Not even thinking about the skin conditioner on my face, I opened the door. Jody stood there, eyes wide as he took in my appearance. “Nice look you’ve got going there, Booker.” He brushed past me—without an invite I might add. Lacey, holding little Addie, followed behind him.
“Hi, Cage.” She patted the one clean spot on my cheek as she walked past me into the living room where Jody was already seated next to Karen, making fun of me.
“I can’t believe you’d rather stay with him than your own brother. Look at him. Using girl’s skin cream like a little puss—”
Lacey put her hand on Jody’s shoulder and said with laughter in her voice, “Jody, doesn’t that smell like the same stuff of mine that you use?”
“What? I don’t use that stuff. It was only that one time after I had those stitches out.”
“I call bullshit. You don’t think I notice that I have to buy twice as much now as I used to?”
“Whatever.” Quick as can be, he changed the subject. “So how are you feeling, sis?”
“A little better. I can almost stand up straight, and I think I’m going to try to put on sweat pants today.” She looked down at her flowing house dress with a grimace. “Not that I don’t appreciate the lovely garments you got for me, Lacey.”
Lacey’s smile visibly put her at ease. “Believe me, I’m not offended. I’ll be glad to see you out of them myself.”
Still playing nice, I brought Jody a cup of coffee. “Are you drinking coffee these days, Lacey?”
“Only if it’s decaf. I’m fine though, thanks.” Jody put his cup on the table, and even said ‘thank you’. We were coming along nicely, huh? Time to try for some extra points with Karen.
“Are you guys planning on watching the game today?” It was an afternoon game, and the Scorpions needed to win it. We were down two games with five to go in the series. My backup, Andre Jacques, looked like he was scared shitless. I kept meaning to give him a call.
“Yeah, of course. It’s got to be killing you to be sitting out, huh?” If anyone could understand how I was feeling, it would be Jody. Another hockey player who had sat out before could truly empathize.
“I’m trying not to think about it too much. It sucks, sure, but what can I do about it?” I didn’t feel half as nonchalant as I tried to sound. If I let myself, I think I could almost cry over not being there for my team—but you already know that I don’t cry, right? Tough, badass guy, blah, blah, blah.
Jody gave me a half smile and nodded his head. He knew the real answer, but didn’t push. “Tough break for the whole team, Cage.”
“Yeah. If you want, you could watch the game over here with us. After the game I’m going to throw some chicken and steak on the grill. You’re welcome to stay.” Look at me being all domesticated. This was what it could be like if Karen wasn’t going back to Canada in a couple of months. Guess I shouldn’t get too used to it.
“Yeah, sure. Sounds good.” Jody got up and put an arm around his girls. “We’ll come back this afternoon. I’ll bring some beer. Anything else?”
“Nope. I can handle the rest.”
Lacey put her hand on my arm, and Addie’s tiny little hand followed. She was a cute baby. “I’ll make a pasta salad, too, if that’s okay.”
I patted the baby’s hand while I addressed her mother. “That’d be great. Thanks.”
Once they left, I made a list for the food store. While I was thinking about what I wanted to put in my baked beans, Karen strolled into the kitchen.
“Look. I did it.”
“Yes, you did. And you look great.” She had gotten into her yoga pants and a loose t-shirt. “How do you feel?”
“Tired. And tired of being tired. I was going to ask if I could go to the store with you, but I don’t think I’d make it. I need a nap.”
She looked so frustrated. All I wanted to do was make it better for her. I wished I could take her pain myself. “It’s only been a week, Karen. Cut yourself a break. I think it’s pretty amazing you’re wearing pants already.”
“To be honest, they kind of hurt.” She gently pulled the waistband down an inch or two trying to find a more comfortable position.
“Go put one of those dresses back on. There’s no reason for you to be any more uncomfortable than you already are. That’s crazy.” What, did she think she needed to dress up for me? Although her ass looked amazing in those yoga pants. Whoever designed those things was a friggin genius. I hoped he or she was a bazillionaire.
“Nah. I’d rather be a little uncomfortable for a while. We’ll see how the day goes. I’m going to pop a couple of Advil and see if I can lie down flat and sleep.”
I had a sneaky suspicion her bottom was hurting her from sitting and sleeping in the chair for so long, but I wasn’t about to ask about it. “That’s a good idea, but don’t use the couch. Go lie down in my bed. It’ll be a lot more comfortable for you. I’ll go shopping, and when I get back, if you’re awake, you can help me prep stuff for dinner.”
“I think I will. Thanks, Cage.”
I watched her walk away. She was still slow going, but the view was fantastic.
***
“Goddammit!” Jacques looked like shit in the first period. The Hawks scored two goals on him. That was two more than we’d scored. Watching hockey could be a ton of fun, especially with other people to watch with, but not when I should have been in the net—with my team—stopping the fucking puck!
Karen jumped when I yelled, so then I was mad at myself for causing her discomfort. Anger had always been my nemesis. I was like a light switch. Off one minute and BAM! on the next. The worst part was I knew it, but I still couldn’t control it; and when I saw my team down by two games in the series and already down by two goals in the third game—well, let’s just say today wasn’t the day I was going to rein it in.
I got up and started pacing behind the couch, yelling at the TV. I was glad Lacey had decided to stay home with Addie who wasn’t feeling well. My language was not for children’s ears. Even babies. “There’s no reason for that! What the fuck is he doing? He’s not covering the net! Why is he coming out so far? He knows better than that. Fuck!”
Karen slowly got up and carefully walked behind the couch to stop my pacing. “Cage, relax. He’s going to be okay. Keith will talk to him and calm him down. We still have two more periods to go. Why don’t you go get us some beer from the fridge?”
“You can’t drink beer if you’re taking pain meds. You can have some juice.” I don’t think Karen appreciated my dictator-like comments. That was proved when I returned with the drinks, and she snatched a beer out of my hand with attitude. “I’m off the meds, and I want a beer. You drink the juice.” Well, okay then. I drank the juice.
***
Five minutes into the second period, Rush was handing out a beat down to a Chicago defenseman. Jody sat forward, forearms on his knees, practically falling off the couch. “Yeah! Pound him! Hit him again!” Once an enforcer …
“Kill em’, Carl! Ugh.” Karen winced and hugged her pillow to herself. “Okay, note to self. Don’t get too excited yet.”
“You okay, sweetheart?” Funny how one little groan from someone you cared about could put things into perspective. I wanted to win the game, I wanted to win the Cup, but I wanted Karen to be out of pain more.
“Sweetheart? Why are you calling my sister sweetheart?”
“Shut up, Jody.” Great answer, huh? To be honest, things had gotten a bit weird over the last week or so between me and Karen. I think it was because I’d had to help her do just about everything and we didn’t really know each other all that well. We certainly knew each other better now. Sometimes I felt really close to her, and sometimes it just felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say to her about the accident or anything. We hadn’t really talked about it, and it was like there was an elephant in the room. I wasn’t sure what to do about it, either.
“Guys, don’t start. I’m fine; I just moved the wrong way.” She gave
her attention back to the TV, but the fight was over. We turned back in time to see Rush being escorted to the sin bin with blood dripping down onto his jersey.
The rest of the game was relatively uneventful. There were a few fisticuff bouts, but nothing over the top. Jacques didn’t allow any more goals and we slipped in three to get a much needed win. The last puck had made it in the net mere seconds before the buzzer signaled the end of the game.
“Well, we’re back in it anyway. We win the next game and I’ll feel a lot better about our chances of advancing.” We talked a while about the game, and then I got up to throw the meat on the grill for dinner.
“Want some help, Booker?”
“No thanks. I’ve got it.” I think I was going to have to give up on the idea of Jody and I ever being buddies, but that was okay. Some people just didn’t gel. Maybe I should start calling him LaGrange, huh? Asshole. Yeah, yeah. I could’ve used an attitude adjustment myself today.
Chapter 17
All right. It was a new day, and I was determined to throw off the funk from last night’s weirdness. Karen had to be going nuts sitting around the house. I knew she wasn’t ready to venture out, but I’d been racking my brain to come up with something that might grab her attention for a while. Keep her busy. So, I called my mom.
“Hi, Dalton honey. How are you, sugar?” My mother’s sweet twangy voice could calm me like nothing else. What was it about mothers? They had magic in them; I was convinced of it. Karen was like that, too. Of course that was where I drew the line, comparing Karen to my mother.
“I’m doing okay, I guess. My ribs are going to be sore for a while, and I still get headaches at the end of the day, but that’ll go away. I’m going out of my mind, though. Bored off my ass.”
“Language.”
“Sorry, Ma.”
“As much as I love hearing from you, Dalton, I know you called for something. Spill it.”
I grinned. That was another thing about mothers. You couldn’t get anything by them. They were smarter than us. “Well, Karen’s still here. She’ll be with me for another couple of days. She’s feeling better, but not well enough to go out or anything. I know she’s going crazy sitting around the house. I was wondering if you had any ideas of something we could do together or something I could get for her to do. Maybe something she could do on the deck outside.”
“Well, what about her painting? I mean, I doubt she brought any of her supplies with her from Canada, but maybe you could get her a startup kit or something just so she could dabble a little. There’s plenty of nice scenery there at the beach.”
“Painting?” That was news to me. And how on Earth did my mother know she painted?
“Yes. You didn’t know she paints?”
“No. And how do you know she paints?”
“We spoke yesterday on the phone while you were at the store. I guess she forgot to tell you. We had a lovely conversation. I really like her. It’s a dang shame she has to go back home in a couple of months. She doesn’t want to, you know. I was kind of hoping you were part of the reason she didn’t want to. I asked, but she very politely told me she didn’t want to talk about that. If you ask me, that means yes.”
I didn’t know she didn’t want to go home, either. I knew she liked it here, but hell, who wouldn’t? There was nothing not to like. “What kind of paints should I get?” There was an art store about five minutes away, but I didn’t know anything about painting.
“Now that I don’t know, Dalton. Find a craft store or something and ask them. I’m sure Karen would love that.”
“I will. Thanks, Ma.”
“You’re welcome, baby. Now you be good to that sweet thing, you hear me? I know you’ll take good care of her. I’ll talk with ya later.”
Ma never said goodbye. She always ended with something that wasn’t finite. She’d say “talk to you soon” or “you have a good game tonight.” Anything other than goodbye. She didn’t believe in goodbyes. Not since my father left her. For a long, long time she thought he’d come back. I still don’t know if she’d said goodbye to him in her heart. I really wished she would.
I told Karen I had to run out and went on my mission. Boredom had set in on me as well, so I stopped at the hardware store and bought some sanding pads for my sander and paint for the deck. It wasn’t intense work, so I figured my ribs could take it. Aside from the deck needing some attention, I needed something productive to do.
Typical of my shopping style, I bought a car load of stuff. My rental was an SUV, so I had plenty of room to fill it up. I bought an easel, some side tables to put paints on, a couple of those palette things, tons of brushes and all types of paints. They had oils, acrylics, watercolors and pastels. I bought each kind in lots of colors. Then they said I’d need different types of paper and stuff for different paints. I told them to give me all of them. I had a couple of canvases and some huge books with blank paper that I was told wasn’t just plain paper. Whatever. I bought it all. Overkill? Maybe.
“Oh my God, what on Earth do you have?”
On my first trip in, Karen saw the easel under one arm and a few blank canvases under the other. Her face broke out into a bright smile. All her teeth were showing. I did good. “I thought you might like to paint. I know you’re bored. Hell, so am I.”
She got up with as much animation as I’d seen so far. “You bought all this for me?”
“Of course. Who else?” Her eyes watered up. “Oh no. Don’t get leaky on me.” I grabbed the stool from the kitchen and sat it outside on the far side of the deck where the sun was, giving her a moment to collect herself. “Go sit down and I’ll bring this stuff out.”
“I can’t just sit down. I need to see what you have there. And I need to change! I can’t wear this; I’ll get paint on it. It’s the only dress I have that’s not hideous.” She was bouncing in her spot. Carefully bouncing, but bouncing all the same. I did really good.
“Okay. Hold on.” I pointed at her where she stood. “Don’t move a muscle.” I ran up to my room and grabbed a plain, white Hanes shirt for her to wear to paint in. “Here. Put this on. Just pull it over your dress. You can get paint all over it. I have lots more. Be right back.”
It took several more trips to get everything inside the house. With the kitchen counter littered with supplies, I stood there feeling a little foolish. It really was a bit much. “Wow, I guess I did buy a lot, huh?”
“Oh, Cage. It’s awesome. I mean really, really awesome.” She walked over and gently put her arms around me, mindful of my ribs. Her face was in my neck when she mumbled, “Thank you so much. I’ve missed my paints.”
I awkwardly patted her back, and watched as she went through the supplies like a chocoholic looking for the last chip in a batch of trail mix. Each item made her happier than the last. “I’m going to start with an oil painting of the dunes.”
“Put what you want here on the counter and I’ll take it out for you. I have two small tables set up next to the easel to put everything on. I wasn’t sure what you’d need.”
“So you just bought the whole store, huh? Cage, you have to let me pay you back for all of this. I know how much this stuff costs.”
She was crazy. But that funk that I’d been feeling the past couple of days? It washed away like yesterday’s rain. Just like that, we were back in our fun space. It felt easy to be around each other again. “Uh, no. Think of it as recompense for the accident.” I didn’t really mean to say that.
“Recompense? Cage, that accident wasn’t your fault. You know that right? You know I don’t blame you, right?”
I knew that. Didn’t I? “Yeah, yeah, of course.”
Stopping her excursion through the land of the paints, she walked back over to me and gently ran a finger along the stitches that were still in my head, and then along hers down her face. “We both got hurt. It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it. I don’t blame you. I never did. Not for a second.” She leaned over and kissed my hea
d. “It’s a shame they had to shave you hair though. You have such pretty hair.”
“Fuck my hair. It’ll grow back. Aren’t you mad? You’ve been so calm and accepting. I don’t get it. If I were you, I’d be mad as hell.”
“I was. I guess I still am, but what good does that do? I’ve thought about not having kids for hours upon hours. It’s not fair, and I hate that that was taken from me. I’ve shed my tears. I’ve cried myself to sleep, but I need to accept it. I’m not saying I’ll never shed a tear over it again, but do you have any idea how many children are already born who need a home? Maybe that’s the plan for me. Maybe I was never meant to bear my own children. That doesn’t mean I won’t be a mother.”
Jesus, what an incredibly strong woman. If I were her, I’d be railing at the word for the injustice. I’d rant to anyone who was close enough to feel my wrath. It was funny to think about, but everyone, including me, thought hockey players were so tough, but the truth was, we didn’t have anything on the strength of a woman when push came to shove.
“You’ll be a great mother, Karen. I know you will.” I put my hands lightly on her hips and leaned in to kiss her nose. Then her lips. I brushed them once, and then twice. My hands involuntarily squeezed her hips, and I took a step forward. Karen took a step back.
“Thank you.” Her hand came up to cup my cheek, and then she went back to sorting her paints.
***
Since we were back to being normal again, I figured I might as well get on with my suit. For evident reasons, sex was off the table for a while, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get under her skin and keep her thinking, right? I used the one thing I was confident about. The one thing that never let me down.
It was no mistake that I looked good without a shirt on. I worked hard to keep my body in top shape. Not just for hockey, but yes, for the women, too. What could I say? Chicks dug muscles. Yup, I was a stud—but of course, you knew that already.
Cage's Misconduct (NHL Scorpions #3) Page 15
