Delay of Game (28 page)

“I like him, too,” I said cautiously, unsure where this was going.

She walked alongside me up the stairs in case I had any problems along the way. “My parents died a few years ago. Would you mind if I adopted him? Even if it’s just for however long we’re all here.”

“Oh.” I’d never imagined anyone else would want that sort of relationship with my father. I’d been an only child, and I hadn’t even had to share him with my mother for over half my life. The idea of sharing him with Noelle, though, didn’t sting like it might have. She was too sweet for me to begrudge her something like that. And for that matter, I would never begrudge my father having someone like her in his life. It was like a giant lightbulb followed her around everywhere she went. I shook my head. “I wouldn’t mind. Not at all.”

 “Really? You’re sure?” Noelle turned huge eyes on me, bright with tears despite the smile lighting up her face.

“I’m sure.”

Before I could prepare myself, she wrapped both her arms around me and drew me in for a hug—tight enough that I had to suck in a breath from the pain. Only it wasn’t just the pain that stole my ability to breathe. It was also the fact that she was hugging me at all. I had never really been the touchy-feely sort. At least outside of the bedroom. I kind of liked the fact that she was hugging me, though.

“Oh!” She let me go almost as quickly as she’d grabbed me. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “If you adopt Daddy, then you’ll be like a sister or something.” Which was a weird thought. Not a bad thought. Just weird.

You would have thought I’d hung the moon based on the smile she gave me then. Granted, that just seemed to go with the territory where Noelle was concerned. I made a mental note to try to get used to the sensation, to the idea that she could think I was awesome. It looked like I was going to be experiencing a lot more of it in the near future. And maybe in the far future, too. Who could know?

The biggest adjustment in all of this, though, wasn’t having the girls around. It was having Daddy home all the time—and Cam there with us as often as he was gone. Sometimes it felt like he was there more than he was away.

Surprisingly, it hadn’t been as weird or awkward to have both Daddy and Cam staying in the same house as I’d expected it to be. There was definitely a surprising dynamic between the three of us, though. Cam and I were both trying to take care of Daddy, and Cam and Daddy were both trying to take care of me, and yet neither Daddy nor I were really up to doing much of anything to help the other, and so Cam ended up doing almost everything.

The only times he complained were when we essentially got in his way and made whatever he was trying to do more difficult for him. Even then, his complaints were quiet, and not really worded like complaints.
You know, if you’d go back and sit down in your recliner, Scotty, I could fix her some ginger tea and bring you some water
,
or,
I’m not sure your dad will appreciate it if you puke on his bed while you try to help him get up in the morning
. If it had been either me or Daddy and not Cam, we would undoubtedly be saying something like,
Get the fuck out of the way and let me do this, you idiot
. He was a lot nicer than we were. That just proved he didn’t belong in my life, didn’t it?

We could probably make things a lot easier for him if the two of us would stop being so stubborn, trying to do more than we should, but I doubted that would happen any time soon. Maybe
Obstinate
should have been our last name instead of Thomas. It had a certain ring to it, at least.

But it was those moments when the three of us were just hanging out together that felt the…well, the oddest. Odd because they were comfortable.

The nights when Cam was home with us, in particular, were just nothing at all like what I’d been dreading. He would go into the kitchen and make something for the three of us to eat. Cam was a surprisingly good cook. Not a gourmet chef or anything like that, but he could make tasty meals that fit the doctors’ recommendations for Daddy’s diet, and he didn’t burn the house down in the process. It shouldn’t really be surprising that he could cook. He’d been living on his own for years now, and most guys figured it out eventually. And it shouldn’t be surprising that he knew how to make relatively healthful meals because that was what athletes needed to eat to stay in peak physical condition. Nevertheless, color me surprised. I just hadn’t been expecting it, I guess.

After we ate, he would sit with us in the living room so Daddy could watch the game footage that he’d recorded. Cam sat with me on the sofa and let me lean into him, and Daddy never said a word about how Cam kept his arms wrapped around my waist, or how he planted little kisses on my head, or how he twined his fingers with mine and whispered horribly inappropriate and delicious things in my ear so quietly that Daddy couldn’t hear. Or at least I prayed he couldn’t hear.

I can’t wait until I can taste you again
, he’d said one time, and I’d had a hard time keeping my face from flooding with heat since Daddy was in his recliner only a few feet away. Cam had put both his hands over the backs of mine, wrapping our doubled-up arms around my waist and tugging me closer to him.
Next time, I’ll taste all of you, including that sweet pussy. I’ll make you come so hard you’ll forget your name.

I nearly forgot my name just from listening to his promises.

Another time, he’d leaned his head down so his lips brushed against my ear, on the side opposite of where Daddy was sitting, and whispered,
Your breasts drive me insane in the best possible way when you’re sleeping. They’re these perfect pillows, and I can’t stop thinking about getting my hands on them.

When he said things like that to me, those tingles he had always been able to cause in me took over, racing up and down my spine and leaving goose bumps in their wake. It made my breath turn shallow and my pulse sprint like a racehorse, and all I could think about was getting him alone.

None of that could have prepared me for what he said to me Wednesday afternoon before he left for Game Four, though.

The three of us were hanging out in the living room, Daddy on his recliner and Cam and I on the couch, watching NHL Network. The commentators were analyzing everything that had happened in Game Three and giving their opinions on what both the Storm and the Canucks needed to do in order to win the game tonight. I wasn’t paying much attention to the TV, though. All of my energy was wrapped up in sensation. Cam had me leaning against his chest like he did so often, our thighs melded together, and his arm was around my back so that his hand was able to rest on my lower ribs. He wasn’t putting any pressure on them, of course. He was always careful to avoid anything that might cause me pain. But the way he was holding me allowed him access to my side, which he teased with his fingertips. They danced along my skin, tickling me and leaving prickles of awareness in their wakes.

I was just starting to squirm from the sensation when he brushed my ear with his lips again and whispered, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Then a giant ball of confusion welled up in my chest and traveled up to my throat, where it lodged itself, and I could barely catch my breath for the frustrated tears welling in my eyes.

Love
? When had this become about love? I’d never factored that into the equation, and the thought of solving for
Y
only filled my head with
X
’s and
O
’s.

SOUPY AND BABS
dropped Rachel and her kids off to stay with Sara and Scotty during the game. The guys came in with them. Babs lived in the same building as them, right across the hall, actually, and the two of them were going to take me with them tonight so we could head out to the Moda Center together for Game Four.

I chuckled at the way Tuck walked in like he owned the place, dropping his Lightning McQueen backpack just inside the door and heading straight for Scotty and his recliner. Without even a moment’s hesitation, he climbed right up onto Scotty’s lap.

“Elbows, Tuck!” Rachel said, but not in time to stop her son from digging his elbows into Scotty.

Scotty winced a little, but he quickly masked his discomfort.

“Sorry,” Tuck said, blushing until his face was as red as his hair. “Mr. Coach? Mommy said I’m in charge of you tonight.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. She said we have to make you feel better, and I always feel better when I cuddle with Mommy, so I’m gonna cuddle you all night. ’Kay?”

Pinning Scotty to his chair with a little boy seemed like an excellent way to keep the man from trying to overdo it. I had to admire Rachel’s style. She winked at me while she was helping Maddie get her backpack off. “I have to use the tools in my tool belt,” she said, laughing.

I hummed in assent. “I think in this case, Tuck is more like a weapon than a tool.”

She didn’t deny it.

Babs and Soupy carried some bags with groceries into the kitchen and set to work putting things in the fridge or out on the counter. Rachel got her daughter situated at the dining room table with some books.

I turned around to find Sara coming down the hall from the bathroom. She looked a little green, as though she was nauseated again. In the last couple of days, morning sickness had been hitting her at random times, not just in the morning anymore, but she was starting to move around on her own a little better despite the pain of her injuries, just like Scotty was. I crossed over to her, putting one hand on the small of her back.

“Are you sick?”

“Just nausea. Nothing’s coming up. It just feels like it might.” She leaned into me a little, laying her cheek against my chest.

I’d been worried that she was going to freak out on me after what I’d said to her earlier. I hadn’t thought it through. The words just came out before I could think about them and what kind of reaction they might provoke. And really, who tells someone they
might
be falling in love with them? What a crock of shit. Adding
might
into the mix only proved that I was a fucking coward because if I’d had any balls at all, I would have just flat out told her I loved her. But because I’d thought she would flip when I told her that, I’d softened the blow a little—only not really.

But even though she had definitely been uncomfortable hearing what I’d told her—there was no way for her to hide how she’d tensed up in my arms or the fact that she hadn’t responded at all, whether to laugh in my face or tell me to shove it or to say she might be falling in love with me, too—she was still letting me hold her, still curling in toward me, still seeking my comfort when she didn’t feel well.

She just wasn’t ready to love me. Or at least not to admit that she might. I knew that. She’d built too many protections around herself over the years, kept pushing men too far away, so it was going to be a long, slow process getting through all of that. I knew it. I was okay with it.

I put my other arm around her and kissed the top of her head. The peppermint scent of her shampoo tickled my nostrils. “Get Rachel to make you some ginger tea,” I said. It had been helping more than anything else Sara had tried. “And rest. I’ll see you after the game.”

“All I do is rest,” she grumbled into my chest, her nose brushing against the lapel of my suit. Then she tipped her head up to pout at me.

I couldn’t resist. She looked so fucking adorable like that, I had to bend my head down and steal a real kiss, stopping it a hell of a lot sooner than I would have liked because Scotty cleared his throat in warning behind me. “Good,” I said. “That’s the plan.”

Once Babs and I were able to pry Soupy away from Rachel, we left. Babs seemed anxious tonight, which wasn’t normal for him. He bopped his legs around in the backseat of Soupy’s SUV, kicking into the back of my seat every now and then.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I groused after the fourth time he kicked my seat.

“Nothing.”

Soupy scowled into his rearview mirror and then glanced over at me. “He’s been like this for three days. Every time I’ve seen him, he’s fucking dancing around like a ticking bomb that’s about to go off.”

Now was not the time for Babs or any of the boys to give in to nerves. We were up two games to one in the series. We needed everyone to dig in and keep doing what they’d been doing, not fall apart.

No matter how hard Soupy and I tried to get him to tell us what was up on the way into the arena, though, he just bit his lip and refused to say a fucking word.

That was not a good sign.

Once all the pre-game stuff was finished, I headed up to the press box with the rest of the guys who’d been scratched for tonight. Jens and Monty were both in the lineup again, so Cody “Harry” Williams—a big redheaded kid who looked like he could be related to Rachel if not for the fact that he was twice as tall as her—and Radek Cernak—a Czech call-up from the AHL who knew a grand fucking total of three words of English—were the ones joining me, Luddy, and Chunk tonight.

Early on in the game, it was pretty clear that Vancouver wasn’t happy with the way they’d played the last couple of games. Unlike the first game in the series, where they’d dictated the style of play almost entirely, in games two and three our boys had imposed their will upon the other team. Not so tonight.