Page 5 of Hockey Nanny

Dawson cracked a smile too and ran a sheepish hand through his hair. “I swear he’s not usually so…” he paused, giving up the pretense with a shrug. “Actually, yeah, he’s always like that.”

“At least he’s consistent?” I offered, and Dawson snorted under his breath.

“Unfortunately.” He stood there looking at me for a moment before seeming to remember that I was there on business, and clapped his hands together. “Anyway, let me show you around. Your room is on the second floor, and I guess you’ll want to meet Henry…”

Henry, I learned soon enough, was the foster kid Dawson had taken in, and the source of much tension amongst the residents of the mansion.

As we walked, Dawson explained the job. He needed someone to take care of Henry while the guys were busy with the hockey season. As part of the NHL Hockey League, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, specifically (Dawson had been shocked to learn I knew next to nothing about them), he wasn’t able to be around nearly enough to keep an eye on the kid.

He did promise, however, that he would contribute as much as he could, and he had appointed Boone, his twin brother, as well as Gage, the unapproachable half-naked man I’d met earlier, to help with taking care of Henry. Neither Boone nor Gage was happy with the idea of a seven-year-old living in their house, but Dawson was team captain both on and off the ice, and his decision was final.

Despite his polite, slightly stiff tone, I noticed the way Dawson’s eyes softened when Henry himself came racing into the living room, barreling toward us with a model helicopter clutched in his hand.

“Dawson!” He wrapped himself around Dawson’s leg, looking up at the hockey player with a gap-toothed smile. “Can we play helicopters?”

“Hey, champ. Maybe later.” Dawson unwound the kid from his calf and crouched down to speak to him. “This here is Carissa. She’ll be keeping an eye on you when the rest of us are busy.”

“Cool.” Henry lifted his little chin to blink at me. “Do you like helicopters?”

I eyed the scatter of toy planes and choppers littering the rest of the room and crouched to inspect one. “Oh, I do. I’m actually learning to fly one for real.”

Henry’s eyes practically bulged out of his head, and even Dawson glanced down at me in surprise.

“I’m a pilot in training,” I clarified, sneaking a glance up at him and flushing when I saw the awe on his face. “I’m working my way up to getting my license. My dad flies too, gives tours of the Grand Canyon, and such. I guess it runs in the family.”

Dawson’s jaw flexed, impressed, but he quickly masked it behind a stoic expression. Henry, meanwhile, was absolutely delighted to meet a ‘real-life pilot’ and was already gathering all of his favorite models to present to me.

“Well then,” Dawson cleared his throat, watching the two of us pore over the plastic figurines. “Now that you know what you’re dealing with, do you think you’ll be able to handle living in this house with all of us?”

He said it as a joke, keeping his tone light and even, but the slight crease in his brow told me he was more anxious than he let on. He needed help desperately, and something told me that if I turned down the job, things in that household would spiral out of control.

I glanced between him and Henry, the latter of whom was looking at me with wide, pleading eyes. I ruffled his ginger hair and offered a smile to Dawson.

“Well, it looks like somebody has got to keep this team in order,” I said. “It may as well be me.”

3

~

Carissa

1 Month Later

A full month into living in Dawson Barnett’s mansion, I’d settled into a comfortable routine. Henry was a surprisingly easy kid to manage and always incredibly polite. So much so that I wondered if he was putting on a show in the hopes of impressing Dawson. He clearly held the hockey player in high regard if the starry-eyed way he watched him on TV was anything to go by.

The guys had been gone for most of the month, playing away games and only dropping by occasionally. When they were home, it was business as usual. Dawson kept up his stiff, polite performance around me, only softening when Henry was around, and Boone kept up his flirting despite his brother’s best efforts to keep him in line.

I had to admit I was flattered, and Boone was, admittedly, a hunk. A simple smile from the guy had me blushing, though I wasn’t sure what to do with his rapt attention.

Gage, in stark contrast to both brothers, continued to ignore me entirely. Whenever I walked into a room when another guy was around, Gage proceeded to walk out. He kept to himself and kept his headphones on tight, even avoiding Henry despite his promise to Dawson to help out with the kid.

I wasn’t too bothered by it; he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who could handle kids anyway, but I could tell his distancebothered Dawson. The team captain, I had learned quickly, was not as good at concealing his feelings as he seemed to think he was.

By the time Saturday morning rolled around, I was looking forward to some peace and quiet, and hopefully an opportunity to catch up on my studies. Henry had a private tutor come in during the week, and I spent the rest of those days hurrying after him and helping with his homework, which meant weekends were sacred to the both of us. I got a few uninterrupted hours to myself, and Henry got to play video games to his heart’s content.

Gage had initially been cagey about letting Henry anywhere near his precious PS5 setup, hovering like a disgruntled gargoyle every time the kid so much as looked at the console. But somehow (most likely involving bribery of some kind), Dawson had managed to talk him down. Not only that, he’d gone one step further and bought Henry his own controller so the kid wouldn’t have to get his sticky fingers all over Gage’s pride and joy.

Dawson hadn’t said much when he handed Henry the gift. He rarely did. He’d simply rested a hand on Henry’s shoulder and told him to have fun in a soft voice I was starting to realize he reserved exclusively for the kid. And so, with a fresh cup of coffee in mind and Henry no doubt glued to the television screen for the next six-plus hours, I made my way through the massive mansion with every intention of spending my day studying in some cozy corner.