clean towel, he repeated the routine of smearing on antibiotic cream and applying a bandage. Then, some latent paternal instinct must have kicked in, because he kissed her hands, one then the other, above the bandage.
Rolling her eyes, she tugged free. “I’m not a baby. You don’t have to kiss it and make it better for me.”
Heat crawled up his neck. Was that what he’d been doing? Damned if he knew. All he was certain of was that he sucked at this. Was completely inept and unprepared to deal with Bree and this minor crisis.
Worse? She knew it. And she wasn’t cutting him any slack.
“It won’t happen again,” he said.
But then she looked disappointed, as if he’d said the wrong thing. Again.
“I can’t go to soccer practice.” Her words were rushed, her mouth set in a mulish line. “My knees hurt too much.”
If she’d been a boy, he’d have told her to rub some dirt on her knees and walk it off. That sometimes athletes get hurt but they keep playing.
But she wasn’t a boy, a son he could relate to, could understand. She was a female, with all the contradictions, emotions and sensitivity of her kind.
Neil put away the antibiotic. “You’ll have to call your coach and tell him you won’t be there.”
Picking at the corner of the bandage on her knee, she shrugged.
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
She sighed and dropped her hands. “Yeah.”
“I thought we’d go to the rink,” he said, sounding as if he was asking her permission. Feeling like an idiot for it.
“If I don’t go to practice, I shouldn’t go ice-skating.”
Shit. Good point.
“You could bring a book and read while I do some drills. Then we’ll go to your grandparents’ house and you can play with your cousins.”
And he could hit the home gym in the basement, do the workout the team trainer had emailed him last night. Just because he was staying in Shady Grove for a few weeks didn’t mean he could slack off. He had to stay in shape, keep his edge. At thirty, and already considered an old man in a league of twenty-year-old superstars, he had to constantly push himself to be stronger and faster, to play smarter, harder than anyone else.
“No, thank you,” Bree said, polite as if he was one of her teachers or some stranger instead of her father. “I’d rather stay at Pops’s.”
She hadn’t treated Leo this way, Neil thought, bitterness coating his throat. Hadn’t looked at him as if he was something slimy and smelly that’d been dredged up from the river. No, she’d gazed at him as if he was her savior.
The bastard.
Neil should have knocked his teeth down his cocky throat when he’d had the chance eleven years ago.
“So?” Bree asked in such a snotty tone, he raised his eyebrows. “Can I go to Pops’s house?”
“Sure.” What else could he say? She didn’t want to go with him. Didn’t want anything to do with him.
And he had no idea how to change it, how to fix this. If he should even keep trying.
CHAPTER NINE
SOMEONE POUNDED ON the kitchen door, rattling the windowpane. At the table working on an estimate for a bathroom remodel, Maddie jumped, her heart racing. She was halfway out of her seat when the door opened.
“Where’s Bree?” Leo asked.
Maddie sat back down slowly. “In the shower. Wha—”
He stormed into the kitchen followed by James and Eddie. James held the door and Zoe, his German shepherd/husky mix, padded in, her pointy ears perked, her tail wagging.
“Well now, don’t be shy,” she drawled. “You all just come right on in.”
Eddie, a Pittsburgh Pirates cap covering his short hair, sawdust clinging to his faded jeans, crossed to the fridge and opened it.
“No, really,” she continued, hooking her arm around the back of her chair. “Please help yourself to anything you’d like. What’s mine is yours.”
He opened the crisper drawer. Shut it again. “These idiots kidnapped me before I could have supper.”
“Don’t blame me,” James said as he leaned back against the counter. He nodded toward Leo. “He’s the one with the bug up his ass.”
Leo paced from one end of the kitchen to the other muttering under his breath, his strides long and angry. He was either working off a good mad or worried about something. Or both.
They all ignored him.
“There’s leftover chicken, rice and asparagus in plastic containers,” she told Eddie. “Second shelf.”
“You cooked?”
“Don’t sound so shocked. It doesn’t take a gourmet chef to throw chicken on the grill.”