by Kate Meader
Dinner was a strained affair, a lot of “Could I have some bread, please?” and “Oh, this carbonara is lovely.” (It was. Alexei had it going on in the kitchen and looked almost human in an apron with cartoon cats and the slogan OCP: Obsessive Cat Person.) Isobel did her best to keep the conversation rolling and learned that Victoria was an office manager for a real estate company and that the bakeries in Park Slope, Brooklyn, were out of this world.
“So, Isobel,” Victoria said after Vadim’s grunts became unbearable. “I understand your father isn’t around anymore. What about your mother?”
“She lives in Scottsdale with her partner. After she divorced my dad, she came out and lived happily ever after chasing the rainbow.”
Vadim’s head snapped to attention. “Gerry is gay?”
“You remember my mom?”
“She was always flirting with the players.”
“Overcompensating.” Isobel smiled at Victoria. “Speaking of overcompensating . . . There was a time not so long ago when Vadim wished I was a lesbian. It was the only explanation that fit the facts as he saw them.”
Back to grunting from the Russian man-child to her right.
Victoria smiled. “He was always like that as a boy. No gray areas with Vadim.”
“Yes, please discuss me as if I am not here.”
“You can always contribute,” Isobel said, but by some mutual silent agreement she and Victoria stopped talking about Vadim’s childhood foibles. It was still too raw for them to be in the same room together.
“So, do you like being a coach?” Victoria asked after a few more bites. “I understand there aren’t many women coaches at this level.”
“She’s an excellent coach when she’s not being a pain,” Vadim offered, which Isobel took as progress, because the statement could only be directed at his mother. Or Alexei.
“Some would say the two things go hand in hand,” Isobel said, then to Vadim’s mom, “I like it. I like working with people who want to learn.”
“Pro players are pretty set in their ways, I imagine.”
“Damn straight. Younger players, especially ones younger than Mia, are more receptive. Definitely more rewarding.”
“I am unrewarding?” Vadim asked.
She heard unexpected cheekiness in his voice, so she gave it right back. “Not . . . completely. A vast improvement from your misguided youth.”
His smile lit up the room and her world with it.
“I’ve been doing some work with a youth hockey charity here in Chicago,” she said to Victoria, eager to mute the charge coming off Vadim. “Giving kids, especially ones that don’t have a lot of economic resources, opportunities to play sports can have a real impact on their lives.”
Vadim frowned. “I did not know about this.”
“Well, our interactions usually focus on you, Russian. Center of the universe and all that.”
Alexei’s cough sounded like agreement, and even Victoria had trouble hiding her smile.
“It is not always about me, is it, Bella?”
She’d give him that. He’d certainly demonstrated his generosity as a lover. She wished he’d stop flirting with her in front of his mom, though. As if this situation wasn’t awkward enough.
“If you’re feeling like spreading some of that love around, there’s a charity fund-raiser next week.”
“I would be honored to attend.”
Alexei and Victoria watched this exchange with interest—or at least, Isobel assumed that was the meaning behind Alexei’s squint. And she hadn’t missed how Alexei snuck furtive glances at Vadim’s mother every time she sucked on a noodle. That wasn’t merely a casual interest in whether people were enjoying his food.
Victoria continued. “Mia never stops talking about your performance in Sochi, Isobel. She watches it over and over. Even more than Vadim’s games.”
Vadim rolled his eyes, refusing to be drawn in.
“Yeah, well, Vadim only got a bronze.”
He raised his chin. “I will get gold next time.”
She couldn’t resist. “So will I.”
He looked taken aback, bafflement darkening his expression. After a long pause, he asked, “What does that mean?”
Deep breath. “I was invited to Plymouth next week for tryouts.”
“Isobel, that’s wonderful,” Victoria said.
“Thanks.”
Vadim stayed silent and merely continued with the moody stare.
“Well, say something,” Isobel muttered.
“Say something? How about, ‘You cannot do this’?”
Not that. Her heart squeezed. “This might be my last chance.”
He slammed his fork down, its loud clatter making everyone at the table jump. “Have you forgotten what you went through two years ago? When you almost died? You are not fit to play.”
“Players take risks all the time. Guys play with blood clots, concussions, injuries, but they’d rather leave it out there on the ice. They’ll probably just make me sign a waiver, exempting them from liability.”
He threw up a hand, all Vadimesque drama. “How wonderful, Isobel. There will be no one to sue when you are dead.”
“What would you do? If someone said you should never play again but you still had the strength in your legs and the torque in your body and the fight in your heart? If they said your next skate might be taken at the same time as your last breath, would you retire gracefully?”
His mouth curled in a sneer. “I would not risk my life to play hockey.”
“Then I guess it doesn’t mean as much to you as it does to me.”
Victoria looked at Alexei, then back to the bickering couple. “Perhaps we should let you discuss this alone.”
No, thanks. She’d had quite enough of Mr. Know-It-All Petrov. Isobel stood, her heart sputtering. “No need. Thank you for dinner, Alexei. It was very nice to meet you, Victoria. I hope Mia gets better soon.”
She took her plate to the sink, rinsed it, and placed it in the dishwasher, then left with the heat of Vadim’s condemning stare burning into her back.
Tvoyu mat’! How could Isobel think this was acceptable? Vadim had only recently acknowledged his feelings for her, and now she wanted to put herself in harm’s way?
Two minutes after she left, he checked to see if she was still outside, perhaps sitting in her clown car, psyching herself up to admit her error. But she was gone, her exit fueled by her stubbornness. No matter. Soon she would recognize the foolishness of this plan.
He returned to the kitchen, relieved to see no sign of his unwanted guest.
Alexei was filling the dishwasher. On Vadim’s entry, he spoke in Russian. “She is with Mia.”
“You should have talked her out of coming.”
“It is time you acted like a man and faced up to your problems.”
Vadim pointed. “I do not employ you for your opinions.”
“And yet I have given them to you all these years.”
This was true. Alexei was never afraid to comment on Vadim’s choices and mistakes. Vadim put up with it because he needed the occasional sounding board, but that didn’t mean he had to listen to the man’s opinion on every topic.
“You were loyal to my father. How can you take her side in this? She left him.” She left them. “Ever since she wedged her way back into my life, you have acted as though you work for her, not me. I am your employer.”
“Your father was not perfect.”
“He did not abandon his son!” Though that wasn’t strictly true. He provided a roof over Vadim’s head, yes, but he was a hardworking man with myriad business interests, not all of them legal. If he couldn’t attend every—or any—of Vadim’s hockey games, it was because he was earning money to provide for his family.
But apparently that wasn’t good enough for his mother. She hadn’t wanted to be a parent anymore. But fate had the last laugh, leaving her pregnant with the child of the husband she hated.
He placed his hands on the kitchen c
ounter, holding in his agitation by a thread. “Did he abuse her? Hit her?”
“No.” A crystal clear voice rang behind him. “Your father never raised a hand to me.”
He turned to Victoria—he could not call her anything else, even in his own mind. She had abdicated all rights to the title of mother seventeen years ago.
“Alexei, could you give us a moment?” she asked in rusty but serviceable Russian.
With Alexei gone, Vadim searched for the most restrained thing he could think of. He refused to let her feed off his pain. “I know he was a difficult man, but you can’t reenter my life after so many years and expect open arms.”
“I understand. And I understand if you’re not ready to talk about any of it. But please know that not a day went by when I didn’t think of you, Vadim. The boy I loved—love—more than my own flesh.”
Evidently not, or she would have put up with whatever inconvenience his father had inflicted. A little distance from a rich and powerful man? Surely a small price to pay to be with the boy you claimed to love more than your own flesh.
Isobel would know what to say. How to handle this. But he couldn’t even trust her to stick around. She would rather foolishly put her life on the line instead of be here for him when he needed her.
Annoyed at his weakness, he cleared his throat and sought neutral ground. “How is Mia?”
“Sleeping. Her temperature’s still high but not as bad as before. She’ll be furious to miss your game, but perhaps she’ll be well enough to stay up and watch it on TV.”
“There is a media room on the other side of the house, but she might be more comfortable in the living room. I will move the TV in there.” He threw a glance that way, as if he needed to choose a place for the television right now. Looking directly at her was too painful. “Shouldn’t she be in school?”
“Yes, she should. But she stayed home with a sore throat this morning while I went to work. I didn’t even know she had left New York until Alexei called.” She crushed her hands together. “It’s hard to keep track of her sometimes.”
He was tempted to say she had chosen this life of single motherhood for herself, but he was tired and no longer in the jabbing mood.
“She is willful, that is for sure. This is good for a hockey player, not always so good in a daughter or sister.”
“I wouldn’t have her any other way. Her spirit, especially in light of all that’s happened to her, is awe-inspiring.”
They were silent for a moment, thinking on the illness that had brought Victoria back into his life and the girl they both loved who was trying to bridge the chasm between them. Existing fissures widened, and Vadim’s mind worked hard to plug every single one. He would not allow her in. And he especially would not allow their common denominator—Mia—to be used as a pawn, even if Mia had set this chess match in motion.
“I should go to sleep,” he said, though he doubted he would get much rest tonight.
She looked crushed, and he hated her for making him feel guilty.
“I just wanted to thank you for letting me stay to take care of Mia. As soon as she’s well, we’ll leave.”
Yes, you will.
TWENTY
“You started without me?” Harper came click-clacking into the den at Chase Manor and threw herself onto the sofa. Heels off, hand grab for the wine, and— “No spare glass?”
Violet pressed pause on Dirty Dancing—the original, of course. Baby and the fam had just arrived at Kellerman’s Resort in the Catskills. Sexy shenanigans were on everyone’s dance card. “We thought you couldn’t make it.”
“Have I missed a single Awkward Sister Bonding Night yet?”
Isobel smiled. She had to admire how Harper had stepped up to the sister thing since they’d been thrown together six months ago. Not inheriting the team to run solo had been tough for her, but she handled it like a boss, making a real effort to broker their fractured sibling relationship. Now big sis hopped up and grabbed a wineglass from the sideboard.
“We’d understand if you wanted to spend more time with Remy,” Isobel said.
“Plenty of time for that.” Her swallow was audible. “I’m, uh, thinking of moving in with him.”
Violet and Isobel exchanged oh really glances. “That’s serious.”
“Too soon?” She poured the wine, and as she often did, answered her own question. “Maybe it is. But he wants to start trying for a baby and—”
“A baby?” Violet grabbed the bottle from Harper before she’d made it to half a glass. “You don’t need alcohol. It sounds like you’re already mentally impaired.”
“Vi . . .” Isobel warned.
“Come on. She knows him less than six months and they’re already trying to get preggers. That’s crazy!”
Harper looked amused at Violet’s overreaction. “Take it you’re not a fan of kids.”
“In exceedingly small doses, and I wouldn’t have thought you would be, either. When we get to the play-offs, we’ll have fulfilled the terms of the will. We—” She stopped. Self-corrected. “You don’t have to sell off, which means you are still running a professional hockey team, Harper. How are you going to be the bitch in the boardroom if you also have to be the babe in the bedroom and now the baby mama with a spare diaper in her Kate Spade purse?”
“Well, here’s my secret.” She leaned in, those green eyes they all shared sparkling. “Remy plans to retire at the end of the season and he’ll be staying home to change the diapers. It’s all he’s ever wanted since he was a little girl.”
Isobel felt a pang in her heart. How wonderful to have found someone so willing to step up to the plate like that. “That’s pretty hot.”
Violet clearly didn’t want to agree, but how could she not? “Remy with the BabyBjörn? Yeah, hotness at ovary-exploding levels.”
“So we have to start looking for another center,” Isobel mused.
Vi thumbed in her direction. “Always the team with this one.”
“We have to make the play-offs first,” Isobel said. “Twelve games to go, and with the way the standings are now, we need at least eight points to be assured of the wild card.”
Harper set her chin. “Ten points would be better, so we can straight up qualify and don’t even have to consider wild card. You think Petrov has it in him?”
“Physically, yes. Mentally? This business with his mom is distracting him.” Isobel had filled them both in on the latest Petrov drama. The news of how Mia and Vadim were related was also prompting questions, and Rebels’ PR was currently whipping up a statement for the media.
“What about this business with his coach?” Harper asked after taking a sip of her wine. “Is that distracting him?”
Isobel stiffened. After Vadim’s overreaction to her tryout news, there would be no returning to that well. Could the bastard be even a little bit pleased for her? Oh no. Heaven forbid anyone else draw focus from the mighty Vadim Petrov.
“We’re not—I mean, we did but—” She held up her hands. “We had some unfinished business from years ago and now it’s all tied up. The itch has been scratched.”
“Multiple times, I hope?” Violet asked, and when Isobel laughed her agreement, her younger sister nodded. “That’s my girl. So proud.”
“Hmm.”
Isobel hated when Harper did that. “Don’t, okay?”
“What? Remind you that itches have an annoying habit of staying, y’know, itchy? That’s what I said about Remy, and we all know how that turned out.”
As if there were any comparison. “Remy’s not like other hockey players. He’s not hanging at clubs. He’s not signing bare tits at the Empty Net. Not once have I seen him look at a puck bunny since he was traded in. The man has only ever had eyes for you.”
“Yeah, the minute he laid those Cajun peepers on you,” Violet chimed in, “he was all, ‘Me Remy, you Remy’s baby mama. Take my seed. Take it all!’ ”
Harper’s smugness wasn’t annoying at all. “You’ve got to be kidding.
I’m so not what he had in mind for his future, but once I figured out what I needed, I realized that Remy was the one. You know how you wake up, and you can’t remember what you were dreaming about? It’s there, just out of reach, so close but so far. I think I was dreaming about Remy all along. Then one day I woke up, the dream sharpened, and it all fell into place.”
That was strangely poetic from the usually plain-speaking Harper. Even Violet looked affected.
On the subject of dreams, a curious memory returned to gnaw at Isobel. Wake up, Bella. I am here—the words she’d thought she heard while she napped in Vadim’s arms and gave him a sleepy hand job. It was like something in a reverie, just like those brief moments when she and Vadim appeared to be on the same page.
Harper sipped her wine. “You’re right, though. Remy’s about as far from Cliff as any man could be.”
The weight of that statement loomed over Isobel’s head like a heavy object waiting to fall.
“Well, you won’t catch me falling for a hockey player,” she said defensively. “I’m not going to be that woman, waiting around, knowing he’s—just knowing.”
She caught Harper’s eye, expecting judgment, but saw only compassion. They had both experienced their father’s failures as a parent in different ways. Clifford thought Harper too weak to run the team and Isobel too strong to be wasting her time on coaching. Hockey’s not for pussies, Izzy. Only this year had the sisters found common ground, and ironically, it was Clifford Chase’s last will and testament that had forced them into a new understanding of what the other had suffered.
Violet, who had never met him, was definitely more circumspect on the subject of Clifford. And by circumspect, Isobel meant completely silent.
The youngest Chase poured more wine. “Things seem to be looking up, for sure. The team’s on a winning streak. Harper’s managed to snag a guy who actually wants to be a stay-at-home hottie. And now that Isobel’s hit it and quit it with Petrov, it means you won’t have to worry about conflicts of interest when you become a full-time coach.”
Right, when she became a full-time coach, the great compromise. As much as she enjoyed it, it didn’t fill her heart to overflowing like actual professional play and competition.
