Breaking the Ice

Chapter 31

31

They rushed back to the shop and two minutes later Dulcie walked through the door, followed closely by Kelly and Sally. Nick went and bought some champagne and they had an impromptu party.

“To the new manager of Birdie’s,” Nick said, raising his drink in the air. “To Samantha.”

They all clinked their glasses together and Samantha mouthed, “Thank you,” as she swallowed the lump of emotion with a mouthful of bubbles.

They shut the shop early and had celebration sex against the wall in the back room. They went to his apartment and had frantic sex on the kitchen bench. Later that night in bed he buried himself deep inside her and they had slow, intense, leaving-on-a-jet-plane sex.

Their noses were touching and he was looking right into her eyes and she loved him so much she knew she’d do anything to make him stay.

Anything but ask.

“I’m going to miss you,” she said instead as he withdrew and entered her again slowly on a deep satisfying groan.

Him. Not this . Not sex. Although she was definitely also going to miss the best sex she’d ever had at the hands of the G-spot whisperer.

Buried to the hilt, he raised himself on his elbows and stared into her eyes intently. “I’m going to miss you, too.”

He moved to pull out again but she clenched her pelvic floor muscles and held him inside, grasping a naked buttock to keep him there. “No, don’t move. I want to remember what it’s like to have you inside me.”

He chuckled. “I’m about two seconds away from coming.”

“Me too,” she admitted as she loosened her hold and he moved inside her again, kissing her as he withdrew and groaning as he plunged back in, pushing them both into the abyss.

Nick flew to New Brunswick the next day. Samantha didn’t see him off at the airport and he’d been grateful. Saying goodbye at the apartment had been hard enough.

It was full-on once he hit training camp, running through a full battery of physical tests, putting his recovery through its paces as he trained with the team off-ice. He knew his injury would bench him for the first month or six weeks but the residual weakness on his turns was surprising and there was a lot of discussion about that among the team.

He missed Sam. Terribly. But the schedule the first two weeks was grueling and by the end of the day he was too exhausted to dwell on what he’d left behind.

And his knee hurt like a son of a bitch.

But he doubled down, pushing himself because this was the only thing he’d ever want to do, right? So he worked out, traded smack talk with the team about his knee and attended every allied health appointment. He was fitter in three weeks than he’d been the last four months but then it came to getting back on the ice for their first team shinny and everything changed.

Nick stood inhaling the cold, removing his skate guards as he stared at the freshly Zammed surface waiting for the rush. For the buzz that always stormed through his system like a force-ten gale at the sight of the glossy ice, the lights reflecting back a blinding white, the net at the end ready for the puck.

But it was curiously absent .

Instead, with the sounds of his teammates’ blades slicing through the ice surrounding him and their ribald banter bouncing off the walls of the empty arena, Nick felt… apprehensive.

Not afraid but not confident either. And lack of confidence on the ice could kill a career far quicker than a bung knee.

What the fuck was even happening now? And why the hell was he not panicking about the fact that for the first time since he’d laced on a pair of skates at the age of three he actually had no desire to step on to the ice.

He’d been through a knee operation, four months of physio and recovery and over two weeks of intensive training to get to this moment and he… didn’t want it.

Not as much as he wanted Samantha.

And that was it. Right there. He didn’t want it. Not because he’d lost his nerve or because he was afraid to give his knee its first real-time test. But because of Sam.

Because he loved her .

All he could think about, standing here, knowing that all he needed to do was put his blade on the ice and he could have another three or four pro years, was Samantha.

How could he have been so blind? So stupid . How could he have fallen in love and not known it when it seemed so obvious now? It had been that day at Birdie’s grave when she’d wept for his grandmother like she’d been her own. He knew it as clearly as he knew he needed to have a conversation with the coach and his agent about retiring immediately because he’d already wasted far too much time not being with the woman he loved.

A sudden fierce longing to see her belly swollen with his child almost cut him off at the knees and stole his breath. Finally, he understood what she’d been talking about for months. What her eggs had been cheeping about. Loving someone meant wanting to see their eyes, their expressions, their laughter in the face of your child.

Unless of course she’d changed her mind. She hadn’t mentioned the whole baby thing those last few weeks after all. Maybe he’d fly home and she’d have changed her mind about him, too? Look at him and say, Oh Nick, really, why would I need you when I have Birdie’s and the Orgmaster 2000?

Suddenly he understood what real risk was. And he was an NHL line defensive. But that was a different kind of risk, one he was trained to calculate and knew how to push. Putting his heart on the line was a whole other kind of risky.

But he knew it was one he had to take.

“Hawkeye, you want a hand-embossed invitation?” his coach bellyached from across the arena. “Get your ass on the ice.”

Nick just smiled and slid his guards back in place.

Two weeks and four days. And Samantha had cried every one of them. She’d known it was going to be hard, but nothing had prepared her for the total and utter wasteland inside her. She cried in the shelves where Nick had touched every book. She cried out the back room where they had gone for it against the wall. She cried in her bathroom where he had rubbed her back while she’d vomited.

On two separate occasions.

And to her utter dismay she even cried in front of the customers. She’d broken down in front of a bewildered Bernie just the other day. The poor man had only dropped in for his mother’s books and ended up patting her awkwardly on the shoulder while trying to judge the distance to the door.

No one was safe from her grief, although all the regulars had pitched in to help distract her from it. She had tried to keep her mind off Nick, absorbing herself in the business side of Birdie’s. Quite a few drop-ins lately had been asking about the old pulp fiction detective stories and classic comics and she’d been toying with the idea of expansion. She could combine all the boys’ own stuff and potentially make another viable store.

“I just can’t find it, dear.”

Samantha broke from her reverie and attended to her customer, disappearing into the shelves to find the requested Nora Roberts that she knew she’d put there two days ago. The bell over the door rang but she didn’t pay it any heed.

She vaguely heard the milk frother kick in on the coffee machine and figured it must be Kelly. She’d rung earlier to say she’d met a fabulous girl and needed to chat.

“Be right there, Kel,” she called as she located the book and smiled at her customer.

“No rush, take your time.”

Samantha froze. That was not Kelly’s voice! Her eggs, who had been treating her as persona non grata since Nick left, suddenly roared to life.

Nick?

“Excuse me,” she said, passing the Nora over to the grateful woman.

She came out from behind a shelf, and there he was looking all shaggy and unshaven and so very wonderfully Nick-like. Her eggs sobbed with joy as she leaned against the shelf on suddenly wobbly legs.

“ Nick? What are you doing back?”

“I’ll have this, and these too,” the Nora customer said, pushing them into Sam’s unprotesting hands.

“Here,” Nick said, beaming at the lady. “Let me.”

Sam wandered over to the couch, her heart thundering, her brain still trying to compute that Nick was back. Why? Oh, God… he hadn’t injured himself again, had he?

Her eyes ranged over his body, searching for visible signs of injury as he charmed the customer but nothing seemed apparent so she forced herself to wait patiently for him to finish. When he finally showed the customer out and flipped the sign to closed, she wanted to run to him, throw herself at him, tear his clothes off and drag him to the ground.

But maybe he was just injured and she didn’t want to get her hopes up.

“Did something happen?” she asked as he approached.

He nodded. “Something big.”

“Did you injure yourself again? Your knee? Somewhere else?”

She rose to her feet and before she knew it, she was in front of him, running shaky hands over his knees, his thighs, lifting his shirt to inspect his stomach, his back, his chest for bruises or lacerations. He felt good beneath her hands, solid and warm and she wanted to bury her face in his neck and cling to him like an oyster on a rock.

A stubborn one. The stubbornest goddamn oyster in the world.

Nick laughed as he stilled her hands against his ribs. “I didn’t hurt myself. I threw it in before I even started.”

Samantha blinked, her heart skipping a beat. “What? But… why ? What do you mean?”

Dragging her over to the couch, he pulled her down beside him. “I got to the first ice practice and the strangest thing happened.”

“What?”

“I realized I didn’t want it anymore. Not as much as I wanted you.”

Sam couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It couldn’t be true, could it? Surely, he wouldn’t jest about something like this . “I… really?” He wanted her? He wanted her more than a lucrative pro NHL career?

“Yes. Really.” He slid his hands either side of her face, his eyes locking with hers. “I stood there and realized what I really wanted was this crazy girl I’d fallen in love with who has a problem with these really noisy eggs that I’d like to help her with. And she can run the bookshop and my agent’s going to find me something to do that doesn’t involve much travel and we can live happily ever after. If she loves me too. If she’ll have me.”

Samantha couldn’t believe her ears. She stared into his lovely brown eyes as his words slowly penetrated. Had he really spoken them? Said he… loved her?

Nick Hawke loved her and wanted to have babies with her?

He looked sexy and handsome and beautiful and he was here in Tetworth and he loved her and hell if she didn’t want to jump him right here, right now.

But this was too big to get wrong. This wasn’t just about sex, this was the rest of her life.

“This is a stunning turnaround, Nick.” She eased his hands from her face, clasping them in her lap. “You really want to help with the egg situation? I thought you didn’t want babies?”

“I didn’t. And then I fell in love with you and I got it. And now I want to have babies with you every year for the next decade. All little girls, just like their mother. I want it so badly it’s all I can do to stop myself from impregnating you right here, right now.”

Samantha’s eggs responded predictably to his blatant callout. They knew sperm was in the offing. They could smell it. She could practically hear them salivating.

Not yet , damn it.

“Are you positive? I don’t want you to be watching the Crabbers play in the Stanley Cup at the end of the season and have you regret that you chose me. That you gave it up for me.”

“Sam, I’m thirty-eight and won that cup twice. My NHL career had enabled me to go to some pretty amazing places and do some pretty amazing things. But, to date, falling in love with you has been the best ride of my life. I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing it for me because I finally know what I want out of life and it’s you.”

Samantha wanted to weep but she daren’t shut her eyes in case she opened them and found she’d just been daydreaming. “I don’t know what to say. I’m speechless.”

He grinned. “Say yes. Say you love me.”

“Yes.” She nodded as tears blurred her vision. “Yes. More than anything, yes.”

She kissed him then, two weeks and four days’ worth of longing and a lifetime worth of love in one devastating kiss.

“Bec is going to freak,” Samantha laughed when she finally broke away.

“Yeah, but your eggs are going to party.”

And they did. Her eggs partied hard. They partied like it was 1999. They put out the welcome mat and waited for the boys to arrive. They flirted and dirty danced and ten months later not one, but two of them got to undergo a little division. And finally the snooze button was activated and Samantha’s insides were once again blissfully silent.

For a while, anyway.