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Chapter Nineteen

Lars

Mabel was irritable. I knew exactly how she felt.

Rowan MacFarlane showing up at my house to take Adeline on a date had to be the most outrageous example of trolling I’d ever seen. And I’d been a pro hockey player for sixteen years. Trolling was our currency.

But this asshole? It felt like he was trying to fuck with me , with his smirk and his hand on Adeline’s back. And the way Adeline had looked at me as she left, like I was not worthy of an opinion here.

So what if she was right? I’d told her kissing her was a bad idea.

I still believed that, but unfortunately this bad idea had felt so damn good I was getting hard just thinking about it.

The way she’d felt in my arms, that supple strength and soft power.

Her lips, her tits, the feel of her ass in my hands, the way my cock notched into the cradle of her body. All of it perfect.

And perfectly wrong.

I didn’t need to count the ways, but I did it anyway because the reminders were the only things maintaining the thin veil of never between us.

Her youth.

Her father.

Her employment.

Her crush.

That was all before we factored in my unsuitability for a woman of that quality.

Adeline was young and fresh and just starting her life.

I was none of those things, not to mention I had a baby to consider.

Leaning on Adeline, using her as a crutch right now was bad enough.

Adding sex to the mix would not make the path any clearer.

I shouldn’t have called. But I had to check in on her, make sure she was safe.

“Alright, Mabel, what are we going to do to entertain ourselves?”

There was a game tonight between Boston and Denver, but that was entertainment for me, not Mabel, so I switched over to the Disney channel and picked the first movie with a princess on the thumbnail.

Mabel was doing her crawling-but-going-nowhere thing, so I gave her a little boost, closer to the bars of her play-cage.

The bright colors on the screen held her in thrall for all of ten seconds, then she flapped her arms like she was trying to fly.

Back to the screen as the princess belted out something. Kind of catchy, to be honest.

I checked the score of the game and considered calling O’Malley or Jacobs, or even Theo to see if they wanted to hang. Only I wasn’t good company. Neither did I want to explain to Theo why Adeline wasn’t here.

Oh, haven’t you heard? She’s dating MacFarlane. Yeah, that MacFarlane.

Dinner at the club—what a joke. Where would I take Adeline on a date?

A nice, romantic restaurant where we could be given privacy in a dark, candlelit corner.

Where no one would know us. (Because what you’d be doing was all wrong, asshole.) I didn’t know much about fancy food, but Adeline probably did.

She’d traveled the world, and I bet she had a shit-ton more savvy than me who went nowhere and knew nothing.

Was she regaling MacFarlane with stories of her travels?

I loved hearing the brief mentions, her excitement.

I loved listening to her soft voice, especially when she sang to Tilly and Mabel.

We hadn’t discussed the fact she wrote a song about me to entertain her sister.

She’d seemed embarrassed about it, so I let it slide.

But now I was thinking, she wrote a song about me! And my beard!

I rubbed it now, thinking about abrading Adeline’s thighs with my stubble-rough jaw, my beard soaked from her liquid pleasure. My chest felt itchy. I scratched but it was no good because this itch was under my skin. Inside my chest.

MacFarlane was always posting shit on Instagram. They’d left only an hour ago, so he probably hadn’t had a chance to upload pics, or maybe he’d have some common sense and keep it on the down low. Did the guy really want to be messing about with his captain’s daughter?

If I couldn’t, then why should he?

There would be hell to pay if he hurt Adeline. I knew this how? Because I’d thought through every scenario involving this woman for myself and come up with the only conclusion that made sense: hurt her and die.

That was what Theo would think.

Except I needed to keep my paternal thinking for my own daughter, who right now was making noises that might be interpreted as singing along to Disney.

I resisted checking out my teammate’s social media and focused on being in the moment with my daughter.

She’d abandoned the movie and now she was rolling around on her back, waving her hands in the air.

One of her booties had somehow landed on the other side of the pen, so I had no choice but to take possession of her baby foot and give it a squeeze.

Oh, she liked that! I tried to see Vicki in her smile, but all I saw was my mom. I hadn’t thought about her in years. Sven had removed all trace of feeling I had for her, but Mabel’s smile brought it rushing back.

She couldn’t help dying and leaving me in Sven’s care, but I sure wouldn’t have wished a six-year-old kid on a gruff asshole like Sven Nyquist. Barely twenty when I was born, he hadn’t matured much by the time he had to take me on full-time.

Now here I was, in my father’s shoes, forced to take on a kid I barely knew. But I could do better.

The muddle of emotions swirling around in my head hacked me off. My mom, Sven, Mabel, Adeline. I flicked a glance to my phone, resisted the impulse, and picked up the remote instead. Hockey would be the perfect distraction right now.

Boston was 2-zip up in the second period. I tried to get into it, but even a goal to narrow the deficit and the prospect of a Denver comeback couldn’t elevate my mood. It wouldn’t hurt to check my Instagram account, see if anyone was giving me shit about Mabel.

There was a new reel on there. Adeline must have added it after I’d given her access and told her to go crazy.

A fun video of Kershaw and me, it showcased some of our best moves over the last couple of years, and even a few times we messed up but were laughing about it afterwards.

The video was intercut with stats and details on our records. People loved it.

D’Legends!

Best defense in the game!

Superglutes and Superdad. (I laughed out loud at that one.)

I would never have expected a charm offensive like this to work, but Adeline really knew what she was doing. More interesting was that it was posted this afternoon after I had pissed her off. She didn’t have to do this nice thing, yet she had because she was a good person.

In related news, I was a total dick, who still needed to know what MacFarlane was up to.

Yep, he’d gone ahead and posted on Insta.

The club, the drinks, the mini-burgers. One of Adeline with his arm around her.

Her expression was deer in the headlights as she raised a flute to the camera.

She didn’t look happy, which I knew intimately because she had looked happy a couple of nights ago when I kissed her.

She had looked abandoned and wanton and so damn needy that my entire body tensed with the pleasure of that memory.

Then she’d looked scorned or maybe, scornful of my inability to take it any further. She had to know what a mistake it was.

But this thing with MacFarlane? That would be an even bigger one.

Adeline

“So Rosie just shoved him in the dumpster. It was absolutely priceless.”

Rowan laughed his head off. “She seems like a cool chick.”

“She is.”

We were an hour in, and Rowan was close to hammered, getting his wrist rehab in with every raise of a glass.

He’d given up any pretense of romantic or sexual interest in me, instead reserving his dubious charm for the servers who had started on the bottle service.

We’d also acquired a few fans who loved that Rowan MacFarlane was here, drinking in their orbit.

“So what’s the deal here?” I tapped his phone.

“What?” He looked a little worse for wear, but suddenly alert to my query.

“Boden just texted.”

He looked down at his phone and Noah Boden’s message: Man, Kershaw is pissed. He called asking where you took his sister.

“Why’s my brother pissed?”

“He doesn’t want you to date me. Of course it makes him mad.”

“But you don’t want to date me, either, do you, Rowan?”

His gaze sharpened. “I asked you out.”

“Yeah, but not because you’re interested in me. This is about Lars, right?”

He scowled at the mention of his teammate, then quickly adjusted. “Aw, Addy, don’t be like that.”

I had checked Rowan’s profile on Instagram. He’d posted several pictures of us, cropping them to make us look close and personal. The hashtags were the usual junk: #clublife #hockey #chicagorebels but there was also one called #hockeyhos and another tagging #larsnyquist.

So, not a real date.

And all because no one saw me for me. I was Theo Kershaw’s daughter, Hatch Kershaw’s sister, Lars Nyquist’s nanny. Even Rosie’s friend.

“Tell the truth, Rowan. You have a beef with Lars, right? And this ‘date’ is some way to make him upset, so he’ll what? Screw up and you get your shot on the ice?”

He made a face. “C’mon, Addy. So you have a crush on Nyquist. I heard you talking to Tara about it. This way we kill two birds—you make him jealous, and I make him mad. I saw how he was when I showed up.”

“I don’t want to—look, there’s no point in talking to you about this.

You clearly have an agenda. And I don’t like playing games.

” I stood, fighting back tears. Rowan’s actions might have been intended to make Lars mad, but they only served to earn my fury.

Enough to pick up my glass of Prosecco and throw it in his face.

Which I did. “And you don’t get to call me Addy.”

Thirty minutes later, I exited the Viper dance floor and ran into Candi again.

Her face lit up. “Another water or are you ready to hit the hard stuff?”