Page 14 of Jesse and the Ice Princess
"Nice try." He pulled on her braid. "We can tell your mom it was my fault."
Charlie stood. "Well, itisyour fault."
He draped an arm over her shoulders and squeezed her to his side. "You're trouble."
She snorted. They both knew she was anything but trouble. Leaving their trash in the living room, they headed for the stairs. Her mom would silently seethe at the mess they left behind. That was her style.
Sometimes, Charlotte wondered how her parents worked. They were so different. But they got each other, loved each other.
Down in the basement, her dad's sheet ofGlicespread before them with a net at one end. Padded walls surrounded the surface, reaching to Charlotte's chest.
On the back wall, a rack of skates beckoned to her. She ran a finger over the row belonging to her. Three old pairs of figure skates and one barely-used pair of hockey skates.
She pulled out her favorite pair of worn figure skates. She'd kept the blades sharpened for the rare moments she could come down here by herself and just enjoy being on the synthetic ice. The laces were stained from too much use, therefore making them unsuitable for competition—according to her mother.
Slipping into them was like seeing an old friend after a long time away. No pair of skates since had been so comfortable or brought back so many good memories.
Beside her, her dad laced up his skates and stood. He grabbed two hockey sticks from where they leaned against the wall and extended one to Charlotte as soon as she joined him.
Her fingers curled around the wooden stick instinctively. Her dad was old school, preferring wood to fiberglass.
They skated to the center of theGlicesurface, and her dad dumped a bag of rubber pucks.
"No foam balls?" She quirked an eyebrow. When she was younger, he only let her shoot with children's toys.
"I think you've graduated from that."
She didn't tell him that when he wasn't there, she came to the basement and pretended she was one of his players, that sometimes she wondered what it would be like to streak up the ice during the middle of a hockey game with a puck on her stick.
She never dared show him what she could do, not really believing it herself. It didn't matter how quickly she could go from forehand to backhand, she wouldn't match up to those boys, even losing ones.
Figure skating was her sport. Not hockey.
Shaking those thoughts from her mind, she lined up across from her dad, bending low for the face-off. He grinned as he dropped the puck and won it from her. No one would ever say either of her parents went easy on her.
Charlotte chased him around the small surface. He might be able to stickhandle the puck away from her, but he couldn't out-skate her. Moving backward, she faced him. Every time he tried to get around her, she twisted to the side and blocked him, thankful for the strength in her ankles from years of training.
He laughed. "If anyone on my team could skate like you, we might have a fighting chance."
"Your prized Jesse can't?" The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Her father stopped skating. Charlotte, not paying attention, rammed into the padded wall behind her and fell to the ground.
"Has Jesse been giving you trouble?"
At her dad's question, she sat back against the wall, her yoga-pant clad legs stretched out in front of her. How could she answer that question? Yes, he was a problem, but it wasn't completely his fault. She'd managed to avoid thinking of Hadley all evening despite her friend's constant texts. They all went unread.
"He's fine, Dad." The last thing she needed was him going all cave-dad on one of his own players.
"You'd tell me if any of the guys were causing issues, right?"
"Sure." Not likely. She knew it was the guys from the team that had started her ice princess nickname. They saw her around the rink when she was single-minded about her training and not interested in their chit-chat.
"They aren't allowed to touch you."
"What?" She lifted her eyes to her dad.
"It's a team rule. No one dates the coach's daughter. I won't have any of them bothering you."
