Losing an Edge (Portland Storm Book 13) (11 page)

Connor gave me a devilish smile. “You won’t tell, will you, CayCay?”

Jesse lit up like a Christmas tree. “CayCay? Oh my gorgonzola, that is almost as adorable as you are, Cadence. Please tell me we can call you that from now on.” He had all the hand waving and lisping speech often associated with the stereotypical gay man, which was Anthony’s exact opposite. I wanted to pinch Jesse’s cheeks every time I saw him.

I wasn’t so sure about anyone calling me CayCay other than my nephew, though. Once Cassidy started talking, she could, too, if she wanted. But that was where I drew the line. I was about to tell Jesse as much, but Levi pulled into the driveway, rescuing me from having to say anything. If I was lucky, maybe Jesse would forget all about that nickname soon, and it wouldn’t ever become an issue. At any rate, I grabbed my coat and purse, sent Connor back to the playroom, where he was supposed to be, and headed out for my day with the guys.

Anthony had an SUV, so we all loaded in and left Levi’s car at Cam and Sara’s house.

Levi climbed into the back with me. “So what exactly are we doing today?” he asked, settling his seat belt into place over his lap.

“ChocolateFest,” Jesse answered. “As much wine and chocolate as you can handle, all day long. But please don’t get sick, because that isn’t cute.”

“Something tells me we might run into Laura Weber,” Levi said quietly to me.

“Katie’s mom?”

“If anything involves wine… And then you’re adding chocolate to the mix? Hell, half the guys’ wives are probably going to be there.”

It wasn’t far to the Oregon Convention Center. As we headed inside, Levi walked alongside me, so close his hand brushed against mine. That slight contact sent tingles of awareness skittering up my spine. They took root in my hair, making me feel like it might be standing on end. Well, it might give me a bit more volume, right? Had to find the bright side, or else I’d find myself caught up in hormones going bonkers. Now wasn’t the time for that.

Come to think of it, maybe wine wasn’t the best plan for today, either. I’d have to keep an eye on how much I drank.

The convention center was filled with rows upon rows of booths, each boasting their own specialty chocolates along with wines to pair with them. The booths went on as far as the eye could see in the main room, and the guides told us there were a few other halls with more to explore.

“Where do you want to start?” Levi asked.

“Dark chocolate.” My answer came with no hesitation.

“By itself? Or do you want truffles with other flavors?”

“They’ve even got chocolate-covered bacon,” Jesse said, practically hyperventilating up ahead of us by a few steps. “Honey, I’m going to drool over this.”

“No need to drool. We’ll buy you some chocolate-covered bacon,” Anthony replied.

“What about you?” Levi asked. By some unspoken agreement, the two of us held back a bit, allowing the others to go on without us. “Do you want chocolate-covered bacon?”

I wrinkled my nose in response.

He laughed. “Because we could get you some. Might be good to try it at least once. Expand your horizons or something.”

“That’s a horizon I don’t need expanded, thanks.”

“So in general, you’re not much of a risk taker, then?”

“I never said that. I just don’t think I need to risk having a heart attack and getting diabetes all in one fell swoop.”

“Fair enough.” His hand kept brushing against mine, and then he curled his pinky finger around to lock with my pinky—not holding hands, exactly, but close.

Painfully close.

Heart-leaping-to-my-throat close.

Too close? I couldn’t decide. I kind of liked it, but wasn’t I supposed to be keeping some physical distance between us while I decided whether or not I could trust him? That was one of the aspects of courting that I’d latched on to when Wendy had suggested it.

The truth was, I liked the bit of contact too much to want to let go.

“So you never told me that Anthony’s fiancé was a man,” Levi said after a bit of wandering aimlessly through the crowd.

“Does it matter?”

He shrugged. “Not really. It only means I don’t have to dream about throat punching Anthony every time I see him grabbing your ass anymore.”

This time, I laughed out loud. “He has to touch my butt if he’s going to hold me in some of the lifts we do, you know.”

“I know. And it makes me all kinds of jealous.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that. I bit the inside of my lower lip.

Levi strolled up to one counter where they had dozens of handcrafted specialty chocolates. He scanned the case for a moment. He turned to me, grinning. “Do you trust me?”

I wasn’t so sure I was ready to go that far in general, but I supposed there wasn’t any real harm in trusting him to make this decision. “Sure,” I said. “You pick.”

When he’d found the ones he wanted, he flagged down a worker. “Two of those,” he said. “And do you have any coffee instead of wine?”

“Espresso would go well with them.”

“Perfect. Two espressos, too.” He dug out his wallet and selected a few bills to pay.

“Coffee’s an interesting choice, when it’s all about chocolate and wine,” I noted.

“Figured we should pace ourselves. There’s a lot of wine to be had, but no reason we need to plow through it all at the beginning. We won’t even be able to taste the chocolate after a while if we have too much wine.”

The worker handed over our selections and Levi’s change, and we carried them to an area with tables and chairs. He held out a chair for me and helped ease me into it. I glanced around and found Anthony and Jesse a few aisles over but still within my line of sight. Good thing they were both tall. Their heads bobbed above the sea of other people crowding the area.

“So you trust me enough to pick out your chocolate, but not enough to be alone with me,” Levi said as he took his seat across from me.

There wasn’t any point in denying it. I hadn’t exactly hidden the fact that I was looking for the other guys, and it didn’t take much to figure out the motive behind it. “Something like that,” I said sheepishly. “Although, if this chocolate is bad, I reserve the right to change my mind about trusting you for future chocolate decisions.”

He smiled. “Duly noted.”

“That doesn’t upset you? That I’m not comfortable being alone with you yet?”

“Why should it upset me?”

I shrugged. The idea of having to share our time with anyone else would have driven Guy bonkers. He had always expected me to go along with whatever he decided, no questions asked. According to him, he was older and wiser—not to mention, a man, although he never used that one to my face—and therefore knew better what I needed. Somehow that had also filtered down to him supposedly knowing what I wanted. I didn’t have the opportunity to make many decisions, in all my years as his partner. Even fewer once we’d been a couple off the ice.

Now that I thought about it, maybe I shouldn’t have let Levi dictate what chocolates he was buying for me. It’s possible I should have told him what I wanted.

I didn’t get the sense that he was trying to rule my life, but did I need to assert myself early on, so he wouldn’t think I was going to let him steamroll over me all the time? I wasn’t sure. One more thing I needed to talk to Wendy about the next time I had a session with her, I supposed.

Levi leaned back in his chair, crossing his feet at the ankles. The chairs and tables weren’t designed for someone of his size. He seemed cramped in them, almost like they were meant for children. He took his chocolate out of the wrapper. “You gonna try yours?”

“Thought I’d wait to be sure it doesn’t kill you first,” I joked.

“I see. I’m the royal food tester.” He winked at me before biting off half the chocolate. Then he groaned in pleasure.

Once he swallowed, I unwrapped my own chocolate. “Since you haven’t keeled over yet…” The second the chocolate hit my tongue, there was an explosion of flavor. Salt, creamy caramel, and rich dark chocolate. “Oh my God,” I said, my mouth still full. I didn’t care about manners just now, though. It was too good.

He gave me a wry smile. “So I did okay, then?”

“Okay?” I licked my lips, noticing how his eyes followed the path of my tongue. “You scored bonus points with this one.”

“So maybe I move up a step or two in the process?”

I sipped from my espresso, buying time. “Process?”

“The one where you decide whether you can trust me or not. Where you decide how much to let me in and how soon.”

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. He was so persistent, but without being pushy. I wasn’t sure what to do with him, but there was no denying I wanted to be around him. “A step or two… Yeah, sure.”

“Any chance you can tell me how many steps there are and which one I’m on?”

I finished off my chocolate, taking my time savoring the flavor as I debated how to answer him. “To be completely honest, I don’t know how many steps you’re going to have to take. A lot.”

“So basically I’m on step three of twenty, or something like that?”

“More like step three of two hundred.”

But two hundred was a lot less than the seven thousand four hundred and twenty-seven I’d estimated before. Something else I needed to chew on for a while.

IN OUR LAST
game against the Coyotes, their goaltender had shut us out. At home, no less, which only made the loss sting worse than if we’d been on the road. We were already at the end of January, and not once all season had we lost two games in a row. In today’s NHL, that didn’t happen. But now, it was looking like we were about to drop two in a row for the first time all season long.

Needless to say, that thought didn’t sit well with anyone on the bench. We’d come so close to capturing the biggest prize in the sport, the Stanley Cup, at the end of last season, but we’d fallen just short. And why was that? Because, once we’d gotten to the Finals, we’d lost twice in a row. And then it had happened again. And then our season had been over. Done. Kaput.

All season long, Bergy and the rest of the coaching staff had been drilling into us the importance of not letting any sort of a losing streak take hold like that. Not during the season. Definitely not once we got to the playoffs, but we had to treat the whole season like it was the playoffs. That was how it worked when you were in the thick of things in the Western Conference. There was no room for complacency. Only for excellence, for pushing yourself to the very brink of your limits and then finding some way to push further, harder, faster, stronger.

It didn’t help that our defense was currently being held together with duct tape and silly putty. In a normal season, I was a third-pairing defenseman at best. We were all playing over our heads right now due to injuries to our top guys.

Andrew Jensen was out indefinitely with a concussion.

Keith Burns had been playing through a hairline fracture in his foot, but once Cole Paxton had returned from his emergency appendectomy, Burnzie had blocked another shot with the exact same spot on his foot. Now he was out for at least the next six weeks, possibly longer. We might be lucky to have him back in time for the playoffs.

Dominic “Bear” Medved, who had been my partner before all these injuries, had been dealing with groin issues all season that kept pulling him out of the lineup.

That was why Jim Sutter had brought in Hammer a few weeks ago. Better to have a guy with some experience than to call up some kid from the AHL who wasn’t ready for the kind of pressure we were under. So now, we had a makeshift defensive corps.

Cody “Harry” Williams was up on the top pairing with Colesy. They’d both at least been in the league for quite a while, but neither was truly a number one guy. Or at least they hadn’t been before. Harry had been surprising everyone with how well he was adapting to his new role, though.

I was with Hammer in the middle, definitely a step above where either of us had spent much time before in our careers.

Bear—as long as he was healthy—was with Ilya Demidov. Demi usually floated in and out of the lineup, filling holes when needed; now he was an every night player.