Page 42 of Coast to Coast

Crew finished washing his hands, and I handed him a cloth to dry before setting him on the floor. He took off into the family room and settled in to play with his train set.

“Does he always run everywhere?” I asked without expecting an answer.

“Hate to break it to you, but his parents are both athletes. Kelsey ran track in college, and he’s surrounded by even more with Sam and his family. Don’t expect him to chill out too often. He’s probably going to climb shit and get hurt almost daily.”

“Can I put pads on him?” I joked. And a shirt on you, please put a shirt on, please, please, please.

“Only when he’s on the ice,” Tom said, sensing my tension yet doing nothing to reduce it. Fucker must enjoy it. “Speaking of the ice, we have a family event next weekend. It’s a family skate event. Can you bring him? I’ll have the second car by midweek. I’d like you both to come, but I know that doesn’t give you much time off before you fly back to Boston.”

“Sure. Has he ever skated before?” I asked, doing my best to pretend I was unaffected by him.

“Nope, we’ll have milk crates for him to push around, and his helmet should be here midweek. But he hasn’t tried to skate yet…it could be interesting.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Crew has two speeds, asleep or full speed ahead. I expect him to resist the milk crates and then get pissed when he’s not skating as fast as everyone else.”

“Well, then he’ll feel better when I fall on my ass next to him.”

“You can’t skate?” he asked, tipping his head to the side with a slight shake. “But you ski?”

“It’s not that I can’t skate, I can. I’m just not very good at it. But at least I’m not afraid of falling.”

“Kiwi! Come see!” Crew yelled for me to join him. When I met him in the family room, it was clear that he needed a bit of help getting the train tracks lined up to run his train.

“Hey…coffee?” Tom yelled from the kitchen while he cleaned up the rest of breakfast.

“Please. Black?”

He nodded, and a few minutes later, he brought me a steaming cup of coffee, setting it down on the end table and putting it out of Crew’s reach. Yeah, I might be imagining a shirtless Tom bringing me coffee in bed some morning.

“Are you hungry? There are pancakes left,” his question startled me as it interrupted my thoughts.

“No thanks, I’ll probably just have peanut butter toast in a bit.”

Tom left us and headed back into the kitchen. A few minutes later, he returned with two slices of bread slathered with peanut butter.

“Oh, I wasn’t asking you to make it for me. Thanks,” I said.

“You’re welcome. Music?” he asked, holding the phone in his hand. “I can set you up on the Sonos system if you want to run it.”

“You pick,” I said, almost spitting out my coffee when Taylor Swift’sOur Songblasted through the house.

He quickly turned down the volume but left on the music. “Sorry, guilty pleasure. Might also be a guilty pleasure for most of the team.”

“You guys know she likes football players?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, we all know she’s out of our league.”

Which was when I noticed that Crew was doing a damn good job singing along to the music. And yeah, he was a toddler, but he stayed on key naturally and made up for any lack of skill with more than a bit of enthusiasm. If you’d told me a month ago that I would have so much fun hanging out playing trains and singing Taylor Swift with a toddler.

When I finished my toast, I stood to bring the plate to the kitchen, Tom following me and standing inches from me. If I just leaned back, I’d be able to feel the entire length of his body up against mine. I took a sharp breath in.

“Everything okay?” He asked, his breath hot on my neck.

“Um, do you always go shirtless around here?” I asked, the heat of his body apparent as he came as close as possible without making contact.

“Is that your line, Callie? Is the no-shirt thing a red flag for you?” he asked.

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