25. Nat
Nat
I have never considered myself a coward. I would even go so far as saying I’m fearless.
But even I have to admit my belly has been yellow in recent weeks.
Six weeks to be exact.
Six weeks since I got the show of my life and saw Chase—my husband—in all his spectacularly naked glory.
And obviously my cowardliness has started to attract the attention of others because right now Oakley is in my office, a scowl on her face, hands on her hips.
Everything about her posture says she’s here to do battle.
Except in the minute she’s been in the room she hasn’t said a word. Not one. She’s just stared at me through narrowed eyes.
And I’m starting to squirm.
Again, not something I would have done before now.
“Are you here to just stare at me or are you working up to whatever it is you want to yell at me about?” I ask, the urge to stand strong, but I keep my seat.
She might be one of my closest friends, one of a few I can be vulnerable in front of, but I’m not ready to admit anything to anyone yet. I’m barely acknowledging my lack of spine to myself.
The only response I get is an arched eyebrow.
With a sigh, I lean back in my chair. “Come on. I don’t have all day to play charades or guess what or whatever the hell this is, Oakley.”
“Sorry I’m late! I had to pee!” Cami rushes through the door, her rounded belly barely noticeable to anyone who doesn’t know she’s pregnant. “Oh, I’m not the last one here!” She grins.
“Nope. That’s me.” Blake rounds out this little pow-wow I wasn’t warned about. Closing my door behind herself, she heads for my desk.
I watch as my three best friends—my business partners—line up, shoulder to shoulder on the other side of my desk. They’re a unit. It doesn’t escape me that normally I’d be standing right next to them.
“Okay. What’s going on?” I lean forward, press my forearms to my desk and eye each of them. “I’m unaware of a meeting…”
I let the words hang to see if any of them picks them up but all I get is varying degrees of emotion.
Oakley seems the most irritated. Blake is more disappointed, I think. And Cami? Well, she isn’t angry at all. If I had to guess I’d say she was happy with the situation. Whatever the hell that is.
“Out with it!” I tip my chin up, ready to take whatever they throw at me.
“You know what I’m going to say.” A flash of disappointment fills Oakley’s gaze before she goes on. “I don’t need to tell you what your role in this organization is. You chose it.”
“General Manager. And yes, I chose it. And I’m doing it.” I indicate the papers spread out on my desk.
“No. You’re hiding behind paperwork to avoid a certain player.” My gaze darts to Cami. “You forget, I might not be here day to day, but I have insider knowledge neither of these two get.”
She grins. Actually grins!
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I try the ignorant route, it seems the best course of evasion at the moment.
“Ha!” Blake points a finger at me. “You may as well have said, yes, Cami, you are correct. I am avoiding a certain player.”
“How do you figure that?”
It’s Oakley who answers my question. “Because you didn’t ask what she was talking about, you said you had no idea.”
I stare at Oakley. “I fail to see the difference.”
“The difference is not wanting to talk about it and not knowing what it is.” Cami’s words have me shaking my head.
“I’m sure that makes sense to you but I?—”
“Cut the crap, Nat. And get your ass out of this office. I want to see you at the games, home and away, in the locker room, the occasional drop in at training,” Blake says.
“I don’t need to?—”
“Wrong. And it isn’t about you anyway, it’s about the team, and everyone, players to the front receptionist, knows you’ve pulled away.”
“Pulled away from what? Getting in the way of everyone trying to do their jobs?”
“You never got in the way.”
“That was in the beginning, when we were building the team. Now we’re established, winning more than losing, and I don’t need to be as hands on.”
Oakley looks to the side, Blake and Cami turning her way. “She’s not going to break.”
“Then we’ll make her.” Blake’s words have me sitting straighter.
“What does that mean?”
“You will be at every game for the rest of the season. Every game of the playoffs. And you will bring Chase’s sisters with you.”
Oh. The tension in my shoulders dissolves as the true meaning of her demand falls into place.
“Yeah, now you’re getting it.” Blake’s smile is soft. “This is a season for the record books. Our inaugural season and we’re going to the finals, and Chase and his sisters deserve you to put whatever has you holed up in here aside so they can experience it together.”
“And don’t forget, they have to get through the anniversaries soon,” Cami adds. “The twins told Whitney they are worried Chase might not be able to concentrate because of them.”
I glance at the calendar on my desk. “Dammit,” I mutter. The anniversary of their father’s death is only days away. Their mother’s right behind it. I can’t believe I’ve been so wrapped up in my own problem I forgot about this important—gut-wrenching—milestone the Hawkins’ siblings have to face.
“This isn’t like you, Nat. What’s really going on?” Oakley asks.
I could tell them, reveal the reason I’m hiding out is because when I’m not, when I see Chase—think about him—my brain turns to pile of lust slush. But I can’t. “I don’t want to be a distraction.”
“Or you don’t want him to be a distraction?” Cami asks. She puts up a hand. “Don’t say it isn’t about Chase. The twins might not fully understand the undercurrent running between you and their brother at home, but they aren’t blind to it.”
My back straightens, my stomach churns. “What are they saying?”
“You and Chase are weird around each other. It’s not like the weird you two had going on before Christmas but it’s not the family vibe you had going after it either.”
I’m sure what Cami is saying makes sense. And to a pair of teenagers, young teenagers at that, they wouldn’t—shouldn’t—be able to tell the weird behavior is sexual tension.
Since the day I walked in on Chase in the locker room wearing nothing but a smile, my libido has kicked into overdrive. I don’t go a day without thinking about jumping him.
Who am I kidding?
It’s an hourly struggle.
“Okay, now that we have you thinking, and have reminded you what we expect the GM of the Rogues organization to do, we can get out of your hair and let you do it.” Oakley grins at me. Then with a wink she says, “And if you need to do it to get things back on track, do that too.”
Cami snickers behind a hand.
Blake’s lips twitch but she spent so long keeping her thoughts off her face so the opposition couldn’t read her that she holds firm.
Oakley though, is cackling like a loon.
And I can’t help it. My lips tug up and I’m smiling wide as I watch two of my best friends attempt to hold in their mirth while the other lets it run free.
These women are my people.
It’s been the four of us against the world for over a decade and in that time, we’ve gotten degrees, won gold medals, taken a start-up company from the ground to global success, and shaken up the male-dominated arena of professional hockey with a winning team.
“Is this intervention over?” I ask. “Do you all have time to go get lunch?”
“A working lunch?” Cami asks.
“No. Just lunch. Maybe a bottle of wine…okay, no wine for you,” I say, my gaze on Cami’s midsection.
“Yeah, so, no wine for me either.” With a frown, Oakley raises a hand. “I think.”
“What?” “You’re pregnant?” Cami and Blake lunge for Oakley as they speak.
I take my time getting out of my chair and moving around my desk. “You think?” I question.
“I haven’t done a test. But I’m late. We’ve been trying. We love Micky so much and watching him with Drew and Candace...” She shakes her head. “We want him to have siblings. We never want him to be alone again.”
Tears shimmer in her eyes and like we’ve done too many times to count we move in for a group hug.
“He’ll never be alone again. He has all of us. Just like Whitney, Cassidy, Crystal, and Candace, he’s part of our family now. We might not share blood, but we share something better. We chose to love each other.” Cami’s voice is coated in tears.
“We know. We still want him to have siblings. Cousins are fun too, but we want him to have brothers and sisters.”
“Hell, woman, you don’t even know if you’re pregnant for sure and you’re talking more than one? Of each?”
Oakley laughs. “I want at least four.”
“You do not!” Blake says.
“I do. I always wanted a sister and brother. I have you girls but when I was younger, it was just me at home. I want the big family I never had but always envied.” Her watery gaze lands on Blake.
“Well, as the only one of us qualified to talk about what it’s like to grow up in a big family, I can say it’s a love-hate thing. But yes, I want what I had growing up, Bran does too. I’d like Drew to be out of diapers and sleeping through the night before we try for another, but I’m not getting any younger and Mom and Dad are talking about staying down here more often now that Mason is thinking of moving to Baton Rouge permanently with Cash.” Blake shrugs.
Cami pulls back with a gasp. “I just realized, well except for Nat and she kind of is, we’re all moms now!”
“Er…” Three sets of eyes land on me. I haven’t told them I adopted the girls. Didn’t even mention I was doing it.
Cami raises a hand, index finger out, and draws circles it the air in front of my face. “What’s that?”
“What?”
“That look on your face.”
“I, um...”
“You’re pregnant!” Oakley grabs my arm.
“Oh lord.” Blake’s eyes pop wide.
“No! I’m not pregnant.” I roll my eyes and laugh. “Unless it’s an immaculate conception.”
“Oh.” Oakley pouts. “I thought we could have babies together.”
“No. I have a baby. She’s almost one.”
“You…” Cami tips her head. “Wait, wait, something the twins said… Oh! I know! You’re their legal guardian, same as their brother.”
“Kind of. He’s their guardian. I adopted them.”
“All of them?” Blake asks. “Not just Candace?”
“All of them. Chase wanted them to have security. And with no other relatives, if something happens to him…” I shudder.
“The only thing happening to that man is he’s going to keep our goals against low and get us through the Cup finals.” Blake’s fierceness blazes in her eyes. “We will play for the Cup. I feel it in here.” She palms her chest.
“Beck is pretty sure they’ve got what it takes to go all the way to the finals.”
“Walker agrees. Although he doesn’t talk about it much. I don’t think he wants to jinx anything.”
“I’ve been studying the other teams. We’ve got a better than most shot at the Cup. Although, like Coach, I’m not ready to proclaim we’re getting it. I’ll be happy with making it to postseason,” I say.
“We’re already guaranteed that,” Blake says. “Even if we lose?—”
Oakley slaps a hand over Blake’s mouth. “Hush!”
“I know.” I grin. “So, lunch?”
“Let’s do it. I’m starving.” Cami rubs her belly. “And I’m eating for two now so not somewhere with healthy salad. I want a burger and fries.”
“Frankie’s!” The rest of us say.
“Oh, yeah.” Cami looks down at her hand where it rests on her unborn child. “Little Bit, you’re going to love Frankie’s.”
“Little Bit?” I ask.
Cami chuckles. “Yes. Whitney keeps asking how big her baby brother is, and Beck kept saying ‘a little bit bigger than last time you asked’, and I thought it was the perfect way to refer to this one seeing how we are not finding out what we’re having.”
“So, she’s not asking about a brother because you found out?” Oakley asks. “But I thought you were going to find out.”
“Changed our minds. Life has so few good surprises. This one is the goodest of the good.”
“Is goodest a word?”
Cami eyes me with a raised brow. “Does it matter?”
I shake my head. “No. What matters is getting you and Little Bit fed.”
Sliding her arm through mine, she says, “Let’s go. We can take my car seeing how I won’t be drinking any wine.”
“I can drive too.” Oakley grins.
“Nope, I’ll drive.” Cami steers me out of my office. “We’ve got a stop to make on the way.”
“Oh?” Oakley follows us, Blake behind her.
“Yes. You need to know for sure, so first we head to a drug store for a pregnancy test. If you’d told me before I drove here, I could have brought you one of the ones I have at home.”
“Why do you have them at home?”
“Because once I figured out I could be pregnant, Beck bought every brand the drug store had on the shelf.”
“Bex bought them?” Blake laughs. “Lord, I can see it. That tall streak of serious standing there trying to work out which one to get. It would have taken him a good ten minutes to give up making a decision and toss them all in his basket.”
“Yep.” Cami grins. “According to Whitney, that’s pretty much how it went down.”
We’re all laughing as we leave my office. And even though I’m still worried about how I feel about Chase, I’m glad my best friends pushed me to confront my behavior. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t figured out what to do, because regardless of what I do do, I know these three women will be at my side.
Like they have been from the day I met them.