On the Fly (34 page)

I watched Tuck and Maddie while Dad
read. Maddie had joined Dana on a throw blanket, sitting up
straight and completely engrossed in the story. Tuck was on
Rachel’s lap, his legs sprawled out and his head angled back
against her shoulder. Even if you weren’t hearing the story, you
would be able to tell what was going on by the play of expressions
going across his face.

Looking at them like that felt right,
as though they were meant to be part of my family. The twinkling
white lights from the tree and the flickering flames in the
fireplace were bouncing over them all, giving them this ethereal
glow that made me wish the moment would never end. I wanted
this—exactly this—to be my future.

It wasn’t long before Tuck was yawning
and stretching his arms overhead, making a wide arc with them.
Maddie rubbed her eyes. Once Dad finished the story, Mom got the
two kids to help her fix up the plate of decorated cookies and a
glass of milk for Santa. When it was all situated next to the tree,
Rachel took them both upstairs and got them to bed.

While Rachel was upstairs, Dad and Zee
went back out to my SUV to get her Santa gifts for the kids. I
would have helped them get everything done, but Dana pushed me back
onto the couch and Mom brought over an ice pack for my
ankle.

“
You haven’t been taking
good care of it tonight,” Mom said.

She was right, I hadn’t, so I sat
there with my foot up while Dad and Zee put everything under the
tree for the kids to find in the morning.

“
You know,” Mom said after
they’d finished, “I’m about as tired as Tuck. I think we’ll head up
to bed.” She gave Dad a look, and he nodded. They’d just flown in
from the east coast, so it didn’t surprise me that they were
exhausted. She smiled at me. “We’ll see you in the
morning.”

Rachel passed them on the stairs on
her way down. She sat beside me on the sofa. I put my arm around
her waist, tugging her slightly closer to me. There hadn’t been too
many opportunities to be close to her since we’d gotten here—not
many chances to touch her.

She sank back against the cushions,
relaxing into me.

“
How early do you think
they’ll be up in the morning?” Dana asked.

I laughed. “If they’re anything at all
like we were, four or five a.m. sounds about right.”

“
They might give us until
dawn if we’re lucky,” Rachel said. “Maddie will try to rein Tuck in
at least a little bit, since we’re here and not at home, but
there’s only so long he can be held back.”

“
Right.” Zee stood in front
of the fireplace. The fire had nearly burned itself out. He
stretched his arms up above his head, cracking his back, almost
mimicking Tuck’s actions from a little while ago. “So that means we
should expect a four o’clock wake-up call.”

Rachel nodded. “Yeah. Probably
so.”

“
We should get to bed, too,
then,” Dana said. She yawned as she got up from the recliner, but
it wasn’t even remotely convincing. “Ready?” she asked
Zee.

She was making sure Rachel and I got
some time alone, even though I’d done the complete opposite last
season when she and Zee wanted time together. I’d been a total ass,
following them both around and making an utter nuisance of myself.
She ought to be doing the same thing as payback now. They both
should be. I deserved that and then some.

But Zee took her hand, and they headed
for the stairs. “Turn the lights out when you two go to bed, will
you, Soupy?” Zee called out over his shoulders.

“
Yeah. I’ll get
them.”

Once they’d disappeared up the stairs,
Rachel turned to me. “It’s not even eight thirty.”

“
Nope.” I brushed her hair
away from her face, letting my fingertips whisper over the skin of
her cheek.

“
They’re not really going
to bed at this hour, are they?”

“
Not a clue.” I didn’t
really want to think about the two of them right now. I’d rather
just enjoy the fact that they’d left us alone for a little while.
“Was this okay? Mom didn’t give the kids too many cookies, did
she?”

“
Maybe one or two too many.
It could have been a lot worse.”

“
It will be tomorrow. She’s
probably going to send them home with a bucket full of
cookies.”

Rachel smiled, and I had a hard time
not kissing her. This was nice, though—sitting and talking, just
being together.

“
I like your parents,” she
said. “I watched y’all all night, the way you are together. Eric,
too. It’s just easy. Even when you’re teasing or giving someone a
hard time, I see how much you love each other.”

“
That’s how families are
supposed to be. That’s how it is with you and Tuck and Maddie,
too.”

She moved in closer to me, putting her
arms around my waist and resting her head on my shoulder. “I wanted
it to be different for them than it was for me. I made an effort to
be like—” Rachel cut herself off and shook her head. “Never mind.
It’s stupid.”

“
Tell me,” I said. “I bet
it’s not stupid.” Nothing she said ever seemed stupid to
me.

“
I used to watch a lot of
old reruns when they were babies,” she finally said. “Family
sit-coms, mainly, like
Full House
and
Growing Pains
and
The Cosby
Show
. I let myself believe that was what
families were really like, or at least that was what they
should
be like, and so I
tried to make sure we were like them—as much as we could
be.”

I tugged her closer to me.
“You think my family is like
The Cosby
Show
?”

“
Maybe more like
Growing Pains
.” Her hand
touched my thigh.

That was all it took for me to
harden.

“
There’s a little Mike
Seaver in you, I think. Or maybe Zack Morris.”

“
Saved By the
Bell
?”

“
Yeah. At least a
little.”

“
A little,” I agreed.
“Maybe a lot.”

“
Brenden?”

It was getting more and more difficult
for me to think, because she was tracing a lazy pattern over my leg
with her fingers. “Yeah?”

“
What happens if you get
sent back to Seattle? Or traded? Between us, I mean.”

At least now I knew what she’d wanted
to talk about earlier. I’d been trying not to think about that
aspect of it, mainly because it felt like a kick to the balls to
think about being forced to leave her and the kids, even
temporarily. “Most of the time, when a guy gets traded in the
middle of the season and he’s got kids, he goes to wherever he’s
sent and his wife stays behind with the kids until the off-season.
It’s too hard to deal with changing schools in the middle of the
school year and everything else involved with moving a
family.”

“
But that’s most guys,” she
said. “And that’s when it’s his wife and kids.” Her fingers stopped
dancing over my thigh, and she looked down at them. “My kids are
getting attached to you. I didn’t intend to let anyone get this
close. They’ve been hurt enough already. If you leave—”

I put my hand down over hers, folding
my fingers between hers. “Just your kids?” I didn’t believe for a
second that she wasn’t just as attached as they were—as I was. She
never would have opened up to me, otherwise. She never would have
let me get this close. “I’m attached to them, too,” I said. “And to
you. I meant what I said to Tuck last night. I have no intention of
hurting any of you. If I have to leave, whether it’s going back to
Seattle or somewhere else, it’ll only be temporary. Once the season
is over and the kids are out of school, we’ll figure out what the
next step is and we’ll take it together. That’s what I want, at
least.”

I held my breath, waiting for her to
respond. I needed her to want the same thing. I needed it a hell of
a lot more than I needed air.

“
I want that, too.” She
looked up, craning her head back so I could see all her fairy-dust
freckles and the deep, mossy-green of her eyes. “For some reason, I
hadn’t thought about the possibility that you could be traded or
sent to the AHL until now. I should have since I’m working for Jim
and I have to help him with all those transactions, but I hadn’t.
Not until I heard how worried you were about it earlier, and then I
got scared.”

I was scared, too, now that she was
forcing me to think about all the things I’d been avoiding. “I
don’t want you to be scared, but things might not always be like
what we’ve had here.” I kissed her on the forehead. “I’ve moved
around a lot in my career. I’ve been traded a few times, and I’ve
spent more time in the minors than I have in the NHL. I almost
never have a contract that runs longer than a year. I’m not like
Zee. He got drafted by the Storm, and he’ll probably finish out his
career here in five or ten more years. Things haven’t come so
easily for me.”

“
If it was easy, it
wouldn’t be worth having,” she said.

Mom had told me that more times than I
could count, especially in the last decade or so. I’d always
thought she was telling me that just so I would work hard, so I
wouldn’t give up on my dreams just because they didn’t come true
overnight. But maybe there was something to it, after all. Because
working my way to the NHL had been anything but easy, and staying
in the NHL sometimes felt even harder than getting here had, but I
finally felt like I was accomplishing something. At least most of
the time.

“
Do you really believe
that?” I asked.

“
I believe it with all my
heart. Being a single mom, having my kids when I was a
teenager—that was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and it seems
like it only keeps getting harder. But I wouldn’t trade it for
anything.”

“
I wouldn’t trade you for
anything.” That was probably the cheesiest thing to ever come out
of my mouth, but I didn’t care. It was the truth. I couldn’t think
of anything that would make me happier or that could be more
perfect than talking with Rachel and holding her in my arms. The
lights on the Christmas tree made her hair look like fire. I kissed
her cheek, trailing a series of kisses all along the path of
freckles like I’d dreamed of doing almost since the moment we’d
met.

Her breath caught, and she moved
closer, until she was up on her knees and her chest was pressed
against me so tight that each of the rapid beats of her heart
pulsed into me. Shaking, she put both hands on my shoulders,
steadying herself as I kissed every freckle and every bare inch of
skin I could find.

“
I love you,” I
said.

Her eyes fluttered open, those
see-through lashes tickling my cheeks as she blinked repeatedly in
surprise. Hell, I surprised myself by saying it. The thought hadn’t
crossed my mind even once that I could recall, and yet it was the
absolute truth.

“
I do,” I said before
kissing her. I sucked her lower lip into my mouth and nibbled on it
just a little. She tasted like hot chocolate and sugar cookies. For
the first time I could remember in a very long time, I wanted more
chocolate because it would mean more of her. “I love you. I love
Tuck and Maddie, too. I love you so much that the idea of leaving
you behind for a little while if I have to go somewhere else feels
like a knife in my gut. I can’t even let myself think about what
I’d do if you won’t come with me to whatever next year
holds.”

Rachel stared at me, her breaths
erratic and her heart hammering away. Silent.

I shouldn’t have blurted it out like
that. I should have given her more time to adjust to it all. Things
had progressed between us so fast it left me reeling, and she had
to deal with the added emotion of having her kids
involved.

“
I’m sorry,” I
said.

“
No. Don’t apologize.” She
shook her head, and the ghost of a smile passed over her lips at
the same time as tears made her eyes shiny. “I really care for you,
too, but it scares me. I don’t know for sure if it’s love, but I
don’t want it to be because I was so stupid before and I still
don’t know if I should trust my own judgment. I’m just terrified to
make the same mistake again.”

For now, that would have to be enough.
I was pretty sure she was falling in love with me. It was more than
just caring for me, but I wouldn’t rush her. Not on something as
important as that. “Okay.” Her fear was something I could
absolutely live with, something I could work every day to relieve.
“For what it’s worth, I think you have excellent
judgment.”

She was laughing when she lowered her
lips to mine.

That was when Dad cleared his throat
from the top of the stairs.

Rachel pulled away from me, her blush
as intense as I’d ever seen it. She hid her face in the space where
my neck and shoulder met.

“
Sorry,” Dad said. “Don’t
mind me. Your mother remembered we’d left the milk and cookies
under the tree, and someone needs to make them disappear.” He took
his time coming down the stairs. He took even longer eating the
cookies and drinking the milk, making sure he only left a few
crumbs on the saucer and a sip or two in the glass.