A Match Made in Texas- By Arlene James Page 0,59

end of the court. It’s not all that cold, frankly, if you’re actually skating. That’s why hockey gear is designed to wick away sweat and why I like a little heat.”

“All right,” she conceded, “we’ll stay, but not too long. The last thing you want to do is get a sunburn on top of everything else.”

“True.”

She pushed him over to the nearest chaise and held the chair while he managed the transfer.

“Ah,” he sighed, stretching out. “Most comfortable position I’ve found in quite a while.” He caught her hand as she claimed the second chaise and lifted his face to the sun. “The Dutch love to bask in the sun, you know. Swim, too.”

“Really? I thought it was very cool there.”

“Most of the time it is, but they do get a little summer, and at the very first sign of it, they hit the water.” He chuckled, as if remembering. “It’s funny when I think about it. My dad lives out in dusty west Texas where you’d think they’d crave water sports, but the only time I can remember seeing him in a bathing suit he was wearing boots and a cowboy hat.”

Kaylie smiled at the mental picture. Curiosity swelled, and she gave in to it, quietly asking, “Why don’t you see your father now?”

Stephen blew out a breath through his nostrils. “Well, you have to understand how it was with my parents. Mom was an exchange student at Texas Tech when she met my father. When she got pregnant, he insisted on marrying her or having custody of me. I think he was afraid of exactly what happened, that she’d run back to the Netherlands with me. She was never really happy in the marriage, and she hated west Texas. She and I traveled back and forth between the Netherlands and Texas for years, until we were spending more time there than here. They used to have terrible fights about it. Finally, when I was eight, they divorced. My dad begged me to stay with him, but…”

“She was your mom,” Kaylie supplied simply.

Stephen nodded. “They both wanted me, you know? And that was great, but it was also a kind of burden. I couldn’t be with them both at the same time, and Holland was more my home than Lubbock by then. My father and I had almost become strangers.”

“He berated you, didn’t he?” Kaylie asked gently, indignant on Stephen’s behalf. “Called you a mama’s boy and a sissy.”

“What?” Stephen looked over at her in surprise. “No! Where’d you get that?”

“From what you said in the ambulance.” She tried to recall his exact words. “Something about not being a pansy, a mama’s boy.”

“Oh, that,” he said, shrugging dismissively. “That was the best thing my dad ever did for me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look,” he said, shifting slighting over onto his left side in order to face her, “when I was sixteen I came back to the States to play triple-A hockey. It was my first step toward the pros, and my dad arranged it all for me. He drove to Colorado and convinced a coach there to give me a tryout, flew me over here, hired me a private trainer to get me ready and shelled out a fortune in fees.”

“You obviously made the team,” she said, and he nodded.

“I did, but it was tough sledding that first year. We practically lived on a bus, playing and practicing in different towns all over Canada and the U.S., but nowhere near Lubbock.”

“Not surprising,” Kaylie commented.

“More than once I called my dad to come and get me,” Stephen went on. “The first time, he did. Drove all the way to Minneapolis. Within a week, I was begging him to take me back. After that, whenever I’d call, he’d, well, he’d say whatever it took to keep me fighting for my spot on that team. Some of those phrases he used became my private mantra. Two years later, I won a full scholarship to college in Wisconsin. From there, I got picked up by the AHL and a year later signed with the Blades. My dad opened the door to all that for me.”

“Your father may have opened the door, but you did the hard work,” she pointed out.

“True, but I’m not sure I’d have stuck it out if he hadn’t egged me on that first year.”

“So why the estrangement now?”

Stephen shifted over onto his back again. “It’s just that there’s always been this distance between us. We haven’t spent more than a couple