteness. Yet. It’d happen soon, but I’d always had a hard time shaking off my sleep to join the waking world.

“It’s snowing,” Logan said, as if that explained everything.

I peeked past my brother and saw that, yes, indeed, there was some white stuff falling from the sky. “And?”

Gray laughed. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, since we’ve only lived in Tulsa for a few years, but in this part of the world, snow is still a rarity. Which means the kids want to get out and enjoy it while it’s still snow and not ice.”

“You three go right ahead,” I grumbled, wishing I’d stopped to put on a pot of coffee before answering the door. “Go grab your baby sister, while you’re at it. Three’s plenty old enough to get out and enjoy some snow, I think. I, on the other hand, have every intention of dragging myself back into bed and sleeping until a normal hour for a Saturday.”

“Aunt London,” Kennedy said dramatically. “You have to help us build a snowman.”

“Wheelchairs and piles of snow aren’t a good combination,” I groused. I could just see it now, trying to wheel out on the powder and sinking like a crate full of treasure.

“The bigger concern,” Gray said, redirecting the conversation, “is that since Tulsa doesn’t have snowplows and whatnot ready to go, the roads are going to be nasty in no time, and it would be suicide for anyone to get out in it. It’s not like when we lived in Wyoming.”

As much as I hated to ever admit my brother was right, this was one time I’d let him win. Last winter, the entire city had shut down for about four days when snow had blown in, because the temperature had warmed up so much during the day that it’d started to melt, but then it’d all frozen again overnight, leaving behind a solid sheet of black ice covering everything. I could drive in snowy conditions, but ice was another beast entirely.

I shook my head. “All the more reason for me to crawl back under the covers.”

“Except they’re predicting this storm is going to keep everything shut down for at least three or four days, just like last year,” my brother said. “Maybe longer.”

“Most likely longer,” I agreed, peeking again to see how much had already fallen. Looked like a bunch more was in store for us.

“So you’ll miss Christmas if you don’t come home with us!” Kennedy added, throwing up her hands.

Gray gave me his trademarked big-brother look. “You’re not missing Christmas. Mom and Dad are already at the house. The kids want to build a snowman as soon as there’s enough powder on the ground to try it. You can watch from inside and warm them up with hot chocolate once they come in. Just come on so I don’t have to be a jerk and carry you over my shoulder to the car.”

“I’d like to see you try it.”

“Oh, I’ll try it, all right. And I’ll manage it.”

I rolled my eyes and, sighing, undid the chain so they could come in.

Kennedy jumped onto my lap, singing “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” and picking up the jar candle. She held it up and stopped singing long enough to ask, “Whatcha doing with this?”

I wheeled us into the kitchen so I could finally get my coffee going. “Using it as a weapon.”

She snickered. “You gonna burn us?”

“Nope. I intended to bonk your daddy in the head with that for daring to wake me up this early on my day off.”

She nodded like that made perfect sense.

Logan headed straight for the living room and opened all the blinds to watch the snow.

“So why don’t I pack up a bag for you while you get yourself ready?” Gray asked, following us into the kitchen.

I shook my head. “Why don’t you get these two home so they’re safe from whatever idiots around here think they know how to drive in snow when they really don’t, and I’ll follow you in just a bit once I’ve had time to wake up and sort out what I need to do on my own?”

“There’s no reason you couldn’t just come with us. I specifically left Erin and Finn at home with Sierra so there’d be plenty of room for you and your chair.”

“Except I want to have my own car so I can escape as soon as it’s safe to do so.”

Kennedy giggled. “We’re gonna kidnap you.”

“I know you are,” I said, nodding vigorously. “So I need a way to unkidnap myself after a few days. Right?” I tickled her ribs until she climbed down and darted off to join her brother. The coffeemaker finished brewing, so I poured Gray a cup—in a travel mug, as a hint—before fixing one for myself. “I started my laundry last night and forgot about it. I can’t leave wet clothes sitting around for days, so I need to run them again and transfer them to the dryer. I need to figure out what to do with any food I’ve got in the fridge, in case I’m gone for several days. There are things I need to do before coming over, Gray. Besides”—I dropped my voice—“I’ve got all their Christmas presents in my trunk, all wrapped. I’ve got to bring my car with me, regardless of when I leave. So you might as well just load them back into your car and go.”

“You swear you’ll head over before too long?”

“I know how to drive in snow,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s all the other idiots out there.”

“I’ll be on my way in two hours, tops. Pinky swear.” I held out my hand with the pinky hooked.

“Anything I can take out for you now? Need your trash hauled to the dumpster? Got an emergency bag with your medical supplies ready to go?”

“Emergency supplies are already in my purse, and more in the car.” I wheeled over to the trash can and pulled the bag out, tying it off. “Take this if it’ll make you happy.”

Within minutes, I had him and the kids heading out the front door, leaving me in peace so I could figure out what I still needed to do.

I hadn’t intended to move in with the family for Christmas. I’d thought I’d go over for most of Christmas Eve and return for Christmas Day, but otherwise, I’d hoped to enjoy my alone time.

Thanks to the weather gods, now all my plans were shot.

I wheeled myself to my laundry room and added more detergent to the washer so I could run that load again, then headed into my bedroom to see what I could get started packing. Good thing I loved my family—or at least most of them. My sister-in-law wasn’t exactly my favorite person in the world, but I put up with her because she gave me my awesome nieces and nephews. This was going to be a long few days with all of us in close quarters.

IF I’D BEEN smart, I would’ve sent Gray down to the gas station to fill up my car for me before sending him and the kids home. Even with the hand controls I’d had installed, an able-bodied person could drive my car. They just had to pretend the stick I used for both acceleration and braking wasn’t there. Apparently, I had been in too much of a hurry to get rid of him, though, because the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

That was why I was now pressing the Assistance button on the gas pump at the first open station I’d come to. Not many of them were open in this weather. I’d often seen snow coming down like this when we’d lived in Wyoming, but never here. For Oklahoma, this was practically a blizzard.

A crackling male voice came on over the intercom. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, that’d be great. I need to fill up, but I’m in a wheelchair. Can someone come pump for me?”

Nothing but static. For a long time. I pressed the button again.

“Sorry, miss. I’m trying. No one else came in today because of all this snow, and I’ve got a line of people…” His voice trailed off, and I could hear the beeping of the register in the background.

“Never mind. I’ll manage.” It wouldn’t be the first time I pumped my own gas. I just wasn’t looking forward to dealing with my chair in this cold weather. I’d rather stay inside my car.

“You’re sure?” the guy asked.

“Positive.” By the time he managed to get out and help me, I could be done and out of there.

As fast as I could, I assembled my wheelchair and transferred myself over to the seat. Then I dug a credit card out of my wallet to use in the pump and dumped my purse and keys on the driver’s seat. Only then did I realize the machine had a message scrolling across it in flashing neon green: PAY INSIDE, CARD READER OUT OF SERVICE.

Lovely.

The thought of putting myself and my chair back in my car, driving to a different pump, and doing it all over again wasn’t my idea of a good time. I grabbed my purse, set it on my lap, and took off across the lot to prepay for some gas.

A bundled up woman was racing out as I reached the door, and she held it open for me. I made my way to the end of a line that had to be seven or eight deep.

Then I realized Dmitri Nazarenko was in front of me, holding a red gas can.

“Think we’ll get enough to take your snowmobile out or something?” I asked him.

He spun around and, once his shock at finding me there wore off, glared at me. “It’s for snow blower. Helping neighbors.”

“What a guy,” I teased, winking up at him.

He turned around and ignored me.

“I’m heading over to my brother’s house. They want me to join them now so I’ll be there for Christmas. You know this is all going to turn to ice before long, right?”

“Was here last season, too,” he grumbled after a moment. I noticed he didn’t bother to face me when he spoke.

“Is Sergei still around?” I asked, determined not to be swayed. I had way too much fun digging at this man. “You didn’t leave him in the car, did you? Those titanium legs get cold—”

“Sergei flew back to Russia. Home to his family.”

“I guess you don’t get enough time off to go back to see your family, huh?”

“Sergei is my family.”

The way he said it, I was almost positive he meant that Sergei was his only family. Despite my intention of poking the bear, a piece of my heart broke for him.

“Are you spending Christmas with Hunter and Tallie, then? Or one of your other teammates?”

The line thinned in front of us, and he moved forward without responding.

“What, so does that mean you’re staying all by yourself?”

“Going to blow snow for neighbors,” he said. Then he got to the front of the line and passed some bills into the cashier’s hand, mumbling a pump number. As soon as he was done, he took his gas can and headed for the door.

“Merry Christmas, Nazarenko,” I shouted at his retreating back.

“Schastlivogo Rozhdestva,” he called over his shoulder.

I wheeled up to the counter and passed the harassed-looking cashier my card. “Can you put twenty on pump ten?”

He glanced out the front windows, squinting into the snow. Then he shook his head and looked at some monitor that was angled in such a way I couldn’t see it. “There’s no vehicle at pump ten, miss.”

“Pump ten,” I said. “The one I buzzed you from a few minutes ago. Gray Chevy sedan.”

He shook his head again and scanned the monitors some more. “There’s no gray Chevy out there. There’s no vehicle at pump ten.”

Of all the insufferably stupid people… Fuming at his idiocy, I snatched my card out of his hand and wheeled myself back outside, ready to get back into my car and keep driving until I got to the next gas station.

Only he was right.

My car was gone.

My car, with thirty thousand dollars worth of modifications to make it accessible, might as well have just vanished into thin air. The mods had cost me more than the car. That thing was my lifeline. It allowed me to live on my own, without the need for people to constantly help me do every tiny thing.

In shock, I shoved my hand into my coat pocket, digging for the keys. Nothing. Checked the space in my purse where I would have put them. Not there, either.

Then it hit me. I’d tossed them on the seat along with my purse when I’d taken out my card to pay. But once it was clear I needed to go inside to pay, I had only grabbed my purse. The keys had been sitting there, just waiting for someone to come along and take them. And my car.

“Well, fuck! Goddamn fucking piece of shit,” I shouted, causing a few people to turn and stare from their gas pumps. I tried not to curse like that under normal circumstances, but this didn’t quite fit into the normal category. Didn’t want to slip up in front of Gray’s kids. I was supposed to be the awesome aunt, but he wouldn’t let me be around them too much if I started cussing like a sailor.

Nazarenko was just pulling away from another stall. He stopped in front of the store when he saw me and rolled down the passenger-side window of his vehicle.

“Where’s your car?” he demanded, his voice gruff. “It’s cold.”

Pretty sure I already knew how cold it was, thanks. I had to fight down the urge to roll my eyes at him. “I think some asshole stole it.” Because I was a freaking idiot.

WHO THE FUCK steals a disabled woman’s car in the middle of a snowstorm? I’d been in that car. It wasn’t like the asshole could’ve gotten in and missed the fact that it had been modified.

I didn’t want anything more to do with London Hawke—I’d told myself that I shouldn’t have to deal with her again after that night a week ago—but I couldn’t leave her sitting there in her wheelchair.

Grinding my jaw together, I leaned across the seat and opened the door for her. “Get in.”

“Why?” she demanded. Clearly, the damned woman was determined to be obstinate about everything.

“Because it’s cold as balls and car is stolen. Get in.” I put my car in park and got out to help disassemble the wheelchair and put it in the backseat. It wouldn’t be as easy to maneuver things to lift it all behind her without the modifications she’d had made to her car, so I assumed she’d need some help.

She glared at me when I reached her side, but she lifted herself into the seat. Maybe she had some sense, after all.

“Tell me how to take it apart,” I said.

Instead of telling me, she pushed a few levers and took the wheels off herself. I put the wheels in the back and then the body of the chair, then shut the door and returned to the driver’s seat.

She was still glaring at me. Damn, but she was hot when she did that.

I drove out of the parking lot and turned right, with the snow coming down harder than ever. Snow had never bothered me any, but it was like a unicorn around here—such a rarity that people acted like it had to be all in their imagination. I’d learned last season just how stupid these people could be when it came to winter weather. I’d hoped to do my business and get home before the roads got too bad, and before too many of the stupid people were trying to get wherever they intended to go for the next few days, but it didn’t look like that would happen.

“Wrong way,” she said. “You need to turn around and go left.”

“Police station is this way.”

“I want you to take me to my brother’s house.”

“Need to file police report.”

“I can call them to report it.”

I supposed she had a point about that. Not that I’d ever admit it to her. I found an open lot and used it to turn around. “Then call. And tell me where to go.”

“Just get on the highway and stay on it for a while,” she said, taking out her phone and dialing a number. She explained what had happened to the officer on the other end of the line. Within a few moments, she’d hung up. “They said to get home first and then call to file the report. They don’t want people out in this.”

We were still on the service road, about to enter the on-ramp, when I saw all the brake lights up ahead. Then a car on the highway swerved to avoid hitting someone in front of them and ended up in the ditch.

“Maybe not the highway,” I said.

“The highway will be safer than the side streets.”

“Don’t think anywhere is safe.”

She sighed, but then she pointed me toward another street up ahead. “Try taking a right at the light.”

The light turned red before we reached it. I carefully braked, but without snow tires, we slid a lot more than I would have liked. The car came to a stop before we ended up in the intersection. A big pickup truck that had been waiting at the light had a hard time getting enough traction to move, and once he got started, he almost slammed into us.

“How far your brother lives?” I asked. My house was only a couple of blocks away. The sooner I could get back there, the better. There were too many people in this city who didn’t know how to drive in this stuff, and I wanted to be as far away from them as I could get.

“He’s about four miles northwest,” London said. “Takes less than ten minutes, in good weather.”

But this wasn’t good weather. Even if I managed to get her there safely, the return trip to my house was going to be treacherous.

“Not sure we can make it there,” I said. “How far is your house? Might be better to just go home.” I fully expected her to argue with me, to try to convince me we’d be just fine and I should take her to her brother’s house anyway.

“Half a mile. But my keys were in the car. I can’t get in without busting a window or breaking down the door.”

That wasn’t going to happen. No way in hell would I leave her alone in a house with cold air coming in, let alone one where she couldn’t lock the door for protection.

I turned to look at her, hating myself more with each second that passed for what I was about to suggest, but I couldn’t see any way around it.

“Need to take you back to my house,” I said. “It’s close. We can get there.”

Between the angry tic in her jaw and the glare drawing her eyebrows together, there was no chance she would agree. She hated this as much as I did. Maybe more. But then she sighed and shrugged. “I suppose you’re right. Let’s just hope we don’t kill each other before we thaw out.”

EVEN THOUGH IT took almost thirty minutes to get to Nazarenko’s because of how heavily the snow was falling and how many cars were stuck—giving me ample time to think about the situation—nothing could have prepared me for what I encountered when we arrived.

The problem? His house was a split-level. That meant stairs to get just about anywhere in the house. In fact, I’d never been inside a split-level house that had a bathroom on the same floor as the living areas. They were usually upstairs with the bedrooms, and maybe down in the basement area.

This wasn’t going to end well.

“I’ll have to carry you inside,” he said as he turned into the driveway, pressing the button to open the garage door.

That much was clear. There were six steps leading from the sidewalk to the front door, and now that I could see into the garage, I could see it was the same leading into the house from there.

“Any chance I can stay on one floor once I’m in?” I asked, holding on to some tiny shred of hope that I wouldn’t have to rely on him to constantly carry me everywhere in order to get around. I didn’t do well without my independence. I’d learned to get around in my wheelchair sooner than the doctors had expected, and I’d been adapting to whatever the world threw at me ever since, finding a way to live my life as normally as possible.

He shook his head. “No bathroom on main level.”

Yeah. Exactly what I expected. I tried not to sulk.

After he closed the garage door, he shut off the engine and got out to cross in front of the car. I undid my seat belt and opened the car door, determined to do as much as possible on my own. “I should warn you,” I said, flashing my eyes up to meet his. “I weigh more than it looks like, and I’m not a fan of letting anyone carry me. Ever.”

“Should I let you crawl?” he asked, his sarcasm dripping. He took a step back and waved toward the steps. “Be my guest. Do it yourself.”

It was a tempting offer, but I kind of liked the idea that he was as uncomfortable about this as I was. I scowled and raised a brow, angling my body so he could better manage it.

“It’ll be a bit like carrying dead weight,” I joked, even as he put an arm under my knees and lifted me out of the car. I stretched my right arm across his shoulders and tried to carry as much of my weight as I could. That drew us closer together, though, and he tensed.

“Just be still,” he demanded, all his sarcasm giving way to agitation.

I grinned and twirled a finger through his long hair. “Is the hair hiding something, too? Like the beard?”

“Leave hair alone,” he groused. He looked like he wanted to bat my hand away, but his were both otherwise occupied with trying to carry me.

I released the hair in my fingers, but I wasn’t done picking at him. Not yet. Grinning, I reached up with my other hand and delved into the tangled, wiry strands hanging from his chin. Only they weren’t as wiry as I’d expected them to be. They were almost soft. I kind of liked the feel of his beard against the soft skin of my palm. “You know, we’ll probably be holed up here for days, just the two of us. That’s a long time to try to keep a secret from me.”

He glared at me for a moment, kicking the car door closed. Then he stomped into the house and deposited me on the couch before returning to the garage for my wheelchair, not giving me an answer.

Yeah, this was going to make for a very interesting Christmas.

AFTER WE ARRIVED at Nazarenko’s house, I called the police again and officially filed a report.

They made sure to inform me, multiple times, that while they were taking my stolen car seriously and would investigate as soon as possible, the current weather situation in the state would be occupying all available resources for the time being.

Not really a surprise. It didn’t matter, in the short term, because whether I had my car or not, I wasn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future. In the short span of time from when I’d left my place, gotten to the gas station, left there with the cranky Russian, and arrived at his house, the weather had deteriorated at a rapid pace. I was perfectly aware just how much of a mess everything was right now, thank you very much.

Once I was done with the police, I put in a claim with my insurance company. Whether they ever recovered my car or not, chances were high it would at least need some repairs. I only hoped the thief didn’t screw with my hand controls, if they did leave my car somewhere. Neither the police nor the insurance adjustor seemed to think it likely I’d ever see that car again, though, and if I did, it wouldn’t be in usable condition.

Then I called my landlord, Dan, to inform him my keys had been stolen and I needed the locks to be changed. He said he’d get it done, and once I came home after the holidays, I should stop in at his house next door for the new key.

Finally, I called Gray to fill him in. He didn’t take the news so well.

“I’m coming to get you,” he said, once I’d finished explaining the situation.

“No, you’re not. You said it yourself this morning. Going out in this weather is a suicide mission in this part of the country.”

“So you’re just going to stay with a stranger for however long it takes for the city to thaw out, huh?”

“He’s not a stranger.” Strange, yes. But not a stranger. I’d had coffee and dinner with him before. That was more than enough to realize Dmitri Nazarenko wasn’t a threat to me. He might not be the most pleasant person to be around, but he wouldn’t do anything to harm me. “It’s not ideal, but it’ll be fine.” And if I kept repeating those words enough to convince my brother, maybe I’d eventually start to believe them, too.

“I don’t like this, London.”

“She’ll be fine,” I heard Dad say in the background, and I stifled a grin even though neither of them could see me. “She’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself. I think we should all know that by now.”

“Exactly what Dad said,” I agreed. And if anyone should have that drilled into his head by now, it was my father. “Look, we have electricity. We’ve got heat. He has a fireplace, too, so even if the power lines go down, we should be able to stay warm.” If he had firewood…something I hadn’t bothered to ask yet. “And I’m sure there’s food in the kitchen.” At least, I hoped there was. And that he knew how to prepare it, since his kitchen wasn’t designed to be wheelchair-friendly. I doubted I’d be much help. “It’s not like it’ll be forever, and there are a lot worse places I could be stuck.”

I shuddered, thinking about what might have happened if I’d let Nazarenko take me to the police station, like he’d intended at first. What would they have done with us once we realized we couldn’t leave, put us up in some of the empty jail cells? Not my idea of a great time.

“What about your emergency supplies?” my brother demanded.

“My big kit was in the trunk, along with all my Christmas presents for everybody. I’m sure we’ll never see most of that again, if any of it. I do keep a few spare things in my purse, though.”

My eyes flickered over to Nazarenko. He was sitting in an armchair across from me, wearing a formfitting T-shirt that showed off all the rippling muscle underneath and a pair of sweats that hugged his ass and thighs in impossibly perfect ways, but he had his nose buried in his phone and didn’t seem to be paying me any attention. He hadn’t said a single word to me since bringing in my wheelchair and setting it next to me on the couch.

Whether he was paying attention or not, I still didn’t want to say the word catheter out loud, let alone mention things like leg bags. In my experience, people tended to freak out about bodily functions, and my accident had caused me to lose control over most of mine. But honestly, I had my wheelchair, a few spare bits of that all-too-important tubing, and at least one spare bag. There was no reason to think I should need more than that for a few days—less if we were lucky.

Clothes, on the other hand, were going to be a bigger concern. I didn’t exactly go around with clean undies and spare jeans in my purse. I supposed I could steal a T-shirt from his closet, if it came down to it, and wash what I was wearing. Too late to worry about that now. We’d just have to figure it out.

“I’m going to be fine,” I repeated again, still trying to convince us both.

“As soon as the roads are clear, I’m coming to get you,” Gray said. Or was threatened a better word? Hard to be sure. Heck, it could have been a promise, and it might have been all of the above at once. When it came down to it, he was the best big brother a girl could hope to have, precisely because of that very ambiguity.

“I’d expect no less,” I said. “Tell the kids I’m sorry, and I’ll make it up to them once the roads are safe.” After all, I had the whole week off work, and the kids were out of school. We could have some fun once I escaped this temporary prison.

He gave me a grumbled promise and said he’d text me pictures of their snowman once the masterpiece was complete. I swore I’d contact him immediately if anything was wrong, even though there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it but commiserate. Finally, we hung up.

I slipped my phone onto the coffee table in front of me and sighed, putting the back of my arm over my eyes as I leaned against the couch cushions. Getting through the drama of my morning and the phone calls had left me with a splitting headache.

“Bet you had no idea what you were getting yourself into when you went out for some gas, huh?” I said, peeking out for a moment.

“Should know by now.” He flashed his eyes up from his phone to meet mine. “Trouble always finds me.”

I burst out laughing. “That’s me. London Trouble Hawke. Can’t take me anywhere unless you’ve got bail money lined up.”

“Cops can’t help me now. Too much snow.”

“That’s right, Nazarenko. You kidnapped me, and now you’re stuck with me.” I straightened myself on the couch, trying to fight off the migraine that wanted to take root.

“Dima,” he said quietly.

“I’ll call you Dima if you’ll tell me about your tattoos.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“Liar. Maybe you forgot you already told me that your tattoos had meaning, but you did tell me. I want to know what they’re about.”

“Do you tell everyone about your accident?”

“If they want to know,” I said. “Why? Do you want to know?”

“Same kind of thing, is all.”

“I know about your accident,” I said, refusing to look away this time. “With Sergei.”

“Was all over news.”

I nodded. “It was. So was mine. Well, the local news, at least.” I’d been playing for the University of Minnesota at the time. There was enough coverage that the local hockey community had pulled together to help me out. Some of the women’s college programs had put on fund raisers to help pay for my medical expenses, and there’d been an anonymous donation from someone connected to the Wild. They’d never filled me in on who was behind it, but that money had paid for my car modifications—the hand controls, the electric control over the passenger seat so I could easily slide it forward and backward for getting my wheelchair in the back.

“I know,” he said.

“You do?” I blinked a couple of times. I didn’t know why, but it surprised me that he had any knowledge at all about my accident. When I’d crashed into the boards in that game, it hadn’t received anywhere near the kind of attention that it would have if I’d been a man, or especially if I’d been a pro, like he and Sergei had been. This was four years ago, when I’d been a twenty-year-old junior with my whole life ahead of me. For a time, I’d thought that my life might as well have ended, but I hadn’t let myself stay in the doldrums for too long. How could I when there were so many people who wanted to help me?

“Was playing for Minnesota then.”

The weight of his words hit me like a ton of bricks. For a moment, all I could do was stare at him, open-mouthed, while I tried to take it all in. “Did you send me money?” I demanded.

He stared back, silent and unwavering. Then he got up and headed for the stairs. “Need to change sheets.”

Damn it all if he wasn’t running away from me, and doing it in a way that I couldn’t chase him.

HOW THE HELL was I going to get through the next few days with this woman in my house? When I picked her up and she started playing with my beard, all I wanted to do was make her stop, even if it took kissing her senseless. Not a good direction for my thoughts to take since, due to the construction of the house, I was going to have to pick her up and carry her multiple times a day until the weather finally cleared and I could send her on her way.

The sooner that happened, the better, too, because then I’d started thinking about kissing her, and now I couldn’t stop—even though she drove me mad with all her probing questions. Goddamned, insufferable, prying woman.

I ripped the sheets off my bed and cursed myself for never having gotten around to furnishing any of the other bedrooms in this house. There’d been no need to. When Sergei came to visit, he always preferred to get a hotel room close by. He was the only person I ever had visit me, so I hadn’t been in any big rush. I often thought about offering up one of the rooms to a younger teammate or to someone who got traded mid-season, but I hadn’t ever done that. The rooms were still empty, so now I would be sleeping downstairs on my couch for a few nights.

If my instincts were right, London sensed my attraction and was using it against me. Why else would she have played with my hair like that? There wasn’t any other good explanation for it. She was trying to torture me.

That theory lined up well with all her other behavior since I’d first met her. She seemed to get off on poking and prodding my every wound. If she found a sore spot, she dug in until I couldn’t do anything but run away for some peace.

I finished putting clean bedding in place and carried the dirty sheets downstairs.

London raised a brow when she saw me. “Done running away yet?”

“Need to wash them.”

No way was I ready to face her again. I never knew what to expect from her, and that terrified the shit out of me. I headed down to the lower level and started the washer, taking my time to compose myself before returning to the living room to join her.

When I crossed in front of her, she tugged on the sleeve of my shirt, pulling me down next to her.

“What?” I demanded.

She dug into my right wrist and held my hand up in front of her, looking at the back side. Her fingers traced the Cyrillic lettering. “What does it say?”

I ground my jaw. “None of your business.”

“I’m making it my business.” She leaned in closer to me, resting her weight against my side.

“Why?” Why did she care? Why wouldn’t she leave me be? Everyone else in the world understood they needed to keep their distance, that I didn’t want to talk. Why did this woman have to be different from all the rest?

“Because we’re stuck in this house together for who knows how long. What else are we going to do? Stare at the walls?”

I tried to jerk my hand back, but she had an unexpectedly strong grip and refused to budge. “You’re obstinate. Anyone tell you that before?”

“My brother tells me that all the time,” she said. “So tell me.”

More frustrated by the moment, I bit off, “Says ya ne zabudu.”

She waited a beat and then scowled up at me. “Care to translate?”

“Means I won’t forget.”

“I doubt you could if you tried. Lord knows I can’t.”

Every bone in my body itched to get away from her. Because she was getting too close. Not just physically, either, although that alone was enough to send me to my wits’ end. Her limbs were long and lean and very firm, and I couldn’t get the memory of her wrapping her arm around my shoulders out of my mind. Or her scent, for that matter, which was currently wrapping its way around me and taking me captive. Citrus and vanilla. I wanted to bury my nose in her hair and breathe her in.

But it was the way she kept prying into my past, more than anything, that left me wanting to escape.

I stared down at the words on my hand. I’d had them tattooed there about six months after the wreck, after trying to bury the pain of the memory in as much alcohol as I could possibly consume. “I tried to forget,” I said.

“How?”

The memories washed over me like a flood. “Sergei found me one morning. I was on bathroom floor in a puddle of filth. He kicked me with his new leg until I woke up. ‘Wake up, you fucking son of a bitch,’ he said in Russian. Kick. Kick. Kick. ‘Wake up. I’m walking, for first time in forever, and you try to drink yourself to death. You should help me celebrate. Your papa wouldn’t be proud to see you this way, Dima.’”

“Did you drink a lot back then?”

“Too much. Always too much. Tried to make it stop hurting. Papa would have been more disappointed in me than I could stand, because I nearly killed Sergei. Once I finally cleaned myself, we decided to celebrate. Get tattoos.”

“And that’s when you got this?” London asked, still tracing the letters.

“Didn’t go for this. Sergei got a phoenix. Tribal phoenix on back of shoulder. I wanted tribal husky. Tribal to match Sergei. Husky for Papa.” I pointed to the curved lines on the right side of my neck that covered some of the worst scars left from the wreck and felt her gaze travel over the black ink. “He had husky named Anya. She came to Lake Baikal and jumped around on frozen lake while I skated.”

She’d also lain by his side as cancer killed him, following years of exposure to toxic chemicals at the paper mill. That damn dog hadn’t left him even after he was dead and in the ground. I’d tried to get her to come stay with me at Sergei’s house, but she’d always gone back to Papa’s grave.

I didn’t tell London that bit. Didn’t want her to see anything that was such a deep part of my soul.

“But that wasn’t only ink I got that day. I also got this on my hand. Made sure the words faced me. Drinking to forget doesn’t work. Drinking was what got me there—me with mountains of guilt, Sergei with no leg. Haven’t touched alcohol since.”

She was still staring at my neck—staring far more intently than she needed to in order to make out the design. It was big and bold, with the husky’s snout ending just before becoming part of my face. I didn’t like her scrutiny.

I really didn’t like it when she reached up and traced the lines etched into my skin. Her touch was soft and tender and all the things I didn’t deserve to feel. It burned through me. Ate me alive from the inside.

“I never realized you had a scar there until now,” she murmured. “Is that why you got it here? To hide the scars?”

Her touch was too much. With any other woman, as soon as she started getting this close, I pushed her away and moved on with my life, going back to my usual state of being alone with my guilt.

I couldn’t take any more, but I also couldn’t escape from her. From this. We were stuck together for the time being.

I bolted up from the couch and stomped into the kitchen, desperate to put at least some distance between us.

“Yeah, there you go again,” London called out after me. “Running away. You’re a big, tough, manly man, but the second anyone gets too close, you run and hide.”

“Need to eat,” I bit off, banging open the cupboard doors in frustration.

“You go right ahead, telling yourself those lies. But I don’t believe it. Not for a second.”

And that was what terrified me.

I LET DIMA bash things around in the kitchen for a while, but not for too long. After years of experience with poking at Gray, I knew it was best to keep poking until I got the results I wanted, as long as I gave him intermittent breaks like this. While Dima was busy, I sent my brother a text, reiterating that I was perfectly fine, and he shouldn’t worry…and that he should tell Mom to stop worrying, too. Even though my mother hadn’t called, I knew her well enough to know she was practically frantic with not knowing if I was all right, even though there was no good reason for her to be like that.

Once things quieted down somewhat in the other room, I knew it was time.

“Dima?” I called out. This time, I used the name he’d asked me to. After all, he had told me about the tattoo I’d asked about in return. I had to give on some things if I wanted him to do the same.

He said something I couldn’t understand. Then, “What?”

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

A loud clatter rang out, like he’d tossed something in the sink, but then he stalked back into the living room and picked me up, barely even glancing at me in the process.

“I need my purse.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. Probably praying for patience. He might think I was PMSing or something. Whatever. He didn’t need to know the truth.

He carried me into the kitchen so I could grab my purse off the counter.

“What are you working on in here?” I asked.

“Lunch.” He turned around and headed straight for the stairs.

I rolled my eyes, not that he’d notice. “Sounds delicious. Care to elaborate?”

“No.”

Halfway up the flight, my irritation got the better of me. I grabbed a handful of his beard and jerked until he looked down at me, brown eyes blazing.

“What?” he demanded.

“Nothing.” I kept a firm grip on him, though. I liked seeing the fire in his eyes. I might like it a bit too much. A smile was threatening to claim my face, and I fought to clamp it down. “Just wanted to see what’s going on in your head, since you refuse to tell me.”

“Nothing to tell,” he grumbled, flipping on the bathroom light.

I took a quick glance around. Typical bathroom, not equipped for a handicapped person. It had the usual shower-and-tub combo, which might prove to be a bother when I needed to bathe. If he had a separate shower, I could roll myself in and not need his assistance, other than in bringing both me and my chair up here. But tubs were another matter, entirely.

I released my hold on him after taking it all in. “Just set me down on the toilet for now. Then I need you to bring me my chair.”

“Why you need wheelchair to piss?”

“Just do it, Dima.” I wasn’t in the mood to explain that I’d need to clean up some bits in the sink once I was done, and I wasn’t in the mood for him to see all the tubing and whatnot. I only had to insert the catheter every few hours so I could empty my bladder, but I couldn’t reach the sink from the toilet to clean everything off. That meant I needed to be mobile.

He set me down and glared at me, but he stalked out of the bathroom. A minute later, he returned with my chair and set it in front of me.

“Thank you,” I said, doing my best to remain civil. “I’ll handle it from here and yell when I’m done.”

He clomped out of the bathroom, slamming the door closed behind him. I quickly dealt with emptying my bladder and cleaning up all my supplies before stowing everything in my purse.

“Dima?” I called out, waiting for his response.

Nothing. Not even a bunch of banging.

Maybe he’d gone back downstairs.

I wheeled over and opened the door, poking my head out to look around. He wasn’t there, but I could hear a few sounds coming from the kitchen again. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore a bit on my own. If I could see how he lived, maybe I would understand him better. That was my hope.

To the right, I found his bedroom. Cream walls. Leather furniture. Soft brown fabrics on everything, like fur, that looked warm and comforting. It was Spartan and neat, with nothing out of place.

I backed out and opened the door to one of the other bedrooms. It was piled high with cardboard boxes. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture to be found, only boxes upon boxes. My fingers itched to open one and take a peek, but that might be too invasive. Leaving the room, I closed the door.

The other room must be the one where I’d be sleeping, then. I opened that door…and found nothing. White walls. Hardwood floors. And nothing at all inside the room.

“Looking for something?” he asked. Or growled. There was a definite surly flavor to his tone, and it turned me on in the best and worst sort of way.

I spun around, dropping my grip on the door handle. My heart was pounding so hard he had to be able to hear it. “I called for you. You didn’t answer or come to help me.”

Then I saw him, and it definitely turned me on.

This was bad. This was very, very bad. I bit down on the inside of my cheek, hoping the pain would help return me to my senses.

“Making lunch,” he said. He stood at the top of the stairs, arms crossed in what would have been an intimidating posture if not for the shoulder leaning against the wall.

“I didn’t hear you come up. You should’ve let me know you were there.”

“You called for help. I’m here. What else do you want from me?” The way he glowered at me threatened to turn every bone in my body to mush. It was hot. Even with the beard, it was hot, and probably not in the way he intended. Holy moly, I was in trouble. “And you should ask before you snoop in my house,” he added.

He had a point, but I wasn’t inclined to concede it. “So is this where I’m sleeping?” I asked, sweeping an arm toward the vast open space behind me.

“You sleep in bed. I sleep on sofa.”

“That doesn’t quite seem fair. There’s no reason you shouldn’t sleep in your own bed.”

“So I put mouthy woman in wheelchair on sofa? Yeah, what a guy.” Sarcasm dripped out of his pores.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that he was tossing my own words back at me.

“Everything so fucking funny,” he mumbled, picking me up again so he could carry me back downstairs. “You’re playing with fire.”

“Why don’t you have a guest bed?” I asked, refusing to give in just yet. I kind of liked the idea of getting burned if it turned out to be anything like I imagined. I let my fingertips trail through the silky-smooth strands of his beard, marveling again at the texture.

He jerked his head to get me to stop. “No need. Sergei likes hotel.”

“No one else comes to visit you? Not ever?”

“Only you.” He dumped me on the couch again and went up again for my wheelchair.

“I’m not taking your bed from you!” I called up after him. “It won’t kill me to sleep—”

“Why everything has to be a fight with you?” he roared, stopping halfway up the flight.

“Why do you always have to answer my questions with more questions?”

“Why you’re always touching my beard? Poking and prodding and prying. Little snoop. Can’t keep your fucking hands to yourself.”

“Because you’re hot, Dima!” The words came out before I thought them through. “You’re hot. Even your stupid beard and the way you constantly glare at me and push me away. It’s all hot, and I’m hot and bothered. Okay?”

For a moment, he stared at me, his eyes dark and angry in a way that only intensified my attraction. “Fucking mouthy woman.”

I bit my tongue to keep from grinning. He didn’t have the first clue how mouthy I could be. Although, if he wasn’t careful, he might find out. The angrier he got, the hornier I got, which could prove to be quite a conundrum. Then he spun and marched up the rest of the stairs, coming back to set my chair near me.

He came too close. Shouldn’t have done that.

I managed to get a fistful of beard hair and drag him down to me. Everything exploded the second my lips touched his.

I bit his lower lip. He hissed, opening his mouth to let me in as I lay back, pulling him on top of me.

This was probably a bad idea. This had to be a very, very bad idea.

But I didn’t care.

He caught part of his weight with an arm against the back of the couch, but most of his body fell upon me, burying me with the most delicious warmth. He kissed me back, hard and angry, his beard scraping against my chin in a way that only made me want more.

His hand dug into my hip hard enough I could feel it as he spread my legs and settled himself between my thighs, his weight pressing me farther into the cushions.

Both hands splayed, I took in the ridges and planes of his chest and back, ripping his shirt free so I could touch flesh.

Kisses. And nibbles. He rained them down the column of my neck, alternating, just sporadic enough that the sting of each bite took me by surprise. He bit harder than before when he reached my clavicle.

I cried out, and he whipped his head up to meet my gaze.

His eyes were fire. Blazing. Angry. Consuming me.

“It hurts?” he demanded.

I sucked in buckets of air, my chest rising and falling in rapid, uneven waves. “Yes.”

“Good or bad?”

I didn’t even have to think. “Good.”

Then his lips were on mine again, the kiss punishing and furious and desperate. I swallowed his taste, dark enough to leave me drunk with need, and so erotic I felt everything inside turn to liquid heat.

“More,” I demanded. Now that I’d gotten my hands under his shirt, I worked my way around to his back and delved beneath the waist of his sweatpants. His ass was hard and tight, muscled perfection with just enough jiggle to tempt me to slap it. Instead, I squeezed, and he ground his pelvis into me.

He nipped my earlobe and groaned. “I want to fuck you. Want to fuck you hard and fast. Give you better use for that fucking mouth.”

Again, there was no need to think. I gave him the only answer I could.

“Yes. Fuck me.” I moaned as his hand slipped up inside my shirt. He kneaded my breast through the thin fabric of my bra for a moment, then pinched my nipple. I could barely get out the next word. “Please.”

WHY THE HELL didn’t I keep any condoms down here? Probably because I never brought women back to my place. I always went home with them so I could leave whenever I was ready to move on. No need to have them easy to get to at home. I kept a stash in my dresser and made sure to take some with me if I thought I’d be hooking up with someone for the night.

At the moment, I was cursing myself for not having protection where I needed it. I peeled myself off London and picked her up, desperate to get inside her as soon as humanly possible. She licked my neck, suckling the scar hidden under my tattoo so hard I nearly tripped on the stairs. This time, she was too busy groping me to help carry her weight, but that was a trade-off I was more than happy to make. She dug into my flesh until her fingernails practically marked me.

I set her on the bed and pried her hands off me so I could fetch the box of condoms out of my dresser drawer. At the last second, I saw the box of dental dams beside it and grabbed those, too, just in case I could slow myself down enough to make use of them. By the time I returned, she’d already stripped her shirt over the top of her head and tossed it to the floor. Her body was everything I’d imagined it to be and more. Long limbs. Strong, toned muscle. Small, pert tits I couldn’t wait to get my mouth on. Some men might be intimidated by a woman as fit as she was. Not me. It turned me on so much I could hardly stand it.

Tossing the protective gear on the bed beside her, I straddled her lap, pushing her back so I completely covered her again.

Her long brown hair fanned out over the bedspread, and she yanked hard on my beard again, forcing me down to her for another kiss. Her lips were already pink and swollen, but she attacked me with as much fervor as I’d attacked her moments ago.

I raked my fingers up her ribs, digging them beneath the material of her bra to shove it out of my way. When I cupped both breasts in my palms, she arched up into me. Her tits were already hard enough to cut glass, the nubs biting into my flesh as much as my fingers bit into hers.

I broke off the kiss with a nip to her lower lip that had her crying out. That was my chance to work my way down her body to enjoy those tits. I palmed one breast and flicked my tongue over the nipple a few times before suckling the whole thing.

London let out a groan and pushed her hands against the back of my head, driving me onto her and directing me where she wanted me. “Fuck, Dima, that’s good. I’m so wet.”

I nipped her gently with my teeth before moving to the other breast. “Not just mouthy. Dirty mouth.” And, damn it to hell, I liked it.

She was so sensitive her reactions were driving me wild. Somehow, her entire body bucked beneath me. I didn’t think she had enough use of her legs to accomplish it, but I wouldn’t complain.

With my free hand, I undid the fly of her jeans while I worked on her other tit. I slipped my fingers inside her panties, past her curls, to find her as slick and hot as my wildest fantasies. Using only the tips of my fingers, I spread her lower lips and found her clitoris, circling it a few times in the same rhythm as my tongue on her rock-hard tit.

Her breathing turned shallow. Sharp, staccato bursts. She lifted her head and dragged me up by the hair until our eyes met. “Stop teasing me and fuck me.”

I grinned, but I didn’t stop. I kept circling that little nub of nerve endings until I felt her legs shaking beneath me, watching her eyes darken and roll back in her head. “You feel that?”

“Yes, I fucking feel that. I want to feel you. Inside me.”

Discovering how much sensation she still had might be the best present ever. For some reason, I’d assumed she couldn’t feel anything at all below a certain point. And now that I knew she could, I was endlessly fascinated. I wanted to devour her and watch her every reaction. I wanted to tease her in every way I could imagine, waiting to see how she’d respond.

Still watching her eyes, I delved lower and slipped a finger inside her. “And this? You feel this?” I pumped my digit in and out a couple of times, marveling at the sensation of her flesh enveloping me in wet heat.

She bit her lower lip and nodded. “I feel a lot of things. Not everything, but more than I ever expected to. Mainly, I just can’t use my body the way I could before. I don’t have much control over my legs or other…things.”

I added another finger and stretched her. Her flesh gave way, like butter, easily accommodating me. “Why you want me to fuck you?”

One of her devious smiles lit up her face. “Because I want you. And because you want me, too, but you don’t want to want me. It pisses you off, and that turns me on.” As if to prove her words, a fresh wave of slickness coated my fingers.

She was right about it pissing me off. But I couldn’t stop myself from touching her.

I lowered her jeans and panties past her hips and tugged them free from her ankles, tossing them to join her shirt on the floor. But instead of stripping myself, I dug out a dental dam and ripped it open.

She raised a brow in question.

I raised her legs and spread them so she was wide open for me, her glistening, pink pussy on perfect display. “Hold your legs,” I said.

A question still in her eyes, she put one hand behind each knee and held them in place. I positioned the piece of latex over her sweet pussy, and then I went to town.

“Oh, fuck,” she said as soon as my tongue connected with her skin. I suckled, licked, nipped, and swirled until she was a moaning, writhing mess, and her voice was nothing more than a high-pitched stream of “Fuck me already. Bastard.”

I added my fingers to the mix again, using them to stretch her while I focused my mouth on her more sensitive areas.

Her thighs crushed against the sides of my head, holding me in place.

Her clit was hard. Swollen. Pulsing. I knew she was close, so I sucked it between my lips and gently rolled it between my lips and teeth until her pussy clenched around my fingers and tried to keep them inside.

Breathing hard, her body covered with a sheen of sweat, she glared down at me when I lifted my head. I kept my fingers inside her and used my thumb to continue teasing her clit.

“Stop,” she complained. “I’m too sensitive now.”

“Thought you wanted me to fuck you.”

“I did. You should have gotten on with things before you made me come.”

“Can still fuck you now. You can come again.”

London jerked on my beard, dragging me up until my face was level with hers, so I could see how intense her pout was. “I said I’m too sensitive. I can suck you off.”

I couldn’t seem to stop myself—especially not since her swollen lips were in such a sexy pout. I kissed her, forcing my tongue into her mouth to tangle with hers. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders and drew me closer, keeping her other hand fisted in my beard. I ground myself against her until she whimpered and squirmed, rocking against me.

“I like you sensitive,” I said, nipping her lower lip. “Like a fucking cat in heat. Want to make your pussy purr.”

“It’ll be yowling instead of purring if you don’t stop.” But she didn’t let go of me.

“I could make you scream. Thick walls. No one will hear.”

She glared at me, digging at my fly. With one hand, she found my cock and rubbed it through the layer of fabric. “Big boy. Didn’t you say you had a better use for my dirty mouth?”

“Should fill it with cock so you shut up.”

“Maybe you should.” She licked her lips, her pink tongue leaving a trail of moisture that made my cock twitch against her hand.

“Maybe I will.” I climbed off her and got rid of my clothes, donning a condom before climbing over her again. This time, I straddled her head.

She rested one hand on my thigh and opened her mouth, her tongue out to swirl around the head of my dick. Then she bobbed forward and took most of my length, pointing her tongue to slide along the ridge on the underside. I groaned when she took my balls in her other hand and massaged them, my hips rocking back and forth. She let me fuck her mouth like I wanted to fuck her pussy, her eyes staying on mine.

Every now and then, she pulled me out and licked my length up and down, using her hands to pump me.

“Much better use of dirty mouth,” I said. I leaned back and found one of her tits with my hand, teasing it until she moaned against my cock. The vibrations felt so fucking good I wanted to feel more of that. And I knew exactly what I could do to make that happen.

I twisted myself around until I was facing the other direction, my knees on either side of London’s head, and my head positioned over her pussy.

“I’m too sensitive,” she complained as my fingers found her slit. When my thumb brushed over her clit, her entire body bucked beneath me.

“Want to make you come again.” I wanted it so bad I could taste it—definitely more than I wanted to get off, myself. “Want me to stop?” I asked, praying she’d give me the answer I wanted. I circled her clit with my tongue while I waited on her reply.

She kept me waiting so long I was almost convinced she was going to tell me to go fuck myself.

“Don’t stop,” she finally groaned.

I slipped my fingers inside her opening and went back to work on her clit with my mouth. She took my cock into her mouth again, warm and wet and open for me. She whimpered and moaned, writhing beneath me, which only brought me closer to losing control. She grabbed my ass and held on, and I thrust into her like an animal.

The rougher I treated her, the wilder and wetter she became.

She clenched around my fingers again and cried out, but her voice was muffled against my cock. The vibrations were almost more than I could take.

I had to be inside her.

Couldn’t wait any longer.

I flipped around, grabbed a pillow, lifted her hips, shoved it beneath her, tossed the dam out of my way, and pushed into her sweet pussy before her orgasm had completely subsided, reveling in the way her body squeezed my cock.

The angle allowed me to go deep. So fucking deep. I melted into her, letting her swallow me whole.

Her eyes were almost manic, dark pupils so wide they virtually erased her brown irises. I eased myself in and out, in and out, picking up a slow rhythm to start even though every pore in my body was screaming to fuck her hard and fast.

She grabbed my beard again and drew me over her, using the fingernails of her other hand to scrape a path from my shoulder to my ass and back. I braced myself on my forearms. She dug her nails into my ass so hard she might have broken the skin.

I hissed in a breath and picked up my tempo.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, digging in harder.

“Yes.” I thrust again, so deep it made her eyes widen.

“Good or bad?”

“Good.” So fucking good I never wanted it to stop. I didn’t even care that she was teasing me or throwing my own words back in my face.

“Good. So fuck me, Dima,” she said, burying her face against my neck. “I need you to fuck me.”

So I did. I fucked her hard and fast, both of us almost angry in our intensity, scratching, biting, clawing, slapping. Even when we had sex, it was a damn fight with her. This woman would be the death of me.

London’s legs shook until the quaking took over her whole body, and she arched up into me again with her biggest climax yet. This one lasted so long it left me shaking, on the verge of my own orgasm.

I pulled out and reached down to bring myself to completion, but she beat me to it. She jerked my cock until I came with a shout and collapsed over her, crushing her into the mattress.

I wasn’t sure how long we lay like that. Long enough that the cool air in the room made me shiver as the sweat dried. Long enough that our breathing settled back to normal. Long enough for London to start shoving at me to get off her. Long enough that I realized there was nowhere I wanted to be right at that moment than exactly where I was, with this angry, infuriating, hardheaded, mouthy woman trapped beneath me.

And that scared the shit out of me.

EVEN THOUGH I was caught beneath a surly Russian bear of a man, I was as content as I’d been in a long time. Sex endorphins were good, even after bad sex. But what had just happened between the two of us? I don’t know exactly what I’d call it, but sex wasn’t a powerful enough word.

Still, I’d always enjoyed poking the bear, and now was no exception to that rule. I jabbed a finger under his ribs. “Get up. You’re suffocating me.”

“Good. Maybe your dirty mouth will learn to shut up if you can’t breathe.” He didn’t budge. Not even an inch.

“Maybe next time you shove your dick in my mouth, I’ll use my teeth.”

“You wanted dick, you got plenty of it.”

“I don’t know that yours is anything to write home about,” I shot off before I could think better of it.

He laughed. “Who called me big boy, hmm? And who had three fucking orgasms? Said she was too sensitive, couldn’t come again?”

“Bastard.”

“Bitch.”

I bit his shoulder. Hard.

He lifted himself off me just enough that he could slide a hand between us. I hadn’t been lying about my sensitivity. I’d never climaxed three times before, but it was entirely possible that it was because I’d always made my partner stop because it ached too much to keep going after the first time. Who knew that it was a sign I could come again—even more intensely—and not a sign that I needed to stop?

Apparently, Dima was the answer to that question.

He rubbed slow circles around my still-swollen clit, and my body responded immediately. “Still too sensitive?” he ground out.

“Yes.”

“This hurts?” He circled me faster.

“Yes.” I could barely breathe again, and my eyes felt like they were going to roll back in my head at any moment.

“Good or bad hurt?”

“So good.”

He gave me a cocky grin—one of the first times I’d ever seen him smile—and kissed me slow and deep.

It didn’t take long before I shattered again, perfectly content to let him pin me to the mattress forever, as long as he would keep making me come.

SOMETIME LATER, DIMA crawled out of bed and picked me up, ignoring my protests. All I wanted to do was lie in bed all day, trying to recover from our marathon bout of wild sex. He carried me to the bathroom and set me on the edge of the tub, then handed me a cloth. “I’ll get your chair,” he said. Then he went downstairs, completely nude.

“And my purse!” I called out after him.

He let out a grunting sound, but a moment later, he was back with my wheelchair, my purse resting on the seat. He dropped it off without another word and left, closing the door behind him. I cleaned myself up as best I could without bathing, and I dealt with emptying my bladder before calling out for him.

He still hadn’t bothered getting dressed. I bit down on my lower lip, taking in every inch of his body. Dima’s chest, arms, and legs all bore a light dusting of dark hair, but he wasn’t anywhere near as hairy as I’d expected, considering the state of his face. But now that I could see him—all of him—in the light, the rest of his tattoos were almost all I could look at.

They were everywhere. The words on his right hand. The husky on his neck. There was a stained-glass Madonna on one thigh and an intricate Celtic cross on the other. Still more ink covered his ribs and chest, and he had a full sleeve on one arm.

“What?” he demanded. “Never see a naked man?”

“Just wanted to see all your artwork.”

He held out his arms, as though putting himself on display, and turned around, showing off his entirely too perfect ass as well as an enormous eagle that spanned his upper back and shoulders. “Might be new art. You clawed me enough.”

“There are some red lines,” I murmured. “Want me to ink them in for you? Make them permanent?”

“Scratch me like that again, and who needs ink?”

“Is that an invitation?”

“You finished?” he grumbled in lieu of answering, spinning around to glare at me.

“Yeah. I’m finished.” I tossed the used washcloth in the laundry bin.

He stalked over and picked me up. Only, instead of taking me back to his bedroom so I could get dressed again, he carried me downstairs.

“What are you doing?”

“Lunch is ready.”

“So maybe we should get dressed and eat like normal human beings,” I countered. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t paying me any attention. I felt like nothing more than an annoying fly, buzzing around his head, with the way he was treating me again. “People could see us through the windows,” I hissed.

“It’s blizzard. Who’s going to see?”

You will, I thought to myself, heating up even though it shouldn’t matter. We had just rutted each other like wildebeests, after all. He’d been inside me, so what was the harm of him seeing the outside? Besides, I’d just gawked at him and studied every inch of his body, memorizing the lines of his tattoos.

However hypocritical it might be of me, though, I couldn’t shake the urge to find some way to cover myself. I shifted my arms over my chest.

Dima glanced down at me, his brow raised, and chuckled. Then he dumped me in a chair at his dining room table and stalked off to the kitchen. A minute later, he came back with a couple of plates and some sandwich fixings.

“Can I have a blanket?” I asked, reaching for the multi-grain bread.

“You want to look at me but not let me see you?”

“There are kids in your neighborhood, aren’t there? Surely they’ll be out building snowmen and having snowball fights. You want them to see me?” I rolled my eyes. “But seriously, I’m cold.”

“You weren’t cold a few minutes ago.” He loaded his sandwich with half a container of sliced turkey, but I didn’t miss the innuendo in his words.

“I had an enormous Russian blanket a few minutes ago.”

“Want me to put you on my lap? I can make you hot again.”

All he had to do to make me hot again was look at me the way he was right at that moment. I felt all flushed and fluttery, which wasn’t normal for me. Not at all. The last man who’d been able to make my insides melt like that was Wade Miller, but his heated looks and suggestive talk hadn’t come close to producing the kind of melting intensity that Dima could wring from me in a single glance.

“Is that a threat or a promise?” I asked, finding some new gear that bordered on being saucy. I wasn’t sure where this version of London had come from, but I kind of liked her.

“You tell me.”

I licked my lips, and his dark eyes followed the path of my tongue. Promise. That was definitely a promise in his gaze. “Eat your sandwich, Dima,” I said, putting the finishing touches on my own. “You might need your energy.”

“Need more than energy to deal with mouthy woman for days.” As if to prove his point, he got up and started brewing a pot of coffee. Then he took two cups out of a cabinet and passed one over to me. “Think we might both need it.”

A great, bubbling laugh billowed out of me. I was having way too much fun with him.

APPARENTLY, DIMA LIKED being naked. Or maybe he liked keeping me naked, and so he was remaining nude in order to justify my state of undress. I wasn’t sure which it was, but after my initial discomfort and embarrassment, I couldn’t say I minded too much.

He’d brought me back to the living room after lunch, setting me down on the couch before loping back into the kitchen for a minute.

I took the time to check my phone for messages. There were five of them—one from Gray telling me he would do his best to calm Mom down, three from Mom with her worried sick about me and threatening to force Dad out into the weather to come and get me if I didn’t respond within the next five seconds, and one from Dad reassuring me he had no intention of venturing out in this stuff no matter how many fits Mom threw but requesting that I at least respond soon so she’d calm down. I shot off a few replies, smiling and shaking my head the whole time.

When Dima returned, he had another cup of coffee for each of us. He set them on the table and took a seat next to me, stretching his long legs out in front of him to cross them at the ankles.

His eyes continually roved over my body, settling on my breasts more often than anywhere else, so I had no qualms about giving him the same sort of assessment. Only I didn’t obsess over his dick. Don’t get me wrong—I liked his dick. A lot. I liked what he did with his dick even more, and at the moment, he was already hard again. But the rest of his body gave me much better clues about the man hiding underneath all that ink. Like the Madonna etched into his leg.

His thighs were big and muscular like those of so many hockey players. I reached over and traced a fingertip along the outer edges of the Madonna tattooed there.

He flinched.

“Don’t tell me that hurts,” I teased.

“Doesn’t hurt.”

“Then what?”

He shrugged and almost imperceptibly inched away, under the guise of angling his body so he could look at me more fully. “Personal.”

“We’ve gotten a hell of a lot more than personal,” I pointed out.

“Just fucking. Fucking isn’t personal.”

“Oh, isn’t it? Silly me. I was under the impression that sex was one of the more intimate things two people could do.”

“You ask too many fucking questions.”

“I didn’t ask about the Madonna.” Yet. “I just touched it and you jerked away like I’d burned you.”

“I could touch you and make you burn.”

I had no doubt about that, but I wasn’t in the mood for him to constantly deflect me. I ran my hand up his thigh, flattening my palm over the center of the design and letting his leg hair rasp against the sensitive skin of my hand. When I got close to his hip, his dick jerked to attention.

Dima eyed my boobs and licked his lips. “You don’t have tattoos.” It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“So why you care so much about mine?” he demanded. Glaring right at me. Holy heck, he was hot as sin when he got mad. His whole body vibrated with intensity, his muscles taut and tense under my fingers, like he was ready to run. Or pounce on me.

I’d much prefer him pouncing on me since I had no way to chase him down. Maybe I should poke and prod a bit more… “Why do you get so defensive every time I try to learn who you are?”

“You know who I am. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

“I want to hear it from you.”

“What? You want to hear I nearly killed Sergei? That’s what you want?” His eyes flashed brown fury, and he clenched his hand into a fist at his side.

“Is that what you think happened?” I asked.

“It’s what I know. Got drunk. Got in car. Caused a wreck. Sergei almost died.”

“But he didn’t die.”

“Lost his leg.”

“He did. Lots of people lose their legs. Hell, half the guys on the Para-Pythons team have lost at least one of their legs. They got blown up by IEDs. They had car accidents. All sorts of things have happened to cause people to lose limbs.”

“But I caused it.”

“Sergei got in the car, you know,” I pointed out. “He had a choice.”

“Not his fault. I drove the car.”

“He didn’t have to get in it with you, though. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Don’t want to talk about Sergei any longer,” he grumbled.

“So what do you want to do?”

For a few more moments, he kept glaring at me, so intensely I almost melted beneath the heat of it. But then his gaze dropped to my breasts again, he unclenched his fist, and he twisted one of my nipples between his thumb and forefinger.

I gasped in a combination of surprise and desire.

“Hurts?” he asked.

“Yes.” The word croaked out of me as he rolled my tit around, putting more and more pressure on it. Somehow, there seemed to be a direct connection between my breasts and my sex—a fresh wave of moisture filled me, leaving me hot and slick and aching for him in no time.

“Good.” Then his mouth was on me, and I forgot all about his tattoos, at least for the time being.

I WAS ROYALLY screwed. Nothing else quite fit the situation I found myself in.

It was bad enough that I couldn’t keep my fucking hands off of London. But to make things worse, every time I tried to act like a grown man with a brain—one that lived in my head, not my cock—she went and started prying again. I’d left briefly to go blow off some steam and use the snow blower on my neighbors’ cars, sidewalks, and driveways, like I’d intended. Other than that, though, the only way I’d managed to get her to leave my past alone was to take her back to my bed.

Or take her on the couch.

Then there was the living room floor.

Hell, I’d even screwed her brains out in the bathtub when I’d only intended to carry her up there so she could clean herself off after all the sex. She’d jerked on my beard and dragged me down into the tub with her, though, and the next thing I knew, we were humping again with the water sloshing all over the floor around us.

It wasn’t even dark out yet, and I’d already worked through a third of the box of condoms I had on hand. If she kept pushing, we were going to be out well before the snow and ice thawed. Then what would I do to shut her up? I didn’t have a clue.

Might have to leave her on one floor and go to the other. I doubted I could keep my hands off her well enough for that, but it was an idea.

Now, after I mopped up the floor, she really was in the tub cleaning off. Once I was certain she had everything she needed, I left her to fend for herself and took a quick shower in my master bathroom, to wash away the sweat and musk of sex that seemed to be oozing out of my pores.

After drying off, I put on a pair of sweatpants. Better to have something covering me. It might not stop me from fucking London again, but at least it would slow me down the next time. While I was in the closet, I found a Tulsa Thunderbirds T-shirt that might not completely swallow her whole, and I dug a pair of clean boxers out of the drawer. Clothes could only help, and we’d put hers in the wash a bit ago.

Or so I kept trying to convince myself.

She was still splashing around in the other tub, so I left the clothes lying on the foot of my bed and headed downstairs to figure out what I’d feed her tonight. I found some steaks in the fridge, which would go well with potatoes and a salad, so I took out the package of meat and set them on the counter to come up to room temperature. They’d be much better on the grill than the stove, though.

I glanced out the window. The snow was still coming down hard, but it was still snow. Not ice, like we would likely have later. I could handle grilling in the snow.

I bounded back up the stairs and knocked on the bathroom door.

“Yeah?” The sound of her voice was muffled, and the water sloshed some more.

“Be outside for few minutes. Don’t drown.”

“Outside? In this?” She was too indignant about what I was doing to realize she should be indignant about my insinuation.

“Turning on grill,” I explained, grinning. I didn’t smile often, but somehow I had been doing it more than normal with her in my house. My smiling muscles felt achy and out of shape. Uncomfortable. I needed to knock that off. Still, I didn’t wait around for her to argue with me, taking off again, not that my departure stopped her from trying to start another argument with me. It was apparently her favorite thing to do.

“You’re a freaking lunatic!” she called out, along with God only knew what else. Her voice followed me down the stairs, but I did my best to tune her out. Nothing she could say was going to put a damper on my plans.

I toed on the first pair of shoes I came across, shoved my arms into the sleeves of a zip-up sweatshirt with a hood, and went out the back door to start the grill. It was covered in a thick blanket of snow, but that all fell off as soon as I opened the lid, plopping down to wetly land on top of the growing blanket on the porch. I’d bought a gas grill last season, once I’d realized how nice the weather usually was in Tulsa. Cooking out had always appealed to me. Made me feel more like I fit in with the Americans I lived among, or at least the ones here in the Southwest, in whatever small way I could manage.

I turned the dials and got the fire going before closing the lid again and returning inside, kicking the snow off my shoes as I crossed the threshold. Then I spent a few minutes seasoning the steaks and wrapping the potatoes in foil to bake alongside the steaks over the flame. I took the potatoes out and got them started cooking, then repeated the process of kicking the snow off my shoes.

“Dima!” London shouted when I’d just barely come back inside the house.

“Fucking annoying woman,” I muttered beneath my breath. Couldn’t she wait until I finished and came back to get her? But that would apparently be asking too much. I grabbed a towel off the kitchen counter and used it to wipe my hands as I stomped up the stairs. “What?” I demanded as I flung the bathroom door open and draped the dirty towel over my shoulder.

She bit her lower lip and gave me a saucy look, not bothering to try to hide her breasts from me. It seemed she’d given up on that, at least. But she didn’t say anything. She just stared. And laughed. She laughed so hard, in fact, that she couldn’t possibly speak, even if she’d intended to say anything to begin with.

“What you need? I’m busy. Making dinner.”

“Please tell me that’s not how you’re going outside to grill,” she spluttered after what felt like an eternity.

I looked down at myself. Pants. Shoes. Sweatshirt. I was fine. “Is there problem?”

“You’re in flip-flops and your chest is bare. You didn’t even bother to zip up.”

I shrugged. “I’m Russian.”

She raised a brow and laughed again. “There’s all sorts of snow in your hair. Your beard. You could’ve put the hood on.”

Again…it was just snow. Did she not understand I’d grown up in Siberia? My childhood had introduced me to an entirely different sort of cold than anything she could ever imagine.

But the last thing I wanted to do was start another fight with her. That was all we did—fight and fuck.

Needless to say, I’d rather fuck.

“You need something? Or can I put steaks on the grill?” They probably weren’t room temperature yet, and the potatoes needed to cook longer before I put the steaks on, but at least doing that would get me away from her for a few minutes.

She shrugged. “It can wait.”

If it could wait, why the hell had she yelled for me instead of fucking waiting? “Back in five minutes.” Twenty, if I could manage it. I closed the door—somehow stopping myself from slamming it behind me—and stormed downstairs again. I grabbed the plate of steaks, headed outside, and threw them on the grill. When I returned to the house, I tossed the plate into the sink, loving the way it clattered around. Listening to the noise it made was the best alternative I could come up with to tossing her. Naked. In the fucking snow. But if I did that, I’d just have to warm her up again, and the way I’d end up doing that would surely be to fuck her again.

I took a few minutes reining in my temper before going upstairs to help her. In that time, she’d managed to get herself out of the tub and dry off, and she’d wheeled into my bedroom and put on the clothes I’d left out.

Her tits were like small pebbles, poking out against the soft fabric. Damn if I didn’t get hard again just looking at her like that. I’d never seen a woman in my clothes before. A few of the ones I sometimes went home with wanted to put on my shirt, but I always left before things could progress to that level.

Seeing London like this had me rethinking everything, which was a terrifying prospect.

“So your steaks are on the grill?” she said. Smiling. Everything made her smile, which only made me scowl even more.

“Ready to go down?” I barked.

She licked her lips, and her eyes flashed down to my crotch—just long enough that my cock twitched in response. “Sure.”

Hell. I might not make it through the day, let alone multiple days of this.

SOMEHOW WE GOT through dinner without either starting World War III or fucking on the dining room table. Don’t ask me how I avoided jumping her, because she spent as much time trying to figure out the symbolism and deeper meaning behind each tattoo she’d discovered on my body earlier as she did actually eating her meal. I wanted to shut her up so she’d stop fishing for answers I’d never even admitted to myself.

Easier said than done.

Finally, though, we were finished with our meal. London wheeled herself out to the living room, and I took a few minutes to clean up the kitchen in peace.

My reprieve didn’t last long.

“Dima?” she called out.

I shut off the faucet and pressed my eyes closed in a silent prayer for patience. “What?”

“Your phone.”

There was only one person who’d be calling me in the middle of an Oklahoma snow storm, and I couldn’t do a damned thing to help him right now. How the hell was I supposed to get to Hunter’s house when driving to the end of the street might take half an hour? I couldn’t be the baby whisperer now, no matter how much everyone wished I could.

I dried my hands, tossed the towel on the counter, and went out to answer the call, snatching the phone out of London’s hands. She shrugged and smiled at me. Again. Damn her.

Harper’s anguished screams assaulted my ear before I could even say anything, echoing from somewhere in the distance. Her sobs were loud enough that even London could hear her. She raised an eyebrow in question.

I glared and turned so I couldn’t see her. “I can’t get there,” I said. My hand clenched, itching to pat the little girl on her back and soothe her.

“I know,” Hunter said. His voice was raw, like he’d been up for hours. He probably looked like shit, too. “I told Tallie you couldn’t come, but she’s going insane. We both are. So I told her I’d call and ask anyway.”

“How long she cries this time?”

“It’s been going on for two hours. But she kept us up all night last night, and—”

“Why didn’t you call last night?” I cut in, going back into the kitchen to finish loading the dishwasher.

“Tallie wanted to, but I told her we needed to find a way to calm Harper down on our own. We can’t keep taking advantage of you like this. Besides, we’re heading out on the road again almost as soon as the Christmas break is over, so it’ll be all Tallie.”

“It’s not taking advantage.”

“Whatever.” He sighed. I’d never heard him sound so exhausted. “The point is, she hasn’t stopped for more than an hour here and twenty minutes there for almost twenty-four hours, and we’re both going insane. We don’t know what to do.”

“Grow beard and talk Russian,” I said.

“I’m being serious, Dima.”

So was I, but I doubted he wanted to hear that. Then I had an idea. “You hold Harper. Go rock in her chair and put on the speaker.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Serious.” I was very serious.

He waited for a pregnant pause, but then I heard Harper’s cries grow louder, until they rang out inside my head. “All right,” Hunter said. “I’ll try anything.”

“I’m on speaker?”

The sound crackled and clicked a few times. I assumed he was shifting the baby into his arms and trying to get the phone how he needed it. Then I heard everything more clearly. Especially Harper’s shaky sobs.

“Yeah. You’re on speaker.”

“Rock her,” I said to him in English. Then I switched to Russian. “I don’t remember my mama, little one, so you be sure you hold on tightly to yours. Mine left me and Papa when I was only a bit older than you. Ran off with another man to America. Said she wanted a better life. That’s what Papa told me, at least.”

To my surprise, Harper’s screams were already starting to fade. Maybe Hunter was figuring out the right way to hold her.

Or maybe it was my voice.

Either way, I took a seat at my dining room table and kept talking. I told her how I met Sergei when I was seven and he was ten, and how we became best friends despite the difference in age, mainly because I had an extra hockey stick that I’d let him play with. I told her about the winter, and how rocky the ice would be along the shore of Lake Baikal even though, out in the middle, it was a perfectly smooth sheet. So clear you could still see down through it. I told her about the summer I found out Papa had cancer. And when he died.

I told Harper all the things I couldn’t tell London.

And then I thought of London again, sitting in my living room and wearing my clothes and making sexy, smiling faces at me while she laughed, and I couldn’t stop myself from telling Harper all about her. The baby wouldn’t understand, after all.

“She drives me crazy, kukolka. It’s her favorite thing to do—make your Dima go insane. She asks me questions. About Sergei. About that night. But I can’t talk about those things. Not with anyone but you, because you don’t know you should be afraid of me. You don’t know what a bad man I am, deep down inside. You only see your funny Russian friend with the beard you can pull and the funny words. But she would see me for who I am if I told her what she wants to know.”

Harper whimpered a couple more times, but then she sighed. I could almost feel her head melting against my shoulder, the way it did when she finally gave up the fight and settled in.

“Is she relaxing?” I asked Hunter in English.

“Close to sleep,” he said quietly. “But she’s going to rip my hair out.”

“Should have beard for her.”

He grunted. “Don’t stop yet.”

“Not yet.” Then I switched back to Russian. “London scares me, little one. I know I’m a big, mean man. But she scares me.” Because, even though she drove me up the wall, I couldn’t keep my hands off her. More than that, I didn’t want to. We had sexual chemistry that was unbelievably good, and we both seemed to be sadistic and masochistic in equal measure. That might be the scariest part of all. “Promise me, when you grow up, you’ll find a good man. A nice man. One who’ll treat you like a princess, not one like me.”

Because I was a monster, not someone capable of treating anyone like a princess.

“She’s out,” Hunter said a moment later. “I think you did it.”

“Go rest,” I told him. “Tell Tallie she can call me on the road if Harper won’t sleep.”

“Yeah. Will do.” Sheets rustled, followed by the soft hum of Harper’s deep breaths. “Thanks, Dima,” Hunter said.

“Nothing to thank me for. Go sleep.”

I hung up the phone and got up to finish whatever I’d been doing before he’d called. But when I turned around, London’s chair was in my way, and she had the strangest look in her eye.

This couldn’t be good.

THAT PHONE CALL helped me see Dima in a new light. Granted, I hadn’t understood much of anything he’d said, but the words weren’t important; their meaning was what mattered.

Whether he liked it or not, and regardless of the fact that he did his damnedest to hide it from the world, he had a soft side. He had a heart.

Of course, I knew he had a heart. He wouldn’t have put together that sled hockey game to raise money for our team if he didn’t. But there was a part of me that had been wondering how much of it was because he cared and how much was due to the guilt he felt over the accident all those years ago. Maybe he had it in his head that enough do-gooder activities would wipe away his part in Sergei’s disability. Ludicrous, if so.

Now I was leaning more toward him caring more than he liked to let on. Why else would he bother to spend all that time talking to a baby—over the phone, of all things—to soothe her? Last week, when he’d gotten the call while we were having coffee, he’d been ready to drop everything to rush to that little girl’s side, and now this.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind—Dmitri Nazarenko was a softie. He was a great big, bearded, tattooed, grumpy marshmallow. One that had been toasted over open flames, maybe, but still a marshmallow. And everyone knew toasted marshmallows were the softest on the inside.

And since I had figured out that much about him, I had no doubt he was going to fight even harder to keep me from reaching the ooey-gooey softness underneath his charred exterior.

Dima stood before me, arms crossed in a defensive posture. “Move,” he said.

“Why? Don’t want me to know you sat here and talked that baby to sleep?” I rolled my eyes. “Too late. I was sitting here through half that call. Maybe longer.”

“Shouldn’t eavesdrop.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous. In case you’ve forgotten, you were speaking in Russian.”

“How do I know you don’t speak Russian?”

“Because I’m telling you I don’t.” Although I might have to rectify that situation if I intended to spend more time around Dima. It wouldn’t be a bad idea.

He shook his head and shoved his way past me, carefully avoiding bumping into my chair before stalking over to the sink. He turned the faucet on even though he’d already finished the majority of the dishes and the sink might as well be empty. Running away again. He always did that. “Could be liar,” he muttered.

“Well, I could be, but I’m not. Unlike you.”

“I don’t lie.”

“Maybe you don’t, but you sure don’t face the truth.”

He spun around, hands wet, to face me. “What truth? What do you know about anything?”

“I know you’re living in the past. I know you won’t let yourself move on. That’s what I know.”

“You don’t know.” He turned again and tossed a coffee mug into the sink, letting the clatter fill the air between us. “Fucking woman, think you know everything. You know nothing.”

You know nothing, Jon Snow, I thought to myself and had to stifle a laugh. Now probably wasn’t the best time to laugh, and I doubted Dima would get the Game of Thrones reference.

Since Dima was studiously avoiding paying attention to me, I wheeled up behind him and reached over to trace a finger along the outline of the eagle spanning his back and shoulders. He flinched as soon as I made contact, but he didn’t pull away before I felt what I was sure would be there. A scar underneath the design, much like the scar beneath the husky tattooed on his neck. In fact, I was almost positive that the majority of his tattoos were strategically placed to hide scars. Over the course of the day, we’d touched enough for me to feel the uneven texture. The words on the back of his hand weren’t—it was too small to do any good for something like that—but I’d wager a guess that the rest were.

“Can’t keep hands to yourself?” he said, jerking away from me. He moved to the side and put a few things in the dishwasher. “Haven’t had enough yet?”

“I don’t want sex right now. I just want to touch you.” I’d never had so much sex in such a short amount of time before. Too much more and I’d be raw inside. A good kind of raw, but still. Something told me we both needed a break from it. That, and I knew he was using sex as a means of running away from my questions.

“Touching leads to fucking.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“If you want to touch me, it does.”

“Are those scars from the wreck?” I asked, moving the conversation along to keep him off his game.

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

His head shot up, and he glared at me. “Why?”

I shrugged. “Wish I knew. But it does.”

He muttered something in Russian.

Yeah, I definitely needed to learn at least a few choice Russian phrases. I put that on my mental to-do list, immediately following poke Dima in the ribs and just before poke Dima in the feels. “So are they?” I asked. “From the wreck? When Sergei lost his leg?”

“Nosy woman. Constant questions.” He dried his hands and threw the towel on the counter before kicking the door of the dishwasher closed.

“I take that as a yes then.”

Instead of answering me, he picked me up by the waist, pressed my back against the doorframe, and kissed me like he meant business.

Which, apparently, he did. His hard dick pressed into my belly, pulsing with the same kind of electricity we’d had all day.

But he was running again. Trying to distract me. Using sex to avoid talking about whatever it was he thought he could hide from.

I couldn’t allow that to happen. Not again.

I pushed back on his shoulders, trying to get him to stop, but he shoved his tongue into my mouth and ran his hands under the shirt I was wearing, sliding them along my ribs.

“Stop,” I said, my voice muffled in his kiss.

“Want to fuck you.” He bit my jaw and nibbled a path down my neck.

“No.” I pushed his shoulders again. Even though I had more upper body strength than any woman I knew, I wasn’t a match for him. His muscles were like steel, not budging. “We’re not fucking now,” I said. “We’re talking.”

He ground his hips against mine. “Let my cock do the talking.” Then his mouth came back to mine for another kiss.

I bit his lower lip. Hard. Almost hard enough to draw blood.

He reared back his head and glared at me with the same intense heat as standing on the surface of the sun. He wiped the pad of a finger across his lip and looked down, like a hockey player who’d just been high-sticked and was trying to bleed for the refs. Then he met my eyes again.

“I said no,” I repeated.

“You didn’t say no earlier.”

“I didn’t. But I am now.”

Another stream of Russian expletives flew through his lips, but he set me back in my chair.

“I want to talk,” I said.

“I want to fuck.”

“Tough. I’m not fucking unless we talk first.”

“How much talk?”

I shrugged. “Until it’s enough.”

He paced through the kitchen, a caged animal searching for a way out. But he was stuck in this house with me for now, and I had no intention of letting him off easy.

Every few minutes, he looked over at me and dragged a hand through his hair, saying something completely out of my realm of understanding. Then he paced again.

“Tell me about that night,” I said when it looked like he was slowing down.

“None of your business.”

“You really think you can brush me off like that after all the times we’ve had sex today?”

“Just sex. Just fucking.”

“Not to me, it’s not.”

“What, you think you want me to be fucking boyfriend? Take you on dates? Buy you flowers?”

“I don’t need flowers. I just need you to let me in. Or maybe not that. Maybe I need you to let it out, even if it isn’t to me.”

“Let what out? Nothing to let out. Fucking crazy woman.”

“Oh, I’m crazy, am I? But you’re the one pacing and blowing a gasket because I asked you some simple questions about your tattoos and scars.”

“You asked about the wreck.”

“I did. Because I think it’s all related. And I think you still blame yourself for everything that happened. And you can’t move on, even though Sergei has. You’re still living in that night when you made a bad decision, but the rest of the world has moved on without you, Dima.”

He stopped. Glared. Kept glaring so long it almost made me squirm. Maybe I’d pushed him too hard when he wasn’t ready for me to chip away at all the burned, crusty stuff surrounding his middle. That was one of my biggest problems growing up, when I’d poked at Gray. Couldn’t back off in time.

Without another word, Dima left the kitchen.

I followed him until he went down the steps to the front door—where I couldn’t follow—and then he left. Barefoot. Without a coat. In what had to be nearly a foot of snow.

I might have gone too far this time.

HUNTER ANSWERED THE door with a confused look on his face, rubbing his eyes like I’d just awakened him. Which I probably had. Then he really looked at me, and his eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He poked his head out the door and looked around. “No car. How’d you get here?”

“Walked.”

He stood there gawking at me like I had three heads.

“It’s fucking cold as balls. Let me in.”

He stood back and allowed me inside. “Surely you knew it was cold before you left. You could’ve put something on.”

I made my way to the living room and grabbed the first throw blanket I saw. Good thing Tallie kept them all over the place, because I couldn’t stop my body from shivering. I wrapped it around my shoulders and wished I had another for my feet, but I was too cold to walk the several steps required to get to another one. “Only a few blocks. No big deal.” I plopped down on the couch.

“No big deal,” he repeated, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. He rolled his eyes and picked up another blanket, tossing it toward me. “But that still doesn’t explain why you’re here and not at your house.”

I wrapped it around my feet a few times. “Had to get away from her.”

“Her? Not following.”

“London. She’s stuck at my house with me.”

“London’s at your house?” Tallie squealed, joining us from down the hall in a silky robe and fuzzy house shoes with her hair up in a haphazard bun-slash-ponytail combo that I couldn’t even attempt to name. “I knew you two would hit it off.”

“If you mean hit each other…”

“You’re not going to hit her,” Hunter said, taking a seat on the recliner across from me.

Tallie, bleary-eyed and clearly exhausted but still smiling, kicked off her slippers, curled up on his lap, and tucked her toes between his thigh and the arm of the chair.

Something inside me warmed at the sight, and I tried to brush it off. I wasn’t here to get any crazy ideas about things I might like to have. Things I didn’t deserve. That kind of shit needed to get out of my head right this second. “Might have if I didn’t leave,” I ground out.

“Mm hmm, whatever,” Tallie said. She leaned her head on Hunter’s shoulder, her wild hair blocking half his face from my view. “If you two would just get over yourselves, I bet you’d go at it like rabbits.”

I gave her a look that said I wasn’t amused.

Her eyes went wide. “You already have! I knew it. Bet it was good, too. The way you two go at each other all the time, I can only imagine the sparks.”

“No sparks.” More like full-blown explosions.

Tallie rolled her eyes.

“How did she end up at your house?” Hunter asked, moving the conversation back to safer territory.

“Went to get gas for snow blower. Bought it after the snow last winter. Thought I could help neighbors with their cars, but someone stole her car at the gas station. Couldn’t leave her there. Woman all alone in wheelchair, stranded at gas station in snowstorm.” Papa would roll over in his grave at the thought. He’d raised me better than that.

“No, you couldn’t,” Tallie said, “because you wanted to get her home and screw her brains out.”

“Not screwing her brains out.” Which was a fucking lie. That was exactly what I’d been doing, and what I wished I could continue doing, because it shut her up and got her to leave me in peace for a while. At least for as long as we were fucking. But now she said no. No sex, just talking. The last thing I wanted to do.

“So you two are arguing a lot or something? And you’re stuck together in your house until everything thaws?” Hunter asked, sounding like this entire conversation amused him to no end. Some friend he was.

“Woman won’t stop pushing. Why you have tattoos? Why you have beard? Tell me about wreck when you tried to kill your best friend.”

“She wouldn’t say that,” Tallie said, her tone just this side of chiding.

“How you know? You meet her one time, think you know her. She sees one tattoo, she thinks she knows.”

“Maybe she knows more than you think she does,” Tallie said, and I scoffed.

“London probably wouldn’t say something like that, but I bet you would,” Hunter added with a pointed look in my direction.

“I didn’t try to kill Sergei.”

“We know you didn’t. But do you know that?”

“Fuck you,” I bit off, and he laughed. “Sorry, Tallie,” I added sheepishly once I realized I’d cursed in front of her. I tried not to do that, to lose my cool like that around my teammates’ wives and girlfriends. Not that I was careful around all women. I’d cursed at the team owner’s wife once, but there was something about her that practically begged for it. She was horrified, which only made me want to do it again.

Tallie waved me off like it was nothing. “This ain’t my first rodeo. But seriously…y’all are going at each other?”

Like monkeys in heat, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud. She’d just cackle like she won the lottery if I admitted how right she was on that score. “Constant arguing. Constant prodding.”

She grinned. “I bet the makeup sex is hot, though.”

“Not making up.”

“No? So angry sex, then?” She waggled her brows. “That’s good, too.” She gave Hunter a pointed look that I did my best to ignore.

“And you got so worked up you needed to go for a walk,” he put in.

“Yes.”

“In the snow,” Tallie said. “With no shoes on.”

“I’m Russian,” I grumbled, silently cursing myself when I shivered. “Thought Harper needed me.”

“She’s been out like a light since that call. She’s fine. And now that we know it works as well over the phone—”

“I can still come. I can rock her. Works better.” I might have been too desperate in my argument, but I wasn’t ready to give up my time with that baby. I needed Harper more than she needed me, and that wasn’t easy for me to explain.

Tallie gave me a questioning look, but she didn’t contradict me.

“Have you cooled off enough you’re ready to go home?” Hunter asked. “She’s in a wheelchair. You can’t leave her alone in your house with all those stairs for too long.”

The walk had worked a hell of a lot better than a cold shower would have in terms of getting rid of my hard-on, but I wasn’t so sure it had done anything for my inappropriate anger. I scowled at him.

“Come on,” he said. “I’m driving you home.”

“Can’t drive in this. People getting stuck. Causing wrecks.”

“Wanna bet I can’t? Did you pass any cars that were stuck on your way over?”

I hadn’t, but I didn’t want to tell him as much. The bigger problems were on the highway and main roads. No one had been out in our neighborhood when I’d walked over to his place, and he was surely a competent driver in snow. In other words, he was kicking me out so I would have to deal with London, whether I wanted to or not.

“Go on,” Tallie said. “You can’t leave her alone like this, and there’s not a chance in hell I’m letting you walk home in your bare feet and without a coat on.”

I knew it. I didn’t like it, but I knew it.

Damn it.

I TRIED TO convince Hunter to stick around for a while, but, bastard that he was, he left as soon as he dropped me in front of my house. He didn’t even wait to be sure London hadn’t locked me out, though, because the snow had turned to sleet and freezing rain in the time that we’d been gone from his house, and it was only going to get worse from there. He needed to get home, and I knew it, but I still wasn’t happy he was abandoning me.

He could’ve been a friend and acted as a buffer for me for a few minutes at least, especially after all the ways I’d been helping him and Tallie with Harper. That wouldn’t be asking too much, would it? But he was gone, and I was doomed to be all alone with London again.

When I walked through the front door, she wheeled into the hall.

“So you didn’t freeze to death,” she said.

I grunted. “I’m Russian.”

“So you’re fond of saying. You’re also an idiot.”

The last thing I wanted to do was start another fight right away. I climbed the few steps in the entryway and moved past her into the living room.

“Your feet are blue,” she said, following me.

I whirled around, praying for patience. “You need anything? Or can I put you in bed?” It was plenty late enough that I was ready to be done with her for the night.

She gave me a suggestive look.

“No fucking, you said.”

“So I did.”

“You need anything?” I repeated.

“I should probably go to the bathroom again,” she said. “With my—”

“Chair and purse,” I cut in. I knew the drill by now, whether or not I understood why the fuck she would need her purse to piss. I crossed over and picked her up to get the process started.

She shivered the instant I touched her, and damn if her tits didn’t harden to stiff peaks.

I glared, mainly because I couldn’t stop myself from focusing on those gorgeous breasts, and it pissed me off. “Sorry I’m cold.”

“You should take a hot shower or something. Warm up.”

I noticed she didn’t offer to warm me up herself.

I deposited her in the bathroom and went back for the rest of her stuff. Once she was settled, I decided to do exactly what she’d suggested, going into the other bathroom and turning on the steaming spray.

By the time I finished and came out with nothing but a towel around my waist, still dripping, she had wheeled herself into my bedroom. Her eyes roved over my body again, assessing and appraising, and triggering yet another erection. Which, I might add, she noticed, if the way she licked her lips was any indication.

“So you’re sure about me sleeping in here?” she asked.

Positive. Especially because if I left her in here and went downstairs to sleep on the couch, it meant I could be away from her for a while. Eight hours without fighting or fucking sounded really good at the moment.

“Bed is all yours,” I said, going into my walk-in closet to find something to put on.

“You could share it with me,” she said.

“You ready to fuck again? Had enough talk for now?”

“No, but I wasn’t offering sex. I was suggesting we could share the bed.”

“Next time I’m in bed with you, we’re fucking. Got it?”

She snorted in laughter. “Message received, loud and clear. Enjoy the couch.”

When I came out of the closet in sweatpants, she’d already gotten into the bed and was situating the blankets over her. I paused long enough to debate whether I was doing the right thing or not. But chances were high that she’d try to talk to me all night long, and all I’d want to do was fuck her. Not a good combination.

I stalked out of the bedroom and started to close the door, but she said, “Dima?”

I stopped with the door cracked. “What?”

“Might want to leave that open so I can shout for you if I need you.”

“You shout loud enough.” So loud I could hear her at Hunter’s house, most likely. But I left the door open and went downstairs to figure out how I’d manage to sleep on my couch.

HOURS LATER, I woke up shivering, with a massive crick in my neck and my hips and knees aching like a son of a bitch. My couch had not been designed for a man over six feet tall to sleep on it. Regardless of that, though, I shouldn’t be this cold if I still had electricity. I mean, I had a fucking blanket on.

I blinked my eyes open and squinted toward the kitchen, expecting to see the green glow from the microwave clock, but it was pitch black. The streetlights outside weren’t even glaring in my house.

No power.

So we had no heat.

Lord only knew how long we’d been without. Quite a while, based on how cold it was in the house. And if I was already this cold, there was no doubt London was freezing her ass off. She was a woman, and in my experience, women were always complaining of being cold—at least until they reached menopause, when they were constantly hot.

There wasn’t any way around me building a fire and going up to check on her. I rolled off the couch and grabbed the blanket to take it with me, deciding to wake her first, and then stumbled up the stairs.

“Dima?” London said. Her voice shook, which made me feel like an ass. Not that it was my fault the electricity was out. None of this had been my fault, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling like I should have done something to prevent it.

I stood in the open doorway to my bedroom and saw her, curled up in a fetal position and shaking as hard as I’d ever seen a person shake. Damn it.

“Power’s out,” I said.

“Has been for hours.”

“Why you didn’t call for me?” Not that I could have prevented the power lines going down under the weight of the snow and ice, but still.

“I thought maybe you needed more time.”

“Time?”

“To get over me poking at you so much.”

“You planning to stop?” I asked.

“Nope.” She tried to wink, but she was shaking so hard it made her look like a crazy person. “But I thought I should give you time to adjust, at least.”

“You’re freezing.”

“You think?”

“Need to make a fire. You have to come down with me.”

“I have to, do I?”

“Unless you want to freeze. I can leave you here.”

She shook her head. I crossed to the bed and threw the blankets off her. She was like an icicle when I picked her up, and she curled around me, sucking away any warmth I had left in me. “Fuck, woman. How long you planned to wait before calling for me?”

“Long enough.”

“Fucking stubborn-ass woman.”

She smirked at me.

I carried her downstairs, tossed her on the couch, and bundled her in blankets. Then I went outside to bring in some wood and started building a fire.

London made a dreamy, sighing sort of sound, which irked me.

“What?” I demanded.

“Just watching the way your back muscles work while you do that. You’ve got a gorgeous back, Dima. A lot like the rest of you. The moonlight is lighting you up like a Christmas tree. And speaking of Christmas trees, why don’t you have one?”

“Russian Christmas isn’t like American Christmas. Not even on the same day.” I threw a couple more logs into position and got up to find matches.

“What was Christmas like for you?”

Lonely, just like most of the rest of my life, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I came back to the fireplace with my box of matches and struck a few until I got the kindling to take flame. “Christmas was quiet. Me and Papa. That was all.”

“Not your mother?”

“No mother.”

“You mean you never knew your mother?”

I blew on the flames, gently urging them to spread. “Why does it matter?”

“Why are you so determined that you shouldn’t matter?” she shot back at me.

The flames took hold of some of the bigger logs, so I set the grate back in place. Too bad it hadn’t taken longer. Now I had to face her.

The moonlight combined with the flames highlighted the reddish undertones to her hair, making them dance in front of my eyes. Her gaze pierced me. Never wavered. Drove me mad with wanting, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was that I wanted, other than her. But that was a stupid thought, because she made me feel crazy all the time. How could I want her? And better yet, why would I want her?

But I did.

“Be back,” I muttered, going back upstairs before she could pick away at one more layer of the scars surrounding me.

I stripped all the blankets and pillows off the bed and grabbed as many more as I could from the closet. The pile was so big I couldn’t see over it, but I carried them downstairs with me and created a pallet on the floor in front of the hearth. When it was ready, I plucked London off the couch and lay her on it, tucking the blankets all around her.

She never took her eyes off me, damn her. Constantly searching, but I didn’t have a clue what she thought she would find. There wasn’t anything worthwhile in me for her to discover.

I tried to get up and go back to the couch, but she grabbed my hand.

“What you want?” I bit off, jerking to free myself from her grasp.

She wouldn’t let go. Instead, she tugged on me, dragging me down beside her. “We can keep each other warm,” she said.

“Told you, next time I’m in bed with you, I fuck you.”

“Hmm. Well, I guess it’s a good thing this isn’t your bed, then, isn’t it?” Then she yanked harder on my hand and pulled me down beside her, wrapping herself all around me. It was kind of similar to how Tallie had wrapped herself around Hunter earlier, which was exactly the wrong thing for me to think about at the moment.

I couldn’t deny it felt good to have her warmth and to feel her body pressed against mine. But I also couldn’t relax.

Because I’d never slept with a woman before.

I’d fucked plenty of them, but it had only ever been sex.

This was feeling like a hell of a lot more than sex, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

I’D NEVER FELT so deliciously toasty as I did when I woke up the next morning, with the fire still burning, Dima’s limbs entwined with mine, and the sun streaming through the windows. My face, though—and the tip of my nose, in particular—was freezing. I definitely didn’t want to move out of my cocoon of warmth, and I wasn’t ready for Dima to get up yet, either. He was like a human furnace. Like my human furnace. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing his body heat, let alone the semblance of intimacy we’d forged in sleep.

Actually, lying here next to him, I was surprised to realize I wanted a whole lot more intimacy than the little bit we’d already established. Not just sex, but closeness on a soul level.

Which was a dangerous thought. Dima hadn’t budged an inch in terms of letting me in, or even letting go of all the negativity that he was desperately clinging to. He was as bound and determined as ever to keep living in the past. Based on my own history and my relationships with other people who’d moved past traumatic, life-changing events, that wasn’t something I could live with in the long term. I couldn’t be with someone who refused to forgive himself for a mistake. He’d never let me love him if he couldn’t love himself.

Still, even if indulging myself with the fantasy that Dima could ever move on and be ready for a life again was a bad idea, I needed to take advantage of this unguarded moment while it lasted. I snuggled closer to him, but instead of humoring me, he rolled away. In a flash, the dream fizzled out from under me.

Bastard, I thought to myself. The man was hell-bent on keeping his distance in everything but sex. “Don’t get up yet,” I complained, my voice cracking from sleep.

He kept going, though, climbing out from beneath the mound of blankets and getting to his feet. “Calling electric company.”

I felt the loss of him immediately, so I rolled back toward the flames.

“They won’t be able to tell you anything but that they’re working on it,” I shouted after him.

“Calling anyway.”

He futzed around in the kitchen for a few minutes while he was on the phone. It sounded like he was either on hold or listening to a recorded message, one of the two, since he didn’t say anything during the entire phone call. I took the time to text Gray and let him know that even though the power was out, we were perfectly fine. Then, after Dima had hung up, he marched straight past me and up the stairs. Not much time passed before he returned and picked me up, carrying me away from the blissful heat and depositing me in the bathroom, where he’d already situated my chair and purse. I pouted up at him, wrapping my arms around myself and shivering.

“Water heater is gas, so there’s hot water. Yell when you’re done.”

“What did the electric company say?” I asked before he could close the door behind him.

“Working on it. Might be a day or two. Crews coming in from Texas and Louisiana.”

“Should make for an interesting Christmas.” Not that we needed a power outage for it to be interesting. I definitely hadn’t ever experienced a holiday similar to what this one was bound to be.

He made an indistinguishable sound and left me to go through my ablutions. When I called for him, it took a few moments for him to come up the stairs to get me. I realized the reason for his leisurely reappearance once we returned to the living room. He’d moved the bedding away from the fire, removed the grate, and was setting things up so he could cook over the flames.

“Aren’t you a regular jack-of-all-trades?” I murmured as he placed me on the couch, where I could bundle up under multiple blankets.

“Still have to eat,” he said and got back to work.

He’d already placed a metal stand of some sort over the flames, and he had cast iron pans on top of it heating up. Now he went into the kitchen to get sausage, eggs, and all sorts of other things before coming back to cook them over the fire. Within about twenty minutes, he’d made a full, far more industrious meal than I typically ever bothered with for breakfast. I tended to grab a bagel with cream cheese or peanut butter on my way out the door. If I felt particularly adventurous, I’d take the time to toast the bagel first. Anything more than that was more work than it was worth and always felt like overkill to me.

Not to Dima, though.

He brought out plates and utensils, and he served up the food, all without saying a word to me. Once he’d fixed his own plate, he took a seat beside me. Not because he wanted to be close, if his scowl was any indication. I expected it was mainly because of the blankets.

“So is this what it’s going to be like for the next however long until the ice melts?” I asked. “A bunch of grumbling and growling at each other but no talking?”

“You’re talking plenty.”

“I notice you don’t ever bother to ask me about myself. It’s always me asking you to tell me things, and you shooting me down.”

“You want to talk, then talk.” He stabbed a sausage and shoved it into his mouth, effectively cutting off his own ability to speak, even if he intended to, which we both knew he didn’t.

Sulking, I swirled my fork through the scrambled eggs and veggies on my plate before settling on what I wanted to tell him. Maybe I should be vulnerable with him if I wanted him to open up to me. Couldn’t hurt, at least.

“When I crashed into the boards that day,” I finally said, “I remember thinking it was odd that it didn’t hurt. Because it should have. It should’ve knocked the wind out of me and left me bruised and aching, but there was nothing. One of the girls tried to help me up so I could skate to the bench, but it was only then that I realized I couldn’t move my legs. The thought never occurred to me to worry about them, since the impact was to my back.”

Moments after I’d started talking, Dima had set his fork down on his plate and started staring at me. Through me, maybe. Staring so hard it was as if he wanted to brand me with his eyes. Maybe he thought he could intimidate me into shutting up.

That wasn’t going to happen.

“Even though it’s been years, I still get these weird sensations in my limbs. Sometimes it’ll be shooting pain that goes away as suddenly as it comes on. Other times, it’s a weird tingling. The guys who’ve had amputations tell me they get phantom sensation in their missing limbs, too. Maybe their foot will itch, but it isn’t there for them to scratch. Sometimes they could swear they get a stabbing pain in their missing legs that lasts for an hour or more. Does Sergei get those phantom pains, too?”

Dima still hadn’t stopped glaring. “Told you. Don’t want to talk about that.”

“Sergei’s not a that,” I ground out.

“Fucking English. Don’t want to talk about Sergei. Okay? Shut up.”

“I’m not going to shut up. And why won’t you talk about him? Are you scared that if you do, you’ll actually let yourself feel something? You think you can erase what happened by pretending that you’re a freaking brick wall? It happened, Dima. You had a wreck. He lost his leg. Nothing’s going to undo the past, especially not ignoring it.”

He got up and took his plate to the kitchen, tossing it into the sink with all the food still on it. It made such a racket I was shocked the plate hadn’t broken.

“Now you’re running away again. You can’t face it.”

“Been facing it for seven years,” he roared.

“No, you’ve been running from it for seven years. Are you going to run off to Hunter and Tallie’s house again today? Is that what you’re planning? Or maybe you’re going to try to shut me up by fucking me again, because that’s sure a hell of a lot better than actually dealing with the garbage in your head.”

“What do you want? You want me to say I almost killed Sergei?” He came back into the living room like a panther on the prowl, eyes blazing, beard and hair flying wildly behind him because of the ferocity of his movement. He didn’t stop until he was hovering over me, his arms braced on either side of me, with all sorts of fury billowing out of him in waves. “I nearly killed Sergei. My best friend. My only family. He lost his leg because of me. Is that what you want?”

I refused to look away. I would not cower in fear, no matter how much he might want to intimidate me. Because I recognized the fear driving him, filling him with anger, echoing in his body like years of loneliness. I’d lived with that fear, too, right after my accident.

They say fear brings out a fight-or-flight tendency in everyone. With Dima, maybe he tended to fly because he was scared of what would happen if he were to fight. Right now, I could see the internal battle being waged inside him. Part of him wanted to fight back against me or whatever he could get his hands on, in order to alleviate all the crap racing through his mind. Another part of him wanted to run as fast as he could.

No matter how fast you run or how far you go, though, the past will always catch up to you. Always.

I took hold of his beard with an unforgiving grip so he couldn’t run off without causing himself a ton of pain or carrying me along for the ride. Dragged him down until we were nose to nose, chin to chin, eyeball to eyeball. “You almost killed yourself, too,” I ground out. “Did you ever think of that? Or are you so caught up in what happened to Sergei that you can’t bother thinking about yourself, for once?”

“Would’ve been better if I’d died.”

“Oh yeah? Yeah, I’m sure Sergei would agree, too, right? There he is, missing a freaking leg and his best friend is dead and can’t help him learn to function without one of his limbs. Yeah, I’m sure that would’ve been much better.”

Dima jerked his head back, but I yanked harder on his beard, holding him in place. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed his fist clenching.

“You going to hit me?” I knew I might be flirting with disaster in egging him on, but something told me he’d never intentionally hurt me. Not with the way he was still hung up over what had happened to Sergei. Hitting me would just be one more thing on his never-ending list of reasons to beat himself up. Maybe we got a little rough when we had sex, but that was completely different.

“Grebanyy suka,” he growled when I yanked, bumping our foreheads together.

“Wanna tell me what that means, or is that top secret, too, like everything else in your life?”

“Means you’re fucking bitch.”

“Well, aren’t you just full of sunshine and rainbows?”

“I’m nicer when I’m not around prying women who rip out my beard.”

“You let that baby jerk on your beard, and you’re a sweetheart with her.”

“She’s baby. Want me to rock you to sleep and tell you stories in Russian?”

Yes, I thought, but I didn’t want to say it out loud. Now wasn’t the time. “What do you tell her, anyway?” I demanded. “You seem to have no problem talking nonstop to that baby, but you refuse to tell me anything.”

“I can tell you something.”

“Yeah? Try me.”

“Tell you to shut up. Tell you I’d rather be alone than have to listen to you all day.”

“All day, all night, and probably all day tomorrow, too, if it doesn’t warm up outside very soon. Should make for a nice, comfortable retreat for the two of us. Stuck together, not talking other than to fight.”

“Don’t want to fight.”

“No?” I said sarcastically. “You sure do have a funny way of avoiding fighting. Actually, you’d rather run away again, wouldn’t you? Find somewhere to hide, like a little boy.”

He ripped back from me, but I wrenched his beard and hauled him on top of me, kissing him with all the fire and anger and frustration that had been building up between us.

Dima gave me back as good as he got, as with everything else between us, biting my lower lip until I let out a squeak of protest and opened to let him in. His tongue jabbed between my lips, and he fisted both hands in my hair, twisting my head back and to the side so he could kiss me deeper and harder.

He straddled my hips, his dick pressing against my ribs as he broke off the kiss. “Still no fucking, only talking?” he demanded, panting.

I tried to shake my head, but I couldn’t with the way he was holding me captive. My breaths were shallow. Ragged. Frayed, like the rest of me. “I want you.” Damn it. I wanted him more than I could ever explain, and so much more than he would ever give me.

That was all he needed to hear, apparently. Within seconds, blankets and clothes were flying, and we were hot, sweaty, naked.

His mouth was everywhere. Licking. Tasting. Biting. Oh, God, the way he bit drove me out of my mind. A hard bite followed by tiny nibbles and another intense bite. Every touch of his teeth left me wetter. Hotter. Squirming for him.

“I need you,” I said, gasping for air. He was still busy trying to get me ready for him, but I didn’t need any more preparation. Didn’t want to wait any longer. I slid my hands down the broad expanse of his back until I reached his butt. Dug my fingers in and dragged him toward me.

He settled between my legs, his hands still working their magic all over my body in a way that might leave a few marks, but I didn’t care.

He buried his head in the crook of my neck and buried his dick in my sex, sliding all the way to the hilt in a single thrust. He didn’t give me any time to adjust to his presence, either, taking up a primal pace almost immediately. An involuntary cry ripped from my throat, but I felt too good to care about anything but more.

One of his hands fisted in my hair, he tore my head back and feasted on the column of my neck, and I shattered around him.

There wasn’t anything sweet or tender about the way we came together. It was all ravenous intensity and wild lust, a carnal dance that hovered somewhere between pleasure and pain. I vaguely recalled spanking his ass, driving him on and bringing him to bite me harder. He shouted things in my ear, Russian phrases that made no sense to me but sounded dirty and angry and incredibly kinky, all at once.

I loved every second of it, especially the moment when he held himself completely still and cried out with his orgasm before collapsing on top of me. I tried to catch my breath, but it wasn’t easy to do with a two-hundred-ish-pound man crushing me. Not that I minded. The longer he stayed, the longer I could pretend this moment meant more than it did.

But then he got up, and the cold air slapped me and my sweat-covered body back to reality. As did the trickle between my legs.

Judging by the look of horror in his eyes, we both realized it at the same time.

We hadn’t used a condom.

I’D DONE A lot of stupid things in my life, but this topped the list. By a mile. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to lose control with London like that, and I definitely shouldn’t have fucked her again. But the worst part of all was that I’d forgotten my number one rule of sex: never fuck without a goddamned condom.

I’d forgotten my second rule of sex, too: keep it casual. No matter how much I tried to keep it that way, never letting anyone get too close, somehow London had gotten to me in a way no other woman ever had. I wouldn’t have lost control, otherwise, and there wasn’t any fucking point trying to convince myself there was another explanation.

I could get mad at her, but that wouldn’t solve anything. Placing the blame on her wouldn’t be fair and it wouldn’t fix anything.

All I could do now was face the consequences and hope there weren’t any big consequences.

That and keep my fucking hands to myself and my cock in my pants until such time as this snow finally melted and London could go back to her family. The sooner she was out of my house, the better for both of us. Otherwise, if we managed to avoid killing each other, we might end up with something even worse to deal with than the constant bickering we had now.

But for now, she was still in my house, covered in my sweat and the scent of sex. I said a silent prayer for patience, not to mention a heat wave, before I carried London upstairs and set her in the bathroom so she could do whatever was necessary to clean up. Her chair and purse were still in there, and I found another pair of my boxers and a clean T-shirt she could put on.

I went into my own bathroom to shower and try to wash away the memory of all the things I’d fucked up.

Then I set about finding a way to be on my best behavior until the weather cleared up and she could leave.

We both seemed content to pretend that what had just happened between us had been simply a figment of our imaginations. That it hadn’t really happened. That we hadn’t been so stupid as to forget something as important as protection.

I knew I should say something. Anything. Tell her I got tested regularly and was clean. Ask her if she was on any form of birth control. Something. But I didn’t, and neither did she. Here we were, two adults, acting like toddlers who would rather avoid a difficult subject than face it head on.

I didn’t know what to make of that sort of behavior with her, because with everything else, she was constantly in my face. Pushing. Demanding answers. Trying to get me to break, and coming damn close to it.

She still hadn’t given up on convincing me to tell her about my past, either. The rest of the day, every time she asked me a question and tried to get me to talk about Sergei or the wreck or even my childhood, I did exactly what she expected of me. I got up and left the room, going upstairs or downstairs, whatever was necessary to get away from her. Running away, she called it. I called it preserving my sanity.

When that didn’t work, she tried using the same tactic I’d used before. If I wouldn’t talk, she tried to lure me into fucking her again. She kept giving me coy glances and licking her lips and making sexy eyes at me.

Not going to happen. The last thing I needed now was to add fuel to whatever fire we’d already created. In response, I did the same thing I would if she tried to insist I talk—I left.

I was getting really tired of trying to avoid her in my own damn house, too, but what else was I supposed to do? Tallie was right. I couldn’t storm out into the weather and leave London all alone. Not when she used a wheelchair to get around, and my house had so many stairs. I wasn’t that cold and heartless, even if I came close.

So, I waited. And avoided her every time she poked at my temper.

That afternoon, I had another call from Hunter, begging me to talk Harper back to sleep. They still had power, and I was half tempted to ask if I could send London over to stay with them until everything thawed, but I knew Tallie would insist I come, too. My plan was to get away from her, not simply move our base camp from one place to another. Besides, I wouldn’t want Hunter and Tallie to be responsible for London. They already had enough on their hands with Harper’s colic.

Once the baby was settled and asleep, I hung up and went back into the living room, only to find London staring at me with one of those looks I couldn’t interpret.

“So I guess I just need to learn Russian, huh?” she said.

“Why you need to learn Russian?”

“To figure out what you talk to that baby about. You have no problem talking to Harper. Just to me.”

“Nothing to talk about.” Not to her, at least.

“Hmm,” she said, but she went back to building a house of cards on my coffee table.

I joined her, since she was otherwise occupied and might leave me alone. We kept working at it in silence until the sun set and I had to light candles in order for us to see. Then I left her to it and got up to make us something for dinner.

The power came back on not long after dark, thank goodness. That meant we had heat, so I could put London back in my bed while I slept on the couch as I’d planned to do. That would prevent me from spooning with her again. I didn’t think I could get through another night of having my cock nestled up against her ass without doing something else I’d be sure to regret, and Lord knew I’d already done more than enough things worthy of remorse for one lifetime.

When I came into the living room after washing the dishes, I found her next to one of the big windows, looking out in front of the house. She glanced over her shoulder at me momentarily, but then she returned her attention to the street.

“It’s starting to melt,” she said. “It’ll refreeze tonight, after the temperatures drop again, but I bet it’ll warm up again tomorrow. Maybe enough will melt that the streets won’t be so bad.”

“Maybe you can leave then,” I said before thinking better of it.

She turned and stared so long it made me feel like an even bigger ass than I already knew myself to be. “Yeah. I’ll call my brother tonight and ask him to come get me as soon as it’s safe tomorrow.”

“Better to spend Christmas with your family, anyway,” I said.

But something deep in my chest ached, dull and throbbing, at the thought that she might be gone tomorrow.

Which made no sense. I should be glad to be rid of her. We’d been driving each other crazy since the moment we’d first met, so anything that would get her out of my life had to be for the best. Didn’t it?

“Definitely better to spend Christmas with my family,” she said, and she returned her attention to whatever was going on outside my window. “I haven’t ever spent one without them. This is the first Christmas Eve I haven’t been with them.” She backed her chair away from the window and went back to the coffee table to collect her phone. “In fact, I think I’ll call Gray now. Who knows? Maybe he can get here tonight.”

So that was that. She was ready to be done with me, and she’d do whatever it took to make it happen. Whether I’d intended it to happen this way or not, I’d run another person out of my life.

Possibly forever.

Shouldn’t I have been happier about it?

DUE TO THE combination of the weather and the holiday, there wasn’t a single pharmacy open that late on Christmas Eve or at all on Christmas Day. Just my luck.

The longer I had to wait to get to a pharmacy, the more anxious I grew, too. How long was it safe to wait before taking the morning-after pill for it to still be effective? And did the effectiveness diminish in relation to how much time had passed? I wasn’t sure, and every time I tried to pull out my phone and do a quick Google search, some member of my family or another interrupted me. That meant I had to quickly hide what I’d been searching for and put my phone away, because the last thing I needed for any of my family to know was that I’d had wild, crazy monkey sex with a grumpy, tattooed Russian while we were snowed in together.

Not that I was getting much time alone to do my searching, either.

Mom had been hovering since the moment Gray and I had come through the door on Christmas Eve night, constantly trying to help me do every tiny little thing. I had to keep reminding her that having my car stolen didn’t make me any less capable than I had been for the last however many years, other than making it difficult for me to drive anywhere. She didn’t like it. Hovering was her thing. It made her feel like she had some control over life, I supposed.

Gray kept sitting down next to me and grilling me about how Dima had treated me the whole time I had been there. Granted, I hadn’t warned him about the house being a split-level, so now he had a thousand questions about how I’d managed to do certain things. The answers were all the same, too: Dima carried me. My brother didn’t like that answer, for some reason. Probably because I always put my foot down and insisted on doing everything for myself if it was at all possible…and even trying to do the impossible on my own. I was too stubborn for my own good, and we both knew it, so the fact that I’d had to rely on Dima’s assistance stuck in Gray’s craw as much as it did mine.

When those two weren’t in my grill, I had my nieces and nephews climbing all over me like a jungle gym. Logan had me drilling him on multiplication tables in between bouts of teaching me how to play Roblox on his mother’s laptop. Kennedy wanted to practice braiding my hair. She made an awful, tangled mess of it every time she touched me, but I didn’t have the heart to turn her away. Almost-three-year-old Erin begged for me to take her for a ride and pop a wheelie almost as often as she wanted to have a Frozen sing-a-long while wearing her Elsa princess costume from Halloween. The youngest of the kids, my nine-month-old nephew, Finn, was the easiest. He just wanted to giggle and make faces at me and shove bites of his squashed banana in my mouth. So even though the kids were constantly around, at least they were fun, which was a nice change of pace from the adults.

The only two people in the house who weren’t incessantly checking on me or trying to get my attention were my father and Sierra, my sister-in-law.

Dad knew better than to poke and prod at me after the way I’d blown up at him a few months after my accident. He’d been trying to get me to slow down and stop pushing myself so hard, but that wasn’t in my nature. Which, of course, he knew. He’d raised me to be a strong, independent woman, capable of taking care of myself. But I was still his baby girl, so he hated seeing me cry in frustration when I tried and failed. Still, my blowup had brought us much closer together, and we’d come to an understanding after that. He could still worry about me all he wanted, but he needed to keep it to himself…and if I needed his help, I promised I would ask for it without hesitation. Since we’d agreed to those terms, we’d been fine.

Sierra was another matter entirely. She and I had never been close, but now that I was in a wheelchair, she seemed to resent me more than ever. I supposed it was because some family decisions hinged on whether things would be accessible for me or not. She seemed to think I got more attention than I deserved, and with the focus on me, it pushed her to the fringes. I had never fully figured out her issue with me. Regardless, my accident had only driven a bigger wedge between us than what had been there to start, and my whole car-getting-stolen-and-me-staying-with-them-for-the-holidays thing seemed to be eating her alive from the inside. The sooner she could get me out of her house, the happier she would be.

And frankly, that was a score Sierra and I could agree on. I loved my family to bits, but I also needed my space—especially to process everything that had happened in the few days before I’d ended up here.

It was hard to believe I’d only been with Dima for less than two days. It had all gone so fast, even though we’d spent the entire time sniping at each other or else falling into bed together. And, crazy as it sounded, I missed him.

I hadn’t even been at Gray’s house with the family for as long as I’d been with Dima, but it felt like it had been two weeks.

I needed to get back to my place. To my life. As soon as possible.

Christmas Day finally came to an end and the house got quiet. When Tuesday morning rolled around and the roads were all clear, I took that as my sign that it was time to hightail it out of there and try to resume life as normal. And my father was going to be my salvation, whether he realized it or not.

I wheeled up beside him at the breakfast table and fixed a bowl of cereal, grateful for the cacophony that my nieces and nephews were providing all around us. “Any chance you can borrow Gray’s SUV today and take me home?” I asked him.

He gave me a suspicious look. “Already bailing on us, huh?”

Kennedy whacked Erin over the head with the younger girl’s sippy cup, which elicited a fresh wave of screams from both girls.

“Stop being a poopy head,” Logan yelled at the same time.

I raised a brow in my father’s direction. “Are you surprised?”

He laughed. “Not in the least.”

“I love them to pieces. But there’s only so much of this I can take. And since I’m the aunt and not the mommy…” I left that hanging, glancing over at Sierra, who looked as harried as I’d ever seen her while she mopped up the bowl of baby cream of wheat that Finn had just gleefully dumped on the floor amidst his older siblings’ dramatics.

“Any chance you wouldn’t mind having Dear Old Dad sleeping on your couch tonight?” he replied.

“I doubt Mom would let you get away with that.”

“Not unless we stowed her away and rescued her with us. I bet we could hide her in the trunk and they wouldn’t notice until we were in the clear.”

“You really think she’ll let you shove her in the trunk?”

He shrugged with a sheepish expression. “I’ve had crazier ideas.”

I laughed. “So can you, though?”

“You can’t get through at least one more day?” Dad asked. He glanced over to where Mom was trying to break the two girls apart. “We barely get to see you anymore.”

“How about I make dinner for just the three of us—you, me, and Mom—on Thursday or Friday? We can have a quiet night in.”

“So you’re not giving in.”

“Nope. This is one of those Daddy, I need your help moments you’re always telling me to be sure I ask for.”

“Unfair. This is not what I meant.”

“I’m still using it as my excuse.”

He laughed and shook his head, but thirty minutes later, he had the keys to Gray’s SUV in his hand and was ushering me out the front door.

I got in, and he helped me break down my chair and put it in the back. Then he got behind the wheel and started the ignition.

“I need to make a stop before you take me home, though,” I said cautiously. This was definitely going to be the tricky part.

“The police station to see what’s going on with your car?” he replied, backing out.

“No, the pharmacy. The police said they’d call me once they know more, and they’ve had their hands full the last few days with all sorts of other things. I’m sure they’ll get to my case soon-ish.”

Dad made a hmphing sort of sound, but he didn’t question me.

When we went into the pharmacy, he discreetly looked at fiber supplements and other fun grown-up things like that while I waited to speak with a pharmacist. Within ten minutes, my questions had been answered and my prescription for the morning-after pill had been filled. Now I just hoped it would work.

“Do I want to know?” Dad asked once we were back in the SUV.

“No, I’m a hundred and ten percent positive that you don’t.”

“Then I know.”

“Daddy,” I whined.

He threw his hands up in surrender. Good thing we weren’t on the road yet. “It’s your business. Not mine. Just tell me one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked suspiciously.

He pointed at the prescription bag I’d stashed in my purse. “If that doesn’t work, and you need help, will you please let me help? Doesn’t matter what kind of help it is, either. I just want to be there for you.”

Which was precisely the reason I’d asked him to be the one to take me, and not either Mom or Gray. Those two would have insisted they needed to know everything and be involved in every step of the process, when it was none of their darn business and there wasn’t anything they could do, anyway.

I let out a soft chuckle, but I nodded. “If I need help, you’ll be the first to know.” There were a lot of things that could happen, though, which wouldn’t require me needing my father’s help. He just didn’t need to know that part.

He nodded thoughtfully, but then he pulled out onto the road to drive me home. “So what’s your plan for if the police don’t recover your car?” he asked after a moment.

“I already informed the insurance company it was stolen. They’ll replace it.” Granted, I’d have to wait for a new car to be retrofitted for all my modifications, so it wouldn’t happen right away, but I could at least start the process. “There might be somewhere I can rent an accessible vehicle in the meanwhile, and if there’s not, I can get Terri or Eric to give me a ride to work. I’m sure Wade will pick me up for Para-Pythons practice, and probably anything else I ask him to do.” And maybe a bunch of other things I didn’t ask him for, too. We might not have worked out as a couple, but he made for a heck of a friend. “I can bug Gray into taking me to the grocery store sometimes. It’ll give him a good excuse to slip away from Sierra and the kids for a bit of peace if nothing else.”

“So you’ve got a plan…”

“I’m coming up with a plan,” I corrected him. “There are still details to be sorted out, but I will sort them out. Have you ever known me to just sit back and flounder around?”

“That’s my girl.” He patted me on the knee.

The rest of the way back to my house, he refrained from bugging me about things he knew better than to think I’d tell him. I texted my landlord to let him know we were on our way and would need the new keys shortly. When we pulled up in front of his house, Dan came out with the keys in hand and passed them through the window.

“You need anything else?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing I can think of. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

Dan nodded. “All right, then. You know I’ll help you out in any way I can. Call me anytime.”

There was already a pickup truck in my driveway, though, so Dad had to park behind it. Wade Miller had his arms crossed and was leaning against the bed of the truck.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded when he came around to help me with my chair.

“Waiting for you.”

I laughed. “I see that. But why?”

“Can’t I just drop by to see you?” he replied. Evading the question. That wasn’t like him.

I raised a brow in question, and he gave me a subtle nod of his head in my father’s direction. So I still didn’t know why Wade was here, but apparently he had no intention of explaining until Dad was gone.

I nodded that I understood. “So we’ll call it a surprise visit, hmm?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Dad took the keys and got the door unlocked, heading inside to take in an armload of my Christmas presents. In no time, Wade had my chair fully assembled, and he set the brake so it wouldn’t roll away when I tried to get into it.

“Wanna explain now?” I asked once Dad disappeared inside my house.

“I don’t know. Maybe you want to explain what happened between you and Nazarenko.”

I blinked, shaking my head. “What do you mean?” How on earth did he know that anything had happened with Dima beyond that trip to the coffee shop?

“Just that he’s been calling everyone involved with the Para-Pythons, trying to get your phone number or your address. Said you were with him during the storm and he needed to get in touch with you. But I figured if you wanted him to have your number, you’d have already given it to him. So there must be a reason he doesn’t have it.”

“Oh,” I said, completely taken aback. But then Dad came back out with empty arms.

“You sure you don’t need anything else?” he asked me.

“I’m fine. I promise.”

“And I’ll stick around for a bit to be sure she gets settled,” Wade put in.

Dad shook his hand and then bent over to hug me. “Still think you’re a traitor,” he said before getting back into Gray’s SUV and driving off.

“Traitor?” Wade asked, laughing.

“For abandoning him to suffer through the rest of the week with all of those kids.”

“Mm hmm.” But Wade turned and headed into my house, and I followed him. He shut the door behind me once we were both inside. “So,” he said, taking a seat on my couch. “Nazarenko. What does he want with you, and do you want me to make sure he leaves you alone?”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know what he wants, but I don’t need you to do anything about him.”

“Because I could make it happen. Just say the word.”

“If you mean you’d go threaten him with a gun—”

“Never said a word about threatening him,” Wade cut in.

“I notice you’re not arguing the part about the gun.”

“If it would make you feel better, I could arrange for someone else to deal with him.”

I laughed, but not because I doubted him. If anything, he was entirely too serious. “I don’t want anyone to deal with Dima. Not like that, at least.”

“Then how?”

I knew better than to have put a qualifier on what I said around Wade. I shook my head. “I don’t want you to do anything to him.”

He stared at me, and the familiar tic in his jaw started up, but he let it drop. “Why were you with him through the storm?”

“I stopped to get gas and my car got stolen. He was there. He tried to take me to Gray’s house, but the weather got too bad too fast, so we ended up going back to his house until it cleared.”

“Why do I get the sense there’s a whole lot more to the story than you’re telling me?” Wade grumbled.

How on earth had I ended up with so many grouchy, grumbly men in my life? I sighed. “I’m fine, Wade. I’m all in one piece. No harm, no foul.”

“But you didn’t give him your number.”

“I didn’t think he would want or need it. He could have asked.”

“You could’ve offered.”

“But I didn’t. And he didn’t. Did he say why he needed to get in touch with me?” I asked, hoping it was something simple like I’d left behind the toothbrush he’d let me use while I’d been there. It had to be something like that, now that I thought about it. He’d been so ready to be rid of me that he hadn’t even been able to look at me or talk to me, almost, there at the end. So it didn’t matter how much I missed having him moaning and groaning. Whatever we’d had, it was done.

Or it should have been.

Wade stretched out both of his titanium legs and leaned back, settling in. “He won’t say. Just that he needs to get in touch with you. He wouldn’t even back off when I started dropping hints about the things I’d do to him if he hurt you.”

“There are a lot of things you do, Wade Miller, but dropping hints is not one of them.”

He smiled, the same sort of devilish smile that had gotten me to fall for him back in the day. “No, I suppose I don’t drop hints, do I?”

I rolled my eyes.

“So what do you want me to do about him?”

That was an excellent question.

“THE FUCK DID you do to your face?” Andrew Nash, Drew to the guys and one of my Thunderbirds teammates, demanded the moment I walked into the locker room before our next game.

Half the guys were already in the room, and they all turned to see what he was talking about.

I ran a subconscious hand over my bare jaw. It felt odd to the touch, especially where the scars from the wreck were.

Razor Chambers burst out laughing. “Tori’s going to die when she sees you like that.” Tori was what he called his wife, Viktoriya. She was a Russian woman he’d married over the past summer. They both claimed it wasn’t just so Viktoriya could get a green card.

Sometimes I believed them, other times not so much. These days, I fell more in line with believing them, though, especially after he’d insisted they have a proper Russian wedding even though they were already married. Besides, the immigration officials had decided to rush all the paperwork through once word had gotten out that her family were victims of the Russian Mafia, so I figured that was good enough for me.

She couldn’t ever go home again—a sobering thought. I’d been looking out for her since he’d brought her back to Tulsa. Making sure Razor didn’t treat her like shit, because enough other men had already done that.

Turned out he was all right, though. Despite myself, Razor was growing on me. Especially because Viktoriya loved him, for whatever reason.

Since I actually liked Razor, I decided to answer him instead of Drew. I shrugged. “Decided it was time to shave.”

“Since this morning?” Razor replied, laughing. “Holy hell.”

I’d shaved my beard after morning skate in lieu of taking a pregame nap. There wasn’t a chance I was going to be able to sleep, anyway. I hadn’t heard from London since her brother had picked her up at my house two days ago. I’d called every number I’d been able to get my hands on for the guys involved with the Para-Pythons, but no one would tell me a fucking thing. They wouldn’t give me her number, her address, tell me where she worked. Nothing.

If she wanted you to have her number, she would’ve given it to you, they kept telling me. Back the fuck off, before we decide to make you back off. A couple of them made sure I was aware that they’d have no problem arranging for my accidental death if I didn’t take their hints. Given their history with the military, I was inclined to take them at their word.

Even though I knew she didn’t need anyone in her life being so overprotective, because she was more than capable of taking care of herself, a part of me was glad she had these men looking out for her in the same way I looked out for Viktoriya. Then there was the other part of me that wanted to do as bad to them, if not worse, because they wouldn’t give me London’s fucking number.

Now I had to somehow get my head back on straight so I could focus on playing hockey tonight. I had no idea how I’d manage that, since I hadn’t thought of anything but London since the moment her brother’s SUV had disappeared around the corner of my street. In fact, I’d almost jumped into my car and followed them.

Maybe I should have.

Hunter came into the room, headphones on and already getting into the zone as he took a seat in his stall to put on his gear. The other guys were still gawking at my painfully bare face.

I nodded my head in Hunter’s direction. “Tired of baby ripping my beard out. Time to shave it off.”

“Blaming it on the baby,” Drew said, shaking his head. “What’d she ever do to you?”

“Ripped my beard out,” I groused, stripping my tie off and tossing it into my locker.

“Well, Merry Fucking Christmas to you, too,” Razor said. “I didn’t think you could get any uglier, but it’s good to know I can be wrong sometimes.”

I tossed my bag in my stall and set about ignoring the guys, but they weren’t finished. Drew came over and rubbed his knuckles on my cheek. I glared until he took his hand back.

“Smooth as a baby’s butt. Who knew you had such soft skin under there, Dima? Bet the ladies’ll be glad that monstrosity’s gone. All that chafing between the legs…”

“He’s never with the same woman twice,” Ethan Higgins said, shaking his head. The guys all called him Huggy Bear because he was as big and mean as a grizzly, but he was also the last person anyone would want to hug. He was standoffish, always keeping to himself, and even surlier than me. That was saying something. “Moves on as soon as he learns their names.”

For the most part, he was right. I had been with London more than twice, though. I’d honestly lost track of how many times we’d been together in such a short amount of time. And, worse yet, I wanted to be with her again. That was the problem. I’d been sure I wanted her out of my life, but as soon as she was gone, I wanted her back.

I missed the way her scent wrapped itself around me and clung to my body, mixing with my own like we belonged together.

I missed the way her hair had tickled my nose when I’d held her that night when the power was out.

I missed seeing her in nothing but my T-shirt and boxers, her tits hard and poking through the soft fabric.

More than anything, I missed the way she’d grabbed hold of my beard and dragged me on top of her until I did what she wanted.

But I’d gotten rid of the beard. Because she’d wanted to see what I was hiding.

And she was gone.

I was a fucking mess.

And all because of a smart-mouthed, bossy woman I wasn’t even certain I liked.

Ridiculous.

Eventually, the guys stopped giving me shit over shaving my beard, and we all finished getting ready for the game. A group of them went out into the concourse to kick a soccer ball around to loosen up. I thought about joining them but decided not to. Being out there with them would only invite more comments about my baby face or something. Not what I was in the mood for.

Finally, it was time to take the ice for warm-ups. I followed Hunter and the rest of the guys out, with only our team captain, Eric “Zee” Zellinger, behind me. The Blues had come out a few moments before us and were already swarming the net in their end of the arena.

The stands were about half full, which was honestly a good turnout for us lately. Probably half of them were here to see the Blues, who were at the top of the league in the standings right now.

I skated through the line rushes and stopped occasionally to stretch, going through my usual pregame routine, but Sergei Dragomirov came over and started speaking to me in Russian.

“You see that kid?” Drago said, pointing up toward the back of the lower bowl.

I followed his gaze. I couldn’t make out the kid’s face, but I recognized the man standing next to him with his arms crossed. That was Wade Miller, one of the sons of bitches who had refused to give me any information about London. The kid in question was in a wheelchair and holding up a sign.

With my name on it.

I’ve got London’s number for you, it said.

I smiled, racking my brain to figure out how to get the number from this kid. Couldn’t stop myself from smiling, actually.

Drago elbowed me in the ribs. “Who’s London?”

She’s everything, I thought to myself. Then I shook my head, as though trying to shake that thought straight out of it. “Nobody,” I said, skating off for another rush at the goal with my line mates.

As soon as we headed back to the locker room after warm-ups, I found an arena worker and asked him to bring Miller and the kid down to talk to me after the game.

I didn’t have a clue what I would say to her when I called later. But at least now I could say it, whatever it was.

An odd, warm sensation spread through me at the thought of her. Something I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

It reeked of happiness to the point it made me want to puke.

WE LOST TO the Blues, but it should have been by a much wider margin than the two-to-one final score. Hunter, as usual, had held us in contention despite a constant barrage of shots coming his way from the Blues forwards.

Drew had scored our only goal, so the reporters had their mics shoved in his face as I made my way out of the locker room to where Wade Miller and the kid should be waiting for me. They were there—Miller with a permanent scowl and the kid grinning like he was seeing a unicorn.

I handed the kid a puck I’d signed for him, which only made his smile bigger. He looked like he might fall out of his chair if he got too much more excitement.

“Thank you for coming. For getting London’s number for me.” I held out a hand to shake with Miller.

He didn’t take it right away. Eventually, he reached out and obliged, but he squeezed so hard it was like he was trying to crush my bones. “Don’t thank me. Thank London. I’m sure as hell not happy about it, but she seems to think it’s okay to give you her number. Doesn’t mean she wants to talk to you, though, so watch yourself.”

Point taken. I pried my hand free from his grip and reached out to shake with the kid. “Hello again,” I said.

“I still can’t believe you signed a jersey for me at the sled game,” he said, lifting the shoulder of the one he was wearing. “But you wouldn’t remember that.” He didn’t give me the chance to tell him I did remember. “Oh my God, I still can’t believe this is happening.” He whacked Miller in the ribs with the puck I’d given him. “It’s Dmitri Nazarenko! Right there, Wade. Do you see him?”

Miller rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I see him.” Then he turned to me. “Evan wanted the opportunity to talk to you again. Your friend, Sergei Mironov, is Evan’s biggest idol.”

“Sergei is, like, the best sled hockey player in the world. Ever. And he’s won a Stanley Cup, back when he could play stand-up hockey with you. But you know that. He’s done it all. You probably know that, too. He even came over and talked to me and shook my hand when he was here, which was the coolest thing ever. I’m still shaking from it, and it happened weeks ago.” Evan kept babbling for a few minutes, going on and on about how great Sergei was. All I could do was nod and agree with him. Sergei was a much better man than these guys would ever know, but that wasn’t what mattered. I’d have to call Sergei soon and tell him what an impression he’d made on this kid.

When Evan finally stopped to breathe, I took the opportunity to butt in. “So you have London’s number?” I said before the kid could gather up another head of steam.

“Oh. Yeah.” He fumbled around in his pocket, digging for it. Then he passed me a scrap of paper ripped from a spiral notebook. “Here you go. She said I should be the one to give it to you, because if she left it up to Wade, he might not do it because she doesn’t think he likes you.”

Miller grunted in acknowledgment.

The guy was honest. I had to give him that.

“Thanks,” I said, carefully slipping the scrap into my wallet. “Next time Sergei visits, I’ll let you know. Maybe you can play shinny or something.”

Evan’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Holy shitballs, Batman. Are you serious?”

I took a few minutes to be sure he knew I was serious and to thank them again. Then I shook Miller’s hand one more time before taking off to rejoin the rest of the team for our flight to Toronto.

“Hurt her and I’ll fuck you up,” Miller said when I started to walk away.

“Not going to hurt her,” I said. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do with her, but I didn’t want to hurt her. Spank her, maybe, if I honestly thought that would do a damned thing to get her to shut her mouth sometimes. But not actually hurt her. Hell, spanking her would probably have the opposite effect of what I was going for, anyway.

“You sure about that? Because I can promise you, there are a lot of ways to hurt a person that don’t involve anything physical. I would know, since I hurt her before. She’s tough, but she’s not unbreakable.”

I turned around before I reached the door heading back into the locker room. “How you hurt her?”

“Didn’t mean to,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his coat. “I just couldn’t let her in. Wasn’t ready for help. Wasn’t ready to care about myself, let alone to let someone else care about me. But I still love her in my own way, and I’m not about to stand to the side and let some other asshole come along and break her heart. You got that?”

“Don’t need help,” I said, hating the defensive tone in my voice.

“Sure. Whatever.” He took a couple of steps back toward where he’d left Evan. “You’re a freaking island of one, aren’t you? That’ll go over really well. You should know that London’ll see straight through that, though. And she won’t put up with it. It’s not in her nature. Especially not with her job…”

I knew she could see straight through me. And I knew she wouldn’t put up with me constantly pushing her away and telling her to stop asking me questions.

But I also knew I’d been a mess the last couple of days without her.

Her job, though? I wanted to ask Miller what he meant by that, but he’d turned and collected Evan, and they were heading out with the rest of the crowd. How the hell had I spent so much time alone with London without finding out a damned thing about her? I didn’t know where she worked or what she did. For that matter, I didn’t know she’d had a relationship with Miller at some point, or that he’d broken her heart. I didn’t know anything that mattered.

All I knew was that I wanted to be with her, and that the wanting had only continued to grow the longer we were apart. And being separated from her left all sorts of parts of me aching. Parts I’d been ignoring for years.

I didn’t like it.

I might dislike it more than being with her drove me crazy.

Fucking hell.

AROUND MIDMORNING ON Friday, my phone rang with a call from an unfamiliar number. It had to be Dima. Wade and Evan had let me know they’d given him my number that night after the game.

For a moment, I debated not answering. After all, I wasn’t in the mood to be called a bitch or told to shut up, or any of the other things he tended to do to start a fight with me, and since we weren’t together in person, things wouldn’t turn physical between us.

I didn’t make up my mind until the last ring before the call would go to voice mail, but I finally swiped my thumb over the screen and answered.

“Hello?”

Silence met me on the other end.

“Dima? Is it a bad connection or something?”

“Thought you would be at work,” he muttered.

“Or hoped I would be, at least.”

“Maybe.”

“So you wanted to leave me a message but not actually talk to me, is that it?” I wheeled myself into the kitchen and started fixing myself a snack, holding the phone between my cheek and my shoulder.

“Why you’re not working?” he asked in lieu of answering me, which shouldn’t be a surprise since that was how we always were with each other.

“My office is closed until after the New Year. I’ve got time off to do whatever I want.”

“So you’re with your family?”

“I’m back at my house now. I had all the family time I could stand for the time being.”

“You should be with your family.”

My ire already getting the best of me, I ripped open the refrigerator door and let the cool air wash over me. “And you should stop telling me what to do.”

“Family is important.” The way he said it reminded me that he didn’t have any family of his own anymore, unless you counted Sergei.

“I know that.” I grabbed a fruit-filled Greek yogurt and a spoon after staring in the open door of the fridge so long that half the cold air must be in the kitchen now instead of the machine. “My parents are coming over for dinner tonight. And I’m going with Gray to take the kids to the movies this weekend.” Somehow, I’d let my brother con me into it, but I couldn’t really say I minded. It gave me a good excuse to go see the latest animated flick. I always felt awkward when I went to see a kid movie alone.

“You have your car back yet?” he asked.

“Did you really call me to ask about my car and why I’m not spending every waking moment with my family?” I grumbled, wheeling back into the living room. I peeled back the foil cover and dug my spoon into the yogurt with so much force that some of it plopped over the edge of the cup. “Please tell me that’s not why you harassed my teammates until one of them finally gave in.”

“You can’t answer a fucking question?”

“I don’t know why I should answer your fucking questions when you won’t ever answer mine.”

Dima let out a string of Russian words, most of which I couldn’t understand, but it didn’t take much imagination to come up with numerous colorful possibilities for interpretation.

“Yes, I’m still a fucking bitch,” I bit off, homing in on the one thing I had understood out of all that he’d said. “And you’re not here to shove your dick in my mouth to shut me up, so you’re going to have to either listen or hang up on me.”

“Trying to get to know you,” he shouted. “All you want to do is fight.”

“I don’t want to fight with you, Dima. I’m sick to death of fighting with you. I’d thought we were done with that when I left your house. Hell, I’d thought we were done, but now you want to call me and fight over the phone?”

“Not trying to fight with you. I want to get to know you.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“Hell if I know.”

I took a moment to stir my yogurt, waiting impatiently for the pulse that was pounding through my veins to slow down. But maybe he had a point. Maybe he was trying to get to know me, not start a fight. We were both too volatile by half. I swallowed a spoonful along with a bit of my pride before speaking again.

“The police found my car about a hundred miles away,” I said once I’d calmed down enough to think clearly. “All the hand controls had been ripped out, along with the navigation system and the stereo. It’d been wrecked, too, so it looks like they took everything of value to sell on the black market.”

“So you have no car now.”

“No, but my insurance is paying for it to be replaced.” Or some of it, but I didn’t want Dima to know I was going to have to dip into my savings to pay for what the insurance wouldn’t cover. He still hadn’t admitted that he was the one behind the pro players who’d banded together and paid for my car to begin with. I wasn’t about to let him get some other crazy idea like that in his head. This was my mess, and I needed to be the one to get myself out of it. “Wade took me car shopping yesterday. I bought one, and I’ve got it in the shop now, being fitted with the modifications I need.”

“Wade said he hurt you.”

“Wade said what?” I spluttered, nearly choking on my yogurt. I don’t know what I’d been expecting Dima to say next, but it sure as hell hadn’t been anything like that.

“He said he hurt you. You used to date him?”

“A long time ago, yeah.”

“Think he still loves you.”

“Not like that, he doesn’t. We’re friends now. We’re much better as friends.”

“What about us?” Dima asked. “Are we friends?”

“To be honest, I don’t know what we are.” And I knew even less about what I wanted us to be. “What do you think we are?”

“Fucked up.”

I burst out laughing. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Tell me about your job.”

“What do you want to know about my job?” I asked, taking another bite and letting the burst of flavor explode on my tongue. Maybe I was starting to calm down, after all.

“Anything. Everything.”

“I coordinate programming at the Brookside Community Center,” I said. “I’ve got a degree in social work, and this is how I decided to put it to use. I schedule events for seniors, kids, support groups, and all sorts of other things. That’s where I met Evan, actually. He came in for some support group meetings for teens with disabilities. I told him about the Para-Pythons when I found out he was into hockey.”

“You go to lots of support groups?” he asked.

“I coordinate them. There are some I attend, but I’ve got a group of counselors who run the meetings for me, and some of them offer private counseling sessions from our facility.”

“What kind of meetings?”

“Everything you can think of. We’ve got groups for addicts, for families of addicts, for people with HIV, people with disabilities, people dealing with loss and grief… You name it, we probably have a support group for it.”

“Have any support groups for grumpy hockey players?”

“Hmm,” I said, tapping my finger on my chin even though he couldn’t see me. “I don’t know if I’ve got any support groups specifically for that, but I do have a couple you might think about.”

“What’s that?” he drawled, clearly not as amused by my sarcasm as I was.

“There’s one monthly for people dealing with grief. But I also have a meeting a couple of times a week for people to talk about their guilt and survivor’s remorse.”

He fell silent for so long I thought he might have hung up on me, once again running away. But then he said, “You go to the meetings?”

“Not those,” I replied, carefully weighing my words. “I leave it to my counselors to run the groups that don’t have any relevance for me. I usually go to the ones that have other people who’ve suffered traumatic injuries or who’re dealing with different sorts of disabilities, though.”

“Does it help?” he asked.

“It can, if you let it. Or it can be a complete waste of your time if all you want to do is push people away so you can run off alone to hide. You can do that on your own time without bothering with a support group.”

“When does group meet?” he asked, and I almost fell out of my chair. “The one for guilt.”

“Wednesday afternoons at two,” I said once I’d pulled myself back together. “Or Saturday evenings, if that would work better for you.”

“Team comes home on Tuesday. I’ll come Wednesday.”

“ONE LAST THING before everyone heads home,” our head coach, Doug Spurrier, said. Earlier this morning, we’d flown back from our abysmally bad road trip, but we’d had a film session and team meeting before they let us leave.

Spurs waited until everyone settled and looked at least halfway interested in whatever he had to say before going on. “Mr. and Mrs. Jernigan want to do something special for you boys this year, so we’re planning a moms’ trip in February when we play the California teams. So do whatever you need to in order to get your mother here for it. Talk to Denise Whitlock in travel if you’ve got any questions or problems. Even if your mother can’t make it, you can bring along another woman who’s been like a mother figure for you, but we really want each of you to have someone along on this trip if at all possible.”

Most of the guys sat up a bit straighter and started talking with some excitement in their voices. That was what always happened whenever a team planned a road trip where everyone could bring along one of their parents.

But I didn’t have any parents, so I never got so excited about the prospect.

Spurs dismissed us after that, and several of the guys headed straight up to see Denise so they could start planning for their mothers’ arrivals. I went the opposite direction, making my way to the locker room to gather my suitcase so I could get the hell out of there before someone caught on to the fact that I would rather not face this shit.

Zee caught me before I could escape, though, grabbing my arm and dragging me to a stop when I ignored him calling my name. “Who you bringing on the moms’ trip?” he asked conversationally. Yeah. Right. Like he just wanted to gab.

I shrugged and shook my head. “No one.”

“You heard Spurs, though,” Zee said. “The Jernigans want all the boys to have someone with them. That means you, too.”

“Don’t have a mom.”

“I know. Which is why I stopped you to talk about it.” He gave me a look that clearly said I was an idiot.

“Don’t have anyone to bring. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. What about Sergei’s mother?” he suggested.

I was halfway through shooting down that idea when I slowed down enough to allow myself to think about it. It actually it made sense. After all, Sergei would never be able to take his mother on a trip like that, now that he couldn’t play stand-up hockey anymore, and she was the closest thing I’d ever known to a mother. She’d always treated me like I might as well be Sergei’s brother, even after the wreck. I didn’t know if she’d agree to it, though. Maybe I shouldn’t even bother asking her.

“Think about it,” Zee said, but then he let me leave.

I added that to my list of other things I’d been thinking about almost nonstop the entire time we’d been on the road. Most of those things racing through my head revolved around London, though, so the thought of asking Sergei’s mother to come on a road trip would make for a nice change of pace.

I grabbed my things and headed out to my car. We didn’t have a game tonight, so I had the rest of the day to myself. Tomorrow, we only had practice and a film session—again, no game—so I should be able to make it to that support group meeting London had told me about. But right now, I wanted to find the community center and take a peek around. It wouldn’t hurt if I ran into her while I was there, too, because I hadn’t been able to get her out of my head since the moment she’d left my house. Seeing her wouldn’t remove her from my mind, but it might help me relax if I could tell that she was all right. That we were all right. If we were.

After pulling up the address on my GPS, I followed the directions, parked in front of the building, and made my way inside.

A curvy blonde with fire-engine-red glasses was manning the front desk. She smiled at me when I came through the door. “Can I help you?”

“I…” I didn’t have the first clue what to say. “Looking for London,” I finally said, since she’d been staring at me the whole time with an expectant expression.

“Oh, well, that’s easy. She’s in the Disabled-But-Able meeting right now. You’re a bit late, but that won’t matter to anyone. It just matters that you’re here.” She smiled, clearly thinking I must also belong in that group. With all the scars visible on my chin now that my beard was gone, who could blame her for that line of thinking? “Just go down that hall, and it’s the first door on the left,” she said, pointing me on my way.

“But I’m not—”

An elderly man came in behind me, and she turned her attention to helping him, leaving me on my own to wrestle with whether or not I should go into the meeting or go home and come back tomorrow for the group session I actually intended to attend. Once. I definitely wouldn’t be coming to it more than once.

The blonde gave me another smile and waved her hand in a shooing motion. I ended up going where she’d directed me.

As soon as I stepped into the room, I saw a familiar sight. London, eyes flashing, leaning forward in her wheelchair in a posture meant to intimidate, letting some other woman in a wheelchair have a piece of her mind. The only thing missing was her jerking the woman around by a nonexistent beard. I ran my hand over the scruff on my face and made a mental note to shave it again. It wasn’t long enough for her to get a grip on, but as fast as it grew, it wouldn’t take much longer.

“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” London said. “That’s all you ever say, Joyce. How about all the things you can do, hmm? Or aren’t there any?”

The woman named Joyce sniffled. “But I ca—”

“You can’t,” London cut in. “We already know that. Trust me, you’ve been telling us all the things you can’t do for weeks. I think everyone in this room has already gotten the message, loud and clear, a dozen times over.”

“Why are you picking on me?” Joyce sobbed.

“You think I’m picking on you? I’m trying to help you, but you’re determined not to be helped. By anyone. Especially not by yourself. You’ve got doctors who’ve crafted a new leg for you, but you won’t bother trying to learn how to walk on it. You’ve got a husband trying to support you through every step of this process, but you keep pushing him away. You’ve got two kids at home who want their mommy back, but right now they’re the ones taking care of you instead of the way it should be. When are you going to accept that the one thing you actually, honestly, really can’t do is turn back time so you can undo your accident? You’ve got to move forward, whether you like it or not.”

The things she was saying sounded, to my ears, like she was speaking directly to me, even though I knew she wasn’t. Which made me want to leave even more than before. In fact, I started to back out of the room, hoping I’d done so before anyone noticed me.

Too late.

Wade Miller caught my eye and crossed the room to stand beside me. Glaring. The man always glared at me. Granted, I probably always glared at him, too.

“Seeing London in her element is something else, isn’t it?” he said.

“Her element?”

He shrugged and turned so we were next to each other facing London, then crossed his arms. “Confronting people. Pushing just enough that they finally start to fight back. She always knows where the line is, somehow…she understands when to stop without going too far. I mean, you’ve seen it yourself, haven’t you? She’s done it with you. Has to have done it with you at least a few times.”

I didn’t say anything because it was too uncanny to be watching her doing the same things with this woman that she’d done to me during those days we were snowed in at my house. I wasn’t sure how to process that.

“She did it to me, too,” Miller said. “Or she tried to. Still does sometimes, but I don’t let her get away with that shit. She’s really just getting started with Joyce, though. You should stick around and watch it for yourself if you want to learn what she’s all about. The counselors here all love London because she doesn’t hold back.”

So I stood there, feet planted in place, completely riveted as I watched London tear into this strange woman.

First, Joyce tried to run away, but London followed in her wheelchair and cornered her on the other side of the room.

Then Joyce yelled and screamed, flailing her fists like she wanted to hit London. To London’s credit, she never flinched and never backed away.

But when Joyce started crying—sobbing uncontrollably, actually—I couldn’t bear to watch. I wanted to cross over there, pick London up, carry her away from that woman, and give her a piece of my mind for the way she was torturing this woman she was supposed to be helping.

“Don’t,” Miller said, his voice low. Warning me. Or maybe it was a threat. “I know you want to help Joyce, but the best thing you can do for her right now is let her fight through the tears. She’s got to get through this part or she’ll never come out on the other side.”

So I stayed put, even though every muscle in my body wanted to run to her defense. Which was ridiculous. I didn’t know her. I didn’t know anything about her except that she was crying, and it was London’s fault.

Minutes passed with those two still in the corner. I couldn’t hear anything they were saying, only that they were both still talking and Joyce was still crying. But gradually, her voice got stronger. Louder. More defiant.

“Get out of my damn way,” she shouted at London.

And this time, London backed up her chair and allowed Joyce to pass.

Joyce wheeled over to a pair of parallel bars set up alongside a wall of windows, with the afternoon sunlight streaming in.

Miller turned and gave me a grizzled grin. “Come on. You’re helping.”

“Helping?”

But my question fell on deaf ears. Miller crossed over to Joyce’s chair, and I blindly followed him. He stood on one side of Joyce and directed me to stand on her other side. We each put a hand on her back and another under her arm, helping her to stand and gain her balance. I looked down and realized her left leg was prosthetic.

Memories of the early months with Sergei flooded me. I couldn’t catch my breath. Wanted to let the waves take me under because I remembered Sergei’s pain, his frustration, his anger and sadness and loss, but I couldn’t give in to the tidal wave of my past because this woman was holding on to me as part of her support. I couldn’t let her go any more than I could have walked away from him when he’d needed me.

“There you go,” Miller said to her. “Nice and steady. We’ve got you. Just get your balance while Ben and Nick adjust the height of the bars for you.”

A couple of the other men had already come forward and were lowering the bars into place so they were a little taller than waist-height for Joyce. She leaned on us some, wobbling only slightly, as she settled herself into position.

They locked the bars into place and stepped back.

Tears still streaming down her cheeks, Joyce took a look at Miller, then at me, and she gave us a resolute nod. Gently, and ever so slowly, we guided her forward until she stood between the two bars. Miller eased her hand onto the bar nearest him, leaving me as her only human support, and backed away. I waited until she caught her balance and moved her weight to the other side before following his example. Finally, she stood on her own with only the two bars as guides.

“That’s it, Joyce,” Miller said, all his attention on her and none on me. I might as well not be there, if not for the fact that he’d dragged me along to help. But why? Why me? What was his aim in all of this? “You’ve got this,” he said. “And we’re all right here if you need us, but you’re not going to. Okay?”

She stared straight ahead, jaw set in place as she lifted her left leg—the prosthetic and the one closest to me—and angled it forward. It came down and touched the ground in front of her, a huge step even though it only spanned a few inches, at most.

“Slow and steady,” Miller said. “Get your balance before you take the next step.”

Her hands hovered over the bars, lightly touching, but she wasn’t holding herself up with her upper body. She paused a few moments as her weight shifted gradually from the back foot to the front, the right to the left. As soon as she tried to release her right foot, she wobbled and had to grab the bars to support herself. But she didn’t fall. As fast as she could, Joyce moved her right foot forward and replaced it on the floor to recover her balance, and the whole room broke out in applause. Even I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

“I told you,” London said, coming up behind me. “You can do it. And it’s not easy, and you’re going to have to practice, and it’s going to hurt, and you’ll fall down and cry and hate the world some days. But you can do it.”

“I can,” Joyce said, sniffling and looking over her shoulder in my direction.

“Now do it again,” London said. “Because that’s the only way this is going to work. You’ve got to keep going even when you don’t want to.”

Joyce nodded, but she faced forward again and squared her shoulders to the task at hand. First the left foot. Then the right. This time, she stepped maybe an inch farther than she had the first time, still holding on to the rails with a death grip, but the point was that she was doing it.

London put her hand on the back of my arm, and my entire body jolted into awareness. Of her. Of us.

“Didn’t recognize you without the beard,” she said quietly, not that anyone would hear her over the cheering and encouragement being sent in Joyce’s direction.

“Got sick of you jerking me around by it,” I replied.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her lips quirk up in a grin.

“You promise you’re not going to be at meeting tomorrow?”

“Why?” she said, smothering a laugh. “You scared?”

“Not scared. Just picturing you stomping on my balls since beard is gone.”

“Ouch. That’d hurt.” She made it sound like an appealing thought somehow, dirty and kinky and hot. Not a good sign. “Good thing I can’t stomp on you, huh?”

“It would hurt,” I replied. But not as much as dealing with all the shit in my head that I hadn’t touched in years. That was bound to hurt worse, if watching what Joyce had just gone through was any indication.

She was walking. Unsteadily, slowly, and with a lot of assistance.

But she was doing it.

So maybe now it was time for me to put the past to rest.

TERRI, THE RECEPTIONIST who worked at the front desk, was supposed to be my ride home after work, but when I wheeled over to her at quitting time with my coat and purse on my lap, she gave me a funny look and shook her head.

“What does that mean?” I asked, immediately suspicious.

She pointed toward the glass-paned front doors. Or, more specifically, to the enormous, glowering Russian leaning against the hood of his car on the other side of those doors, with Wade at his side. Dima had both his arms and legs crossed. Wade had his back to me, legs shoulder-width apart in a stance meant to intimidate Dima, but there wasn’t a chance in hell of that happening.

I sighed. “How long have they been out there?” I asked Terri.

“Since not long after the end of your Disabled-But-Able meeting. Probably an hour or more. They did some yelling at first. Scared a little elderly lady, and I had to tell them to knock it off or I’d call the cops on them. So they stopped yelling at each other, but they haven’t budged. Most people are skirting around them. I can’t say I blame them, either. They’re both kinda scary-looking, aren’t they?”

When they wanted to be… “I have a feeling one of them will be taking me home tonight, so you can go on whenever you’re ready.”

“You sure?” she asked, warily eyeing the two most bullheaded men I’d ever known.

“Positive.” I might not be happy about it, but there wasn’t any way around it. Besides, I was even more bullheaded than the two of them combined. Someone had to break these two up before they killed each other, and it appeared I was the lucky someone in line for the job. Not that I had a clue what they were going on about, but apparently I’d find out soon enough. “Can you lock up?”

“Got it. I’ll see you in the morning.” She took another glance out the windows. “You sure you don’t want me to call the cops anyway?”

“I’m sure. I can handle those two.” I put on my coat and headed out into the warmer-than-it-appeared air, immediately wishing I’d left the coat off. We must have had a warm front blow in while I was otherwise occupied doing my job.

Dima raised a brow when he saw me come out, and Wade turned around to face me, planting both feet in the same kind of stance as before, with his arms crossed in front of him. They should get a look at the pair of them. Good grief. They might as well be twins with the way they were posturing and glaring and whatnot.

“What the hell’s gotten into you two to make you scare off a little old lady in front of my community center?” I demanded once I got close enough that I wouldn’t have to yell. “You were getting along just fine while we were all inside, so what went wrong?”

“There were people around us inside,” Wade said, “and besides, it wasn’t about us in there. It was all about Joyce.”

I scowled, trying to ease my arms out of my coat so I didn’t roast alive. It didn’t matter how many years I’d been living in Oklahoma—I still hadn’t gotten used to the rapid changes in the weather, and I doubted I ever would. They came up on me out of nowhere and took me by surprise every time. “So you were on your best behavior.”

“Yes,” Dima said.

“And you can’t be if you don’t have an audience? Why not?”

“Because I don’t think he’s good enough for you,” Wade said.

I rolled my eyes. “Who asked you? I think I should be the one to make that call.”

“You don’t think he’s good enough for you, either,” he shot back as Terri made her way out of the building and hurried to her car, not making eye contact with any of us.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you didn’t talk about him at all the whole time he was gone, other than when I asked you what you wanted me to do about him. You didn’t even know he’d shaved off that rat’s nest of a beard until he showed up today. I could tell from your reaction when you realized he was there.”

“Oh, so I didn’t talk to you about him for a few days, when whatever’s going on between us is none of your business, and I didn’t stalk him online to see if he’d done something different in a few days, so suddenly that means he’s not good enough for me? Whatever, Wade. Get over yourself.”

“Get over myself?” he shot back.

“Yes. Exactly.” I rolled my eyes. “You know, if anything, maybe it means I’m not good enough for him, hmm? I didn’t pay enough attention to him while he was gone, so why should he want me anymore?”

Dima let out a chuckle, and without the beard hiding it, you could actually see the smile so often hidden underneath.

“Oh, that’s funny, is it?” Wade drawled.

“Just nice to see her going after someone else for once,” Dima replied.

“Don’t think you’re getting off any easier than he is,” I shot in his direction. “What are you doing here at all? You’re supposed to be coming to the support group tomorrow.”

He shrugged. “Wanted to see you. Missed you.”

Wade snorted.

But I melted a bit inside. I didn’t want Dima to know that he could have that kind of effect on me, though. Not yet. Not until I had time to figure out how I felt about it, at the very least, and maybe not even then.

That kind of knowledge was power, and I wanted to have the upper hand if at all possible. I wasn’t good at letting someone else have the upper hand over any part of me, since I had lost control in so many areas of my life already.

“So what are you saying?” Wade asked.

This wasn’t an easy answer to give him because I knew, without a doubt, he wouldn’t like hearing it. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Wade Miller, but I didn’t see any way around it while still staying true to myself. “I’m saying that, while I appreciate the sentiment behind what you’re doing, I don’t want you to keep doing it.” Sure enough, as soon as the words were out of my mouth, his jaw set and locked—anger and pain, both colliding within him the way they always did. Wade had made a lot of changes in the last few years, but he still had a long way to go before he was ready for the kind of relationship he wanted. And he’d never be able to have it with me, whether he still thought he wanted us to be an item or not. I couldn’t go there with him. I couldn’t be the one to slay his dragons, and I couldn’t allow him to think he was taking care of the demons lurking in his closet by looking after me.

He kicked a rock with his toe, staring at the asphalt between us. “So that’s it, then? You’re kicking me out of your life and letting him in?”

“I’m not kicking you out. But I’m not kicking Dima out, either. If you want to be part of my life, you’re going to have to accept that I’m going to make choices you don’t always agree with. I’m going to have people involved in my life you might not like. You don’t get to determine who I see and who I don’t.” It was hard enough loving him when he couldn’t love himself, but allowing him to pick and choose who was good enough for me wasn’t something I could do. Not ever.

“So if I think you’re making a huge mistake, I’m just supposed to bite my tongue and pretend I don’t see it?”

“No. You’re supposed to love me anyway, the same as I’ll love you even when you’re being an enormous ass.”

“But you don’t love me,” Wade said. “That much is clear.”

A part of me deflated, but I refused to look away. “You’re wrong about that. I’ve loved you for a long time, Wade. I just can’t love you the way you want me to because you won’t take care of yourself.”

He kicked another rock and spun around, the muscles in his back bunched like he was looking for someone or something to hit. I doubted punching something would help him, but it might allow him to blow off some steam. Only there was nothing out here for him to hit other than Dima or me, so I hoped he would just leave. Walk it off. Go to the gym and punch a bag. Maybe find one of the other guys from the Para-Pythons to have a beer with or something.

Every bone in my body wanted to comfort him, but that would negate everything I’d just said. So I couldn’t. This time, he was going to have to sort it out on his own.

“You gonna take her home?” he finally ground out, glaring at Dima.

“I’ll take her home,” Dima replied, keeping one wary eye on Wade and the other on me, gauging my reaction.

I nodded my agreement with the plan.

Without another look in my direction, Wade stalked across the parking lot and climbed into his truck, slamming the door before revving the engine and peeling away so fast his tires squealed on the pavement.

After Wade was gone, I turned back to Dima. “Well, that was awkward.”

“You’re not kicking me out?” he asked.

“No. Not yet, at least.”

He grinned, even though it was obvious that he was trying to hide it. Cocky bastard. “So where that leaves us?”

“I don’t know. Where do you want us to be? You’re the one who asked me to leave, if you’ll remember.”

He held up the back of his right hand for me. “I don’t forget. Not anything.”

“No, you tattoo it all over yourself so you can’t forget even if you try.”

He chuckled and gave me a sheepish expression.

“Come on,” I said, closing the distance between us. “Take me home and we’ll talk about it. Figure out what’s going on with us.”

“Fine. Since you can’t jerk my beard.”

I winked. “I have a few other tricks up my sleeve.”

“That’s what makes me nervous.”

“Good. A smidge of fear never hurt anyone. Too badly…”

STANDING IN LONDON’S house, I’d never felt quite so big, awkward, and clunky. Everything in her space was neat and tidy, with plenty of room between every piece of furniture to allow her to move in her wheelchair with ease. The halls and doorways were wider than normal, too. This was a house clearly designed with accessibility in mind.

Being here should have left me feeling like I had enough space to move around, for once, but it did the opposite instead—I felt like I was taking up too much of London’s ability to move freely, and everywhere I stood, I would be blocking her.

“You planning to stick around long enough for us to talk?” she drawled after we’d been inside for a few moments—long enough for her to get a couple of bottles of water from the kitchen and set them on the coffee table. “I thought that was why you wanted to bring me home. Have a seat. Get comfortable.” She shifted from her chair onto the couch and patted the seat next to her.

No chance I’d be able to relax being that close to her. Not unless I could drag her up against me and bury my nose in the citrus-vanilla scent of her hair. I’d caught a couple of whiffs of it in the car, and the reminder had taken me back to the first day she’d been at my house.

The longer she’d stayed, the less I’d been able to make out the scents of her shampoos and soaps and whatnot.

But now they were all back full force, doing a number on my already frayed nerves.

I sat in the armchair across from her instead of where she’d indicated, stretching my legs in front of me. Her furniture was too small for a man my size. It felt almost delicate.

“So you were hiding scars under all that facial hair, hmm?” Her gaze flitted over my face, taking in every part of me. “Not a surprise. But they’re not that bad, you know.”

Subconsciously, I ran a hand over my jaw, feeling where the skin bubbled up. They weren’t as bold and purplish as they used to be. These days, they were more of a soft pink, almost white in places. I hadn’t seen them in years, though, because of all the facial hair covering them. “Not too pretty, either.”

She chuckled. “You’re not supposed to be pretty. You’re a hockey player. I can’t think of a guy who doesn’t have at least a few scars from sticks and skate blades and surgeries. Most have missing teeth, too, but you seem to have at least most of those. It’s not that bad. Besides, my brother always told me that chicks dig scars.”

I couldn’t stop the grin from curling up the corners of my lips. “You like my scars?”

London shrugged, smiling. “I never said I like scars.”

“But do you?”

“I like them better than the beard.”

“Why?”

“Because they allow me to see you. All of you. Even the parts you’d rather hide. They let me know who you are.”

“You know who I am.”

“I mean on the inside. That’s not the same as what you show the world. None of us are the same on the inside as what we let everyone else see.”

“You’re different?” I scoffed. “Not just a demanding, mouthy know-it-all?”

London shrugged. “I’m those things, sure. But there’s more to me than that. I also care too much about other people. I have to be that way to protect myself from getting hurt, because so often, they don’t help themselves when they should. Part of it is a barrier. It’s a way to keep myself from getting too close to people who won’t ever make the changes they need to make if they want to live a better life.”

“Like me.”

“I hope you’re not going to be like that,” she said quietly. “Because I really care about you, Dima. I’ve already let you in too far if I’m going to be able to keep myself from getting hurt if you don’t choose to deal with all your stuff.”

“Like Miller.”

“Yes, like Wade,” she said, nodding. “I care too much about him by half, and it kills me that he doesn’t care about himself.”

“He loves you, though.”

“In his own way, yes. But if he can’t ever start to love himself again, how can he really love someone else? How can he let someone else love him if he doesn’t think he deserves to be loved? He hates himself because he came home and his team didn’t.” She leaned forward, and some of her hair escaped from the clip holding it back behind her head. It fell down to frame her face in waves that I wanted to run my fingers through. “What were you thinking when he said you weren’t good enough for me?” she asked after a long moment.

“Thinking he’s right.”

“He’s wrong. He thinks you’re not good enough. He thinks he’s not good enough. It’s all wrong. That’s the problem. And I need you to see the truth. I need you to see yourself for what you are.”

“Trying not to hide from you,” I said.

“It’s not me I’m worried about here. I wish you weren’t hiding from yourself.”

I shook my head, not following. “How can I hide from myself? Doesn’t make sense.”

“Exactly. You can’t, but you’ve been trying to. From yourself. From Sergei. From everyone.” London leaned forward and grabbed a bottle of water from the coffee table, then took a sip. “You’re a study in contradictions,” she said after a moment, eyeing me over the top of her bottle. “You tattoo your hand so you won’t forget, but the rest of your body is covered in tattoos meant to hide the evidence of your past. Instead of putting ink on your face, you grew that god-awful beard to hide the most visible remnants of your accident. But then you hold charity events to raise money for other people dealing with the same problems Sergei has, and you sent me money to fix up a car for my needs after my accident.”

My head whipped back like she’d struck me. “I didn’t—”

London held up a hand to stop me before I got too far. “Don’t lie to me about that, Dima. I’ll know, and I can’t stand being lied to.”

“All right.” I wasn’t a good liar anyway, unless it was lying to myself, apparently.

She raised a brow. “So you admit it? You’re the one who sent me the money, aren’t you?”

“Wasn’t just me. Got every guy on the team to donate.”

“But you’re the one who was behind it.” A statement, not a question. “It was your idea, you organized it, you probably hounded the rest of the guys until they forked over some money, and you arranged to get it to me. I’m sure it was the same thing when you dragged half your teammates into participating in the sled hockey game, too. You got it in your head that you had to do it, and then you worked your ass off to make it as good as you could for the fans by getting the other guys involved.”

I tried to shrug it off.

“So what’s all that about?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because you seem to want to be with me, even if you don’t want to want me. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why, but I want to be with you, too. But I can’t be with someone who’s trying to hide from the past like it’s going to catch up to him. No, that’s not entirely right. I can, but I won’t.”

“I shaved,” I said on a frustrated sigh. “What else do you want?”

“I want you to figure out how to let go. It’s not just about the beard and tattoos, and you’re deluding yourself if you think otherwise. It’s about what you’re trying to hide with them. I want you to move on so you’re not constantly trying to make up for your mistakes. That’s no way to live.”

“I don’t know any other way.” Constant reminders of the things I’d done wrong had been the only things holding me together for so long now I didn’t have a clue what it would be like to let any of it go.

“Well…if you want to be with me, you’re going to have to figure it out. You can start tomorrow when you go to the support group.”

“What if I don’t go?” After watching what she’d put Joyce through this afternoon…

London stared at me so hard and for so long I thought she might start in on me that same way. But finally, she said, “You saw what happened with Wade this afternoon.”

I nodded.

“I love him as much as I love my parents, my brother, my nieces and nephews. Wade Miller is part of my family, and I would do anything to see him happy. Including push him away because he’s still stuck in the past. Even if it hurts us both, which I promise you…what you witnessed this afternoon ripped us both to shreds, even if you think I’m just a coldhearted bitch. I might not break down and start crying over things, but that doesn’t mean they don’t tear me apart limb from limb on the inside.”

“So I don’t go, you cut me out? That’s what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly, no. But I am saying I won’t sit by and let you keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing all along, hoping things will get better. You’re going to have to make an effort to make things better. Or I’ll cut you off.”

When she said the last part, her gaze flickered down to my crotch. Instinctively, I put a hand down to guard my dick and balls.

She snorted in laughter.

“Not funny.”

“The look on your face is.”

“This is why you’re a bitch,” I bit off.

“A bitch you still can’t get out of your mind.”

Damn it if she wasn’t right about that.

“So are you still coming to the support group tomorrow?” London asked.

“Fine. I’ll come. Once.”

“Don’t limit yourself to only coming once until you give it a try. You never know. You might come back again after the first time.” She took another sip from her bottle. “It’d be good for you.”

“Not promising anything yet.”

“Fair enough. But I’m not promising anything, either, until I’ve seen that you’re making an effort.”

“Not anything, meaning what?”

“Meaning no sex. No jumping into bed to get me to shut up. We can hang out like this and get to know each other, but no matter what we might become in the future and regardless of what we’ve had together in the past, right now we’re just feeling each other out.”

“I only like you when you’re naked. You feel good when you’re naked.”

London burst out laughing, but I was being completely serious. When she was naked, I liked the things that came out of her mouth. When we had clothes on, I would typically prefer for her to keep her thoughts to herself. Yes, that meant I was all sorts of sick and twisted, but I’d never argued otherwise.

After a moment, she sobered up and gave me a pitying sort of look. “Well, then.” She shrugged and cocked her head to the side. “I guess you’d better start making an effort to leave the past behind, because I have no intention of getting naked with you again until I’ve seen some change.”

I had to be losing my mind. There wasn’t any other good explanation for the fact that I had every intention of trying to make this work, whatever the fuck this turned out to be.

In all the years since my father had died, and in the seven years since the wreck when I’d nearly ended both Sergei’s life and my own, I’d never once seriously considered getting myself into any sort of counseling. But now, with London threatening not to let me get into her pants, it was all I could think about.

Why wasn’t I saying to hell with her and moving on to some other woman? I could get as much sex as I wanted from any number of willing women—that had never been a problem for me, ugly beard or not—so my willingness to go along with what London was insisting upon couldn’t be just about sex.

“Not even oral?” I said, waggling my brows to show I was teasing.

She tossed a throw pillow at me in response, which I caught and threw right back in her direction as soon as it was in my hands. It narrowly missed her head before smacking against the wall behind her. But somehow we both ended up laughing.

I reached for the other bottle of water, careful to keep all my body parts out of her reach, since I still didn’t trust that she wouldn’t try to cut off my dick, and I also didn’t trust that I wouldn’t try to get her naked if I could touch her again.

Her eyes followed my every movement, but we both managed to keep our hands to ourselves.

“Got tested again,” I said, removing the lid from the water before taking a long swallow. “On the road. I’m clean. Thought you should know. Was stupid of me…”

“It was stupid of us both,” she said, not that it made me feel any better.

I knew I was a man-whore. It wasn’t uncommon for me—until lately, at least—to be in a different woman’s bed four or five nights out of the week. Whatever might be said about London’s temperament, I didn’t get the impression she let a lot of men into her bed. I took it as my own responsibility to safeguard not only the women I slept with but myself, and I hadn’t fulfilled my end of the bargain that time.

“I’m fine, too,” she said.

“You’re not—” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word pregnant, so I waved my hand through the air, hoping she’d be able to fill in the blank.

It hadn’t been very much time since I’d been an idiot and fucked her without protection, so she might not even know yet. I didn’t have a clue how long it took to find these things out. Somewhere between instantly and nine months was my best guess.

“I’m fine,” she repeated. “It’s all taken care of.”

I nodded, letting it sink in and hoping she was right. “Sure I can’t get you naked?” I asked.

This time, she threw every pillow within reach.

“WHY IS MY mama telling me you’re her favorite son now?” Sergei asked me, the Russian words acting like a balm to my soul after the last few weeks of insanity. “I hardly hear from you for weeks, and suddenly you’re taking her on a road trip to California?”

We were having one of our regular phone calls, early in the morning for me and late in the evening for him. It wasn’t uncommon for the two of us to talk three or four times a week, but he was right. I hadn’t called him much lately. London had gotten into my head, and I was letting it affect me in countless ways.

It hadn’t stopped me from doing what Zee had suggested and inviting Sergei’s mother to come on the moms’ trip with me, though.

“I’ve always been her favorite,” I replied, rolling over in bed and wishing London was next to me. After seeing her again, following more than a week of not even talking to her for the most part, I hadn’t slept much at all. My bed felt cold and empty without her in it. I didn’t like it.

Besides, it didn’t make sense. I’d never spent the night with her in this bed. Not once.

Now I was starting to regret my decision on that score, but it might be too late. The things she was asking of me, I wasn’t sure I could give her.

“You’re the youngest,” Sergei said. “The baby. That’s all it is.”

“The baby is always a mother’s favorite.” I still couldn’t get used to the fact that the entire family treated me as if I were one of them, no questions asked. They had taken me in all those years ago, and never once had they made me feel like I didn’t belong. I was Sergei’s brother, as far as they were concerned. That was that.

“You’ll make sure she feels accepted, won’t you?” he asked.

I understood his concern without him needing to say a word. She didn’t speak any English, and most of the other women on the trip would be Canadian and American.

“She’ll be fine. Drago and Petro are both bringing their mothers. She’ll have other Russian women she can talk with. And I’ll be with her as much as possible to explain what’s going on. You know what these trips are like. Everyone will treat her like a queen.” It was something I actually felt good about, for once…a way for me to repay her, even in some small way, for all the things she’d done for me over the years.

“So other than keeping that from me, what else is going on? You’ve been avoiding talking to me.”

“I’m not avoiding you.” Not exactly.

“Does this have anything to do with London Hawke?”

“Why does everyone think everything has to do with London?”

“That probably means it does.”

“What do you know about it?” I groused.

“Enough to realize that you’re probably a mess if you’re letting a woman get to you.”

“Don’t like her unless she’s naked.”

“So get her naked.”

“Easier said than done.”

Sergei burst out laughing. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You can’t get into her bed.”

“Not funny.”

“The hell it isn’t? I haven’t had a laugh this good in ages. Dima’s sulking because he can’t get laid.”

“I can get laid.” Just not by London.

“But not with the one you want. Which means you’re in way over your head.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll leave that to London, once you figure out what you’ve done wrong.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.” I hadn’t done much right, either, though.

“Sure. Whatever you say, Dima.” Sergei couldn’t stop laughing, or maybe he wasn’t even trying. Either way, he went on so long I couldn’t help but join him. “Seriously, though,” he said, trying to catch his breath from having such a good time at my expense, “Mama is more excited than I can tell you. So thank you. You’re giving her an experience I can’t.”

That sobered me up in a hurry. “Don’t thank me.”

“Yeah, maybe I should wait until I see what kind of trouble you get her into while she’s there. If my mother comes back to Russia covered in tattoos, I’ll never let you hear the end of it.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

AFTER PRACTICE THAT morning, I stopped by Denise Whitlock’s office to arrange for flights to bring Sergei’s mother, Svetlana, or Svetka to me, to Tulsa before the road trip. I still had time to spare before the support group meeting that afternoon to stop by a local furniture store and buy a bed for the guest room. I’d never needed one for Sergei, but his mother was another story. I’d told her I’d put her in a hotel, but she’d scoffed at the idea.

“How will I cook for you if I’m in a hotel? You’re too skinny, Dmitri. Don’t they feed you in the NHL? I’ll make some borscht.”

She was completely ignoring the fact that I was far from skinny and the only difference in my appearance from the usual was the lack of a beard, much as expected. I’d told her the trip was for me and my team to treat her, to thank her for all the ways she’d helped me over the years. All my arguments fell on deaf ears. When my Svetka decided she needed to cook, there was no talking her out of it. So she would stay with me for a few days before and after the California road trip and take care of me the way she had in those days after my father had passed away, the best way she knew how.

So now the furniture company was set to deliver a bed and some other pieces the next afternoon, well before I needed them for Svekta’s arrival, and I didn’t have any other excuse readily available to avoid going to the support group meeting at London’s community center.

There was no sign of Miller’s pickup truck in the parking lot when I arrived, but that didn’t set me at ease. He wasn’t the one I was worried about.

When I stepped inside, the same blonde greeted me at the front desk, but there was no sign of London in the lobby area. Not that I could breathe any easier simply because she wasn’t present.

“Back again already? What can we do for you today?” she asked with a friendly smile. She pushed the bright-red glasses back up her nose, even though they hadn’t fallen far. Probably a habit. I knew plenty about habits that were difficult to break.

“Supposed to be a meeting for guilt or something,” I mumbled. I laid on the accent heavier than normal, half hoping she’d misunderstand me and send me on my way home.

Her smile brightened. “So there is. Same place as yesterday, down the hall. I think they’re still getting the room set up, but there’s coffee and donuts, so you can help yourself while you wait, and maybe introduce yourself to some of the others. Just holler if you need anything, okay?”

What I needed was a way out of attending this meeting without London finding out I’d found a way of avoiding it, but I doubted the receptionist would be willing or able to help me with that, so I nodded and made my way into the conference room.

The two men who’d adjusted the bars for Joyce yesterday were busy setting up chairs in a circle, and another man was at a table at the back of the room fixing himself a massive cup of coffee—big enough that it should keep him awake for a week if he drank the whole thing. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to the two I recognized, since they could possibly be friends of Miller’s. Maybe it was a chickenshit move on my part, but I went over to the snack table and filled a cup with coffee even though I didn’t normally drink anything with caffeine so late in the day.

“First time?” the guy asked. He took a long swallow from his coffee and eyed me over the top of his travel mug. “Don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

I grunted and hoped he’d leave me be.

He held out a hand to shake. “Jack Carson. I’m one of the counselors.”

Apparently, my hopes were in vain. I reluctantly reached out and shook with him. “Dmitri Nazarenko.”

“Ah,” he said, brightening. “You’re London’s new pet project.”

“Pet project?” I shook my head, not following.

Before he could answer, the double doors banged open and almost a dozen more people came through, talking and laughing with each other. Jack smiled and excused himself to go and greet the new arrivals without bothering to explain what he’d meant.

Was that all I was to her? A plaything, something to amuse herself with while she practiced her version of counseling, if that was what she wanted to call it? My blood pressure was already climbing, and the support group meeting hadn’t even gotten started yet. I chugged my coffee, burning my tongue and the roof of my mouth in the process, but I didn’t care. I had to get the fuck out of here.

I tossed the cup in a garbage can and headed for the exit, but Wade Miller’s body—not to mention his scowl—filled the doorway, blocking my path.

“Running away so soon?” he asked, planting his feet shoulder-width apart. “I told London you weren’t good enough for her.”

“Looking for bathroom,” I lied.

“Yeah.” He stepped to the side to let me pass. “Sure. Whatever. Fucking coward.”

I pushed past him and headed straight for the front door.

“But they’re just about to get started,” the receptionist called after me, but I didn’t slow down. I didn’t stop.

The door slammed closed behind me, but I kept barreling forward until I reached my car. I ripped open the door and started the engine, driving off before I could calm down enough to think about what I was doing.

All I knew was there wasn’t a chance in hell I was sticking around for that bullshit.

And I would never allow myself to be London’s pet project.

Never.

“WADE’S OUT THERE waiting to take you home,” Terri said, nodding toward the exit when I came out of my office at the end of the day. She sent a nervous glance out the front doors, no doubt remembering the confrontation that had taken place out there yesterday at quitting time. “Do you want me to take you home like we’d planned, or are you good?”

Wade was out there waiting for me. Not Dima. I couldn’t hide the fact that I deflated at the realization.

I’d been hoping Dima would stick around after the session so we could discuss how it had gone for him. Maybe I could have talked him into coming over for pizza or something, and we could have spent some time getting to know each other with our clothes on. But that wasn’t going to happen if he wasn’t here.

Having Wade stick around instead wasn’t a good sign.

I wasn’t convinced I wanted to hear whatever he might have to say. It had only been twenty-four hours since that blowup, and I doubted he saw things any differently today than he had yesterday.

I glanced out the windows and found him resting his hip against the front bumper of his pickup with his arms crossed in front of him.

Whatever had happened, I had to know. Especially if I needed to run damage control with Dima. “Don’t worry about me,” I said to Terri. “I’ll get Wade to drive me home, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You’re the boss.” She didn’t sound like she thought it was such a hot idea, though.

This was one of the rare moments in life when I wished someone else would take charge and tell me what to do—and that they’d tell me to have Terri take me home instead of finding out what Wade wanted to say.

Now wasn’t the time to be a coward, though. I had to stick to my guns and make sure he understood I wasn’t going to waver.

I drew on my sweater and rolled myself out the front doors.

Wade nodded in acknowledgment once I joined him outside, which was about as close to a smile as I ever got from him. It’d have to do for now.

“I take it you’re my ride home,” I said.

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“I’m not.”

He gave me a look of pure disbelief.

“I’m more confused, if anything,” I clarified. “I thought Dima might stick around…”

Wade snorted. “He didn’t even stay long enough to park his ass in a chair for the session. Chugged some coffee and split so fast I thought his pants must be on fire.”

“What did you do to cause him to bolt like that?”

“Why do you automatically think it’s something I did? I’d barely walked through the door before he was running for the hills.”

I didn’t want to believe Wade because I’d hoped that Dima was finally going to make some progress with coming to terms with his past. But no matter what Wade’s flaws might be, lying to me wasn’t one of them. He had always been unfailingly honest, even when it was to his detriment. I’d have to talk to my counselors tomorrow to see if any of them had a sense of what had freaked Dima out.

Or maybe Dima would tell me later if I called him. It was worth a shot.

I let Wade help me climb into his truck and waited for him to stow my wheelchair in the back. When dealing with his pickup, I was as helpless as I’d been while staying at Dima’s house. There was no way for me to maneuver myself into the seat without assistance, and once I was in, I couldn’t reach to do anything about breaking down my chair or putting it out of the way.

When he climbed into the driver’s seat, he had a strange look in his eye. It was kind of wild and definitely haunted, similar to how he’d so often appeared when we’d first gotten to know each other. Back in those days, PTSD had held him so tightly in its grips that I’d feared he’d never come out on the other side.

“You okay?” I asked cautiously. Every nerve in my body was on high alert, my fight or flight instinct kicking in. My usual MO was to fight; with Wade, it was probably safer to do the opposite. He still hadn’t gotten a good handle on controlling his emotional responses to things, and when he got caught up in something, he was unpredictable, at best.

He started the engine and planted both hands on the steering wheel, staring out ahead at nothing or everything. I could practically see the thoughts spinning around in his mind like a tornado had touched down in his head. White knuckles. Protruding veins on his hands and arms. He was barely keeping a grip on the present.

I reached across and touched the back of his hand.

He flinched and jerked his hand away from me. “How the fuck are you more willing to be with him than with me? I told you he’s not good enough for you—”

“It’s not about you versus him—”

“—and I was fucking right. He’s not even close to good enough for you, yet you still want him. You’re willing to throw what we could have away. To throw me away—”

“I’m not throwing anything away, Wade.”

“Aren’t you? Because I can’t just stand by and watch you devalue yourself—”

“Whoa,” I said, watching as Terri crossed the parking lot to her car and got in.

I gave her a reassuring wave. She nodded in my direction as she drove off, leaving the two of us alone.

Then I returned my focus to Wade. “Back up,” I said. “It’s bad enough that you’re going to sit here and try to tell me that Dima isn’t good enough for me, but now you’re going after me? That’s not going to fly.”

“What the hell else would you call what you’re doing?” Wade shouted.

“I’d call it knowing my own mind. I’d call it having enough respect for myself to make my own decisions. Dima and I aren’t even a thing—”

“He wants to be.”

“—and we won’t be a thing until and unless he can deal with his past. You’ve already proven to me that you’re not ready to do that, which is why we won’t ever be a thing. You know that. You’ve known that for a long time, so don’t try to act like your jealousy of Dima is about me at all. It’s about you. Plain and simple.” I was still rational enough to recognize that my reaction was overly defensive, but there wasn’t much I could do about that at the moment.

“You think this is about fucking jealousy?” Wade roared, eyes blazing.

“You think it isn’t? Tell me what it is, then.” I held up my hands in frustration. “Go on. Tell me. I’m waiting for a reasonable explanation that trumps envy. I’m all ears.”

He didn’t say a word, though. Instead, he put the pickup in gear.

“No. Stop,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean stop the damn truck and let me out.”

“Let you out to do what?” He put his foot on the brake and stopped, though, gesturing toward the empty parking lot. “Terri’s gone. You still don’t have a fucking car. No one else is here to drive you home. What are you going to do, London? Just let me take you home.”

“Let me out,” I repeated. “I’ll get Gray to pick me up, or I’ll call a cab if he can’t.”

“Why won’t you let me take you home? You think Nazarenko and I have issues, maybe you should get your own worked out first.”

His words weren’t too far off base—I was coming to see that I didn’t have my life as together as I’d thought I did—but that wasn’t what had me worried. It was the scary way his eyes were bulging out of his head, and the way it seemed like the veins in his neck might burst if he got any more worked up. I’d seen this before. Too many times. And I knew what came next. But he couldn’t stop now that he had a head of steam going.

“Can’t make up your fucking mind. You want to be with me, but you want to be with him, but then you don’t want to be anything but friends with anyone. You refuse to act like an adult—”

“Get my chair out of the back and let me out of the truck,” I demanded, fighting back tears. Not because of the things he was saying to me. I had to get out of bed and put on my big girl panties every single day of my life, and today had been no different. I could take an honest evaluation of my flaws without letting it get to me, but that wasn’t what he was doing.

Whether he realized it or not, Wade was about to lose control over himself again, letting the PTSD rile him up until he wasn’t himself anymore. And if I stayed with him while he was like that, it wouldn’t be good for either of us.

“I’m not listening to any more of this,” I said as calmly as I could. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you go off the deep end. Not again.”

I’d already witnessed it three times.

Three times that had left me scarred and shaken, internally if not visibly.

Wade screamed a curse, but he slammed the gearshift into park and flung his door open. He put my chair together slamming the pieces around so much that I flinched, while I sat in the cab of the truck and tried to remember how to breathe. All the while, I kept hoping I was doing the right thing. Should he be alone right now? Should I let him drive?

Probably not, but it wasn’t safe for me to stay with him, either. I didn’t know what to do, and that scared me more than anything.

Everything that came to mind seemed wrong. After glancing out the window to be sure he was still busy with my chair, I cautiously opened the glove box to see if he had a gun in there. Nothing but a bunch of papers, thank goodness. Then I bent down to feel for the familiar metal of one of his weapons beneath the seat, hoping—perhaps foolishly—that he didn’t have anything with him.

He ripped the door open before I found anything. I recoiled when he picked me up, an instinctive reaction that left him even more visibly upset than he already was. Still, he set me in my chair as gently as he would handle a newborn baby.

The juxtaposition was too much for me to process, the same as it always was when it came to Wade.

My pulse jackknifed through me, cutting a jagged line of fresh, aching scars on my heart bearing Wade’s signature. Out of instinct, I reached up and brushed the backs of my knuckles along his cheek. I had an innate need to soothe him, even though I knew there was no calming the storm inside him once it got started. The only thing to do was batten down the hatches and pray it passed before causing irrevocable damage.

He grabbed my hand and pried it away from his face, his eyes burning through me like lava. “You don’t get to do that,” he bit off. “You don’t get to rip my heart out, stomp on it, and then try to put the pieces back together again.” Then, without another word, he crossed in front of his truck and climbed back in, driving off before I could warn him to drive carefully.

I watched until he got onto the road. Once I was sure he’d gotten at least that far without causing a wreck, I dug in my purse and pulled out my phone to call Gray for a ride.

My hands were shaking so hard from the confrontation that I dropped the phone on the ground and had to pick it up again. The screen was cracked. I pressed my eyes closed, took a few deep breaths, and punched a few buttons, cutting my finger on the broken glass of the screen.

I sucked the blood from my finger as the phone rang three times.

“Not your fucking pet project,” Dima barked into the phone, jarring me into dropping the phone again. “What’s that fucking noise?” he demanded loudly enough that I could hear him even with the phone on the ground.

I fished around until I could pick it up and press it to my ear, hoping I wouldn’t cut myself on the sharp edges. “Sorry. Dropped the phone.”

“What you want?” he asked, as surly as ever.

“Nothing. I just— I meant to call Gray. My screen is broken, and I guess I didn’t push… Dima, I didn’t mean t—”

“You’re crying. Why you’re fucking crying?”

“I don’t cry,” I countered, even as I sniffled and realized he was right. I was crying. Damn it. The whole thing with Wade had gotten to me even worse than I’d imagined. It was like I’d gone back in time to the first time I’d been with him when he lost control, and I’d suddenly felt like I had none. The realization only made me cry harder. “It’s nothing. Listen, I didn’t mean to call you. I need to call my brother for a ride.”

“Where are you?”

“At work. I need—”

“Be there in ten minutes,” he said. Then the line went dead.

I’D HOPED THAT by the time I got to the community center, London would have stopped crying, but she hadn’t. I didn’t know what to do with a crying woman. It wasn’t like she was Harper and I could just hold her and rock her and tell her stories in Russian, and then everything would be okay. But there were tears streaming down London’s cheeks as she eased herself into the passenger seat of my car. And she was shaking. Hard enough I could see it.

Made me want to punch something.

I took apart her wheelchair and stowed it in the backseat. For once, she didn’t even attempt to help me with it. That only further emphasized what a mess she was, because under normal circumstances, she would be bristling at the thought of me doing something for her that she could do for herself.

I didn’t like it. Not a bit. But there wasn’t anything around for me to hit, and hitting something wouldn’t make me feel any better, anyway.

She didn’t budge when I closed the door and went around to climb in on the driver’s side. Didn’t balk when I reached for her hand. This wasn’t like her. Not at all.

“What happened?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing important.”

“Important enough you’re crying.”

“It was just Wade. It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t sure I believed that, but now wasn’t the right time to start up another argument. I squeezed her hand and then moved mine back to the steering wheel so I could drive her home.

“What’d you mean, you aren’t my pet project?” London asked after a few minutes of silence other than the sounds of the road and her occasional sniffles.

“Don’t want to fight right now.”

“I’m not trying to start a fight. I’m trying to understand why you left today without sitting in on even a minute of the group session. Wade said you bolted before it got started, and when you answered the phone a bit ago, you shouted at me that you’re not my pet project. So what’s that about? Did he call you that?”

I realized my grip on the wheel was hard enough to stop blood flow, so I intentionally loosened my fingers and tried to calm down. It was bad enough that London was crying. I didn’t need to add my own bullshit to the mix. “Wasn’t Wade. One of the counselors.”

She fell silent again for a moment, staring out the window. “I’m sorry. He shouldn’t have said something like that.”

“You’re not denying it,” I pointed out.

“I’m not denying that there are people I take it upon myself to help in every way I can, and that sometimes other people see that as me taking on a pet project. That doesn’t mean I see things that way, and it doesn’t make it the truth.”

“Am I one of those people?”

“You’re one of the ones I care enough about to do more than maybe I should. More than you’re ready for, at least. So in that way, I suppose you could say you are.”

“And Miller is another,” I said.

“Yes. Even though I know there’s nothing I can do for him. He’s got to help himself. So do you.”

I came to a red light and stopped, turning to face her. She angled her head toward me enough for me to see that she’d stopped crying.

Thank God.

“I won’t apologize for caring about you, Dima. Or for caring about Wade. Maybe I care too much. Maybe that’s my problem. But if it is, it’s my problem and something I’ll have to learn to deal with on my own.”

“That’s why you were crying?” I asked. “You care too much?”

She sighed. “Too much. Not enough. Depends on who you ask.”

“I wish you wouldn’t let him hurt you,” I said, turning into her driveway and putting the car in park.

“So do I.” London laughed, long and loud. “Trust me, I’m working on it. But even those of us who can be stone-cold bitches most of the time have hearts underneath. No matter how hard you try to protect yourself from all the crap life throws at you, you’re going to get hurt. It’s part of being human.”

I climbed out of the car and started taking out the pieces to her wheelchair while she put it together. How badly had he hurt her? I couldn’t help but wonder if she was so hard on the exterior because she was afraid of being hurt again. Sounded like that was at least partially true. So maybe she wasn’t as put together as she wanted people to believe. Sad to say it, but that made her more relatable to me. I could definitely understand trying to prevent repeating the past, in whatever way it might manifest itself.

“You have plans tonight?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Debating going out with the guys.” Actually, I’d been hoping Hunter or Tallie would call me and beg for my help with Harper, but they hadn’t done that in a few days. Hunter had told me this morning at practice that he thought the baby was finally getting over her colic. Was it bad that I wished she’d have it a little longer just so I could go over to soothe her? Probably. “Drew’s getting the boys together,” I added.

“Oh.” London shifted from the car to the wheelchair. “Well, if you’d rather stick around and order pizza…”

“Any chance I can get you naked? I like you better naked.”

She pursed her lips and raised a brow. “Not likely.”

Pizza with London might still be better than anything else I could come up with as a way to spend my night, even if I couldn’t get her clothes off. I shrugged. “Could stay a while.”

She chuckled and headed for her front door. “Well, I’m not going to twist your arm.”

I was still debating whether I should stay or go, but my feet had apparently made up their own mind. She held open the door for me, and I followed her inside.

She headed for her desk and pulled up her laptop. “Any preference on pizza?”

“They have stroganoff?” I asked.

She pulled a face. “Stroganoff pizza?”

“Just stroganoff.”

“Not likely.” London smirked in my direction. “Guess I’ll order what I like, and you can be happy with that.”

“Guess so.”

“Grab me a glass of wine, will you?” she asked. “I’m still shaking after…” She stopped herself and shook her head. “I just want some wine tonight. Need something to help me relax. There’s an open bottle of red in the fridge and glasses in the cabinet to the right. And you can help yourself to whatever you want. Wine, beer, water…anything.”

I went into the kitchen and fixed her a glass of wine, taking a bottle of water for myself.

I still didn’t know how things had turned out like this. Why was I here with her at all? And did I believe her when she said she wasn’t looking at me as a pet project? I wasn’t sure.

The only thing I was certain of was that I couldn’t stand the thought of walking away from her now that I was with her again, and that scared the shit out of me.

“I STILL CAN’T get over this smooth baby face,” London said, leaning over to trail the backs of her fingers along the line of my jaw. I’d been at her place for hours, since long past the time we’d finished our pizza and I should have gone home, but I wasn’t in any hurry to leave.

She didn’t seem to be in a rush to kick me out, either. Might have had something to do with all the wine she’d been drinking. At this point, she was more than just a bit tipsy, but at least she wasn’t shaking and crying like she had been when I’d first picked her up. I kind of liked her like this if it meant she wasn’t going to dig for long-buried treasure in my mind. I just hated that it took Miller upsetting her so much that she drank half a bottle of wine to cope with the shit he made her feel.

We’d had dinner and talked about all sorts of things we’d never discussed before, since usually I distracted her by trying to fuck her. But now wasn’t the time for that. She still wouldn’t tell me anything about what had happened this afternoon with Miller to leave her in tears, and I still wasn’t sure I could accept her answer about me being her pet project, so we were avoiding all of the above by having conversations we’d never come close to having before.

I told her about the upcoming trip and how I was bringing Sergei’s mom along with me, and she filled me in on her plans to expand the community center’s programming to include arts and crafts activities for seniors. After I spent a while telling her about how Viktoriya was becoming something of a little sister to me, London demonstrated the way her niece liked to braid her hair, complete with off-key singing. By that point, she’d had at least four glasses of wine, and she’d lost all her inhibitions.

Our interactions tonight were light and playful, nothing like our usual intensity, even if there was still a lot of anger simmering beneath the surface for me, and a lot of hurt lurking behind her eyes. Hurt that Miller had put there. And maybe I’d put some of it there, too, by not following through with going to her group session.

But the whole time we’d talked, we’d kept our hands to ourselves.

Until now.

My pulse went through the roof the second her fingertips touched my skin, especially because my face was still sensitive where the beard had been. Every time I shaved, it left me feeling raw and vulnerable. If she kept touching me, I’d lose my resolve and put my hands on her, too.

I couldn’t allow that to happen. She’d said no fucking, so there would be no fucking, damn it.

“Not a baby face,” I said, backing away as far as I could without tipping her off to the fact that she was making me insanely uncomfortable. I needed distance. I needed time to rein in my control. “Baby skin is like silk. I know.”

“Yeah, from all your time with Harper.” London didn’t take the hint, inching closer to me on the couch and tracing the line of my jaw with the tips of her fingers. Her thigh brushed up against mine, and my cock jerked to attention. “How’s she reacted to the lack of facial hair?”

“Pulls my hair instead.” A grin made its way to my lips, one I couldn’t stop. “She likes to put fingers in my mouth.”

London smirked. “There are worse things you could put in your mouth.”

And there were better things I could put there, too, but that thought had nothing to do with Harper and everything to do with London, so I kept it to myself.

London looked like she might have been able to read my mind, though. Her eyes went dark and sultry, and she licked her lips.

Damn her.

I got up and went into the kitchen for another bottle of water. Not that I was thirsty. I just had to get away from London before I did something I’d regret.

“Will you bring me another glass of wine, too?” she called out after me.

“You finished that bottle already.” And I honestly wasn’t sure she needed any more. But at least she was home and wouldn’t be going anywhere else for the foreseeable future.

“There’s another,” she said. “Corkscrew’s in the drawer by the stove.”

I grabbed a bottle of water, took out the new bottle of wine, and dug through her drawer until I found the corkscrew, all the while thinking I was making a huge mistake, even though I didn’t have the first clue what that mistake might be. Either way, it didn’t stop me from going ahead with what she asked. I went back into the living room and opened the wine. When I reached across to fill her glass, she grabbed hold of my wrist, tugging me toward her so hard the wine spilled on her arm.

“Playing with fire,” I warned her even as a needy growl left me.

But she jerked on my wrist until I had to straddle her lap in order to avoid toppling her, completely ignoring all semblance of sense.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, the sweet scent of her wine clouding the span of air between us. It was enough for me to get drunk on, especially once I combined it with the heady scent of her.

“Missed you, too. But you said no fucking,” I reminded her, moving the wine bottle to the other hand so I could set it on the coffee table. No need to spill more than we already had.

She gave me a seductive pout, trailing the fingers of her free hand over my abs. “I know. But I like to play with you.”

“Like I’m your pet?” I forced out. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have kept my temper in check, but apparently I had no intention of behaving reasonably as long as she was acting like a wild woman. Simply giving voice to the words was more than enough to have me spitting mad again.

London didn’t seem to notice my anger, or maybe she didn’t care. She spread her palm over my chest and slid her fingers up toward my neck, still holding my wrist captive with her other hand. “I might like petting you,” she murmured. “Waiting to see if I can make you purr.”

“Play with me like this too long and I’ll bite.”

Her eyes flared, and my cock pulsed. She licked her lips and dug her fingers in around the nape of my neck, tugging me down to her.

The instant our lips met, it was like tossing a match on gasoline. Everything went up in flames. Our clothes. Any good intentions I might have had. My resolve.

All gone.

Anger mixed with passion, melting away everything but the need to be inside her. I ripped open a condom from my wallet and somehow got it settled in place before I forgot about it again. But she made me want to forget everything except the immediate, the here and now.

I lifted her over my lap and spread her legs wide, bringing her down onto me like there was nowhere else she belonged. She held on, hands braced on my shoulders, face buried in the tattoo on my neck, while I slammed my way home over and over again.

I dug my fingers into her ass, and she clenched all around me. Tight. So fucking wet. Shuddering and crying out things that would never make sense. I smacked her ass, hard enough it stung my hand. She arched into me and bit my neck, and it felt so damn good I nearly lost all control. So I slapped her ass again, hoping for more of the same.

Spasms racked through her. “Don’t stop, Dima,” she moaned, not that I had any intention of stopping.

I reveled in the knowledge that spanking her was as much of a turn-on for her as it was for me, striking her ass time and again until I didn’t have anything left in the tank to give. By the time I came, her ass was red and hot to the touch, and she’d had at least two orgasms.

She collapsed on top of me, wrapping her arms around my body in a sweaty, sensual hug that I wanted to last for an eternity.

Another thought that scared the shit out of me. There seemed to be a lot of those happening lately. Which meant I needed to put an end to it immediately, or I was going to get in over my head and not be able to climb my way back out. I shifted London off my lap and got up.

“Don’t,” she said in some combination of a whine and a seductive purr that did a number on me.

“Don’t what?” I bit off on my way to the bathroom to deal with the condom and get a washcloth for her.

“Don’t go.”

Something told me she’d be singing a different tune if she hadn’t had almost half a bottle of wine.

But something else told me I wouldn’t be leaving.

I WOKE UP with my alarm blaring, the sun streaming in through the window, a splitting headache, the most delicious post-sex ache I could remember, and the weight and warmth of Dima’s body pinning me to my mattress. Nausea, too. Lots of nausea.

Oh, yeah. And I also woke up with a gut-busting case of regret, which only made my hangover headache worse than it was on its own. Why had I let myself get so drunk that the thought of sleeping with Dima seemed like a good plan? It went against everything I’d told myself had to happen. The more I gave in, the less likely he would be to ever make the changes he needed to make. I’d seen it before with Wade, and I couldn’t do that again with Dima. But here I was, falling back into bed with him because I’d been shaken and hurt and drunk, and he’d been here to pick up the pieces.

I shoved on his shoulders, trying to make him move, but he was still dead to the world. It was impossible to get him to budge even an inch, at least until such time as I got him awake.

I pushed. I tried to roll out from under him. I called his name multiple times.

Nothing.

So I did what any reasonable woman would do under similar circumstances. I dug my fingernails into his butt and pinched.

He let out a string of Russian expletives.

“Still a bitch, I know,” I grumbled, shoving his shoulders again. “Get off me. I need to get up.” Because I never wanted to move again, and that was a scary thought. I couldn’t let things happen like this, because I’d only end up getting my heart broken again in the end. Falling for a man like Dima was bad news, especially since he hadn’t shown any sign at all that he was willing to deal with his past.

And I was definitely starting to fall for him. There was no other explanation for why I would have taken him to my bed last night, wine-brain or not.

I was an idiot. I’d let Wade get into my head yesterday, and then I’d compensated for the crappy way I felt about how that had all gone down by getting drunk. And then I’d made the biggest mistake of all by sleeping with Dima.

He grumbled and groaned, most of it in Russian, but he finally rolled off me.

When I turned on my side to get into my chair, though, I realized it wasn’t in my bedroom. I vaguely recalled Dima carrying me to my bed last night, the fuzzy memory combining with images of another night filled with as many sexual positions as we could fit in before the sun came up. Stupid of me. How could I have lost my mind so badly that I’d completely ignored everything I’d been telling myself since Christmas?

“I need my chair,” I croaked. And some water to help with the hangover, but I could get that for myself once I had my chair.

But Dima didn’t get out of the bed to go get it for me. Instead, he put his big, callused hand on my bare butt and squeezed. Hard. My skin tingled where he touched me, and I was immediately ready for more.

Wrong answer.

I pressed my eyes closed and tried to will my lusty urges away.

“Still pink,” he said, and I blushed.

Typically, I blushed about as often as I cried, so almost never. At least he couldn’t see my face.

He rubbed my cheek a couple of times before giving me another sound smack, but then he finally got out of bed and stalked off to the living room. He didn’t even bother to put a sheet around himself, giving me an excellent view of his toned backside. My mouth watered at the sight, which was absolutely the wrong reaction to have. Again.

This seemed to be becoming a habit.

A moment later, Dima pushed my chair into my bedroom and stopped it next to the bed, my purse positioned on the seat. “Thought you might need it,” he said.

“Why would I need my purse?” My head hurt too much to try to decipher why he would think something like that.

“How the fuck I’m supposed to know? You always needed purse and chair together at my house.”

The catheter. I didn’t want to explain it to him now. Hell, I didn’t want to explain it to him at all. I wanted him to put on his clothes, get out of my house, and not step back into my life to tempt me until he started getting his own life in order. Because apparently, I couldn’t trust myself when he was around, at least not when I was already overly emotional because of things between me and Wade.

I knew where Dima stood—he wanted to be with me, but he didn’t want to leave the past in the past—so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he would readily jump into bed with me the moment I opened that door.

Which meant the door had to close. Not permanently. But for now.

I nodded and mumbled my thanks before transferring myself to the chair and finagling a blanket over my chest and lap, even though he’d already seen and touched every inch of my body in every way imaginable. In lieu of trying to answer questions he hadn’t asked, I took the purse with me and went to the bathroom. When I finished there, I went into the kitchen and chugged a bottle of water before returning to the bedroom.

He already had his clothes on, thank goodness. Maybe it didn’t have to be a big confrontation right now, thank goodness. “Have to get to morning skate,” he said.

“And I need to get to work.” No point letting him think he should dawdle.

Dima crossed over and bent to kiss me, but I turned my face to the side, pressing my eyes closed as I did so.

Why did he have to do this now? Why did it have to become more personal, more intimate? Why couldn’t it still be just sex for him?

He’d never tried to kiss me before when he wasn’t trying to get me into bed. That wasn’t how we’d ever been together, at least before now. He was trying to move things to the next level at the same moment when I knew I had to put on the brakes.

This was not going to end well.

His lips briefly met my cheek, but he put a hand on my chin and tugged until I looked up at him.

“What?” he demanded. “Why you won’t kiss me?”

“I think you should go,” I forced myself to say, refusing to let myself get emotional. Now was not the time for that.

“I’m going. Just want to kiss you first.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” And even as the words left my lips, my heart started the painful process of shattering along all the lines where I’d glued it back together again so many times before.

“We can fuck but not kiss?” The all-too-familiar anger was flashing in his eyes, ripping new holes in my heart even as it reopened the old ones.

“We can’t fuck, either. This was a mistake, Dima. I shouldn’t have let it happen. I was upset about Wade, and I tried to forget about it by having too much to drink. And then I tried to forget about it with you. Because you were here. I shouldn’t have done that, but I did, and I’m sorry.”

He stared, incredulous.

I tried to jerk my head out of his hand, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Wasn’t a fucking mistake,” he ground out.

“It was. I think you know—”

“It wasn’t just drink. You wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

“I did. I do. But I shouldn’t.” There was a part of me that wished he would take me over his knee and spank me, make me forget all the reasons I was doing what I knew I had to, give him a means of releasing some of that anger…but I also knew that wouldn’t be a lasting solution. Not for either of us. Not for anything.

“Don’t start crying. You asked me to stay.”

I didn’t remember that, but I wouldn’t argue it. Arguing wouldn’t solve anything. “Maybe I did, but now I’m asking you to go,” I said, fighting back the tears that were stinging the backs of my eyes. Another thing he was right about, damn him. “I told you before that we couldn’t have a physical relationship until you dealt with your past, and you haven’t done a darned thing about that yet. You’re still running away, Dima. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay. I shouldn’t have taken you into my bed. But I did, and I’m sorry if I’m sending you mixed messages. That’s not fair of me. But I mean it this time. I can’t be with you if you’re not willing to make changes.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“Does it honestly matter at this point?”

He glared at me so hard I thought I might melt beneath the heat of it. But finally, he released my jaw and backed off. “Maybe you should be with Miller.” Then he stalked out of my bedroom, grabbed his jacket, and left, slamming the door behind him.

In order to stop myself from chasing him and trying to get him to forgive me, I bolted the door. He had every right to be angry with me, and his forgiveness wouldn’t do anything to make me feel better about what I’d just done. It was something I’d have to work through on my own, along with a thousand other things that I thought I’d already solved in the past, but which seemed to be cropping up again in the present.

Then I got into the shower and let myself fall apart.

I SHOULD HAVE realized that my nausea that morning wasn’t just from a combination of the hangover from hell and a double dose of regret, but it hadn’t crossed my mind.

Because we’d been careful every time we’d had sex, except for that one time.

And because I’d taken the morning-after pill as soon as I’d been able to go to the pharmacy to buy it. True, I had been pushing the time limit for efficacy, but the pharmacist had assured me it was almost as effective after three days as it was after two.

And because it had only been one time.

And because I didn’t think it would happen to me, even though science had proven time and time again there was no reason to think I was any different than any other woman, beyond my inability to walk.

But for some reason, the thought hadn’t ever crossed my mind.

If I’d been thinking clearly, I should have bought a pregnancy test a week or two later to clear my mind, but I hadn’t. I’d been too caught up in the drama with Wade and Dima to worry about my own potential issues. Maybe I’d been too caught up in thinking myself invincible, too. Who could know?

When the nausea had continued every day for a week, it still hadn’t struck me that I might be pregnant. Instead, I chalked it up to being so upset over possibly losing Wade as a friend, not to mention the fact that I hadn’t seen or heard from Dima at all since the moment he’d walked out my front door that morning. Losing one of them was bad enough, but it appeared I’d run them both out of my life, all in the span of twenty-four hours. That had to be a record, and not one I was proud to own, even if I knew it was for the best for all of us. I couldn’t continue to be Wade’s crutch, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I became one for Dima.

When I moved into a second week of feeling sick to my stomach every day, I’d started to get nervous. Not nervous enough to go to the doctor—I had always been one to avoid doctors if I could manage it, because they tended to tell me all the things I couldn’t do instead of focusing on those I could do—but nervous enough that I let it affect me at work. I was spending hours searching WebMD to find the possible causes for persistent nausea, and all of the answers the Internet provided were horrifying.

As a result of both my general distraction and the way I had to race to the bathroom to puke up my breakfast every day for a week, Terri confronted me on my way back to my desk one morning.

She planted her hands on her hips and blocked my path. “Tell me you’re knocked up and that’s what this is all about, because if it’s something more serious than that and you haven’t gone to the doctor about it, I’m going to strangle you.”

Knocked up. Her words hit me like a ton of bricks, startling me so much I nearly fell out of my chair in relief. Being pregnant actually made a ton of sense in terms of explaining so many of the things I’d been feeling, and it was a much better answer than cancer or something wrong with my internal organs that might require surgery. And why the heck hadn’t WebMD mentioned pregnancy? They’d given me a thousand other worst-case scenarios, but that should have topped the list of possibilities.

I must not have been searching the right combination of terms.

The fact was, I was a day or two late. That wasn’t unusual for me. I’d never been regular, so I didn’t worry if I was a few days late, or even a week or more.

Being pregnant wasn’t exactly ideal, particularly since Dima and I didn’t appear to be on speaking terms, but it was an answer.

“You are, aren’t you?” Terri said. “I thought you might be since this happens at the same time every day.” She waved her hand in my general direction, as if that were enough to explain what she meant.

Of course it was enough. I knew exactly what she was talking about.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll get a test and find out.” And then, once I knew, I could sort out a plan. Until I knew whether there was anything to worry about or not, though, there wasn’t any point in allowing myself to become too anxious about it.

She cocked a hip against the wall and took up a seemingly casual pose that was anything but casual. “So which one’s the baby daddy?”

This time, I nearly choked on the answer. “Wade and I haven’t been Wade and I in years.” These days, he wouldn’t even look at me when we were at Para-Pythons practices. He did everything he could to avoid me.

“So it’s the surly Russian.” She nodded appreciatively. “I can definitely see the appeal. When are you gonna tell him?”

“Right now, there’s nothing to tell anyone.” And yes, I was avoiding answering her question because I didn’t know what the answer should be for myself yet. This was all happening too fast. I needed time to sit down, make a list of pros and cons, weigh every aspect of any course of action, and come up with a plan.

Something told me I wouldn’t have that kind of time. At least not if she was right and I was truly pregnant. This might be one of those times I needed to ask my father for help. Not that he could do anything about the situation, whatever it might be, but he was always good for helping me figure out the course of action I needed to take. I wasn’t sure if he would keep his trap shut around Mom, though, and the last thing I wanted was to have her freaking out about something until there was a good reason for it.

More than ever before, I wished Dima had made an effort to meet me halfway. If he would see a counselor or go to a support group—I didn’t care if he did it at my facility, as long as he did it—then we could at least be getting to know each other. It would be easier to decide what to do if he could be part of the decision since he’d been involved in the origination of the problem.

But he was bound and determined to stay exactly as he was. Stuck in the past. Beating himself up for a mistake he’d made years ago. He wouldn’t budge.

How could I make a plan that involved him in any way if he had no intention of meeting me in the middle? But was it fair for me to keep him in the dark?

I’d only thought I was distracted before. Now, there could be no doubt.

EVEN THOUGH I’D been driving my new car for a week, I still hadn’t gotten used to the differences in the hand controls.

I hadn’t been able to afford the same system I’d had before, when Dima and his teammates at the time had paid for it, so I’d been forced to put in a lesser model. It worked well enough, but the controls weren’t as intuitive. Instead of pushing or pulling on a stick to accelerate or break, I had to spin a knob to the right or the left. It worked, but my brain still wanted to do things the old way.

Since I was still getting used to the new hand control system, I thought it was better to take smaller roads instead of the high-traffic highways for the time being. It took me longer to get where I wanted to go, but I felt safer going at slower speeds with fewer other cars around.

That was how I ended up going past Wade’s house on my way from work to the pharmacy when I went to buy a pregnancy test. His truck was in his driveway, but I didn’t see him out in the yard or sitting on his porch like he did so often. Being indoors had never sat well with him. He needed to be moving. He needed open space and lots of fresh air. I was glad I didn’t see him this time. If he’d been outside, I might have stopped to try to get him to talk to me, and he needed to be the one to make the next move in our relationship, the same as Dima.

So I kept driving until I reached the pharmacy.

I could schedule an appointment with my doctor to find out if I was pregnant, of course, but I’d rather see what one of the over-the-counter tests had to say before taking that step. The last thing I needed right now was some doctor trying to tell me about how I couldn’t or shouldn’t have a baby because of my disability, which they were bound to do. You can’t was their favorite thing to tell me, and it was the one thing certain to have me digging in my heels, determined to prove I can. But was this something I should dig in my heels about? Should I bring a baby into the world when I wasn’t sure the father wanted to be with me, let alone whether he was ready to be a father? And lately, I wasn’t sure I had any business being the one to determine anyone’s level of readiness for anything.

Once I found the appropriate aisle in the pharmacy, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of tests available. How was a person supposed to know which one was best? I stood there reading the labels for a long time, unable to make up my mind.

Too long, apparently.

Wade walked up to stand so close I could feel him before I saw him. There was always an electric energy surrounding him, bouncing off of things. Like me. I turned my head to look up at him.

“You’re pregnant,” he said, his voice gruff and angry.

I blinked a couple of times, trying to keep myself composed. Since he was already angry, I didn’t know what direction things might go. They could turn south in a hurry, and I needed to be ready for any eventuality. “What are you doing here?” I asked in what I hoped was a conversational tone.

“Saw you drive by.”

“Were you watching for me?”

“Not exactly. But I helped you buy that car, so I recognized it going down my street.”

“And you thought you should follow me.”

He shrugged. “Seemed like a good opportunity to talk to you.”

“You’ve had all sorts of opportunities to talk to me. You could have made an effort after Para-Pythons practice. You could have come to a support group meeting.”

“But we couldn’t be alone in those circumstances.”

“Ever think maybe that would be for the best? After the way you acted the last time we were alone together, I’m not sure privacy is such a hot idea.”

He moved to my side, alleviating the crick that had been forming in my neck. Arms crossed. Feet shoulder-width apart. Eyes full of hurt he didn’t want anyone to see, but he’d never been able to hide it from me.

“You’re scared of me.”

“I’m scared for you,” I corrected him, even though there was starting to be some truth to what he’d said in the first place.

“Same difference.”

“Not really.”

He scowled, but he reached for one of the pregnancy tests on the shelf and held it up in front of me. “Why isn’t he here with you?” He raised a brow and shook his head when I didn’t respond right away. “What, did he run off? I told you he’s not good enough for you, and this proves it.”

“That’s not any of your business, and it doesn’t prove anything.”

“He did run, didn’t he? Can’t take the heat? Can’t face the fucking consequences for his actions, just like always. Acting like the chickenshit he is.”

I put three random pregnancy test boxes on my lap, not paying any attention to which ones I’d grabbed even after spending so much time comparing them, and backed up so I could make my way to the checkout.

“Oh, so now you’re going to run away, too?” Wade said, following me. “Is that it?”

“I don’t have to answer your questions.”

“You don’t have to answer mine, but I have to answer yours, huh?”

“You don’t have to answer anything,” I said, doing my best to stay calm, even as I felt his anxiety growing by the moment. “You don’t have to do anything, Wade, except find a way to be healthy. And you’re not.”

“And some asshole who’s going to knock you up and then leave you to deal with his mess on your own, that’s someone who’s healthy?”

I tossed my boxes on the counter and glared at the cashier until he started ringing up my purchases. “I’m not going to fight with you, Wade.”

“That’s the problem. You never do. You lay down the law, and if people don’t fall into line, you cut them off.”

He had me feeling defensive again, damn him.

“I fight plenty, when it’s called for.”

“And you don’t think this is something worth fighting over?” he nearly shouted, shoving the pregnancy test he’d carried with him onto the counter with my others.

I nodded for the cashier to add it to my transaction. I was already buying three. One more wouldn’t hurt. Then I turned to Wade, praying he would really listen for once, not just hear. “It’s not your battle to fight.”

He whipped out his wallet and peeled off a few bills, tossing them on the counter.

The cashier reached to take them, but I shook my head and picked up the money myself, passing it back into Wade’s hand. He wouldn’t take it, so I shoved the cash into his pocket.

“That much is clear,” he ground out. Then he spun on his heel and stalked out of the pharmacy.

Trying to maintain as much dignity as I possibly could after such a public display, I took my wallet out of my purse and selected a credit card to pay with.

The sooner I could get home to sort through everything, the better.

I WAS A big, stinking, fucked up mess. There was no other explanation for why I would be standing on Hunter’s porch at almost two in the morning, especially when he hadn’t called to beg for my help with Harper.

At least no other reasonable explanation.

We’d just come home from another long road trip. It was late in January, a few weeks after the last time I’d seen London. The moms’ trip was due to start in a little over a week, so my Svetka would be arriving in a few days. But she wasn’t here yet, and London still wouldn’t have anything to do with me, and I couldn’t bring myself to go home alone right now.

So here I was. I didn’t ring the doorbell because I didn’t want to wake Harper if she was sleeping. But I had to get Hunter’s attention somehow or else he wouldn’t realize I was out here to let me in.

I probably should’ve said something to him before he’d driven himself home from the airport, but at that point I still hadn’t known I would end up at his place. It wasn’t until I’d gotten in my car and found myself parked on the curb in front of London’s house that I knew I needed help. I’d dragged a hand down my face, the beginnings of a new beard scratching my palm, and realized I was more fucked up than I’d ever imagined becoming, and it was all because of this woman.

So, here I was. With any luck, Hunter hadn’t already gone to bed. I dug out my phone and sent him a text message to tell him I was on the porch.

Hunter: Go home, Dima. Harper’s fine and I’m busy.

Me: Let me in. Cold as balls out here.

Hunter: Whatever happened to all that “I’m Russian” bullshit? You don’t get cold, remember?

Me: Still Russian. Still cold. Open the door or my balls will freeze off.

Hunter: Anything wrong? You okay?

Me: Fine. Freezing.

Hunter: It won’t matter how cold you are if you don’t get the fuck off my porch and leave me alone, because you won’t have any balls left to worry about. I’m busy with my wife. Go get laid yourself, why don’t you? Do you honestly need something?

Me: Open the fucking door.

Hunter: That’s what I thought. You just don’t want to go home. Not a chance. I haven’t seen my wife in a week. She’s a hell of a lot hotter than you. I’m turning off my phone now.

Either he truly did turn off his phone after that or he was successfully ignoring me. Whichever was the case, he didn’t respond to another of my texts, and he didn’t open the door. I had no choice but to go somewhere else if I didn’t want to be arrested for breaking and entering.

At this hour, I couldn’t even go to a bar, not that I wanted a drink. By now, I knew that alcohol and I didn’t mix. I just wanted somewhere to go other than home. It didn’t look like I would have a choice, though, since the bars were all closing any minute. They might let me through the doors, but they wouldn’t let me stay very long.

I drove back to my place and took a shower to see if it would help take my mind off of London.

It didn’t work.

I spent the whole time I was under the spray remembering the time I’d fucked her in my bathtub and how the water had made her skin glisten.

Which led me to jerking myself off.

Which in turn led me to wishing she were here with me.

She didn’t want anything to do with me, though. Not unless I played by her rules, and I had never been one to play by anyone’s rules unless they suited me.

London’s didn’t.

Instead of falling asleep once I got out of the shower, I lay in bed with all sorts of other memories racing through my mind. Especially the last night I’d seen her. Sleeping next to her the whole night. Holding her in my arms. The citrus-vanilla scent of her hair tickling my nostrils. Waking up with her soft body beneath me.

I glanced at the clock. Almost three in the morning. This was going to be a long night.

Probably the stupidest thought to cross my mind in ages—which was saying something—had me reaching for my phone and typing in a message for her.

Can’t stop thinking about you. I need you.

I felt like an idiot for saying I needed her, and I definitely didn’t like the thought of it, but now that the words were floating out there, I knew them to be the truth. I needed her in my life, even if she pissed me off and drove me absolutely up the wall.

She was probably asleep at this hour. She had to work in the morning, and she wasn’t all twisted and fucked up like I was. She could actually sleep at night, like a normal human.

I tossed my phone on the nightstand and plugged in the charger, determined to try one more time to get some sleep. We had a game tomorrow—or really, tonight, considering the hour—and it wouldn’t be good if I tried to play without getting at least some rest. I’d played like shit enough lately, just from not having my head in the game. Add exhaustion to that, and I’d be lucky to stay on my skates.

But before I even shut my eyes and tried to sleep, my phone buzzed with a message from London.

You know what you need to do if you want to be with me.

So she wasn’t ready to give in. Damn.

Not that I’d expected her to have a change of heart. I might have hoped, but I definitely didn’t expect it to happen.

I tossed my phone back on the nightstand and put my forearm over my eyes, hoping I could pretend I hadn’t sent her a message at all.

Easier said than done. My phone buzzed again about two minutes later and, glutton for punishment that I was, I rolled over and swiped my thumb over the screen to see what else she had to say.

I miss you, too. I keep hoping you’ll meet me in the middle somewhere, but then I think maybe I’m stupid for holding out hope. Maybe you’re more like Wade than I want to believe. Maybe you’ll never be able to move beyond your past. Maybe you’re happy being stuck in that night, reliving it over and over again. Or maybe you’re just too scared to see what life would be like if you could let yourself off the hook. I don’t know. I just know that I miss you and it’s killing me to have to remind myself that I can’t fix you. I can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. I wish you would help yourself. Or at least try. Make some sort of effort. Right now, that would be enough.

I should never have texted her to begin with. I hadn’t accomplished a damned thing other than making myself think about her even more than I already was.

I lay there trying to figure out what to respond, but nothing came to mind. She wasn’t giving in. I wasn’t ready—willing?—to do the things she wanted me to do. Let myself off the hook? How could I do that? The legal system might have felt I’d already done my penance, but they didn’t have to see Sergei’s titanium leg. They didn’t have to watch him play hockey on a sledge instead of skating the way he used to do. They didn’t have to live with the guilt that I carried around every single day of my life.

It felt like London and I were at a complete impasse. I couldn’t live with what she wanted of me, but I didn’t know if I could live without her, either. Which was a scary thought.

Before I could type anything in, the screen lit up again with one more message from London.

Since we’re both awake, there’s something I need to tell you, and I can’t do it via text. Is it okay if I call you?

I dialed her number instead of replying.

“Hey,” she said before the first ring had even finished.

“Hey.” I didn’t know what else to say. But then, she was the one who supposedly needed to talk to me, so maybe I didn’t need to say anything at all. I fell silent, waiting for her to fill me in on whatever was going on in her mind.

She took her time getting around to it. I’d never known her to be hesitant about anything, so I wasn’t sure how to feel about her reticence now. She usually just jumped straight into whatever was on her mind, often without thinking. I both loved and hated that about her.

“I didn’t want to tell you, at first, but I had a long heart-to-heart with my dad, and he convinced me I owe you that much.”

“Tell me what?” I bit off. If she didn’t want to tell me, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. In fact, I was almost positive of the opposite. It was probably better to stop now. My thumb hovered over the button to end the call.

But she didn’t stop, and I didn’t hang up on her. “I’m pregnant,” she said after what felt like forever.

The phone slipped out of my hand, and I had to scramble to dig it out of the blankets so I could keep talking to her. “You’re what? You said— No. You said you were fine, after…”

“I know I did. And I thought I was. I used the morning-after pill as soon as I could, but it was a few days after the fact, and it’s not a hundred percent effective even in the best circumstances.”

“But you can’t—”

“I think we’re both grown up enough to realize that, yes, I can be pregnant. No form of birth control works all the time other than abstinence, and the two of us definitely weren’t using abstinence.”

“I…” I didn’t have the first clue what to say. The thought of sleep was getting further and further out of my grasp.

London was pregnant.

With my baby.

But she wouldn’t let me be with her. Or would she? Considering the circumstances, she’d have to loosen up some and allow me back into her life. Wouldn’t she?

“So now what?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I want to come to your house. I need to see you.”

“And I need you to let go of what happened with your accident.”

Again with the incessant let it go bullshit. “Can’t change who I am.”

“I don’t want you to change who you are. I only want you to see yourself the way everyone else sees you.”

“So we can’t even talk about the baby?” My frustration was ramping up to an epic level.

“We’re talking about the baby. And about us. And about how there can’t be an us if we don’t find some sort of compromise.”

“Compromise means both have to change.”

“I know that,” she said, sighing. “What do you want me to change? Tell me what you need from me.”

“Need you to let me be part of this.” That was the only thing registering in my brain at the moment. I could tell her I needed her to stop being such a hardheaded woman, but I doubted I’d be happy if that happened. I liked the way we butted heads all the time, even if it made me a sick bastard.

“I want you to be part of it.”

“I need to come over. Need to see you.” I needed to be with her more than I would ever be able to understand.

“Dima…” She let my name trail off into nothingness.

“You won’t let me come over.”

“Have you done anything about moving on from the wreck? About forgiving yourself for making a mistake? Anything at all?”

I knew it was impossible to forgive myself for all the things I’d done wrong. Anyone who thought otherwise was full of shit.

“I take that to mean you haven’t,” she said dryly after a protracted moment of silence.

“Are you keeping the baby?” I asked.

More silence. She might have sniffled. Then, “I don’t know. It’s a big decision. Especially…”

“Especially what?” I asked when she didn’t elaborate. Her answer was like a knife to my gut. Within the span of five minutes, she’d told me I was going to be a father and then hinted that she might take it away from me. It was too much. Too fast.

“Especially if I might be on my own for whatever decision I have to make.”

I didn’t want her to be alone for this. I wanted to be with her. “Will you let me be part of decision?”

“I wouldn’t have told you at all if I wasn’t going to allow at least that much.”

Then there was hope. A tiny sliver of hope, maybe, but it was something. I grasped on to that, hoping to hold it tight enough that it couldn’t escape but not so tight that I smothered it before it could sprout roots.

“I really do miss you,” she said softly.

“Just not enough to let me in.”

“It’s not that. I want to let you in. I just want you to make an effort to live the life I know you can, and right now, you’re not.”

“It’s not that hard. Let me come over. Let me see you.”

“So we can fall into bed again? That won’t solve anything,” she said.

“Just want to touch you. Smell you.”

“Fight with me,” she added, although there was a hint of laughter in her tone.

“I will fight. For this.”

“I hope you mean that. Prove it,” she said. “Show me.”

“How?”

“You know how.”

Yeah, I knew what she wanted. I just didn’t know if I could do it.

We hung up not long after that. I powered off my phone and shoved it in the top drawer of my nightstand so I wouldn’t be tempted to text her again.

The last thing I needed right now was another reason to lie awake in bed all night, but she’d just given me one.

VALTTERI FILPPULA HAD the puck for the Lightning. He was barreling up the ice toward Hunter, and there was no one with a chance of catching him but me. I shouldn’t be the one trying to cover him because I wasn’t a defenseman. Didn’t matter. I had to do it. Travis “Prince” Royal had been pinching in, trying to keep the puck in play when Filppula had knocked it off his stick and chipped it out into the zone. I’d cycled back to cover the point when Prince had made his move. Huggy Bear was our other defenseman on the ice, but just as he’d turned to chase the guy, his skate blade had literally broken off, leaving him hobbled.

So now, I had to be the one to chase this guy’s ass.

I used to be a much better skater, back before the wreck. I hadn’t lost any limbs, but I’d needed about half a dozen surgeries to repair all sorts of injuries, and I’d gotten a severe concussion. The combination had completely altered the way I played. Before the wreck, I’d been one of the top offensive talents in the league. These days, I had to use my hockey IQ in order to excel as a defensive forward. Speed was no longer one of my attributes, though, so it was all about positioning—and at the moment, my positioning stunk to high hell.

I turned on my afterburners and gave it everything I had, but the guy was too fast. His teammate, Callahan, was on his wing, too, so I had to break up the possibility for a pass from behind, preferably without taking a penalty in the process. Hunter had his focus fully on Filppula, so I had to trust that my goaltender could contain him. I had to take Callahan out of the action in order to prevent a pass while Hunter was out of position.

I took two power strides and lunged, thrusting my stick into the passing lane at the last second. Sure enough, Filppula tried to get the puck to his teammate—he was more of a playmaker than a shooter. The puck grazed my blade, which I had been holding at exactly the wrong angle, apparently. Inadvertently, I tipped the puck directly at the goal. Hunter slid over and grabbed it in his glove, just in the nick of time. He held onto it and the ref blew his whistle to stop play, with two Lightning forwards bearing down on the goal.

The red light came on over the penalty box, signaling a TV time-out.

“You trying to fuck me over, Dima?” Hunter shouted as I skated behind his net. To this point in the game, midway through the third period, he was holding on to a shutout. His clean sheet almost came to an end right then and there, but at least we were up by two goals.

“Fuck you,” I muttered. “Wouldn’t even fucking let me in last night.”

“Sorry if laying my wife was more important than seeing your ugly face.”

I skated back to the bench and took a seat next to Razor.

“He biting your head off for that?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Good. Get your fucking head on straight.” He slapped me on the back of my shoulder pads, like that might knock some sense into me.

I didn’t know how to get my head on straight, though. I’d only slept for about an hour last night after talking to London. I’d been too worked up all day to get my pregame nap in. I was a wreck.

“Tori wants to come over to your place tomorrow,” he said while the ice crew shoveled the snow in front of us.

That one threw me. I usually saw her at Razor’s place or sometimes at Hunter’s. I didn’t have people over at my house very often. “Why she wants to come over?”

“Said she has some things to make it feel like home for Mrs. Mironov.”

The TV time-out came to an end, and Spurs sent Razor out onto the ice for the next face-off before I could come up with a response.

Viktoriya wanted to make my place feel like home for Svetka. I didn’t have the first clue what she had in mind, but I was game to find out. In fact, I might have to kiss her for that.

Just not while Razor was looking.

WHEN THEY ARRIVED at my house the next afternoon, Viktoriya came in carrying a china tea service and a samovar—a sort of plug-in tea maker—with a tote bag draped over her slim shoulder, while Razor was loaded down with an Oriental rug and all sorts of other things I couldn’t make out. Viktoriya was a ballerina, tall and lean, with a graceful, dark beauty that only hinted at the horrors she’d been through. I only knew bits and pieces, but it was enough to turn my stomach. She smiled when she saw me, something that was starting to happen with more regularity the longer she’d been around.

I took the china as she came up the steps into the living room.

“For your Svetka,” she said. “My mama always wanted to drink tea from her china.”

She followed me into the kitchen, where I set it down on the counter. She put her tote bag next to it and started unloading all sorts of teas and a few other items for the kitchen.

“She’s only going to be here for a few days,” I said, dumbfounded by how much Viktoriya had brought over. “Where did you find this?” I asked, pointing to the samovar. I’d honestly never seen one in North America, even if they were common enough in Russia. Most people used a Keurig here to heat the water for their tea. For that matter, most people in this part of the world liked their tea over ice and full of sugar.

“Found it at garage sale.” Her eyes lit up when she said it. “Tallie took me. Like whole store in driveway. Everything costs very little. Only two dollars. Two dollars!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of Viktoriya and Tallie going garage sale shopping. It wasn’t something I’d ever taken part in since I’d been here, even though I passed them on the streets almost every weekend. Someone was always trying to sell their old things, and it seemed someone else was always ready to buy them. “Is that where you got the rug, too?”

“Yes. And china. And vase.”

I raised a brow and scanned all the things she’d unloaded on my counter. “Haven’t seen a vase yet.”

“In car, still. Razor will bring inside. Fresh flowers, too.”

“You didn’t need to buy all of this.”

“But she should be comfortable while she’s here,” she said, not looking up at me as she continued to unload her bag.

“Wanna give me a hand with this?” Razor called from the stairs. He didn’t mean it as a question, either, based on his tone.

I didn’t particularly want to help him, but I also didn’t want him to break anything in my house, so I headed back into the hall to see what he was doing. He’d dropped a pile of things at the bottom of the stairs and was halfway up with the rug.

“We should move the bed so we can put the rug underneath it,” he said, not slowing down on his way up.

“How much did you know she was bringing?” I asked once I reached the landing.

He chuckled, leaning the rolled rug against a wall while we made our plan. “I knew she’d bought some china. Apparently she and Tallie have been going to every garage sale in the greater Tulsa area every Saturday morning for months. She never spends more than five dollars here or ten dollars there, though, so I had no idea she’d nearly filled an entire bedroom with stuff. So I’m glad she’s bringing some of it to you.”

We each picked up a side of the bed in my guest room and moved it against the wall. Then I unrolled the rug and he helped me center it in the room. It had rich reds and golds—a bit gaudy for my taste, but Svetka would love it as much as she’d love the dainty pink-and-blue china set. I just didn’t know what I’d do with them once she went back home to Russia.

“You get any sleep yet?” Razor asked as we moved the bed back into place.

I shrugged.

“What the fuck’s going on with you, anyway? You’re always a mess, but this is worse than normal.” He headed back down the stairs, so I followed him. We both grabbed armfuls of the stuff he’d left at the bottom and carried it up with us: curtains, a matching comforter, and some pillows to go with the rug, plus a bunch of tchotchkes and a set of matryoshka dolls.

This might be Svetka’s first trip outside of Russia, but thanks to Viktoriya, it would be as much like home as possible.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, setting the nesting dolls on the nightstand next to the bed.

He tossed the comforter and pillows on the bed and carried the curtains to the window, taking down the rod. “Feed me another lie, why don’t you?”

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

“When you start fucking up on the ice, it’s something we all need to worry about.”

“Everybody fucks up sometimes.”

“You don’t. You might not be some superstar or anything, but you’re as consistent as they come. You’re like clockwork. Coach trusts you to always get shit done, but last night you were a mess.”

“Had a bad night.”

“Was it because of London?” Viktoriya asked me.

My head shot up in surprise. I hadn’t heard her come up to join us. And she spoke in Russian, leaving her husband out of the conversation, which was unusual. The two of us sometimes spoke in Russian, but never when Razor was around because she didn’t want to leave him out.

I glanced over at him, but he was busying himself with putting the curtains on the rod and tactfully ignoring us, so I turned back to Viktoriya. “Why do you think that?” I asked.

“Because we all start doing stupid things when we fall in love.”

“I don’t love her.”

“Okay.” She moved to the bed and started arranging the pillows and comforters, making it cozy.

“I don’t.”

“If you say so. But sometimes, love can sneak up on you. Even if you think you’re immune to it.”

“I’m not immune to it.”

“You just don’t think you deserve it.”

I put a piece of gold fabric on the top of the dresser and spread the tchotchkes over it, hoping if I didn’t respond, she’d let it go.

“I haven’t met your Svetka yet,” Viktoriya said, “but something tells me she wouldn’t agree with that. She’d want you to have all the love in the world.”

“With London, it doesn’t come easily.”

“Nothing good is easy. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work for it.”

I stared at the tchotchkes, rearranging them over and over again, mirroring the way I was rearranging all the thoughts in my head. “What you have with Razor,” I said slowly. “It’s not easy?”

“The hardest thing I’ve ever done is let him love me.” She crossed over to join me, taking the pieces from my hands and setting them in place to force me to stop messing with them. “But it’s also the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Well, then.

There wasn’t much I could say to that.

DIMA WAS LETTING his beard grow in again. I knew only because I’d taken to watching the Thunderbirds games lately. It was the only way I got to see him these days. It was up to him when we’d see each other again, and he knew it. Once he showed me he was making an effort at moving on with his life, we could pick up again where we’d left off. Until then, I was limiting our contact to the phone in order to salvage my own heart as much as was humanly possible.

I had to admit, he looked pretty hot with all that scruff. It wasn’t overly long now, just the perfect length. Enough to hide the scars he wanted to hide, but not so much that he hid every single aspect of his appearance.

Other than that, though, he looked like hell. Red eyes with deep circles under them. More scowling than usual. I hated seeing him like that. Especially because I knew I was at least part of the reason for it. Maybe more than just part of the reason.

Still, we were talking again, at least. After that night when I’d told him I was pregnant, he’d been calling me almost every night. Sometimes we talked until the wee hours of the morning. Other times it was only for a few minutes. For the most part, the length of our calls depended on his mood.

The night after Razor and Viktoriya helped him ready his house for Svetka’s visit, we talked for hours. He filled me in on all the things Viktoriya had brought over to help Svetka feel at home even though she’d be halfway around the world. “She even brought a Russian tea maker,” he said, laughing. It was good to hear him laugh, since it didn’t happen often. “Don’t know where she found one of those. She apparently goes to garage sales with Tallie every weekend. Razor said she filled a whole bedroom with things.”

“What kind of things?”

“No telling. But she never had much before. It’s new for her to have something of her own. I think she likes it.” He went on for eons, describing all the ways Viktoriya had filled his home with small tastes of Russia.

The next night when we talked, it didn’t last anywhere near as long. He called when he got home after a game that the Thunderbirds had been shut out and had six goals scored against them. “I played like shit tonight,” he said.

“You weren’t that bad.”

“How would you know?”

“I was watching.”

He let out an indecipherable sound. “Was awful. No skating legs.”

“Why do you think your legs were shot?” I asked.

“Not sleeping.”

“Maybe you should try sleeping tonight, then.”

“Been trying. I’d sleep better if I could see you.”

“I’d sleep better if I didn’t have to worry about you.”

“Why you’re worried about me?”

“Because I’ve seen what guilt can do to a person.” Too many times to count, and some of them way too close for comfort.

“Guilt is good for you.”

“Guilt is good when it tells you to make amends for something. It’s not good when you can’t let it go once you’ve done that.”

“You don’t give up, do you?”

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “Not when it matters.”

“I matter to you?”

“You do.”

“Viktoriya said nothing good is easy.”

“Did she?” I asked, curious where this was heading.

“Must mean we’re better than good.”

I laughed. “Maybe we can be.”

“I still can’t come over?” he asked.

“No. But I’m glad you haven’t given up.”

“Can’t give up. You’re having my baby.”

The way he said it made my heart flutter with hope that he really meant he wanted to fight for this. For us. We’d fought plenty in the time we’d known each other, but this was the first time he’d given me any sense at all that he wanted to fight for us instead of against me. Which meant I had to fight for us just as hard as he intended to. I had to get my own life in order.

But hope could be dangerous. Too many times over the years with Wade, I’d allowed myself to hope he was finally turning the corner with his PTSD. Too many times, I’d been wrong. The weight of improperly placed hope was enough to crush me, so I was always cautious where I set mine.

Maybe I was too cautious.

But maybe I wasn’t.

The only way I could know for sure was to be patient and stick to my plan.

“AUNT LONDON!” ERIN shouted the second I wheeled into Gray’s house. She leaped onto my lap and took my face between both of her hands, holding me still so I couldn’t look anywhere but at her. “It’s my birfday.”

“I know it is, silly goose. Why do you think I’m here?”

She grinned, looking down at the box she’d dislodged in her anticipation to get to me, twirling the silver-and-teal curling ribbon with her chubby fingers. “Is this my present?”

“It is. But you have to wait to open it until everyone’s together and you’re opening all your presents.”

“Exactly, munchkin,” Gray said, lifting her off my lap. “You know the rules. All the birthday presents get opened at the party.”

“Can I shake it?” she asked, giving me a devious grin.

I passed the box over. “Shake away. I doubt it’ll tell you anything.”

Gray put her on the ground and playfully swatted her on the bottom. “Go on. Take it to add to the pile.” Once she ran off, he turned to me. “Please tell me you didn’t spend a fortune.”

“It’s an aunt’s prerogative to spoil her nieces and nephews rotten.”

“Which means you got her something that cost more than you should’ve spent on her in a full year.”

“It means I got her what she wanted. It’s an Elsa doll. Not too expensive.”

He rolled his eyes, but Sierra came into the room with the baby in her arms. She saw me, stopping cold. She’d had a huge, welcoming smile on her face, but it fizzled into the less-than-enthusiastic expression she usually bore when I was around. There might have even been a hint of stink eye attached.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me.”

Without another word, she turned and headed back into the kitchen.

“Don’t mind her,” Gray said.

“I never do.” My brother knew Sierra and I weren’t all buddy-buddy, but I sometimes wondered if he saw how she really felt about me, or if he was blind to it because he loved us both. Daddy saw the truth, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. I doubted Gray could really make a difference with Sierra’s jealousy, but it’d be nice if he could acknowledge that there was an issue.

The kids were all gathered in the playroom, along with a few of their friends. The mothers seemed to be congregating in the kitchen, where Sierra had gone. That made my choice easy. I wheeled myself into the playroom.

Gray followed me and flopped down on the beanbag chair. “You seem out of sorts,” he said, his voice almost completely covered up by the squeals and giggles coming from the kids.

“I am out of sorts.”

“Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

I gave him a do-you-really-want-to-know look.

“Want me to guess instead? I think it has to do with Dmitri Nazarenko. And maybe Wade Miller, too, since he’s not here with you like he usually is for the kids’ birthdays.” He shifted so he was looking at me full on. “And maybe most of all, it has to do with the fact that you’re pregnant. And not totally with the baby’s father, even if you’re not exactly not with him, either. And you’re scared.”

My jaw dropped. “How do you know all of that?”

“Dad,” he said matter-of-factly. “He let it spill last weekend when we were FaceTiming. Didn’t mean to, but it came out. I notice you’re not denying you’re scared.”

Gray was going to have to know eventually, but I’d hoped to have things a bit more settled before I started filling in the rest of my family.

“To death,” I admitted. There wasn’t any point trying to hide the truth from my brother. He knew me too well. “So Sierra knows, too?” I asked.

“She heard.”

“That explains her reaction when I came in today.”

Gray rolled his eyes. “Don’t make this into more than it is.”

“Oh, come off it. She’s never liked me, but she’s been jealous of the attention I get since my accident. She thinks she should get more attention than me because she’s been providing our parents with grandkids and I haven’t, but now she probably thinks my baby’s going to steal attention away from her kids.”

“Maybe she does. That doesn’t mean anyone else agrees with her.”

I shrugged.

“Dad said you weren’t sure what you were going to do yet.”

“I’m not.”

Gray raised a brow in question.

“Trying to work things out with Dima. If we can find a way forward, then we’ll decide what to do together. But I’m not going to jump into a long-term relationship with a man who’s got issues just because I’m pregnant. If we couldn’t make things work when there wasn’t a baby involved, what reason is there to believe that’ll change once you add another complication to the equation?”

“He’s not the only one with issues.”

I rolled my eyes. “His are bigger than mine.” Weren’t they?

“You ever stop to think that maybe you’re expecting too much?”

“I just want to see some effort.”

“You just want to be in control,” Gray said, rolling his eyes. “Of everything.”

“I like to be in control because there are so many things I have no control over.”

“You don’t have control over anything. You just want to think you do.”

I pouted, hating when my brother was right. “Maybe.”

He laughed. “But he knows?”

“He knows.”

“And what’s he doing about it?”

“Trying to figure things out. The ball’s in his court.”

Which meant it was out of my control.

No wonder I was out of sorts.

SVETKA HAD THE biggest smile I’d ever seen when I met her at the airport. She reached up with both hands and took my face between them, kissing me on each cheek like I’d seen her do with Sergei so many times before.

My heart lodged somewhere in my throat when she did that.

“Your beard,” she said, Russian words rolling thick from her tongue. “Dmitri, I never thought I’d see you without that beard again. You make a mama proud to see your handsome face. Did you shave it for me?”

I winked. “If you want it to be for you, it’s for you, Svetka.”

“I wish you’d call me Mama. Or at least Matushka.”

She’d been trying to get me to call her something more familiar for over a decade, but I’d never been able to bring myself to do it. Especially not since the wreck. I could have killed her one true son that night, so why should I have the honor of calling her Mama? She would never listen to my arguments, telling me she might as well be my mama, so I should just give in and call her what she wants.

I took her bag from her and led her out to my car.

“So warm,” she said in awe.

“Just wait until we get to California.” I loaded her bag into the trunk and helped her into the passenger seat before getting behind the wheel. “It already feels like summer there. No snow. No need for your coat. You’ll love it.”

“I already love it because you wanted to share it with me,” she said, patting my knee. Then she gave me another once-over. “Much too skinny. Just like Sergei. I’ll bake you some good bread.”

RAZOR AND VIKTORIYA came over for dinner the first night Svetka was in town. Svetka shooed me and Razor out of the kitchen, but she allowed Viktoriya to stay and help her, loudly complaining in Russian that my American house was so confusing since it didn’t have doors on every room. She’d never allowed me and Sergei to get in her way in the kitchen, kicking us out to do our schoolwork and closing the door so she could have peace while she worked her magic.

Viktoriya was allowed to stay, though, because she was a woman. Svetka still held on to very traditional views of gender roles, and I doubted she would ever let them go.

I heard their voices coming from the kitchen, but I did my best not to pay too much attention to what they were saying. At least not until I heard London’s name. Then I sat up a bit straighter.

“Dmitri has a girlfriend?” Svetka asked, a hint of awe in her tone. “A real girlfriend?”

“I think so. She’s not making it easy on him, though.”

“He won’t make it easy on himself, you mean.”

They both laughed, but there was a lot of truth in Svetka’s words, even if I didn’t want to hear it. London wanted things of me, and I wasn’t sure she was wrong for wanting them.

I’d thought I was ready to give her way a try, but I’d chickened out at the last minute, and I hadn’t done a damned thing since then in terms of meeting her needs. The only thing I knew I needed, though, was her.

FOR THE NEXT two days, Viktoriya spent as much time as possible with Svetka so she wouldn’t be alone. I still had to go to practices and team meetings, so I couldn’t be with her nonstop. The two of them had hit it off right away, though. Before we left for the California road trip, Viktoriya and Tallie even took Svetka to a garage sale.

My Svetka came back to my house with a stuffed white tiger that was almost as big as I was. She set it on the coffee table in my living room and pushed it around until it was positioned exactly how she wanted it.

“You need a pet, Dmitri,” she said when I asked her why on earth she’d bought it.

“It’s not alive,” I pointed out.

“So you can’t kill it.” She nudged it one more time, then nodded and headed for the kitchen to brew more tea and bake more bread.

She was still dealing with jet lag, so she went to bed very early that night. I stayed downstairs to call London, since I hadn’t heard her voice since Svetka had arrived, and I missed her with the kind of hollow ache that had filled me after my father had passed away.

“Hey, stranger,” London answered.

“Miss you.”

“Whatever. You’re too busy taking Sergei’s mom around town to have time to miss me.”

“You’re wrong.”

She paused for a moment, but then she said, “Okay. I’m wrong.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I demanded. London never admitted to being wrong. She never gave in. Not on anything.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Is it the baby? I’m coming over.” I was already out of my chair and halfway to the door.

“Nothing’s wrong,” London repeated. “I just… My brother made sure to point out to me that I have a bad habit of always needing to be in control of things, and I’ve been thinking about it. And I think I’ve been that way with you. Maybe too much so.”

I didn’t have the first clue where she was headed with this, but I liked it even if it left me feeling hesitant. “So baby’s fine?” I asked, just for further reassurance.

“The baby’s fine.”

“And you’re still wrong?” I asked, not attempting to hide the doubt filling my tone.

“I’m still wrong. So, you’ve been missing me?”

“So much my stomach hurts.”

“But it makes your head hurt when we’re together.”

“Only because you always poke at me.”

“I do. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Seem to remember you saying guilt is bad.”

She laughed, and the sound warmed me up from the bottoms of my toes. “So I did.”

“So don’t be sorry. Besides, I’d rather argue with you.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it’s how we are.”

“It is.” I could picture the smile coming over her lips. I wished I was seeing it in person.

“You look hot when you grab my beard and drag me around.”

“You don’t have a beard left for me to grab.”

“Growing it back. It’ll take a while.”

“Don’t grow it all the way back,” she pleaded. “You look hot with it how it is now. I like a little scruff. Besides, I can still grab your hair and direct you where I want you.”

“Not if you couldn’t use your hands.” As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Everything had been light and flirtatious until then, but London already couldn’t use her legs. Threatening to take away use of her hands was crossing the line. I started to apologize, but she cut me off.

“You’re right. Maybe sometime we can try that.”

“I… What?” I had to have misheard her.

“My brother pointed out that it’s always my way or the highway with me. In everything. He seems to think I try to control things, and he suggested I might need to let go of that need to have everything go my way all the time. So that’s something I’m willing to try. With you. If you want.”

My mouth went dry. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’m trying to compromise with you, Dima. I’m trying to meet you in the middle. I want to give up some control. I want to let you be in charge sometimes. I want to let you be right and not constantly push to be the one dictating how everything between us has to be.”

I shook my head to clear it. “Why you want this?”

“Because I think maybe you want it. And maybe it’ll help me to be what you need. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be good for me to give up some control every now and then.”

“But why you want to compromise now?” I asked.

“Because I can tell you’re trying. Maybe you’re not getting into counseling. Maybe you’re not going to group sessions or whatever. But you’re talking to me even though I’m not letting you get me naked—”

“Or see you,” I cut in.

“Or even see me. You’re starting to let me in. So I need to start to let my own guard down with you.”

I could hardly catch my breath, trying to keep up with all London was throwing at me. Things between us had slowed to a glacial pace for so long, but now they were moving too fast.

“When can I see you?” I asked. Because I didn’t know how much longer I could go without touching her.

“How soon do you leave for the road trip?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Then maybe you should come over tonight.”

TEN MINUTES AFTER we hung up, Dima was ringing my bell. Good grief, the man didn’t waste any time, did he? I’d been anxious to see him, too, but he had to have driven at twice the legal speed limit the whole way here.

I opened the door, and he came straight through. Hovering over me. Staring through me. He closed the door and locked the deadbolt before facing me again. I allowed myself a moment to take him in—dark, intense eyes that bored through me; scruffy jaw; chest rising and falling with his breath.

My breaths were just as ragged as his. I still couldn’t quite believe that I’d suggested letting him have control in this way. Or that I’d asked him to come over now. Let alone that he was already here. I’d barely had time to freshen up in the bathroom before he was standing in front of me.

But Gray was right. I did always try to keep my finger on everything that happened in every aspect of my life. I wanted to be the boss. I wanted things to go my way, even when my way didn’t make any sense. I had a need to be in control and for people to do what I wanted them to do, whether it was best for them or not. I seemed to think I was the only one who could figure out the right way to go about life.

That kind of thinking wasn’t just arrogant of me; it was dead wrong, and I had to learn to accept that fact.

So now I was going to give up some control to Dima. I only hoped I didn’t freak out too badly when it became clear I had almost none.

“You’re sure?” he asked, his gaze taking in every inch of me in a way that had my nipples puckering.

I bit down on my lower lip, reveling in the fact that his gaze followed the slight movement. I wasn’t sure at all. If anything, I was terrified. If Dima didn’t get on with it, I might chicken out. “Positive,” I said, though.

“You’re not drunk?”

I felt drunk from the way he was looking at me, but I hadn’t had a drop of wine since that night when I’d had entirely too much. “I’m completely sober. I’m pregnant, Dima. I’m not going to get drunk now that I know.”

“Was a joke,” he said. “Maybe not funny.”

I laughed, because he was completely serious about thinking it was a joke. Some things definitely got lost in translation.

“Not going to change your mind? Say it was a mistake?”

“It’s not a mistake. I want this.” And it killed me that he had to question my motives so much. That only proved that I was making the right call this time. I hadn’t been fair to Dima. Not at all. “I want you,” I added, since he was still just standing there and passing his eyes over me in a caress, when I wanted it to be his hands caressing my skin.

But still, he just stood there. Staring. Raking over my body with eyes that appeared to see everything. I’d never felt more self-conscious, more exposed, than I did in that moment. I wished he still had that damned beard, because then I could grab him by it and drag him down to me so we could get on with things.

Except, that would defeat the purpose of what we were doing.

So I sat and waited, barely breathing from the anticipation.

Finally, Dima closed the distance between us. In a single move, he picked me up and wrapped my legs around his waist, holding me by my thighs so I had to put both arms on his shoulders for balance.

I couldn’t stop myself. I had to kiss him. He let out an animalistic growl when our lips touched, his tongue immediately pressing against my seam and demanding entrance. He tasted as dark and needy as I felt.

“Should spank you for keeping me away so long,” he said, his mouth mere inches from mine.

My voice caught in my throat, a hard lump that made it impossible to swallow. I licked my lips to wet them, watching his eyes take in my every movement. “You should,” I said.

“You’d like it too much.”

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “I probably would.”

He winked and gave me one sound smack on my bottom, heading toward my bedroom. “Maybe some other time.” He didn’t bother to turn on the lights once we reached my room, leaving nothing but the moonlight to guide his movements as he carried me to the bed, setting me on top of the comforter.

I trailed my fingers down his chest, itching to fumble with the buttons of his shirt as he backed away, but he brushed my hands to the side and shook his head.

“Doing this my way,” he said.

My pulse kicked into another gear, but I nodded.

Reaching into the pockets of his pants, Dima emptied their contents onto the mattress beside me: several condoms, almost as many dental dams, a bottle of lube, and two neckties.

I couldn’t catch my breath, like I’d just run a marathon. “You really are going to tie me up,” I forced out, equally exhilarated and petrified.

He kept his eyes locked on mine. “I’ve got you,” he said.

Somehow, it was enough.

He selected one of the ties, a silky sky-blue one, and unfolded it to its full length before kneeling behind me on the mattress. His weight caused the bed to sink, and I fell back into him, too shocked that I was going along with this to keep myself upright. I held up my hands for him, but he slipped the fabric in front of my eyes and tied it behind my head.

“Oh,” I murmured, more breath than speech.

Once the tie was secure, he slid his hands down my upper arms, teasing the sides of my breasts with his knuckles.

I gasped, shocked by how tender I was there, not to mention my massive response to such a simple touch.

“If you need me to stop, say alyy.”

“Ally?”

“Alyy, yes. Means red, so I’ll stop.”

“Will I need you to stop?” I croaked out as he tugged the hem of my shirt free from the waistband of my jeans and flattened the palm of his hand over my belly. His mouth hovered over the space between my neck and shoulder, not quite kissing me but close enough I could feel every aspect of his breath.

“Don’t know.” He undid the button and fly of my jeans with his free hand, then slid both his hands down under the band of my panties, stopping when he could cup my lower abdomen. “Moyà,” he whispered in my ear.

I really needed to learn some Russian. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“Means mine.” He nipped the lobe of my ear, drawing my back against his chest. “All mine.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant me, the baby, or all of the above. All I knew was the possessive tone in his voice stole my ability to think clearly. I pressed my hands over the backs of his and urged him closer, but he growled at me.

“Nyet.” One at a time, he peeled my hands away. “Doing this my way.”

Sliding his fingers up my ribs, he inched my shirt up and away from my body while I did my best to be patient and allow him to have his way with me. He tugged the shirt free from my arms before going back to squeeze my breasts through the thin barrier of my bra. My nipples peaked, tightening to hard nubs within seconds, but he kept kneading them, teasing them, tugging them until I cried out.

“Too much?” he asked, immediately gentling his touch without taking his hands from me.

“Too tender.” I could barely get the words out from panting. Ever since my accident, my breasts had been more sensitive than before, but this was something else entirely. Was it because I was pregnant? Probably at least somewhat, as they’d even been growing in the last week or two. Or maybe it was the blindfold forcing my other senses to be heightened. Either way, it was more than I had been prepared for.

“Want me to stop?” he asked.

“Please don’t.”

Dima pressed his lips against the side of my neck, tugging down the straps of my bra so he could free my breasts to the chilly air. Every nerve ending in my breasts tingled. Pricked. They were practically begging for his touch, and I was tempted to give voice to the pleas. Somehow, I kept myself quiet and allowed him to do as he would, only writhing against him when I absolutely couldn’t keep myself still.

“Moyà,” he repeated, suckling the delicate flesh of my neck and rolling my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers until I couldn’t help but squirm, wishing I could really drive my hips into him for better contact.

I threw my head back and sucked as much air as I could get into my lungs.

“They’re bigger,” he murmured in awe, his lips finding a home along my jaw. He flicked the tips of his fingers over my hard nubs, and my whole body shuddered in pleasure. “Your tits. All of it. They’re bigger.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Moyà,” was his only reply.

His. He was claiming me. Marking me with his scent. Branding me with the heat of his touch. I reached behind me and locked my fingers in his hair, dragging his lips to mine so I could kiss him.

He groaned and complied, his tongue forcing entry between my lips to meet my own, but he pried my hand free from his hair and tugged it behind my back. “My way,” he bit off between fierce kisses. Within moments, he had my other hand behind my back as well, and I felt the telltale sign of him securing the other necktie around my wrists—tight enough to prevent me from using them but not so tight that it caused me any pain.

Then he got up from behind me, and I fell over from the loss of his support. I tried to straighten myself, to rise to a sitting position, but it was no use. I could only lie where I was and wait for Dima to move me as he saw fit.

For a moment, I didn’t know where he was, and the anticipation of what he would do next nearly drove me out of my mind. I tried to listen as intently as I could, hoping to glean his location from the sound of his movement, but he was as stealthy as a cat. I never figured it out until he reached for my jeans and tugged them, along with my panties, down to my ankles in a swift move. A couple of quick tugs later, and he had me completely naked.

“Happy now?” I teased.

“I always like you better naked.”

The bed dipped again as he crawled up beside me. He put his hands under my shoulders and shifted me until I was propped against the pillows. Then he put more pillows under my hips, angling my body to better accept his.

“Hands all right?” he asked once he’d finished arranging me just so. “And your shoulders?”

“I’m fine.” Fine, if you considered feeling like a blazing inferno of need to be fine.

Dima settled himself between my knees, and I almost whimpered in the anticipation of being with him. Apparently there was a great deal more anticipation to come, though. Starting with my feet, he massaged and kissed a very slow path up my legs, stopping occasionally to say, “Moyà,” or to ask how much I felt when he touched me in a certain way, how much sensation I had in a particular spot.

“Just pressure there,” I said, or “Everything, dear God, everything.”

“Mm,” he said, as though he were trying to memorize every detail of my response.

He’d barely reached the soft spot on the backside of my knee, and I was already wriggling and begging him to get on with it.

When he shifted closer to me, his large frame brushing the tender skin inside my thighs, I instinctively tried to reach for him.

No use. I couldn’t free my arms.

With just the hint of a fingernail, he traced a path from the inside of one knee, up my thigh, across my belly, then back down my other thigh to end at my knee. “Moyà,” he said again, and something wrapped around my heart and squeezed, stretched, tugged me in a thousand different directions at once. Suddenly, I realized this wasn’t just sex, and I didn’t like it. I wanted everything to go back in time, until it was nothing more than touch. Purely physical. Only lust.

But there was no going back.

“Dima,” I begged. “Please stop teasing me.”

“Like to tease you.” For a moment, he didn’t touch me at all. Then his lips pressed to the spot above where the baby was growing.

I jumped when his tongue flicked out to swirl inside my belly button. The sensation was enough to surprise me on its own, but there was something more. A need to hold him close to me. A yearning for more of his possessiveness. A strange desire to give him so much more than simply control.

“Like that?” he asked, stopping to shift higher, so his head hovered over my breasts and his long hair hung down to tickle me.

“Let me use my hands,” I pleaded.

“Nyet. You’ll grab my hair and rush me.”

“I just want—”

“You want to let me do things my way,” he interrupted. “Said you want to give me control. Let me have it. Stop fighting. Just feel.”

Just feel. He obviously had no idea what he was asking of me with such a seemingly simple request. I’d spent the last four years doing everything in my power to not feel. I wanted all my sensations back, but I’d done everything I could to suppress every damned emotion in me.

But now they were rushing over me like a rising tide, and I was being pulled under.

Dima raised himself over me. He settled his hips between my thighs, close enough that the head of his cock pulsed against my flesh, and leaned over me, resting his weight on his forearms. Then he kissed me, long and slow and deep. So deep I felt his damned hand wrapping itself around my heart and making itself at home there.

I wanted to push him away. To make him stop. To put an end to everything he was doing to me on the inside before I was crushed under the weight of four years of buried emotion.

But I couldn’t.

All I could do was kiss him back as desperately as he was kissing me and trust that he could keep me from being washed out in the riptide that was coming for me.

His tongue slid alongside mine, and he let his weight drop down on me a bit at a time, grounding me with his touch. But it was too late. I was lost at sea. Adrift and being pulled under by an irresistible force. Racked with a grief I couldn’t give voice to, because the words would overwhelm me.

He slipped inside me, saying, “Moyà,” like he would never let me go, no matter how hard I might try to make him.

I couldn’t hold on.

I couldn’t protect myself.

I couldn’t guard against the painful throbbing of my heart as it burst open and let Dima fill all the cracks, old and new alike.

“I’ve got you,” he said, his mouth brushing against my ear as he surged home inside me again and again. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.” He removed the tie from my eyes and swiped the tears from my cheeks, kissing my drenched eyelids.

He did have me. All of me. Every broken mess of an inch.

“Moyà,” he said again as he came, shattering the last veneer of my resolve.

His.

I feared he was right.

I STAYED WITH London a lot longer than I’d intended to. I had to, after the way she’d responded. She gave herself over to me completely. Allowed me to worship her body and give her pleasure the way I wanted to. She fell apart in my arms, and then she let me put her back together.

I didn’t realize until I finally had her in my arms again just how badly I needed to keep her there.

“Moyà,” I’d called her multiple times. Mine. London. The baby. I wanted them both to be mine. I wanted it so much I’d do just about anything to have them.

But right now, I had to get home before Svetka woke and realized I’d left her alone. I forced myself to separate myself from London, untangling my limbs from hers.

She rolled over with me, her body lax and limp after all the many times we’d fucked tonight. Her eyes shone in the moonlight. Tears. There’d been more than a few of those over the course of the night. Strangely, holding London while she cried had felt similar to watching Joyce take her first steps on her new leg. I didn’t know what to make of the tears, but I also didn’t get the sense they were entirely bad.

I kissed her again, lingering over the way she softened under my touch. “Have to go home,” I said when I broke apart from her.

“I know.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“I don’t want you to go, either.” She hooked a hand around the back of my neck, sinking her fingers into my hair to keep me with her for a moment longer.

“Svetka will wake up and wonder where I’ve gone…”

London nodded and kissed me one more time, hard and fast, before releasing her grip on me. She blinked, and then the softness was gone from her face. It was like she’d been wearing a mask, but once I’d blindfolded her, the mask had slipped away. And now she was settling it back into place.

However much I might want to stick around and find a way to get her to dispense with the mask again, I couldn’t. I got out of her bed and drew on my clothes before going back to the living room to move her wheelchair within her reach.

“I’ll call you,” I said.

She nodded and rolled over.

Right about now, I wanted to kick myself for not having more time to stay, so I could get to the bottom of what had come over her. I couldn’t, though. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do right now but go back to my place and get Svetka ready for the moms’ trip to California. “Lock door behind me.”

“I will,” she said. “Go on.”

So I left.

Svetka was already up and making tea in the kitchen when I walked through my front door. She poked her head around the corner and raised a brow. “With your girlfriend?” she asked me in Russian. “Why didn’t you bring her to meet me? I could make her tea.”

“There’s no time to make her tea right now, Svetka.”

She patted me on the cheek. “Matushka. And there is always time to make tea for your girlfriend.”

“Maybe when we come back from California. Today, we need to get to the airport.”

“I’m ready as soon as I have some tea. I made bread. We’ll take it on the plane.”

Leave it to my Svetka to think she needed to make me bread to take on a chartered flight with the team.

PETRO’S MOTHER SPOKE a broken form of English that was only moderately worse than my own, so she’d been acting as an interpreter for Svetka and Alexei Petrov’s mother throughout the trip. The three of them had been having a blast together. For both Svetka and Mrs. Dragomirov, this was their first time ever in America, and they were doing it in style.

Svetka hadn’t had a passport when we’d had our accident, so she’d had to stay at home and worry from halfway around the world. We’d made sure she got one as soon as possible after that, but this was her first opportunity to use it.

I’d hardly had time to talk to London at all since we’d left. I called her when I could, but she seemed distant and the team was keeping us busy. Plus, Svetka was occupying the remainder of my free time, and since I rarely got the opportunity to do anything for her, I was trying to make the most of it.

I couldn’t help but worry that I’d made a huge mistake with London before leaving, though. Maybe her tears had been more than I’d thought they were. Maybe I hadn’t made it clear enough that she should stop me if she needed me to stop. Maybe she hadn’t really wanted what she’d said she wanted. Maybe… There were a thousand maybes racing through my head, but until I got home and was able to see her again, face-to-face, I doubted I’d know just how bad things were.

In the meantime, the Thunderbirds had gone all out to make sure this trip was special for all of the moms, and for the guys, as well. There was a dinner at an expensive restaurant in LA, a shopping trip one afternoon on Rodeo Drive, a bus tour of all the celebrity mansions, a stop at the Walk of Fame, and even a day at the spa getting massages, facials, and pedicures. In the middle of all that, we’d lost a game to the Ducks by an embarrassing margin and lost another to the Kings in overtime. Now we were flying up to San Jose for the final game of this trip against the Sharks.

Razor and his mother were facing me and Svetka, which I supposed was fitting since Razor had married a Russian bride. Drago, Petro, and their mothers were across the aisle from us, so we formed a bit of a Russian contingency.

“You’re the one Tori’s been telling me about, then?” Mrs. Chambers said, eyeing me.

“What Viktoriya’s been telling you?” I asked cautiously.

Svetka perked up upon hearing Viktoriya’s name. She had apparently decided to adopt Viktoriya as a daughter, even if she couldn’t arrange for either Sergei or me to marry her. She’s a good Russian girl, Svetka had told me after their garage sale excursion. She’d make a good Russian wife. I had to remind her she was already someone’s wife. She’d waved a hand like it was nothing, but she’d let it go. Probably because she knew enough about London to know I had someone else I wanted in my life, anyway.

“Just that you look out for her,” Mrs. C said. “Treat her like a sister.”

“Just do what’s right,” I mumbled. I didn’t like this kind of attention. I didn’t want people treating me like I was doing something special when, really, I was only doing what a decent human being would do.

“There aren’t a lot of people in this world who would do what’s right for someone who’s walked a few miles in Tori’s shoes. So that means I like you.”

I tried to shrug her comment off, but she didn’t seem ready to let it go.

“She tells me your girlfriend is in a wheelchair.”

Svetka perked up again at hearing girlfriend. That was one of the words she’d had Petro’s mother teach her, apparently. She sat up straighter in her seat. “You know Dmitri’s girlfriend?” she asked Mrs. C, speaking in Russian.

Mrs. C looked at me expectantly, waiting for translation.

“She wants to know about Dmitri’s girlfriend,” Mrs. Petrov put in before I could respond. “Is she good girl? Will she cook for him? Be good mother for his babies?”

I blanched at the word babies, hoping no one would notice my reaction, since I hadn’t told a living soul that London was pregnant with my child. The last thing I needed right now was for Svetka to learn about the pregnancy, since London and I were still working out what kind of relationship we were going to have going forward. Nothing was settled. Nothing was a given.

“I haven’t met her yet,” Mrs. C said, smiling at Svetka.

“He’s hiding her from everyone,” Mrs. Petrov translated in Russian. “Maybe he’s embarrassed because she’s in a wheelchair.”

I threw up my hands in frustration. “That’s not what she—”

Svetka swatted my hand like I was a naughty boy sneaking sweets from the kitchen and hoping she wouldn’t notice. “You shouldn’t hide your girlfriend. Let your friends meet her. Let your Svetka meet her. Don’t be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” How the fuck was I supposed to take her around and introduce her to my friends when, until the night before we’d left on this road trip, she hadn’t even allowed me to see her?

Mrs. Petrov wasn’t helping at all. I glanced over and noticed both Drago and Petro were snickering at my situation.

“You went to her last night instead of bringing her to me,” Svetka pointed out.

“London is in a wheelchair. My house is full of stairs.”

She gave me a look that plainly said she didn’t think that was a good enough excuse, and that Mrs. Petrov was correct in thinking I was embarrassed and hiding London.

“She’s not even my girlfriend!” I argued, then immediately wished I hadn’t. Especially once I realized that Mrs. Petrov was “translating” some more for both Razor and Mrs. C, and both Petro and Drago were adding commentary here and there. Lord only knew how they were spinning this, but I doubted it was good.

“You spend all night with a woman who’s not your girlfriend?” Svetka said. “You’re better than that, Dmitri. Your papa would roll over in his grave if he thought that—”

“I don’t know what we are. I want her to be my girlfriend.” I wanted London to be a hell of a lot more than just my girlfriend, actually. That night had opened my eyes to just how deep my need for her went.

Deep enough to scare the shit out of me.

“But she’s not?” Svetka asked, suspicion running rampant in her tone.

“Maybe?” Not my best answer ever.

“Why isn’t she your girlfriend?”

I shifted, more uncomfortable than I’d ever been on the team plane. I suddenly felt like I was too big for my seat by half, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to make myself smaller. “She says I need to get into counseling or something,” I bit off, glaring at Mrs. Petrov as she hurried to tell Mrs. C, “She won’t be girlfriend because he’s crazy man. Completely mad. Woo-woo bonkers.” The woman even added some arm waving and over-the-top facial expressions to emphasize her point.

“What do you need counseling for?” Svetka asked. “Because of the wreck?”

I shrugged. “She thinks I still blame myself for what happened to Sergei.”

Svetka patted my hand, looking at me the same way she had when I was a little boy who’d never known a mother’s love. “She’s right.”

“I know she’s right, but—”

“No buts. She wants you to let it go? She wants you to move on with your life? She wants you to look forward, not back?” Svetka didn’t wait for me to respond. Those were questions that clearly didn’t need a response. “She’s right, Dmitri.”

“I know she is.”

“But you don’t like it. You don’t know who you are if you’re not blaming yourself for something you did wrong.” She gave me a sad look. “Do you remember the first time Sergei brought you to my house? That was the day you told me you didn’t have a mama of your own because you hadn’t been a good enough baby. She left, and it was your fault, you said. You couldn’t blame her, even though she was the adult who’d made the decision. One time you told me something almost the same about your papa dying. You said if you’d only been less of a burden for your papa, he wouldn’t have had to work so hard, and he wouldn’t have gotten cancer from the paper mill. Now you blame yourself for Sergei losing his leg.”

“That one really is my fault, Svetka,” I argued.

“It’s his fault, too. He didn’t have to get in the car with you. He knew you’d had too much vodka.”

“But I was the one behind the wheel.”

“You were. But my Sergei, he has a wonderful life. He lost a leg, but he’s not letting it stop him from living.”

I slumped back in my seat, sulking like an overgrown child. Then Mrs. C caught my eye and gave me a look I didn’t want to interpret.

“She won’t be with you?” she asked.

“Kind of. She wants me to change.”

“Is she willing to change, too?”

Until that night before we’d left for this road trip, that would have been an easy question to answer. It had all been about me making changes up until then, but now London had gone out of her way to stop being so controlling. Something that wasn’t easy for her. Something I’d never thought she’d do.

“She’s making changes,” I muttered.

“But you’re still not?” Mrs. C said. “Sounds like you need to get over yourself. If you really want to be with her, that is.”

Damn all these women, thinking they knew what was best for me.

Svetka reached into her carry-on bag and dug out the last piece of the bread she’d baked the morning we left. “Here,” she said in Russian, passing it into my hands. “Eat this. You’ll feel better. You’re too skinny.”

JACK’S WORDS FROM this afternoon were still ringing in my ears hours later, as I sat on my couch eating an overfull bowl of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream and watching the Thunderbirds game. He’d stopped me on my way out of the office, wanting a word because I seemed to be in a funk.

Yeah. A funk. I supposed he could say I was in a funk, if that was what he called being pregnant, in love with a surly Russian who didn’t want to face his demons, and falling apart at the seams because I’d finally allowed myself to feel things again.

You know how it is, he’d said to me that afternoon. Counselors, therapists…we think we’ve got it all figured out. But that’s a load of crap. The truth is, we try to fix other people so we can avoid fixing ourselves. So if you want him to fix himself, maybe you should start by taking a hard look in the mirror.

I already had taken a hard look in the mirror. That was the problem. Now, all I could see was that Dima, Wade, and Gray were all right about me: I was a bitch who had to control everything around me at all times. It was my way or no way at all. Take it or leave it. I never allowed for any gray to fall between my black and white.

I hadn’t always been like this, either. Oh, sure, I’d grown up with a serious stubborn streak and the determination to prove I could do anything I set my mind to, but this went beyond simple confidence. It was arrogance. And it was ugly.

And I didn’t like it.

Jack had left me with a few choice things to ponder after our impromptu counseling session, the most difficult of which had to do with how far back this cocky attitude and need to be in control of every aspect of my life had started. I’d been thinking back the whole time I’d been watching this game, trying to pinpoint a time in my life when my attitude had changed.

The easy answer would be when my accident happened and I’d lost the use of my legs. But honestly, I didn’t think that was it.

The harder I thought, and the deeper I delved into my memories, the more likely it seemed it was a point a few months later. I’d been struggling to come to terms with my new disability. I’d gotten through much of the grief and anger and heartache that comes with such a drastic change in life. And then one day, I was able to stand up.

Which gave me hope.

False hope, much like any I might have harbored about Wade overcoming his PTSD and being able to live a normal, happy life.

False hope. No wonder it was enough to crush me.

But was any hope I might hold out for Dima also of the false variety? Or was I just scared because of so many things in my own past?

I watched him on the TV, stirring my ice cream until it was smooth and silky like soft-serve, trying to get out of my own head long enough that I could see the truth of the situation with him.

He’d been having a good game, but the team as a whole was struggling just like they had been on the rest of the trip. But Dima managed to knock the puck off the stick of a Sharks defenseman and push it out into the neutral zone. It was the end of a long shift, so I expected him to shoot it into the other end of the rink and head off for a change, but he surprised me, chasing after it and skating in on the San Jose goaltender.

He deked a couple of times and shot the puck high, glove-side. It just barely went in.

The camera switched over to a shot of the guys’ mothers up in one of the suites, all of them on their feet and cheering. They zoomed in on one who was so overjoyed that she had tears in her eyes.

“That’s Svetlana Mironov,” the commentator said. “She’s the mother of Nazarenko’s good friend and former teammate, Sergei Mironov, and she tells me she might as well be Nazarenko’s mother, too. And I can tell you from personal experience, she makes excellent bread.”

I chuckled to myself and took another bite of my ice cream, but my doorbell rang before play could start up again.

I glanced up at the clock. It was almost eleven o’clock. Who would be coming over to my house at this time of night?

Then they pounded on my door, so I gave up any thought of pretending I wasn’t home and hoping they’d go away.

I set my bowl on the coffee table and transferred myself into my wheelchair. The bell rang a few more times before I got there and could peek through the peephole. Wade Miller was standing on my stoop, looking like hell.

This couldn’t be good.

At all.

I opened the door, and the scent of whiskey on him nearly drowned me.

“What…” I shook my head, trying to get my brain to catch up to the present. “What are you doing here?”

“I had to see you. Had to try one more time.” His words were slurred. Thick. Full of so much pain they brought tears to my eyes.

“Wade, you’re drunk and you’re not thinking straight.”

“I haven’t thought straight since I met you.” He came through the door, stumbling over the threshold but somehow managing to stay upright.

I backed up so I wouldn’t be in his way if—or maybe when would be more accurate in this situation—he fell. The whole time, my mind was racing a mile a minute. With him being in this condition, I couldn’t let him stay, but I couldn’t let him drive, either. If I tried to take his keys from him, though…

“London,” he said, his voice rough and ragged. His eyes were red, bloodshot.

“How much have you had to drink?” I asked, trying to redirect him from whatever line of thinking had brought him here.

“Enough.” He shrugged. “Lost count after about a dozen shots.”

“Please tell me you did that at home and not at a bar, because if any bartender sold you—”

“They’ll sell me whatever I want. I’m a fucking hero, remember?”

I nodded, trying to figure out what pocket he had his keys in. Probably on the right. “I remember,” I said cautiously, trying to inch my way closer to him at the same time as I knew, without a doubt, that I couldn’t possibly get away with what I was thinking. Not safely. But I had to try, even if it meant getting hurt, because the alternative was Wade getting himself dead, or someone else getting hurt or killed, or God only knew what else could happen, but it wouldn’t be good.

The pocket on his left side looked heavier, though. More weighed down. Like something bigger than his keys was in it.

He wouldn’t be stupid enough to have a handgun sitting in his pocket, would he? Probably not if he were sober. But considering the circumstances, anything was possible.

“I still love you, you know that?” he drawled, trying to lean back against the wall, but he was farther away than he’d realized, and he crashed back into it instead.

I flinched at the racket but did my best to stay in the moment. “I know you do, Wade. I’ve never doubted that.”

“I could be a good father for your baby. Better than that son of a bitch who knocked you up and left you to deal with it on your own, that’s for sure.”

“No one doubts you’d be a good father,” I said, creeping closer. Could I possibly get close enough to remove everything in both his pockets? And even if I could manage it, what the heck was I going to do after that? He might be drunk beyond belief, but he was still stronger and faster than me.

The crowd at the game erupted, and Wade turned his head toward the TV.

“You can’t fucking let him go, can you? You can’t admit that he’s no fucking good for you.”

“There are a lot of things I apparently can’t let go of,” I said. I was close enough I could reach for his pockets. But there was no chance I could empty them both before he stopped me. None at all. I had to make a decision. Keys or gun? Right or left?

“I can’t let go, either,” he said. “Of you. Of the idea of us. You’re good for me, London.”

But he wasn’t good for me, a fact that had never been clearer in my mind than at this very moment. I took my chance and lunged for him, digging my hand into his pocket and curling it around the warm metal barrel. He was too stunned and too drunk to react right away, so I was able to come away with it in my hand before falling out of my chair from leaning too far.

“The fuck are you doing?” he shouted, reaching for me like he was going to either hit me or grab me, I wasn’t sure which.

I turned the Beretta around in my hand until it was pointed directly at him. “Why did you have a gun in your pocket?” I demanded. “Why did you come to my house, drunk off your ass, with a damned gun in your pocket?” Hands shaking and nerves flying through the roof, I checked the chamber. “It’s fucking loaded, Wade. You brought a loaded gun and had it sitting in your pocket. Have you lost your mind?”

“Apparently.” He reached for me again, like he was going to try to wrestle the gun from my hands.

If I let him do that, we were both screwed. Tears burning behind my eyes, I disengaged the safety. “Don’t. I swear, I’ll shoot you.”

He laughed. He actually laughed, like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard, before the laughter turned to tears. Probably because he knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I could ever follow through with that threat. But then he shocked me.

“Do it. Please.” He spread his arms out to the side, giving me a huge target.

“Give me your keys,” I choked out through my own tears. “Give them to me, and we’ll get you some help—”

“There is no help. That’s just it.”

“There is, if you’ll let there be. Come on. Give me your keys.”

“Are you going to shoot me or not?” he shouted.

I blinked back more tears, praying he would toss the keys my way so I could call…someone. I didn’t know who. One of the other vets from the Para-Pythons, probably. Those guys had a much better idea of what Wade was going through than any of the rest of us. And maybe the cops, too. But I had to get those keys from him.

He pushed himself away from the wall, somehow standing upright. “Just shows where I stand with you if you won’t even help me end it when I fucking beg you to.” Then he stepped over me and left.

I turned the safety on again and dropped the Beretta like it was on fire, sobs exploding out of me. The tires of his pickup squealed outside as he drove off, reminding me that he still wasn’t safe, even if he didn’t have his stupid gun. I pulled myself together enough that I could right my chair and climb back into it. Then I wheeled over to my phone and called nine-one-one, praying that the cops could get to him before he hurt himself or someone else.

I WAS STILL shaking when, hours later, my phone rang. I hoped it was Dima. This was the time of night he would call me if he were going to, and hearing his voice right now would soothe me more than anything else I could think of.

Instead, it was the officer who’d come to take a statement from me after Wade had left.

“I’ve got good news and bad news for you, ma’am,” he said.

“I was afraid it would all be bad news.”

“You and me both. The good news is that we found your friend and he’s alive.”

Alive. Which meant he was probably hurt, or else the officer would have said something like he’s fine. “And the bad?”

“He’s in the emergency room right now. Wrecked his pickup about two miles outside of town. Wrapped himself around a tree. No one else was involved.”

I pressed my eyes closed as more tears silently fell. “Is he okay?” I asked, but my voice was so soft I could barely hear myself.

“Too soon to know. It was ugly, ma’am. I won’t lie to you about that. He’s lucky to be alive based on the look of that pickup. They had to use the Jaws of Life to pry him out of there. Is there any family we should contact? His parents or a girlfriend?”

“No, I… I’ll take care of it. At this time of night, it should come from someone they know.”

“If you’re sure,” he said. He spent a few more minutes giving me all the information he could, and we hung up.

I called Wade’s parents and filled them in with as many details as I had. They lived in Alabama, though, and wouldn’t be able to get out to see him until tomorrow at the soonest. I assured them it would be fine, that I’d make sure he wasn’t alone.

But I’d already changed into my pj’s, even though I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be getting to sleep very soon after that, so I had to put my clothes on again. Then I drove up to the hospital and parked outside the emergency room entrance.

When I wheeled in, the woman at the desk directed me to the waiting room. “He’s in surgery right now,” she explained. “I’ll have one of the doctors come out to talk to you as soon as possible so they can explain everything.”

I nodded and fixed myself a cup of coffee before settling in to wait. I wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight, anyway, so I might as well load up on caffeine.

Over the next hour, I texted the rest of the Para-Pythons team to fill them in. A text wouldn’t wake them up if they weren’t already awake like a phone call might, but it would get word to them as soon as they were up in the morning. Not an ideal solution, but it was the best I could come up with at the moment. Then I called Wade’s boss and left him a voice mail. No matter what happened, I didn’t imagine Wade would be going in for work tomorrow morning.

I was still keeping myself busy by letting people know what had happened when the doctor came in and took a seat across from me.

“You’re London?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Before we put him under, Mr. Miller gave me permission to talk to you. He said you’d be here. Probably not anyone else, but he thought you would come.”

Again, I nodded. Anything more than that, and I would probably fall apart. The only thing keeping me together to this point was having something to do.

“He’s out of surgery and in recovery. We’ll let you go in to see him in just a bit, but he’s not in the clear yet. He’s got one heck of a gash on his head, and a concussion from that, but he also had some internal bleeding in his abdomen and around his lungs. We had to go in to make a few repairs. We’ll keep him here for a few days to be sure everything starts healing all right, and he might need some help at home once he’s discharged.”

“His parents are coming from Alabama,” I said. “I’m sure at least one of them will stay.” His mother had been with him for months after he’d come home from Iraq, staying by his side to help him learn to face his new life, even when he’d screamed at her and thrown things across the room in his anger and grief.

I hoped she had the strength to go through that again. This wasn’t the same kind of situation, but in some ways, it might be worse. I just knew that, even though I was here with him now, I couldn’t be the one to hold his hand through the process of healing.

And it was my fault. That was the only thing making sense in my head, now that I was still long enough to allow my thoughts free rein. Wade Miller had gone and tried to kill himself because of me.

I needed to see him.

I needed to get out of there.

I needed Dima.

SVETKA WAS ASLEEP, her head resting on my shoulder, when the team plane touched down in Tulsa in the wee hours of the morning. Taxiing to the gate would take a few minutes, so I left her sleeping and turned on my phone to see if I’d missed any calls or texts.

There was a voice mail from London. I pressed the button to listen to her message and instantly felt more awake the moment I heard her voice, but my mood changed in a heartbeat.

“Hey. I know it’s the middle of the night, and you’re probably still flying home and all, but I just… I need to talk to someone. No, not to someone. To you.” She sniffled, which tore me up inside. “Call me? Whenever you get this. I’ll be up.” She fell silent for a moment, and I thought she must have hung up, but then she said, “I really wish you were here with me right now, Dima.”

Apparently I tensed up while listening to London’s message, because Svetka woke and looked at me with worried eyes. She patted my cheek. “You’re upset, Dmitri.”

“Something’s wrong with London,” I said.

“Ah. Yes. Your girlfriend who isn’t your girlfriend.” She nodded, rubbing her eyes as the plane came to a stop at the gate. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I need to go to her.”

“So we’ll go to her.”

For Svetka, it was as simple as that. Whatever I needed, she would make sure it happened, and she’d be right by my side the whole time. No questions asked.

I didn’t deserve her, but I was damn glad I had her.

Once I’d loaded all of our bags into my car, I called London’s number. She answered before it had finished the first ring.

“Dima? I’m sorry. It’s so late. I shouldn’t have—”

“Where are you?” I cut in. I didn’t want to hear her tell me she shouldn’t have called me, that she should be able to handle whatever had upset her so badly on her own. “Svetka and I will come to you.”

“There’s no need—”

“There’s every need. Where are you?”

She sniffled. Still crying. I wanted to punch whoever or whatever had upset her enough to make her cry. “I’m at the hospital,” she finally said.

“You’re hurt?”

“Not me. It’s Wade.”

Fucking Miller. That was who I’d punch, as soon as I could get my hands on him. I didn’t care if he was already injured. That son of a bitch deserved anything I could deliver and more for hurting London again.

“On our way,” I said. Then I hung up before she could tell me not to come.

When we arrived at the hospital, they directed us to the emergency department waiting room. London wasn’t there, but a nurse said she’d let London know we had arrived. They wouldn’t let us go back to Miller’s room. Only family, they said. I wanted to argue that London wasn’t family to that son of a bitch, or at least I didn’t want her to be any longer if he was going to keep doing things that made her cry, but I bit my tongue.

Ten minutes later, she wheeled in, still in tears.

I was on my feet before the doors closed behind her, crossing over to pick her up. I was equally surprised and relieved when she wrapped her arm around my shoulder and buried her face against my neck.

“It’s all right. I’ve got you,” I said, sitting in the nearest chair and settling her on my lap.

“It’s not all right. Wade got drunk and crashed his truck, and it’s all my fault.”

“Not your fault.” I should know. I’d gotten drunk and crashed my car, and there was no one to blame for it but myself. Miller might have been upset about London, but he was the one who’d put the drink in his mouth, and he was the one who’d gotten behind the wheel.

“But it is. I should’ve taken his keys from him.”

“How you could take his keys?” I asked, shaking my head. She wasn’t making any sense.

“He came over.”

My blood started boiling. “Already drunk?”

She nodded. “He was a mess. Drunk and mad and lonely. He was going on and on about how he still loved me, how we should be together, but I knew he was going off the deep end so I had to do something. I had to get him some help. I could only get the gun from him, though—”

“Gun?” I roared. The son of a bitch had gone over to her house, drunk off his ass, carrying a fucking gun? Around my woman. My fucking baby. If the asshole got out of this hospital, he wouldn’t make it very far. Not if I ever saw his ass again.

“I tried to get him to give me the keys, but he stormed out. I couldn’t make myself shoot him. I couldn’t…”

“He’d be in hospital if you shot him,” I said, as if it would make her feel any better about the situation. I knew it wouldn’t, though. She cared too much. She’d told me that before, but now I was finally starting to understand. And it was because she cared so damned much that she could be such a mess over a man who didn’t deserve her tears.

“I know.”

“You’d hate yourself if you shot him,” I pointed out.

A fresh wave of tears welled in her eyes, and she nodded.

“He did this to himself. It would have happened no matter what you did. You can’t save a man who refuses to be saved.”

She nodded again, snuggling closer to me, and the truth of my words echoed in my head. Did I want to be saved? I wasn’t in the kind of shape Miller was, but I’d never been to war.

Hockey players always talked about our game in those terms—saying a game was a real battle or a playoff series was a war of attrition all the time—but it wasn’t true. What we did wasn’t even in the same realm as what soldiers went through, so I couldn’t put myself in the same boat as Miller.

Yet I had to concede that London was right about me. Svetka had helped me to see it. Every day, I woke up and tried to atone for my past. Maybe it was time for me to look forward instead of back.

Especially now that I had a baby of my own on the way.

Svetka caught my eye over the top of London’s head. She gave me a small smile. Then she dug a shawl out of her bag and settled it around London’s shoulders. London glanced up at Svetka, who patted her soothingly on the back.

“Not your girlfriend?” Svetka said to me in Russian. “I think you’re mistaken.”

I held London close and slid my hand over her hair, urging her to relax into me as much as possible, thoughts zipping around in my mind like a thousand angry bees trapped in a box. But there was only one thought I could hold onto, only one that made sense in the numbing mass of ideas storming through my mind: I couldn’t let her worry that I’d end up in a situation like Miller was in now. I’d already done it once—long before I ever met her, thank goodness—but once was more than enough. I had to do whatever I could to assure her I wasn’t woo-woo bonkers, like Mrs. Petrov had called me.

In the end, that was all London had been asking of me. Maybe she had been too hardheaded to put it in simple terms, and maybe I had been equally hardheaded in digging in my heels and refusing to acknowledge the truth, but that was all she wanted of me.

I’d be more than just an ass if I denied her that much.

The waiting room doors opened, and a couple of the other players from London’s sledge hockey team walked in. I recognized them as some of the other wounded military veterans, like Miller.

They eyed the way I was holding London on my lap, but then they gave me a nod.

“Take her home,” one of them said. “We’ll stay. She needs rest.”

I thought that was an excellent idea. I wanted to take her home. With me. So Svetka and I could take care of her, and so I could make sure she understood I intended to do whatever she needed of me in order for us to have a future together.

Because as far as I saw it, London was my future. And I liked the way that future looked. I liked it a lot.

I DIDN’T HAVE it in me to argue when Dima said he wanted to take me back to his place. I was too tired—both physically and emotionally—and too thankful that he was here with me when I needed him most, to do anything other than nod or shake my head. I even let him carry me out to his car while Svetka pushed my wheelchair, loaded with both her purse and mine.

When we got to his house, he carried me up to his bed and set me there while he went back for my wheelchair and all of the bags he and Svetka had taken with them on the road trip. Apparently they hadn’t even stopped at home before coming to the hospital.

I felt awful that he’d brought her along for all of that. It was the middle of the night after a long trip, so she should be resting instead of trying to take care of me when my friend was in the hospital.

But before Dima had finished bringing everything inside the house, Svetka knocked on the door to Dima’s bedroom and came in carrying two steaming cups of tea in dainty china, complete with matching saucers.

She handed one of the saucers to me and nodded toward the space next to me on the bed, as if asking for permission to sit. I nodded and took a sip as she sat beside me. Instead of drinking her tea, she watched me, a kind smile forming soft lines around her lips and eyes. After a moment, she started speaking to me in Russian. The only thing I picked up was Dmitri, several times, and then later, girlfriend—that one, she said in English. She paused after a bit and took a sip of her tea.

“Thank you,” I murmured. For the tea. For the kindness. For whatever it was she felt the need to tell me, because undoubtedly it was something wise. I only wished I could understand more of it.

Then she patted me on the cheek, got up, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

I wasn’t sure what she’d said, but it felt like she was welcoming me into the family or something equally sweet. Now I wanted to know what Dima had told her about me while they were on the West Coast.

He came into his bedroom a few minutes later, smiling when he saw me sipping from my china cup. “Svetka said she made tea. Help you sleep better.”

I returned the cup to the saucer, staring down at the faint hint of tea leaves falling to the bottom. “She said something. Lots of something. Your name and girlfriend were all I could make out.”

“She wants to know you. Find out if you can cook well enough to make me fat.”

Eek. I pulled a face. Svetka would be out of luck there. Dima was far and away the better cook out of the two of us.

“She might teach you to make bread,” he warned.

“Do you have a fire extinguisher handy?”

He chuckled as he sat next to me, rubbing a hand over my shoulders and upper arms before tugging at the hem of my shirt. “Come on. Need to get you in bed.”

I set my saucer on the nightstand and let him slip my shirt over my head, too tired to resist. In no time, he’d stripped me down to my bra and panties and found one of his soft T-shirts to slip over my head.

He nudged me to lie down, but I shook my head.

“I should go to the bathroom first.”

“Ah. Need your purse.”

“Yes.”

Without asking for an explanation, he bounded down the stairs to get it and brought it back up before I had finished transferring myself over to my chair.

“Thank you,” I murmured. But I felt like I owed him an explanation, especially after the way I’d almost blown up at him over that very thing a while back. Maybe it was because there wasn’t anything sexy about what we were doing now so I felt less embarrassment. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was the aftermath of the adrenaline that had coursed through my body all night finally draining from my system. Maybe it was just the fact that I was coming to accept the fact that I wanted Dima to be in my life long term, and that meant there were things I needed to tell him. Whatever was behind it, I unzipped my purse and reached for my small supply bag.

He watched silently as I took out a catheter and held it up for him to see.

“Since my accident, I haven’t had much control over a lot of things with my body,” I said. “It’s not just my legs. I can’t use the bathroom without help, or if I go too long, I might have accidents.”

“You can’t feel it?” he asked. He didn’t seem disgusted or offended, thank goodness.

I shrugged. “Sometimes I can tell when my bladder is full. Not always. But even then, I can’t always squeeze the right muscles to make it empty. I have to follow a timing program for all of this kind of stuff,” I said, waving my hand in the general direction of my lower abdomen. “I can’t just trust that I’m going to feel a signal when it’s time to go, or else I’m bound to have an accident.”

“Don’t want accidents,” he said, his tone making it sound like he was teasing me.

Teasing was a very good sign. I fought the urge to smile as I wheeled myself to the bathroom.

When I returned, he’d changed out of his clothes, only keeping on a pair of boxer briefs. I parked my chair by the bed and engaged the lock before climbing in. I pulled the blankets over my body and lay on my side, facing the edge of the bed where my chair was.

He turned off the light and lay down behind me. “Can I hold you?” he asked softly.

I nodded, and his strong arm came around my waist, tugging me against him until we were nestled together like spoons.

The heat of his body was like a drug. Before long, I was out, content at least for now to let him soothe my frayed nerves.

I DIDN’T WANT anything to wake me from my pleasant, soft, dreamy state, but morning sickness had other plans. I bolted out of Dima’s embrace and transferred into my chair as fast as I could, barely getting to the bathroom in time.

He and Svetka were both waiting for me on the other side of the bathroom door when I came out, concerned looks on their faces.

I blushed, because I wasn’t sure if Svetka knew I was pregnant, and this might not be how Dima would have wanted to tell her. At least she didn’t speak much English. I hoped she wouldn’t understand, so he could tell her whatever he wanted her to know.

“Just morning sickness,” I explained.

Dima nodded but still looked worried. “The baby is okay?”

“Fine,” I assured him, but Svetka’s reaction stole all my attention.

“Baby?” she repeated. Then her eyes went wide, and a huge smile lit up all her features. She started rattling off all sorts of things in Russian that I couldn’t possibly follow, pushing past me into the bathroom. She wet a cloth and wrung it out, then used it to pat my face and the back of my neck, still nattering on excitedly. Here and there, I caught baby and girlfriend as she patted my cheeks. Then she stood right in front of me, staring straight into my eyes, and said, “Zhena.”

I raised a brow in Dima’s direction, but he responded to Svetka in Russian instead of translating what she’d said to me. After a bit of back-and-forth, she rolled her eyes and headed downstairs.

“She’s going to bake bread,” he said as she disappeared into the kitchen.

“Care to explain all that?”

“She knows you’re pregnant,” he said dryly.

“I caught on to that much, funnily enough.” When he didn’t elaborate, I asked, “What does zhena mean? Because something tells me it has nothing to do with baking bread.”

He gave me a long, serious look. “Means wife.”

“Oh.” The weight of the word felt heavy. That was not what I’d been expecting.

“Told her not to worry about us. We’re working it out.”

I nodded, but then I wondered what he meant about us working it out. Was that what he wanted? Marriage? Right now, I just wanted to know that we could function together for a period of time without trying to kill each other. I needed a lot more stability, on both our parts, before I could begin to entertain the idea of something as permanent and life-changing as getting married, even if it was something I wanted with every fiber of my being, now that the thought had entered my mind.

“Need to talk to you,” he said, his expression still serious.

Talking wouldn’t be a bad thing. We could definitely stand to do more of that. “Okay.”

He went back into his bedroom and waited for me to join him, then closed the door behind us. Svetka wouldn’t understand whatever we were talking about anyway, so that seemed like an unnecessary step, unless he was worried that the tone of our conversation would upset her.

And that made me nervous.

Last night had been the first time we’d been together for any significant period of time without poking or prodding at each other. The first time we hadn’t immediately started arguing. The first time there had been any sense of intimacy not directly tied to sex.

It had been everything I needed. Far more than I’d expected. I still wasn’t sure how to process it, but I wasn’t ready for that moment of peace between us to come to an end.

Dima took a seat on the end of the bed, and I stopped my chair a few feet away, facing him.

“You want…” He tucked his hair behind his ear, buying time. “You want me to get help. I don’t want group meetings, though. Too many people. Too much talking. All English. Not for me.”

“You don’t have to do support groups,” I hurried to say. “You don’t have to do—”

He cut me off before I could say anything, holding up his hand and shaking his head. “I want to get help. Don’t want to end up like Miller.”

“You’re not like Wade. You could never be like him.”

“I am. Did the same thing. Got drunk. Wrecked car. Spent weeks in the hospital, and Sergei spent longer.” He held my gaze, steady and unwavering. “Might not have been to war. Might not have been blown up, but I’m a lot like him. I don’t want you to worry about me how you worry about him, though. Need you to know I’m going to be here for you. For our baby. So I want to get help. For guilt. Need to let go, like you said.”

I was so deeply in shock all I could do was blink for fear of falling out of my chair, and I already ached in a few places from when I’d done that last night. No need for a repeat performance so soon.

“Okay,” I finally said. “There are a lot of counselors out there. I can set you up with one, or maybe get a recommendation—”

“Want you to come with me,” he cut in.

“Oh.” Again, that was all I could say. He was leaving me speechless. I didn’t know what had happened to bring on these sudden changes, but I couldn’t say I minded in the least.

“You can talk about Miller. Or maybe your accident. I can talk about guilt and grief. We can talk about us. About the baby. How we fight so much.”

“Couples counseling,” I said.

He nodded.

“You’re…sure you want this?”

“I want to be with you. I want a family. With you.”

Once he’d said the words aloud, I knew I wanted the exact same thing. “Okay,” I said. “So we’ll get into couples counseling together.”

“Good.” He got up and took a shirt and a pair of sweatpants out of a drawer, pulling them on. “You made Svetka happy. She’s going to be a Grandmama. No matter what flaws you have, for Svetka, you’re perfect. Can do no wrong. She won’t hear a bad word about you.”

I put on the same clothes I’d been wearing last night and let him carry me downstairs to sit with Svetka. She gave me tea and made me breakfast, letting me sit in the kitchen with her while she made bread. And all the while she kept patting my cheeks and saying countless things I couldn’t understand, dotted by Dmitri and baby and girlfriend.

And zhena. She said that one more than the rest combined, leaving no doubt in my mind where she stood on the matter.

I knew where Dima stood, too. Now I just wished I could figure out my own mind. Although, to be fair, I was getting there.

OVER THE LAST couple of weeks, London and I had been spending more and more time together. We’d started seeing a counselor. It helped that I was with London, since the focus wasn’t fully on me, but now the counselor, Steven, wanted to start seeing us separately sometimes, while we continued to come to the joint visits.

I didn’t hate the man, exactly. Steven had a very different counseling style than London did, not constantly getting in my face and pushing all my buttons until I exploded. He just asked questions and let me take the time I needed to answer them. Sometimes, I could answer in a minute. Other times, I needed to spend a week or more thinking about what Steven had asked before I could settle on a response that seemed as honest as I could be.

London, too, seemed to be opening up more than before. She told us how sometimes she still woke up in the mornings and forgot that her legs wouldn’t work right, and she’d get mad at herself when she would try to get out of bed and end up falling. Or how every now and then, she’d feel a sharp, prickling sensation in one of her legs, and she’d start to hope that maybe the doctors were wrong. Maybe she would be able to walk again someday if she just kept trying hard enough. That little bit of hope seemed like a cruel trick that the universe was playing on her.

Going to couples counseling wasn’t as awful as I’d imagined it would be, all told. I wasn’t sure I was any closer to letting go of all the guilt I felt over the car wreck, but London and I were definitely getting to know each other better, and not just sexually. We were talking about the future, too—for us, and for the baby.

She’d agreed that she would keep the baby, regardless of what happened between us or what came from our counseling sessions. We’d also agreed that I would have a part in our baby’s life no matter what came of our personal relationship. That put my Svetka’s mind at ease. Now she was at home in Russia, busy making baby blankets and lamenting the fact that she couldn’t find any American garage sales in Siberia.

Outside of our counseling sessions, I’d started taking London on dates. Real dates where we went out in public together, not just nights when I would go over to her house and do whatever it took to convince her to let me in her bed.

One night, I took her to watch a ballet recital that some of Viktoriya’s students were putting on. Another night, we went to dinner with Hunter and Tallie at some upscale restaurant downtown while they left Harper with a babysitter. Yet another time, I suggested that Hunter and Tallie should go out alone and leave the baby with me and London. It was great for all of us, but maybe not as a date for me and London. Admittedly, I’d spent an awful lot of time that night doting on Harper, who loved touching my new shorter beard and giggling uncontrollably. So of course, I’d spent hours rubbing my face against her hands, her feet, her belly, her cheeks…anything to make her laugh. At least London had laughed, too. She didn’t seem to mind that I’d focused more on the little girl than I had on her that night. She’d said it was good practice for our baby.

A couple of times, she came with me to watch the Thunderbirds home games. I made sure to set her up with Tallie and Viktoriya—two people she’d at least met before, and whom I felt could be trusted to look after her. Some of the guys’ wives and girlfriends could be more than just bitchy any time a new girl came into the fold, and I didn’t want London to have to face that alone. Tallie could be counted on to put them in their place if they said a fucking thing they shouldn’t around my girl.

I liked having her there, even if we still lost more than we won. That was how it went for an expansion team that had only existed for a couple of seasons. We’d known essentially since November that we had no shot at getting into the playoffs, so now we were just trying to avoid finishing last in the league. Then after the games she came to, I took her back to her place and charmed my way into her bed.

My favorite of all the dates I’d taken her on was wasn’t really a date at all. We went to her first ultrasound together in late February.

“This is earlier than I usually do an ultrasound for my patients,” the doctor said, taking a seat across from the two of us. London was already in a hospital gown and ready for the test, but apparently we were going to talk about things first. “The fact is that your spinal cord injury puts you in a higher-risk category, so we’re going to be watching you closely every step of the way.”

“What higher risk?” I asked. I was so excited and nervous and ready to puke up my guts about the whole process that I couldn’t sit still. Instead, I was up and pacing around the room, wishing the doctor could magically answer all of the questions—even the ones I didn’t yet know I had—via telepathy.

That didn’t even come close to happening.

“As with all SCI patients, there’s a risk of infection to the urinary tract, which is increased during pregnancy. We’ll be doing routine screenings quite a bit more often than you’re used to,” the doctor said, smiling at London, who nodded like she’d been expecting that. “You’ll need to be more diligent than ever about making sure you empty your bladder as fully as possible and doing it on a schedule.”

“How often?” I asked. The nurse had offered me a note pad and pen earlier, so I picked them up and started scribbling notes. They came out in an odd combination of Cyrillic and English that no one but me would be able to understand.

“For now, every two to three hours. But the later you get into the pregnancy, the more often it will be necessary. The weight of the baby will push on the bladder, so you might find that you need to empty it every hour. But there are other possible complications we need to keep in mind, as well.”

Other complications, I wrote, then paused with my pen poised, waiting for the doctor to go on.

“As you gain weight, you’re going to be at an increased risk of decubitis ulcers—”

“What’s that?” I interrupted. I didn’t have the first clue how to spell it, even.

London rolled her eyes. “I’m sure she was about to explain it, if you’d just be patient.”

“Bed sores,” the doctor said, winking in London’s direction. “They’re fairly common in anyone who’s already bedridden or who spends much of their time in a wheelchair, but the increased weight adds to the risk and likelihood of them forming.” Then she looked at me. “This is something you can help with. You can check the places London can’t see to look for the sores. We’ll give you some pictures you can compare, so you know what you’re looking for. And I’m sure London is already well aware of the need for eating a proper diet and drinking plenty of fluids in order to prevent them. Moving around as much as possible will also help in terms of prevention.”

Water and nutrition, I noted on my list.

“So getting out of my chair to have sex every once in a while is a good thing, then,” London said, and my head popped up from my notetaking.

The doctor grinned. “Sex is good for you. Sure.”

I wrote SEX and underlined it four or five times, not that I’d need the reminder. Sex was always on my mind these days.

“It’s helpful that you’ve been active playing sled hockey,” the doctor said. “You’ve got good upper body strength?”

“Better than any woman I know,” London said, and I had to agree. The way she moved herself around with nothing but her arms continued to astound me.

“You’re going to need it as you gain weight. There may come a point in your pregnancy that you weigh too much to transfer yourself easily from your chair to the car or the bed…so she might need your help,” the doctor said, turning her attention to me.

“I can carry.”

“I don’t want you to carry her. Not if you can avoid it. Picking her up and moving her from her chair to the bed or from the car to her wheelchair is the limit of how much you should do, if at all possible. We don’t want to risk you falling on top of her while you’re carrying her.”

Good point. I jotted it down in my notes.

“But you’ll likely need to get some modifications made to your equipment to accommodate your weight and greater size,” the doctor said to London. “You’ll need additional padding in your chair. You might even need a chair that is a bit wider than this one is. I’d recommend renting it so you don’t have to spend too much money on it up front, especially since you’re not likely to need it after you’ve lost your baby weight.”

London nodded, like none of this was news to her. It probably wasn’t. She was much more up to speed about the kinds of problems expected with paraplegia, in general, than I was, since she’d been living with it for several years already. I knew quite a bit about the problems an amputee faced, as I’d been by Sergei’s side through his recovery, but paralysis was a different beast entirely.

The doctor inched forward on her wheeled stool, resting her arms on her knees. “At a later appointment, we’ll talk a lot about the ways you can tell if you’re experiencing contractions, as most women with spinal cord injuries aren’t able to feel them in the way a non-injured woman would. And there’s a strong chance that we might have you go ahead and check in at the hospital about two to three weeks before your due date, just so we can be sure you’ve got other safeguards in place.”

“Two to three weeks?” London said, shaking her head. “Nope, not gonna happen. I can’t handle that. I can’t—”

“You can if you need to,” I interrupted. “For baby. Not just about you.”

She glared at me, giving me a look that clearly said we’d be having a discussion about this later. I was fine with that. If she wanted to argue, no problem. But there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d budge on something that was meant not only for her protection but our baby’s, as well.

“What about labor and delivery?” London asked, turning her attention back to the doctor. “I read something about the possibility of forceps?”

“What’s forceps?” I asked.

“It’s a tool used to reach inside and pull the baby out if the mother is unable to push enough on her own,” the doctor explained. “And it’s a possibility, depending on how things progress. There are other methods we can use, as well, and we can discuss the possibility of caesarian. No matter what we do, we’ll be keeping a focus on both the mother’s safety and the baby’s.”

“And what about his?” London asked, winking in my direction. “What are we going to do to protect his delicate sensibilities?”

I grumbled something unkind in Russian, but the doctor laughed and picked up an instrument that looked nothing like what I’d been expecting and a blanket to drape over London’s lap. “I’m sure we can arrange for something.” She wheeled over closer and urged London to lie down on her back. “In the meantime, why don’t we show him what his baby looks like? Come on over here, Dad, and take a seat.”

“Papa,” I corrected her. “I’m Papa.”

I didn’t realize until right at that moment how much I wanted to be like my own papa. I doubted I could live up to the example he’d made for me, but I would damned well try.

LONDON DIDN’T GO to see Wade for almost two weeks after leaving him at the hospital that night he’d wrecked his truck. When she decided to go after her ultrasound, I offered to accompany her. She shook her head and reached for the gun that had remained on her TV cabinet that whole time. She slipped it into her purse after carefully checking to be sure the safety was on. “This is something I have to do on my own.”

I didn’t like it, but I didn’t force the issue.

When she was done, she came over to my house, let me carry her up to my bed, and asked me to take charge again. It was in those nights when she gave herself over to me completely that we experienced the most intense connection of all. Somehow, when she was able to give up all power over what might happen, myriad emotions flowed freely between us. There was plenty of lust, to be sure, but also fear and anger and sadness, joy and utter exhilaration.

And love.

That night, when I had her wrists handcuffed to the bed frame and an angled pillow under her hips, giving me free access to lick her pussy to my heart’s content, she cried out all sorts of things. “Let me touch you, you son of a bitch.” Then, “I can’t. I’m too sensitive. I can’t come again.” But the best moment of all was when she cried out, “Damn you for making me fall in love with you,” and her pussy clenched around my fingers with countless spasms.

I nearly came right at that moment from hearing her say the words, even though she wasn’t touching me in any way. Because if she loved me, then I had a much better shot at convincing her to marry me than I would if she only loved fighting with me.

I’d fallen in love with her somewhere along the line. I couldn’t be exactly sure of when or where it had happened. I only knew that when I woke up with her in my arms, I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be, and when I was on the road with the team, I was more miserable than I could remember being in my life. And that was saying something, since I’d known more than my fair share of misery over the years.

As far as I was concerned, everything in our relationship was going as well as could be expected.

Today had me nervous, though. It was a Saturday afternoon in the middle of March, and instead of me taking her out on a date, she had invited me to spend the day with her brother and his family. Her parents had come for a visit, and it was going to be a full house.

I wanted to make the right impression on her family, especially her brother and father because I knew their opinions meant the world to her, and because I really wanted for us to be a couple. I needed it, so as far as I was concerned, I needed the approval of these two men in her life, especially since I doubted I’d ever earn Wade Miller’s approval. I didn’t want us to be together just for now, either, but forever. The more time I spent with London, the more I was sure that we were right for each other, and it wasn’t just because she was having my baby. We could be explosive, but only because we were two passionate people who didn’t always see eye to eye.

We agreed when it mattered, which was the important thing.

That said, I wasn’t sure how these men in her family would react to me being in her life, let alone at a family get-together. I was the son of a bitch who’d gotten London pregnant during a snowstorm. Not exactly putting my best foot forward with a papa and an older brother, I wouldn’t imagine.

I picked her up at eleven. We’d decided to take my car since she still wasn’t overly comfortable with the different modification system in her new car, and she wouldn’t let me pay for the same system she’d had before. I had every intention of wearing her down on that score before too much longer, using the argument that she was carrying my baby. I needed to be sure they were both safe, and that would be easier to achieve if she had equipment she was comfortable operating. I bent down and kissed her when she opened the door, lingering over the taste of her, but not so long that her neighbors would get annoyed with our public display if they were watching out their windows.

“You planning to kiss me like that in front of my daddy?” she asked.

“Does he have gun?”

She laughed and wheeled over to get into my car.

It was a nice day, so two of the kids were playing outside in the front when we pulled up and parked in the driveway. One of them—a little girl with brown curls—raced to open London’s door before I’d even cut the engine.

“Can we pop a wheelie?” she demanded, full of exuberance that made me like her immediately. Maybe becoming a father was making me softer around kids. That and spending as much time with Harper as I had in recent months. I’d never been around children much before her, so I’d always been a bit standoffish, not knowing what to do with them.

“Let me get my chair, and we’ll try to do a few before your mommy sees and tries to stop us,” London said, reaching into the back to start the assembly process.

I stayed out of their way, standing off to the side, as London put the girl on her lap and rolled down into the street. She picked up some speed and then shifted her weight backward, bringing the front wheels up off the ground. The little girl giggled. It sounded a lot like the way Harper giggled when I tickled her toes with my beard.

I was so engrossed with watching them that I didn’t notice when a man walked up to stand beside me. “It’s good to hear them laughing, isn’t it?” he said, and I tried not to jump and show my surprise.

“Yes, it’s good,” I said slowly.

He held out a hand. “David Hawke. I’m London’s father.

“Dmitri Nazarenko,” I said, shaking his hand.

He had a grip much like my father’s had been, strong and weathered, like a man achieved from a life full of hard work. He gave me a thorough once-over, but then he smiled at me. “Come on inside and meet the rest of the family. London’ll bring Erin in once they’ve had a bit more fun.”

Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared.

SIERRA HAD BEEN giving me the stink eye since the moment I’d come through the door with Erin on my lap. She hated the fact that her kids adored me. She hated that I could do things with those kids that she couldn’t.

Even worse than the way she was treating me, though, I’d noticed that she was giving Dima the same look. It was like she was bound and determined to hate him, simply because he had anything to do with me. Maybe she thought me bringing home a big, Russian hockey player would steal even more of her thunder. I didn’t know what it was about me that got her goat, but it made me mad.

I could deal with her dislike and jealousy of me, but it left me feeling stabby when it came to Dima. She had my hackles up, and I doubted I’d calm down about it any time soon. Not the best way to spend a family day, particularly when it was Dima’s introduction to them. These were the people he would have to deal with for the rest of his life, and I’d hoped they could make a good impression on him. Sierra was doing her best to accomplish the opposite.

At the moment, Dima was holding Baby Finn, who was just as entranced with Dima’s beard as Harper always was. Finn kept reaching up and patting Dima on the chin or the cheek, and Dima would wiggle his face until Finn started giggling.

“He’s good with babies,” Dad said, sitting down next to me and passing over one of the two huge glasses of sweet iced tea he’d just brought in from the kitchen.

I winked. “You have no idea. One of his teammates has a little girl who had colic. They couldn’t ever get her to calm down unless he came over. He’d rock her and tell her stories in Russian, and she would rip out his beard hairs one at a time, and she’d finally calm down. Tallie and Tori call him the baby whisperer.”

“Might come in handy.”

“Yeah.” I leaned back, a warmth spreading throughout my body and culminating in a smile. “It definitely could.”

Sierra was watching the two of them like a hawk, though, never letting Dima out of her sight.

He picked Finn up in the air and let him drop a few inches, catching him and holding him close. Finn cackled harder than ever.

“That’s enough,” Sierra said, stomping over and snatching her son out of Dima’s arms. “He’s a baby. You can’t toss him around like that.”

Never mind the fact that I’d seen Gray do that very thing with all four of his kids when they were Finn’s age, countless times. What did she think Dima was going to do? Drop the baby? I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking, but I’d never been more upset with her than I was in this moment.

Dima started apologizing even though he hadn’t done a darned thing wrong, but Finn had started crying after being pulled away from him so suddenly, so Sierra stalked off without even listening.

“Why does she have to be so blatantly rude to him?” I hissed at my father.

“I don’t think she knows any other way of being. It’s just something we’re going to have to deal with because your brother married her.”

“Well, we didn’t marry her. I don’t see why we should have to face the consequences of his bad taste.”

“That’s how it goes. You don’t get to choose your in-laws.”

I let out a hmphing sound at that. If Dima and I got married, I wouldn’t have any in-laws, unless you counted Svetka and Sergei—and I did—but they were fabulous. They could very well factor into my decision if he asked me to marry him, not that I was going to tell him that. It would play in his favor, anyway, so there was no need to let him get worked up over it.

“Your mother tells me you had an ultrasound last week?” Dad said, leaning in and effectively redirecting my thoughts away from Sierra and her poor treatment of the man I had come to love.

“Is that a hint that you want to see it?”

“Grandpas always want to see the ultrasound. Get used to that.”

I dug into my purse and found the envelope holding the printout. Dima had one, too, that he’d taken up to practice the next day and shown to all his teammates who would humor him, but I hadn’t shown many people yet. Mainly just Terri and a couple of the counselors at work. For the most part, I was keeping it to myself. I wouldn’t keep it from my father, though. Especially not when he’d flat out asked to see it.

I passed it over to him, and he slipped the picture out of the envelope, holding it up so the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows would light it up for him.

Mom looked up from across the room. “Is that the ultrasound?” Then she and Gray came over to take a look, too. Within moments, the three older kids had all crowded around to see the black-and-white fuzzy image. Everyone had gathered around my dad except for Dima, Finn, and Sierra. Dima winked at me, watching the way the family crowded together. But then Sierra walked in from the kitchen with Finn still fussing in her arms. He reached for Dima as soon as he saw him, but she wouldn’t let him go.

“Oh, good grief,” she said. “It’s just an ultrasound. You can’t even tell what sex the baby’s going to be yet. You can’t tell anything yet. It’s nothing to get excited about. Just one more way London is trying to get all the attention on her.”

I was about to tell her to shut up and act like a decent human being, even though she clearly wasn’t one, and it looked like Gray, for once, was gearing up to do the same thing, but Dima beat us both to the punch.

“Attention? London doesn’t want attention. This is family.” He stood there looking at her like she was a crazy woman—or woo-woo bonkers, as he’d taken to saying lately. Considering what family meant to him, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind of the weight his words carried.

Dad reached over and squeezed my hand. When I looked at him, he winked at me, nodding. That was his sign of approval. He liked Dima. Something in my chest swelled.

“Oh, please,” Sierra said, rolling her eyes. “You clearly don’t know her very well yet, so if you’re smart, you’ll get out while you still can. Sadly, I’ve already married in and have to deal with her all the time. And now she’s going to shove her kid to the front of the line so it can get more attention than mine do, too. She treats the rest of us like we’re second-class citizens in this family.”

“Only one treats people like they’re not good enough is you,” Dima said, getting all growly and fierce, the way he did when the two of us argued over something.

It was probably bad that the only thought in my mind while he fought with her was that he was even hotter when he was mad and I wanted to take him home so he could look at me in private with those angry eyes.

Sierra scoffed, gearing up for another round, but Gray cut her off before she could wind up.

“Would you just let it go already?” he shouted. “I’ve been telling you for years that you’re projecting your own issues onto her unfairly. But it’s never been more apparent than now.”

“My own issues?”

“It’s the same as you’ve always been with your own sister. You can’t stand that she came along after you and was the baby, so she always got more attention than you did. Stop beating London up because you feel inadequate. Just let it go.”

Erin broke out into song, channeling her inner Elsa and breaking through the tension. Mom laughed, and Kennedy joined in with Erin. Sierra stomped off down the hall, carrying Finn with her. The door to her bedroom slammed a few moments later.

“Sorry,” Gray said. “She’s just getting worse with it. I don’t know…” He shook his head, at a loss.

“Why she thinks London wants attention?” Dima asked, clearly flabbergasted.

“Because she gets attention,” Dad explained. “She always has. When she was younger, she got noticed because she was at the top of her sport. Then she got attention because of her accident, and we all had to make adjustments because she was in a wheelchair.”

Dima gave a disgusted look. “She’s paralyzed. Not trying to get attention. Doesn’t want the attention she gets just because of wheelchair.”

“Which any reasonable person understands,” Dad agreed.

“Still,” I said. “You might want to take her advice and get out while you can.” I winked to let him know I was teasing.

“No chance.”

“No?”

“No more running away,” he said.

“Good,” Dad said. “Because if you don’t marry my little girl, I’m going to come after you with a shotgun.”

“Daddy,” I argued in a bit of a whine at the same time as Dima said, “Want to marry her. Don’t know if she’ll marry me.”

I blinked a couple of times, trying to get my brain to catch up with everything that had just happened.

“Why wouldn’t she marry you?” Gray asked.

“Ask London.”

Everyone turned expectant eyes on me.

“I…” needed a minute to breathe. “Are you seriously asking me right now?” I demanded.

“You want to argue instead?” he asked in a teasing tone.

“Well, you haven’t even told me you loved me!” I pointed out.

He let out a string of Russian curse words. At least he’d said them in Russian and not English, because I had no doubt my nieces and nephews would memorize and repeat everything he said. They could be ornery like that. “Maybe you’re woo-woo bonkers,” he said. “Been in love with you a long time. What you need me to say?”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “That’s good enough. I just needed to hear the words.”

“I love you. Okay? So will you marry me?”

“You sure you want to marry into this family?” I asked, half-teasing, half-serious. “You’ll be stuck with Sierra.”

“What about Miller?” he asked.

“If he ever gets his act together, you might end up stuck with him, too.” But I honestly didn’t know if Wade would straighten himself out. I’d told him the ball was in his court when I’d gone to see him, finally. Either he could accept the help that was available to him and be my friend—and only my friend—or he could move on with his life without me in it. But no matter what he felt about Dima, I made sure he understood he didn’t have any say in that matter. I hadn’t heard from Wade since I’d left his house, and I honestly wasn’t sure if I would ever hear from him again. I wanted to be there for him, but he was putting more than just his own life at risk, so even though it broke my heart, I had to make a break in order to protect myself.

Dima scowled at my response.

“I wasn’t kidding about the shotgun,” Dad warned.

“Be nice to have a family,” Dima conceded.

In the end, that was all the answer I needed. I blinked again, this time to hold back my tears. “Yeah, I guess I will then.”

“Good.” Dima winked. “Now let me fix your car.”

I rolled my eyes, but eventually I relented. Compromise, I reminded myself, required both of us to make concessions. It couldn’t be all on his end. I didn’t want it to be all on his end, even, because making changes to give Dima what he needed actually gave me what I needed.

Love. Passion. Companionship. A healthy argument every now and then.

He made me want to be a better version of myself. And together, we were definitely better than we were apart.

“You can upgrade the hand controls on my car on one condition,” I said, thinking fast.

He raised a skeptical brow. “What condition?”

“Move in with me.” It was something I’d been thinking about more and more often over the last few weeks. Most nights, he came to stay with me anyway. It was easier to be at my house than at his since mine had been designed with wheelchairs in mind. He’d started leaving a few things there. First a toothbrush and some body soap and shampoo that didn’t smell girly, as he put it. Then I’d shifted things around in my closets and drawers, giving him some space in both.

Dima grinned—something that was starting to look more natural and less forced on him. “Thought you’d never ask.”

“I STILL CAN’T get over you not leaving with a different girl on your arm every night,” Drew said, tossing a roll of stick tape in my direction from across the locker room. “Don’t know what to make of you anymore.”

“Dima’s a fucking beardless, monogamous wonder these days,” Razor added. “Tori can’t contain herself with calling the son of a bitch a good man.”

“Yeah, but she thinks you’re a good man, too, so clearly she has impaired judgment,” Zee pointed out as he walked past us, and half the guys in the room snickered.

I had no intention of getting into an argument with any of them right now. Arguing with London was a hell of a lot more fun, especially because we typically ended our arguments with a feisty bout of makeup sex. I just put my head down and taped up my stick, getting it ready for tonight’s game.

It was the last home game of the season. As expected, we weren’t moving on to the playoffs, much to the disappointment of our delusional team owners. They seemed to be under the impression that a year or two was long enough for us to suddenly come to prominence within the league, which was as ridiculous a thought as any I’d heard. Chances were high that they’d end up selling the team and getting out of the hockey world long before the Thunderbirds would be truly competitive.

“Leave the man alone,” Hunter said, putting on his pads. “If you ask my little girl, she’d tell you he’s a good man, too.”

“Your little girl wouldn’t tell me anything other than goo goo ga ga,” Drew said.

“Whatever. Babies and animals can sense these things, though, and my baby loves the guy.”

“You gonna let Harper run off and marry him?” Drew asked.

“Last I knew, she wasn’t running anywhere,” Huggy Bear put in.

“I think his fiancée might have something to say about that.” Hunter threw a water bottle at Drew’s head.

Drew ducked just in time to avoid being hit with it.

It was going to be a long summer, and I would definitely miss the way the guys always gave each other shit all the time. I’d be plenty busy, though, getting ready for the arrival of my own baby.

London’s due date was in late September, around the time everyone would be coming back to get ready for training camp and the new season, and we were planning to have a small wedding here, with Svetka and Sergei flying in to join us, next month. Even Wade Miller intended to come. I just hoped he didn’t do anything that would force me to throat-punch him at my wedding. I wasn’t convinced he’d be on his best behavior, but London and I were all about compromising these days. I had to agree to let him come in order to get her to agree to marry me before the baby was born. I wanted the baby to have my name, and for there to be no question at all about who the father was.

Spurs came into the locker room with Mr. and Mrs. Jernigan at his side, and the boys all got quiet. Mr. and Mrs. J were the aforementioned delusional team owners, so we all tried to be on our best behavior around them. Mrs. J was constantly trying to get us to clean up our acts by instituting a swear jar and other ridiculous things of that variety. None of her efforts had panned out yet, but that didn’t stop her from trying.

“We just wanted to thank you all for your effort this season and wish you well on your time off,” Mr. Jernigan said. He was a preacher at a massive local church.

His wife caught my eye. She tensed up and inched closer to his side. She wasn’t my biggest fan, to say the least. Mainly because I refused to watch my language around her. I tended to throw a bunch of money in her swear jar at the beginning of each month, to cover my bases. It was easier to pay than to watch my mouth. Most of the other guys followed my example, too, so she always acted like I was a hooligan.

Mr. Jernigan put his hand around her waist and drew her in against his side, protectively, not that I had any intention of doing anything worse than cursing in front of her. “If it’s all right with you boys, we’d like to say a prayer over you while we’ve got you all together.”

A few of the guys groaned and mumbled quietly to themselves. Nate Cochran quickly bowed his head and silently prayed along with the man, but there wasn’t much the guys who’d prefer to keep their prayers to themselves could do but let the man do as he would.

The preacher kept it short and sweet, at least, asking God to watch over and protect us all, and a bunch of other bullshit. Whatever. He finished, and they left the locker room so we could get on with closing out our season.

Spurs took a few minutes to go over our game plan for the day. We were playing the Blues tonight, who needed to win in regulation in order to clinch the top seed in the Central Division and guarantee themselves home ice advantage throughout the playoffs. We wanted to prevent that from happening. That was our goal for the night.

Finally, we headed out to the ice and went through the singing of the national anthem and all of the other pregame rituals.

The Blues came out with a relentless forecheck, which wasn’t a surprise. Their captain, David Backes, was playing like a beast, hitting every guy in our home turquoise-and-terra-cotta uniforms he could and crashing Hunter’s crease at every possible opportunity.

A little over halfway through the first period, Backes lined up Gustav Gunnarsson and boarded him. Zee immediately went over to drop his gloves with Backes, but the refs stopped him before he could. At least they sent Backes off for a boarding minor, though, putting us on the power play.

Goose skated off the ice holding his shoulder funny. The trainers took a quick look at him and hurried him down the tunnel to evaluate his injury.

“Dima, get out there and plant your ass in front of the net,” Spurs told me. “Look for a tip-in.”

I didn’t often get a chance to take the ice on the power play these days, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to pass it up. I skated out with Zee and Drew, filling in for Goose on the top power play unit.

Zee won the face-off, and we all skated into position. I did what my coach told me to do—I parked myself in front of the crease, not budging no matter how many times the Blues’ goaltender whacked me in the backs of the knees and their defensemen cross-checked me in the kidneys to get me to move. They weren’t as stubborn as I was.

The rest of our guys passed the puck around, trying to draw the Blues’ penalty killers out of position so we could get a good shot off. Finally, it all came together.

Razor shot the puck from the point. I got my stick on it just enough to tip it.

The goaltender scrambled and somehow blocked it with his left pad.

Drew raced in to gobble up the rebound, snapping off a wrist shot that hit the goalie right in the belly. It fell to the ice right in front of me, and I whacked at it a couple of times, to no avail. Then it was a full-on goal-mouth scramble, with every guy on the ice crashing in on the crease. We were trying to poke the puck in; they were trying to clear it out. Sticks and skates and bodies went flying.

The whistle finally blew as the refs lost sight of the puck.

But then something else was flying.

Blood.

I looked over and saw Drew holding a hand to his neck, which was gushing. Must have been a skate blade.

I froze. Panicked. Didn’t know what to do.

“Fuck,” Zee shouted. He tossed off his gloves, bent over Drew, and tried to cover the gaping wound.

“No.” Drew scrambled away as well as he could, with a wild look in his eye. “Seriously, Zee. Don’t touch me right now.”

“I’m not going to sit here and let you fucking bleed to death,” Zee said, following him. “Someone get the fucking trainers over here.”

I started to do that, glad to have some direction, when Drew shouted, “I said don’t touch me. I’m HIV positive,” right as Zee finally got his hand on the gash in Drew’s neck.

His blood kept spurting up through Zee’s fingers, staining everything in sight.

A few of the Blues players raced to the benches to help the trainers and EMTs out. They quickly got Drew loaded onto a gurney, with Zee still holding the wound.

Drew lost consciousness as they carted him off the ice, leaving a trail of blood behind.

Catherine Gayle is a USA Today bestselling author of Regency-set historical romance and contemporary hockey romance. 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, at The Sin Bin, 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.

GHOST DANCE is Book 3 in the Tulsa Thunderbirds hockey romance series, a spin-off from USA Today bestselling author Catherine Gayle’s Portland Storm series.

BURY THE HATCHET

SMOKE SIGNALS

GHOST DANCE

RITES OF PASSAGE

RITES OF PASSAGE will release on November 10, 2016.

Want to join in the discussion? Join Cat’s House, a reader group on Facebook for Catherine’s books.

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

About this Book

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

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Epilogue

Roster

Other Catherine Gayle Books

About the Author