Chasing Charli - Kat Mizera Page 0,15
got to anything like that, and sometimes it broke her heart all over again.
“How come you don’t have kids, Miss Charli?” Niko asked as she absently started a movie.
She swallowed, her chest tightening slightly as she reached out to stroke his hair. “I’m not married,” she said, hoping her voice sounded lighter than it felt. “And I need a husband to have kids.”
“Why don’t you have a husband? My dad knows lots of hockey players that could marry you.” His blue eyes were guileless as he stared up at her, and she managed to laugh.
“Well, I don’t need to get married to be happy.”
“What about Uncle Logan? He’s really nice.”
“I’m sure Logan is great, but I’m very busy teaching kindergarten.”
He frowned. “Mommy’s busy with hockey and she found a husband. I don’t think you’re trying very hard.”
“You’re right. I’m probably not trying very hard.”
Thankfully, there was a knock on the door and she hurried to open it for Sara. She was used to her students asking her random questions like that, but being one-on-one with Niko was different and not as easy to put off.
She never planned to have kids, but she didn’t tell people that because they always asked questions she didn’t want to answer. Luckily, tonight she’d been saved by the bell.
Miikka planned to meet Charli on Sunday at what they now called their Starbucks. He’d thought about nothing but her since their conversation about pizza and cheesecake the other night. Though he struggled to flirt in English, he’d understood everything and was so annoyed his sexy, witty or funny answers had all been in Finnish—and in his head. He hadn’t expected their conversation to go from pizza to sex so quickly, but she’d been so cute and he knew without a doubt she’d been embarrassed.
Just thinking about it made him smile and he’d been looking forward to seeing her all week. Though she wasn’t really his type, there was something different about Charli and he couldn’t figure out what it was. She was also the first person he’d met since leaving Finland that didn’t treat him like a second-class citizen. His teammates didn’t, of course, but that was different. They only cared about his skill as a hockey player, and that was something he was good at.
Other than that, he was mostly on his own. He had his friends and family in Finland, but he was only home a few months a year. The rest of the time he was here in the U.S. and mostly alone. He and Logan had become roommates a couple of months ago, and he was a good guy, but he was always on the go, always hooking up with women, always looking for mischief. That had been fun for a couple of years, but now Miikka wanted to settle down with a family of his own more than any of that. Maybe not kids just yet, but a wife and a home and something stable to come home to.
He’d grown up with a tight-knit, loving family and he’d always thought he’d be married by now. It never occurred to him his long-time girlfriend in Finland would dump him, and meeting women here in Alaska was harder than people thought. Sure, he could date women back home, but it took time to meet the right person, get to know them, fall in love…and by the time he met anyone, he had to come back to the U.S. He also came from a relatively small town in eastern Finland called Savonlinna, and there were only about thirty-six thousand residents. Not only did the women crawl out of the woodwork now that he’d made a name for himself playing professional hockey, but everyone at home knew about Jaana. Her presence made it infinitely harder to meet women since many people in their circles knew them both.
As he pulled into the Starbucks parking lot, he spotted Charli getting out of her car and he waved.
“Hi, Miikka.” She waved and fell into step beside him.
“Hi. I’m Miikka Laasonen…”
They both laughed.
They settled at a table they liked in the back once they’d ordered coffee, and Charli pulled some small white note cards out of her bag. “These are flash cards,” she told him. “We’re going to use them for you to read and learn what we call sight words. When I do them in kindergarten, they’re the basics like the, to, be, etc. I’m going to focus more on nouns with you.”
“Nouns?”
She looked it up in Finnish