Home Ice (8 page)

MATTIAS HAD TO
be bored out of his mind. He’d brought us to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. Since it was a Sunday evening and we were a party of six, we’d had to wait almost an hour before they had a table big enough to seat all of us together. The whole time we’d been waiting, my girls hadn’t been able to stop chattering.

For that matter, they
never
stopped chattering, not even in their sleep, it seemed. I was used to it, but Mattias was a single man with no children. He spent his days surrounded almost exclusively by grown men, and I sincerely doubted their talk ever came close to the inanity that came out of my daughters’ mouths.

By the time the hostess had seated us, the girls had already gushed over who was cuter among Austin Cooper, Blake Kozlow, and Axel Johansson (no need to add Levi into the mix, since everyone already knew he was the cutest of the cute); debated the likelihood that the four girls could end up married to the four cute hockey players; informed Mattias that they’d added Cooper, Kozlow, and Johansson to the brother-husband list (“It’s like sister-wives in reverse, and they’re all hockey players,” Izzy explained patiently upon seeing Mattias’s confused expression); and hatched a plan for the four of them to split up, travel to the various NHL cities around North America, and snatch the wayward brother-husbands who didn’t play in Portland. After hearing all that,
I
was exhausted. I could only imagine that
he
was rethinking his plan to take us all to dinner and trying to come up with a good excuse to get out of it.

But he came with us, and once Sophie claimed a seat on one of the booth’s benches, he inched in beside her. The other three girls gave me giggling glances and piled into the bench opposite them, leaving me to take the final spot next to Mattias. He was so large that I had to be right up against him or else I’d be practically falling out of the booth. I did my best to calm my nerves as I slid in beside him. As if it were the most natural thing in the world he could possibly do, he put his arm around my waist, his hand resting on the curve between my waist and my hip, and drew me as close to his side as I could possibly be.

His body heat was intoxicating, but nothing could have come close to his scent in terms of making me want to get even closer. He smelled like heaven, and it was all I could do to keep myself from burying my nose against his chest and sniffing my fill. It was a good thing the girls were here and we were very much in public, because otherwise I might be hard-pressed not to do my best to crawl up on his lap. That would be taking things way too far, way too fast, particularly since tonight was going to be it.

Not that I’d gotten Mattias to agree to end things after this one
date
, but he had to see the reason behind it. His sister had Down syndrome. He understood, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

“Balloon!” Sophie squealed, pointing toward a man making balloon animals a few tables away from us. Then she was bouncing on the bench, unable to contain her excitement. I hid a smile, hoping she would never lose her childlike enthusiasm.

“Do you want him to make you something?” Mattias asked, chuckling.

She was too excited to do anything more than nod, and I was impressed by her restraint in staying seated where she was. Under normal circumstances, I would expect her to crawl under the table, bumping her head and knocking into legs as she went. But with Mattias beside her, she stayed relatively in place and let him wave the balloon man over.

The man smiled at Mattias and me before zeroing in on Sophie. “How about a crown for the little princess?” He was already in the process of filling a pink balloon with air.

She bounced in her seat. “Can I have a dog? I want a dog.”

Pink could lead to a meltdown. I’d never figured out why, but Sophie couldn’t stand the color. She didn’t want it anywhere near her, typically throwing a fit of epic proportions if someone gave her a pink anything. I started to tell the balloon man that maybe pink wasn’t the best color, but Mattias stopped me with a big hand enveloping mine. I shot my gaze up to meet his.

He shook his head. “Let her tell him,” he mouthed at me. He didn’t even know what I was about to say to the man, but he must have sensed my intent.

I bit down on my tongue. Maybe he was right. I couldn’t always do everything for her. Someday, I would have to let go. She was already eleven years old, not to mention fiercely independent. She wanted to do everything she could by herself. She wanted to be as grown-up as her older sisters. She was starting to discover her wings; I needed to let her fly, even if sometimes she might fall.

The balloon man winked at her. “A dog it is, then.” In no time, he was twisting the pink thing into shape.

“Not pink. No pink.” Sophie’s tone bordered on temper tantrum, and my blood pressure started to rise.

Mattias squeezed my hand.

“Not pink?” the balloon man repeated. In a smooth move, he shoved his half-finished project into the bag slung over his shoulder and took out a plastic bag filled with balloons of every color imaginable. “Tell me what color you want, then.”

“Purple,” she said emphatically, surprising the heck out of me. Purple was often her second most dreaded color. But she grinned up at Mattias and plucked at her Storm jersey. “He needs to match,” she explained.

“Good call,” Mattias said. “That’ll make him look like he belongs with us.”

With us
. The way he said it made it sound like there was an
us
, Mattias included.

“Can you get me a real puppy, Bergy?” she asked, all sunshine and innocence.

“I think you’ll have to ask your mom about that,” he replied, cleanly deflecting her question so he wouldn’t end up as either the bad guy or the hero.

“Mom?” she asked, and her sisters chimed in with promises of how they’d be the ones to feed and water and walk and wash, all of which they’d tried leveraging against me time and again.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I said as the waiter came over to take our orders.

The balloon man finished her dog. He stuck around until the waiter was done, so he could make her a matching purple crown even though she hadn’t asked for it. They both walked away around the same time, and Sophie was grinning from ear to ear with her crown on her head and her balloon dog tucked in beside her on the bench.

“What’s his name?” Mattias asked, angling his head in the balloon dog’s direction.

“Levi,” Sophie said emphatically.

He let out a silent chuckle, one I could feel rather than hear, and I fell for him a little harder.

THE INSTANT HE
parked in my driveway, all four of my girls barreled out of his SUV and rushed straight for the door.

“Kissy-kissy time,” Evie said in a sing-song voice amid their chorus of giggles, and I let out a groan.

Zoe took her keys out of her pocket and let them in, and then Mattias and I were alone for the first time. She slammed the door closed behind them. Within seconds, I saw the curtains flutter. Which meant they were peeking out at us.

“They meant to say thank you,” I said on a sigh. I turned to find him staring at me with those intense blue-gray eyes. They should have frozen me, like icicles boring into me, but there was so much heat in them I burned instead. I couldn’t look in those eyes very long or I’d melt into his floorboard. I hurried to speak again before I forgot how. “So thank you. For everything. This whole weekend…”

My words trailed off, along with my ability to think, because he took my hand in his again, lacing our fingers together and sending jolts of electric awareness through my veins at breakneck speed.

“I should be the one thanking you,” he said. “And your girls, too.”

I shook my head, unable to process it. “What? Why?”

With the pad of his thumb, he traced lazy circles on the back of my hand, raising goose bumps all up and down my arms. I shivered, but not from cold.

“Because you showed me I could be the man my sister loves even when I’m not with her.”

I still didn’t follow. I hadn’t known Mattias very long, but he’d repeatedly shown himself to be kind, thoughtful, and entirely too much man for me to ignore. But now it was time for me to give him that kiss and get out, before I fell too hard. Before Sophie fell too hard. Before we all got too attached. It was happening, faster than I’d been prepared for, and I was already dreading the damage control I’d have to do once he walked out of our lives. I’d let him in further than anyone since Dan and I had split up under the pressure of raising a daughter with special needs. Ever since then, I’d been cautious to keep enough of a barrier between us and the rest of the world that no one could cut us too deeply, but with Mattias I’d let down my guard.

He cleared his throat before my thoughts were coherent, and I forced myself to meet his gaze again.

“I’ve got to head out of town in a couple of days with the team. We have a short road trip. We’ll be back on Friday, though, so I was wondering—”

“I meant what I said earlier,” I cut in. I tried to tug my hand away, but he tightened his hold, keeping me firmly in his grasp—exactly where my body wanted to be, and maybe my heart, too. The only part of me not on board with that was my head, which was the part I needed to be listening to. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done for my girls, especially for Sophie, but I think we should just end this—”

“I wondered if you had plans next weekend,” he continued, as though I hadn’t tried to give him a brush off. “You and the girls, I mean. Friday is Valentine’s Day, so I thought—”

“The girls— It’s their father’s weekend with them, so it would just be me.” And as soon as I said that, I realized I shouldn’t have. I should have told him I had to work. Or I was going out of town. Or anything but what I’d said, really, because now he was looking at me with that panty-melting smile again, and I couldn’t make myself look away. Hell, I didn’t even want to. I wanted to keep staring into those eyes and feeling the jittery sensations he made me feel for as long as possible.

“So I could have you all to myself for the weekend?” Mattias said, and his smile turned into this wicked, sinful, delicious expression that made me want things I hadn’t even thought about in years.

“I…”

He brushed the backs of his knuckles along my cheek, and my nipples pebbled in response. Then his lips were on mine, soft and smooth, gently coaxing me to open for him. I did, fisting my hand in his thick hair as his tongue met mine and drove me to a frenzied ache I’d thought dormant.

He hooked an arm around my waist and dragged me across the seat until I was practically in his lap. In fact, that seemed like a good idea, so I raised myself up on my knees and straddled him, steadying myself with a hand on his strong shoulder and the steering wheel pressing against the small of my back. My fingers itched to explore more of the muscles beneath them, but reason returned before I did anything stupid. My girls were watching every bit of this.

When I broke away, his breathing was as labored and ragged as mine, and he looked at me with an expression of wonder.

This had been a bad idea. A very bad idea. I should have kept it to a simple kiss, nothing more. For that matter, I should never have let it get this far. Yesterday, when we’d first encountered Mattias and Levi in the concourse, I should have wrangled my girls and gone to our regular seats. If I had, then I wouldn’t be feeling so torn right now. I wouldn’t be debating how I was going to come out of this with my heart intact, let alone how I would protect Sophie and my other daughters from getting too attached to this man who had his own responsibilities to worry about. I wouldn’t be staring down into the eyes of a man who looked like he wanted to toss me over his shoulder and carry me back to his cave to do sweaty, dirty, amazing things to me. I wouldn’t be thinking I wanted to let him.

“I should go in,” I forced myself to say. I needed to get off him, but my body wouldn’t cooperate, and Mattias didn’t seem inclined to let me go, anyway. He had both hands on my waist, strong and steady. Big. The longer he left those hands on my body, the more I wanted to feel them.

“You probably should,” he said, without even blinking.

“Yeah. I definitely should.”

“All right.” But he gripped my hips more tightly and drew me closer to him, until my chest was pressed up against his. He dipped his head, and I thought he was going to kiss me again. I tried to prepare myself for the sensual assault, only to have him rest his forehead against mine, both of us taking in labored breaths. “Can I pick you up when I get back into town on Friday?” His breath smelled like the spearmint mints he’d passed out to each of us as we’d left the restaurant.

I should have said no. But I didn’t. I didn’t even come close. “Yes,” I said. Then I forced myself to climb off him, ease over to the other side of the SUV, and get out, grabbing my purse as my feet hit the concrete.

“Seems like a long time away.” He winked, and my chest squeezed. “I’ll give you an update on what we can do to help Sophie skate then.”

I nodded, biting down on my lower lip. Then I turned and headed inside, doing my best to keep my feet moving forward. When I opened the door, I heard him back down the driveway at the same time as all four of my girls raced away from the window, giggling and leaving the curtains fluttering like my heart.