Parental Guidance (A Hot Hockey Romantic Comedy) Page 23

  These women knew her. There was no way she’d hold up under an interrogation. Her best option might be to beg the makeup artist to do something drastic with her look so she’d have to stay perfectly still and couldn’t move or talk or make eye contact. Was that possible outside of getting a Mission Impossible–type mask? Probably not. She was definitely screwed.

  Gina let out a relieved sigh. “We were about to send the search party.”

  “That would be me,” Fallon said, raising her hand.

  “Sorry,” Tess said, sitting down in the on-deck chair for the makeup artist. “I forgot to set an alarm.”

  “So it had nothing to do with sneaking off with Cole Phillips last night?” Lucy asked.

  “We went into the conservatory for some quiet,” Tess said, clasping her hands tight in her lap. “The DJ was loud.”

  “Poor Cole,” Gina said between blasts of hairspray from the stylist. “That guy is in a rough way. Thanks for hanging out with him.”

  “How do you mean rough?” Not that she cared, but she was naturally curious. That was all.

  Gina shook her head, much to her stylist’s annoyance. “He’s been dating and not dating Coach Peppers’s daughter, Marti, for about a million years, and she finally called it off a while back. According to the online gossip, he’s totally brokenhearted.”

  “Yeah,” Lucy said before blotting her bright-red lipstick. “But will this one take?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question.” Gina got down from the chair as the stylist checked her over from every direction. “But she seems serious about it, even if he may not be ready to walk away. Oh, I hope it works out.”

  And that was Gina in a nutshell. No matter how she used to deny it before she met Ford, Gina was a total romantic at heart, and it was no surprise she’d become a wedding planner. She was all about the happily ever afters.

  Tess? Not even close.

  “Honestly, Tess, you’re the best for keeping him from moping,” Lucy said. “If anyone sees him doing it at the reception, especially when Marti is nearby, please send up flares. The guy needs all the friends he can get because he is a mess right now.”

  “He sure is playing like one,” Fallon, the resident Ice Knights superfan, said. “He’s distracted, and it shows on the ice.”

  “Not everyone gets a Lady Luck,” Tess muttered.

  Fallon rolled her eyes. “Don’t even. Zach turning his game around had nothing to do with me.”

  “Well, either way, we Ice Knights fans salute you,” Gina said.

  Tess’s brain was spinning. Things had just gone from her normal level of awkweird to something approaching epic levels of oh-my-God-run-away awkweird. She’d done something totally out of character for her and banged a guy she’d just met six ways from Sunday. Then—to make it even more uncomfortable—he was hung up on another chick, and they were all going to be at the wedding together.

  There was no way this was going to be anything other than a disaster.

  …

  Cole was in hell, and they were playing the “Electric Slide.” There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world for this—which was good because he was still footing the tab for the team. Sure, there was an open bar, but everyone but the rookies thought it was funnier to go to the hotel bar and not the wedding reception bar for their drinks. Assholes. Sure, they weren’t wrong, it was funnier, but they were still assholes. There was no way it could get worse.

  “So.” Petrov drew the single-syllable word out into at least four. “You disappeared with the curly-haired chick last night.”

  Obviously, Cole’s previous declarative statement was now rendered false.

  Sliding his attention away from the dance floor and over to the man sitting next to him, he saw the center had ditched his bow tie, and he had a glass of top-shelf single malt in his hand and a shit-eating grin on his face. This was going to be worse.

  Cole shrugged. “It was a dance.”

  “Then a disappearance.”

  Followed by some damn good sex and—oh yeah—the totally awesome move of waking up and calling the woman he was in bed with by his ex’s name. That had been a shit move even if remembering his own name when he first woke up was a challenge. He’d spent the past six months waiting for Marti to agree to give it another go—which she always did—and turning away every single opportunity to get it on with anyone else. Then he’d gotten weddinged. Something the quick-thinking center next to him wasn’t going to let him forget, so he might as well dig in and get chippy about it.

  “You have a point to make, Petrov?” Cole asked.

  “Just an observation and a hell-yeah for finally moving on.” Petrov clinked his glass against Cole’s. “I haven’t seen you with anyone in months, despite the efforts of some of our more creative fans.”

  “I don’t need to move on from anything.” Eventually things would realign and go back to the way they had always been. Solid. Sure. Unchanging. Just the way he liked it. This was just a temporary glitch, not forever.

  “You trying to tell me that nothing happened last night? Bullshit. I saw how you looked at her.”

  “Nothing important happened.” Inwardly he cringed at what an asshole he sounded like, but he kept that internal, covered under fourteen layers of ice. However, if he gave Petrov even a hint that it had been more, he’d never hear the end of it. “It was a nice time.”

  Three nice times. He’d gone around and searched his room until he’d found the two torn-open condom packets on the dresser top and the one stuffed into the pocket of his suit pants from the time in the conservatory, just to double-check his memory that they’d been three nice, protected times.

  The other forward on his line, Alex Christensen, had packed his wallet with condoms for, as he put it, “the premium opportunities a wedding offered.” Cole had figured it for the hazing it was. Using them had never crossed his mind until Tess talked him into doing the one thing he never did voluntarily—lose. What in the world was going on?

  “First Christensen lines my wallet with condoms, and now you’re whispering in my ear about Tess,” he mumbled to himself before looking up at the god-awful fresco on the ceiling of the reception room that had been painted with a Greek god theme, never mind that they had Icarus flying away from the sun instead of toward it.

  “Maybe we all think it’s time you tried a new path,” Petrov said, completely missing that Cole’s question had been rhetorical. “Ever think that maybe, even though Marti is one of the coolest chicks we know, you should just walk away after this breakup? It’s been six months.” He gestured toward the dance floor. “She seems to have moved on. Follow her lead. You’ve been ignoring the other women throwing themselves at you for months, but last night you fall in with Tess? Sounds to me like you’re ready to move on.”

  Cole looked over toward the dance floor. He didn’t have to search to find her. Marti was dancing with that Wall Street guy, who looked like he couldn’t make up his mind between ogling her tits or stealing from a widows and orphans charity fund. Where had she found this prick? She was better than him.

  “If I could have everyone’s attention,” the DJ said over the music, loud enough to clear the questions from Cole’s head. “It’s time for the garter and bouquet toss.”

  A chair was brought out to the dance floor and a laughing Lucy was led out to it by the redheaded giant, Frankie, she’d married. As she sat down, Frankie whispered something in her ear that had the toughest, no-nonsense shark of a public relations crisis management guru blushing, and then he reached under her dress and pulled her lace garter down her leg.

  “If we can get all the single men to line up at the far end of the dance floor and the single ladies at the opposite end here by me,” the DJ said.

  Cole had absolutely no intention of moving from his seat, but Christensen and Petrov each hooked an arm under his, hauled him up out of his seat, and force-marched him to where all the single dudes were milling about.

  “I’m not catching that thing
,” Cole said, stuffing his hands deep in his pockets.

  Christensen just grinned that never-lost-a-tooth miracle smile of his. “Don’t worry, the plan is for us to catch it for you.”

  “You two are assholes,” he said with a sigh.

  Petrov lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “Something you already knew to be true.”

  “One,” the DJ said, starting the countdown.

  Frankie twirled the garter around one finger and eyeballed the crowd of single guys. Cole took a step back deeper into the crowd, only to be shoved none too gently back to the front by a pair of his line mates who really needed to get a hobby or a girlfriend or both.

  “Two.”

  Frankie pulled back on the garter like it was a slingshot and aimed at a part of the crowd farthest away from Cole. He looked over his shoulders at Christensen and Petrov, shooting them a smirk. The only way to keep him at the front was if they both stayed there blocking his path, but that left the entire rest of the crowd unguarded if they were going to snatch that garter out of midair for him as they’d planned. It was the curse of the double-team.

  “Three.”

  At the last second, Frankie pivoted and shot the garter straight at Cole. It flew through the air like a puck zinging toward the goal. He didn’t mean to reach up and grab the flying lace, but muscle memory was a helluva thing. The garter was in his hand before he realized he was reaching for it.

  Motherfucker.

  He shoved the damn thing into his pocket as fast as he could and ignored the self-satisfied laughter coming from the two chuckleheads behind him. Maybe no one noticed.

  “And we have our bachelor winner,” the DJ said. “Now, all the single ladies lined up on my side of the dance floor, get ready because here comes the bouquet!”

  Lucy turned her back to the gaggle of women, did a couple of I’m-about-to-toss-it-but-didn’t moves, and then—finally—let the bouquet go. It arced across the opening before smacking Tess hard in the face and then falling to the floor as everyone in the room let out a collective gasp.

  “I’m all right,” Tess said as she picked red rose petals out of her hair. “Tis only a flesh wound.”

  Old school Monty Python? He grinned despite his annoyance at the whole garter thing.

  “Let’s give a hand to our lucky guests who will get the dancing started,” the DJ said, his shaking voice obviously an attempt to cover his laughter.

  The fuck? A dance? No. This whole carrying-around-Lucy’s-garter thing was weird enough without adding in a very public slow dance with the woman he’d gotten weddinged with last night.

  He didn’t move. Neither did Tess. Instead they both stood there on opposite sides of the dance floor, her looking just as horrified as he felt.

  “Mr. Garter Belt and Ms. Bouquet to the Face.” The DJ laughed at his own joke. “You’re up.”

  “But I didn’t catch it,” Tess said, her voice going up at the last word.

  No one seemed to be listening to her valid argument, though. Instead, her people were doing pretty much the same thing as his—shoving him out onto the dance floor as a slow song started playing. Last night, he’d curled an arm around her waist and pulled her close without a second thought. Not so much today. Without the high of the trivia game and the social lubrication of a few drinks, everything seemed to move slower with a higher level of awkward.

  “I’m not gonna turn into a stalker,” she said as she settled her left hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to worry.”

  Way to go, dumb-ass, you made her feel like shit. You should bottle that talent. “Who said I was worried?”

  She looked up at him as they moved around the dance floor, filling up with other couples. “So you do that a lot and don’t have weird stalker problems?”

  “Do what?” How had he not noticed last night that she had one blue eye and one green? It was subtle, only a few shades different, and she was wearing glasses, adding in a protective layer between her and the world, but still he should have noticed. “You have heterochromia iridum.”

  “It’s not uncommon,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “More than two hundred thousand cases are diagnosed each year, but don’t change the subject. I know you’re still hung up on your ex. I have no delusions that last night was anything more than just us getting weddinged.”

  Her no-nonsense declaration hit with the sharp crack of a stick to the cheek. For reasons unknown, it burned, stung, and just might have drawn blood. Not that it mattered. It didn’t. It wasn’t like Tess was interested in him anyway.

  He spun them around a little faster than the beat, needing to move. “Good to know.”

  After that, they both kept their mouths shut, which was for the best. Last night had been a fluke occurrence. His tomorrows were already planned right down to the alphabetized books on the shelves in his den, the breakfast he’d been having every day since he was ten, and the woman he was going to end up with—Marti. The first girl he’d ever kissed and the one who had always been there for him no matter what. They’d find their way back to each other. They always did.

  “Did you know the garter toss originated in England and France because guests would try to tear off a piece of the bride’s dress for good luck?” Tess asked, her grip on his shoulder a bit tenser than it had been before. “Grooms started flinging part of the bride’s wedding outfit to calm the crowd and stop the wife from having a nervous breakdown at the idea of having her outfit ripped to shreds while she was wearing it.”

  “I didn’t.” He mentally shook off the unease that crept in whenever he thought about a possible change in his routine and dug for a wedding factoid of his own. Competitive? Him? Fuck yeah. “Did you know bouquets were originally garlic, herbs, and spices carried by the bride to ward off evil spirits?”

  Tess cracked a smile for the first time since she’d gotten a face full of rosebuds. “I’ll add that one to my list.”

  The tension seeped out of his shoulders, and even though he didn’t mean to, he drew her in closer and they swayed to the last bars of the song. Moving on to something up-tempo, the DJ called to the crowd to put on their dancing shoes. Yeah, Cole definitely didn’t own any of those and, judging by the way Tess just stood there and looked around at everyone else, she didn’t, either. Finally, her gaze landed back on him.

  “Good luck with her, your ex,” Tess said, taking a step back out of his arms. “I hope it all works out.”

  Before he could say anything in response, Tess hustled away from him, disappearing into the crowd. Looking down, he spotted a couple of rose petals clinging, against the odds, to his tux lapel. He wasn’t likely to see Tess ever again, but he still slipped the petals into his pocket as he walked off the dance floor, wondering what factoid she would be able to tell him about roses, the origin of the tuxedo, and the stats for the most popular wedding songs. He’d have to figure out for himself, though, because she was right. They had gotten weddinged. Really, what were the chances of ever running into Tess again? Zilch. Zero. Nada. And that was a good thing. Really.

  So why was he staring at the spot where she’d disappeared instead of over at Marti and her idiot date like he usually would have been? Fuck if he knew. He was a hockey player, not Freud.

  Chapter Three

  One month later…

  If there was anything Tess could count on in life, it was her period coming every twenty-eight days like a perfectly engineered clock made of cramps and Almond Joy cravings. Today was day twenty-nine, according to her tracking app, and she was sitting on the edge of the tub in her tiny bathroom not breathing and watching four home pregnancy tests lined up on the counter next to the sink while Kahn weaved around and in between her calves.

  Were four tests overkill for what would no doubt be a negative result? Probably. They’d used condoms. Three of them. It had only been one night. More than likely it was just the stress of her asshole landlord threatening to raise the rent on her flower shop and her apartment above it. Forever in Bloom was finally t
urning a healthy profit, and she had plans to use that extra cash to hire an accountant so she wouldn’t be doing the books herself.

  Kahn mewled and took a bite out of Tess’s leg with his pointy little teeth.

  “Ow!” She massaged the spot right above her ankle to rub the sting out. “What was that for?”

  The kitten, a puffball of black and white fur, just flicked his tail and stared up at Tess as if she’d somehow disappointed him by even having to ask the question. It had only been a week and they were still getting to know each other, but damn, Kahn’s teeth were no joke, and from the kneecaps down she was starting to look like a pincushion.

  Her phone buzzed as it vibrated against the counter, and she sat up straight, bite forgotten and nervous swirling in her belly remembered. If she’d been all in for the test result to come back one way or another, this experience might be different. Calmer? More hopeful? Instead, she was just a jumble of mixed-up emotions ranging from please-let-it-be-yes to oh-my-fucking-God-no and everything in between.

  Family was something she’d never really had until she met her girls Lucy, Fallon, and Gina. Her mom saw her mostly as an inconvenience to be dropped off at various relatives’ houses whenever possible for as long as possible. Those aunts and uncles never let her forget that she was an obligation and it was only because of their Christian duty that they welcomed her into their homes—even if that welcome was more of a tired tolerance. But a baby? That would be creating her own family. She could make sure to do it right because she’d seen firsthand how it could be done wrong.

  Doubt circled upward, twisting and distorting all of that hopefulness because what if she really wasn’t meant to have a family? How many times did she have to learn that lesson? Even if she kept the baby—if there was a baby—did she really think she’d be enough as a single mom? Or would she just repeat every mistake that had been visited onto her?