Page 24 of Single Pucking Orc

“—I was about to knock.”

“You were staring.” He said it gently, delightedly. “Nora Bennett. You were standing on my porch in the dark staring at me through my own window.”

“I was assessing whether you’d remembered to actually feed her or whether you were making a nice dinner for yourself while the baby went hungry, which is a legitimate⁠—”

“She’s fed. She’s asleep. I’m making dinner for me, because I haven’t eaten since the coffee place, because I was interviewing nannies. All of which you know, because I gave you the report this morning and you sounded betrayed.” He shifted, and Charlie sighed against him and didn’t wake. His hand came up automatically to cradle the small dark head, and she had to look at the doorframe instead. “So that’s not what you were assessing.”

“You’re very sure of yourself for a male who fell over at practice.”

“I’m always sure of myself. You’ve complained about it at length.” He was so close, in the warm bar of light from the doorway. Whatever he was cooking mixed with his spicy scent and the sweet milky smell of the baby. Her traitor brain noticed all of it and asked for more. “But this is a new thing you’re doing. You want to know what I think you were assessing?”

“I genuinely do not.”

“I think,” he said, “that you came over here to be annoyed at me, the way you like to be. The way you’ve been coming over the fence to be annoyed at me for a year because it’s the most fun you have all week. Don’t argue, I’ve watched you enjoy it. And I think you looked in that window expecting to catch me being exactly the useless disaster you decided I was the day I moved in. And I think you saw something else. And I think,” he finished, so softly it was barely audible, “that it’s bothering you a great deal.”

The banter had the same rhythm, the same game they’d played across the fence a hundred times—his shameless serve, her dry return, and the little pleasure of it that she’d never once admitted to.

But the edge was completely different now. It had gone from entertainment straight down to somewhere lower and warmer, and they both knew it. He was standing there with his baby asleep on his chest and his sleeves straining and the burp cloth with rabbits tucked into his sweatpants. He watched her over the top of a smile that had stopped being a joke, waiting to see what she’d do with it.

She opened her mouth.

And behind him, in the kitchen, the pot boiled over with a violent, hissing, spitting rush across the burner—and Charlie snapped awake against his chest and let out a shriek that could have peeled paint.

CHAPTER 7

The puck was on his stick and forty-one seconds were left in the second period, and Rognar Stonebreaker was thinking about a diaper rash.

Bex had mentioned it as he was leaving. Deb’s system had produced Bex—vetted and background-checked, a nursing student with references longer than Rognar’s contract. She’d arrived at his door with a canvas bag of supplies, taken one look at Charlie, and said oh, hello, you gorgeous baby in a way that had made him relax by about four percent. But then she’d mentioned the diaper rash.

Slight redness, nothing serious, I’ve got cream on it, don’t stress.

And here it was, surfacing on a two-on-one break with a defenseman closing hard and Grimshaw streaking up the far side screaming for the pass. The redness. The cream. The don’t stress, which had done the exact opposite.

He passed. Grimshaw buried it. The horn went and the barn erupted and Rognar got mobbed against the boards by half his line and heard none of it, because he was already thinking about the phone in his stall.

“You’re welcome,” Grimshaw said, crashing into him, all beard and sweat.

“Great feed.”

“It was a great feed. That was me. You looked like a male remembering he left the oven on.”

“Diaper rash.”

Grimshaw considered this with the gravity of a male with three at home. “Bag balm,” he said. “The stuff for cow udders. Trust me.”

“You’re a beautiful, disgusting male.”

He had been distracted since warmups. He’d told himself in the truck on the drive in that he wasn’t going to check his phone. He’d told himself that again in the tunnel, and again lacing up, and then he’d checked it while he laced up, which made a liar of him before he’d even hit the ice. He’d left the video monitor’s second handset in the truck, but he’d carried the app in on his phone. He was a modern father. He had systems.

He’d looked at the phone twice.

“You’ve looked at that phone four times.”

Fenrick coasted up beside him, green mohawk flattened under his helmet, grinning the grin of a male who had never once in his life had a serious thought.

“I’ve looked at it twice.”

“You’ve looked at it four times. I’ve been watching. It’s what I do now, watching you.” Fen circled backward, arms out, delighted with himself. “I’m putting it in the newsletter.”