Learn Your Lesson: A Single Dad Hockey Romance (Kings of the Ice)

Will

It smelled like a goddamn lemon orchard in my house.

The sweet, tangy scent invaded my senses as soon as I walked in, a candle burning in the entryway and soft voices streaming in from somewhere in the house. I shrugged off my coat, hanging it by the front door before investigating the sound further. When I rounded into the kitchen, I found it spotless — dishwasher running and pans drying on the mat while a podcast of some sort played on a speaker.

I frowned.

Arushi had asked for the weekend off. She had family in town. I’d let Chloe know as much and left money for pizza. But the evidence pointed to her cooking, instead.

“Daddy, look!”

I whipped around to find Ava waddling toward me — and yes, she was waddling, because she was dressed head to toe in full hockey gear.

Her curly hair was hidden under a mini helmet, her legs shielded by thick pads, a jersey just a tad bit too big for her swallowing her slight frame.

My eyes shot wide, and then slid to where Chloe was standing at the bottom of the staircase. She covered her smile with one hand, but I swore her eyes were a bit glossy as she watched my daughter teeter over to me.

“Whoa!” I said when she dropped into a low stance in front of me. She had one of my old hockey sticks in her hands, one I’d given to her after a winning game last season, and she stuck her tongue out as she pretended to skate toward me, tapping the stick side to side.

“It’s a lightning-fast release from number ten, Ava Perry,” she said, sticking her little tongue out. “And the puck goes up and over the glove of Will ‘Pickles’ Perry! Goal!”

Ava threw her hands up in victory, pretending to skate around me by sliding on her socks across the tile floor. That earned her a hearty chuckle from Chloe, and I tongued my cheek before swooping my daughter into my arms on her second lap around me.

I knew she picked number ten because it was well known that it was her favorite pop star’s favorite number. Mia Love was impossible to avoid regardless of who you were or what your musical preference — but especially as the father of a five-year-old girl.

Ava giggled as I swung her high, spinning her around once before plopping her back down. I patted her helmet with the corner of my mouth turning up.

“Nice shot, Pumpkin. I didn’t realize I was raising the next Wayne Gretzky.”Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

“I think I’m more like Gordie Howe,” she argued, shimmying her shoulders in the way she usually did when she was telling me off. “Look what Chloe made me!”

She did a little spin, holding her arms out to make sure I could see the intricate stitching on the jersey. And when she stopped, she beamed up at me, a wide smile spanning her adorable face.

A smile.

Fuck.

My chest tightened at the sight of it, at how it took up her whole face and shone like spotlight onto me. When I glanced at Chloe again, I knew I wasn’t wrong. Her eyes were definitely watering.

Honestly, mine would have been, too, if I wasn’t emotionally stunted.

I dropped to my daughter’s level, bracing my hands on her shoulders as I took in every inch of the mini-sized gear she wore.

“This is, by far, the coolest thing I have ever seen.”

“I look like a real hockey player!”

“You sure do,” I agreed, tapping the mask of her helmet. “A forward, no doubt.”

“Right winger.” She dropped into her stance again, tongue sticking out as she pretended like she was gliding down the ice.

I looked around until I found something suitable for a makeshift puck, and when my eyes landed on our paper towel holder, I quickly tore one off and bunched it up, dropping it to the floor.

“Okay, Pigeon. Let’s see your moves.”

My daughter lit up like I’d never seen in my life for the next twenty minutes or so, batting that rumpled-up paper towel across our kitchen and dining area and scoring on me every time.

Not that I was trying very hard to block her.

Mostly, I was trying to breathe past the knot in my chest at the sight of her having fun, of the way her face looked entirely different when she sported a toothy grin.

After her fifth celly dance — which consisted of her holding the stick above her head and doing some weird wiggle maneuver with her legs — I slung her up over my shoulder and pretended like I was going to toss her into the pool.

“No, Daddy! You’ll ruin my outfit!”

All the playfulness left her at the thought of that atrocity, and I slung her back over my shoulder and carried her inside, setting her down just a few feet in front of Chloe.

“Did you tell Miss Knott thank you?”

“A bajillion times,” Ava assured me. But then, she turned and wrapped her arms around Chloe’s legs, squeezing as tight as she could with all the padding. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“You’re so welcome, my little angel bug,” Chloe said, hugging her in return. Then, she bent down and looked Ava in the eyes. “How about we go hang this up so it doesn’t get wrinkly, and get you in the tub.”

“Can I play with my toys?”

“Well, I don’t see how we can leave the story of Princess Unicorn and Prince Duck untold after that major cliffhanger last night.”

Ava scrunched her nose. “What’s a cliffhanger?”

“I’ll explain upstairs. Go ahead. Leave this all on your bed and I’ll take care of it before I come in.”

“Okay!”

Ava ran up the stairs as best she could in her padding, and Chloe stood, smiling at her the entire way before she slowly turned to face me.

“You made that?” I asked, and damn if that knot wasn’t still tight in my throat.

Chloe shrugged, folding her arms over her middle. She was dressed in an oversized knit sweater that hung off one shoulder, her leggings covered in cat hair.

And yet, I’d never wanted to strip a woman bare so badly in my life.

“I needed a project,” she said, as if it wasn’t a big deal, as if she hadn’t just made my daughter’s entire life with that fucking outfit.

“She was smiling.”

That made a grin bloom on Chloe’s lips, her cheeks turning a delicate shade of pink. “She was, wasn’t she?” Then, she threw her fist into the air and jerked it back down by her side, shimmying her hips in her own little celly dance. “Mission one accomplished.”

“Mission one?”

“Well, mission two is to make you smile,” she said, poking her finger into my chest.

I had to fight against the urge to capture her hand in mine and pull her into me, to feel that soft body of hers pressed against me, to slide my hands into her hair and show her how much what she’d done meant to me.

“And then mission three is to make both of you laugh.”

“I smile,” I said defensively.

Chloe flattened her lips, crossing her arms again. “That little centimeter curve of the right side of your mouth doesn’t count.”

I scowled. “Who made you the smile police?”

Before she could answer, Ava was calling for her from upstairs, and I could hear the bathwater running.

Chloe shook her head at me on a grin, pointing at the kitchen. “Not sure if you already ate, but there’s leftover chicken zoodle stir fry in the fridge.”

“Zoodle?”

“You know, like noodles but made with zucchini.”

My eyebrows inched into my hairline. “You got my daughter to eat zucchini?”

Chloe grinned, satisfied with herself as she shimmied up to me. “Every bite.”

It was a miracle, and I knew my face said as much.

“You didn’t need to cook,” I said. “When Chef Patel takes off, we usually just order in.”

“I’m perfectly capable of making a well-balanced meal, Mr. Perry.”

“I wasn’t doubting you.”

“Mm-hmm.”

She gave me a sassy look over her shoulder before walking up the stairs. She was halfway up when I called out, “Thank you.”

“Ah, so he does still have manners.”

She winked at me, and then disappeared up the banister.

And I stood there in my kitchen with one hand scrubbing over my jaw, wondering how the hell I was supposed to resist that woman when she did shit like this.

• • •

After bath time, I relieved Chloe of her duty, taking over and reading Ava a book.

Of course, I didn’t get far into it before she was begging me to join a hockey team, saying she was ready and that Axel Swann in her class was on a hockey team and why couldn’t she be, too?

I promised her I’d look into it with my heart squeezing painfully in my chest. One, because I had no idea if I could find a league of girls, or one that would allow a co-ed situation. And two, because the thought of her getting hurt was enough to make me want to lock her in this bedroom of safety until she was twenty.

Still, I would have had to have been blind not to see how much joy just pretending to play had brought her tonight. I vowed to actually follow through on this promise and see if I could get her somewhere to play. At the very least, I could hire a coach for her. Maybe I could even fund a small league of girls if we had enough interest.

My mind was still spinning with those thoughts as I read to my daughter. She passed out just a few pages in, clutching her new jersey tight to her chest after begging me to let her sleep with it.

As if I could say no to the first thing to make her smile in I couldn’t remember how long.

I kissed her forehead once she was asleep, slipping out of her room and down the stairs with a long sigh leaving my chest. I was sore as hell from practice and the string of games we had, and we had another home game tomorrow night.

We were just a few games away from our bye week — and as much as I hated to rest too long during the season, I was looking forward to the break.

When I made it downstairs, I re-heated the leftovers Chloe had mentioned before sitting down on the couch. I had two Jeopardy recordings to catch up on, and I played the first one before taking a bite.

Damn.

How the hell did she make noodles made out of a fucking vegetable taste so good?

I shook the thought from my head, doing my damndest not to think too hard about the woman in my pool house as I settled in for the episode. Being upstairs with Ava had helped me clear my mind a bit, and I remembered staunchly why I needed to stop having fantasies about my kid’s nanny.

She was the first good one I’d ever had, and I’d be damned if I messed it up because my cock seemed to react every time she did something nice for me or Ava.

Okay, so maybe I was kidding myself with that. It wasn’t just when she treated Ava like her own, or when she did something around the house that she really didn’t have to, or when she made my life easier by doing what — in her words — was the bare minimum of a babysitter.

It was that she was fucking gorgeous.

It was that she walked around here every morning in that stupid robe with no bra on, and that she was sexy as hell even when she wore the most colorful, outrageous outfits. It was that she was witty and quick to call me on my shit. It was that she cared for three asshole cats like they were her kids and listened to more true crime podcasts than anyone I knew. It was that she spent an entire evening with my teammates’ partners, even though I knew it was out of her comfort zone.

Every small, ridiculous thing about her turned me on.

Which was a real fucking problem.

“What is Back to the Future?”

I blinked out of my haze, finding Chloe sauntering into the living room with a full glass of white wine in one hand, and a half-stitched project in the other. She was freshly showered, her hair damp and held back with a fuzzy headband — which was good, considering she had some sort of goopy green shit slathered on her face.

The giant t-shirt she had on was thin and stretched out like it’d been worn for years. It was navy blue and said Manifest the Matriarchy. It was so oversized that it made it look like she didn’t have pants on, but I caught a sliver of the small sweat shorts she had on underneath it as she walked across the living room.

It was the first time I’d seen her thighs, and from the way my heart stopped beating and my cock jolted to life, you would have thought I was a twelve-year-old boy sneaking my first look at a picture of boobs.

“Do you mind if I join you?” she asked, hesitation making her pause at my lack of reaction to her entering. “I know this is your space, but it gets kind of… quiet out there in the pool house by myself.”

I was still gaping at her, because apparently her body broke every fucking cog and wheel in my stupid brain.

“I can go,” she said, already turning when I finally found my voice.

“Please, sit,” I managed, clearing my throat. “Sorry, long day. My brain isn’t firing.”

Chloe offered a shy smile before she sat down at the opposite end of the couch from me with her eyes on the screen, completely oblivious to how she’d rendered me stupid. She took a sip of her wine before setting it on the side table.

“What is Pulp Fiction,” she said. The contestant on my TV mirrored her question, and Ken Jennings confirmed it was correct.

Chloe wiggled her shoulders at me, and I blinked, hoping my neck wasn’t as red as it felt.

“That was an easy one,” I managed to grind out.

“The easy ones still rack up the cash,” she combatted. “Besides, I haven’t heard you answer any.”

“I’m not in the habit of talking out loud when I’m alone.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “I get some of my best ideas that way.”

She pulled her cross-stitch into her lap then, picking up where she’d left off on what appeared to be a mushroom design.

I tried to focus on the TV and not on where her bare legs were just a few feet away from me, or how it was perfectly obvious that she didn’t have a bra on under that thin t-shirt, but very much failed.

My eyes kept sliding to her where her legs were crossed, to the delicate ankle that bounced a bit as she stitched, to where her thighs hugged each other in a tight seam that I wanted desperately to slide my hand between just to see how warm that nook was.

And if I let my gaze travel up enough, I’d have to fight back a groan at the sight of her nipples through her shirt, at the plump swells of her breasts.

Fuck, I wanted to touch her, to feel the weight of her in my hands, to hear her moan when I bent and took one of those pebbled buds into my mouth.

“I would not have taken you for a game show man,” Chloe said when a commercial came on.

I internally cursed and ripped my gaze to the screen, willing myself to calm down before my hard-on became too much to hide.

When I started fast-forwarding through the commercials, Chloe laughed. “Wow. A very dedicated game show man. You recorded this?”

I was thankful for the conversation. It helped me release my focus on her goddamn hypnotizing body — even if only marginally.

“I used to watch Jeopardy with my dad every night,” I explained. “Mom was more of a Wheel of Fortune fan. But Dad, he loved Jeopardy. He was smart enough to be a contestant, too. There was hardly ever a category that he didn’t know most of the answers to.”

Chloe smiled, laying her cross-stitch in her lap for a moment. “I love that. I bet it was fun for you, to have that time with your dad.”

“It was,” I agreed, frowning a bit because I hadn’t realized how much that small bit of time really had meant to me when I was younger. “I think it became even bigger after Mom passed. Dad was…” I swallowed. “Well, it was hard for him. Understandably. And I think sometimes he just didn’t know what to do with me.”

She nodded, her eyes on her lap before they flitted back to the screen. We watched the next round play out before I was fast-forwarding through another commercial break.

“I grew up with my mom and grandma,” she confessed, something of a smile on her goopy face. “I don’t think they knew what to do with me much, either. Other than warn me that men were an evil species, and I should stay far, far away from them.”

I arched a brow. “A bit harsh.”

“After their experiences, it was an absolute, irrefutable truth to them.”

“And you?”

She laughed, picking up her cross-stitch again. “Let’s just say I have had little evidence to prove otherwise, at least thus far.”

“Ouch,” I said, covering my chest like I was wounded by the words. Truth be told, I was a bit. “Am I so bad?”

“You don’t count,” she said, waving me off.

“And why’s that?”

“Because you’re clearly a rarity. One of the nice ones.”

“I don’t think anyone has ever called me nice.”

“Just because you’re grumpy doesn’t mean you’re an asshole,” she said, giving me a look like she saw right through me. “But you also don’t count because you’re not in the dateable sphere.”

Now I really was offended — for reasons unbeknownst to me because dating was the furthest thing from my mind. I didn’t want a girlfriend. I didn’t even want a friend. I knew the danger that came with both of those territories. I liked to be firmly in the fuck and flee category — and even that was rare.

But all those truths didn’t stop my prideful ass from asking, “And why is that?”

“You’re unattainable,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Your focus is your daughter and your career. Which is admirable,” she added quickly, as if she saw the hurt I was masking with a scowl. “But… if you’re not on the market, then you don’t count. And trust me when I say that most of the men who are on the market are… well…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, and she didn’t need to. I had enough rowdy teammates and memories from college to put the pieces together.

“I take it you haven’t had anyone sweep you off your feet, then?” I surmised.

She snorted. “One night with my head hanging off the bed and a Chingy song blasting in my ear was enough for me to realize the only sweeping that would be happening in my life would be me dusting away all my romantic fantasies.”

I was as confused as I was intrigued by her comment, but a timer went off on her phone, and she hopped up from her spot on the couch.

“Gotta wash this off,” she explained, motioning to the avocado-colored shit on her face. “Enjoy your show. See you in the morning.”

“Goodnight,” I managed, though my mind was racing now, and I wanted to follow her out to the pool house and question her about everything she’d just said.

Head hanging off the bed… was she referring to her first time having sex?

What the fuck was a Chingy?

And what romantic fantasies did she have… because there was a very animalistic part of me that very much wanted to fulfill them.

But the moment she disappeared out of the sliding glass door, the spell was broken, and it felt like a thousand hands were smacking me upside the head.

Get your shit together, Perry.

Chloe was the first nanny I’d had who checked every fucking box. She was fantastic with Ava, and Ava clearly adored her. Hell, my kid had smiled all night tonight.

Wasn’t it usually me bitching if the nanny came onto me? That was almost always my cue to kick them to the curb.

Now, here Chloe was, completely dedicated to the job and so at home already that she sat next to me in a face mask and the most god-awful pajamas I’d ever seen in my life, and yet somehow, she had me wanting to break my own rules.

It was dangerous, not just because it would put a good thing with Ava at risk, but because I was in no position to be anything near what Chloe deserved. That part of me that could be a good man to her, or anyone, had been broken a long time ago.

It died along with my wife, with the woman who had been my best friend.

And that was what messed me up most. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like this, that I’d been so overcome with the desire to touch a woman, to hold her, to…

Fuck.

I growled in frustration, flipping the TV off and storming back to my room.

Clearly, I needed to release some tension.

And I one-hundred percent would not do so while thinking about Chloe Knott.

Or so I told myself.

But the moment I was alone, my pants around my ankles and my throbbing cock in my fist, I pumped myself long and slow until the tension coiled inside me ripped through like an electric current.

And I pictured a copper-haired beauty with the curves of Aphrodite on her knees for me, those warm brown eyes watching as I pumped out every last drop on her chest.