Page 66 of Bountiful
Zara cubed a piece of meat into bite-sized pieces and cut several green beans in half. “Here,” she said, bringing the plate closer to where Nicole sat inherlap.
But the baby pointed at the potatoes in their casserole dish andsquawked.
“Hmm,” Zara grumbled. “If you eat those, I’ll probably be wearing that cheese on my dress.” But she reached for the serving spoonanyway.
“Shouldn’a got all fancied up to try to impress your man, then,” Ottorumbled.
Zara glared at him, and I developed a fascination with my lasagna, pretending I hadn’t heard thatcomment.
“So what do you do for a living?” Artaskedme.
Let the grilling commence. I was surprised I’d made it this long without being questioned. “Hockey,”Isaid.
“That’s not a job,” hegrunted.
“There’s no desk, if that’s what you mean,” I said lightly. “But it pays, and it keeps me busy. I play eighty-five games during the regular season, and sometimes we make the playoffs. Keeps me off thestreets.”
“Did you go to college?” Ottoasked.
Did you?my inner smart-ass wanted to fire back. But I reined it in. I’d basically come here to be grilled, not that it was fun. “I didn’t finish college. The NHL signed me after my sophomore year. And I had bills to pay so it wasn’t a tough decision to leave the University ofMichigan.”
I’d been a decent student before I’d dropped out, but the NHL paycheck had been impossible to resist, since it would allow me to pay Bess’s college tuition and still feed myself. Who wouldn’t make thatchoice?
“Still have your teeth?” Benito asked,smiling.
“Mostly. But my dental bill is pretty brutal.” Like everyone else in hockey, I had a mouth full of crowns. Not my favorite topic. “I chew carefully now. It could beworse.”
“How many years do you think you’ve got left?” he asked, watching me with a thoughtfulexpression.
“On earth? A bunch, I hope. In hockey, maybe five.” Okay, that was probably a stretch. “Maybe less,” I amended. “But I don’t like to thinkthatway.”
Zara’s mother piled on. “What’s yourPlanB?”
The questions just kept flying. And I hated that one. “Not quite sure yet,” I admitted. “Some guys coach, some work in the media.” I happened to hate sports-TV, so that wasn’t really a good choice for me. But the Rossi family didn’t get to hear all my secrets. I cut another bite of lasagna with my fork. “This is really fabulous,” I said, and meant it. “I don’t really eat carbs during the off-season but I am going to have to finish this,anyway.”
“You drink beer,” Zarapointedout.
“Yeah. That’s why I don’t eat carbs.” I lifted another forkful. “During the season I can eat and drink almost anything, and I still drop weight. During the summer I have to be a little more careful. The Chinese takeout place knows me as that weirdo who doesn’t want any rice with hisorder.”
“Thatisweird,” she said, offering Nicole a tiny bite of potato on the end of aspoon.
I glanced at her plate, which still held only baby bites of food. “Don’t you get to eat?” Iasked.
“In a minute,”shesaid.
Well, then. It was obviously time to make the point I’d come here to make—that I’d stand by Zara and her baby if she needed me to. So I pushed my plate forward, out of the way. Then I offered my hands to take the baby. “Switch?”
The corners of Zara’s mouth turned up in amusement, and I waited to see what she’d say. And everyone else watched us as carefully as a season finale onGame ofThrones.
But Zara’s mother jumped out of her chair and came around to take Nicole herself. “Finish that lasagna,” she ordered me. “I only make it a few times a year. And I’ll take care ofthebaby.”
She’d fired me before I’d even begunmyjob.
Alec gotchatty as the meal wore on, taking some of the focus away from me. “I think all those emails I wrote to travel bloggers are paying off. The summer tourists have found TheGinMill.”
“It’s either that or the fact that you’re sleeping with that woman from the distributor,” Benito teased him. “You never run out of the hard-to-get beersanymore.”
Alec grinned, and Mrs. Rossi gave them both asternlook.
