Beckett floated to the surface of consciousness again, and a smile immediately lifted his lips. His back and shoulders ached as he rolled toward Eden, but he already knew she could make him forget all about the pain hockey wrought on his body. In fact, Eden Kennedy could make Beckett forget about every last worry weighing on him—his custody battle for Lily, his aging body, how the success of this season would direct the next five to ten or maybe even fifteen years of his life.
When he reached for her, his hand slid across empty sheets.
“Kennedy,” he yelled toward the bathroom. “Get your sexy ass back in here. I’ve got something that needs emergency TLC.”
He chuckled to himself, imagining the reaction he’d get for, one, calling her by her last name, two, ordering her to do anything, and three, suggesting she was obligated to meet his needs. Those had all become jokes between them over the course of the night. A night that would go down in Beckett’s memory.
He relaxed into the bed with a smile. Outside, the morning sun was cresting, and he felt happy and hopeful for the first time in a long time. He couldn’t wait to make love to Eden again. Then go to his parents’ and cajole Lily away from her cousins and grandparents to grab some one-on-one time with his baby girl before he jumped a plane with his teammates for five intense games in a row.
Life was fucking awesome.
So awesome, he wanted to share it. Thoughts of introducing Eden to Lily brought a mix of unease and excitement. Eden was a natural. She’d be amazing with kids, no doubt. And Lily was a bubble of love. His daughter spun webs of infatuation with everyone she met. Beckett didn’t worry about them getting along. He worried about them getting along too well. Because if things didn’t gel between him and Eden, he didn’t want to think about another woman disappearing from Lily’s life.
And wow, he was getting way ahead of himself. But, hell, it had taken him freaking forever to find a woman who even tempted him to think beyond one night. There had been a time when he thought he and Viviana might be able to make a go of it. Back when the thought of kids hadn’t ever entered his mind. Back when having the biggest contract and the most gorgeous woman were his top priorities. Back when he’d believed being a badass was more important than strategy.
He’d been another stupid jock, perpetuating the negative view of hockey players everywhere. But everyone had to grow up sometime. And Eden made that idea extremely appealing.
He sighed and rolled toward the bathroom. “Eden, what the hell are you doing in—”
The bathroom was dark. He darted a look at the bedroom door, which stood open. A streak of panic burned through his gut. If she’d wandered the apartment, she’d seen Lily’s room. She’d seen Lily’s things. Damn, he wasn’t ready to go there. His housekeeper did an excellent job of picking up after Lily every day. Beckett always knew he could come home with the confidence that no one who didn’t already know Lily lived here, would ever guess. Which was how he wanted to keep things. For now.
“Eden?” He sat up and threw the sheet off. Panic morphed to fear. The fewer people who knew about Lily now, the better. He halted in the doorway and found the living area and the kitchen empty. His gaze fell on the door to Lily’s suite. A knot wound tight in his gut, and he whispered, “Fuck.”
Beckett turned back into the bedroom and reached for his boxer briefs on the floor. Probably not a conversation he wanted to have naked. But as he pulled them on, he noticed all the clothes on the floor were his. Nothing of Eden’s remained. No dress, no lingerie, no boots.
“What the hell?” He turned out of his room and cut through the living room toward Lily’s suite, calling Eden’s name with more than confusion in his voice. He was using the tone he used when he was getting ready to set one of the guys straight. Felt the same tightness in his gut that swamped him when a ref made a bad call against his team. But he didn’t understand it.
He didn’t understand it until he turned into Lily’s room and found the suite as pristine as Mimi always left it. Pristine and empty.
Holding on to disbelief, he lifted his voice and made one last attempt. “Eden.”
The apartment remained silent. Eerily silent. And realization settled in. She’d left.
He stood in Lily’s room, hands on hips, staring at the carpet with a maddening whirl of panic and anger and an odd sense of hurt kicking up all kinds of dust inside him. He mentally scoured their conversations between sex. She didn’t have to work today. Didn’t have school today. She’d said she planned on studying all day. Said something about meeting a study partner in the afternoon.
Dammit, she’d agreed to have breakfast with him at his favorite Irish pub. Had salivated over his description of their Bailey’s Irish Cream French toast.
A sickening feeling settled in his gut. He moved back into the living room, looking around as if he’d find some reason for her early disappearance. But nothing about the pristine way Mimi always left the apartment had been disturbed.
Beckett’s mood had gone from white to black in the span of two minutes. He scraped a hand through his hair and let out a tight breath on his way to the fridge. Now his mind searched their night for something that had gone wrong. Something that would have made her leave without telling him. Without giving him any idea of where she lived or when he could see her again.
But as he opened the fridge and stared blankly inside, he couldn’t pull up any rough spots. Everything between them had been amazing. While they’d both stayed well away from deeply personal subjects, they’d never run out of conversation when their mouths weren’t busy in some other highly pleasurable way.
Beckett’s eyes fell closed with longing, and an image of her as he’d last seen her filled his mind. He’d rolled to his stomach, and she’d crawled on top of him to massage a few of his sore spots. Then she’d stretched out, pressed her ear to his back, and closed her eyes. Beckett had watched her in the dim reflection of the room’s glass wall as she’d fallen asleep there. Then continued to stare until he fell asleep too.
“Goddammit.” He opened his eyes and swiped the orange juice from the shelf. He smacked the cardboard carton on the quartz counter, ripped open the top, and tipped it toward his mouth. He downed several long swallows, but the cool, fresh liquid didn’t improve his disposition.
Beckett slammed the carton on the counter again, and this time, the juice sprayed out the top. He swore, grabbed a kitchen towel, and dropped it to wipe up the spill. That was when he saw a note on the bar.
His heart skipped, and he grabbed the paper.
In pretty, neat, swirly handwriting, she’d written, Thanks for an amazing night. And signed it E.
He stared at it, half expecting some additional message to appear out of thin air. When that didn’t happen, he flipped it over. But found the back blank.
“What the fuck?” No explanation. No call me. No let’s do this again. No can’t wait to see you when you get back to town.
Nothing.
He slapped the note down. “She fuckin’ walked out on me?”
Just like that? He didn’t believe it. Women didn’t walk out on him. Even Viviana, who’d bailed at the sight of Lily, had come crawling back within a week with all kinds of excuses, trying to negotiate. When women left his bed, his room, his life, it was because Beckett led them to the door.
He started to crumple the note, but the paper caught his attention, and he stopped. She’d written it on one of Lily’s My Little Pony notepads. And the pen lying on the bar was filled with crystals floating in liquid. Neon pink and purple crystals. It had come with the notepad, courtesy of his sister, Sarah.
Beckett imagined Eden getting up for something to drink, venturing through the apartment, and finding Lily’s room. And bailing as fast as Viviana had. That both hurt and angered.
He crushed the paper and pitched the ball into the sink. “Fuck it.”
Beckett turned into his room, pulled fresh clothes from his drawers, and headed to the shower. He didn’t need a woman in his life anyway. Lily filled every square millimeter of his heart.
The long, hot shower relieved sore muscles, reset Beckett’s inner landscape to single dad, badass hockey player, and he drove to his parents’ house with only a twinge of lingering resentment. Only considered calling Eden and confronting her half a dozen times.
By the time he turned up the long, winding drive of his parents’ house on an Arlington hillside overlooking the Potomac, he was only mildly annoyed at how his morning had unfolded. An hour of focused Lily time would straighten him out. An hour of focused Lily time could right any wrong in Beckett’s life. And leaving her this afternoon for a week wasn’t exactly sitting right with him either.
He parked behind his mother’s Lexus SUV and started up the walk. A chorus of giggles erupted somewhere near the kitchen and floated to Beckett. A smile filled his heart. He took a long, deep breath of the fresh Virginia air and soaked in the silence of the countryside. That was all he needed to remind himself his life was fucking awesome.
He chuckled at himself for getting so wound up over a chick he hardly knew. And by the time he’d climbed the stairs and reached for the door handle, he knew everything in his world was about to be put exactly right.
Beckett pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped into the wide foyer. Straight ahead, the massive living room looked out onto his parents’ property and the Potomac beyond. It had snowed last night, and a dusting still clung to the trees and bushes.
Unlike his apartment, his parents’ house teemed with life. The three granddaughters giggled downstairs in the finished basement his parents used as a playroom. His mother, father, and sister chatted in the kitchen.
“Something sure smells good,” Beckett said, heading toward the kitchen first to say hello. All three members of his family turned to smile at him from the kitchen table. “What did you make me for breakfast?”
His mother was beaming. She always beamed when the grandkids were here. “Lily ate hers and yours.”
“Man, is she growing,” Sarah said. “I swear she’s two inches taller than when I saw her last week.”
Beckett couldn’t stop grinning. “Yeah, she’s definitely had a spurt. I’m going to have to buy her new clothes in a few weeks if this keeps up.”
His sister and his mother shared a glance. “Shopping with Beckett’s credit card.” Sarah pumped her fist. “Yes.”
Beckett was laughing when all three girls raced up the stairs, then squealed through the living room and into the kitchen, where their high-pitched shrieks echoed off the tile and made everyone cringe.
All four of the adults tried variations of “tone it down,” but the girls ran around the table and skittered off into the depths of the three-thousand-square-foot house.
Beckett stared after them, hands held out to the sides. “What the hell? Do I have chopped liver written on my forehead today or what?” Then he yelled, “Lily Nicole Croft, get your little tush back here and say hello to your dad.”
But the girls continued to laugh and squeal. And for the first time in a year, Lily didn’t come running to him. His heart fell to his feet. To cover the second blow of the morning and his true heartache over Lily’s show of independence, he dramatically slapped a hand to his chest and hung his head. “Oh my God. I think my heart just shattered.”
His mother stood from the table. “Lily, you’re breaking your daddy’s heart.” She paused to squeeze Beckett’s arm and grinned at him. “She slept through the night, no bad dreams. She woke and didn’t fuss over you not being here this morning. She’s making real progress, Beckett.”
His mom disappeared into the living room at the same time that their home phone rang. His father called, “I’ll get it.” And stood to answer, leaving Sarah and Beckett at the kitchen table.
“Thanks for staying over with the girls,” Beckett told her.
“Anytime. They all entertain each other so well, I get to read and knit and watch a TV show without interruption. It’s like a vacation.”
Beckett grinned, but it was pained. “Not easy raising them alone.”
Sarah was married to a marine who was on his second tour overseas. Aside from his mother—and possibly Eden, though since she bailed, he’d never get a chance to find out—Sarah was the strongest woman he knew.
She covered his hand with hers and squeezed. “You are an amazing father. The fact that she’s not sobbing all over you right now shows just how great a job you’re doing. And it does get easier. Raising them alone, I mean. It’s already easier than when you got her, right?”
Beckett winced, remembering how broken his little girl had been. “A hundred times easier.”
She released his hand and gave him that now-let’s-get-down-to-business look.
He groaned. “Oh God. What?”
“Nika called me last night.”
Nika Kristoff was the young wife of the team’s newest, and youngest, center, Andre. The couple was nineteen and twenty-one respectively, brand-new to the United States, with all their family back in Russia. They already had a two-year-old son and another baby on the way. To keep Andre focused on the ice, Beckett had set up a support network for Nika, which included Sarah.
Beckett straightened. “What? Why? Andre didn’t call me. Are they okay?”
“They’re fine.” Sarah’s calm tone reassured him, and he relaxed. “She called because Dmitri put gum in his hair, and she couldn’t get it out.”
He huffed a laugh, thinking of the couple’s two-year-old. “Beautiful.”
“Easy fix. Peanut butter, for your future information.”
“Good to know. Hope I never have to use it.”
“Oh, you will,” she said, smirking. “Anyway, when I asked Nika how Dmitri got the gum in his hair, she told me that she’d been cooking for some Russian tradition, I don’t know which one, and that while she was busy in the kitchen, Dmitri went unsupervised for about fifteen minutes because Andre took a detour on the way home from the game and ended up at Top Shelf.”
Beckett’s humor slid away, the same way this conversation was circling the drain. “Uh…huh…”
Sarah sat back. “You’ve been incredibly discreet with women since Lily came into your life. So hearing that you were all over one last night made my sisterly antennae vibrate.”
Ah fuck. “The reason you think I’ve been discreet with women over the last year,” he told her, “is because there haven’t been any.”
“Seriously? You expect me to believe that? Hello. I get the whole puck bunny thing. I know how hard women chase you guys down.”
“I misspoke,” he said deliberately, holding his temper. “There haven’t been any here. I may have hooked up a couple times at away games, but that’s it. I can’t kiss anyone in public in the greater Metro area now?”
“Sounds like you were doing more than kissing, bro.” Sarah lifted her hand to halt the argument she could evidently see coming, because she continued, “I’m saying that you’re a dad now. A dad going after full custody of a little girl. You shouldn’t be doing shit like that in public. You have every right to mess around however you want to mess around, but get a room.”
Beckett exhaled heavily. He was thirty-one years old and his big sister was bitching him out for getting caught kissing a chick in public. Okay, yeah, he’d been doing more than kissing her, which others might have suspected, but no one knew for sure. Either way, she was probably right. He’d lost his head with Eden.
“Now, tell me about her,” Sarah said, excitement replacing the censure in her voice. “If you haven’t been hooking up much, there must have been something special about this woman. Jesus, Beck, it’s about damn time.”
“Don’t start. I’m well aware of my age. I’m reminded every time I step on the ice or the team picks up fresh meat—like Andre. And I’ve already got a perfect five-year-old. What more could I want?”
“How about a perfect sibling for that perfect five-year-old?”
His father returned to the kitchen. Beckett gave his sister the shut-up look. Sarah rolled her eyes and dropped her chin into her hand.
“You played great last night,” his father said. “How are you feeling about your game against the Sharks next week?”
Beckett didn’t want to talk hockey right now. After thirty-six hours without Lily, he just wanted some focused baby-girl time. But another wave of giggles came from some distant place in the house, so instead of interrupting Lily’s playtime to fulfill his own selfish needs, Beckett talked with his dad while Sarah cleared plates.
The patter of little feet turned Beckett’s head just as Lily launched herself at him. His reflexes kicked in, and he caught her with a “Jesus, Lily…”
But her giggle infiltrated his heart and melted the irritation that came with the shock. So he tickled her, and her laughter spilled out and filled the kitchen.
And Beckett’s whole world righted. His entire life turned into sunshine and Hello Kitty and My Little Pony and butterflies and rainbows.
He was so fuckin’ lost over this kid.
“You monkey,” he said, laughing. “You’re getting too big to be doing that.”
“Daddy, stop.” The words popped out of her on bubbles of laughter. “Daddy.”
He propped her on his lap, facing him. He lifted one of her wild curls and pulled it in front of her eyes. “What the heck is going on here? This mop’s all over the place. Jeez, the things your grandma and your aunt let you get away with.” He let the curl bounce free and stroked his daughter’s dewy pink cheek. Love swamped him. Sometimes his love for Lily felt so big, he feared it would overwhelm him. “Did you have a good night?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded emphatically, all her baby teeth glowing. “We watched movies and ate popcorn and colored and played games.” Her exuberance faded a little. “Grandma said you’re going away today.”
His heart pinched. “I am.”
She curled her little hand around two of his fingers, as if trying to hold on to him. “For games?”
“Yep.”
“Can I come?”
Crap. He kissed her forehead. “Sorry, baby. No family on work trips.”
“How long will you be gone?”
God. Would this ever get easier? He brushed more curly fuzz off her forehead. “I’ve got five games. They’re all on the West Coast. I’ll tell you the team, and you tell me where they’re from.”
Her face lit up a little. “’Kay.”
“Let’s see.” He covered her legs with his hands and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I’ll give you an easy one to start out. Ducks.”
“Anaheim,” she responded immediately. Not surprising. They played this game a lot.
“And where is Anaheim?”
She threw her arms overhead, her adorable little face scrunched in a furious smile. “Disneyland.”
Beckett, Sarah, and their dad laughed.
“And where is Disneyland?” Beckett asked.
“California.”
He went through the other four teams, and she got every one right.
“Okay,” he said. “Grab me a brush and a hair tie. I’ll rebraid this mess.”
She pushed off his lap. “Can you do a fishtail today, Daddy?”
He winced a little. “You know they’re not my best.”
“Yeah. Okay. How about a waterfall? They’re soooooo pretty.”
“A what? I’ve never heard of a waterfall.” And Beckett knew every braid in existence. Because Lily’s curly hair often knotted, braids had eliminated tears early on, and Beckett had stuck with them. He was a master braider and usually ended up braiding not only Lily’s hair, but Amy’s and Rachel’s too.
“We found it on YouTube. It looks super easy.”
His brows shot up. “YouTube?” He cut a look at his sister. “YouTube?”
She grinned. “Supervised YouTube.”
“Oh my God.” Beckett leaned forward, pressed his elbows to his knees, and ran a hand down his face. The weight of everything yet to come with his daughter sometimes terrified him.
Luckily, Lily didn’t give him time to think about where YouTube could lead. She grabbed his hand and pulled. “Come on, Daddy. We got new nail polish too. All different colors. We’ll find one for you that won’t match the Ducks or the Coyotes or the…”
While his daughter recited the names of the teams he would play over the next five days, Beckett stood and looked over his shoulder at his sister.
She met his gaze and nodded. “I’ll have it ready for you.”
Relieved Sarah would have nail polish remover and cotton balls waiting for him at the door when it was time for him to catch his plane, Beckett relaxed and followed his daughter into the room his mother had decorated for Lily.
Then he settled on the floor with her in his lap and a brush in his hand. And he soaked in the feel of his baby warm and safe in the circle of his arms, her silky hair slipping through his fingers as he attempted this waterfall thing and listened to her chipper voice as Lily chattered on and on about her night with her cousins while sorting through a box of nail polish.
His life was so fucking awesome.
“What about red, Daddy? Are any of the teams you’re playing red? ’Cause then we won’t use red.”
Red, red, red. Eden pushed into his thoughts.
Okay, his life was…mostly…fucking awesome.
