Home Ice (9 page)

PAIGE ANSWERED THE
door wearing a cream-colored dress that fit her body like a glove and made my mouth water. Her hair was swept off her neck in some sort of up-do that made it look simple but was probably really complicated and time-consuming. I didn’t care about that. All I cared about was the fact that it gave me an excellent view of her long neck, and it made me want to kiss her in that spot just under her ear.

I hadn’t seen her since I’d dropped her and the girls off at her house on Sunday evening, but I’d talked to her every day since. After I was done with whatever work I’d had to get done for the evening, or following the night’s game when I was back in my hotel room, I’d sent her a text message to see if she was still up. Every night, she’d responded by calling me almost as soon as I’d hit send. It was as if she wanted to hear my voice as much as I needed to hear hers.

During those calls, she’d told me stories about the girls and their time at school, or bits and pieces about the clients who came to her house for massage. I’d told her about the places we stopped on the road, or the tribute the Rangers had put on for a soldier who surprised his overly pregnant wife by showing up at the arena instead of being on a video call like she’d expected. The shock had been so great that she’d gone into labor. They’d rushed the couple off to the hospital, and the baby was born before the second intermission.

Our calls had always been easy like that, a simple recounting of our days. It was as if we were old friends, like we’d known each other for years.

I’d never had that sort of relationship with any of the women I’d dated before. They’d always been so self-absorbed that all they cared about was what sorts of presents I’d bring home for them when I came back. With Paige, it was the complete opposite. I had to encourage her to tell me about herself, because she wanted to hear about me or tell me about her girls. It was as though she was lost in the mix, and I hated the thought of allowing that to continue. So I asked about her every chance I got, and she slowly started to tell me.

In all those calls, I’d never completely lost my mind and told her that I was falling for her. It seemed too soon for that, besides the fact that it wasn’t the sort of thing that should be said over the phone. But everything about being with Paige felt right. It was one of those things like playing hockey, something that had come as naturally to me as breathing. I wanted to know everything there was to know about her daughters, her life, her day-to-day goings-on. I wanted to tell her everything there was to know about mine. I wanted to hear her voice and learn the sounds she made when she was surprised or overwhelmed. I wanted to ease some of her burdens. I didn’t understand it, but I couldn’t deny it.

And now, with her standing just inside her doorway in that dress, with her neck bare and a nervous smile lighting up her face, I couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought. I held out the vase of flowers I’d brought her—yellow tulips, like Zoe had told me her mother liked—and stood there like an idiot.

With a hint of a blush, she reached for the bouquet. “Hi,” she said, sounding as breathless and anxious as I felt. Because, whether the first date, when her girls came with us, could really be considered a date or not, tonight would be. I hadn’t been on a date in so long I didn’t know what to do with myself. It appeared I wasn’t alone in that.

“Hi,” I repeated.

She held up a finger, silently begging me for a moment. I nodded, and she waved me inside before setting the vase down on a cabinet just inside the door and disappearing up the stairs. I took the time while she was gone to explore. Her house wasn’t simply a house; it was a home. The furniture looked cushy and comfortable. The walls were painted in warm colors and covered with family photographs and artwork surely brought home from school by the girls. The short, wide cabinet where she’d set the tulips was littered with ponytail holders, lipsticks, notes, device chargers and cords, and colored paper and markers. A row of backpacks, purses, and coats hung above it in a sort of organized chaos. It all reminded me of my parents’ home, not perfectly neat and tidy but well lived-in and loved.

I was poring over a group of photos from a family vacation when Paige came back down the stairs with a piece of gray construction paper in her hands.

“From Sophie,” she said, thrusting it into my hands. “She made me promise I’d give it to you when I saw you.”

I glanced down and found her childlike handwriting in purple marker.

Dear Bergy,

Thank you for teachen me hokey. Thank you for Levi. Thank you for diner. You are real nice. You mad me smile. You mad Mom smile. I hope you kiss Mom again. A lot. I like you. Zoe Evie and Izzy like you. Mom likes kisses.

Love,

Sophie

She’d drawn a stick figure family of six, one much larger than the others. They all had long hair and skirts except for the big one. She’d drawn something small next to the littlest stick figure, which I assumed to be her balloon dog, Levi. Her handwriting was difficult to interpret, but I understood her meaning even if she had some problems with spelling and grammar.

“She’s already attached,” Paige said when I looked up. She had tears in her eyes, which I brushed away with my thumb. She shook her head and stepped away, not allowing me to comfort her. “I worried this would happen.”

“Is that so horrible? I’m not going to hurt her, Paige.” That was the last thing I would ever want to do.

“You won’t mean to.” She shrugged and gave me the most pathetic look imaginable. “Why couldn’t you have been mean and horrible? All of this would have been so much easier if you were awful, you know.”

I laughed. “Depending on who you ask, they’ll tell you all about how mean and horrible I am. Burnzie might have a few choice words to say after the way I laid into him last night, for one, and I lost track of how many guys have called me the meanest son of a bitch they ever played against a while back.”

She shook her head. “But that’s… That’s not you. It’s not the real you.”

I wasn’t sure who the
real
me was. It probably depended on whom I was with. There was the version that Linnea saw…the one that came out when I was with Paige and her girls. And then there was the other version, the one that everyone else saw.

Arguing about it wasn’t going to change anything, though. I held out a hand for her. “Come on. Let’s go have some fun and worry about all of this later.” Not that I expected her to ever stop worrying. It went with the territory when you had a daughter with Down syndrome. Still, she had the whole weekend free from her kids, and I intended to make good use of that time in getting to know
Paige
.

She picked up her purse and put her hand in mine. “Fine. No worrying, at least for now.”

Little did she know, I intended the
for now
part to last the entire weekend.

MATTIAS TOOK ME
to dinner at El Gaucho for our Valentine’s Day date, an upscale steak restaurant downtown that I would never consider going to under normal circumstances. Granted,
normal circumstances
meant having all of my girls with me, since Dan only kept them one weekend a month, on average. He was supposed to have them every other weekend, but his job prevented that from happening. With tax season coming up, he might not be able to keep them at all after this weekend for at least the next couple of months, so I was determined to enjoy this one with Mattias, whether my girls were with us or not.

Fun, bright places were always better when they were along—Sophie, in particular—and El Gaucho was dimly lit, elegant, and exceedingly romantic.

It was easy to fall right back into the trap of falling for Mattias in that sort of setting. There were candles and more flowers on our table, and he kept leaning in closer to me, resting his chin on his hand and staring so deep into my eyes it felt as though he could see all the way down to my soul.

A Latin band was playing off in the distance, and our waiter flambéed parts of our meal directly beside our table. I oohed and aahed more than I expected I would, but how often could I experience something like this? Not very. As a single mom, I had more academic meets, soccer games, and laundry days on my calendar than dates. But I couldn’t imagine anywhere I’d rather be or anyone I’d rather be with.

Once the waiter left us with our meal, Mattias leaned in again, thoroughly invested in me in a way that made me feel heady. “You’ve never told me how you got into massage. Did you always want to do it?”

I shook my head, sipping from the robust red wine he’d ordered for us. “Not always, no. I came to it in a roundabout way.”

He raised a brow, a silent encouragement for me to continue.

“I was in college when I met Dan. We were both accounting students. We got married when he graduated, in the summer after my sophomore year. I was pregnant with Zoe before Christmas break in my senior year, and I never ended up finishing my degree. We decided it would be better for us both if I was a stay-at-home mom, at least while the girls were little. By then, he was getting ready for his CPA exam, and he was already making a decent living. But then Sophie came along, and she needed a lot of extra care—like daily massage. When she was a baby, her therapist taught me to massage her little body, to help with her blood flow and to increase her muscle tone and awareness. It was a sensory thing, too—a way for me and Sophie to connect. It was something I did for her three times a day, every day, for the first few years of her life. By the time she was three, Dan and I were both so stressed with all of her appointments and visits and therapy sessions that we just…fell apart. We didn’t know each other anymore. There was no time for us to be a couple. The stress of it all drove this huge chasm between us, and we were never able to recover from it. But when we divorced, I knew I needed a job of some sort. Preferably something where I could set my own hours and work either at home or close to home, and massage seemed like a good fit. I started my training as soon as Dan moved out of the house, and the rest is history.”

Mattias hadn’t looked away the whole time I spoke. He had been eating some, but honestly he’d paid far more attention to me than he had to his meal. It was a very rare thing for me to have someone’s undivided attention. I was far more used to having my own attention split multiple ways, trying to make sure each of my daughters had everything they needed and none of them felt neglected.

He reached across the table and let his fingertips fall on the back of my hand, sending electric jolts up my arm. I bit down on my lip, and he grinned, like he knew he was the cause of my nerves. “No regrets?” he asked. “You don’t wish you’d gone back to college to finish your degree? I can tell from the way you talk about your job now that you love it, but…”

“No regrets. I don’t believe in them. And I do love my job. Actually, I’ll be taking some continuing ed courses next month that you might be interested in. I already do deep tissue work, trigger point, that sort of thing, but I’m going to learn about sports massage.”