Losing an Edge (Portland Storm Book 13) (5 page)

“I think it’s a great plan.” He turned to me, tossing his skates in a duffel bag. “Do you have plans tomorrow afternoon?”

“I promised Sara I’d help her take the kids to an indoor park—”

“Perfect,” he cut in before I could finish putting words to my excuse. “Sounds like a fun way to hang out together. And we’ll have your sister-in-law and the kids as a safety net. Should I meet you at your brother’s house, then? What time?”

A safety net
. He was determined to protect me in every way. I couldn’t exactly say I was surprised, since his protectiveness and general kindness had as much to do with why I’d chosen Anthony to be my new partner as his skill level, but his determination still took me aback. I wasn’t used to men treating me this way. Not anyone other than Cam. And he was my brother. I was his youngest sister, the baby of the family. He
had
to treat me like that. It was written into family law or something.

Five minutes later, Anthony and I were finished removing our skates and had our plans for tomorrow all worked out. He and Ellen headed out, but I wanted to make my way up to see Mr. Sutter and thank him for letting us use the ice today before leaving.

In order to go upstairs, I had to walk past the side of the rink where the team was congregating next to the benches. Cam skated over as I passed.

“So? Is he the one?” he asked.

“Maybe. Probably.” I shifted my gym bag from my left shoulder to my right and hitched my hip against the boards. “We’re getting together tomorrow afternoon to hang out. Get to know each other, that sort of thing.”

His forehead creased over his nose. “He’d better not try anything.”

“We’re going to be with Sara and the kids,” I said, rolling my eyes. Cam could go from docile to murderous in 0.18 seconds. I appreciated that he wanted to look out for me, but there was no call for him to go all caveman. Especially not over Anthony. “You do realize he’s gay, right?” I added, just in case.

Cam raised a brow. “You’re sure?”

“One hundred percent positive.” I couldn’t count how many times I’d caught Anthony holding hands backstage at various competitions with his longtime fiancé, Jesse Schwartz. Jesse was a men’s singles skater, so he was always around at the same competitions. “Anthony’s gay, and he’s been with his fiancé for close to forever. Frankly, I’m shocked they haven’t gone ahead and tied the knot yet, since gay marriage is legal all over the country. And even if he weren’t gay, he’s just as overprotective of me as you are, already, and we aren’t even officially partners yet.”

“Good.”

“Good for you,” I said in a huff.

“And for you, too.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I worry about you,” he said. “About you getting hurt again.” The tone of his voice made it clear he didn’t only mean physically. Of course, he and the rest of the family knew that Guy and I had been a couple, not strictly an on-ice partnership, but I’d done everything possible to keep the whole truth from them. There were some things it was better they didn’t know.

“I know you do.” I stretched up on my toes and tugged on his arm so he’d bend down enough for me to kiss him on the cheek. “You don’t need to, though.”

By that point, the coaches had made their way out onto the ice, and several of the guys were starting to skate drills and shoot pucks at the goaltenders. But not Levi. He was skating toward us, which made me antsy to get the hell out of Dodge.

“You should probably start warming up or something,” I said, inching back to make my exit.

Cam glanced up at the clock on the scoreboard. “Still have ten minutes before practice officially starts.”

Damn. I took a full step back, starting to turn. “Well, I should—”

“501 tells me he asked you out last night,” my brother interrupted, reaching for my hand to stop me. “He said you didn’t answer. You just disappeared.”

“Yeah…” I shifted my gym bag to the other shoulder again, glancing past my brother. Levi had been held up by one of the other guys. Thank goodness. But I didn’t know how long this reprieve would last.

Cam glowered at me. He should know better than to think looking at me like that would make me nervous. I knew him too well. Underneath all the muscle and bravado, he was as soft and sweet as a marshmallow.

He kicked his skate against the boards. “So he was doing what I thought when I came in.”

“Wait a minute. You mean you weren’t sure what was going on, but you threatened him for the heck of it?”

“I’ll threaten anyone who steps a toe out of line around my baby sister.”

Didn’t I know it. He’d already proven that by having a minor freak out moment about Anthony.

“Why didn’t you tell me one of my teammates hit on you?” Cam demanded, turning into a surly, growly papa bear.

“He didn’t hit on me. He asked me out. There’s a difference.”

“Not much.”

“Enough.”

“You’re splitting hairs, Cadence.”

I shifted my bag again, not because it was heavy but because it gave me something to do with myself. Which I needed. Desperately. Anything other than to sit here under Cam’s scrutiny.

“If he didn’t hit on you, why are you so nervous?”

Because Levi wasn’t talking to the other guy anymore. He was about half a second away from us, and I wanted to skedaddle before the uncomfortableness of this conversation swelled to mammoth proportions. But instead of hightailing it out of the rink, I did the stupidest thing I could have possibly come up with. I looked up at my brother, stared straight into his eyes, and told a bald-faced lie.

“
BECAUSE YOU GOT
it wrong,” Cadence said, right as I skated into earshot. “He did ask me out, but I didn’t disappear before answering him. I said yes.”

“You
what
?” Jonny roared at the same time as I said, “You did?”

Jonny turned on me, eyes blazing like he was about to bash my nose in.

“She did,” I said, putting a bit more distance between us, just in case.

Only she hadn’t. I would have known if she’d said she’d go out with me. It would have made the rest of the night a hell of a lot more interesting, because I would have spent the time trying to get to know her better instead of drinking as much as possible to ignore the fact that I’d struck out, proving once again that my brother was the better Babcock.

The look in Jonny’s eyes was enough to pin me in place. Then he spun around to face his sister again. “You’re not going out with him.”

“I am if I want to. I may be your baby sister, Cam, but let me remind you. I’m all grown up now. An adult. I can make my own decisions.”

“Not if those decisions have anything to do with dating some asswipe teammate of mine, you can’t.”

“It’s a date. One date. That doesn’t mean we’re
dating
.”

“What the fuck kind of screwed up definition for the word do you have in your head?” he bellowed, and half the team turned to see the show.

“Watch your fucking language in front of your sister,” Koz shouted from the other end of the ice. “Fucking douche canoe.”

“One date,” Cadence reiterated, undeterred by the way the guys were acting. Jonny had never been much of a practical joker. He was quiet and kept to himself, for the most part, so I wasn’t sure how much of this kind of behavior she would have ever been exposed to before. Still, it was a good sign if she wasn’t letting the guys’ crudeness sway her now.

“When is this supposed to happen?”

Cadence looked at me, her expression one of pure sweetness as she shrugged and raised her brows in question.

Holy hell. Maybe this was actually going to happen. After the way she’d run off, I’d convinced myself she wasn’t interested. But maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe she simply hadn’t wanted to hash it out in front of her brother last night. And if that was the case, I couldn’t say I blamed her. It was damned uncomfortable trying to do this with him standing between us in the present.

“Tomorrow,” I spit out. “Tomorrow night.”

“Exactly,” she said. “You’re picking me up at eight, right?”

I supposed that meant I was. “Yeah, eight.”

The way she looked at me then, gratitude mixed in with her undeniably adorable charm, was all I required to breathe easier.

“I’ll see you then,” she said. Then, like a spring breeze, she floated past us and took the warmth of the sunshine with her.

I started to skate back over to my new defense partner, Chris “Hammer” Hammond, but Jonny grabbed a fistful of my jersey and stopped me.

“Everything you do to her, I will do to you. Got it?” His voice was quiet but as intimidating as anything I’d ever heard.

“Everything?” I tried to swallow but choked on my tongue.

“Everything. And I’ll make it hurt a hell of a lot worse than you hurt her.”

“What makes you think I’m going to hurt her?” I asked. That probably wasn’t the right thing to say when he might as well be breathing fire through his nostrils.

He took so long answering me I started to wish the fire were real, so he could melt the ice beneath my feet and I could disappear through the floor. But then he said, “No, 501. I don’t think you’re going to hurt her. Because you’re not stupid. You’re a smart kid, so you know better than to do anything that would hurt her. Which is why you’re going to take her on a date tomorrow, and you’re going to be perfectly fucking nice but as interesting as a bag of rocks. You’re going to keep your fucking hands to yourself. You’re going to bring her home safe—early—and then you’re going to move on with your life and let her move on with hers. You got it?”

Before I could answer, the coaches called us out to the center of the ice for practice to start.

I was in a daze the rest of the day. I didn’t have the first clue what had happened last night, when Cadence had run off after I’d asked her out. I had even less understanding about what had happened this morning or why she wanted to go out with me now.

All I knew was that if Jonny could come up with a way to be a fly on the wall during this date tomorrow night, he would do it—so I needed to be on my guard and make sure I didn’t do anything I’d regret. I had no doubt he’d meant what he’d said.

“YOU HAVE TO
help me,” I said to Sara the second I walked into the house. I tossed my gym bag on the floor just inside the door and put my purse and coat in the hall closet.

“Do I, now?” my sister-in-law said, sarcasm dripping from every pore of her being as she held out Cassidy toward me. “
I
have to help
you
?” She scowled to add further emphasis when I raised a brow in question, then she inclined her head toward everything around her. She was standing in the middle of the living room, surrounded by what appeared to be a flour explosion, a mess I had completely missed in my panic. Connor was nowhere in sight, which likely meant he was the cause of her current catastrophe. That little boy caused more mayhem than all the Allstate commercials combined, and he could cause his damage in the blink of an eye. And he usually giggled about the destruction afterward, too, the little stinker.

I took my niece without hesitation. Playing with Cassidy while Sara cleaned sounded a heck of a lot better than trying to figure out how to remove all that flour, and besides, I could never get enough baby time. But I regretted my decision almost as soon as the squirming, gurgling girl was in my arms. She stunk to high hell. I scrunched up my nose, in a vain attempt to prevent the smell from making its way into my senses.