Blindsided Page 19

  Logan snapped the phone shut again and considered Millie’s front door. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Nic had turned off his phone deliberately, that his buddy, his ol’ pal, was hanging him out to dry. Nic had called to let him know that Kyle probably wasn’t injured at all, but hadn’t called him back after Cat’s plane had landed. What had sent her packing was still a mystery. And he hated walking into things without a clue. Part of him was tempted to get back in the car and go home, to let it ride until Cat brought it up herself. Another part of him said that if he’d done or said something stupid, the sooner he apologized for it, the sooner they could pick things back up.

  He walked up the steps and rang the bell. Cat opened the door as he was wondering whether anyone was home. She looked tired. She looked straight. He’d also seen more real smiles on mannequins. But he was committed, if not to asking straight out what was wrong, then at least to getting a feel for it. Heading back to the car at that point would have been a way too obvious retreat.

  “Hi. How’s the ringee?”

  “So far, so good,” she said, letting him in. She headed for the rear of the house. “He’s back here on the family room sofa. The doctor said he might have a mild concussion and that we’re to watch him.”

  “Standard stuff.”

  “And he’s not to play contact sports for two weeks.”

  Well, that was negotiable, but he knew better than to say so. “Yep. Same ol’, same ol’,” he offered instead. He stopped at the end of the sofa and met the gaze of one really smoldering, pajama-wearing kid. “Hey, Kyle. How you feeling?”

  He threw one nasty look toward his mother in the kitchen and answered, “She says that I’m done playing hockey. That it’s too dangerous. ”

  Cat instantly, smoothly and firmly countered, “I’m sorry, Kyle, but we’ve been over this at least a hundred times already. Your head is more important to me than any cool points you might get for playing a macho sport. There’s no discussion on this.”

  Oh, boy. Obviously the last few hours had been rough ones. No wonder she wasn’t happy to see him. No sleep, a mom scare, a plane ride and then a battle of wills with a pissed off twelve-year-old. That she was still standing was a real accomplishment. Deciding that maybe he could help her deal with this, he sat down on the arm of the sofa and met Kyle’s gaze again. “So how’d you get totaled?”

  “We were scrimmaging and Jeremy Bancroft nailed me in the corner while Todd Stallbaumer and I were digging for a puck. I had my back to him and my head down and then wham. ”

  “Bancroft make a habit out of boarding?”

  “He’s an ass.”

  From the kitchen, Cat said, “Watch your language, please.”

  Kyle glowered for a second and then said, “He hates me and I hate him. He’ll come after me even when I’m nowhere near the puck. Just to knock me down for the laughs.”

  “Is he a big kid?”

  “Not all that much bigger than me. But he thinks he’s hot shi—” He glanced toward the kitchen, took a deep breath and went on, saying, “Hot stuff. He owns the ice and everyone should bow down before him.”

  Logan nodded and was about to say he knew the type, when Cat said, “Bullies are a fact of life, Kyle. You just have to walk away from them. Stay out of his way and he’ll pick on someone else.”

  In her dreams. Logan sighed, patted the kid on the foot and said quietly, “Let me see if I can work out a compromise with this, okay?”

  Kyle didn’t look too optimistic about the chances, but he nodded anyway. Logan got up and went into the kitchen. She was stirring something in a pot. “Cat,” he began.

  “No way, Logan,” she shot back without looking at him. “Save your breath. I’m the mom. I’m the one responsible for keeping him safe. He can just find some other sport to play.”

  “Which one? Tiddledywinks?”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “He could put an eye out.”

  “Not if he wears protective goggles.”

  He leaned against the bar and crossed his arms, determined to make the point as gently as he could. “Look, I un derstand wanting to make sure nothing bad happens to him. I really do. But you have to balance keeping him safe with letting him take some risks. He’s not a tiddledywinks kind of kid. Geez, Cat, he could just a easily walk into a wall and end up with a concussion.”

  “I’ll put curb feelers on his shoes.”

  “Yeah, and you can wrap him in bubble wrap and stick him in a closet until he’s eighteen, too. But at some point, you’re going to have to let him out and then what? You’ve got a kid who has no idea of where the line is between healthy risk-taking and outright stupidity. Is that what you want?”

  She stopped stirring and her shoulders sagged. “No.”

  “Then you don’t have much choice. You’re going to have to hold your breath, cross your fingers and let him take some chances.”

  Wiping her forearm across her brow she asked, “What do you know about raising kids? You don’t have any.”

  “I was eleven the first time I got knocked down hard enough to be hauled to the hospital. Playing baseball, by the way. Not hockey. My parents had this exact same conversation in the waiting room.”

  “Obviously, since you went on to sports fame and fortune, your dad won the argument.”

  “Yeah. In the end, he convinced my mom that he knew more about being a guy than she did.”

  “And being a guy involves asking for regular concussions?”

  He ignored the hard edge in her voice. “Being a guy involves knowing how to avoid them,” he explained quietly. “It involves knowing how to deal with bullies so they leave you alone.”

  She banged the handle of the spoon on the edge of the pot and then went back to her stirring. “That’s really simple. You stay away from them.”

  “Cat, sweetie. How much experience do you have in dealing with bullies?”

  “Unpleasant and nasty people are everywhere. The world’s full of them. I go out of my way to avoid having to deal with them.”

  “Like you did with Billy in the Tucumcari Café?” he pressed. “And Mavis who wanted cash for the damages?”

  “Not fair, Logan,” she whispered, sounding like she might be on the verge of tears. “Not fair.”

  “Yes, it is. You don’t back down. Expecting Kyle to do it is what’s not fair.” He gave her a couple of seconds to let that sink in and then went to stand beside her at the stove. He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up. The worry and fear in her eyes made his chest ache. If Kyle hadn’t been on the sofa, listening and watching, he’d have taken her into his arms and kissed all of that away. “How about a compromise? To make you feel better?”

  She swallowed and took a shaky breath. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’ll work with Kyle on the ice. One on one. I’ll show him some ways to deal with the Bancrofts and shut them down. Once he owns a piece of the ice, he’ll be a whole lot less likely to get hurt again.”

  “You want to make a bully out of him?”

  “Wouldn’t be possible even if I did. Which I don’t. You’re right, the world’s got too many bullies already. Kyle just flat out doesn’t have the mean streak it takes to be one of them.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “All right, you can give it a go. On one condition. If he gets hurt again, he’s done.”

  “Okay.”

  Her eyes flew open. She pulled her chin from his grasp. “You agreed too quick. That was too easy.”

  He grinned and headed out of the kitchen. “You’re such a mom.”

  “Logan!”

  His hands on the back of the sofa, he looked down at Kyle. “Get up, get dressed and snag your gear, kid. We’re going to the rink.”

  Kyle shot off the sofa and ran for the hallway like a bat out of hell.

  “He might have a concussion!”

  Logan turned back. Cat stood at the end of the breakfast bar, a haunted look in her eyes. “I’m not going to d
o anything to rattle his brain. We’ll go nice and smooth.”

  She considered him for a couple seconds, then turned on her heel and yanked open the pantry door. He knew what she was thinking the instant he saw the purse. “No,” he declared, closing the distance between them and taking it out of her hand. He dropped it on the bar. “You’re not coming with us. This is a guys only deal.”

  If she hadn’t been so damned tired, there might have been some fire in the look she gave him. “I’ll take good care of your baby. Trust me, okay? I’m not just a pretty face. I actually know what I’m doing.”

  She blinked fast, like she was trying to keep from crying. “I’d really like to kick you in the shins.”

  “I have a better idea,” he said softly, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and drawing her against him. When she looked up he kissed her—slowly and gently and thoroughly. She melted into him as she always did and made him feel good. And as always, the kiss held delicious promise. He didn’t want to take an IOU, but the time and place weren’t right for more.

  He drew back and confessed, “I missed you on the flight home.”

  She buried her face in his chest. “I tried to pretend you were with me. It didn’t work very well.”

  “Are you okay now?”

  She gave him a little shrug for an answer, but any pressing for an explanation had to wait. Kyle wasn’t a quiet kid. Logan let go of her and stepped back as the footsteps thundered into the family room.

  Kyle zipped between them and wrenched open the garage door. “Please be careful!” Cat pleaded.

  “I will,” the boy promised, turning back to plant a quick kiss on her cheek. He was bounding down the steps when he added, “You’re the best, Mom. The absolute best.”

  Yeah, right, Cat silently countered. That wasn’t what they were going to be saying when they hauled her into court on charges of child endangerment. Logan gave her a kiss on the cheek—not nearly as quick as Kyle’s had been—and then followed her son into the garage. She closed the door after them and then stood there, her exhausted mind trudging through inescapable reality.

  It might be love. It might not. But there was no lying to herself about how drawn she was to him. She could be angry, she could be resentful, she could be afraid and it didn’t make any difference to how she felt when he was near. And when he touched her, all the reasons to keep him at arm’s length simply evaporated.

  There was no getting off the roller coaster. Not right now. Maybe, in a few weeks, it would be a different story. But until then, she didn’t have the strength to resist him. If she got burned, she got burned. The secret to surviving it was to minimize the fallout. She wasn’t going to throw her heart at him. And she needed to make sure she was the only one who suffered because she couldn’t say no.

  Cat came out of the recliner in the family room as they came through the back door. She was wearing a pair of bright yellow flannel pajamas with SpongeBob Squarepants playing hockey on them. He grinned. How the hell she could look just as sexy in them as she did a couple of scraps of black see-through lace…?

  “Ohmigod, Kyle,” she said, one hand on her nose, the other pointing toward the hall. “The shower. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

  Kyle bounded to do as he was told, the same huge grin he’d worn all night still in place.

  Logan watched Cat advance toward him and wondered how long it would take for Kyle to clean up. “Where’s Millie?” he asked.

  “Playing bingo with Florence’s church group,” she supplied as she stopped in front of him. “I thought you said you were going to take it smooth and easy.”

  “We did. It’s his gear that reeks. Especially the gloves. He needs a can of shave cream.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He put his hands on her waist. “You rub a little shave cream on your hands and it takes away the glove stench. And when he gets out of the shower, we’re going out to the garage so he can have a lesson on the proper care of his equipment. Just unzipping the bag doesn’t cut it.”

  She nodded and, deciding that they were done with the mom stuff, he drew her toward him. Her arms went up. But only to the center of his chest. He looked at the locked elbows and then into her eyes. They weren’t cold. They weren’t flashing fire, either. But they were an almost steely shade of blue. Okay, it was bull by the horns time. He could handle it. “Is there a problem, Cat?”

  “I don’t know how to say this.”

  “How about straight out.”

  She took a deep breath and touched her tongue to her lower lip. “Kyle’s already been dumped by his father,” she said. “When the season ends and you go back to your real life, I don’t want him feeling abandoned again.”

  Shit. She was going to give him the heave-ho.

  “I really appreciate the time you’re taking with him, but I’d rather you kept some distance so that he doesn’t get attached to you.”

  God, how stupid could a man be? How fricking blind? It hadn’t even crossed his mind that Kyle might think of him as a father kind of guy. “Smart call,” he said, letting go of her and taking a step back.

  She nodded and crossed her arms across her midriff. “What’s between us is just between us. It’s better if it’s not a family type deal. That way, when it ends, we’re the only ones affected by it.”

  But she wasn’t ending it now. She was willing to keep going. Or at least that’s what he was hearing her say. There was only one way to find out if he was hearing right. He reached for her again. She twined her arms around his neck and brought everything back to rights.

  “For someone who’s never done the fling thing before,” he teased, “you sure know the ropes.”

  She smiled. “I read a lot of women’s magazines. Every issue has some sort of article on how to keep affairs from getting messy.”

  “You read a lot, don’t you?”

  “As recreation goes, it beats hanging out in bars.”

  Logan chuckled. “Well, I don’t know about that. Do you own a fur coat?”

  She laughed outright, her eyes sparkling. Relieved, he hugged her close. He was moving in for a kiss when he heard the front door open. He swore softly over Cat’s resigned sigh and let her go again.

  They were standing innocently on opposite sides of the breakfast bar by the time Millie rounded the corner. “Logan! How nice to see you here. Are you staying for dinner?”

  Dinner had been almost five hours ago, but he rolled with it. “Sorry, Millie. As soon as Kyle gets cleaned up, I’m going to show him real quick how to take care of his gear and then head out. I’ve made other plans for the evening, but thanks for asking. Maybe some other time.” Cat mouthed thank you.

  “Thanksgiving,” Millie said, hanging her purse in the pantry. “We’re having the entire team over for dinner.”

  “I’ll plan on it.” He made a mental note to bring Cat a bottle of Zin and to ask her if it was all right to bring Millie one of Merlot.

  Cat looked over her shoulder and smiled at her son as he came into the family room. As usual, he hadn’t bothered to comb much less dry his hair. And why he couldn’t seem to grasp the general concept of a bath towel was beyond her. “Speak of the devil,” she said, chuckling.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s an expression,” she explained. “We were talking about you and here you are.”

  He looked between the three of them. “What were you saying?”

  “Nothing good,” Logan teased as he opened the door to the garage. “This way, hockey man. Your gear is calling.”

  Kyle slipped out. “Bye, Millie,” Logan said. He paused, gave Cat a kiss on the cheek, said, “See ya,” and then left them standing in the kitchen.

  “My, my, my.”

  Cat inwardly cringed. “It was a friendly kiss, Millie. Don’t read anything into it that isn’t there.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” her sister-in-law assured her, beaming. “I’ve never seen Logan kiss a young lady before.”

  “Which tells me
,” Cat said as she headed for bed, “that you haven’t been hanging out in the right bars.”

  Chapter Twelve

  H e was pitching his gloves into his locker when Nic came in.

  “Jesus, Logan,” he said, hanging his skates on the hook inside his own locker. “Who you trying to kill? Anyone in particular or all of them?”

  Logan sat on the bench and started loosening his laces. “You know just as well as I do that stamina can make or break a tight game.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t get long wind and iron legs in one fricking week. You’re just taking your—”

  Logan looked up. “My what?”

  Nic scraped his hand through his hair. His shoulders sagged. “Look, why don’t you take Cat out to dinner tonight. I’ll crash at someone else’s so you guys can have the house to yourselves.”

  “She’s got some PR deal with the auction going this evening.” Or something like that. He could bet on it.

  “So, go with her,” Nic suggested. “The meeting or whatever has to end and then you can spend some time together afterwards.”

  He pulled off a skate and wiped the blade dry with a chamois. “I don’t chase women. They chase me.”

  “It hasn’t occurred to you that Cat’s different?”

  “She may be.” He pulled off the second skate. “But I’m not.”

  Nic sighed and headed toward the door. Logan stood, put an overhand knot in his laces and hung them up.

  “What you are,” his friend said from the doorway, “is a guy who needs to get laid before he hurts someone. Swallow your stupid ass pride, call her and let her knock the sharp edges off of you. We’d all appreciate it.”

  Logan slammed the locker door closed and then stood there glaring at it. Yeah, he was frustrated. He was wound tight enough to explode. Drinking hadn’t helped ease it one bit. Neither had pushing himself and the team to the physical limits. But spending a couple of hours with Cat in the nearest bed would, as Nic had so crudely put it, knock his sharp edges off, and that stuck hard in his craw.

  No, he admitted, his teeth clenched, that wasn’t the real problem. It was the fact that it wasn’t simply a matter of finding a warm and willing body. He’d been out looking the past week. The bodies were there and free for the taking. But he hadn’t wanted them. He kept measuring them all against Cat’s. Kept measuring their smiles against hers. Their laughs. They’d come up way short on every single count.