Alex (Cold Fury Hockey #1)(11)

Jim takes a huge bite of lasagna and chews with a grin on his face. With a brief glance, I take in his kind eyes, tanned face and scruffy beard. He’s a bear of a man, standing over six feet tall and built almost as wide. Jim is an auto mechanic by trade, working at one of the Ford dealerships for the past eighteen years. While cars are his specialty, he’s one of those dads who can just fix anything.

We settle into the Murdock family tradition of cracking jokes while we eat dinner, snorting and laughing in between bites of lasagna and garlic bread. While my last name is Price, because my birth father still owns that part of me, I consider myself Jim’s daughter and thus a Murdock.

When we’re done, I bring out Glenn’s birthday cake. It’s tradition in our family that the birthday honoree gets their favorite dinner cooked, and their favorite dessert. It doesn’t have to be a cake, but in Glenn’s case it was.

Homemade red velvet cake with buttercream frosting.

His eyes go wide when he sees the monstrosity that I’ve made. It’s so tall that it actually tilts to the left a little, slightly resembling the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I light the eleven candles and then we all sing a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” while Glenn looks around at each of us with a toothy smile on his face. By the time the last notes of the song die out, we’re all wearing matching grins.

Glenn closes his eyes to make his wish, then gives a gusty blow to the candles, moving his head back and forth to give them all equal airtime. He blows them out like a champ, all except the one trick candle I had placed in the middle. We all laugh as he repeatedly puffs at it, watching it spark back to life time and time again.

Finally, he gets the candle permanently extinguished, then I serve the cake. Glenn wolfs his down in about three huge bites, which is not surprising. He hit some sort of weird growth spurt a few months ago and seems to be adding inches and pounds to his frame every week. He’s going to be tall like Jim, and built like a Mack truck. He’s already a superstar on his rec football league, barreling over players that are two and three years older than him.

When the last crumb of cake has been swallowed, my mom gives a big yawn, stretching her arms out wide. “That was just fabulous, Sutton. I’ll help you do the dishes and we’ll get out of your hair tonight.”

I glance over at Glenn and his jaw is hanging open, his eyes disbelieving what he’s heard.

“Good thought, Penny,” Jim-Dad says as he looks at her and pushes back from the table. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow and I’m beat. This was a great dinner, Sutton.”

Another glance at Glenn and he’s staring slack-jawed at his dad. His eyes race over to mine and he’s giving me a look like, Are they serious?

I can’t leave the kid hanging and my lips quirk upward. “Wait. We forgot about Glenn’s present.”

“Oh, that’s right,” my mom says, slapping her palm to her forehead. “How could we have done that?”

Glenn’s face relaxes and he purses his lips in amusement, slinging his arms back across the kitchen chair in a posture that says, I really wasn’t worried. I knew you guys were kidding the whole time.

Standing from the table, I walk over to my small kitchen pantry and pull out Glenn’s present, which Mom brought over earlier in the day to hide. I had wrapped it for her in football-themed paper with a huge gold bow on the top.

My heart seizes—in a good way—when I see the look of surprise on his face from the size of the box. I set it in front of him and say, “This is from me, Mom, and Jim-Dad. We all went in on it together.”

His eyes look up into mine and he swallows hard. Then they flick over to Mom, and finally to his dad. Placing his hands on the gold bow, he says quietly, “This is the best birthday ever.”

Leaning over, I give him a light noogie on his tousled blond head. “You don’t even know what’s in the box, brat.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says seriously, looking to me, then to Mom, then to Jim-Dad. “It’s still the best birthday ever.”

Mom’s eyes immediately fill with tears. Jim-Dad’s face suffuses with pride in his son and I stare at the wonder that is my brother and marvel that my parents raised such a good and kind boy.

Then Glenn dives at the box, ripping and shredding the paper I painstakingly wrapped so that not even a seam would be noticed. When he pulls back a large chunk of paper and sees what’s inside, he squeals—yes, squeals. He sounds like a pig being murdered with a butter knife and I grimace. Pulling back the last shred of wrapping, he stares with love in his eyes at the Xbox in front of him.

Glenn has never had an electronic gaming device before. Oh, he’s played on plenty when he stays over with his friends, so he knows all about them. But here’s the thing that makes this kid so fabulous. He’s never once asked for one. Glenn is considerate of our family’s boundaries when it comes to what we can afford, and he’s always been grateful for anything he’s ever been given.

Now, watching him with the look of adoration and disbelief on his face, I wish desperately that my parents and I had it within our means to give this kid everything his heart ever desired. He deserves it, mainly because he doesn’t expect it.

Reaching under the kitchen cabinet, I pull out two smaller items that I had wrapped. Glenn’s eyes widen even farther as his hand reaches out to take the gifts from me.