Parental Guidance (Ice Knights #1)(28)
“What do I always tell you, Button? Life is a banquet…”
“And most poor suckers are starving to death.” She finished the line from Auntie Mame for him.
Zara sighed. This was their game. He was the Auntie Mame in their relationship, and she was forever the flustered, timid Agnes Gooch.
“Exactly.” He pulled a neon-green ball made out of the hard rubber that the manufacturers claimed was indestructible, which Anchovy just took as a challenge. “So I came to rescue you from your tower to take you to lunch at our favorite hot-dog stand.”
He flipped the ball up in the air, and the dog caught it and ran off to his favorite chew spot under her worktable.
Of course, watching his progress just reminded her of where she should be right now, and it wasn’t chitchatting with her dad. “I’m working.”
“When did you start?” he asked, concern darkening his eyes.
“It wasn’t that early.” She folded under his disbelieving look. “Okay, I’ve been at it since five.”
“It’s three in the afternoon.” He looped his arm through hers and pivoted them both so they were facing the open door. “Hot dogs and snow cones and sunshine are required.”
She looked over her shoulder. “But Anchovy—”
“Has a new toy and is fine to be on his own for an hour. Come on, let your old man show you some fun.”
Taking a deep breath, she went through the never-ending to-do list that lived in her brain. Unlike her dad, she’d never been able to block out the nuts-and-bolts part of everyday living. He always managed to get by on charm and a dream, because she’d been there after her mom left to make sure the bills got paid on time and her school field trip permission slips were signed. After doing that for most of her life, it was hard to turn that part of herself off.
“The library fund-raiser is only a month away, though, and I have to finish this piece between the orders for my Etsy store.”
Her dad cupped her chin and turned her so she faced him. There was no missing the bittersweet tinged with guilt in his eyes. “It’ll be there in an hour, and you can get back to your workaholic ways. Life is a banquet. Don’t starve.”
Of course, her stomach picked that moment to growl because, per usual, she’d worked through lunch. As if that sound was the victory bell, her dad relaxed back into the incorrigible charmer everyone down at the bar or the track or the job site knew him to be.
“You’re not giving me an Agnes Gooch makeover,” she said, grabbing her keys from the hook by the door and telling Anchovy to be a good boy (good luck).
He lifted his arms in triumph. “But she lived!”
Laughing, she closed the door behind them and double-checked the locks. She really should still be at her workbench, even if she’d been there for almost ten hours that day, and then followed her dad down the stairs. And maybe, while her dad stood in line at the hot-dog stand, she checked her Bramble app for the twelfth time that day to see if there were any messages from Caleb, but that didn’t mean anything. Nothing at all.
…
Caleb submerged himself up to his chest in the cold-water bath at the Ice Knights facility. Even with all the off-season workouts, he needed it after that grueling three-hour, on-ice training camp session. Coach Peppers had them doing goal line to the far blue line sprints, more sprints from center ice to the net and back, enough laps around the ice that his guts tried to climb out of his body, and more. His eyes closed and, the back of his head resting against the tub’s edge, he let the frigid water do its work so he wouldn’t be walking like an eighty-year-old man tonight.
“Oh my God.” The unmistakable voice of star forward, total shit disturber, and one of his best friends, Cole Phillips, blasted through the room. “Are you the guy from Harbor City Wake Up? The one whose mommy has to pick out his dates?”
Caleb, not bothering to open his eyes, flipped off Cole.
“Dude, my mom is glued to that shit.” Phillips eased into the ice bath next to Caleb’s, judging by the sound of the sloshing water and the other man’s quick intake of breath. “You do not know how many calls from her I’ve had to avoid so she won’t start in on what a great idea it is again. You have screwed over your gender, man.”
Yes, that was exactly what he had been worried about when the choice had been put before him to either do this and take some of the heated attention off Petrov so he wouldn’t get traded or make all the men on the globe get uncomfortable with the idea of giving up a little control.
“It wasn’t by choice,” he grumbled, keeping his eyes closed.
“Yeah, my mom doesn’t care. She just wants to find me a nice girl who isn’t so dramatic.”
That made Caleb open his eyes and turn to look at Phillips. “You mom isn’t Team Marti, huh?”
Marti was Coach Peppers’s daughter, all-around amazing woman, and the other half of Phillips’s twisted love life.
“She got off that train about six breakups ago.” Phillips’s jaw tightened, and sure, it could have been because of the fifty-degree water, which didn’t sound that frigid until you were easing into it despite the protests of your cold-shrinking junk. “Anyway, we’re here talking about your dating life, not mine.”
This guy was giving him conversational whiplash. “You’re the one who brought up your mom and Marti.”