Annette Blair (12 page)

“Can it, Ice Boy. If my ass is so hot, why did the Penis get the grope on every female with a pulse?”

Jason tried to take her arm, but she pulled away.

“For that matter, why did you let me fall out of the elevator and leave me there? Talk about rejection. Yeesh.”

JASON
couldn’t believe Kira thought he’d rejected her. He took her by the shoulders. “If I had stepped out of that elevator, Gracie would have known what we were up to. I stayed out of sight to save your reputation.”

“My what?” She mocked him with a laugh. “Get serious.”

“I am serious. A staff as big as ours would have been talking about you, looking down at you.”

“But not at you?”

“Well, no. I’m a Gilded Age throwback, remember? They expect me to—”

“Hit on anything that moves?”

“Speaking of hitting, Tillinghast must have been hit with a few too many fast balls, if he couldn’t see what he had in you.”

Kira looked as if he’d insulted her intelligence.

“What?” he challenged. “No comeback? Good. Damned if you haven’t been shocked silent, and about time. You don’t even know your own worth. That deadbeat ballplayer
hurt you and I’m sorry, but stop hiding behind all that black. I like the real you.”

She stood so still, Jason was able to run his hands through her crown of copper curls, the way a kid tests a candle flame to see if he can touch it without getting burned. “Tell me the real reason you always dress in black,” he said.

“The real me wears black,” she said so softly, he barely heard, but her eyes spoke a different language, one comprising heat and desire, “to look professional.”

“You do look professional, but you also look sexy as hell. I see sex in those straps you call shoes, in defiance of everything, including the weather. I see sex in your black outfits, even if you don’t, but I can’t help feeling you’re hiding under there.”

“Get real. What you see is what you get.”

“Do I?”

When she didn’t answer, he continued. “Why are you trying to play down your natural sexuality? You’re not a nun. You’re a . . . a—” He looked at her sandals. “Inside, I think you’re a butterfly, colorful, flamboyant, and you should be proud of it.”

She turned away, crossed her arms, and gazed silently through Kingston’s wall of pocket windows to study the sea.

“Tell me the truth,” Jason said, coming up behind her and daring to run his hands down her arms. “Do you wear black because you’re a witch? Do you wear it because you’re hiding your true nature? Or are you actually mourning the loss of that lousy scum-sucking relationship?”

Kira turned on him so fast, Jason stepped back.

“I like black, damn it! It’s nobody’s business but mine what color I wear.” She went around him and grabbed her purse off a marble-top console table. “You’re my boss, not my fashion consultant. I dress in a businesslike manner for my job, and that should be enough. I believe I’m allowed to wear whatever color I choose, thank you very much.” She checked her watch. “We’d better get a move on; hockey practice started five minutes ago.”

“Shit!”

Jason’s ire cooled as she ran through an icy rain toward the Hummer. If his feet were cold, hers must be freezing in those sandals. He got in, shut the door and swore beneath his breath as he divested himself of his raincoat. He threw it over her lap and tucked it around her feet, then he placed his suit jacket over her shoulders, fighting her for a minute to keep it there.

When she pulled it closed at the front and shivered inside it, he was satisfied she’d keep it.

“A sweater’s not warm enough!” He started the engine, put the heat on high, and broke the speed limit getting them to the rink.

“It’s a sweater coat, but . . . thanks for the . . . extras,” she said, her belated gratitude barely tempered by her resentment.

Jason figured she had a right to be miffed. He didn’t know which of them was acting weirder. Her, for shrouding her true nature in black, and failing to protect herself from the elements. Or him, for trying to protect her . . . from what? Herself?

She’d gotten this far without him, hadn’t she? Why should she listen to someone she’d just met? And why the hell should he care whether she listened or not?

A shiny yellow bus—St. Anthony’s painted in royal blue letters on the side—sat waiting at the door to the Cloud Kiss rink.

Unfortunately, some aspiring artist/delinquent had painted a huge
sucks
beneath St. Anthony’s in bold red letters.

“Don’t tell me he drove it through Newport like that?” Kira said, sitting up, the first sign of life since they’d argued.

“Betcha it’s only on the driver’s side. Those nuns are gonna croak,” Jason said, trying not to show his amusement.

Kira must have sensed it, though, because she gave him a double take, before looking back at the bus in appalled horror.

Most of the twenty-some boys who had signed up were hanging out the windows cheering their arrival. The bus rocked as if the rest were bouncing off floor, walls, and ceiling.

Jason stroked the Hummer’s leather-covered steering wheel. “This baby is loaded with soundproofing,” he said. “I can’t wait to hear those boys up close.”

Kira tossed his raincoat over his head. As Jason pulled his coat down to clear his vision, he felt an icy draft and saw her door slam. When he spotted her, she was running between the raindrops toward the rink, his suit jacket wrapped tight around her. Good thing they’d left their arena gear in the dressing room this morning. He’d feel better when she was wearing more clothes.

Had he ever had a weirder thought? That witch was distorting his perspective on everything.

Jason cursed, locker-room style, and left the quiet safety of his truck. Kira had screwed him up, and down, and all around, because she left him to quiet the boys by himself. “Screw me,” Jason said, raising his collar against the icy rain.

He was right; the door side of the bus had
not
been desecrated, so no one in St. Anthony’s garage could have seen it. Jason knocked and the door swung open, old Mr. Peebles, the school’s janitor-driver ready to weep in gratitude.

Jason barely said hello before he was forced to step gingerly aside, as the boys flooded out like the bulls on the streets of Pamplona.

“They’ll calm down when they’re not so confined!” Jason yelled to the driver.

“Yeah, right,” Peebles said with a laugh. “Have fun. I’ll be back at five to pick up the pieces.”

“Wait,” Jason said. “You might want to pull into that big garage and get my caretaker to see if he can scare up some body paint for the other side of the bus before you get back on the streets. Do Sister Margaret a favor and hide the evidence.”

Peebles swore before he ever got out to view the damage.

Two long agonizing hours awaited him, Jason realized as he followed the boys into the rink, sending them to the benches where they’d put on their skates.

He’d told Sister Margaret that if she dressed them for two hours on the ice, he’d provide their skates and hockey sticks. Since Kira hadn’t emerged from the dressing room, he might end up having to sort shoe sizes and hand out skates by himself as well.

When he opened the lockers, new skates and sticks inside, the boys hushed, as if in church. Jason sighed in appreciation and let the silence wash over him.

Kira appeared, dressed warm, praise be, and stopped when she saw the gazes on the boys’ faces, and the relief on his.

With a nod and almost a grin, she took immediate charge of the boys, and of him, truth to tell, and began taking off shoes and checking sizes in her usual efficient manner.

Instead of the edge she showed the rest of the world, she gave the boys smiles and hair strokes, as if she were a Kira Jason hadn’t known existed. One minute she was the wand-wielding witch, the next, the staid businesswoman, but this Kira was painted in soft pastels and existed on a plane somewhere between the butterfly he longed to meet and the witch he liked sparring with.

Did he like sparring with her? Who knew?

He only suspected she hid a bright side, of course, and he’d seen the witch side, but now this. How many more layers did she possess, he wondered, and why did he want to know them all?

In the first ten minutes, before lessons had even begun, half the boys fell in love with her. Jason studied their faces. In each of them, excitement and adoration were tempered by a kind of preservation instinct he was sorry they’d already learned to employ.

He hadn’t spotted Travis, not yet, but he remembered how the boy’s grin about buckled his knees.

He’d dealt with kids at every rink he played in. Why had that one child affected him, even before he’d asked to be adopted?

A small hand slipped into his, and Jason knew before he looked, because he remembered the unwelcome chest tug.

Prepared to be strong, Jason looked down, set to smile, but he got a shock, because he saw double. “Two of you,” he said. “There are two?”

Except for the dimples on opposite cheeks, they were identical: their grins, their cowlicks, their freckles, the red hair . . . the jelly on their chins. Jason chuckled.

Travis nodded, one hand in Jason’s, one clutching his twin’s. “Zane wants to play hockey, too,” Travis said, and the tug on Jason’s chest became an all-out clutch.

Zane was wearing a leg brace.

JASON
and Kira managed to get all the boys on skates, except for Zane, whose brace was connected to a special shoe, so it wouldn’t work with a skate, and without it, he couldn’t stand.

Zane was a trooper and took it with good grace, especially when his twin hesitated to take advantage of his own perfectly fitted skates. “Go skate, Travis,” Zane said with an excited smile. “I wanna see
you
do it.”

“No,” Travis said, looking wistfully down at his skates, “I’m gonna sit with you for a while.”

Kira came over and took them both to the bench. Like a hen with her chicks, she tucked Wizards stadium blankets around them and gave them hot chocolate and cookies.

Jason shook his head as he turned toward the rest of the crew. Before he could give them hockey lessons, they needed skating lessons. He was really working from the bottom up, here. But they were supposed to be having fun, weren’t they? So maybe he’d hang loose and let that happen.

He turned to coax Travis on the ice, just in time to see the boy throw himself into Kira’s arms. Uh-oh.

When she gazed his way, Jason gave her a sympathetic look, realizing her expression must mirror the one he’d worn that day in the schoolyard. She was as shocked and hooked by the boy’s adoption request as he’d been.

The difference was that Travis had managed to knock his latest mark on her fine little ass.

Jason grinned and gave her a salute much like the one she’d given him on her first day, but she scowled at the gesture, rose, dusted herself off, and pulled the boy close, as if to protect him.

Jason knew exactly how she felt.

Wishing he could be out there skating with the boys, he wasn’t satisfied until two-thirds of them were steady on their feet, some actually skating, some putt-putting along like Model T’s on a bad road, others grinning just to be standing, one or two with their arms spread like wings.

At any given moment a third of them went down, face or bottom first. Good thing they’d stocked up on ice packs.

Jason found himself grinning a great deal more than he expected.

“Tell Travis to come and skate,” he called to Kira, and she nodded, grudgingly, and spoke to the boy, because she knew as well as he did that Travis should take every opportunity given him.

It took her quite a while to convince the boy. Jason watched the series of stubborn headshakes and glances Travis gave Kira and his brother, an indication of his stubbornness. But finally Kira took Zane on her lap and urged his twin sternly forward, sending one of her chicks from the nest. Travis had no choice but to turn and come in Jason’s direction.

“Is Zane gonna be okay?” Travis asked, pointing his thumb over his shoulder in his brother’s direction.

“He sure is. Kira’s gonna keep him company, so they can watch you together. See how happy Zane looks?”

Travis did look, and he turned back to Jason with a grin.
“He looks like her little boy. See, their hair is the same color. And they both gots freckles.”

“Yes, I do see,” Jason said, surprised and warmed by the observation, until Travis tugged on his sleeve to regain his attention.

“Ready to skate now?” Jason asked, putting on the pair of climbing boots he’d bought himself.

“Okay,” Travis said as he stepped onto the ice, wobbled for half a beat, and caught his balance. With a grin he put one skate in front of the other, caught the rhythm, and kept going, a natural on the ice.

At the beginning of the second hour, against his better judgment, but caving to the boys’ begging, in the name of fun, Jason emptied a bag of pucks on the edge of the ice.

Kira and Zane handed out sticks, according to Jason’s instructions, based on the size of each child.

He studied the boys—faces eager, stance at the ready, and was almost, almost, glad Kira had suggested the lessons.