Chapter 7
7
Liam
T he doorbell ringing woke me up. The one sound that would have me hopping out of bed on a Sunday morning before noon, after a victory parade party that went late into the evening.
I thought about answering the door in all my glory just to get another reaction from her. While the underwear last time might have been a shade too far, she’d about swallowed her tongue, so it was worth it. Deciding on some decency, I pulled on sweatpants and nothing else.
I knew Kit hated herself for noticing my body and I took a perverse thrill in that. It was an excellent body. She should notice. She’d have to be dead not to.
But man, did it bother her.
In fact, just thinking about the way she’d gaped at me made me a little hard.
I scrubbed my face with my hands as I tried to get my bearings.
It had been a hell of a week. My brother went and upended his life at that golf tournament. Married, of all people, the love of my life, pop-star Sydney Malloy!
It was so unlike him, I took the trip out there to see if he needed saving. He did not. In fact, if I was a betting man, I’d say my brother might have found his match.
Go figure. Sydney Malloy.
But I took the red eye back for the parade yesterday. and now… beautiful Sunday.
I really wanted Kit to be wearing that cat costume again. I bounced down the steps eagerly, but stopped when I remembered she wasn’t coming today. She was coming next week. Suddenly, I was mad at whoever was ringing my doorbell so early in the morning.
“This better be good!” I growled, opening the door.
Standing there was a beautiful brunette and a little girl with a pink backpack.
My manicurist and once upon a time fling, Janice, and her daughter, Tess.
“Janice!” I said. “Do we have an appointment?”
“No, no appointment,” Janice leaned in and kissed me on both cheeks. leaving the smell of patchouli and something else that reminded me of summers with my brother out mowing lawns. “Thank God you’re home. I really need your help.”
“Come on in,” I said, pulling the door wide so Janice and the little girl could come inside. “Everything okay?” I asked her.
“Fine. I mean… you know.” She said with a laugh that could mean anything.
“Heya Tess,” I said to the little girl blinking her big blue eyes at me behind her pink glasses. She lifted her hand and we engaged in our very elaborate handshake that included a booty shake and ended with us pretending to sip tea out of little cups with our pinkies up.
“How are you Tess-a-saurus Rex?” I asked her, once the imaginary tea had been sipped.
Tess shrugged as if to say, how is anyone in the grand scheme of things? “Fine, Liam, Liam Bo Biam,” she said. Yes, we had secret handshakes and nicknames for each other. We were cute. “You won.”
“I did. Did you watch?”
“No.” she pushed her glasses up with her wrist. This girl gave zero fucks about me being an NHL Star. “What did you get for winning?”
“A big trophy.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s….ah… it’s not here.” I suddenly wished I had a shirt on.
“I won a gold fish once. At the fair.”
“Yeah, that’s fun.”
“I named it Fishy.”
“Solid name.”
“It died.”
For the past year, Janice had been coming by once a month to work on my jacked up feet. A hockey player’s feet were no joke and nail care was something I took very seriously. After Janice and I had our little fling several years back, she actually left Portland to enter a nursing program, which crushed me because no one had her magic touch.
So when I heard she moved back into town with her little girl, I begged her to take me on as a side job.
Things must not have worked out with her and Tess’s dad, which meant she was a single mom raising her kid, so naturally I gave her as much money as she would accept.
She would only agree to take me on if she could bring her daughter, which I was totally cool with. I liked kids. I mean, Tess was a little tricky in that she wasn’t into sports at all or video games. But it was all good. We figured out our thing. Mostly, she sat on the couch reading books while her mom worked her magic. But we did watch some shows together. And the kid was crazy about animals. Swear to God, I considered getting a dog, just so Tessa could love on it.
Whenever the team did cool family stuff, I always invited Tess and Janice. We went to the aquarium one time and there was that Cirque Du Soleil thing. It was fun.
In fact, there was one point where I almost wished things could have been different between me and Janice.
I liked Janice and I liked Tess.
But I wasn’t that guy. The guy to settle down without love, and I didn’t love Janice.
There were times I wished I could be that guy that fell in love. That got swept away with emotions.
There was only one time when love felt possible.
I glanced back down at the little girl. So serious with those glasses and her mouth set in a straight line. And I thought, for no good reason, of Kit.
“What’s up?” I asked Janice and shut the front door.
“Let me get Tess settled and then we can talk,” she said, and I followed them down my hallway of dreams as I liked to call it. All my jerseys and awards. The good press clippings. Pictures with movie stars.
Maybe that’s why the little girl reminded me of Kit. She wasn’t impressed by any of this stuff either. She held her mom’s hand and marched down the hallway like my whole life was uninteresting.
“Wanna hear a joke?” I said.
“Yes,” Tess said, looking over her shoulder at me as we walked by my Olympic gold medal.
“Why did the old man fall in the well?” I asked.
Yes, I looked up dad jokes to tell her. I was shameless.
She thought about it until we got into the living room where she turned around to face me. Her hands on her hips like she was a coach giving a locker room dressing down. “Why?” she asked, and I was pleased she didn’t come up with the punchline herself. Half the time she did. The kid was smart.
“Because he couldn’t see that well.”
Tess smiled, revealing her missing front tooth. “Good one,” she said.
It was no Stanley Cup, but her smile made me happy.
Janice opened up her bag and pulled out a book and a little water thermos for Tess. God bless, women and their bags. They were like magician’s hats. Even the little ones. I saw a woman at a party pull a bottle of Jack out of her purse with little collapsible shot glasses.
It was amazing.
“I’m just going to talk to Liam in the kitchen, okay?” Janice asked her daughter. Tess, already curled up on my giant couch and immersed in her book, gave her mom a thumbs up.
That book she was reading was serious too. Not a coloring book. Or one of those picture books. Like there were chapters and she needed a bookmark.
I found myself following Janice again, this time to the kitchen.
She wore a dress, navy blue and not tight, but not loose either. It looked seriously classy. Like she was an actress in a law show. Even her hair was classy. Coiled up at the back of the head.
The party girl I’d met that summer six and a half years ago was long gone. The professional who came and did my nails usually wore baggy sweatshirts and yoga pants.
“So what’s up?” I asked her.
“Well,” she turned and smiled at me and there was something in the edge of that smile that made me stand up straight. There weren’t mercenary motives or calculation in that smile.
It was fear. Worry.
Everything in me was activated.
There were podcasts dedicated to my fearlessness on the ice. To the way I played like there was no tomorrow. Everything on the line.
I loved that analysis. Appreciated the way everyone saw me like that. I worked real hard to be that guy.
But put a woman in front of me who was scared? I lost my shit. I went full bodyguard.
“Are you sick?” I asked her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Is Tess sick?”
“No,” she laughed softly. “We’re both fine.”
“Then what?”
“I…I have to ask a huge favor.”
“Okay. Shoot.” The favors people asked me for usually fell into two categories. Money or some signed shit she could auction off for money.
I stepped past her to the cupboards and pulled out my supplements and vitamins. The green drink I had every day that tasted like ass but made me feel like Superman. Especially after the week of celebrating.
“You want a coffee?” I asked her. “How about a green drink? I’ve got some of that kombucha stuff. Or if you’re hungry I’ve got some…” I opened the door to reveal all the food made by my chef – Andrea, who I had briefly dated two years ago and then sent to culinary school. Now she was a private chef for a bunch of the guys. Win, win for everyone.
“Lamb chops?”
“It’s 8:30 in the morning.”
“Not time for lamb. I get it.” Her loss, because the lamb chops had been A plus. I pulled them out and some pasta thing. Oh, there was cold shrimp in there too.
“Tess hungry?” I asked, opening containers and dishing up some food before putting it in the microwave. Janice chuckled and shook her head.
“No, she doesn’t eat shrimp and pasta for breakfast,” she said.
“Well, I’m sure I’ve got other stuff.” I opened up my cupboards, but outside of the supplements, they were empty. “Hmm. I could order something?”
“You know,” she said, with a fond smile on her pretty face, “my friends ask me about you all the time.”
“Yeah?” I said, unsure of where this was going.
“What you’re like.”
“And you say I’m awesome?” I asked, licking some lemony sauce off my finger.
“I say you are exactly what you seem to be,” Janice said.
“Is that a compliment?”
“Of the highest order. You are yourself. All the time. Kind. Decent. Simple.”
The number of times I’ve been called simple in my life? If I wasn’t so well adjusted, I’d have a complex. But it was the truth. I liked hockey. I liked women. I liked my family. I liked my team. I liked being nice to people. Helping them if I could.
I also liked lamb chops and pasta for breakfast. If that shit made me simple, whatever, man. I’d take it.
“You,” she cleared her throat. “You told me if I ever needed anything I should just ask.”
“Whatcha need?”
Janice licked her lips and folded her hands together like she was saying a quick prayer to whomever she prayed to.
“It’s okay, Janice,” I said with a laugh. “Just tell me how much you need.”
“I don’t need money,” she said. “I mean, I do, but I don’t want your money.”
I tilted my head and the microwave went off. I pulled out my bowl of food and dug in. The lamb chops really were good. I pulled a paper towel off the roll and wiped my mouth.
Wait. Wasn’t there sauce for these?
I opened the fridge and found a jar of the green stuff and pulled it out.
“So I’m not sure how much you remember from that spring we…dated?” I grinned. If she wanted to call it dating that was fine. But we never left this house. “But you remember my family and I are not tight.”
“Yep,” I said, biting into the lamb chop.
“I have this opportunity,” she said, carefully. “To take a job as a travel nurse-”
“A what now?”
“Travel nurse. I go to hospitals in other areas that are short staffed or are in an emergency situation. It’s a temporary gig, but the money is incredible.”
I needed some coffee, so I turned and fiddled with my little machine. The thing cost about a million dollars, but it made coffee that tasted like the time I went to Italy with Harrison in the off season a few years ago.
That coffee changed my life.
“Liam,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m listening. Sorry. Just need some caffeine.” I looked at her over my shoulder. “So, you’re leaving for a while. That’s cool. I can get along without you for a couple of months. Are you asking for some cash?”
“No, Liam.”
My coffee stopped brewing and I lifted my tiny cup for a sip.
“You sure you don’t want coffee, it’s really good?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I need help with Tess.”
“What do you need?” I put my coffee down.
“I need her to stay with you.”
“No problem,” I said. “For the rest of the afternoon? I can probably handle overnight. We’ll do a movie fest. We didn’t get a chance to finish that new Inside Out movie last week.”
She took a deep breath. “Actually, I was hoping for two weeks.”
I laughed. Oh, I laughed. I laughed until I choked. She reached for me like she was going to Heimlich me or some shit, but I put up my hand.
“That’s not funny, Janice. Did the guys put you up to this? Harrison? He would think this was funny… “ I looked up at her. I’d never seen Janice so serious. Not even when she was breaking things off with me. “Shit, you’re not joking.”
“Trust me, if there was anyone else...”
“Of course there is someone else,” I said. I mean, this was obvious. “Where’s her father?”
She avoided my gaze. Which now that I thought about it, she did every time I brought the dude up. The guy must truly be a deadbeat asshole.
Like my brother, I had very strong feelings when it came to family. It’s why it wrecked me so hard when Gayle pulled that shit about me being the father of her baby.
I’d had my share of women, but I was never careless with them. Ever.
“He’s…not in her life. I told you that. Trust me, I wouldn’t be asking you. But this opportunity is so much money I can’t walk away from it. Between what I’ll earn in two weeks and my savings, I’ll finally be able to buy a house for us. I would take her with me, but I’m going to be working crazy hours and I would rather Tess be someplace familiar than alone with a strange babysitter.”
I got that. I did. However, there was a big but coming. “Do I really seem like the kind of guy you should leave a kid with for two weeks? I have a woman who comes in to take care of my plants so I don’t kill them.”
“No, you have an ex-girlfriend who you help out by giving her a job.” she said and cupped my face in her hands. “Liam, you can do this. You’re great with Tess and I…I trust you more than anyone I know.”
Her brown eyes got damp. And then there were tears trembling on the ends of her lashes.
“Oh, no. Don’t. Please don’t do that!” God, if there was one thing I couldn’t handle it was tears. A woman in tears brought me back to my childhood and problems I couldn’t fix no matter how hard I tried. “So where is this job?”
“Carson City, Nevada. It’s fire season and they need extra staff equipped to handle trauma situations.”
“Can’t I just pay you whatever you were going to make?”
“No,” she sighed. “This is important work, and I do have some self-respect. I’m not taking your money.”
“Okay, how about I just buy you the house you want?”
Janice gave me that look she always did when she was trying to communicate what an idiot I was. Tess sometimes gave me that same look.
“What about Tess? Does she even know you’re doing this?”
“Of course. Do you honestly think I would have even asked, if she wasn’t okay with the plan? She adores you. This is going to be like mini-fun camp for her.”
“What if I mess her up?”
Certainly, I wasn’t the only one who could compile a list of all the ways I could mess up a kid.
“You just make sure she doesn’t spend all her time reading and try and get her to eat something besides bubble tea and graham crackers. I’ll FaceTime her every day and I’ll be back before you guys even miss me.”
Well. Shit.
I could feel it happening. Like a cramp in my foot. Like the flu.
Two weeks with a kid.
How hard could it be?