Gentry threw an arm around his mother's aproned waist. "Mom, you know we're eighteen, right? You don't need to make sure we have enough food in our pockets."
She swatted him in the ribs. "Don't tell me what I don't need to do in my own kitchen. It's six o'clock in the morning and that girl needs more meat on her bones."
Jenna laughed. "I'll take another biscuit, Mrs. Maddox."
Gentry rolled his eyes, kissed his mother on the cheek, then walked over and dropped into the chair next to her at the table. "You still think Ryan's going to be on time?"
Jenna eyed the clock on the stove. It was already six 'o five. "Anne said she was going to drag him out of bed as needed."
"Anne's too nice for that."
"You haven't seen her on the ice lately, hey?"
Gentry grinned and wrapped his hand over her knee under the table. "I haven't seen you on the ice lately. When's your next game?"
"You know I'm not going to tell you."
His hand traced higher on her thigh, and Jenna's eyes widened. "Then I'll have to get the information out of you."
Jenna grabbed his hand before it went higher and shot a look at his mother behind them at the stove. "I don't like it when people come to my games."
"I don't understand that at all."
"Yes you do. You, Curtis, and Ryan always joke about how girls’ sports are boring compared to men's."
"Not boring when it's you I’m watching."
She dragged his hand out from under the table. "I don't want pity viewership."
Gentry leaned in, his breath whispering against her neck. "It's not pity viewership if I get turned on watching you slam other women into the boards."
"Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
Gentry nibbled her earlobe before she could catch his chin in her hand. His eyes danced as she arranged her face into her most stern expression.
"You know I want to be recognized for what I can do on the ice, not just for what I look like under my pads, right?"
Gentry sobered. "You know I'm flirting, but I actually think you're a kick-ass player, right?"
She let him worry a few seconds more before giving him a peck on the lips. "Yeah. I know."
"Jenna?"
She blinked, and her head snapped toward Terry's voice. "Hmm?"
"Did you want butter and jam or just jam? Janice pulled out raspberry since she knows you don’t love strawberry." He held out a plate with two halves of a steaming biscuit.
Jenna’s throat tightened. "Both, please. Thank you."
_____
Country took his time walking up to the back steps of his parents’ house. He'd watched Jenna's car drive past his house, then saw her hesitate before pulling into his old driveway. Seemed Dad struck at exactly the right time. He grinned to himself imagining what that reunion had been like. He still hadn't gone a single six-month period without one of his parents asking if he'd heard from Jenna lately. No matter how many times he'd told them they hadn't spoken in years, the facts didn't seem to make any impact.
Perhaps that would've changed if he'd ever dated anyone else seriously. Since he'd only ever introduced them to a girl he was dating on accident, he could understand why they'd used her as a fallback.
His boots clomped on the wooden steps as he ascended to the back door. He stepped inside to the smell of coffee and biscuits and the sound of his mother's laughter. If that wasn't the best way to wake up in the morning. It definitely beat Polk ribbing him about still using the mug he'd won at the Stampede when he was fifteen.
"Gentry, get in here," his mother called. He slipped off his muck boots and padded into the kitchen. "Did you really force this poor girl out here when it's negative twenty just so she can talk to you about doing Hockey Evening in Canada?"
