The Secret Wedding Wish

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

Janey shook her head no, avoiding looking directly into Thad’s eyes. “Thanks, but I can get him on my way home from the shop,” she said in the officiously pleasant tone she used with customers. “Seven o’clock?”

  “Right.” Looking as if he either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the polite wall she was erecting between them, Thad turned his attention to her son. He clapped his hand on Chris’s shoulder and led him on inside the practice arena. “Come on, sport. Let me introduce you to the rest of the coaching staff….”

  Telling herself Thad’s equally neutral attitude toward her was for the best, Janey went back to her store, and continued working on her proposal to expand her business. If she could get this, she would be in the black in no time, and she would be able to hire more help, as well. And the ironic thing of course, was that she had Thad Lantz to thank for her idea. Had he not pushed her so hard that morning, had her temper not skyrocketed, she knew she wouldn’t have picked up the brochure or been thinking that way.

  All too soon, it was time to go back to the arena to get Chris. There were only four cars left in the lot. One of them was Thad’s SUV.

  With Chris nowhere in sight, Janey figured she had no choice but to go on inside. To her surprise, Chris was out on the ice with Thad, working on his shooting. Both were wearing skates and looked like the natural athletes they were. “You want to keep both hands high on the stick when you’re getting ready to shoot off a pass,” Thad was explaining, his back to Janey.

  “How come?” Chris asked earnestly, while Janey tried hard not to notice what broad, muscular shoulders and a nice backside the jeans-clad Thad possessed.

  “Because it’s easier to move your lower hand down on the center of the stick, where it needs to be situated when the pass comes, than to move it back up…” Thad said, gently coaching her son. “See, the whole thing is quickness and control….”

  While Janey watched from the short row of bleachers that surrounded the practice ice, Thad continued explaining then had Chris fire off a practice shot. It was the best shot Janey had ever seen her son make.

  “That’s so much easier that way!” Chris shouted enthusiastically as he looked up at Thad in adulation. “You’re a really good teacher, you know that? Not just at hockey, but math, too.”

  Thad clamped a paternal hand on Chris’s shoulders, looking at that moment more like a devoted father to her son than instructor slash employer. The mutual respect and admiration between them made Janey’s heart ache. “That’s what coaching is—teaching,” Thad told her son humbly.

  It was more than that, Janey thought, gratitude flowing through her.

  Chris’d had a lot of people coaching him over the years, in both his schoolwork and sports. None had made such a quick impact on him as Thad. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, there was something special going on there. Something Chris hadn’t even had with his dad…who, as much as he had loved Chris, hadn’t possessed a lot of patience when it came to teaching Chris anything, athletic or otherwise.

  Catching sight of Janey, Thad waved and guided Chris in that direction, too. “Chris finished his work early, so I put him through a few drills on the ice.” He looked at her questioningly. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “It’s fine.” Janey smiled at him awkwardly. “Thank you.”

  Thad looked over at Chris. “You know where to put your pads in the locker room?”

  Chris nodded and went off to get his shoes.

  “You’re looking…cheerful,” Thad noted as he skated over to the wall that edged the practice ice.

  That’s because she now had hope of expanding her business as quickly as she needed.

  He regarded her with narrowed eyes. “I thought you might still be ticked off at me—for this morning.”

  Janey shrugged, not too proud to admit, “From a business perspective, you were dead-on.”

  “And from a personal perspective?” Thad prodded.

  Janey hesitated, not sure what to say.

  “Best we not go there again?” he guessed.

  She nodded, her pulse kicking up another notch. She couldn’t say why exactly, but she only wanted him to admire her. Thus far, a lot of what he had seen of her was not exactly her best side. Which made it all the more wondrous that he was still so attracted to her.

  “If there’s anything I can do,” Thad offered warmly, as he came around the wall and closed the distance between them.

  Here it was. Her golden opportunity to use her in with him to help her get what she wanted. But if she did that, would it be much different from going to her family for help? Somehow, Janey didn’t think so. “Thanks, but I can manage on my own,” she said, her body registering the heat as he took a seat beside her. She slanted him a sidelong glance. “I am curious about one thing, though. This is your off-season. I’d think you would want to get away from coaching. As much as possible anyway. And yet here you are, giving tips to Chris.”

  Thad shrugged his broad shoulders. They were sitting so close his arm nudged hers. “We had time to kill. And I enjoy working with him. All kids for that matter.” He turned to her and looked deep into her eyes.

  She had the feeling he was thinking about kissing her—and making love with her—again. Her throat tightened. “How come?”

  Thad hesitated. “Maybe because it reminds me of my youth. Playing sports was the best part of growing up for me. And if I can take that experience and give it back to the next generation…”

  Janey understood. She was a baker for the same reason, because she had loved doing it when she was growing up. And still did. “Well, it’s got to give you good karma, that’s for sure.”

  Thad smiled over at her. And then Chris came bursting out of the locker room, ready to take on what was left of his day.

  “THAT WASN’T HARD at all,” Emma murmured, as the four of them finished off the chicken gumbo Janey had helped them make for the team cookbook.

  Joe grinned. “You’re right. ’Cause if it’s easy enough for me to put together, anyone can do it.’ Taking his new wife by the hand, he pushed his chair back from the table and tugged her over onto his lap.

  Chris made a face, and excused himself, muttering something about “crazy newlyweds,” before heading up to his room to work on his math homework.

  “Hey—if you need some more help with that—” Joe called after his nephew helpfully.

  “I’ll call Coach Lantz,” Chris yelled back. “’Cause he’s the one with all the right answers!”

  “No kidding.” Joe settled back in his chair.

  “So how is it going with the new team?” Janey asked her brother curiously. She knew Joe had wanted to play on his hometown hockey team forever, and now he finally had the chance. If she didn’t somehow muck things up for him.

  Joe beamed the way he always did when talking about hockey. “The team hasn’t practiced together as a group yet ’cause it’s still the off-season, but everyone I’ve met, and the training staff, have been fantastic.”

  Janey was relieved to hear that.

  Joe gave her a curious glance. “You seem to be getting along with Thad Lantz, too.”

  The way he said that triggered a silent alarm in Janey’s head. Suddenly, she knew it wasn’t just the need for cooking expertise that had her brother at her home that evening. “You heard from Mac, didn’t you?” Janey guessed soberly.

  “That you were seen kissing him? Yes,” Joe revealed grimly, “I did.”

  “Joe—” Emma gave her husband a light warning punch in the shoulder. “You promised you were not going to bring this up!”

  “I’m not giving Janey a hard time.” Joe held up both hands in surrender as he ignored his wife’s chastisement. He assessed Janey pointedly. “I’m just asking where she stands with all this.”

  That was just it. Janey didn’t know. “We’re getting to know each other,” she said finally, telling as much of the truth as she could, without inviting even more meddling in her private life.

  “As friends or someth
ing more?” Joe demanded bluntly, earning himself another censuring frown from his wife.

  Janey looked her brother straight in the eye, figuring she owed Joe this much, since he was now going to be working under Thad’s direction. “I don’t know yet,” she stated as evenly as she could.

  “Okay,” Emma interceded briskly, with a savvy wedding planner’s tact. “Enough questions. We’ve got to get home.” Emma leaped off Joe’s lap. “As soon as we help with the dishes anyway.”

  Janey waved off their offer of help. “I can get ’em. You two lovebirds go enjoy yourself.” Heaven knew someone in the family should, and right now Joe was the only one of her siblings who was attached.

  “Just be careful,” Joe warned Janey at the door. “He’s a good guy.”

  “But?” Janey prodded, sensing there was more.

  Worry flickered in Joe’s eyes. “Since his divorce five years ago, Thad Lantz has a reputation for never getting involved with anyone for very long.”

  Well, that was encouraging, Janey scowled unhappily, as she finished saying goodbye, and went to do the dishes. She had just started loading the dishwasher when the doorbell rang.

  Chapter Six

  Thad Lantz was standing on the other side of the doorway. He looked relaxed and sexy, the hint of an evening beard lining his face. “Sorry to come by so late, but I was just making a final pass through the locker room at the practice arena, and I caught sight of this.” He held up a sixth-grade math book. “I thought Chris might need it.”

  “Thanks.” Their hands brushed as she accepted it from him.

  His blue eyes glimmered with a mixture of amusement and desire. “It must have dropped out of his backpack.”

  Or been left deliberately, Janey thought wryly. In order to give Thad Lantz a chance to drop by? She flashed back to all the times during the dinner with his beloved uncle Joe and aunt Emma that Chris had leapt up to get the phone, or kept an eye on the door. Even hockey talk hadn’t totally held her son’s attention. Now, at last, she knew why. He had been expecting someone!

  “Well, I’ve got to go grab something to eat before I head home,” Thad said casually.

  Janey felt herself flush with an inner warmth she could not contain. Her brows knit together. “You haven’t had dinner?”

  Thad shook his head. “Too busy, working on plans for the preseason.”

  She and Chris should not be imposing on Thad so much without giving back something in return, Janey thought, guilt flowing through her. Before she could stop herself, she found herself offering with the southern hospitality with which she had been reared, “I’ve got some chicken gumbo, salad, and whole wheat rolls left over from our dinner, if you’d like to stay.”

  “Sounds delicious.” Thad flashed her a winning smile, looking as though he had expected to be invited in for dinner the whole time. He walked in, his big body filling the space. “Chicken gumbo, hmm?”

  Janey nodded, unable to help but notice the sizzle between them that seemed to increase by leaps and bounds with every interaction. “It’s an old family recipe with a few new twists.”

  His gaze roamed the length of her, taking in her bare feet, V-necked T-shirt and form-fitting shorts. “Sounds…enticing…”

  Trying hard not to be affected by the intimacy of the situation, or the sensual pine fragrance of his cologne, Janey turned toward the staircase. “Just let me take this book up to Chris and let him know you’re here.”

  Rather than look irritated at the fact they would soon have a twelve-year-old chaperone, Thad seemed pleased.

  Another point in his favor, Janey thought with a rueful sigh. How was she ever going to get this man out of her heart and her mind if he kept being so darn admirable? Usually, the fact she had a son put men off. Not that she was interested in men in any case. Her life was fine as it was. Or it would be, as soon as she got her financial house in order. Thanks to the much-needed push Thad had given her that morning, she now was working on a brilliant plan to do just that.

  Chris’s door was ajar. He was lying facedown on the bed, fast asleep, a book about hockey greats clutched to his chest. So much for working on the math that was due by Friday, Janey thought, disappointed but not surprised.

  “Everything okay?” Thad asked as Janey came back downstairs. As always he saw too much of what she was thinking and feeling.

  She led the way into her homey country kitchen and dished up some salad for Thad. “You may as well know, I think he left that book at the practice arena on purpose.”

  Thad leaned against the counter, arms folded in front of him, and continued to survey her thoughtfully. “I figured as much. It’s one of the reasons I waited so late to come by. I didn’t want to intrude on whatever you had planned for this evening.”

  “Thank you.” Unable to look into his eyes any longer, without thinking about kissing him again, she dropped her glance to the strong column of his throat and the crisp curling hair visible in the open V of his knit shirt. “Both for being so understanding and biding your time.”

  Even if my entire family has put you in one heck of an awkward situation. Not just once. But over and over again.

  He quirked a brow at the increasingly pink contours of her face, seeming to know intuitively there was something else she wasn’t telling. “Anything else happen here tonight I should know about?” he asked curiously.

  Janey handed him the bottle of ranch salad dressing. “It’s my brothers again.”

  Thad sat down at the kitchen table. “Which one?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Janey put the gumbo and bread in front of him, too. “They’re all insanely protective of me. And just so you know, their continuing ‘concern’ has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me.”

  “Because you eloped when you were just nineteen after knowing Ty for all of five days,” Thad guessed.

  Boy, he had a good memory, Janey thought as she sat down opposite him at the small round kitchen table. She traced the pattern on the glossy white-and-green ceramic-tiled top. “The frustrating thing for me is that they don’t have any reason to worry these days, because that’s never going to happen again.” She looked up and gazed into his eyes, not sure why she wanted Thad to know this, just realizing that she did. “I have no intention of marrying anyone.” She had been too miserable the first time, had been forced to work too hard not to show it.

  He gave her the once-over. “Never?”

  Janey shook her head, hanging on to her independence with everything she had. “I’m not going to put myself or my son in a position where we are hurt again,” she stated clearly.

  “Ty hurt his son?”

  Once again, she had said too much. But having blurted out what she had, she had no choice but to go on, lest Thad get the wrong idea about what she meant. “He would have,” she said quietly, “had I not covered for him so much.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  But he wanted to, Janey thought, relieved finally to have someone she could confide in who wouldn’t judge her or tell her what a reckless fool she had been for ever having hitched her wagon to Ty’s in the first place. “Ty loved Chris as much as he was capable of loving anyone or anything, but Ty’s number one priority was still Ty. If something better came along—and it usually did—Ty wouldn’t hesitate to cancel plans with Chris. It didn’t seem to matter if it was Chris’s birthday or any other holiday,” she related miserably. “If Ty got a call to go avalanche-skiing—he was out of there. Whether he got paid as a guide or not. And that’s why we had so much trouble paying our bills, because Ty was cavalier about money.”

  “And Chris never guessed what was going on.” Thad looked as angry and disapproving as Janey had felt.

  Janey flushed. “I couldn’t tell him that the birthday gift he thought came from his dad, came from me. Or that Ty had taken off on what turned out to be a social ski trip rather than spend Christmas with him. It would have devastated him.” Just as it had devastated her.

  “So
you covered.” Thad reached over and took her hand protectively in his.

  “And covered and covered until Ty was killed in that avalanche, skiing where he had no business being,” Janey murmured softly, relaxing in Thad’s strong, warm grip before looking deep into his eyes. “So now you know,” she finished with no small trace of disparagement. “I’m not so admirable after all.”

  Because an admirable person would have found a way not to have to lie to her son and everyone else she knew. An admirable person would have found a way to fix her marriage before it ever landed in such a sorry state, she thought derisively. But Thad apparently did not agree with her punishing self-assessment.

  “You have nothing to be ashamed about,” he told her sternly, holding her gaze. “You held your family together, at great personal sacrifice. That’s more than most would do.”

  What was it Joe had just told her about Thad? Since his divorce five years ago, he has a reputation for never getting involved with any woman for long… Maybe it was time Thad shared some of what was in his heart and on his mind with her, too. “Is that what happened in your marriage?” she asked quietly. “Your wife left when you would have held things together.”

  For a moment, Janey thought Thad wasn’t going to answer. Finally, he said, “I met Renee when I was twenty-nine. She had just had a baby and the guy had left her for someone else—he had no interest whatsoever in his son, Bobby. The jerk wouldn’t let anyone else adopt Bobby, either. But I stepped in anyway, and became a father to Bobby, and a husband to Renee. I had this fantasy I could solve all her problems and make her happy, keep the two of them safe.”

  So he had been a white knight, riding gallantly to the rescue, even then. “Did you love her?” Did he still?

  Thad shrugged his broad shoulders carelessly. “At the time I thought I did. Now, I’m not so sure it wasn’t just the situation that drew me.”

  Janey bit her lip uncertainly. “I don’t understand.”

  He leaned toward her matter-of-factly. “I like being needed, being there for someone in an essential way. I find that very personally satisfying.”