by Pamela Aares
“Last I checked, you were,” Sabrina countered.
“I rather like daring people,” Jake said. “Catch me and I’ll give you a double session in the batting cage.”
“Yeah!” the boys shouted in unison.
Sophie crossed her arms. “What if we don’t catch you?”
Gage flipped Max head over heels and down to the sidewalk. “Jake and I get to choose a truth or dare for each of you.”
“I hate that game,” Max said. “Mom plays it to get me to do things.”
Gage shot Jake a high five. “Game on, dude. We’re facing some mighty challengers.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said, putting his hand up for a high five. He nudged Sophie. She and Max high-fived each other.
The kids’ excitement at the challenge lasted through two servings of hot chocolate from the rink’s festively lit kiosk and the renting and lacing of skates.
Gage raced by them on the ice. Jake had grown up with a couple of guys who went on to play pro hockey, but Gage could probably outskate even them. The air sparkled with the thin layers of ice shaving from the blades of his skates as he executed precise fast-speed turns.
“You’ll need a strategy,” Jake said to Tyler as they stepped onto the ice. “Speed won’t cut it.”
A few couples skated by, their wobbly ankles and unsteady balance evidence that they weren’t accustomed to the ice. But from the beamy smiles and their laughter, Jake was pretty sure skating wasn’t what was on their minds.
He skirted a gazebo-type building that had been constructed in the center of the rink. Skaters could enter from the ice and down a hot chocolate at the small café, do a photo booth session or just take a break on the benches facing the ice. The DJ for the rink worked from a small booth at the north side of the structure.
Strains of “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” blared over the sound system as Jake took a turn around the ice. He curved past the gazebo. There, skating slowly, were Cameron and Dimitri. She tilted her head and laughed up at the prince.
And Jake recognized something he’d never felt before. A power was tapping at him, a power that wanted to break through. He suspected that jealousy existed to alert a person that something new, something unusual and maybe dangerous, was happening. He knew enough about crimes of passion to know jealousy was a powerful, unpredictable force. But stronger than the jealousy pinging in him was the feeling beneath it—a feeling that bottomed him out like a boat hitting a submerged sandbar. Cameron had gotten him to feel, to actually feel. And the surge of feeling rising in him sure as hell wasn’t comfortable.
He didn’t have a lot of practice at feeling impulses and not acting on them. He usually just went with his urges. Only lately had he managed to curb his gambling, but leaving the tables behind had been a battle. And chasing women? He hadn’t chased any since—since meeting Cameron.
Hellfire and damnation.
Dimitri stepped up into the gazebo. Cameron took a twirl on the ice and skated around the kiosk, out of sight. Jake followed. As he rounded the structure, his gut knotted. A man beelined on foot toward Cameron, camera aimed. She nearly fell trying to escape him.
Jake’s skates zzzzed on the ice as he pulled up beside the guy. “Beat it,” he bit out as he pulled the guy’s hand off Cameron’s arm. The guy was big, but Jake was bigger. Jake closed his fingers with bruising force around the man’s wrist. “Unless you want your precious camera to be used as a hockey puck.”
He heard Cameron’s sharp intake of breath and saw shock register in her eyes. He regretted that violence was a force that cut both ways—by prey or predator, for protection or aggression. Jake let go of the man’s arm.
“Hey, this is a public space,” the guy muttered as he backed up, wobbling. He tried to catch his balance but slipped on the ice, his camera swinging from a neck strap and hitting him in the chin.
Jake bent down and helped him up. “Look, just beat it, buddy. We want to have a nice day. You’re not helping.”
He’d been ready to deck the guy, but the gentler words had just flowed out.
The guy shrugged. “It’s a living, you know. I have kids.”
Jake took Cameron by the arm, leaned in close and whispered, “He’s probably already got a bad shot of you already. Might as well give him a good one. You up for it?”
She nodded but didn’t smile. He saw the throb of her pulse in her neck and recognized the anxiety still registering in her body. He pulled her close.
“Okay, buddy, one shot, then scram. Got it?”
The guy aimed his camera and stammered his thanks. Cameron turned on the bright-watt smile that Jake wasn’t sure he liked.
“Holiday spirit must be getting to you,” she said as the guy scrambled away.
“Something like that.” He sure wasn’t going to try to explain that she was getting to him. “I think you owe me once around the rink.” Distraction was an excellent antidote to fear; he’d learned that lesson. Maybe too well.
“Once around.” She put her hand delicately into his.
“Oh, no.” He swept Cameron into his arms, the front of her body grazing his chest. “More like this.”
He led her in a swirling dance. Like the actress she was, she went with his lead, quickly picking up cues and following with some of her own. A waltz from The Nutcracker blared on the PA. He could hum the entire song in his sleep, he’d practiced with his sister so many times.
Thank God for Dana and her love of skating. And her desire for perfection. He’d hated helping her practice her ice routines, hated every long boring minute. But now? He needed to send her a box—or ten—of her favorite chocolates, because nothing had ever felt as exhilarating as dancing with Cameron on the ice.
He snugged his hand to her waist, lifted his other arm and turned her. The smile she gave as she spun back to him wasn’t high wattage, it was devastating. Her natural smile shocked right into the place she’d cracked open in him. He didn’t even have a name for such a place. But he sure as hell felt the power that surged when he connected with Cameron. As the waltz neared its end, he lifted her, spun her around and around, and couldn’t resist kissing her as he dipped her toward the ice. Cool air swirled around them, but the sweet heat of her lips was the whole world, the whole universe. Her soft moan shocked a wave of want through him that he wasn’t sure he could control.
“You’re officially tagged,” Sophie shouted as she and Tyler crashed into them. If Jake hadn’t braced, he and Cameron would’ve gone sprawling.
Tyler pointed to his head and made a tapping gesture. “Strategy, not speed.”
Jake hadn’t recovered from the full-body hit that kissing Cameron had laid on him. And having a ten-year-old remind him of his casually doled-out wisdom didn’t help his effort to recover.
“We get a double session,” Sophie said in a singsong, teasing voice.
Jake’s eyes were glued to Cameron.
She put two fingers to her lips, as if she were tracing their kiss. “If that guy has a long lens, he just got a much better shot.”
Right. Public.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Her smile creased the corners of her eyes. “Neither was I.”
He’d heard many seductive tones from women, but Cameron’s rang of an honesty that drilled into his core. More. He wanted more. He wanted her. And the feeling sneaking in under the wanting wasn’t anything he’d ever faced. He didn’t know what to do with the emotions battering him.
“Jeez, you guys. All you think about is kissing,” Max said as he wobbled up on unsteady feet.
Sabrina whizzed up beside them. “Dimitri and I are taking the kids to the arcade for half an hour. Gage is leading the charge. Apparently they have air hockey.”
A chorus of yeahs drowned out what she said next.
“Pardon?” Jake shushed the kids. “I can’t hear her over you three.”
“She said to have fun,” Sophie said loudly. “I think I’ll stay behind and skate some more.”
&nbs
p; Sabrina took Sophie’s hand. “Nope. You’re coming with us.”
Cameron let Jake lead her in another dance. He hadn’t kissed her again. She shoved down both her disappointment and her urge to kiss him. After all, he’d probably been caught up in the moment, the music, the swirl of holiday energy enveloping them. She tried not to read too much into the kiss.
But as the music swelled with yet another waltz, as he slipped his hand to her waist and drew her close, she melted into the slow glide of his lead. The force compelling her hadn’t waned. The deep desire he sparked, if anything, got stronger the more she saw of him. Her need to be near him, to draw close, seemed new. Yet how was this feeling any different from what had gotten her into trouble with Elliott, different from that yearning for a match, for someone to fit into the place that yawned wide inside her, taunting her with its call to be filled?
A few steady strokes and a turn took them to the gazebo in the center of the rink.
“Hot chocolate?” He released his hold around her waist and offered his hand to help her into the structure.
“Mmmmm, sounds perfect.” Already she missed the firm, warm, mind-numbing embrace that he’d held her with as they’d danced on the ice.
They found a spot on an empty bench and sipped their steaming drinks. The cup warmed her hands, but not nearly as much as his half-upturned smile warmed her heart.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she said.
“Inflation has hit the West Coast,” he said in a deadpan tone. “Pennies won’t do.”
God, he scattered her good sense. But her mind still shoved up its protests. Do not go diving in again without knowing the waters. You don’t know enough about him. And what you do know should be telling you to run! Well, she argued back, there were ways to find out what Jake was made of. It couldn’t hurt to test the waters, could it?
She smiled at him over the rim of her cup. “Truth or dare, then?”
“I don’t know the rules.”
“Luckily for you, I do. If a player chooses ‘truth,’ then the other player gets to pose a question,” she explained. “Which, by the way, you are bound by your honor to answer truthfully. If a player chooses ‘dare,’ then the other person can set out a task to be performed.”
He glanced around the rink. “I think we should maybe stick with truth. Any task I might set might not be appropriate in our current location.”
Like a slow-burning fire, the double entendre of his words curled into her. And his throaty, rumbled tone erased any possible ambiguity. He wanted her. She wanted him. Taking a wiser, slower path was getting to be a near-impossible task.
She bit at her lip and blinked, fighting for composure. “So it’ll be truth, then.”
“Okay,” he said.
She pressed her lips together. And waited.
A male-female duo, playfully debating between staying together in the warmth and going out into the cold, taunted Cameron from the PA system. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” would never be the same song to her again.
“You have to ask a question,” she prompted.
“I thought you’d just tell me a truth.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You have to ask.”
“Give me an example.”
Was he teasing her? Maybe there wasn’t anything he wanted to know about her. There was plenty she wanted to know about him.
“Um... something like... tell me the most embarrassing thing you’ve done on a first date.”
Great. Not only was she having trouble keeping her mind from revving up her body, but now she was sounding like a total moron. Well, at least making a fool of herself might kill the buzz throwing her off-kilter and making her want to leap into his arms.
“Okay,” he said in the same sexy tone. “Tell me.”
“What?”
“Tell me the most embarrassing thing you’ve done on a first date.”
“No, you have to come up with your own question.”
She couldn’t resist a smile as he quirked his lips and knit his brows.
After some moments, he said, “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“I have a question—do you like the designated hitter or not?”
She burst out laughing.
“What?” He grinned. “You can tell a lot about someone by their answer to that question.”
In the face of his serious expression, she stifled her laughter. “Like what?”
“Well, like whether you like a purely offensive game compared to a more complex, nuanced game—a game where the pitcher has to risk his neck in the batter’s box.”
“I’ve always been a fan of nuance.” The flirty words escaped her in spite of her vow to be cautious.
“The National League’s for you, then.”
“What league are the Giants in?” she asked, trying to follow his train of thought.
Was that a wink or a wince? She still couldn’t read that particular expression of his.
“The National League.” He sipped his cocoa. “Truth. Your turn.”
The DJ was between songs, and only the sounds of metal blades scraping on ice and a few strains of chatter and laughter drifted to their perch in the gazebo.
“Where do you see yourself in twenty years?” she asked into the relative silence.
“Assuming the planet is still around and the human species survives until then?”
“Okay, with those two assumptions,” she granted. “And assuming baseball is still a game people play.”
“Baseball will always be a game people play.”
Bing Crosby’s voice sang out the first yearning words of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” As Bing crooned, Jake’s face clouded. She wondered if he missed being with his family for the holiday. And then she wondered if he was remembering Christmases with his brother.
“Twenty years is a long way out,” he finally said.
“You’re right, it’s an unfair question. I withdraw it.”
But she was suddenly considering another unfair question, one that she knew he’d never answer outside the structure and rules of the game. A question whose answer she knew in her heart would bring him comfort if only he would talk about the subject.
She took a deep breath. Some roadblocks simply had to be taken down. Why she’d appointed herself the one to charge Jake’s barricades, she didn’t know. But the sadness in his eyes the day they’d chosen the Christmas tree, when he’d evaded her questions about Peter, gnawed at her. This moment seemed better than any other to deal with the issue, maybe ease Jake’s guilt.
“Why do you feel guilty about your brother’s death?”
He winced. No doubt about that expression. He turned the cup in his hand around and around and around.
“Do you believe in fate?” he said after a few moments had passed.
“No.” She shifted on the bench, aware that he was watching her face. But honesty demanded its due. “Well, maybe. Why?”
“I should’ve been on that boat.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No. Instead of going out fishing with Peter and a friend of ours, I went off chasing a skirt.” He took in a deep breath. A small muscle twitched under his right eye. “Not an hour later, a boatload of drunk water skiers slammed into them. My friend survived. Peter didn’t.”
She was tempted to say something, anything. Suddenly the game felt wrong. Her probing felt wrong. Maybe her belief that it was better to face feelings and live through them wasn’t true for everyone.
He ran his hand through his hair and then shot her a look that speared straight into her heart. “I don’t even remember her name.”
“Whose name?”
“The woman I left Peter to chase down. The woman who changed everything.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I could’ve saved him.”
“Or you could’ve died. God knows, Jake, every day we make decisions that change life’s path. Yes to this, no to that. All we can do is follow our best instincts
. You couldn’t have known.”
“I could’ve been there for him.” He set the now-crushed cup onto the bench and lowered his head to his hands.
“You loved him,” she said, not knowing what else to say. “I’m sure he must’ve known that.”
“I still do.”
One thing she’d learned after her father had died was that grief required attention. Either open up and let grief and all its messy, horrible, poignant energy out into the world and give it life, or expect it to eat away at you forever. But an ice rink and the holidays probably weren’t the best place and time for bringing up such tender subjects. Her instincts were clearly all wrong. When her acting career dried up, she sure wouldn’t be hanging out a shingle as any kind of counselor.
On the PA, Bing promised he’d be home, if only in his dreams. The silence that followed the end of the song seemed to stretch forever.
Then loud shouting from across the rink had them snapping their gazes across the ice. Sabrina and Dimitri stood at the gate, with the kids and Gage flanking them and waving.
Jake lifted his head and took her hand, surprising her. “Dare.”
“What?”
He ran his thumb slowly against the back of her hand. He might as well have run it right through her heart.
“Dare,” he repeated softly.
Her pulse picked up its beat, keeping time to the tune he called up inside her, ignoring her common sense screaming, don’t go there.
“Go on a date with me,” he said as he stood and tugged her up from the bench. “To the coast. To the sea. Let’s get away from all this... all this fuss. Maybe take a hike. Someplace quiet. Someplace wild.”
“I’d like that,” she heard herself saying.
“Truth?”
“Yes, truth.” She pulled her hand from his to quell the trembling that had begun to rumble in her belly. It was the truth; she did want to get away with him. She liked the idea more than she wanted to admit. She liked Jake more than was probably good for her.
Liked?
The problem was that she’d started to fall in love with him. Just a little. But was there even such a thing as being a little bit in love? As they skated over to where their friends waited at the other side of the rink, she hoped maybe there was.
