by Lee Kilraine
Chapter 21
Samantha
I guess I wasn’t thinking when I arrived at the Roughnecks hockey arena for the Kid’s Day with the players. I’d forgotten how cold it was inside hockey arenas, and it was chilly in my short-sleeved blouse and jeans. Duh, Samantha, ice. I made my way to the section of seats they’d set aside for the players’ families. Beck had said the team let the players’ kids get an extra hour of ice time with the players before the event opened to the public. And they expanded “player’s kids” to include the foster kids Ash and his brothers volunteered with.
It was easy to pick out Beck and his brothers because they were the only men out on the ice without uniforms. They’d laced on skates but wore jeans and had their hands shoved into the pockets of warm-looking jackets. So warm looking. Dang, I wished I’d remembered it would be this chilly.
Gosh, I guess I’d have to keep my mind off the cold by looking at all the hot, sexy men on the ice. Although, truth be told, even with so much hotness, my eyes kept gravitating back to Beck. My gaze followed his path around the ice as he held up two wobbly little kids while they laughed and giggled.
Ash swooped in and took one kid off his hands, and Beck and the other boy managed to make a whole loop around the rink. After a high-five, Beck passed the boy off to Eli over by the goal where kids were taking shots. Shots, which to the kids’ excitement, kept getting past the Roughneck goalie.
A few of the women behind me had a running commentary on each of the players.
“I thought the new owner looked nice in the papers, but oh, Lord, the first time I saw Denver King in person I almost fainted,” woman number one said.
“You and me both. Did you see the new guy, number forty-one? We got him from Toronto. Rumor is he has all his teeth!”
“Is anyone sure Asher Thorne is gay and not bi? Because oh my heck, I’d tap that if he’d look my way.”
“Girl, you don’t need to,” her friend said. “Have you seen the other Thorne brothers? Some sexy genes in that family.”
“You aren’t kidding. Look at those faces.”
“I’m too busy looking at their tight asses.”
I smiled and glanced around at them. They had no guilt over being caught.
“I’m happily married to number sixteen out there.” The woman shot me a friendly smile and shrugged. “Just because I’m on a diet, doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu.”
“I can’t argue with that,” I said and turned back around to ogle one Thorne brother butt in particular.
I heard Lila off to my left and turned to see her walking through the group, introducing herself to the wives, girlfriends, and other family members.
“Hey, Sam. I didn’t expect to see you here,” Lila said and took the seat next to me.
“Beck invited me. Seemed like a fun break to get away from work.”
“Beck’s here? Wait. I’m confused. He doesn’t have kids and neither does Ash.” Lila turned away from the ice to look at me. “Unless they have kids I don’t know about.”
“They do. I think like six or seven between all the brothers.” I grinned.
“Seriously? I had no idea. Divorce? Girlfriends?”
“Foster kids. Beck said they volunteer over at the Y with a group of foster kids.” I turned back to the ice, easily finding Beck and his brothers with their gaggle of kids.
“That’s amazingly sweet.” Lila sighed next to me. “I only know Asher and Beck. I’ve never met the others, but they seem like good guys, don’t they?”
“They do.” They really did. “Very close from what I’ve seen. Like in a three Musketeers way.”
“Nice,” Lila said. “That’s nice.”
Beck looked over at us and waved, only to frown across the ice at me. What did I do wrong? I watched Beck pick up the kid he was skating with in his arms, and then he sliced his way smoothly over the ice toward us, scraping sharply to a stop at the rink wall.
“You’re holding your own on the ice with the pros out there, Beck,” Lila said with a wink.
“Well, I’m still on my feet.” He set the child down next to him before looking back up at me. “Come here, you.”
Me? Yikes! I was suddenly the focus of more than half the women in the section. I stood and moved to where he waited at the wall.
My attention caught on the big brown eyes of the little skater next to him. The girl didn’t look happy. I offered her my friendliest smile. “Hi. Are you having fun skating?”
“No.”
“Bethany, this is my friend, Sam. Sam, Bethany.” Beck unzipped his jacket as he talked and shrugged it off an arm and shoulder at a time. “Bethany, tell Sam why you aren’t having fun.”
The little girl held on to the lip of the wall, which she could just barely get her chin over. “Girls aren’t good at skating,” she whispered.
I leaned down until I was close enough to whisper back. “Whoever told you that is wrong. Girls can be amazing skaters.”
“That’s what I told her, but she didn’t believe me,” Beck said.
“I skate. And my friend behind me, Lila, she’s an excellent skater.”
I could barely stay up on ice, and I had no idea about Lila, but no one should get to put limits on a young child. Lord knows I’d had a lifetime of the men in my family putting limits on me because I was a girl. Not today, Bethany. Not on my watch.
“Here, put this on.” Beck handed his coat over to me. “You’re going to need it once you get on the ice.”
I gladly took the jacket, but I wasn’t going to get on the ice. He was crazy if he thought—
“Will you skate with me? Pretty please?” Those big eyes and sweet face were hard to refuse. She pointed behind me. “And her too?”
“Absolutely!” Lila jumped up behind me and linked her arm through mine, happy as a hippy in a van. “Let’s go skate like a girl.”
Bethany’s shy smile gave me the extra boost I needed to overcome the fact that I hadn’t been on a pair of ice skates since I was about Bethany’s age. I had no idea if I would even be able to stay up.
“The skates are over by the other goal. We’ll be waiting for you, right, Bethany?’ Beck’s slow smile and twinkling eyes told me he knew I couldn’t skate. His wink told me he wouldn’t let me fall on my ass.
Lila steered us around to the other end of the rink for skates. “You can’t skate at all, can you?”
“Nope. Me and my big mouth.” I’d defy anyone to look into Bethany’s eyes and not tell the same white lie. It wasn’t possible. “You?”
“I happen to be an excellent skater, although Denver would disagree with me.” She shrugged while we each grabbed a pair of skates from the rack. “He just doesn’t like it that I brake by running into him. But he’s big; he can take it.”
“Okay. Perfect. Now I know how to stop. Although I won’t run into Denver. I’ll run into Beck. Or Brady. I saw him out on the ice.”
Once we’d laced our skates on, we made our tentative way out onto the ice. Bethany was waiting for us. Oh, the poor girl if she’d pinned all her hopes on me. But I wouldn’t let her dreams burst without trying, so I pushed off over the ice toward her, dragging Lila right beside me.
Beck must have said something to his brothers, because over the next thirty minutes someone was always right there to prop both me and Bethany up. Lila did fine, until she had to stop, and sure enough she simply ran into her husband, which had all the kids and players laughing.
Even Bethany.
By the end of the session, I wouldn’t say my skating was any better, but Bethany was skating circles around me. Literally. And laughing and having fun. It was a good time.
I was cautiously making my way to one of the doors to exit the ice when Beck swooped in next to me with an arm around my waist to guide me over.
“You did a nice thing.” His hand moved
up my back to give my ponytail a light tug.
“Thank you for not letting me fall on my ass.” I stepped off the ice and turned my face up at him.
His gaze traveled down to my ass before looking back at me, his electric blue eyes hot enough to make my stomach swirl. “I love that ass. No way I wanted to see it bruised.”
“You’re assuming you’re going to see it later.” Yeah, I was feeling sassy.
“I’m counting on it.” He leaned into me, placing a light kiss on my lips.
Someone skated close behind Beck, bumping into his shoulder. He moved back quickly, but not quickly enough.
Eli skated by facing backward, wiggling his eyebrows at us.
“You are so busted. You just kissed me in front of your brothers.”
“I have a feeling the kiss wasn’t their first clue.” He leaned in and gave me one more quick kiss.
“Oh, thanks for the jacket.” I slid out of it and handed it back. “I’m heading by Lila’s. I want to check out how the stain looks on the new floors.”
“We’ll be here a few more hours. Meet me over at Big Eddie’s for a burger.”
That sort of tripped me up. Because it felt as if something was shifting. Maybe it had been for a long time. Like the way a glacier creeps across the ocean. What started out as “It’s just sex” now felt bigger. Deeper. More fragile. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. So I simply decided to drift along with the current and see where it took me.
Chapter 22
Samantha
“I can’t believe it’s almost Thanksgiving! I haven’t even bought a turkey breast or cranberries.”
“A turkey breast? Who serves a turkey breast for Thanksgiving?”
“People who spend Thanksgiving alone, that’s who.”
“What? You aren’t going to your parents’ for Thanksgiving?”
“My mom still lives overseas, and it’s too stressful at my father’s house for the holidays.” I loved my stepsister, but she escaped to a friend’s house for most holidays. “I usually go to Margo’s, only Margo and her family are heading to Florida, since her sister has a new baby.”
“Why don’t you spend Thanksgiving with me? And my brothers of course. We don’t really do anything special. Just sit around, eat, and watch football.”
“Okay.” I leaned over and planted a kiss on his lips. “Thanks. Can I bring the sweet potatoes? It doesn’t feel official until I eat my family’s sweet potato casserole.”
“You might want to double the recipe. We can eat a lot.”
“I can only imagine.” They were all big men, Asher especially. “What are some of your family’s special recipes? What kind of stuffing did you eat in your family? Classic cornbread or maybe smoked oyster?”
Beck shrugged and tugged on his earlobe. “Our family didn’t have any special recipes growing up. Not for holidays—not for anything, really.”
“Seriously? No recipe handed down with reverence from grandmother to mother to son?” My eyes moved back and forth searching his suddenly stiff face. There was a tenseness in his body that hadn’t been there minutes ago. “Well, that’s fine. Not every family does.”
He turned back to the newspaper in his hand with a slight frown.
“Why don’t we find a recipe to start your own tradition?” I leaned over and grabbed my iPad off the nightstand, snuggled back into Beck’s side, and opened my Pinterest account.
He made a funny noise, and I looked to make sure he was all right. His eyes were glued to my iPad screen but jerked quickly away. Were his ears turning red?
“Are you okay?” I looked closer to be sure.
“Never better.” He messed with the sports page on his lap.
“Every family should have some tradition that makes a person connected to family or happy memories. That’s why we hand down holiday recipes. A family recipe makes a person feel full of love.”
“I’d rather be full of pie.”
“Ah, you like pie. Okay, let’s start there. What kind? Apple or pumpkin?”
“Coconut custard. I remember being at someone’s house, and they served me a piece of coconut custard pie. I thought they were the luckiest family in the world if they got to eat that every night after dinner. It was the first pie I’d ever eaten. They let me have three pieces that night.”
“I love coconut custard pie. Let’s look.” I typed it into the search bar, and photos of pie sprang up on the screen.
Beck sat forward. “Oh, hell yes. You can make any of those and I’d be a happy man.”
“Oh, you poor deluded soul.” I shook my head but couldn’t stop the smile from spreading on my lips. “I’m not making any of these. You are.”
His gaze darted over to me, probably checking to see if I was kidding.
“That’s part of the connection. Either you, or one of your brothers, have to make this—or whatever dish you pick—to start this recipe tradition. Otherwise it’s my tradition, not yours. See how that works?”
“I don’t.” Beck took the iPad from my hand and set it on his nightstand with his paper. He pushed me back on the bed, moving over me in one smooth move. He turned his light blue eyes on me, and then bent his head to my neck to land slow, sexy kisses down the side. “Sam, I don’t care if you make our first annual traditional Thanksgiving recipe.”
My pulse was already beating to a new heated rhythm, even before he slid my pajama top open and kissed my breasts.
“I guarantee you my brothers won’t either.” He ran more kisses along my ribs and over my stomach. I could hear myself panting in anticipation.
His attention was focused and wickedly sexy. I didn’t even respond in kind but let him pleasure me. I let him persuade me for at least ten or fifteen minutes. Oh, yeah, I was on to him. He thrust me up and over the edge, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.
Beck took a slow, meandering path back to my lips but finally arrived and kissed the breath clean out of me. Then he rested his head next to me on his pillow and hit me with his eyes again.
“Thank you. That was lovely. I’m still not making the pie.”
* * * *
I walked into Lila’s house the next day still smiling over Beck’s methods of persuasion last night. I let him try to persuade me a lot. Beck gave it his all. And I was amazed at myself that I didn’t cave in the end. Of course, it also made it easier to say no to baking his first ever traditional Thanksgiving pie in the hopes he’d try more persuasion tonight.
What we had going between us was still a tenuous thing. The working side had smoothed out almost too easily. But it made sense too. Sex was a form of communication, right? And I respected Beck’s vision and work ethic. I was pretty sure he respected my work. On a personal level, in bed we connected with a depth of emotion that took my breath away. But outside of bed, that connection seemed to turn into a delicate glass bridge—slippery, fragile, and harder to navigate.
Which was why the invitation to both the hockey event and his family’s Thanksgiving meal were such a surprise. I’d swear those invitations just spilled out of his mouth before he could think it through. I got the impression he didn’t know what his mouth was saying until it was too late. But seeing him with the kids at the hockey rink had revealed a new side to Beck I’d never seen before.
I’d gone into this knowing Beck and I would go our separate ways when the job was done. Maybe now was a good time to reconsider that. No, that wouldn’t matter. Beck didn’t do relationships. Right. Just enjoy the ride, Sam.
And get back to focusing on the job. We were so close to the end. I had that jittery feeling in my chest I always got when all the elements came together and matched up with—or better yet—surpassed the vision in my head. I loved that first look.
Right now I was anxious to see the floor in Lila’s study. It was the last to go in because they’d sent the wrong color wood twice. My f
ootsteps quickened toward her back corner office. I could already envision how good it was going to—whoa, no. My first look popped that bubble of excitement.
“Frank? What’s with the floor? It’s supposed to run the other direction.” I’d been excited about seeing this floor go down as it was a key focus to the room’s overall feel.
“No, Sam. Beck made a change order to the floors in the study. He said to run them lengthwise along the longest part of the room. So that’s what we’re doing.” Frank pulled a bandana from his back pocket and dragged it across his forehead. “If you have a problem, you should probably take it up with Beck.”
Oh, I’d take it up with Beck all right. I’d specified I wanted the floors running the other way for the effect. I never saw the change order. He sure as heck didn’t discuss making that change. My gut twisted at the all-too-familiar feeling of my work and professional opinions being discounted. I’d spent too many years watching the men in my family pat me on the head and then ignore me.
I was going to take it up with Beck right now. I stomped through four rooms looking for him before I stopped and called his cell. He was outside in the pool house. So that’s where I went. I pushed my way out the French doors, across the patio, my heels tapping along at a sharp clip, around the pool and into the pool house, letting my anger heat from a simmer to a boil.
“Beck, can I have a word, please?” My lips were so stiff I barely got the words snarled out between them.
“Sure. What’s up?” He turned to me with a smile. His face looked completely innocent and guilt-free as if it was no big deal to put a change order on my design without consulting me.
“What’s up? I’ll tell you what’s up, Beckett Thorne…” I’d stopped about ten feet away from him, my arms crossed over my chest and anger twisting in my gut. “This pretense you’ve had going that we’re equals running this job—that’s up, buddy.”
His forehead creased and he managed to look honestly confused. Ha!
“I thought we settled all of this with the lock-in.” He took a step toward me but stopped when I narrowed my eyes on him. “There’s no pretense. We’re partners in this endeavor.”
