I’ve been on those trips before, and they’re unforgettable. We’ll mostly be on a yacht, hosting parties and going to parties on other yachts. And we’ll also explore on land and do some shopping.
Audra and Kyle weren’t invited, even though I told my dad I didn’t mind if he invited them. He said being trapped on a boat with Kyle and Lucien at the same time isn’t really a vacation for him.
Which, fair. After all the wedding antics, I’m sure one or both of them would end up being thrown overboard at least once. Dad’s not a Kyle fan, for obvious reasons, but he likes Lucien. He just doesn’t want to be seen as giving him preferential treatment, so he treats him like all his other players.
Suki is back to opening gifts, and I turn to look at my dad again. The woman is sitting close to him again, laughing. Dad’s lips are quirking with a smile. I furrow my brow with disapproval.
She’s way too young for him. He’s still newly divorced—it hasn’t even been a year yet. But she’s gazing adoringly at him, like she wants him to put a baby in her immediately.
I lean closer to Lucien. “Look at the fetus flirting with my dad.”
“I saw.”
That makes me smile. He refuses to look again, because he doesn’t want me to think he’s gawking at another woman.
“How old do you think she is?”
He gives me a neutral look, keeping his voice soft. “I think we should talk about that later.”
Suki finishes opening all the gifts, and Harry’s servers start to bring out dessert plates. He made a delicious lunch of cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, smoked salmon sandwiches, and salad. He’s also serving individual lemon tarts, in keeping with the yellow color scheme, since Suki and Carter decided not to find out their baby’s gender until it’s born.
The tarts even have powdered sugar stars dusted on top. Lucien only has two bites of his before pushing the plate aside.
“It’s amazing,” he says, setting his fork down. “I wasn’t going to have any, but then I saw it and I had to.”
He’s on a no-sugar diet in the home stretch of the hockey season. The team is in a tight race for a playoff spot, so the players have all tightened up their diets and training routines.
I get to be on the team bench during games now, and it’s my favorite part of the job. Melina and I go out on the ice to assess injuries, and we bandage cuts and check injuries for players who are on the bench.
Even though I’m not a player, I feel like part of the game now. A Nashville player came tumbling over the wall onto our bench last week, and even though Silas blocked him from landing right on top of me, a bead of his sweat still splashed onto my arm.
I get to be front and center for the chirping between players now, and I see why Lucien’s teammates sometimes call him Loki. He’s an instigator, throwing opponents off their game as often as he can.
The shower is wrapping up, people starting to leave, when Lainey approaches me.
“Hey, are you free for some shopping sometime? I have to get a swimsuit for our trip and I’d rather do literally anything else. Maybe we could make it fun somehow. Like not shop for swimsuits and go out to eat instead.”
She and Bash are taking a trip to Fiji in the offseason, and she’s pretending she’s excited about it to him, but secretly she’s freaking out about wearing a swimsuit the entire time, her very fair skin getting crisped in the sun, and the possibility that the water there will give her an IBS flare.
“I’d love that,” I say. “I need to buy a couple suits myself for our trip.”
“Sunday?”
“I can’t do it that day. Lucien’s sister and brother-in-law are coming to visit.” I mentally consider my schedule. “What about Wednesday afternoon?”
“I might be working. I’ll check my schedule and send you some options for dates.”
“Perfect.”
Lucien recently told me the full extent of his sister’s battle with cancer. She’d just found out she was pregnant when she was diagnosed with the same kind of breast cancer that killed their mother. After many conversations with her husband and medical team, she and her husband made the agonizing decision to end the pregnancy.
I’m excited about meeting her. She’s been cancer-free for eight months. Their visit will just be for the weekend, but we’re going to make the most of it. We have a dinner reservation at Harry’s restaurant Friday night and a home game Saturday night.
Suki hugs me when Lucien and I tell her we’re leaving.
“This was so beautiful,” she says. “Thank you for everything you did.”
“You deserve it. And it was mostly Mara and Harry.”
