his hand.
Miikka moved to the rocking chair, the book in his hand. He looked around at the class. “For those who don’t know me, I’m Miikka Laasonen. I play for the Alaska Blizzard and—”
“He’s a winger!” Niko called out.
“Niko.” Charli gently admonished him, shaking her head. “Raise your hand if you have questions.”
A little girl named Daria raised her hand.
“Yes?” Miikka looked at her.
“What’s a winger?”
“It means I play either right or left wing…” He went into a simplified version of his hockey spiel and the kids were mesmerized. They asked dozens of questions that made Charli laugh, but Miikka took each one seriously, answering them as if they were the most important people in the world. She’d never seen someone that wasn’t a teacher handle a group of kids this age so well.
He seemed far more comfortable with kids than he did some adults, she thought as she watched them. When he read the story, the kids were mesmerized, as well-behaved as she’d ever seen them, hanging on his every word. He sounded great, having worked hard on his pronunciation and putting emphasis in the right places. They’d practiced last night and she was so proud of him and how seriously he’d taken this even though this wasn’t even part of the team’s official community outreach program. He’d done this for her, nothing else, and it was yet another check mark in the emotional plus column she’d subconsciously created. There wasn’t a single item in the negative column either, which was making it harder and harder to keep herself from falling in love with him.
At this point, she didn’t even want to try.
“Charli?” Miikka was calling to her and Charli was jolted back to reality.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I have gifts for the children. How do you want to do this?”
“Let’s play some games…” She walked to the front of the room and exchanged a long look with Miikka, who winked.
“Will you come back next week?” Maya, one of the little girls in the class, asked him.
“I will come whenever Miss Charli says it’s okay.”
“Come to our end-of-year party!” Niko yelled.
“Yay!” The whole class joined in and immediately surrounded Miikka, tugging at his bag of goodies, laughing with him and eventually tackling him to the ground. She moved to step in but Miikka caught her eye and gently shook his head, indicating he was fine. The children were laughing and extremely well-behaved, all things considered. She stood on the edge of the melee watching carefully, but Miikka had one arm around Niko, whom he knew well and was comfortable with, and let the other kids attempt to tickle him.
“Miss Charli.” Daria approached her with an impish smile.
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“I really like your boyfriend.”
Charli turned bright red but smiled. “I like him too.”
“I like Miss Charli also!” Miikka called out from the floor, grinning at her.
“I bet they’re gonna get married,” Niko said.
20
Since Charli was still at work during the day, and Tara was good about entertaining herself, Miikka had spent a lot of his free time at Charli’s house. The batteries in one of her smoke detectors needed to be replaced, her garage door was making a weird noise when it opened and closed, and there was a water stain on one wall in the kitchen from before she’d had the plumbing fixed. He took care of the smoke detector and the garage door in an hour and then went to the hardware store to buy what he needed to replace the drywall where it had gotten wet.
He’d also contacted Ryder’s uncle’s contact who sold tile and had ordered the tile for the bathroom. They’d looked at enough samples online that he felt confident it was what she wanted, and he got such a good price it wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t; he’d just buy something else if that was the case. He’d paid for expedited shipping and it arrived three days later, so today he had a whole new project. Removing the old flooring would be the hard part, but he got started as soon as Charli left for work. Ryder and Logan were actually coming over to help, though Logan didn’t understand why Miikka hadn’t just hired someone to do the work.
Miikka tried to explain that it meant more to do it himself and that he wasn’t even going to do it all because he knew Charli wanted to be part of it.
“I’m doing the hard stuff,” he told them when they got to Charli’s house. “Removing the old tile