Page 3 of The Big Puck

The sway of her hips catches my eyes and holds my attention for a beat too long. I look away. “Tell me what?” I prompt her as she laughs and kisses Krissy’s nose.

“How about if today is a try-out?” She turns to me, and the brilliant glare of her optimism and too-good-to-be-true nature exudes an overpowering warmth and enthusiasm akin to a Mac truck adorned with a giant smiley face barreling straight at me. “I try you and Krissy out—though she’s already passing with flying colors—and you try me out.” Her firm words imply the deal has been struck.

“You try me out?” I’m not sure what that means except that if there’s a question of my fitness as a father or a boss to a cheery young woman, my chances of failing are extremely high. I’m not known for a warm and fuzzy personality. But I am a reasonable man, and she has a point if she’s telling the truth about her qualifications—and I know she is, without a doubt.

One of the side effects of my reticent personality is that I’m a good listener, and I can usually tell when people are lying. Maybe I’m being modest—I can tell 99.99% of the time when someone’s shitting me. That’s one of the factors in the plus column for the likelihood of my success as a coach.

“Of course.” She aims a quick grin at me, enough for me to feel the sting, and then puts Krissy in the stroller while she picks up the baby’s bag and starts rummaging through it like she owns it.

“What are you—”

“Krissy needs a change. Don’t you, little girl?” She reaches in and touches the baby’s cheek.

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t—”

“No problem. That’s how babies are sometimes. Unpredictable. It’s part of what makes them so much fun.”

I gulp. Literally. Unpredictability is my kryptonite, and I’ve had a heavy dose of it over the past few months, so I don’t know how much more I can take. I stand there and watch her for a minute as she changes Krissy with deft hands and enthusiastic baby noises.

Over her shoulder, she says. “Don’t let me and Krissy stop you from doing your coach thing.”

Raising a hand to smooth the back of my hair—I need a haircut, but it’s one of the many everyday things I routinely take care of that got shoved aside in the wake of the unpredictable eventfulness of recent months.

“Okay. I’ll…” I don’t need to answer her, but I watch her until she finishes her task, and the happy pair returns to their dance. “You might be a distraction.” No sense beating around the bush because I have no idea how I can sit in this office and get on with my work with Lainey Hall parading around in front of me. It’s not because she’s, ahh, fairly good-looking if you like the woman-child look; it’s the relentless upbeat joy-joy energy she exudes. She’s exhausting. I’m exhausted holding up my forcefield of reality against her crazy Pollyanna vibe.

She stops her dance, glances at me, then laughs. Laughs. WTF?

“You’re right to the point, aren’t you? I like that in a man. We’ll get out of your way then, right, Krissy? We’ll find somewhere else to play. Or maybe…” She turns to me again, and I sit on my desk, my arms folded, watching her, waiting for a bombshell of brilliance and fortifying myself against it.

She asks, “How about I take her back to my hotel? Or we can go back to your place if you’d rather. That way, I can feed her properly, and she can nap in her crib and—”

I put up my hands. “Fine. Okay.” My place is in order, thank fuck. I stayed up late setting things up, making Krissy’s room as perfect as possible with the furniture and things my aunt ordered. It all came in two days ago, and I had to assemble it. My brother Neil didn’t have anything worth keeping except a baby blanket my mom had made for him when he was born—and Neil wasn’t even her son. But she felt sorry for him because she knew Neil had not hit the jackpot in the parent category between my dad and his new baby mama. Mom had been right.

She’s where I got my bullshit detection gene.

I fish my house keys from my pocket and hand them over, then rattle off the address.

“Whoa, slow down there. Let me get my phone so I can get an Uber. I don’t have the best memory for details. Except when it comes to hockey. And people.”

I nod, unsurprised. She strikes me as the kind of woman who goes through life strictly on instinct. I shudder. The type of woman I avoid at all costs because they drive me crazy and give me hives.

She rummages through her bag for the phone, fishes it out, then looks up. “That was 89…what street?”

Huffing a breath, I squash the lift of one corner of my mouth before it can get going. Shit. The woman’s constant grinning must be contagious. One of us needs to keep our head. I repeat my address, adding, “It’s not far. Ten minutes depending on traffic. But don’t bother with the Uber. I’ll give you a ride. There’s too much shit—I mean baby things—for an Uber.”

She nods with enthusiasm and slips the phone back into the bag hanging on her shoulder, clutching my house keys in her hand while she holds Krissy in the other arm.

Wait a second. Should I be giving a total stranger the keys to my newly purchased house—and send her off with my newly officially adopted baby? What the hell is wrong with me?

Her gaze meets mine, and I watch the relentless energy soften, her mouth tempering down to a mild smile. Maybe she sees or senses the panic rising in me.

“Wait,” I say, but I don’t know what I’m waiting for except that I’m not used to making important decisions without more deliberation. Recent events have forced me to move quicker than I’m comfortable with, and now I’m finding myself up against the wall of my tolerance for life-changing snap decisions. “Hold on,” I add, and she keeps those big blue eyes trained on me, their glow subdued to a more compassionate level.

“Too fast? I’m moving too fast.” She rests her forehead against Krissy’s. The baby grabs a fistful of her hair, and I wince on her behalf. But Lainey Hall doesn’t flinch. She smiles at the baby and distracts her with a finger, extracting her hair expertly and without pain or effort or even thought…absently. Instinctively knowing what to do.

She sits on the edge of my desk next to me, almost the same height, and I stiffen and move away as I turn to her.

“It’s just… I haven’t thought this through.” I run a hand through my hair. “Krissy is new to me.” I bark a humorless laugh because that’s a ridiculous thing to say about a baby. “Fatherhood is new to me. Unexpected.”