Chapter 14
Dinner at his girlfriend’s family house was nerve-racking. Apparently her mother wanted to meet him, and Jo admitted she wanted to show him off. It wasn’t just meeting the family; it was that whole life-shattering definition of him having a girlfriend. They’d been dating for a month now, between away games, and home games he always attended to watch the team in action, and practices and meetings, fires and studying, and yes, they didn’t get to spend a lot of time together, but when they did…
Fireworks.
That was the only way he could describe it.
Hot. Sexy. Intense. Loving. Fireworks. Not just the sex, although that was hot, but arguing over films and food, and talking about childhood memories and TV shows, and just sitting quietly, cuddled up on the sofa.
Those were his favorite parts. Curled up with Jo, he could feel the tension in him slipping away. He could put things in perspective. Yes, the Dragons’ power play had holes, but Vasiliev was a good addition. Yes, Gooly hated Vaz, but somehow they had passed New Year and Gooly hadn’t asked again about being traded.
In fact, that morning at practice the guys had basically told him he was love-struck, but that it was okay because he was back with the fitness coach and he was working on his endurance. All being well, he would be cleared to play and back on the ice for Saturday’s match-up with the Predators. Already billed as being a big game, a full capacity crowd, with both teams badly needing the two points for a win, he just wanted to be back on the ice with his team. So he was at peace, with hockey, and his growing feelings for Jo, and he didn’t feel one ounce of fear at all.
Maybe Jo felt that same peace and didn’t feel the need to fill empty space with words. They only had a short drive out of the city to her mom’s home, and she’d been very quiet since he’d picked her up from the firehouse.
“You okay?” he asked for the third time. The first time she’d reassured him she was fine, the second she’d nodded, the third time, she sighed.
“We had a meeting at work,” she said, then sighed again. “I’m processing.”
Was it something to do with her probie status? Was she not doing well enough to make it? Was it his fault? He would never want her to put aside her dreams, however much he couldn’t imagine life without her if she was hurt on the job.
His imagination left nothing to chance; he knew he’d be lost, because more and more he was convinced she could be the one. The mythical one who was connected to him right deep down. When they were together, they didn’t stop talking—when they weren’t kissing, that was. He knew her dad had died at work, that he’d run some kind of engineering company, that she had a sister, and a mom who wanted to move closer to Jo’s aunts. He even knew she’d had a dog called Red when she was a kid, and that he’d been bigger than her and had the softest fur.
He’d admitted he wanted a dog, but he was never at home.
She’d said she still missed Red to this day.
That was the kind of talking they did, and he loved it.
“I’m just concerned, is all,” she said, and Alex placed a hand on her knee.
“About today? I promise I’ll be on my best behavior.” As it was, he was wearing his favorite game-day suit, a new tie and a crisp white shirt. Not only that, but he’d got his hair cut the day before; not a dramatic cut, but enough that it looked tidier and the loose curls were tamed a little. He wanted to come over as a professional guy, the man he was, who worked hard. Not just a sports freak player who people might think had lucked out in life because he could chase a puck around the ice.
He’d even considered bringing his investment portfolio with him to prove he could support her and, god, just to prove he’d made something of himself.
Yep, he had it that bad.
“Not about today.” She smiled at him. “Mom will love you.”
He wished he felt so confident. He’d only ever done the mother-of-the-girlfriend thing once, and she’d taken one look at him and called him a long-haired loser wannabe. Of course, he’d been fifteen and arrogant about his early hockey successes, which had been more important to him than any girl. Moms saw that kind of thing, and that one had seen right through him. Last he’d heard from his cousin was that Melissa Hinton was happily married with a couple of children and a house just down the road from where she’d lived as a kid.
Jo’s mom was different. He wanted to show Mrs. Glievens that he was a solid, sensible guy who had future plans and cash in the bank, and that he loved her daughter.
“If it isn’t today, then what’s worrying you?”
“It’s in the papers tomorrow, but the official report on the Ferris wheel damage on New Year’s was that an explosion was the cause,” she said, the words tumbling out in one long run-on sentence.
They left the freeway and headed north, and for a while she was quiet. He didn’t know what to ask, or if she could even talk about it.
“It wasn’t an accident.”
That got his attention. “What?”
“The explosion was deliberate, and it’s worse than that—the same set-up was found at a fire in the rezoning district, an old cinema, and a homeless guy died in that fire. What if the two are connected?”
“Connected by what?”
“One guy targeting…I don’t know what. Like, the cinema was empty, abandoned, as part of the rezoning. At least it was supposed to be empty, but the security guard was letting this old guy sleep there, or at least he was turning a blind eye.”
“And this old guy died in the fire?”
“No.” Jo sighed. “He’d been beaten quite badly, but we’re waiting on autopsy results.”
“Shit, Jo,” Alex murmured.
“But the Ferris wheel…this was New Years, people around.”
Alex swallowed his instant reply. He’d watched way too many Criminal Minds episodes on plane trips, but wasn’t this the definition of escalating?
“And it gets worse.”
“Worse how?”
“The car accident, the one you went all action hero at? The same set-up was found under the hood. The car was crashed deliberately and the driver didn’t stand a chance.”
“Escalation,” Alex muttered.
“Yeah. We have a team working on it; Dennison has been seconded to the bomb squad.”
“Who would target the family in the car? A dad and his baby? That’s sick.”
“They had questions for the father.”
At that, Alex pulled over onto the shoulder. Thankfully, that close to her mom’s place, the roads were wide and empty, with huge swathes of green.
“Does he need a lawyer? He’s a good guy, a family man.”
She placed a hand on his. “Not that kind of questioning. He’s the innocent party in this. They just wanted to know where the car had been, who’d had access to it, that kind of thing.”
He had so much he wanted to say, about the little family, about his fears for Jo, about how she’d worked her way into his heart and how he couldn’t imagine letting her go.
Instead, he cradled her face and kissed her. “Stay safe for me,” he whispered against her lips.
“Always,” she said back.
The moment they turned into the driveway of the house in Appletree Point, with views of Lake Champlain, Alex realized that bringing proof of his investment portfolio as something to be proud of wasn’t necessary. The place was a huge rambling network of rooms and windows and surrounded by immaculate gardens and likely worth one hell of a lot of money.
That put a whole different slant on things. People said some women wanted the money a professional athlete could bring in; she was so far the other way, it was ridiculous.
“I get paid good money, and I have a lot invested, and I own three properties,” he blurted out.
She shot him a look that spoke volumes. “And you’re telling me this why?”
He groaned. What would she say if he explained that he wanted to prove he was good enough for her and—
She interrupted his thoughts by placing a finger on his lips. “I’ve fallen in love with you, not your money,” was all she said.
He couldn’t hold back how he felt at that point. Why would he? His heart hurt with how much he wanted and needed her in his life.
“I love you,” he replied, his lips moving against her finger.
She smiled and dropped her hand. “There you go, then.”
They kissed then, before they climbed out of the car, and held hands as they reached a side door that led into a bright, airy library. She didn’t let go of him even as they walked through the room, although he did want to stop and look at the photos on the wall of a very young Jo.
“Later,” she said, and they continued down a long corridor and into a gorgeous, bright, airy, high-ceilinged front room, and to a diminutive woman standing next to the girl who’d summarized his social network’s existence in a few sentences right before his first date with Jo.
“Mom, this is Alexandre Simard,” Jo introduced him, and pushed him forward a little. He went into wowing-the-mom mode.
“Mrs. Glievens, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“And you, Mr. Simard. Please call me Iris.”
“Alex.”
They shook hands, and clearly Rose hadn’t done enough to embarrass him in front of her family.
“The team and press called him Simba because of his wild blond hair and his amber eyes, because he looked like a lion,” she said.
“I believe Jo has already explained that to us, Rose,” Iris said with a soft smile.
Alex thrust out a hand to Rose. “Hello, Rose, it’s nice to see you again.”
She tutted, pushed aside his hand and pulled him in for a hug. She was shorter than Jo, and he had to stoop, but he did give her an enthusiastic hug, because it felt real.
“Put Alex down, dear,” Iris said, but there was a smile in her voice. “So, Alex, Jo said you play hockey professionally.”
“He’s the captain of the Dragons team, Mom,” Jo began.
Iris waved a hand. “Go help your sister with the salads,” she said. “I’ll stay here and catch up with Alex.”
When Jo cast a look between him and her mom, he imagined himself as one of those cartoon characters with bugged-out eyes, but she clearly didn’t see that, and she and Rose left.
“Please have a seat,” Iris said, and sat down on one end of a floral sofa. He took one of the single chairs, it fit a little tight for his frame and his hockey ass, but he didn’t make it obvious, or at least he hoped not. “My daughter did well bringing you to lunch,” she added.
He leaned forward as much as his stuck ass would allow and became a hundred kinds of earnest. “I was looking forward to meeting you,” he said.
She nodded, regally, like a queen or something, and Alex’s blood pressure rose a notch. Hell, it was worse than standing opposite the best center in the world for a freaking face-off.
“What do captains of hockey teams do?” she asked, although the calculated way she said it implied she already had research under her belt. He could give her the dry details, but instinctively he knew that wasn’t what she was looking for.
“A lot of everything,” he began. “I’m the spokesperson for the team, the one who assesses, and argues, and corrals players on game night, looks out for them, worries about them, tries to make them a cohesive unit. I cajole and encourage and flat-out bribe my skaters to be the best they can be, and I think I do a good job.”
“You think?”
“I know I do a good job.”
“Hmm,” she said, and inclined her head. “You’re a few points off from the teams currently holding the wild-card positions. Will you be closing that gap and getting to the playoffs?”
He was sure his mouth fell open, and he caught the hint of a smile on her face. “You like hockey?”
She leaned forward in her chair as if she were sharing a secret. “Is it wrong to admit I loved watching the Hawks when I was a young girl?”
He smiled at that, and felt some knot of tension unravel inside him.
“That’s okay,” he deadpanned. “The Dragons are a new team; you have plenty of time to switch.”
She laughed and sat back in her seat. “You care for my daughter?”
“I do; I love her.”
“Do you know why she became a firefighter?”
“She wanted to help,” he said simply.
“I wanted to be a lawyer when I was younger, until I met her father, and then I was happiest as his wife.”
Alex wasn’t sure what to say, so he nodded.
Seemed like Iris hadn’t finished questioning him. “Do you worry about her being a firefighter?”
She asked the question so carefully that he felt like he’d been handed a live grenade and the way he answered would make or break whether he got her approval or not. Should he lie and say he wanted her to stop doing something so dangerous, that he could look after her and she could stay at home, safe, wrapped in bubble-wrap just in case? She narrowed her eyes at his hesitation.
“You want me to be honest?” he asked, because he needed a little more time to process, and delaying his reply by asking questions was always a good tactic.
“Always,” Iris said.
“I will be scared for her every single day when I’m not with her, because that’s how you feel when you love someone. You’re scared of losing them, but at the same time you know that what they choose to do with their life is part of their soul, and I want her always to be happy.”
Iris smiled then, a soft, almost sad smile.
“That, Alex, was the most perfect answer you could have given.”
He couldn’t resist letting out a phew, and pretended to wipe his brow, and they chuckled, which was how the sisters found them when they walked back in.
“Lunch is ready,” Rose announced, and sashayed back out, her mom following.
“Okay?” Jo asked.
He kissed her, held her tight for the briefest of moments. “More than.”
Seemed like Alexandre Simard had made a good impression on Jo’s mom, and that was important to him Jo had said she loved him, and he’d said it back.
Apart from Jo’s problems at work, the clouds around a possible serial bomber, today rocked.