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“So what’s up? Still practicing this late in the day?” He knew the Phantoms usually did their team skate in the mornings during the preseason, but the guys he glimpsed around Kyle appeared to be in practice uniforms.
“Double practice today since coach says we got all soft over the summer.” Kyle shoved another player who was joking around, pretending to take his phone away. “Ax and I just finished up.”
“Hey, Danny.” Axel Rankin, their Finnish foster brother, stuck his head in front of the camera for a second. Big and dark-haired, he blended right in with the rest of the brothers except for the Nordic blue eyes. “Welcome home, dude.”
“Thanks, man. Good to be here.” In fact, he was looking forward to returning to the family’s home in Chatham, Massachusetts, more than he had in a long time, no doubt because he had Stephanie by his side this time. “Are you guys going to make it home for the party?”
Kyle’s face returned to the screen, his helmet off and his hair sweaty. “Assuming you send the jet to Philadelphia next, definitely. You’re not the only one with a hot chick to introduce to the clan.”
“So I hear. I’m looking forward to meeting Marissa and Jennifer.” Kyle’s live-in girlfriend, Marissa, was a matchmaker and the daughter of former pop diva Brandy Collins. Selfishly, he was hoping to meet the singer sometime, since her music was the real deal—gutsy and personal.
Axel, in the meantime, had started seeing a filmmaker from New York who’d relocated to Philly over the summer to be with him. Jennifer Hunter had made a lot of indie films, but she’d met his brother when she filmed a documentary series on the Phantoms that was a lock for a few awards. Danny had seen the series on TV while he was deployed and had been impressed. Plus, it’d been like hanging out with the hockey team for those few months while they made their run for the Stanley Cup.
“And we can’t wait to meet Stephanie,” Axel said from behind Kyle, giving Danny the thumbs-up sign. “You’ll be happy to know the nose job you gave Kyle five years ago has been redone.” He pointed to Kyle’s schnoz. “That fight he got in on the ice last spring straightened it right out.”
“Uh, yeah.” Danny had no desire to discuss the nose incident in front of Stephanie. Why the hell had they brought that up when she was around? “Looks good.”
Kyle must have felt the same way because he elbowed Axel in the gut hard enough to make the Finn back up a step.
“Not a big deal, either way,” Kyle assured him. “We just wanted to let you know we’ll be there tomorrow, but we might be a little late, okay? Welcome home, my brother.”
The simple words damn near choked him up. Kyle had never said much about the time Danny broke his nose after a fairly innocuous comment about Stephanie, but the fact that he’d left his nose cockeyed for years afterward had made Danny feel like crap. The guy had played professional hockey for years without half the damage his own brother had inflicted. And wasn’t that a testament to how whacked out he’d been after Stephanie was taken?
“Thanks. We’ll be looking for you tomorrow, and make sure Axel knows I’m going to be thinking up embarrassing stories about him to let slip in front of his new woman, okay?”
Kyle grinned and said, “You owe him” at the same time Axel shouted from somewhere behind him, “Hey! What did I do?”
But Kyle disconnected, leaving Danny with a darkened screen and the certainty that Stephanie’s gaze lingered on him.
She cleared her throat while he was thinking about what to say.
“I could pretend I didn’t overhear a thing,” she said finally. “If that makes it easier for you. I don’t have any siblings to tell embarrassing stories about me, so I have kind of an unfair advantage.”
“No kidding,” he shot back drily. “I wish I could say that Axel was the only one of us who is ridiculously blunt and lacking subtlety, but it runs in the family.”
“They seemed glad to have you home.” Her voice took on a wistful note, and he remembered that no matter how many times his brothers threw him under the bus for dumb stuff about his past, he wouldn’t trade them for anything.
“I miss hanging out with them. An-n-n-nd, just to get it out of the way, I broke Kyle’s nose when I threw a punch at him.” He’d regretted it almost instantly, and the remorse had stretched out over the years. “It wasn’t that long after you were released. I came home between training stints, and he helped me pack up my stuff. I was still mad at the world for what happened to you—the news reports were vague and I couldn’t figure out what anyone was doing to go after the people who took you.”
