RILEY SHUT HIS dogs out of the bedroom for a while after we came home from dinner with Nate and Anne. He kept them out long enough that we could spend some time together being intimate without their interference. But not very much time passed after that before the incessant whining on the other side of the door, not to mention the way they were throwing their huge bodies against it in an attempt to break it down, was too much for either of us to handle. There would be no chance for either of us to get any sleep with racket going on all night, so I gritted my teeth and braced myself for whatever was to come.
Both dogs jumped into the bed as if it was their bed, too, almost as soon as Riley opened the door and let them in. My new husband put off a ton of body heat on his own, but when these two enormous, furry beasts were added to the mix, I had to wonder how I would avoid suffocation in the night. Good thing it was generally a lot colder in Oregon than it had been in Mexico, or I might end up roasting.
Riley drew me against him and tucked my head on his shoulder, and both dogs crowded their way onto the bed and surrounded us. Max snuggled up against my back, trapping the blankets between us so I couldn’t move an inch in any direction even if I wanted to, and he even draped one leg across my body until I was completely engulfed and enveloped in combined human and canine body heat.
With a surreptitious peek through my eyelashes, I saw that Lola had curled up on Riley’s other side and was making herself quite comfortable, thank you very much. Something told me she was a daddy’s girl. I grinned to myself at the thought, and then I had to wonder what these two dogs would do if Riley and I were to have a baby. Would Lola be protective of a little one, the way she seemed to be protective of Riley? Or would she be jealous because she thought she should be his baby?
And why was I thinking about having a baby with Riley? I ought to keep my focus on figuring out how to exist within his world without thoroughly disrupting everything.
He was right—he had a job to do, and I couldn’t interfere with that. Somehow, I had to find the gumption within myself to become what he needed me to be—and that meant I had to learn how to take care of his dogs when he couldn’t.
It meant I had to find a way to become as much a part of his family as Max and Lola were, as much as Nate and Anne, as much as the other guys who played on Riley’s team. I wouldn’t fool myself into thinking I could ever become more important to him than they were, but I had to somehow work my way into the mix.
But for now, I needed to find a way to sleep with these dogs pinning me to the mattress without allowing my fear to take over. That had to be my first step toward becoming part of Riley’s family. And so far, it was happening surprisingly easily.
Even though somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I ought to be afraid because these dogs were entirely too large and too close to me and they could snap me in half without even breaking a sweat, I wasn’t scared at all. Quite the opposite, even. Oddly enough, I felt protected. Maybe even cherished, although that might be stretching things a bit, considering how new I was to this family unit.
Just as I was about to drift off to sleep again, Max sighed in my ear and licked my neck. But instead of worrying that he was tasting me so he could decide whether or not to eat me, I might have giggled. He let out a hefty sigh that shuddered through his entire body, soothing me instead of scaring me.
In my sleepy daze, I was almost positive I heard Riley murmur, “That’s a good boy, Max. Mackenzie’s your mama now, so you have to help me take care of her.”
I could maybe get used to this.
Maybe.
Someday.
MORNING ARRIVED FAR too soon. I didn’t want anything to break into the idyllic haze of warmth and sleep that had me wrapped up in my own private cocoon, but before I was ready, Riley was crawling out from under the sheets and whispering, “Come on. Max, Lola, outside. Go potty.”
They bounded to the floor and raced down the stairs like thunder, leaving me unexpectedly shivering and lonely in the enormous but suddenly empty bed. I rolled over, trying to find a bit more warmth where Riley and Lola had been, but the sun streaming in through the windows blinded me, so I scrunched my eyes closed for another moment.
But then it hit me, and I burst out laughing. Go potty, he’d said, as if he were talking to a small child, to a toddler.
Yeah, these two dogs were absolutely his children—his family. If we were going to have any chance at all of making this marriage work, I absolutely had to find a way to handle my fears.
So far, so good, though.
I’d been able to pet them without losing a hand, and somehow I’d managed to sleep all night in a bed with both of them, as well as Riley, vying for the limited space and leaving me squashed beneath them all.
I crawled out from under the covers and headed for the bathroom to relieve myself. By the time I’d finished with that and had made my way down the stairs to the kitchen for a glass of water, Riley and the dogs were returning through the back door. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to cringe in fear as both dogs bounded toward me, tongues lolling and tails wagging.
“You might want to head toward the living room,” Riley said, yawning and stretching his arms overhead.
Without questioning him, I took his advice and scurried away from the sink. Good thing I did, too, because both dogs took up position almost exactly where I’d been standing, tails going overtime and barks booming through the space that suddenly felt far too small, even though everything about Riley—and his dogs and his house—was large.
“Sit,” Riley said with enough gumption it made me want to comply.
Max promptly plopped down on his bottom, tail still wagging fast enough to kick up a breeze in the kitchen, but Lola barked again and looked over at me, her enormous head cocked to the side, as if hoping I’d contradict Riley.
That wasn’t going to happen. I was keeping my mouth shut and my feet planted precisely where they were until Riley told me otherwise. He was running this show, and I was just an observer.
“Sit, Lola,” Riley said more emphatically, and finally, Lola complied. Riley glanced over his shoulder at me. “You’ve got to sound like you mean it when you give them a command,” he said. “You’re the boss. You’re the alpha of the pack. If you believe it, they will, too, and they’ll fall into line.”
“Me?” I squeaked, quickly sipping some more of my water to soothe my parched throat, or at least hoping Riley would think that was what had caused my frightened tone.
“Yeah, you.” He smiled patiently and held out a hand toward me, waving me over. “Come on. I’ll show you how much I feed them. You’re going to have to handle this stuff when I’m on the road with the team.”
Oh, no. In the heat of the moment, and just trying to be near these dogs without visibly shaking, I’d forgotten all about the fact that when Riley left, I’d be alone here with his dogs. That I was going to have to fend for myself with them. Not only that, but I’d have to take care of them. How was I supposed to take them for walks or to the vet, or any number of other things? They both outweighed me by a mile. And with the two of them together? There was no way I could do this. Not in a million years.
Riley must have seen the realization dawning in my eyes, because he crossed over to me and wrapped me up in his strong, capable arms. “Hey,” he murmured, his lips hovering close to my ear. “It’ll be fine. I’m going to make sure of it, okay?”
“How can you make sure it’s fine if you aren’t even here?”
“Because I’m going to teach you. And I’ve already taught them. They’re good dogs; they’ll listen to you. They’ll look out for you when I can’t be here to do it. Besides, I already have a dog walker who comes when I’m on the road with the team, and I bet we can get Anne and maybe some of the other guys’ wives and girlfriends to come and help you out while you’re adjusting. You won’t be all alone trying to do this, okay?”
He seemed so sure of himself, so sure of his dogs, and Anne and everyone else. Heck, he even seemed sure of me. But I definitely wasn’t. If anything, I felt the opposite, certain that as soon as he walked out the door and left me alone with them, they’d eat me for a snack.
Judging by how huge their bowls were, I wouldn’t even make a very good snack for them, come to think of it.
Despite all of that, I had to suck it up, somehow screw up my courage yet again and try to do what he thought I could do. I pulled myself out of his arms and gave a curt nod, projecting far more confidence than I felt. “Let’s do this. Tell me what to do.”
Over the next twenty minutes or so, he showed me where the open dog food was stored, how much he measured out for each dog—ten enormous scoops each, twice a day!—how much water to put in their dishes, where the extra, unopened food was kept until it was needed so they couldn’t help themselves whenever they got the urge, the phone numbers for the dog walker, the regular vet, and the emergency vet in case anything went wrong after hours, and any number of other details I’d be bound to forget as soon as I was alone with Max and Lola and my giant bucket of fears.
“Where’s the phone?” I thought to ask after he’d gone through at least a few dozen instructions. “In case there’s an emergency and I need to call the vet or something.” I glanced around the kitchen, because most of my foster families had kept one in either the kitchen or the dining room.
“Shit.” Riley dragged a hand through his hair. “I don’t have a landline. Just my cell. We’ll get you one this afternoon, after I come home.”
“You’re leaving?” I squeaked. Yeah, that was definitely panic in my voice this time. No getting around it. Both dogs looked up at me, probably thinking I was a giant squeaky toy. I couldn’t say I blamed them, either. But just because I’d managed to pet Max and Lola without either of them biting my hand off, and I’d slept with them in the bed without suffocating beneath their weight, that didn’t mean I was ready to be all alone with them.
“Not right away, but soon. In about an hour, after I’ve had breakfast and a shower. I’ve got no choice, baby doll. Doc needs to run some tests on my ankle. I’ve got a job to do, and that means I have to do what they tell me to do. That’s how I pay for all of this.”
I was going to die. No doubt about it.
The dogs would wait until Riley was gone to see the doctor, and then they’d pounce on me and rip me to shreds.
But for some unknown reason, I found myself nodding. “I’ll figure this out.”
“You won’t be all alone with them the whole day. Just for a little while. My dog walker comes at about eleven every day. His name’s Grady. You can go out with him. He can show you how to harness the dogs up and keep them by your side when you’re walking. And Anne said she might be able to drop by later.”
I shook my head, eyes wide. “I can’t walk them.” They might very well drag me behind them.
“Grady can show you. He’s not going to expect you to do anything on your own. He’ll just start to teach you the ropes. How to give them commands, how to control them. I’ll send him a text to let him know what’s going on.”
“I think they’re going to control me and not the reverse.”
Riley laughed softly, but he leaned down and kissed me so sweetly that I melted a little bit inside. “Grady’ll help you out. And besides, I think you need to start giving yourself more credit. You didn’t think you could even manage to pet them yesterday, but you got through a whole night sleeping with them in the bed with you. And you’re still here. You’re still breathing. You’re still all in one piece. You’ve got this.”
“I’ve got this?”
“You do,” he said emphatically. He said it so emphatically, in fact, that I wondered whether he was trying to convince me or himself.
“All right,” I said, my voice shaking on the words. Then I straightened my spine, trying to put belief into my tone and my body language, even though that was the last thing I felt. Because if I couldn’t convince Riley that I had things under control, there wasn’t any chance those dogs would fall for my act. I had to believe. I had to project confidence, even if it was all a big, fat lie. “It’ll be all right. I’ll be all right.”
“I know you will.”
But he was wrong. Absolutely, one hundred percent wrong.
Nothing was ever going to be all right again.
Heck, had it ever been? I wasn’t sure.
I FUCKING HATED going into MRI machines. Always had. It didn’t even matter that, this time, they only had my legs in the damned thing. I still felt claustrophobic with all the machinery and the whirring and beeping noises and the fact that I couldn’t move a goddamned muscle for a long time or else I’d screw up the images and they’d have to start all over again.
And to top it all off, I didn’t get claustrophobic, generally speaking. Usually, I didn’t mind confined spaces. I’d never be able to live with Max and Lola, otherwise, because they took up all the space in any room.
Besides, having been a hockey player for as many years as I had, I’d gotten used to being up close and personal with twenty of my closest, smelliest friends in oftentimes cramped quarters. The MRI ought to be a piece of cake by comparison.
It didn’t quite work out that way, though.
Not at all.
“You’ve got to hold still, Mr. Jezek,” the technician’s voice said over the crackling loudspeaker. His voice practically echoed in the otherwise empty room.
“Sorry,” I bit off. “I’ll do better.” Or I’d try to, at least, but as far as I could tell, the only movement was coming from the act of breathing. Last I checked, breathing was still a vital human function.
“See that you do or we’ll have to start all over again.”
That was not going to happen if I had anything to say about it. I gritted my teeth and strengthened my resolve to hold my breath for as long as I had to so I could remain absolutely one hundred percent perfectly fucking still.
Getting injured had been bad enough on its own; being subjected to all the tests and whatnot to diagnose the injury was pure and utter torture. All the more reason to make sure I didn’t get hurt very often. Whatever precautions I could take to avoid injury, I would be taking them from here on out.
I might need to see what sort of brace Drywall Tierney and the other equipment guys could fashion for me, at least if stability was going to be an issue for me moving forward.
Sitting in a fucking MRI machine when the rest of my teammates were out on the ice for a practice was proving to be torture. I didn’t know how Soupy could fucking stand being sidelined so often, after all the times he’d been out of commission over the last few years. The guy was a walking, talking medical lexicon. He seemed to be on the injured reserve list more than he was in action.
Although, to be fair, I wasn’t sure how he managed to walk sometimes, let alone play hockey. He’d had almost every injury a hockey player could go through and still get back out on the ice. Sometimes more than one injury at a time, even. I only hoped this tweaked ankle of mine wasn’t the beginning of my own spiral of trips to the press box during games.
But I had to nip this line of thought in the bud before it ran away with me. If I kept thinking along these lines, I’d end up psyching myself out, and then I’d probably move an inch or two and screw up the images, and we’d have to start all over again.
Time to reroute my brain to something better.
Like how well Mackenzie was handling being around my dogs.
Fuck, I was so proud of her I could burst. After seeing how fast she’d gone down that first time she’d met Max and Lola, I’d been sure she’d never be able to get past a fear so intense and all-consuming.
But she’d proved me wrong. Mackenzie was a fighter. She wasn’t going to give in so easily. I’d known all along that my pups would love her—they loved almost everyone, and she was quiet and sweet and utterly adorable, so why wouldn’t they love her to pieces?—but the jury had still been out as to whether or not she’d be able to reciprocate their affections until we’d all gone to bed last night.
It’d taken me an eternity to get to sleep because I’d been so worried that she’d start freaking out again at any moment, what with Max practically smothering her from behind and Lola continually inching closer to me until all four of us were somehow squashed in the center of my bed. What if she’d woken up and started to panic before remembering where she was and who she was with? What if her panic triggered the dogs in some manner, and they reacted in a bad way that either scared her worse than she already was or hurt her? And how would she handle it when I wasn’t there with her to rein the dogs in?
Like right at this very moment.
I should’ve spent more time with her, practicing giving the dogs commands and making sure they listened and obeyed. They really were well-behaved dogs, but with any dog, you had to sound like you meant it when you told them what to do, or they’d believe they were the alphas. I wasn’t sure she was ready to put that sort of force into her tone.
Too late for me to go back to this morning and try to teach her how to make them sit. I’d just have to hope she got along all right without me for the next couple of hours.
Finally, the lights came back on, and the table I was lying on started to move backward, freeing me from the machine.
“All right, I think we got what we need,” the technician said into his microphone. “We’ll send the results on to the team doctors.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I didn’t need the guy to tell me he wasn’t going to fill me in on the scans. That was how it always worked. They could see a massive tumor or something on these tests, but they wouldn’t say a fucking word about it. That was for the doctor to do.
Whatever. Based on how my ankle felt, I knew I wouldn’t be getting back on the ice for a while yet.
I headed back into the exam room, got dressed again, and gathered up my duffel bag. It wasn’t quite eleven yet, and Doc wasn’t expecting me to show up at the Storm’s practice facility to go over the tests and do some physical therapy until about two this afternoon, so that meant I had time to buy a cell phone for Mackenzie, grab a bite for lunch, and maybe spend a few minutes with her before heading up to the practice facility. I wished there’d been time for getting her a phone earlier, but with any luck, both she and the dogs would be perfectly fine when I got home.
I started out at the Apple Store at Pioneer Place, buying an iPhone just like mine for Mackenzie and getting her set up on my account—while at the same time making sure Amanda’s phone was removed.
That bitch could fend for herself.
Then I headed to Yard House, a restaurant in the mall that was close to the Apple Store, and ordered a variety of things to go: edamame, tuna rolls, lettuce wraps, coconut shrimp, and Korean barbecue. Between all of that, I hoped she’d like something, but it should at least give me some good protein to fuel whatever workouts I’d need to go through to stay in shape for however long I remained out of commission.
When I got home, Grady’s SUV was parked in my driveway. He should be just finishing up with walking Max and Lola right about now. Excellent timing. I had plenty of food for him, too, so I figured I’d ask if he wanted to stick around for lunch.
I climbed out and grabbed the takeout bags. Just as I was about to shut the car door and head inside, Max’s booming bark stopped me. I spun around and nearly dropped everything in my arms at the sight before me.
Because, sure enough, Grady had somehow gotten Mackenzie to go on the walk with them. And not only was she walking with them but she had both dogs’ leashes in her hand and a grin bright enough to chase away the gloomy clouds overhead. Grady was just a casual observer, making sure everything went according to plan.
She reached up with her free hand and waved at me, somehow smiling even wider than before, warming me straight through.
Maybe we’d rushed into this marriage without thinking.
Maybe we hadn’t known anything about one another when we’d come up with this crazy plan.
Maybe there were still a lot of things we were going to have to sort through in order to make everything work out.
But despite all of that, I felt light as a fucking feather.
We were going to make this work. No matter what.