Delay of Game (11 page)

“Ten games is automatic.”

“But they know you were just—”

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

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

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

“Why?”

“Why what?”

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

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

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

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

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

My hands shook as I tried to unlock the door.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t have to be anywhere.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who are you talking about?”

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

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

Cam was throwing a huge wrench into that.

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

“Cam?”

He turned off the water and looked up.

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

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

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

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

“I wouldn’t tell you if there was.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay. No wine tonight, then.”

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

I nodded, and he headed out the door.

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

“I don’t know,” I hedged.

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

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

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

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

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

For months and months.

Damn it.

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

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

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

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