I WASN’T READY for our time in paradise to come to an end, and I didn’t get the impression that Mackenzie was, either. But injured or not and regardless of my state of readiness, I had to get back to Portland. Doc expected me to return after my honeymoon so he could run whatever tests on my ankle he felt were necessary, and then I would have to start going through the treatment he prescribed. With any luck, I wouldn’t need surgery, but based on the way my ankle had been feeling, surgery was exactly what I expected.
My time away from the ice had certainly helped, but there was still something very wrong with my ankle. I’d been able to hide it from Mackenzie pretty well, because we’d spent an awful lot of our time in bed, in the ocean, in the hot tub, or lying out on the beach. In other words, not on our feet.
But she didn’t know me very well yet, so she couldn’t necessarily tell how bad it had gotten. There was no chance I’d be able to hide it from the people in charge of my career. I only hoped that surgery wouldn’t be required, because that would mean weeks, if not months, away from the game. I’d much prefer a prognosis that called for a matter of days.
Going back to the team wouldn’t exactly be a hardship for me—those guys were like family, far more than my actual family had ever been, and I loved my job more than I could ever explain to someone who didn’t share in it.
I just hated that returning to Portland meant the end of my time alone with Mackenzie.
We’d gotten to know one another reasonably well on the sexual front, but not in any other real way. And now the rest of the world was going to intrude on our stint together, making it far more difficult to get meaningful time to learn about one another.
The good news was that my travel agent had been able to rebook the plane ticket that had originally been for Amanda, now transferring it into Mackenzie’s name. The bad news was that I didn’t have a clue what to say to my teammates when I got back, especially to Ghost.
Hey, guys. So I dumped my cheating bitch of an ex and finally cut off my freeloading, backstabbing son-of-a-bitch brother, and then I married a perfect stranger I met in Cabo. Good times!
Ghost was bound to give me shit no matter how I tried to explain it. He’d always been the one with brains out of the two of us, and no doubt he’d be all too happy to remind me of that fact.
Nonetheless, all good things must pass. Or something like that. Right? I probably had that saying wrong. Again, Ghost was the intelligent one. He was the brains, and I was the brawn. I’d put all my focus into hockey and nothing else. School had just been a means to an end for me. I might have rubbed off on him in terms of getting him into hockey, but he hadn’t rubbed off on me in terms of furthering my education.
Kind of a scary thought, now that I was injured. I should probably come up with a backup plan at some point, figure out what I wanted to do with myself once my playing days were at an end.
Especially now that I had Mackenzie to look after.
She was so sweet and innocent, and a bit naïve. Maybe I hadn’t thought it through when we got married, but I needed to be sure I’d always be able to provide for her. She didn’t have anyone else looking out for her, and now it was beyond clear that the only person in my life who was looking out for me was Ghost. Time for me to man up and become responsible and shit. Maybe Mackenzie and I could figure out how to do this whole adulting thing as a team.
Being married was doing a number on me, in ways I’d never imagined. And something told me it wouldn’t have happened like this if I’d gone through with my original plan and married Amanda.
When we landed at PDX, I grabbed our bags—letting Mackenzie handle one of my smaller suitcases since it had wheels she could manage—and led her out to the parking garage. I pushed the button on my key fob to unlock the Escalade when we reached it, then hit another button to pop open the back end.
Mackenzie’s eyes were wide when I turned around to take my suitcase from her. “That looks huge. And expensive.”
I chuckled and put all of our bags into the back, hoping I wouldn’t get too much dog hair on her things. At least her clothes were in the suitcases. But then again, she was probably going to be just as covered in dog hair as everything else in my life before too much longer. Mastiffs tended to shed a lot.
“It wasn’t cheap,” I said, shutting the back end and then walking around to open the passenger-side door for her. “But I make good money. And I needed something big enough to cart around Max and Lola.”
She climbed inside and looked at me with a funny expression in her eyes. “Max and Lola?” And suddenly, she sounded nervous again, making her expression seem more anxious than funny, now that I thought about it.
Which reminded me that in all the time we’d spent getting to know one another physically over the last few days, we hadn’t really done much about getting to know anything about each other as people.
We’d have to start working on that right away. There was a hell of a lot more that went into a good relationship than sex, even if sex was a major component.
“Yeah, they’re my dogs,” I said conversationally, trying to keep things light to ease whatever worries she might be experiencing now. “Haven’t I told you about them already? They’re pretty big, but they’re both as sweet as can be.”
Well, they were sweet to anyone who deserved it. Mean as hell to anyone who didn’t, like Amanda. Maybe they’d known she was a cheating bitch all along, come to think of it, because they’d never liked her, not even when they were puppies. And these two dogs liked everyone. Usually, at least. Just not Amanda.
“You didn’t tell me about any dogs,” Mackenzie said. She sounded more anxious than she had when she’d told me about the asshole who’d lured her down to Mexico and abandoned her to fend for herself. Jumpier than when we’d first had sex.
That…wasn’t a good sign. Was it? Couldn’t be.
“You’re sure I didn’t say anything about them? Because I could have sworn I did.” I had to have. Sometime between shopping and lounging in the hot tub and luring her back into the bed again.
“No. No, you definitely didn’t say anything about dogs. I would have remembered. I would have—” She cut herself off, and it almost looked like she was biting her own tongue in order to prevent anything else from coming out.
Shit. This was worse than not good—this was bad. Very, very bad.
“So are you saying that dogs are a problem for you?” I asked cautiously.
“I’m terrified of them. Have been for almost as long as I can remember. One of my foster parents had these mean Rottweilers and…” She trailed off, shaking her head as if to ward off a bad memory, but there was no hiding how hard she was quaking with fear. “Are they at least not huge? I could maybe handle smallish dogs. I can try, at least.”
Shit, damn, and fuck. That at least came close to summing up my thoughts on the matter. “No, baby doll, they’re mastiffs.”
She shook her head, a question in her eyes.
“Mastiffs are big. Really big. Enormous, even. They’re one of the largest breeds out there. Max is bigger than Lola, but that’s normal with males. But like I said, they’re really good dogs, and they like almost everyone.”
Probably shouldn’t have said almost, because Mackenzie’s eyes got even wider than before, somehow.
I wanted to scoop her up into my arms to comfort her, but something told me there was no way to comfort her right now.
She was on the verge of outright panic, even though she was doing her best to hold it in. Her neck and shoulders were so tense that I could see every bone, every tendon. And then there were those huge eyes practically bugging out of her head.
This was going downhill, fast.
“They’ll like you,” I promised. And God, I hoped I was right. “And besides, I can feel a lot better about leaving you behind when I have to head out on the road with the team if I know they’re with you, taking care of you.”
“Go out on the road?” She sounded thoroughly fazed.
Holy hell, this was somehow only getting worse. Don’t ask me how that could happen. I couldn’t explain it no matter how hard I tried. Other than maybe acknowledging that I was an idiot and an asshole. That might be a good place to start.
“It won’t be right away, since I’m injured,” I reassured her.
She nodded dully. Didn’t seem as if that gave her much reassurance.
“And I’ll make sure you’re friends with some of the other WAGs before I go. My teammates’ wives and girlfriends,” I added in explanation. “So you’ll have people here you can count on.”
Mackenzie blinked at me a couple of times with the oddest expression taking over her features—some strange combination of confusion and relief and maybe a hint of panic. “I’m not very good at counting on people,” she explained in a matter-of-fact tone.
I chuckled to myself, even though there wasn’t anything funny about what she’d said. But I couldn’t deny the humor of the situation. Maybe Mackenzie and I had a lot more in common than I’d initially thought.
I’d never been able to rely on anyone in my life but Ghost, and even though I knew he had my back, there was always a part of me that was waiting on him to disappoint me. Hadn’t happened yet. Probably never would, but I was still waiting on it. Sure it would happen. Sure he’d prove me wrong to believe that our friendship was the real deal. And even though I knew somewhere deep down inside that it was all in my head, and the guy would never let me down, I still kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The only things I’d ever been able to depend on in my life were Ghost and hockey. Everything and everyone else had let me down more times than I could count. I was always waiting for the next disaster, always expecting the worst in people to reveal itself and knock my feet out from under me.
That was why, even though it hurt and it sucked to the nth degree that Amanda had been cheating on me with my brother, there had been some part of me that had been waiting for the moment that everything would fall apart. It always did.
My life consisted of a series of betrayals and abandonments, heartbreaks and disappointments, one following soon after another until they all blended together into a single big ball of hurt.
Something told me Mackenzie might understand that better than anyone else ever had before. The thought that I could be the one to end the cycle for her, and that she might break the cycle for me…it seemed too good to be true.
But I had to at least hope, right? Didn’t I?
“I’m not very good at counting on anyone else, either,” I finally said. “My parents were never there for me. My fiancée cheated on me with my brother. I usually only count on myself. So maybe we need to start figuring it out together. And we can start by counting on each other.”
Mackenzie looked down at her hands, clasped in front of her, and took a long, slow breath. But when she met my gaze again, it was with a resolute nod. “Okay. I like the sound of that.”
I liked the sound of it, too. Even if it scared the shit out of me. Because counting on someone else, someone I barely knew, trusting her and giving her that much control over me and my life, wasn’t something I’d ever done before.
I wasn’t afraid that Mackenzie would hurt me. Hell, I doubted she’d swat a mosquito that was trying to suck her dry. The ability to hurt someone—intentionally, at least—wasn’t in her DNA.
What scared me was the idea that she was putting her trust, her faith, hell, her entire life in my hands.
She didn’t have anyone else.
No backup plan.
No way out.
This was it for her.
And I hadn’t married her because I’d wanted to help her. Not really, even if that was what I’d told myself in order to paint it in a better light, so I could live with myself and get to sleep at night.
I’d married her as an act of revenge.
My decision hadn’t had a single fucking thing to do with this sweet, innocent, entirely-too-trusting woman. Not really, even if I’d tried to convince myself otherwise. It’d had everything to do with Amanda and Colby.
I was an ass.
And now I had to take her to live with me and my enormous dogs when she was apparently scared of dogs, and I had to find a way to make it right.
Fuck, this was not going how I’d imagined it. I shouldn’t ever be allowed to make decisions while under the influence of tequila.
Only one thing was certain: it would never happen again.
THE DOGS’ BARKING, even from the other side of the closed door, was deep and loud enough to have my knees shaking out of control. My pulse had never been more erratic, and I didn’t think I could remember how to breathe. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make my lungs fill with oxygen. My chest felt tight, like too many rubber bands were squeezing the very life out of me.
With the key in his hand, Riley looked back over his shoulder and winked at me. “It’s fine. Promise.”
I nodded, and I might have mumbled something like “mm hmm,” but it sounded a lot more like a whimper to me. Fine was not a word I could associate with my present situation.
But then the door was open, and two gigantic furry monsters were jumping all over Riley, and I couldn’t stop myself. I dropped my grip on the suitcase and ran for it, heading straight back to the Escalade and tugging on the door, but it wouldn’t open because Riley had already locked it.
“Wait! Don’t run, they’ll only chase you because they think it’s a game,” Riley called after me, but there wasn’t any point in him saying anything at all because my brain had gone straight into panic mode and there was no making it stop now.
I jerked on the handle, but it wouldn’t budge, so I moved to the next door and tried that one, almost frantic because the enormous dogs were jumping up and putting their huge paws on the side of the vehicle next to me, and they each had to be easily three times my size, and they were barking in my ears and one of them had its gargantuan paws on my back and was surely about to bite my head off, and I couldn’t breathe at all and I thought I might pass out at any second, and then one of them, the one behind me, licked my neck and drooled on me.
They were about to eat me. No doubt about it. They were salivating over their tasty meal, and I was set to be the main course.
And then I really did stop breathing.
WHEN I CAME to again, the first thing I saw was the face of an unfamiliar woman leaning over me, her dark brows drawn together in a line as she placed a cool, wet cloth on my forehead.
Then I heard the dogs barking again, but even though the sound was slightly muffled because they were on the other side of the door, I still jumped so high I nearly came up off the bed they’d laid me in.
“It’s all right. RJ’s got them downstairs.”
“They’re that loud and they’re downstairs?” I squeaked, still so anxious that I couldn’t help but drag the covers higher, as if they might provide me with some protection from the beasts.
“They’re big dogs with big barks, but that’s all.”
I blinked up into her almost-black eyes, so scared I was sure the fear was making me even more confused than I ought to be. “Who are you?” I asked bluntly. “And who’s this RJ you mentioned? And where’s Riley?”
She didn’t seem to be offended by my rapid-fire series of questions, at least. She dipped the cloth into a bowl of water and wrung it out again before returning it to my forehead. “I’m Anne Golston, a friend of Riley’s. I’m married to Nate. You might know him as Ghost, since that’s what everyone calls him. And RJ is Riley—that’s just what all the other guys on the team call him, like they call my husband Ghost. They all have nicknames, and I spend so much time around all of them that they’ve started to rub off on me, too. Anyway, Riley’s downstairs with Nate, and they’re trying to get the dogs to calm down. Max and Lola are just excited because he’s home, and because you’re new. That’s all.”
“They’re as big as bears.” And as terrifying as bears, too. At least I assumed they were, since I’d never actually encountered a bear. After this, it wasn’t high on list of life experiences I couldn’t wait to have, either. Bears were probably even scarier than dogs. Certainly deadlier, at the very least. I didn’t think a trip to the zoo would be on my to-do list anytime soon.
“Size isn’t everything,” Anne said, winking like it was some sort of inside joke. But since I wasn’t on the inside, I didn’t get the joke.
Besides, in this case, I would have to argue that size mattered an awful lot, thank you very much. The bigger a dog was, the more damage it could cause me.
“You feeling okay?” she asked after wiping down my face one more time. “We were pretty sure you were just surprised by the dogs and weren’t actually sick. RJ didn’t think you were, at any rate. Nate thought we should call an ambulance, and for a minute there, I was with him.”
“I don’t need an ambulance,” I said, pushing myself upright in the bed and shaking my head. But then I wished I hadn’t done either of those things, because I felt dizzy again.
Anne raised a dubious brow. “You sure about that? You’re looking kind of green.” She gently nudged me back against the pillows and reached for my wrist to check my pulse. “Just keep breathing for me, okay? I won’t let him get an ambulance as long as you keep breathing.”
I had to fight the urge to tug my arm away, and it was an even more difficult struggle to keep forcing oxygen into my lungs. I wasn’t used to people touching me. Didn’t like it. It was one thing for Riley to touch me, because he was my husband, but something else entirely when it was this woman, someone I didn’t know at all.
“I’m sure,” I forced myself to say between labored, shaky breaths. “I’m just terrified of dogs.”
“But surely you knew…” Anne’s voice trailed off when she met my eyes. Must have been my expression.
“We didn’t know anything about each other,” I admitted, the words barely more than a whisper. “Nothing at all. Or at least nothing important. It was such a spur-of-the-moment, impulsive decision.”
Impulsive pretty much summed me up, at least.
On his part, maybe it was more that he’d been drunk rather than impulsive. But now that he knew I was terrified of his dogs—so scared I’d gotten to the point of fainting, something I’d never done before—he was definitely going to see if he could undo our marriage. He was bound to want out. This would be the final nail in my coffin. In no time, I would be back at square one, trying to figure out what I could do to survive. But at least he’d brought me back into the U.S. first, and hadn’t ditched me in Mexico like Paul had. Small blessings, right? I had to focus on those and not the big, scary things I was facing.
But Anne didn’t look at me with pity, thank goodness. I didn’t think I could have handled her feeling sorry for me just now. The pity I felt for myself was hard enough to bear.
A soft knock sounded at the door, and when I glanced over, Riley came through it looking as white as the sheets I was surrounded by.
“Hey,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and brushing my damp hair away from my face. “Don’t scare me like that again, okay?”
Scare him like that? I was the one who’d been terrified out of my mind.
I tried to laugh it off. “No promises as long as there are dogs around.”
“I know you said you weren’t really a dog person, but I didn’t realize it was that bad.”
I forced a grin that probably came out looking like a grimace. “Now you know?”
“Now I know. So now we have to figure out a plan.”
“A plan?” I didn’t follow.
What sort of plan would he need for divorcing me and sending me packing? He might even be able to get the marriage annulled instead of needing a divorce, due to our not knowing enough about each other before getting married or something. He could pay his lawyer to draw up some paperwork and send me on my way, and then he and his monster dogs could be perfectly happy without me.
“For getting you unscared of them,” Riley said emphatically. And he winked. And it was his sexy wink, the kind he gave me when he wanted to get naked and do all sorts of delicious things with me when we were all alone.
But Anne was still sitting on the other side of the bed, and those enormous dogs were still somewhere in the house waiting for their chance to eat me for dinner, and my lungs started to get tight again.
“Remember what I said about you needing to keep breathing?” Anne put in. There was a laugh in her eyes even if it didn’t come out of her mouth.
I nodded and forced some air into my lungs. It was the most painful breath I’d ever taken, but I did start to feel better after I slowly exhaled. A bit, at least. Not a lot, because one of those dogs barked from somewhere downstairs, and I jumped all over again, nearly coming off the bed in my fear.
I looked over at Riley and almost burst into tears. “I don’t think that’s possible. Not for me. I’ve always been—”
“I used to be scared of heights,” Riley cut in before I could work up another head of steam. “Not just scared—terrified. My knees would shake when I had to climb a flight of stairs at school. I would never step foot in an elevator that had glass doors. And airplanes? No chance in hell. I wasn’t getting on one, no matter how much you paid me. Wasn’t going to happen. The same kind of thing would happen to me. I’d get shaky and my lungs would seize up, and I’d just full-tilt panic. Doctors tried to prescribe some pills for me to deal with the panic, but I didn’t like taking them. I just refused to do anything that involved heights.”
“It’s not the s—”
“It is the same thing,” he cut in before I could finish. “Different fear but essentially the same reaction. And I conquered it instead of letting it conquer me.”
“But a flight of stairs never took a chunk out of your leg,” I countered.
“Maybe not, but it took a hell of a lot of courage for me to climb up all those stairs at Mont Royal to get to the top and look down over the city. And it took even more for me to get into a perfectly good airplane and not only not shut the window, but jump out of it. But I did it.”
“You went skydiving?” I asked, half in awe, half sure he was just pulling my leg. Maybe he wasn’t even scared of heights at all and was just coming up with a story to make me feel better about the fact that he had dogs and was going to keep them instead of keeping me if I couldn’t make myself face my fears.
“Ghost took me and just about forced me to do it. Said I’d never be able to make it in the NHL if I couldn’t even get on a plane, and there was no better way to get over my fear of flying than jumping out of one.”
“He made you jump out of a plane when you were scared of heights? And he’s still your friend?”
“My best friend. Because of shit like that, to be honest.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I could be friends with someone who treated me like that.”
“Someone who pushed you to get past your fears?” He quirked up a brow, but I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or genuinely curious about my response.
“Pushing someone out of a plane is kind of sadistic, isn’t it?” And if he pushed me to be around his dogs…
This wasn’t going to work out. I’d been an idiot to ever think it could. But I had finally, definitely learned that my life was never going to be like a fairy tale. I wasn’t living in a romance novel. I needed to get my head out of the clouds and back on solid ground before I did something else as epically stupid as marrying a complete stranger I’d met in a Mexican cantina. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake like that ever again. I doubted I’d survive it.
“So you’re not willing to at least try?” he asked. And he sounded kind of…defeated, I supposed would be the right way to describe it. He brushed a curl of my hair away from my face in a sweet, tender move that sent shivers up and down my spine. “This is a hard line for you? You can’t learn to be around dogs?”
Out of nowhere, a fresh wave of tears welled up in my eyes, and I asked, “What’ll happen if I can’t get past my fears?”
I expected him to say something like We’ll just have to go our separate ways. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything like that at all.
He said, “We’ll just have to find a way to compromise, then, won’t we? Just like with everything else. Neither of us really knew what we were getting into with this, so we’re figuring it out as we go. But it would mean a lot to me if you’d be willing to at least give this a try.”
“Compromise,” I repeated softly, trying the word out on my tongue. I knew what it meant, in theory, of course. But I couldn’t think of too many times I’d been given the opportunity to see it in action.
Not in anything pertaining to me, at least.
When the courts had taken me from my parents, no one had asked for my opinion. When they’d placed me with one foster family or another, I wasn’t given any say. I just did what I’d been told to do, hoping that this time, everything would work out in the end, that this time, I’d be part of a family for real.
Compromise was an entirely foreign concept when it came to my life.
“We’ll all be there to make sure you’re fine,” Anne said, reminding me that she was still sitting on the other side of the bed. “I’ll hold your hand or whatever you need. Nate and RJ’ll keep the dogs under control. We won’t let anything bad happen.”
“Will they be on leashes?” I asked, staring deep into Riley’s eyes, hoping for reassurance or peace, or something other than the intense fear that had clawed me from the inside not too very long ago.
“Already harnessed up,” he said. “They won’t hurt you. Even if they wanted to, we wouldn’t let them. But honestly, they’ll just want to love you into submission. They’re big puppies, enormous lovebugs. That’s all.”
It didn’t appear I would be getting out of at least trying to be around his dogs without having an utter and complete panic attack. “Submission?” I said, popping up an eyebrow so he’d know I was joking.
He grinned in response and then headed out the door. “Give me thirty seconds before coming down.”
Thirty seconds. That wouldn’t be anywhere near enough time for me to remember how to breathe again.
This was bound to be a disaster.