It Had to Be You (Christiansen Family) (4 page)

“Wow, I thought this was a birthday party, not a pity party,” Sam said.

Jace winced. So maybe Sam had a point. He had a life many men would envy. Things could be worse
 
—he could have Sam’s problems.

“Sorry. I hate all these PR appearances. I’m a hockey player, or at least, I was. Until everyone started worrying about my head.”

“Apparently it’s not as hard as we all thought.”

Jace laughed, then looked up at Sam when he didn’t. Oh. He’d thought the man was kidding.

“It’s not a laughing matter, Jace. One more concussion and your career is over. Maybe even your life. It’s not worth it. You should have taken this opportunity to announce your retirement.”

Jace stared at Sam. “I don’t have anything else.”

“That’s not true.”

“Really?” The migraine more than anger made his voice sharp. “I’ve been playing hockey since I was six. Professionally since I turned eighteen. It’s all I have, especially after
 
—”

“Jace.” Sam’s voice quieted. “I’m just saying that you’re only thirty-two. And you’re at the end of your contract. You need to face the truth that the Blue Ox might not renew it.”

Thanks, Sam.

“Life isn’t over, friend. At your age, I was getting married. Starting a family.”

And look how that turned out. But Jace didn’t say it.

“I know. Sorry. It’s just this headache.” In fact, Jace might be bleeding from his ears, the pain nearly able to send him to his knees. He needed to climb into bed with that cold pack Sam suggested. “I don’t think your Holy Tea is working.”

“Get outta here. I can handle this.”

“No. You need to get home to Maddy.”

“Maddy’s sleeping upstairs.”

He frowned at Sam.

Sam lifted a shoulder. “The police finally arrived with the eviction notice. I cleaned up the apartment over the bar
 
—it’s actually really nice.”

Nice? Jace had sacked out upstairs a few times, back in the day, and
nice
seemed a stretch, with the rusty toilet and tub, the stench of the sewer bleeding through the sink, giving the tiny apartment the odor of vagrancy. Sam probably slept on the dilapidated pullout in the tiny living room. He couldn’t even imagine Maddy’s four-poster bed crammed into the dingy bedroom.

“Dude, when did this happen? Where was I?”

“I didn’t tell you, Jace. You’ve helped so much, and I’m grateful
for it. But the truth is, I gotta figure this out on my own.” His eyes tracked past Jace. “What are you doing up?”

Jace’s gaze followed Sam’s and landed on Maddy, hidden in the shadows just inside the hallway to the bathrooms. She emerged, her golden-brown hair falling from two haphazard braids, one of the flannel sleeves of her purple nightgown pulled over her hand, the lacy edge of the cuff gnawed into a frazzled mess. She held her other hand behind her back.

“I wanted to wish Uncle J. a happy birthday,” Maddy said softly.

As Sam took a deep, shuddering breath, Jace could nearly read his mind, cataloging the odors, the bacteria, the chill seeping through the room.

In two long strides, Jace scooped her up, her body the size of a six-year-old’s, at best. “Thank you, sweetie.” He noticed her bare feet and imagined they might be ice cubes as he set her on the counter. He picked up his jacket and draped it around her.

Sam came around the bar. “Maddy
 
—”

“I made you a card.” She produced the card from behind her back, a piece of green construction paper folded in half. On the front, she’d written,
Happy Birth
 
—

Jace took the card and opened it. Inside, it said,
Day!
On the opposite page, she’d drawn a hockey player: black skates, an oversize blue jersey, a black helmet, stick, and puck. Brown hair curled out from the player’s helmet. “Is this me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you sure? This guy is better-lookin’ than me.”

She giggled.

“That’s true.” Sam looked over his shoulder. “C’mon, Maddy, you need to go back to bed.” He reached for his daughter, and she went into his arms.

“My stomach hurts.”

“Again?” He pushed her hair away from her face, gave her a kiss on the forehead.

Jace frowned at him, but Sam shook his head, dismissing the question in his eyes.

“Thanks for the card, Maddy,” Jace said, playing along. He kissed Maddy on the cheek. “You go back to bed, and I’ll make sure you get some rink-side tickets soon.”

“Really?”

Sam glared at Jace. “Maybe.”

Well, maybe Sam was right. A professional hockey game might not be the right environment for a nine-year-old girl. Especially one on antirejection meds.

And seeing him up close, fists flying as he slammed his opponent into the glass, might be the last thing her delicate heart needed.

“I’d better get her back to bed.” Sam handed Jace his coat.

“I’ll close up.”

“No
 
—”

“Sam,” Jace said quietly, using one of Sam’s signature voices.

Sam drew in a breath, and in it, Jace saw a glimpse of the worry, the fear, the stress. “Thanks.”

“Happy birthday, Uncle Jace.” Maddy slid her arms around her daddy’s neck, laying her head on his shoulder.

“Thanks, kid.”

Jace finished putting up the chairs, then swept and mopped, his migraine subsiding a little in the quiet activity. He finally shut off the lights and locked the door, stepping out into the frigid night.

Happy birthday.

He trekked through a puddle of streetlights into the blackness of the parking lot, hitting his key fob to unlock the doors of his Nissan GT-R. He let the seat warm for a moment before pulling out onto the deserted, icy streets toward his loft in the Lowry Building.

He parked in the heated underground garage and used his key to access the penthouse level.

Maybe the tea had worked
 
—the pain had died to a small, tight knot at the front of his head. Still, after toeing off his shoes in the entryway and shrugging free of his leather jacket, he headed down the dark cherrywood floor to the kitchen, where he dug around in his freezer for a gel pack, then set it on the black granite countertop while he unearthed a kitchen towel.

Wrapping the pack in the towel, he wandered toward the window of his rooftop terrace, now laden with snow, and traced where the impending sunrise had just begun to turn the night to silver. It cast a pallor over his white leather furniture and turned his glass kitchen table into a shiny skating rink.

The place smelled of white oleander, evidence that his housekeeping team had come and gone. He’d have clean sheets and towels in the master, the place freshly dusted, his sinkful of dishes sanitized and neatly replaced. And a stack of dinners waiting in his Sub-Zero freezer.

Dinners for one. Not that he didn’t like to cook, but Graham, his agent, insisted that he have something easy when he came home from practice to keep his mind on the game, away from worry.

But really, what else did he have to worry about?

The thought found tentacles, wrapped around his heart. Why hadn’t Sam told him he’d finally lost the house? And what about Maddy’s upset stomach? Could be something she ate. Or . . .

Jace pressed the cold pack to his forehead. Closed his eyes. Hated the thought of sleep, despite his fatigue.

If Owen gets in trouble and kicked back down to the AHL, it’s on you.

He winced, not sure how Eden Christiansen and her venom had found their way back into his head. He could still picture her standing there, dressed like a snowman in her white parka, that long blonde hair spilling out of her hat, green eyes simmering with fury. Her words had sparked something inside, and for a second, he’d been angry enough to tell her off.

But what could he say? Because she was right. Owen
was
headed for trouble. And if he didn’t stop it, or try, the kid would turn out just like his hero, Jace Jacobsen.

And Jace didn’t wish that tragedy on anyone.

He turned away from the window, climbed the stairs to his bedroom, and flopped down on top of the covers, the cold pack draped over his forehead, his eyes.

Maybe, just tonight, God would let him drift into dark, dreamless oblivion and forget, for a few hours, the man he’d somehow become.

T
HIRTY-SEVEN MINUTES
late for work. Eden tried not to look at the time as she punched in and shed her parka in the employee entrance of the Minneapolis
Star Tribune
. She kept her scarf wound around her neck and pressed her hands against her cold cheeks, hoping to warm them after the biting wind on the walk from the bus stop.

She hadn’t had time to wait for the auto service to arrive and jump her old Taurus. And she couldn’t take the Charger, not with Owen’s dinner still all over the seats and floor mats.

Next time she dragged her inebriated brother out of some hole-in-the-wall, she would make sure he landed on the sofa instead of shuffling into her bedroom and flopping onto her double bed before dropping out cold for the night. She’d have to call him
later and make sure he woke up. This morning, he’d been a rock, rolled up in her comforter, and hadn’t moved despite her attempts to wake him.

He’d knocked her alarm off the nightstand
 
—if it weren’t for her internal clock, she might be snoozing away the morning in her one-bedroom walk-up.

The sky had done nothing to encourage her out of bed, with the gray blanket of frozen doom overhead. Minneapolis in January had all the charm of a mausoleum. Maybe she should head home for the weekend, soak in some of her sister Grace’s cooking, trek out into the woods on her snowshoes with Amelia and capture some pictures. Go over the plans for the rebuild with Darek.

But Owen had a game. And she had season tickets. And someone had to be there to root for him, even if lately he seemed to be doing everything to push her away.

She hated being late and ducked her head a little as she walked into the reception area of the obits/classifieds department. Frannie looked up from the desk. She wore her dark hair tucked into a white knit beret. “There’s a delivery on your desk,” she said, smiling.

“Please let it be coffee,” Eden said, knowing, in fact, it could only be a stack of mail-in death notice orders.

“It’s better than coffee.”

Really?

Eden conceded to a jump in her spirit as she walked down the hall, past the rows of classified-ad takers, back to the obits department. Maybe it was a note from Hal in metro saying he’d read her latest article submission. Or even a note from her editor, Charlotte, asking her to follow up on the two leads that came in yesterday for articles on the remembrance page. Certainly the world would like to know more about Stanley R. Barker, the butcher from south
Minneapolis who made award-winning wild-rice sausage. He’d earned a Purple Heart in Vietnam, had a side job as a magician, and raised champion mastiffs. Eden’s brief, quiet investigation had unearthed a story about how he’d served as a volunteer fireman and had pulled three people from a burning house back in the early eighties.

A true hero and one worth illuminating.

She passed by Charlotte’s office, but the door was closed, and unfortunately the editor didn’t stick her head out to shout Eden’s brilliance down the hallway.

Okay, that might be asking too much.

She noticed that Kendra wasn’t at her cubicle, although a Caribou Coffee cup sat open by her keyboard, her bag on the floor by her rolling chair.

Eden entered her own cubicle, and her breath caught.

No, not a telephone message from Hal. Or even a scribbled note from Charlotte.

Flowers. Roses
 
—giant red buds and tiny sweetheart buds in white
 
—dressed up in paper, a red ribbon wrapped around the vase, which sat in the middle of her desk on a stack of envelopes and other assorted messages.

“Wow, someone is keeping secrets.”

Kendra came up behind her, a lime-green sweater wrapped around her, her auburn hair curly and long down her back. She wore a pair of gray dress pants and a white blouse all pulled together with a bright-pink scarf.

For a second, standing next to Miss Sunshine, Eden felt like a mortician, especially dressed in her black blazer, dark-blue dress pants, a neat but boring white blouse, and black boots, whitened by a spray of drying street salt.

She
looked
like she worked in obits.

Kendra should be writing for the social media department, maybe updating the
Trib
’s Facebook page. She’d started only six months earlier, fresh out of St. Thomas, and already had two remembrance articles with her byline. Eden had no doubt some eager editor would snatch her up before the June interns arrived.

“Who are they from?”

“I have no idea.” Eden let her bag slip to the floor, unwound her scarf, and then searched the flowers for an envelope. She found only the plastic stem that should hold the florist card. “Do you see a card? It seems to be missing.”

Kendra looked around her. “Nope. Maybe it’s a secret admirer.”

“I doubt that.”

“Did you have a hot date last night?” Kendra had walked into the cubicle and pressed her nose against one of the roses. “Oh, that is a day brightener.”

Indeed. Something warm and sweet started in Eden’s chest, fanned out into her arms. “Not really. I had a date, but I sort of wrecked it. Owen . . .” She shook her head. “He got
drunk
.”

Kendra raised an eyebrow. “Whoa. The golden boy’s not quite so golden, huh?”

“It’s just a fluke. He’s . . . well . . .”

“A hockey player? A rich, handsome, young one, at that?”

“Trust me, this isn’t Owen. He’s not that kind of player. But I had to cut my date short. Russell drove me to pick him up
 
—”

“
Russell?
Not Russell Hays. From Hays Funeral Services?”

The way she said it, Eden wanted to deny it, but
 
—“Kendra, he’s a nice guy. Really nice. And he cleans up well. He was a perfect gentleman.” She glanced at the flowers. “Maybe there’s potential there.”

“If you stop babysitting Owen.”

“Listen, I know you think I hover too much, but he’s only twenty, and he has a real chance to shine with the Blue Ox. I don’t want him to blow it, not after all his work to get here.”

She moved the flowers to the side of her desk. Touched the petals. They had to be from Russell, right? “Did I miss the coffee cart?”

“I don’t know. I was in Charlotte’s office.” Kendra returned to her side of the cubicle. “I can’t believe it, but she assigned me another story.”

“Oh?” Eden picked up the pile of mail-in notices, then reached for her earphones to begin listening to her voice mail messages.

“It’s about some sausage maker in Minneapolis who had an award-winning recipe or something. It’s sort of a boring story, but at least it’s a byline, right?”

Eden stilled.
Breathe.
Just breathe. In. Out. Let it go. “Right.” But she glanced at Charlotte’s office, her jaw tight. The door was closed.

She could be a team player, right?

Pulling up her chair, she opened her company e-mail, downloading the few obits that had come in, rewording them, and sending them back for proofing.

Breathe.

Then she opened the mail-in forms and entered them, printed confirmations, and sent them with the checks down to accounting.

In. Out. Breathe.

She heard Kendra on the other side in a telephone conversation, probably talking to Gretchen Barker, Stanley’s effusive daughter.

Just let it go.

No. She got up, glanced at the flowers, and then headed for Charlotte’s door.

It now hung ajar. Eden stood outside, ready to knock as soon as Charlotte finished her call. The woman caught her gaze and held up a finger for Eden to wait.

She’d spent her entire life waiting in the hallway, it seemed, watching other people step into the limelight. And it wasn’t that she needed a spotlight, but when, exactly, might it be her turn to become someone who did something amazing?

Frannie intercepted her as she waited. “Eden
 
—I’m so sorry. I found this in the lobby. I think it’s from your flowers.” She handed her a florist card.

Charlotte hung up the phone. “Eden?”

“Thanks, Frannie,” Eden said and pocketed the card. She stepped into Charlotte’s office, debated closing the door, and then gently pushed it shut.

Charlotte raised a penciled eyebrow, her computer glasses perched on her nose, her hair freshly darkened, a white silk scarf draped around her shoulders. “Yes?”

Eden swallowed hard, then tempered her tone even as the words emerged from the angry place inside. “Help me understand why you gave the remembrance piece to Kendra instead of me.”

Charlotte leaned back in her chair, pushed the glasses up on her head, narrowed her eyes. Then she glanced at the clock. “I went looking for you at 8:16 this morning. Waited until 8:32. Does that answer your question?”

Oh.

“I’m sorry I was late, Charlotte. My car
 
—”

“It’s your career, Eden. No one is going to hand it to you. You have to earn it.”

Heat crept into Eden’s face. “Right. Thank you.”

Charlotte nodded and replaced her glasses, her attention already on the computer screen.

Eden backed out of the office, wanting to go home, climb into bed, and start her day over.

However . . . She pulled out the florist card and opened the envelope.

Is it too early to ask you to be my valentine?

Love, Nick

Eden froze. Felt a fist closing over her chest.

Yes, it’s too early, Nick.

She walked back to her desk, picked up the flowers, and silently brought them to Kendra. Kendra looked up, a frown on her face even as she continued her conversation. Eden handed her the card, not meeting her eyes, and returned to her desk.

Mercifully Kendra said nothing, even after she hung up.

Eden grabbed her phone and dialed Owen. He should be awake by now.

No answer
 
—her call went to voice mail.

Fine.

She managed to avoid Kendra until lunch, when the woman tracked her down in the cafeteria.

“What are you working on?” Kendra slid her orange tray onto the table. It held milk, an apple, and a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich.

Eden set her pen in the crease of her notebook and shut it. “Trying to choke down this salad.” Her phone lay on the table. She hit redial.

Kendra eyed the notebook, then gave her a wry smile. “Sorry about the flowers.”

“Forget it.”

“You should call him anyway.”

“Who?”

“Russell Hays. See if he wants to go out again.”

Eden hit End on her phone. “Shoot. He’s still not answering.”

“Who?”

“Owen. He was in pretty bad shape last night. And he’s got practice at two o’clock.” She reached for her bag.

“Holy cats, Eden. Seriously
 
—you’re obsessed.”

“I’m not obsessed. He’s my brother.”

“He takes up all the available space in your life. And you let him. What happens if he’s traded again? Or injured?”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m not trying to jinx the ice, but you have to be honest with yourself.”

“I’m his big sister.”

“Right. Not his trainer. Not his coach, not his mother.” She shook her head. “You gotta show a little tough love here.”

“I can’t let him destroy everything he’s worked so hard for.”

“What
you’ve
worked so hard for.”

Kendra’s words stopped her. Then, “Listen, I’m all caught up, and if anything comes in, call me. I’ll be back in an hour or so.” Eden picked up her plate to dump it.

“Don’t forget your notebook.”

Eden shoved it into her bag. The last thing she’d let anyone see were her journal entries about the lives she’d encountered in obits. She didn’t know why chronicling the extra information that didn’t make it into the obituary column mattered, but the details
 
—like
a man’s coin collection or dedication to bird-watching
 
—intrigued her. Everyone had a story. And inside everyone was a hero
 
—you just had to dig for it.

Eden hung her bag over her shoulder and headed to the employee entrance, grabbing her jacket and punching out.

She texted Owen while standing in the frozen bus shelter. He didn’t answer.

Maybe he did take up too much room in her life right now. But that’s what family did for each other. And she refused to let him fail.

She boarded the bus, hand on her phone, but it never vibrated the entire eight stops to her apartment.

Her heart sank at the sight of the Charger outside her building.

Upstairs, the odor of burnt toast filtered out into the hallway, and frustration formed on her lips as she unlocked her door and pushed her way inside. “Owen! You’re supposed to be at practice!”

A layer of smoke hovered against the ceiling, the smoke alarm dangling from its electric leads. Crumbs littered her white Formica counter, and as she walked farther into the apartment, the foul odor of old gym socks flooded over her.

What?

“Owen!” She headed straight for the bedroom but found it empty, her bedspread a mess where he’d rolled up in it like a burrito.

She tapped on the bathroom door, but it eased open into darkness.

The smell seemed to emanate from her living room, so she returned.