by Amy Aislin
Andy did as told. “What’s the green stuff on the veggies, Dad?”
“Marjoram and tarragon.”
“Ooh, yum,” Tay said under his breath.
Later, once they’d eaten, Dakota shooed Andy and Tay out of the kitchen so he could clean up, ignoring Tay’s protests that he could help. “Go keep my kid busy so he’s not underfoot.”
“If you insist,” Tay said, giving Dakota a tiny kiss on the cheek while Andy was in the other room. The pleased smile Dakota shot him would stay with him for a long time.
“Andy.” Sitting on the floor of the family room with Andy after they’d finished the campervan, Tay looked around, frowning. “We’re missing a piece.”
“Where?”
He pointed it out on their finished puzzle. Stood to check if he was sitting on it. He wasn’t.
“What’s going on?” Dakota asked, wiping his hands on a towel as he came into the room.
“We’re missing a piece.” Tay looked behind couch cushions. At this point, you never knew.
“You are? It’s a brand-new box, though. Did it get lost in the campervan, maybe?”
“God, I hope not.”
Andy stood. “I know where it is.” He disappeared down the hallway.
Tay shot Dakota a questioning glance. Dakota shrugged.
Toddling back in, Andy held Tay’s heavy backpack in front of him, teetering as he did so.
“Whoa, buddy. Here.” Dakota took it out of his hands, placing it on the floor next to the coffee table.
Squatting, Andy opened the zipper to the tiny pocket on the front and removed two different colored highlighters, a pencil in need of sharpening, two pens, and a little travel-sized thing of floss. “Where’s it?” he muttered, sticking his entire hand in the pocket.
“What are you—” Tay started to say but was interrupted by a loud “Aha!” from Andy. He raised his hand in triumph; held between two fingers was a puzzle piece.
Tay sat next to him and looked into the pocket as if more pieces might materialize. “How did that—”
“I put it there,” Andy said, snuggling up to him. “When you came for dinner last time. So you wouldn’t forget about me.”
Dakota’s face went ashen, his expression pained. Tilting his head back, he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard.
There was a story there Tay wanted desperately to delve into; now wasn’t the time.
“I’m not going to forget about you, Andy.” He put his arm around Andy for a side hug. “Even without puzzle pieces.”
Andy uncapped a highlighter. “One time my mom forgot to get me from school.”
Ugh. What could Tay possibly say to that?
Andy aimed the highlighter for the back of his hand.
“No,” Dakota said, taking it away. His voice was tight. “We don’t color on ourselves.” He held a palm up for the cap.
“Only paper. I remember.”
“Can you say good night to Tay? It’s time for bed.”
Andy jumped on him, startling an “Oof” out of him. “Good night, Tay.”
“Good night, little man.”
“I’ll be setting up in the dining room,” Dakota said to him, Andy’s footsteps thumping up the stairs. “You can set yourself up there or in the living room if you want.”
“Sure.”
He waited until Andy and Dakota were both upstairs, then gave himself an all-over shake, like a dog, getting rid of the heaviness Andy had cast over the room with a single sentence.
One time my mom forgot to get me from school.
God.
Standing, he traveled across the hall into the dining room, bringing his backpack with him. The dining room table was enormous, fit for way more than Dakota and the two people Tay had seen in his life—Andy and Calder. He commandeered a small corner at the end nearest the living room and removed his chunky textbook from his bag.
He loved Dakota’s house. It was a two-story bungalow a few minutes’ walk from High Park. The outside was dark gray brick with forest-green accents and a covered front porch that spanned the width of the house. The inside was muted yellow walls with wood paneling. The house was longer than it was wide, divided down the middle by a short hallway that led to a staircase. On the left was the living room, complete with gas fireplace and cozy sofas. It was divided from the dining room by a wooden half wall. Beyond the dining room was the kitchen. To the right of the stairs was a small den with a desk and a window seat. Farther down the hall was the family room and then a mudroom.
It was all very homey and welcoming. Family portraits on the dining room walls, Andy’s artwork on the fridge, potted indoor plants on windowsills, several 3D puzzle boxes piled up in the family room, toy trucks on the floor of the living room as if Andy had been playing and then been called away. It reminded Tay a lot of his own childhood home, just without the hockey gear strewn everywhere.
He was much better at picking up after himself now, though. In fact, if someone entered Dean and Grey’s house, they wouldn’t be able to tell he was staying there at all unless they looked in the guest bedroom. He’d sort of overtaken their family room when he’d first moved in, books and papers and his laptop piled on the coffee table while he studied or completed assignments. But ever since Grey had moved in permanently after being traded, Tay tried to keep out of their way as much as possible, although sometimes he studied at the dining room table just for a change of scenery.
In fact, he kind of felt bad that he was still living there. The hallway renovations at his apartment building were taking longer than anticipated—not exactly a surprise. When did construction projects ever finish on time? But it’d been over a month now, and as much as he liked having roommates, he had a feeling Dean and Grey wanted their own space back.
Not that they’d said anything. They were actually pretty awesome, inviting him to watch Netflix and chill with them—actually watch Netflix and chill, not the euphemism for which it was known—asking if he needed anything from the store when they went out or if he wanted to partake in whatever takeout they were ordering.
It just felt like Tay was in the way. No doubt Dean and Grey wanted to be alone after so many years apart.
He was yanked out of his thoughts when Dakota came into the room without having made a sound.
“Jesus,” Tay said, keeping his voice down so it didn’t carry upstairs to Andy’s room. “You move like a ninja.”
Dakota chuckled, running his hand along the back of Tay’s neck as he headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
Goosebumps erupted on Tay’s neck at the contact. Yes please, more touching. All the touching.
Dakota returned carrying an enormous plastic tray with a domed cover.
“Whoa,” Tay said when Dakota removed the cover. “That cake’s massive.” It was a giant rectangle, big enough to feed forty people at least.
“It’s a bit smaller than the ones Calder and I did for the Foundation’s celebration party.”
“What’s this one for?”
“A retirement party. Guy’s a golfer, apparently. Want to see the design?”
Tay sat up in his chair. “Yeah.”
Dakota handed him a sheet of paper with a design sketched in pencil. Most of the cake was grass. In the top right corner was what appeared to be a small section of road with a tiny toy golf cart. Tay examined the supplies Dakota was bringing out of the kitchen and found a little plastic golf cart among them. In the top left of the sketch was a trio of pine trees. In the middle was a kidney-shaped golf green, complete with a little hole for a flag with the number eighteen on it and a tiny golf ball. In the bottom right was a sandy patch.
He went through the supplies, careful with the delicate stuff, and found golf balls the size of his pinky nail made from what he thought was fondant. There was also a thin, wooden stick for the flag, the flag itself, also made out of fondant, tiny little edible flowers, and green icing.
“Is everything edible?” Tay asked a
s Dakota returned from the kitchen with a square of Styrofoam holding three pine trees.
“Everything except the flag post and the golf cart.”
“How’d you make the trees?”
“Piped icing onto upside-down ice cream cones.”
“Genius.”
Dakota chuckled at his reaction.
“Can I help with anything?”
“Thanks, but I’m good.” Dakota used a couple of spatulas the size of his head to lift the cake onto a disposable tray he’d covered in green icing. “Andy and I did the time-consuming stuff on the weekend. The trees and the golf balls, mainly, and the icing too, so everything would be ready to go for tonight.”
Tay slid the sketch back to him. “It’ll take you all night to do this.”
“A couple of hours, at most.” Back into the kitchen Dakota went, returning wearing a plain brown apron. He nodded at Tay’s textbook. “What are you working on?”
“A reading for my pre-hospital care class. It’s a course that teaches us how to pathologically and psychologically assess and manage people in distress or crisis due to illness or trauma. We’ve been reading case studies for the last couple of weeks.”
“Are you enjoying the course?”
“Yeah. It’s way more interesting than I expected it to be.” It was also the one course that was making him question his decision to become a paramedic. Every other course had been theory and labs so far—biology, chemistry, psychology, anatomy. This was the first that involved actual people. They hadn’t gotten to the practical part of the course requirement yet—that’d come later in the month—and Tay was already questioning if he had it in him to take another person’s life in his hands.
Just the thought made his stomach curdle.
Told you you couldn’t cut it, kid.
It was exactly what he expected to hear from his sisters if he failed.
Fuck his life.
Refocusing his thoughts, he said, “About Sunday.”
Dakota raised his eyebrows but didn’t look up from the icing he was spreading on the side of the cake.
“Any food allergies I should know about? Any foods that are a hard no?”
“I’m not crazy about seafood,” Dakota said, concentrating so hard that a line appeared between his brows. “Fish is fine, but squid and oysters and shrimp and all that? That’s my only hard no. No allergies. Actually, if you could stay away from chicken nuggets and fries too, that’d be great.”
“Why?” Tay asked, laughing.
“It’s Andy’s current favorite. I swear we have it every other day.”
This time, it was Tay’s eyebrows that shot up. “You’ve been eating deep-fried chicken and potatoes three or four times a week and still look like that?”
Dakota still didn’t look up, but his smile was wide and pleased and a little naughty around the edges. Tay approved.
“I’m no hockey player, but I work out. I prefer cardio workouts, but I’ll use the gym in the building before work most days.”
The building as in the arena? “I’ve never seen you there.”
“Oh no,” Dakota said with a scoff. “We nine-to-five peons get a smaller, more run-down gym in a different part of the arena than yours.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Welcome to real life.”
They worked in silence for a while after that. It was hard to concentrate with Dakota only eight feet away at the other end of the table. He didn’t make a lot of noise as he worked, but he had a magnetic presence that kept pulling Tay’s gaze his way. Tay had never considered cake decorating sexy before, but when it was done with competency by a six-foot-two hunk with a furrow of concentration in his brow whose forearm muscles shifted with every move?
If Dakota taught classes, Tay would sign up just to sit in the back and watch him.
It was an effort to hunker down and get his reading done without getting distracted by Dakota; he must’ve succeeded, however, because the next time he looked up there was a glass of water and a sweating beer bottle in front of him. At Dakota’s elbow was a glass of what he assumed was scotch.
“Thanks,” he said.
Dakota didn’t hear him, too involved in his work. Why that was endearing, Tay couldn’t say.
He finished his reading before Dakota finished his decorating, so he got his phone out to check if there was anything else on his to-do list for tonight. The only thing waiting for him was an email from Mason with an update on the AITech contract.
He briefly considered pulling out his tablet to work on his comic. He’d finally gotten Rhys’s stupid face right before the game in Anaheim and he wanted to work on it some more. But that would mean Dakota would see, and frankly, it was easier to put himself out there with Dakota than it was to share his artwork, something that was so personal. Which was why he didn’t pull out his tablet. What would Dakota think? That it was childish and he should spend his time on his schoolwork rather than his hobby?
Grabbing his beer, he stood and made his way to the other end of the table. Dakota was standing now as he worked, probably to get a better perspective of the top of the cake. The entire top was done and—
Man, it was so cool! The sandpit looked like actual sand, the golf green was smooth and a lighter shade of green than the surrounding grass, which somehow looked like real grass. The golf cart was gently placed on the road. All that was left were the flag and the trees.
It was a different type of art than Tay did, but it was art nonetheless.
“This is amazing. How come you don’t have a website or a Facebook page to display your cakes?” Tay knew he didn’t because he’d checked. The only thing he’d been able to find about Dakota online was a brief bio page on the Foundation’s website. It had been massively disappointing. “You could have an online order form. Maybe get more business.”
Dakota carefully placed a tree in the top left corner. “Calder and I are kept pretty busy as it is with word of mouth. With the both of us working full-time jobs, we don’t really have the time to take on more work.”
“Would you ever consider doing this full-time?” He’d asked a similar question in the coatroom at the Drake Hotel, but Dakota had evaded.
A second tree joined the first. “I like my job. I especially like knowing I’m making a difference. I raise funds that go directly to refurbishing athletic facilities or that help run sports camps and after-school activities for kids. But if the opportunity presented itself for us to do this full-time and we could make it work—in terms of start-up costs and expenses—I’d give it serious thought.” The third tree was added to the top of the cake. Dakota picked up one of the tiny flowers, barely half an inch wide. “Want to put the flowers on?”
“No.” Tay took a giant step back, hands up like a busted perp. “I’m not touching that masterpiece. Are you kidding?”
Dakota laughed, white teeth flashing. “These guys are easy. You just plop them on top. See?” He did just that, getting as close to the grass as he dared, hovering there for a moment, before letting the flowers fall onto the grass near the trees.
“I would’ve messed that up somehow.”
“I doubt that.”
Once the flag was inserted into a little hole and the golf balls were strategically placed, Dakota pushed the cake to the middle of the table, took off his apron, and fell into a chair, stretching out his neck left and right. Tay came around the table to get a look at the cake from the front.
“So cool,” he muttered. “Can I take a picture?”
“Sure.” Dakota’s arm came around his waist, guiding him onto his knee. Tay’s hands immediately went slick around his phone, and he had a vision of it slipping out of his hands and onto the cake.
Not good.
He leaned back into Dakota’s chest to leave extra space between himself and the cake, just to be sure.
“Here.” Dakota handed him his phone. “Can you take one with mine too so I can send it to Calder?”
Pictures taken, Dakot
a reached for his scotch on the table and took a sip.
“What are you drinking today?” Tay asked, remembering the first time he’d spotted Dakota drinking scotch in the infamous coatroom. He’d never been turned on by trying someone’s drink before, but the way Dakota’s eyes had heated when Tay had placed his lips over the outline of his own on the glass . . .
Tay’s cock plumped just thinking about it.
“Ten-year-old Pike Creek,” Dakota whispered in his ear, shooting goosebumps up Tay’s spine. “Canadian whiskey. Want a taste?” Warm lips landed on the back of his neck.
Tay groaned, head falling forward. “God. Your mouth should be illegal.”
Teeth scraped the skin between his neck and shoulder.
“Jesus.”
Dakota’s arm around his waist was solid. The kisses and nips on his neck were wet and sensuous. When Dakota reached around to cup his jaw in one big hand, angling his face backward so Dakota could take his mouth?
Sexiest thing ever.
Dakota tasted like whiskey—smooth, sweet, and a little bit of spice. His fingers on Tay’s jaw were firm and controlling in a way that had blood pumping through Tay’s veins. What was it about sexual confidence in a guy that was so goddamn sexy?
“How’s it taste?” Dakota murmured against his lips.
“Sweet. Like vanilla and maple syrup.” He placed a small kiss at the corner of Dakota’s mouth. “Undertones of spice.” A kiss on the other corner. “And very, very naughty.”
He barely got a chance to suck in a breath before Dakota was kissing him again, forcefully, his other hand trailing down to cup Tay’s erection through his jeans, and fuck. Pleasure radiated outward into his toes. Tay ripped his mouth away to swear incoherently.
“Please tell me you’ve finished your reading,” Dakota said.
“Reading?” Lifting himself up, Tay turned to straddle Dakota’s lap. “What reading?”
Erections pressed together, Tay’s mouth crashed down on Dakota’s with absolutely zero finesse. Dakota made a sexy-as-sin sound, part groan part whine, hands diving down Tay’s sides to grasp his ass.
“Yes,” Dakota muttered when Tay started to move. “Fuck yes, keep going.”
