Laurel seemed to stare at him a long time and Gage’s stomach lurched. “Would you rather we go back to California?” he asked after a moment.
She shook her head. “Sorry, you caught me by surprise. I haven’t really thought that far ahead, but to answer your second question, there’s nothing for me in California anymore. Dad’s in Phoenix, I’ve lived in Colorado the last five years, and most of my friends are here.”
“What about Dolly? Are you still close to her?”
“They’re in Japan now. Ed is career military so they move every few years. I haven’t seen her in ages but I follow her posts on Facebook and stuff.”
“So you think you’d be happy here with Dani and Hailey and the others?”
“You want to settle here?”
“We can live anywhere we want, but I like working with the team and it seems you do too.”
“We both know this coaching gig isn’t going to be permanent.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Come on, the press uses words like ‘beginner’s luck’ and Howard always watches me like he thinks I’m going to get cooties on him or something. It’s still a boys’ club, you know?”
“Are you going to want to go back to what you were doing before if you don’t stay on here?”
“Coaching at a high school? No. I don’t really want to do another Olympics either. If I stay here, I’d like to do something behind the scenes for the team. Maybe even scouting.”
“Yeah?” He nibbled her ear. “I have the power to make that happen. But as a scout you’d be on the road all the time… What would I do?”
She giggled. “Follow me around like a lost puppy?”
He bit down on her earlobe. “Okay.”
“Mmm.” She shivered as gooseflesh broke out all over her body.
He rubbed his hands down her arms, loving how she always reacted to his touch. “Do you have anywhere to be in the next hour?”
“N-no.”
“Then upstairs in bed it is.” He got up, set her on her feet and then grabbed her hand as they practically raced upstairs.
Gage flew to Phoenix to pick up his ex- and hopefully future father-in-law. Maurice Saunders was a big, burly man, well over six feet tall, with bushy eyebrows, silver hair cropped close to his head, and a warm, friendly handshake. He gave Gage a hug, though, and they talked from the moment the flight took off from Phoenix.
“How’s my girl doing?” Mo asked. “I worry about her, working all the time.”
“I think she’s good,” Gage said, smiling at his former father-in-law. “I do my best to make her rest whenever we can, but coaching an NHL team is a pretty demanding job. Especially now.”
“It was good of you to give her this opportunity.”
“She’s more than qualified and—”
“Oh, cut the crap, son. I know damn well you did this to get her close to you again. My question now is, what are you gonna do about it?”
Gage shrugged. “My intention is to marry her again and never let her go. She’s not always on board with my plans, though.”
“Who’s the woman in New York?”
Gage chuckled. “No one. An old friend who decided to go for a photo op. Laurel knows about it, no secrets between us.”
“No?” Mo raised his eyebrows. “Seems to me you kept a whole lot of secrets.”
Gage met his gaze guiltily. “Mr. Saunders—”
“Mr. Saunders? You’ve been calling me Dad for nearly sixteen years. We’re back to Mr. Saunders? That doesn’t bode well for the future.”
“Sorry. Dad.” Gage cleared his throat. “There were things I couldn’t tell her while I was deployed. I was going to tell her everything when I got home, but she had those divorce papers waiting for me and if she was leaving me, I couldn’t tell her. It was ridiculously convoluted and she wouldn’t slow down long enough for me to calm her down. I’d lost men out there, friends, so I wasn’t emotionally able to fight for her right away. By the time I’d pulled myself together, she was long gone. We fucked up, and I own my part in it, but she has to meet me halfway this time. I’ve tried to win her over for years and until now she’s always said no. I can’t force her to love me again.”
Mo laughed. “Now that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. There’s no again. She’s never stopped loving you. It breaks my heart to watch her go through life pretending she doesn’t still miss you. But it pisses me off seeing you with all those socialites and supermodels, as if Laurel’s not good enough.”
“That was never the case,” Gage said quietly. “She’s everything to me.”
“Then what the hell are you waiting for? Marry the girl and have some babies!”
“She said she doesn’t want them, that she’s too old now.”
Mo sighed. “Did she? What a bunch of bullshit. She wants babies so bad she can taste it. I love my daughter, but she’s stubborn as hell. You’re going to have to be more persistent than she is stubborn. You know that, right?”
“I’m trying, but we have to get through hockey season. It’s important to her to do a good job, to make sure she leaves her mark, one way or another.”
“A few more weeks then.”
“If we go all the way, we’re looking at the middle of June until the championships are over.”
“It won’t go that far.” Mo made an impatient gesture. “This isn’t your year. You’ve come a long way, but my gut tells me it’s the Sidewinders’ time. They’re hot, motivated, and with all the talk about Coach Barnett retiring, they have extra incentive to do it one more time before he goes.”
Gage nodded. “True, but no one thought we’d be in the playoffs either, and here we are.”
“You worry about Laurel. She’ll worry about the team.”
“And what are you going to worry about?”
“All of it. That’s what parents do.”
They were quiet for a while.
“A baby, Gage. That’s your magic bullet.”
“What?” Gage looked at him in confusion.
“Give her a baby and everything will work out. If you don’t, I don’t think you stand a chance.”
They had dinner in San Francisco that night, taking one night to relax and enjoy themselves. Laurel hadn’t seen her father in a couple of months and it was nice to sit and talk with nowhere she had to rush off to for once. She’d been a little worried her father would say something he shouldn’t to Gage, but whatever had been said on the plane seemed to have settled things between them, so she didn’t say anything to either of them.
Her father had always insisted she hadn’t been fair to Gage by not telling him about the baby, but the combination of her mother’s death and the miscarriage had been too much for her back then. She hadn’t been able to cope with anything else, and the last thing she wanted was to send Gage back to the Middle East with yet another loss on his mind. She also hadn’t wanted any more sympathy and it probably wouldn’t have been safe for him to be thinking about something as serious as the loss of a child at that point. As angry as she’d been back then, she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if anything had happened to him because of her.
“Laurel?” Her father was looking at her with concern. “You okay, hon?”
“Sorry, just thinking about practice tomorrow. We have a lot to do, and it’s an hour back to the hotel if traffic cooperates.”
“We can get going any time,” Gage said, motioning for the check.
“I’m looking forward to the games,” Mo said as they walked out to the waiting limo. “I don’t get to many in Phoenix.”
“Well, maybe you can come stay with us in Anchorage for a bit,” Gage suggested. “Then you can go to all of them.”
“Colder than a witch’s tit,” the older man muttered. “I’ll come visit in the summer.”
“There’s no hockey in summer,” Laurel pointed out, laughing.
Her father shrugged. “Well, maybe you’ll give me some grandchildren and then I’ll have an excuse to endure the cold.”
“I see,” Laurel replied smoothly. “You’d come for grandchildren, but not for your only child.”
“You’re boring now,” he teased. “I need little ones who want to play cards and go skating and stuff.”
“Well, don’t hold your breath on that. I’m no spring chicken anymore, so I don’t know if kids are in the cards anymore.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Women are having babies into their late forties these days.”
Laurel shook her head. “Like you know anything about women in their forties.”
He pursed his lips. “Well…I just might.”
She got into the limo and turned to narrow her eyes. “What does that mean? Are you dating?”
“You think I’ve been a monk all these years?”
“Ew, gross! I do not want to hear about your sex life, Dad.”
“Sex life? I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about a relationship, a woman I’m involved with.”
“You have a girlfriend?” Laurel had never considered such a thing.
“I do.”
“Why haven’t you ever said anything? How long has this been going on?”
“Because I didn’t know how you’d react. You were crushed when your mom passed. So was I, for that matter, but eventually I had to move on. You were young, starting your life and career. I was alone. Lonely. I met Dawn a year ago. We’re thinking about taking it to the next level, moving in together.”
“Really?” Laurel just stared at him. “It’s been a year and you never even mentioned her?”
“We don’t talk that often, Laurel, and frankly, I had a feeling you wouldn’t be happy.”
“I’m not unhappy, I’m just shocked. I mean, I don’t know anything about her.”
“She’s forty-three, an interior designer, and has a teenage son. He’s seventeen, going off to college next year. We hope anyway. That’s what we’re waiting for, him to graduate in a few weeks, and then we’re going to start looking for a place together.”
“Why didn’t you bring her along so I could meet her?”
“You don’t need to be distracted on a road trip. Besides, I wanted it to be just us for now, until you’re ready to meet her. I know it won’t be easy.”
“I’m not…” Laurel tried to collect her thoughts. “Dad, I’m not upset. Mom’s been gone a long time. You’re only fifty-eight, so it makes sense that you wouldn’t want to be alone. I’d like to meet her.”
“Maybe you can come for a visit after the season is over.” He patted her knee. “You have your hands full at the moment.”
They parted ways in the lobby and Laurel waited until they were in their suite before turning to Gage accusingly. “Did you know about this Dawn woman?”
Gage held up his hands in mock surrender. “No. He didn’t say a word about her the whole flight.”
“But I bet you talked about you and me having kids.”
“He said he’d like a grandchild, I said you weren’t sure you wanted them anymore, and he said I should talk you into it. That’s as far as it went.” Okay, that was only partially true, but she was annoyed and he wasn’t going to fight with her about this.
“He has a girlfriend and none of us know anything about her,” she said, pacing back and forth in front of the window.
“Babe, he’s a grown man. What’s the big deal?”
“He’s…” Her voice trailed off and she scowled. “He’s my dad. I can’t think about him as a man.”
“But he is a man. A young, healthy one at that. You can’t make this hard on him, babe. I can check her out if you want. I’ll have Chains run a background check, make sure she’s not some kind of black widow or anything. But unless we find something really shady in her past, you have to be happy for him.”
“Ugh.” She threw herself into his arms and held him tightly. “Too many changes, too much going on. I don’t know why I’m so overwhelmed all of a sudden. It’s not like me to get like this.”
“Hey, don’t cry.” He was shocked to see tears leaking from her eyes. What on earth was going on with her?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve been super emotional lately. Maybe this coaching thing is a lot more stressful than I thought.”
“How about we get some sleep? You’re always emotional when you’re tired. Come on.” He gently pulled her toward the bedroom. For the first time since the day she’d asked for the divorce, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. What if all her stress lately was because of him? What if she was better off without him? He’d never doubted himself about anything in his life, but this kind of vulnerability was so unlike Laurel it worried him. She loved to coach so the idea that the stress was too much for her was ludicrous. It had to be something else. Even though it would kill him, he’d give her up if he was the cause of her recent misery. Her happiness had always been his priority, which meant getting to the bottom of this sooner rather than later.