Delay of Game (8 page)

“Sit down.” Jonny disappeared through an open doorway into the kitchen, and his dog followed. I guess that command was meant for me, then. I thought about following him, but sitting seemed like a better idea. My knee was definitely achy—the steps leading to his porch proved that, even if nothing else had—so I dropped down onto the couch without any further prodding.

I heard the back door open and close. He must have let the dog out. A minute later, Jonny came back into the living room with a reusable gel ice pack and a kitchen towel. He lifted my right leg and put a pillow on the coffee table before setting my ankle on it. He put the towel over my knee and then the ice pack on top of it. “Keep that in place. I’ll be right back.”

“Thank you, Jonny,” I managed to get out before he started up the stairs.

“Cam,” he said over his shoulder without slowing down.

I didn’t want to call him Cam. My dad called him Jonny. All of his teammates called him Jonny. Dana and Laura and all of the other players’ wives and girlfriends I hung out with called him Jonny. Sticking with the nickname the guys had given him reminded me of the fact that he was a hockey player. He was one of Daddy’s players. He was completely off-limits and I wasn’t interested, even if he was nice to me when I didn’t deserve it, and even though he looked like a mix of the best parts of all of the Avengers rolled up into one.

I hadn’t settled my thoughts yet by the time he returned carrying a T-shirt.

He handed it to me. “You can stay in the guest room down here tonight. Bathroom’s on the left.” Without pausing, he went back into the kitchen and opened the back door again. The dog rushed in and leaped up onto my lap as if there was nowhere else it would rather be. When Jonny came back out, he had two bottles of water in his hands. “Sorry. That’s Buster. He can be overly friendly. You gonna throw this on me if I give it to you?”

I was pretty sure he was teasing me, not upset, but it was hard to tell. His expression never seemed to change.

I shook my head, petting the dog to see if I could calm him down. “I won’t throw it.”

He tossed one of the bottles toward me, and I caught it one-handed. He’d unscrewed the lid on his and guzzled about half of it before I had even loosened the cap on mine.

“Why are you doing this, Jonny? Why are you looking after me like this?”

“Cam,” he repeated. He took another long swallow, leaning back against the doorway and staring at me with those unwavering eyes. He shrugged. “It’s just the right thing to do. Good night, Sara.” He crossed over and took the dog off my lap. “He can’t hear, but he’ll want to come with me, and he’s too excited about you being here to pay attention.”

Then he headed up the stairs again, his almost empty bottle of water in his hand. Once he set Buster on the floor, the dog chased him up the stairs, passing him at about the halfway point.

I didn’t know what to make of all this. Big, tough Cam Johnson, a guy no one in the NHL wanted to mess with, had a deaf Pomeranian and was trying to take care of me.

I DON’T KNOW
what possessed me to bring Sara to my place, but it was way too late to have second thoughts. That didn’t stop the second thoughts from coming, though—or third thoughts, fourth, seventeenth.

But whether I was rethinking it or not, she was downstairs in the guest bedroom I always kept ready for my mom.

Sara was a mess over her dad. She had likely at least bruised her knee from practically falling out of my truck. She needed someone to look after her right now, and that responsibility was falling on my shoulders.

The remembered sensation of holding her so close to me, though—the thought that she was so near—was going to keep me up all night. Add that to all the shit that had gone down in the game and the immediate aftermath, and I might not sleep for a week.

I knew what Jim Sutter would tell me if he were here right now. He’d say I needed to get some rest so I’d be ready for tomorrow’s phone call with the League. But nothing I would say to them would matter, so what was the point of worrying over it? I had Sara to worry about. And her father.

At least Buster was sleeping. It had taken him a little while to settle down after we got back, especially because I’d brought Sara with me. Buster loved people, and he loved being the center of attention. When a stranger came around, he would do anything and everything in his power to get them to love on him, and that always brought out his excitable nature. Now, though, he was curled up by my side and kicking his legs in that deep doggy-dream way they had, as though he was chasing a cat or something. He would run off and chase anything if I’d let him, but since he couldn’t hear me when I called, I had to keep him on a leash most of the time.

That was the main reason I had this house. I didn’t need this much space just for me. But it had a fenced backyard, so he could go run around all he wanted. I’d put in a doggy door in the kitchen so he could go out whenever he wanted, too. He used it when I was gone, but for whatever reason, when I was home he would always wait for me to open the main door. I think he just liked to make a running leap on his way out, which wasn’t as easy to do if he had to nudge the flap out of the way with his head. When the team was in town, I took him to the park as often as I could, and my dog sitter did the same when we were on the road. I really wished it were safe to take him to one of the no-leash parks, though, and trust that he would be okay and come back to me.

Maybe someday.

I was lying there on my back, listening to Buster breathe in his almost-snoring sort of way, when a knock on my bedroom door startled me. I must have jumped because Buster jolted awake, barking like a loon.

I grabbed him so maybe he would calm down and stumbled out of bed. Buster squirmed in my arms, but his barks turned to excited whimpers.

“Jonny?” Sara’s voice was muffled through the closed door. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”

I whipped the door open. “It’s okay. What’s wrong?”

The moonlight shining through my window hit her in all the right ways, and my T-shirt didn’t hide any of her curves. I wished I’d given her a robe or something more substantial because looking at her like that, her legs stretching down for days, had me thinking about taking care of her in ways I had no business even thinking about.

She licked her lips, but I wished she hadn’t. I couldn’t look anywhere else. Even though I was standing there in a wifebeater and shorts, Sara wasn’t looking at anything but Buster. Damn dog, stealing all the attention again. I wanted to feel her eyes on me the way mine were on her.

“I just— I can’t sleep. I can’t stop worrying about Daddy, and I don’t know if maybe I should go back to the hospital anyway, even though he said—”

“You can’t help him there right now,” I cut in. Buster barked, as though he was agreeing with me, and his damn fuzzy tail was whipping back and forth against my arm, creating more breeze than a ceiling fan on high. “He’s got a whole hospital full of doctors and nurses who are trained to help him with whatever he needs.”

“I know that.” She put out a hand to let Buster sniff her, and then she rubbed his ears.

I couldn’t help but wish she was looking at me like she was looking at my dog, that she was touching me instead of him. She kept rubbing him until he was too worked up for me to hold on to him anymore. I set him on the floor, and he raced circles around Sara’s legs.

She laughed, and then her eyes flitted up to meet mine and they turned somber again. “I do. I know I can’t help him and he’s in good hands, but I just can’t shut my brain off and I don’t know what to do.”

I knew all too well what it was like to not be able to stop thinking. I’d been doing it myself for well over an hour, ever since I’d made my way up the stairs. If I couldn’t stop thinking long enough to sleep, I didn’t have a clue how I could help her do that.

She’d said she hadn’t wanted to be alone—but there’d been something wild in her eyes when she’d said it that made me realize it probably went a hell of a lot deeper than what she’d said. That was easy enough to understand. Corinne had had a hard time shutting off her brain and sleeping, too, after our father left. She was the oldest of my younger sisters, the one who remembered the most about how things had been, just like me. Sometimes, just sharing a bed with me or Mom or one of the younger girls had been all Corinne had needed to get to sleep. I supposed it was just the presence of someone else more than anything that had helped her. The realization that she wasn’t alone. That she hadn’t been abandoned by everyone in her life—just by our father.

Without thinking it through any further than that, I reached out and took Sara’s hand, and I tugged her into my room. “Come on. You can sleep in here with me.”

For the first time in the two years I’d known her, she looked uncertain and shy. I didn’t like seeing her like that. Sara Thomas had always been one of the most fucking confident and sure of herself women I knew. It oozed out of her, usually, rubbing off on everyone around her. It was one of the things that made her sexy as sin. One of the things that always gave me a fucking hard-on just looking at her and her big doe eyes and pouty lips. I never wanted to see her looking like this, like she was afraid of making the wrong decision.

Like
I
was the wrong decision.

She shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t think—”

“Just to sleep,” I clarified. “I’m not going to try anything. You’re Scotty’s daughter. I’m not an idiot.”

Only maybe I was. I was a giant fucking idiot. I had to be if I was even thinking about getting Sara to sleep in my bed with me, but that was exactly what I was attempting to convince her to do.

“Just to sleep?” she repeated hesitantly, meeting my eyes again. Hers had dark circles under them. She’d run herself ragged with worry.

“Just to sleep.”

Finally, she nodded and let me lead her over to the bed. She sat on one side and laid down, pulling the blankets over her while she was so close to the edge I worried she might fall off. I went around to the other side and got in, and Buster leaped up to get between us. He settled in the very center of the bed.

That was good. With him there, I shouldn’t do anything stupid in the middle of the night. I’d already done enough stupid shit tonight to last me a good year or two.

I lay there wishing I’d bought the king-sized bed when I moved into this house instead of the queen. Then there would be more room between us. More negative space so maybe I wouldn’t be able to smell the peppermint scent that was Sara, so maybe I couldn’t feel her warmth. So maybe I could stop thinking about her legs wrapping around me.

I rolled over to face the windows, hoping that would help me stop thinking about her, so maybe I could get my fucking hard-on under control. That wasn’t likely, but still.

“Jonny?” she said softly.

I wished she’d call me by my name. I didn’t care if the guys all called me Jonny. Nicknames are just part of the gig when you play hockey. But Sara was different.

“Yeah?” I replied.

“Thank you. For everything.”

She shouldn’t be thanking me. She should be hitting me and screaming at me and throwing a hell of a lot more than just a bottle of water all over me.

“Go to sleep, Sara,” I finally said. If she didn’t, there was no chance in hell I would be able to.