Light the Lamp

by Catherine Gayle

  The next night, the Storm played the Oilers. I scored a goal and an assist, and my line pretty much dominated all night long. Scotty couldn’t even find a reason to yell at us after that game, which was a rarity since I’d joined the team. That seemed like the primary way he communicated. We’d won again, and those two points from the win kept us in the same position we’d been in, but it provided a bit more of a buffer between us and the teams fighting for the wild card spots in the Western Conference.

  That Oilers game was the first in another back-to-back. The next night against the Kings, I got three assists, even though we lost. It was a good thing we’d built up that buffer; the loss took it away, but we still had the advantage over the teams breathing down our necks for now.

  We had a day off after that before we had to fly to Calgary for the final road game of the season. Noelle and I went house hunting again, and we found the one we wanted. It was a big Craftsman-style house in the Hawthorne District—fitting, since we first met by the Hawthorne Bridge—with four bedrooms, gorgeous landscaping in the front, and a backyard about as big as you could expect to find in the city for the puppy to grow up in. It was in the same neighborhood as her parents’ house had been. The same style. It was the same in as many ways as I could find for her since I couldn’t buy her the home she’d grown up in.

  Noelle still hadn’t named the puppy. He wasn’t going to be Prince Flugelhorn McSnazzy Pants, thank God—and she still refused to go with Godzilla, much to Tuck’s dismay—but she couldn’t seem to settle on the perfect name.

  “At this rate, he’ll weigh sixty or seventy pounds and you’ll still be calling him Puppy,” I told her after we put down an offer on the house.

  “Would that really be so awful?” she asked. She was smiling again.

  She was always smiling now. And laughing, too—that tinkling laugh that made me think of Liv’s wind chimes. I knew there would be days in the future when she wouldn’t be able to smile, days when tears were more plentiful than laughter. That was all right, though, because now I knew we could talk through our problems. We could always find a way to come to a solution that would work for both of us, even if we didn’t understand each other right away.

  Noelle came with me to the airport later that afternoon. She let me kiss her and hold her and call her älskling and tell her jag älskar dig as many times as I needed to before boarding the flight. At the hotel that night, I called her on FaceTime. She was in bed wearing a sexy little tank top, and the puppy was in bed with her.

  “I thought he was supposed to sleep in his crate,” I said.

  “He will when you’re home. When you’re gone, he sleeps in the bed with me. I made an executive decision.”

  “So he’s my replacement?”

  She gave me a shy smile and shook her head. “Puck can’t replace you.”

  When she said that, the pup went crazy, leaping up on her chest and licking her all over her face until she was giggling uncontrollably. I loved seeing her like that.

  “Puck? You’ve finally named him, then?”

  “He seems to like it. I think it fits him, don’t you?”

  I was willing to call the dog anything. I was more concerned with the fact that she fit. Noelle fit in my life and I fit in hers, and that was all that mattered.

  I got three assists and a goal in our win over the Flames the next night, one of the most prolific games of my professional career. That win, combined with the results of a few other games around the league, meant that our final game of the season—at home against the Canucks—essentially didn’t matter. We knew we would finish as the third seed in the Pacific, and we knew Vancouver would finish as the second, meaning they were the team we would face in the first round in the playoffs.

  We flew home that night after the game, and Noelle was in bed asleep, the ghost of a smile still on her lips when Babs and I got there. Puck was in bed with her, curled up on half the pillow her head was resting on. He barked when I came in and made a flying leap off the bed to get to me.

  “Hush, Puck.” I didn’t want to wake her. I picked him up, despite his wiggling and squirming and endless exuberance, and carried him out so I could put his leash on him. We went down so he could run around for a few minutes before I put him in his crate, and he took care of his business while we were outside. He whined for a minute when I settled him in his crate, but he was asleep in no time.

  Noelle wasn’t, though. She stretched her arms out and arched her back like a cat. “I missed you,” she said.

  Leaning over her, I kissed her deep and slow, reveling in the feeling of her arms wrapped around my neck to anchor her to me. When I finally broke off the kiss, I crawled into bed and drew her into my arms. She settled her head in that space on my shoulder almost instantly, the one just by my neck, where she fit so perfectly.

  “Not as much as I missed you.”

  Her hand slid up my chest and over my neck, coming to rest on my cheek. “The scruff’s back. I like you scruffy.”

  I chuckled. “Trust me, I know.”

  Noelle fell silent, and I listened to the pattern of her breathing, measured the beat of her heart against mine. I could tell she was almost asleep when she murmured, “Jag älskar dig.”

  That was when I knew: I was hers and she was mine, and that was never going to change.

  Catherine Gayle is a bestselling author of Regency-set historical romance and contemporary hockey romance with a New Adult feel. She’s a transplanted Texan living in North Carolina with two extremely spoiled felines. In her spare time, she watches way too much hockey and reality TV, plans fun things to do for the Nephew Monster’s next visit, and performs experiments in the kitchen which are rarely toxic.

  If you enjoyed this book and want to know when more like it will be available, be sure to sign up for Catherine’s mailing list. You can find out more on her website, her blog, at Red Door Reads, at Hockey Romance, at Facebook, on Twitter, and at Goodreads. If you want to see some of her cats’ antics and possibly the occasional video update from Catherine, visit her YouTube account.

  LIGHT THE LAMP is book 3 in the Portland Storm series. The first book is BREAKAWAY, and the second is ON THE FLY. TAKING A SHOT, a novella that follows ON THE FLY, is available in the anthology SEDUCED BY THE GAME, featuring novellas by other hockey romance authors Toni Aleo, Cassandra Carr, Bianca Sommerland, and more. All proceeds of this anthology are being donated to cancer charities. You will not be able to purchase TAKING A SHOT separate from the anthology for one year. The fourth novel in the series will release in August, 2014.