Page 9 of Learn Your Lesson

I narrowed my eyes. “A turkey?”

“Gobble, gobble,” she said with a saccharine smile, and then she hooked her arm through Chloe’s and led her toward the kitchen. “I’m Arushi Patel, but you can call me Chef.”

• • •

Dinner was served a short ten minutes later, Chef Patel making sure we were all settled and taken care of before she kept herself busy cleaning up the kitchen. I was thankful she was still close enough to where we were in the informal dining area that she could help me carry the conversation with Chloe because I was as good at small talk as I was at braiding my daughter’s hair.

I must have worn my discomfort on my sleeve, too, because as soon as dessert was cleared away, Chloe smiled into her napkin, blotting at her lips before folding it on the table. “Well, I’m sure you’re ready to relax. I’ll get out of your hair and be on my way.”

Before she could stand, Ava said, “But I wanna show you my room.”

Chloe’s eyes shot to mine before she smiled at my daughter. “Maybe we could save that for another time.”

She was doing that thing again where she shoved her hair behind her ears only to immediately fix it the other way, her lips pinned between her teeth, weight shifting from one hip to the other.

“You’re more than welcome to stay,” I said, clearing my throat.

“Oh yeah?” She smiled like I’d told a joke. “Pretty sure you just checked the time on your watch for the tenth time since I got here.”

Chef Patel sucked her teeth at me as she cleared our dessert plates. “Manners of a goat.”

“First I’m a turkey, now I’m a goat?”

That almost got a smile out of my daughter, and then my phone was ringing. I frowned down at Carter’s name on the screen before standing and excusing myself out the back sliding glass door that led to our pool.

“Okay. You win. Why don’t you take Miss Knott up to show her your room?” I said to Ava. “I’ll be right back.”

I thought I heard another joke at my expense from my darling chef before I shut the door behind me and accepted the call.

“What?”

Carter barked out a laugh. “Well, hello to your grumpy ass, too.”

I rolled my eyes. “What do you want? It’s a school night.”

“How’s my favorite girl?”

“Currently as close to happy as she gets because she’s showing her kindergarten teacher around our home.”

There was a brief silence before he said, “Um… care to elaborate on why her teacher is there this late?”

“Not even a little bit. What do you want, Fabio?”

Carter Fabri was the closest thing I had to an annoying little brother. The kid had rolled up as a rookie last season with a feather in his hat and a grin the size of his home province. As much as he gave me gray hairs, I liked his attitude. I liked that when he was here, he was dedicated — no matter how much he partied in his off time.

The problem was that he wasn’t here long.

He rode the bench for a lot of his first season, coming in for sporadic line changes every now and then before he was sent down to the AHL to help them with playoffs. He came back to training camp for this season and stuck around for a few months, but he just wasn’t quite where he needed to be to stay put.

And so, he was back with our AHL affiliate once again.

I knew he had it in him to secure a permanent spot here in Tampa, he just needed to grow up a little bit. He also needed to get laid more or find some kind of way to beef up his confidence. As a center, he needed to be a leader. He needed to call the shots and communicate with his linemates without any hesitation.

As it was currently, he had the backbone of a grasshopper.

“I sent you a film clip,” he said, and my phone buzzed in my ear with the text arrival. “I need some Daddy P tough love because I’m about to lose my mind if I can’t figure out why this shit keeps happening to me.”

Daddy P was the nickname bestowed on me by my team. Daddy for obvious reasons, and P for Perry — or Pickles, depending on who you asked, because I was “cool as a cucumber.”