Home Ice (14 page)

Something to talk to Paige about, but preferably not when we were surrounded by half my team and their families.

She broke away from me and angled her head toward a quiet corner. I took her hand and followed her, trusting that 501 and Sophie’s rig would be enough to take care of her, and that the other girls were fine with the rest of the teens.

When she came to a stop, she stretched up on her toes and kissed me.

I laughed out loud. “I didn’t realize it was kissy-kissy time.”

“I think it’s always kissy-kissy time when I’m around you. I think about you all the time. About how you don’t just care about me but you care about my girls, too. About how you take time out of your life to be with all of us. You’re like a dream, Mattias, except you’re real.”

“You’re my dream,” I said, looking down into her rich, hazel eyes. She still had tears in them, but there was something else, too. Something deeper. It was as though I could see all the way to her heart just by looking in those eyes, and that heart was smiling back at me.

She bit down on her lip. “I just… I wasn’t prepared for this.”

“Prepared for what?”

“For falling in love with you. But I have.”

She could have blown me over with that, because I was in love with her, too. And her girls. And her life. The more time I spent in her house, surrounded by her family and the way they loved and supported each other, the more it felt like exactly where I needed to be. I’d thought it would take more to convince her we were meant to be together. I’d expected to have to work harder to find a way to fit within her life, and to convince her to let me in since she had to think about her daughters as well as herself.

But she loved me.

“That’s good,” I finally said, unable to wipe the goofy grin off my face.

“Why is that good?”

“Because I think I’ve been in love with you since not long after I met you. And I know I love your daughters.”

“I know you love them. I think that’s why I finally stopped fighting it. Because you’re so good to them, and you’re so devoted to Sophie. You work harder to make her life better than even her own father.” Paige’s tears started up again, so I drew her into my arms and held her to me. “He’s a good man, but he just doesn’t take the time to be there for her. But you do. All the time. I’ve spent so many years feeling like her sisters and I were the only ones fighting for her, and now it feels like a huge weight has been lifted.”

If I wasn’t careful, she was going to bring out some emotion in me that I’d kept locked away for a very long time. The last thing I needed was for my players to see me cry, so I put that under lock and key. It was one thing to laugh and smile in front of them; it was something else to let them see me being so vulnerable.

Once I thought I had it under control, I said, “I’ve got big shoulders, Paige. I can carry a lot.”

“Mom!” Sophie screamed. My blood turned to ice, and we both spun around in panic.

But it was a good scream. A happy scream.

Because she was skating all by herself. Yes, she still had the rig holding her up. Yes, she was moving slowly and awkwardly, and if she didn’t have the rig, she’d be on the ice in a heartbeat. But she was bending her knees and digging into the ice, and she was propelling herself forward, chasing 501, who was a few strides ahead of her.

“Oh,” Paige said, and her hand shot up to cover her mouth as a fresh flood of tears streamed down her cheeks. “My baby’s skating.”

She wasn’t the only one crying, either. As soon as I felt a hot tear blaze a trail down my own cheek, I brushed it away with the back of my hand. So maybe it wasn’t the end of the world if my players saw me cry. Not if it was for the right reason, and this was definitely the right reason.

“WHY ISN’T BERGY
here yet?” Sophie asked. “He’s late.”

“He’s not late,” I replied, glancing at the clock on the wall. In the months he’d been in our lives, he had never once been late, and I doubted that would change today. He still had ten minutes before he was due to arrive.

“But he’s not early, Mom,” my youngest complained, and I laughed.

“Just because he’s not early, that doesn’t make him late,” Evie pointed out.

“It does for Beefy,” Izzy said.

I was inclined to side with Izzy on this one, not that I would say so in front of the girls. If Mattias said he would be somewhere at eight, you could count on him to show up at 7:45. It was just part of his makeup. So, like Sophie and Izzy, I wondered where he was and what had held him up.

Zoe tossed a throw pillow at her sister’s head, her face bright red from the effort to stop a laugh combined with her continued embarrassment. “Stop calling him that.”

The girls were on Spring Break, so I had taken the week off. It was the last week of the regular season, and the Storm were finishing things out at home, so Mattias was in Portland for now. He’d promised to pick us up after he got done with practice because he had a surprise for Sophie.

A surprise he hadn’t even told me about, no less.

Before an argument broke out, the doorbell rang, and all four girls raced to open it.

“Bergy!” Sophie squealed as I rounded the corner and saw him for myself.

He had Sophie wrapped up with one arm and was holding another bouquet of yellow tulips with the other hand, and he winked at me over the top of them. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I just remembered I hadn’t brought your mom flowers since we got back in town.”

The older girls giggled and took care of getting the tulips in water while Mattias and I gathered up purses and Sophie’s backpack.

“You don’t have to bring me flowers every time you come back from a trip, you know.”

“I know,” he said. “I like bringing you flowers, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you light up with the prettiest smile when you see them. Almost as bright as Sophie’s.”

I laughed. “Well, that’s saying something.”

Within a few minutes, we were all in his SUV and he was backing out of my driveway.

“You still won’t tell us where we’re going, Bergy?” Izzy asked.

“I guess I could tell you now.” He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret. “I’m taking you to an ice skating rink where a kids’ hockey team practices.”

“A hockey team?” Sophie repeated, her excitement creeping into her tone.

“Yeah. For kids your age, Sophie.”

I caught his eye and shook my head. She’d been skating with her rig every day for weeks, as often as either Mattias or I could get her to the Storm’s practice facility. And she was definitely making improvements, but that didn’t mean she was ready for something more. She still needed the supportive structure to hold her up. Her core wasn’t strong enough for her to balance on skate blades.

“I’m going to play hockey?” She was bouncing so hard in her seat that I could hear it.

“We’re going to talk to the coach and find out if you can play next year,” he said.

“But
you’re
the coach, Bergy.”

“Not for this team, I’m not. Coach Carlson is a special coach, and he works with extra special kids.”

Special kids. Meaning kids with special needs. I caught the hidden meaning even if Sophie might not have, and I decided to reserve judgment until I could see what this program was all about for myself.

And once I saw what they were all about and heard the coach tell Sophie all the things she would have to do between now and next October if she was going to be able to play with the rest of the special needs kids? I nearly started crying.

Coach Carlson let Sophie put on all her gear, including strapping into her rig, and get out on the ice with the rest of his team. He gave her a hockey stick, and the rest of us watched from the stands as one of the other kids taught her how to shoot the puck toward the net.

“She’s really going to play hockey, isn’t she?” Zoe said, sniffling.

Mattias nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”

I was too overwrought to do anything but take his hand and squeeze.

For the next half hour, we sat there and witnessed Sophie beginning to realize her dream. Once the kids started to leave the ice, Mattias climbed down the bleachers and helped the coach get Sophie out of her gear.

“Mom?” Zoe asked once he was well out of our hearing.

“Hmm?”

“I think he’s a keeper.”

I laughed, still sniffling. “Oh, you do, huh?”

“Yeah,” Izzy said.

“Definitely,” Evie added. “He’s not the kind of guy you let get away from you. So you need to do something about that.”

I got the distinct sense that my girls were ganging up on me, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. “Do something about it like what?”

Izzy shrugged, and Evie said, “I don’t know.”

But Zoe didn’t brush it off. “Something like asking him to come live with us.”

“What?” I didn’t even attempt to hide my shock. That wasn’t something we’d ever talked about, whether my girls were around or not. “Why do you think he should come live with us?”

“Because you love him. So do we.” Zoe gave me a look that clearly said I was being slow. “It just makes sense.”

“What makes sense?” Mattias asked when he and Sophie clomped back up the stairs.

“You coming to live with us,” Izzy answered.

He nodded, looking at her before turning his gaze to each of my girls in turn. Then he settled that gaze on me, and I nearly melted into the aluminum bench I was sitting on. “Is everyone on board with that?” he asked cautiously.

“Yes!”

“Absolutely.”

“Mm-hmm.”

My daughters were going to be the death of me.

Sophie was still holding his hand, and she tugged on it until he looked down at her. “Will you come live with us?” she asked.

He squeezed her hand and winked before looking over at me. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on what your mom has to say about that.”

“Oh, please, Mom!” she said. “I need Bergy to help me skate. I got to get a lot better by next year so I can play hockey.”

Her sisters chimed in with a chorus of “Please,” not that it would have made a difference. I already knew what I wanted, and I already knew what I thought would be best for not only myself but also my daughters.

I narrowed my eyes up at him. “I say,” I said slowly, “that if Beefy wants to come live with us, he can. But only if he keeps bringing me flowers every now and then. And maybe if we can arrange to meet his sister sometime this summer.”

He laughed. “It’s a deal.”

And we all knew how Mattias felt about deals. Once he made a deal with someone, he followed through on his end of it.