Last Chance Christmas (12 page)

And probably one reason why she’d chosen a career field so far from what he’d wanted for her.

“So what do you think?” J.C. joined her inside the warming shed where she’d taken a seat to put her foot up. “Are you going to hop on a sled and school those kids in the fundamentals?”

“You’re the NHL player. Isn’t that your job?”

“Nothing will light a fire under their butts to practice like having a girl best them on the ice.”

She rolled her eyes. “Aren’t the younger parents raising a new generation of less sexist kids?”

“Ideally, maybe.” He pointed to the ice where Riley Elliot was racing circles around his friends, his upper body strength allowing him to really shine. “But realistically, those kids are going to practice until midnight after you thoroughly shame them with your wrist shot.”

“Spoken like a disciple of the Walker School of Hard-Assery.” She edged closer to him on the bench, wondering how much time they needed to put in here before she could drag him back to his place and have her way with him.

The past two days had been the most sexually fulfilling of her entire life with twenty-four hour access to all the orgasms she could handle. Which, even with her body on the mend, turned out to be quite a few.

But even more than she wanted to lose herself in him again, she wanted to decorate the Christmas tree. He’d snapped a photo of a pine tree on his property while out on his run the day before. She’d given it the thumbs up and now it sat in the window of his front room, infusing the whole house with the scent of balsam and lifting her spirits considerably.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. But don’t you think all that drive and determination he gave you served you well? Even if you used in a different arena from what he envisioned?”

She shrugged. “I came here to try and improve relations,” she reminded him. “So you’re preaching to the choir. But I can’t fix things between us if he doesn’t show up.”

“You should let me hold you hostage until they get back here.” He spoke the words into her ear, the warmth of his breath against her skin giving the idea sensual implications.

But she didn’t know if she trusted herself to stay beyond Christmas. She already feared feeling too much too fast for a man who’d made it clear his career came before her. That had been true a decade ago, and nothing they’d shared this week—no matter how incredible—did anything to suggest he’d changed.

“I thought you said your team would be calling you any day to start practicing again.” She wondered how much of that was wishful thinking on his part.

“They will.” Straightening, he said it with a fierceness that told her exactly how important it was to him.

As it had always been.

She needed to keep that in mind when her heart started softening toward him. Before she could respond, her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out, careful not to drop it since she had gloves on.

“It’s my mom.” Surprise and wariness made her debate answering for all of a second. “Hello?”

“Hi Shea. I’m so glad I reached you. Your father and I have been hearing rumors you came home for the holidays. Are you really in Vermont, sweetheart?”

“I am.” Her eyes followed J.C. as he stood to give her privacy. He moved onto the ice to give one of the bigger boys some pointers. “I was excited to hear you are finally getting your Hawaii trip. Good for you.”

“But we never would have come if we’d known you were even considering a trip to Cloud Spin.” Her mother sounded upset, while in the background of the call, Shea could hear traditional Hawaiian music playing—was that a ukulele that made that sound? “We’ve gotten so used to you having other plans for the holidays, it didn’t occur to me to check with you before we left. But I feel terrible—”

“No need!” Shea hurried to protest, not sure she could navigate a guilt trip right now. She wanted to make peace with her parents and their past disputes, not add another one on the pile of old regrets and misunderstandings. “I’m having a great time and I’m really happy for you and Dad.”

Her mother paused. Or, now that Shea listened carefully, she seemed to be recapping the conversation in a whisper for someone else. Dad, no doubt.

“Mom, you can put me on speaker phone and that way I can say hi to Dad too, and he can hear—”

“She says she wants to talk to you, Walt,” her mom was saying while the phone sounded like it was getting passed from hand to hand.

Shea braced herself. Maybe her mother didn’t know about speakerphone.

“Shea?” her father barked at her, his voice sharp and—she couldn’t deny—beloved at the same time. “That you?”

“It’s me, Dad. I was just trying to tell Mom she could put me on speakerphone so you could both hear—”

“Do I look like a damn fool teenager to you, missy?” he groused. “Your mother and I don’t use speakers to talk on the phone. So how’s that rink of mine? Warren said you got it going.”

So that was how her parents had found out she was in town. Warren must have leaked the news.

“J.C. did most of the work. It looks great, Dad.” She watched as J.C. pantomimed the motion he wanted the boy to take with his arms. The sleds were definitely more difficult for bigger bodies, especially for kids who hadn’t grown enough coordination to operate that bigger physical equipment. But the kid seemed to be doing better.

“He got a lot of fancy new equipment for it, you know. The place has gone high tech.” Her father seemed to be moving away from the ukulele music, or whatever it was she’d been hearing in the background.

“It all works really well. I think I figured it out enough that I could help you open the ice next year, if you need a hand.” She felt a swell of pride to be the one to offer an olive branch related to hockey—the intersection of their lives that had always caused the most grief and argument.

“You live too damn far away for that, my girl. But your old man will get it figured out. More likely to use an ice chiller than a speaker phone any day of the weak.” He wheezed a sound that might have been a chuckle.

“What if I lived closer, Dad?” She had been giving it serious thought since she’d seen Cheeky’s, the high end boutique in downtown Cloud Spin. Since then she’d run some numbers based on her savings and there was a chance she could afford a property like that up here. She certainly had a better chance of owning or renting a storefront in Cloud Spin than she did in Brooklyn.

If she bought here, she might not even need investors.

“You don’t though.” Her father had that dictatorial tone she remembered from her younger years, the one guaranteed to get her hackles up. “You moved six hours away, but it might as well be the moon for how much your mother sees you.”

She closed her eyes. Forced herself to think about olive branches and making peace with the past. It was Christmastime.

And her father’s brain tissue was probably deteriorating from too many hits in his career, even if he refused to see a neurologist to discuss the possibility. That was reason enough to be patient and forgiving.

“But I am thinking about moving back, Dad.” She didn’t want more years to slip away without spending time with her family. Finding out how much had changed in her absence made her realize she wanted a stronger relationship with them. “I guess I hoped that if I did, you would be glad to have me around more.”

For a moment, he was so quiet she could hear the Hawaiian music again, faint and far in the background. So she jerked back a little when his gruff shout returned.

“After you gave up your career to design store windows?” The sound he made a disparaging equivalent of “bah-humbug,” a cross between a sigh and a sarcastic “ha.” Even now, she was fluent in her father’s language of disappointment. “It’s a bit late to come home now, but I’m sure your mother would be glad of it.”

Overlooking the dig about her “designing store windows”—a totally separate art from her work as a buyer—Shea still felt the hole in her chest from his implication that she’d wasted her life on one crappy career while running a perfectly good one into the ground. But after ten years of letting him upset her, she was done defending her choices.

“So Mom would be glad to have me home, but you wouldn’t be?” She wanted to be sure she understood, even if it hurt to put such a fine point on it.

Oddly, as she waited for an answer, she couldn’t help but think what a good father J.C. would be someday. He had so much patience with the rowdy crew on the ice, encouraging the ones who were struggling and cheering on the ones who were finding the rhythm of the sleds. Then again, her father was good with other kids. Just not so much with his own kid.

“Aw, that’s not fair, girlie,” her father finally admitted, taking his bluster down a notch. “I’m always glad to see you. And will you tell J.C. to check the thermostat for me? It’s bugging me that I can’t remember if I lowered it.”

Her brain stumbled a little on his words. She’d been so touched that he’d practically said he missed her—or about as close as he’d ever come to saying that—she wondered if she’d heard the last part right.

“You want J.C. to make sure the thermostat is turned down?” she asked, frowning. “In the house?”

“Yes, of course in the house.” In the background, the music got louder again, and she could tell he’d walked back to wherever he’d been standing at the beginning of the call. “Your mother made sure he had a spare key before we left. Just make sure he checks that heat. I’ve got to know now, Shea.” Her father paused a second. “Merry Christmas.”

She was so taken aback; she had to blink her way out of the bog of emotions.

“Merry Christmas, Dad,” she told him, but he’d already disconnected the call.

It had been, quite possibly, the most meaningful exchange she’d had with him in over a decade. A real turning point in her relationship with him. An encouraging step forward on her path to make peace with the past.

But at the same time, the call had dropped a bombshell with the news that J.C. had been harboring a key to her parents’ house this whole time. Instead of taking her to the Peak’s Grill that first night, he could have simply opened the door to the house for her.

Instead of pretending she had nowhere else to go, he could have been a gentleman and allowed her to spend Christmas in the house where she’d been born. He’d robbed her of the chance to make her own decision, making it for her instead.

None of that should surprise her given the way they’d parted ten years ago. He’d always thought he knew what was best for her, ditching on their plan to go to New York and choosing Minnesota instead where her options for a career were going to be limited. Even so, she would have followed him there after she graduated, except he didn’t even go to college, going straight into the NFL where his team farmed him out to a league in Sweden.

And communication had stopped coming all together.

Now? Same thing, different decade.

J.C. was still irresistible and he was still her personal kryptonite. Underneath that charming exterior, he put himself and his career first. So if having her under his roof furthered his goals—that was how it would shake down. Her preference was a nonfactor.

But even while she knew it was true, she couldn’t just storm off the way she would have as a teen. She would confront him and find out what he had to say. Her father could become confused more easily these days, she knew.

She wouldn’t accuse J.C. unfairly. She would simply ask him.

‡

“H
ow are things
in Hawaii?” J.C. rejoined Shea only after she’d put her phone in her coat pocket.

He’d spent the time on the ice with the kids and—for once—being on the ice without his own skates on hadn’t sucked. Normally, the frustration over not being able to play put him in a dark mood, but the peewee players were loving life as they whizzed around the fresh ice on those sleds and their joy reminded him why he’d started playing in the first place.

He remembered those games with friends as a kid. How much he loved racing around with the puck on his stick, taking passes and shooting goals, talking smack and trying to top his friends with the ridiculousness of his brags. Some of that fun had faded when he became so good that he didn’t dare brag anymore. It was strange how pursuing something you love could become a painful journey when you suddenly turned successful. He hadn’t been prepared for that.

Or much else about his career.

Even now, he was still learning how much he’d sacrificed to achieve his dreams. And one of the toughest sacrifices was sitting on the bleachers now, her face oddly blank after the call from her mother.

“Shea?” he prompted when she didn’t answer him. “Is everything okay with your folks?”

When she turned cool gray eyes on him, he knew something was wrong. Really wrong.

“My father asked if you could check the thermostat.” She spoke calmly enough. To a bystander, the words were reasonable. But J.C. could feel that the cadence was all wrong. Stiff and too careful.

He should have told her about the key.

“I’d like to explain that—”

“I don’t think anything requires an explanation. I’m sure you know how to adjust a thermostat.” She rose to her feet, her gait awkward because of the injury, but her shoulders ramrod straight as she moved down the bleachers. “Unless, of course, you are perplexed about how to get in their locked house?”