Page 8 of The Winging It Holiday Special

Dante smiled. “Me too. Mine’s waiting for me in bed right now.”

“Oh well. Can’t blame a girl for trying.” A second later her smile returned, this one a little mischievous. “Surprise curfew enforcement sounds like it’ll be pretty entertaining, at least.”

Dante liked this woman. He tilted his beer bottle toward her, and she clinked the neck of hers against it. “Happy to be of service.” Then he amended, “Someservice.”

She cackled.

The next time the server came by, when Bogs raised his head to call her over, Dante cut him off with a sharp shake of his head.

Bogs blinked at him. “Aww, no. Already?”

Crunch’s brow wrinkled in confusion, and he looked over from where he’d been deep in conversation with Twyla’s friend. “What? What’s the matter?”

With a world-weary sigh, Bogs laid it out. “Curfew, bro. Baller got sent out to chaperone.”

Crunch polished off the last of his beer, his shoulders slumping. “Man, your husband is the biggest buzzkill.”

That it was Gabe who sent Dante out to corral the stragglers was a carefully crafted fiction. People expected that from the captain. Dante wasn’t about to tell them he did it of his own initiative. “Not his fault you guys took too long to seal the deal.” Twyla’s friend snorted into her drink. “Sorry to disappoint, ladies.”

The server did swing around again—this time after catching Dante’s eye—and he handed her a few folded bills. “The next round for our friends, please, since I’m depriving them of their companions.”

Twyla snickered. “Why do I get the impression this isn’t your first rodeo?”

In answer, Dante winked and tipped an imaginary cowboy hat as he stood. Bogs and Crunch and the call-ups stood too, like good little ducklings. “Better luck with your next steers.”

He got the whole group back to the hotel with five minutes to spare. Mission accomplished and job well done. He let himself back into the hotel room as quietly as he could, but Gabe roused a little anyway. “You make it in time?”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Dante left his shirt and jeans on the chair by his bag and hopped one-legged to take off his socks.

“Mmm.” Gabe pulled his pillow closer to himself with the arm he had curled around it. “You get hit on?”

Dante slid into the bed, smug. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

“I’ll ask next time I see one.” He shifted his legs until—

“Jesus, how are your feet so cold?” Just the one foot, actually. Dante sort of figured Gabe fucked up the circulation a few years ago when he fractured it. He lifted his calf to make a foot sandwich. It was better to just warm him up now, or Dante would wake with frozen toes on his leg in the middle of the night, and Gabe would sleep through the whole thing. He sighed. “I should get one of those Enso rings.”

Gabe wormed closer—the cuddling was great until about three in the morning, when they both woke up sweating to death—and slung his arm around Dante’s waist. “Could just tattoo my name on your ass.”

Dante grinned and closed his eyes. “For Valentine’s, maybe.”

5. National Adoption Day

IT WASthe last home game before American Thanksgiving when the message came through.

On a scale of 1 to 10, it read,how bad is Gabe going to freak out if I bring a date to Christmas?And then another, just behind it:And also her kid.

Dante stared at the texts from his father-in-law, mind whirling. On the one hand, Chris had pussyfooted around introducing them to his girlfriend for months, and he absolutely wanted all the details now that that was apparently on the table.

On the other hand, they were going to be late for morning skate. “Gabe!”

He finally poked his head out of the office and saw Dante dressed and waiting. Lost track of time again doing… whatever he was doing in there, Dante would bet.Research, maybe. He thought he was so sneaky. He was lucky Dante loved him so much. “Shit! Be right down.”

“Mm-hmm,” Dante said pointedly and bent to rub Mario behind her ears when she twined around his ankles. “Daddy’s kind of a space cadet lately, huh?”

A second later Gabe was next to him, sliding his feet into his boots. “As if you’ve never been late.” He peeked outside through the sidelight, then reached into the closet, withdrew a scarf, and looped it around Dante’s neck, evidently having judged him insufficiently bundled. “All right, let’s go.”

The drive was icy after an early snowstorm, and Dante needed his attention on the traffic and road conditions before the actual ice at the arena, because even though he hadn’t letanyone give him an official leadership position, he’d somehow become a role model and now had to set an example and not just loudly bang his teammate in road-trip hotels. But Gabe took over the drive on the way home, because the heater in the passenger seat was broken and his battered body needed it more than Dante did. And that gave him time to think.

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