Cade: Fire And Ice: A Second Chance Hockey Romance (16 page)

The week I spent in North Falls with Ellie, her brothers and Christopher was eye-opening. When we were in high school I'd always thought of her home life as a grim, ongoing disaster, and one I couldn't rescue her from. Because I'd barely seen her since then I'd just assumed it was still that way, but I was completely wrong. The boys were thriving. The family Ellie had helped create, the one she stood firmly at the head of, was happy - much happier than my own or that of anyone I knew. Christopher was still too young to understand the differences between people who had money and people who didn't, but Jacob, David and Baby Ben all knew damn well that if they ruined one pair of shoes the next one was coming from the second-hand store for five dollars and not from the sporting goods store at the mall for two hundred. And none of them resented it. Somehow, Ellie had managed to raise them with a sense of realism and a lack of entitlement that was so rare I'm not even sure I'd ever seen it before in young people, including myself.

Phone calls from Kings' staff and teammates started getting more frequent as the first week stretched into the second. I knew I wasn't going to be able to stay in North Falls for much longer as people got antsy about my absence from physical therapy sessions and understandably if mistakenly worried about me falling back into old habits. I could have told them I was in North Falls with the love of my life, the beautiful son I'd only just found out about and the rest of the family, but no one would have believed it. Well, almost no one. My mother texted me one night as I lay in bed with Ellie, cuddling.

"Hello, Caden. I'm starting to worry about you. Are you in North Falls with that woman?"

I groaned.

"What?" Ellie asked, looking up.

"My mom. She's all stressed out because she doesn't know exactly what I'm up to."

"Let me see."

I considered not letting Ellie see the text but she knew what my mother was like and since there was no question as to whose side I was on, I passed her the phone. She made a face as she read it.

"Ugh, Cade. What are you going to tell her?"

"The truth, Ellie. Do you think I'm too scared of my mom to let her know where I am?"

Ellie shrugged and I let it go. She had every right to wonder whether or not I was still under my parents' thumb. When I'd composed a reply, I showed it to Ellie before sending it.

"I'm in North Falls with Ellie Hesketh, yes. I'll be back in Los Angeles soon, no need to worry about me."

Ellie looked at me. "Cade, you know she's going to freak out, right?"

"Yeah, probably. My mom can freak out all she wants. I'm here, with you, and she's going to have to deal with it."

"OK."

She didn't sound entirely convinced. I couldn't blame her. After she fell asleep I lay there in bed, thinking. I had to go back to Los Angeles. It felt like ten years ago all over again. But things had changed in those ten years. Ellie's brothers weren't small anymore. Jacob was months away from being a legal adult. Was it possible to do things differently this time? To bring Ellie and our son and the boys with me? I was scared to even hope for it. North Falls was all any of them had ever known. I knew what I had to do. I'd known it for years, actually, but it wasn't until Ellie showed up at my front gate that it became something that could conceivably happen rather than the fantasy it had previously been.

I put my hand on Ellie's shoulder and shook her, gently.

"Cade? What? Again?"

I chuckled quietly. "Ha! No, it's not that - unless you want it to be?"

She rolled over, smiling.

"I'm actually a little sore. I can't believe I'm sore from having too much sex, what are you doing to me?"

I bent down and kissed her mouth.

"I'll give you tonight, Ellie. No promises after that. I actually - I just wanted to ask you something."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I was wondering if you would be OK with me taking Christopher camping this weekend, just the two of us. Is that something you think he would like?"

Ellie reached out and ran one finger along my jawline, leaning in to kiss my chin when she got to it.

"Cade, he thinks you're superman. He'd probably spend all weekend cleaning the house with you if you asked. Where were you thinking of going?"

"Oh, just out to Lake Westwood, not far. I'll have my phone on me, obviously."

I was lying through my teeth, tense with adrenaline over the plan I'd concocted in my head. Ellie said if Christopher wanted to go and if I promised to call her twice a day to check in, she was fine with me taking him. So when he came home from kindergarten the next day he was bursting with excitement, chattering non-stop as we drove out to the airport. As soon as he saw the planes, he looked up at me, confused.

"Cade? Daddy? Is this where we're camping?"

He still hadn't settled on what to call me and I was letting him work it out for himself.

"No, Christopher. We're not actually going camping. We're going to surprise mommy."

"Are we?!" He started bouncing up and down. "What's the surprise? Where are we going?"

"Well," I started, sitting down in one of the hard, plastic chairs in the airport lounge and pulling my giggling son onto my lap, "do you know what getting married is?"

Christopher thought about it for a little while, studying my face.

"Is it when a lady wears a white dress and a man wears a suit? And they wear rings?"

"Yes, that's what happens at a wedding."

"And then," my son paused adorably to ponder whether or not his idea of marriage was correct, "they live together and they have a baby?"

"Sometimes they have a baby before they get married."

"Do they?"

"Yes. I was thinking of asking your mommy if she wants to get married to me."

"Will you live together then?"

"I hope so, yes."

"Would I be there? Would Baby Ben and David and Jacob be there?"

"Yes, Christopher. Your mommy would never leave you and she would never leave your uncles, either. If she got married to me, of course you would be there, and so would they."

"You're getting married to my mommy?"

"Only if she says yes. I have to ask her first, and we would only get married if she wanted to. Is that something you would like?"

I had anticipated some natural hesitance from Christopher but there was none. He grinned and wrapped his arms around my neck.

So we flew to New York, my little lookalike son and I, and went to Tiffany and Co. to pick out a ring for me to propose to Ellie with. I knew if I'd asked her about rings she would have told me she didn't want anything ostentatious or showy. Ellie is nothing if not frugal. But the urge to go at least somewhat crazy was too strong to resist. If you can't splash out on an engagement ring for a woman who has never been spoiled in her life, then what can you splash out on? Eventually, after more than three hours in the turquoise-bedecked store and two trips by sales assistants to fetch snacks for my increasingly fractious son, I settled on a ring. A flawless, three and a half carat Asscher-cut diamond surrounded by a halo of smaller, blush pink diamonds and set simply in white gold. It was going to take a week to have ready so Christopher and I had to fly back to Michigan without it, while I tried repeatedly to impress upon him the importance of not mentioning a single thing to his mother. I actually took him out to Lake Westwood for the afternoon when we got back to North Falls, so we could throw rocks in the water and go for a short hike. He was going to have to tell Ellie something when she asked how camping had gone.

Mostly, Christopher contained himself, although he came close to exploding with the news a couple of times, once at dinner when he suddenly jumped out of his chair yelling "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" and Ellie asked him what was going on.

"Mommy! Cade is-"

"Christopher!" I interjected, shaking my head at him and giving him a stern look which caused him to sit back down and press his lips together like the news was literally trying to burst out of his mouth. I wasn't even sure he was going to spill but I knew the secret was burning a hole in his consciousness and he wasn't going to be able to keep it in for long. Later on, after dinner when Ellie and I were washing dishes, she turned to me.

"So what exactly has gotten into you and Christopher? You guys are acting weird."

"Are we?"

Ellie chuckled and took a step back, eyeballing me skeptically. "Cade, come on, are you serious? I'm not a total idiot and you two are definitely up to something."

"Hmmm...I don't know about that, Ellie."

She wasn't buying it, but she just laughed and went back to the dishes, rightfully confident that one of us, either me or our son, was going to crack soon enough.

The day the ring arrived I went to the post office and then drove back to Ellie's place with the package sitting on the seat beside me. I kept looking over at it when I was stopped at red lights and feeling little curls of nervousness winding their way around my spine. What was she going to say? I knew she loved me - I kept repeating it to myself over and over so as not to go crazy. But what about everything else? Was she going to be open to moving to Los Angeles with the boys? And if she wasn't, was she willing to go long-distance for a couple of years until my contract with the Kings was up? What if she said no? Was I going to be able to resist the temptation to crawl back to L.A. with my tail between my legs and fall right back into the party lifestyle I'd only recently managed to extricate myself from?

None of it mattered until I asked. Which I did later that night as the last shudders of Ellie's orgasm shook her soft thighs against my cheeks and her fingers relaxed their grip on my hair.

"Oh my God, Cade. Oh my
God
. How do you do that?"

I gave her a cocky grin and kissed one of her thighs before crawling up her body and kissing her mouth. She reached down between us and stroked her hand up my hard cock but I grabbed her wrist before it was too late.

"Stop, Ellie."

She laughed and went right back to stroking me.

"No, Ellie," I gasped, squeezing my eyes shut and willing my brain to stay in control, "wait, wait a second. I need - I need to - there's something important."

"Really, Cade? Is there something more important than this right now?"

She squeezed my cock when she said the word 'this' and I almost lost it.

"Yes. Ellie...please, yes, this is very important. Just...wait, please."

I had to get off the bed and stand there for a few seconds running my hands through my hair and willing my dick to cool down. Ellie was watching me, baffled.

"Cade, what the hell are you up to?"

My pants, which had the ring box in the pocket, were lying on the floor where I'd thrown them. I picked them up and sat down on the bed, far enough away from Ellie that she wouldn't be able to reach me.

"Ellie?"

"Yes? Cade? Are you losing your mind?"

"No, but I want you to listen to me. Just for a few minutes. I have something I want to say."

She must have heard the seriousness in my voice, because she sat back a little and stopped laughing.

"OK, Cade. Is this about going back to Los Angeles?"

"Well, yes, in a way."

"Cade, I know you have to go back, you don't have to-"

"Ellie! Let me finish, woman!"

She held up her hands and smiled. "OK, alright, I'll be quiet."

I knew she thought I was going to give her a talk about leaving, about how I had to do it. I knew she was expecting a series of vague promises about the future. Most other women would have guessed what I was up to but if I knew one thing about Ellie Hesketh, it was that she never expected good news. Nothing in her life had taught her to do so. If she was willing to have me, I was going to do every damn thing I could to change that.

"Ellie," I started, taking a long, deep breath, "I love you. Do you know that?"

She reached out and stroked my ankle, the one part of me that she could reach.

"Yes, Cade, I know it."

"Good. So we've established that. I love you. I want to be with you, all the time. I want to take care of you and my son and your brothers. I'm not willing to leave you again without making things official, either."

I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out the turquoise blue box and bless Ellie and her complete lack of materialism, she didn't even recognize it. I got down on one knee beside the bed and saw it click in her eyes.

"Cade, ohhh..."

"Ellie Hesketh. You are the only woman I have ever loved. You are everything I have ever needed in life. When I'm not with you, you're all I think about. When I am with you, I'm happy. I want to make you happy, beautiful Ellie. For the rest of our lives. I want to be a father to our son. Will you marry me?"

The seconds stretched out crazily as my heart nearly pounded out of my chest and Ellie sat on the bed staring at me. Finally, finally, it seemed to sink in.

"Oh Cade. Oh my God. Are you - Cade are you
serious
?"