Offside (10 page)

Honey screeched and laughingly set her
little niece away from her. “Kavita! You’re getting me all wet! Oh,
who cares.” And she pulled the little girl in for a damp hug. “You
feel cold.”

The sun was very low in the sky now
and the air taking on a chill.

“I am cold,” Kavita said, starting to
shiver. She danced up on down on her little toes.

“Where’s your towel, bunny?” Honey
looked around. She set her wine glass down on a little table and
reached over for a towel draped on a nearby chair.
“Here.”

She folded her niece up in the big
beach towel and pulled her up onto her lap, wrapping her arms
around her. “So, what’s new, bunny? Got a job yet?”

Kavita giggled. “No.”

“Well, that’s no good! How are you
going to support your parents?”

“I’m four, Auntie Honey!”

They were joined by Kavita’s little
brother Sebastian. Honey bent down to give him a smooch. “Hey,
little dude,” she said. “Have fun in the pool?”

He nodded, still not talking a whole
lot, but since Kavita was only too willing to talk for her little
brother, he didn’t need to.

“Yes, he had fun,” Kavita said. Honey
grinned.

“Come on kids, let’s go inside and get
your clothes on for dinner.” Their mom rose out of her chair and
scooped up Sebastian. She held out a hand for Kavita who scrambled
off Honey’s lap.

“I’d better go check on dinner,” Mom
said, rising as well.

“Need any help, Mom?” Honey
offered.

“No, I think Jess has things under
control.”

Her parents had a caterer they often
used when they hosted dinner parties, who brought a small team into
the kitchen and took over cooking and serving, after planning the
menu with Mom.

Honey shifted her chair to face
Kortney as James took their son into the house to get changed as
well. “How are you feeling, Kortney?” she asked.

Kortney sighed. “Huge. Fat.
Uncomfortable.” And she launched into details about her last doctor
appointment and how much weight she’d gained and a whole lot of
other things pregnant women always seemed to want to talk about,
including decorating the baby’s room. Honey went with
it.

Soon dinner was served at the big
table in the formal dining room.

“We like family dinners,” Mom told
their guests. “So we keep things really informal.”

That meant the kids ate with them,
which meant a lot of noise and parental intervention and
interjections of “Sebastian, stay in your seat” and “Burton, stop
throwing peas at your cousin”, which annoyed her mother who was
trying to hold court, despite her claim that she liked things
informal. It was all kind of fucked up.

Honey kept her thoughts to herself,
ate her meal then volunteered to take the kids into the kitchen for
dessert, partly so their parents and the other guests could enjoy
their meal in peace, but mostly so she could escape.

In the kitchen, she got the kids
seated at the big island on stools. Jess and her two girls were
just about finished cleaning up and putting things away in the
spacious kitchen. Honey pulled cartons of ice cream out of the
freezer. She was going to scoop it into bowls, but on impulse
peeked into the pantry and found what she’d hoped for―ice-cream
cones. Ice cream was way more fun in a cone. Messier, but fun. Then
she found some colored sprinkles, which was even more fun. Every
kid loved sprinkles.

The three kids were thrilled by this
and once she got them all sorted with ice cream in cones with their
choice of colored sprinkles, she made one for herself, leaning on
the counter across from the kids as they ate.

“You have so much ice cream on your
face, we’re going to have to throw you in the pool to clean you
off,” she told Burton.

His eyes went wide but the other kids
giggled. “Do it!” Kavita cried.

“No! No pool!”

“Don’t worry, I’m kidding,” Honey
assured him. “Maybe.” But she winked at him. “Hey, guess where I
went yesterday?”

“Where?”

“The aquarium. And we saw an octopus.
Do you know how many arms an octopus has?”

Little heads shook.

“Eight! Eight arms. And he moved very
fast in the water.”

Three sets of eyes went round. “I want
to go to the ‘quarium,” Kavita said. “Why don’t you take us there,
Auntie Honey?”

“Good question, bunny. Maybe I will
someday. Now I’m living here we can do more stuff
together.”

“Yay! You can take us to
Disneyland!”

Honey blinked. “Um…well. Maybe.” That
sounded like fun, but she wasn’t sure about taking three small
children to Disneyland all by herself.

They all started chanting,
“Disneyland!” at the top of their lungs, although the two boys were
mostly just yelling wordlessly and Honey laughed. “Shhh,” she said,
making a shushing motion with her hands, but smiling.

Honey made her escape from the house
not long after that. Driving the Ventura Freeway, she let out a
sigh. She’d done her duty and showed up. Not a single person had
asked about her new job. It was typical, but she no longer expected
anything from them. Or from anyone.

Chapter Seven

Matt was fucking sick of watching the
games from the press box, dressed in a suit and tie. He wanted to
play
. He had an appointment with the team doctor tomorrow
and he was gonna punch something or somebody if the doc didn’t
clear him for full contact play.

The post concussive symptoms had been
gone for a while now. He knew they were just worried about the
vertebra in his neck that had been fractured, wanting to make sure
it was fully healed. And yeah, he wanted to make sure of that
too—of course he did. Thinking about taking another hit like the
one that knocked him out, possibly ending up with brain damage or
spinal cord damage, paralyzed, made him want to vomit.
Christ.

Every day he thanked God or his lucky
stars or whatever or whoever he needed to be grateful to that his
injury hadn’t been worse than it was. It had certainly given him a
whole different perspective on many things. He’d seen people in the
hospital way worse off than him, and swore he was never going to
whine or complain about petty shit again. He was going to
appreciate everything he’d been given and make the most of
it.

But he wanted to get back in the
game,
for fuck’s sake.

He let out a long breath as he headed
out of the Coliseum after the game, a nice win for the team. As he
passed Steve Holbrook coming out of his private box up there, he
greeted the team owner with a smile, but of course that immediately
made him think of Honey.

Because Steve was on his way home, and
Honey was there to have dinner with him. Would she tell her dad
that they’d spent the afternoon together yesterday?

He had no clue.

Did he want her to tell him? He wasn’t
entirely sure of that either.

He remembered the guys’ talk about how
Holbrook had traded Heimdall just because he’d dated Honey. Was
that true or just rumor? Would Holbrook trade any guy who dated his
daughter?

Jesus, that was stupid. Holbrook was
smarter than that. You couldn’t run a hockey team that
way.

He turned down an invitation to go out
with some of the guys later and left the Coliseum to head home,
thinking about the afternoon he’d spent with Honey the day before.
The attraction between them was still there, sizzling hot, just as
hot as it had been eight years ago when they’d gotten all tangled
up in each other. Maybe hotter.

And it was weird, but being with her
yesterday with her little friend Mia made his head all screwed up.
Because not only was Honey gorgeous and sexy, she
was…sweet.

Sweet like honey.

Jesus. He was getting fucking
poetic.

Mia obviously was crazy about her, and
Honey was great with Mia, genuine and affectionate, an openness in
her eyes and her smile that he hadn’t seen with other people,
including him. Or maybe he’d caught a glimpse of it…but seeing her
like that with Mia made him realize how guarded Honey was with most
people.

He wanted to see more of her like
that, relaxed and candid. He wanted to see what she looked like in
bed, wanted to see her looking at him when he was fucking her into
heaven. He wanted to see the expression in her eyes when she came
apart underneath him.

Damn.

With all kinds of pent-up energy and
frustration inside him—sexual, professional, whatever—as soon as he
got home he changed into a pair of board shorts and headed to the
pool. Nobody else was there, early Sunday evening, so he dove in
and started doing laps to work all the frustration out of him. The
cool water rushing over his body felt good. Using his muscles felt
good.

He swam until his lungs burned and his
arm and shoulder muscles screamed, then hauled himself up onto the
side and sat there panting. Good. It was good for him. Distracted
him from thinking about Honey.

Except there she was again,
dammit.

*****

“You can help me celebrate.” Matt
smiled at Honey across the front reception counter of Condor
Community Foundation the following Thursday after their meeting.
They’d met again to go over some of the details she’d arranged for
a visit to Franklin Middle School.

She tipped her head to one side,
totally being sucked in by his smile. God, what was it about him
that just melted her inside? “Celebrate what?”

“I’ve been cleared for full contact,”
he said. “I can practice with the team and that means it won’t be
long before I can play again.”

“Oh! That’s great!” She couldn’t help
but smile at his obvious pleasure at this turn of events. “Will you
be joining them on the road?”

His smile vanished. “No. I have to
wait until they’re back.”

“Uh…when’s that?” Crap, she didn’t pay
much attention to the team schedule. She was going to have to
bookmark it in her web browser.

“They’re back Sunday,” he said.
“Practice Monday morning. I guess we see how that goes and maybe
I’ll play next week.”

She studied his face. It wasn’t
obvious, but she could read the anxiety and frustration in his
eyes. “It’s been a while since you played, though. They might not
want you to jump right back into it.”

He grimaced and shoved a hand into his
thick hair. “Yeah. That’s true. But fuck, I’ve been waiting for
months now.” Then he glanced around. “Shit.”

Clearly he was trying to keep his
frustration to himself.

“Well, it’s still good news,” she
said. “Right? So you just have to wait a few more days while
they’re away and then you’ll be practicing with them first thing
next week.”

“Right. Which brings me back to my
invitation. To help me celebrate.”

The glimpse of vulnerability she’d
seen in his eyes a moment ago made it so hard to resist. But hell,
she shouldn’t be worried about him. She needed to be protecting
herself, and going out with Matt Heller was the exact opposite of
that.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she
said slowly.

She remembered the Saturday excursion
to the pier and how much fun she’d had. Nothing bad had happened.
But still…

“C’mon, Honey. The team and all my
buds are away right now. Help me celebrate.”

Irresistible. The word sprang to mind.
When he smiled like that, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, all
his attention on her, it was pretty damn compelling.

But there were good reasons to resist.
What if the worst happened? What if someone in the media saw them
together and went public with it? What kind of crazy shit storm
could result from that? Her main goal these days, apart from trying
to prove herself at the Foundation, was to keep
out
of the
news.

“I’m all on my own,” he said with an
entreating look that made her nipples tingle. God! He could
probably ask her to jump off the Santa Monica Freeway and she’d
consider it.

She sighed. “Okay. But we have to go
somewhere very low-key. Like, maybe Burger King.”

He tipped his head back and considered
that. “I like a good Whopper now and then.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help
it.

He grinned too. “Okay. Low-key it is.
I’ll pick you up Saturday afternoon. One o’clock.”

She blinked. “Oookay.” An afternoon
date somehow wasn’t what she expected.

“Need your address, babe.” He pulled
out his cell phone and waited. She recited it and he entered it in
then shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Great. See you
Saturday.”

Her second week on the job had gone
much like the first, with people keeping information from her,
going for lunch and coffee breaks without her and her generally
feeling lost and useless—other than the work she’d been doing with
Matt and the things she’d set up for him.