Page 3 of Puck the Halls
“Nathan?” Danielle’s sweet voice comes over the line.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I say.
“You took the plane from Chicago after the hockey game toDecaturto kiss the kids goodnight instead of just heading here?” she asks.
A perfect guess about what happened.
“Yes.”
“Even though they are obviously already in bed and wouldn’t have seen you or even known you were there.”
“Yes.”
Crew is grinning and simply holding the phone toward me as I get a scolding.
He is usually the one who has done something spontaneous and ridiculous so I imagine he is enjoying this a lot.
What can I say? Fatherhood has made me soft.
“You could be almost halfway here by now,” she says.
“Decatur is a quick flight from Chicago,” I say in my defense. “And we’re not going to see them again until the afternoon of the twenty-third.”
Tonight is the twentieth. Tonight was the last game for the Racketeers before the holiday break. Crew doesn’t have to be back on the ice until the twenty-eighth, but of course we’re returning to Chicago to be with the kids for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Still, we decided we could grab a couple of days away. We all agreed that it had been too long since the four of us have had time alone with no interruptions from a teething baby or a toddler who has every excuse in the book to get back out of bed once she’s put down for the night.
Between all of our crazy schedules, two kids—we honestly don’t know how two parents do it, not to mention single parents—we feel like the four of us have barely had time to sit down to an uninterrupted dinner together. Long stretches of time to truly bond and enjoy one another are a faint memory.
Yes, I mean sexually.
It’s not as if we don’t have sex. We do. A lot of it. In various combinations. But it’s true that it is rare that all four of us are able to just be together for an hour or more and truly enjoy our foursome.
Danielle in particular has been missing that. She loves all three of us and enjoys time one-on-one or two-on-one with us, but her favorite times are when she has all three of us with her.
Crew's Christmas gift to all of us is a getaway to a mountain cabin in Aspen. He came up with the idea after he heard his sister, Luna, say that she and her three guys were going to be getting away.
Yes, we’re going to be at the same resort but they’ll be in another cabin entirely and we’ll likely have limited time with all eight of us together. Those three guys like their time all doting on their woman as much as we do.
“Alexsei and Owen will be here in an hour,” Danielle says. “They would have left Chicago about the time you did.”
True. Alexsei played tonight and Owen was coaching.
“So, what time are you going to get here now?” Danielle asks.
I look out the window again and cringe. “Well, that’s the other thing we needed to tell you.”
Danielle makes a tiny growling noise that we very rarely hear from her. It is not a sexy growl like she sometimes does in bed that meansdo more of that. This is aI am completely fed up with yougrowl.
“Tell me,” she demands.
“Well there is?—”
“Crew, you tell me,” she interrupts.
My brows rise. “Why do you want him to tell you?”
“Because he said that he tried to talk you out of this trip to Decatur. That means whatever you’re about to tell me is also your fault. I want to hear it from him.”
