Nickolai's Noel (10 page)

“Seems like the Sound’s locker room is a hotbed of gossip.”

He shrugged. “Is good to stay informed about these things. Jan is new to this country, and his English is not so good. But this woman—Krystal—she speaks his language, though not Czech. She has spoken the language of many members of the team and tried with others. The wives and girlfriends do not like this.”

“And the players? Do they like it?” Noel wondered if this woman had succeeded with Nickolai.

He shrugged. “Some do. Some, not so much.” He reached for her hand. “I don’t have games on New Year’s. Gabe has invited me to a fancy party at Beauford Bend on New Year’s Eve. Will you go with me, or must you visit your family again?”

Though they hadn’t even celebrated Christmas, her mother was already lobbying for Noel to return to Louisville for New Year’s. She hadn’t given an answer yet, and now she knew what it would be.

“I was invited to that party, too. I would love to go with you.”

“Good. That makes me happy.” He gave her a quick kiss. “I’m hungry. Now, I will take you for dinner. You choose anywhere you would like.”

“Even if I choose a place where, for two hundred dollars, you only get a little fish on a plate where some green stuff has been swirled and a tower of vegetables?” she teased.

He laughed. “I love that you remember what I say.”

“Maybe what you say is important to me.”

“I’m happy to take you to this place with the vegetable tower and green goo. Such places are good for special times, but foolish for every meal. And I think today is a special day. Choose any place you like.”

“Then I choose Cracker Barrel. Maybe I’ll get to meet Dede.”

“Really? Thursday is turkey and dressing night. You like that?”

Truth was, right now she liked everything. “I do.”

He stood and pulled her to her feet. “My car is across the street.”

“No. I’ll drive.” Noel smoothed a little frown between his eyes. “I can tell you still have a headache.”

Time stopped, and Nickolai looked at her for a long time, not smiling, not speaking, maybe not even breathing.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said quietly. “You are so nice.”

“I try to be.”

The flirty glint resurfaced in his eyes. “Are you nice enough to offer me hospitality tonight? I hoped … I brought the suit and tie I am required to wear for travel, and my bags for my trip are in my car, just in case.” He pulled her to him and looked down at her face. He was more adorable than a viral YouTube puppy video. “So, what do you think, Noel?”

“Good thing you changed the sheets!”
her naughty bits yelled gleefully.

“Good thing I changed the sheets,” Noel said.

As they made their way through the shop and out the back door laughing and holding hands, Noel couldn’t help but wonder if she had landed in a relationship after all.

Three months later

“Maybe since today everyone is Irish, I should pick an Irish name.” Nickolai took a bite of his soft-boiled egg. He didn’t like the pancakes at The Café Down On The Corner as much as Cracker Barrel’s, but the eggs were better. But he didn’t eat pancakes very often anyway, and The Café Down On The Corner was only a block from Noel’s apartment—where he’d spent every night since Christmas when he wasn’t on the road.

Noel put her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her hand.

“Really? What’s your Irish name going to be?” She was pretty in her bright green sweater.

“Patrick? Like the Saint.”

She sipped her coffee. “Can’t you do better than that?”

He didn’t really know many Irish names. “I don’t think so. Sean? Is that one?”

She nodded. “What would your last name be?”

“O’Glazov. I’ll be Sean Patrick O’Glazov.”

She leaned back in her chair and laughed, all soft and musical. He hadn’t gotten tired of hearing that laugh in almost three months, and he didn’t think he ever would.

“So, Sean Patrick—may I call you Sean Patrick?”

“Saint Sean Patrick, I think.”

“Don’t push it. You’re not even wearing green.”

“These are the clothes I always wear on the team airplane.” He smoothed the purple and silver striped tie that he wore with a gray suit and white shirt with French cuffs.

“Oh, I am well aware of that.” She smiled at him over her coffee cup. Noel teased him about his superstitions but, the way he saw it, this was no time to be taking chances. He was leaving in one hour for three away games in four days—Tampa, Winnipeg, and New Jersey. If they won any two of the three, a trip to the playoffs was guaranteed. But he didn’t speak of that. He had never uttered the words
Stanley Cup
, and he tried not to think them.

“So, Saint Sean Patrick, are you going to have O’Glazov put on the back of your jersey?”

“I might,” he said. “You never know.”

“And I suppose you’re suddenly going to start drinking some flavor of Gatorade other than orange and stop kissing your stick before and after you tape it.”

“Is not superstition. A stick must know it’s loved.” Noel should know she was loved, too, and he hoped she did. He just wasn’t sure when would be the right time to say it. But he did love her, so much—had ever since they’d sat in front of the burning Yule log and eaten cookies together. If the season was going well, life with Noel was everything he thought he’d never have.

She laid her hand on his. “I wish I could be there to see you play.”

“Me too,
lyubimaya.”
And he did. She’d been to every home game since Christmas, and he always felt more powerful when she was in the arena. “But we couldn’t travel together or sleep together. I wouldn’t like that. I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too. But this weekend is a good time for me to go to Louisville. I haven’t been since that weekend after Christmas, and I need to fit Constance’s Easter dress before I hem it.”

Noel had been making a little dress for her niece—pink with bunnies and carrots at the top. Smocking, she called it. She was making this dress because it gave her pleasure, not because her family had demanded it—though they demanded plenty. There was love for her little niece in Noel’s face when she stitched the little pictures. He wondered what it would be like to watch her sew such a dress for their child. But what if they had a boy? A picture of a brawly four-year-old wearing a pink bunny dress with hockey skates and a helmet flashed before him and made him laugh. Laughing came easily these days.

Noel laughed, too. “Why are we laughing?” she asked.

“Because we’re happy?”

She nodded and sighed. “But sad because you should go now. It’s getting late.”

She was right. He threw some bills on the table and ushered her out the door. The air was spring-like, nothing like March in Ottawa or Moscow.

“You won’t forget, will you?” Nickolai asked as they walked toward Piece by Piece.

“Of course I won’t forget.” She didn’t even tease him this time. “I have already double checked the time zone differences for road games and set alarms on my phone for all the games for the rest of the season.”

The ritual had started in early January when the Sound was in L.A. Nickolai had been especially tense because they hadn’t beaten the Kings a single time this season. At exactly one hour and seven minutes before puck drop time, Noel had sent him a text that said,
Good luck, my darling!!!
The message had warmed him from the inside out. When Noel called him sweet names, she meant them. And not only had they beaten the Kings in overtime, Nickolai had scored the winning goal. He’d teased Noel that it was her text message, with the three exclamation points, that had made the difference. So—as joke—she’d done the exact same thing the next night when he was in Anaheim. Another win, another two goals. Then, on home ice against the Avalanche, she’d sent the message from her seat in Bridgestone Arena. Another win, and Nickolai got a hat trick—his second of the season. The Sound hadn’t won every game since then, but they’d won a lot more than they’d lost, and Nickolai had scored at least one goal in every game.

So the text message wasn’t a joke anymore; it had become one of his rituals.

“Did you get your iPod from the bedroom?” Noel asked as they entered Piece by Piece.

“Da.
It’s in my backpack.”

“I put a bag of those oatmeal cookies I made in your backpack, too. But I didn’t go through your things. I put them on top.”

He swung her into his arms. “I have no secrets from you.” The goodbye kiss was always bittersweet. Too bad they didn’t have more time. She’d woken him this morning by running her tongue up the inside of his thigh, but he wanted her again. He lifted her against him so she would know how much.

When he released her, she looked at him they way every man wants to be looked at—breathless and hungry.

“You’d better get your backpack and go.” She sounded breathless, too.

“Yes. Is almost time for you to open the shop anyway.”

On his way to get his backpack from Noel’s workroom, Nickolai stopped to look at
Lazy Morning.

Noel stepped up beside him and put an arm around his waist. “I think I should give it to you. I think you love it more than I do.”

He looked from the quilt to her sweet smiling face. “Maybe … ” Should he say it? Did he dare? “Maybe one day, we will sleep under it. Together. In our own home, no?”

Radiance bloomed on her face, and he knew she was also dreaming of what he’d been dreaming of.

“Maybe,” she whispered.

It was time to say the words. There was no doubt. He took her hands. “I love you, Noel.”

She half closed her eyes and tilted her head. “And I love you, Nickolai.” Her honey sweet laugh washed over him. “Or Sean Patrick O’Glazov, if that’s who you are today.”

They hugged and kissed one more time before Nickolai went out the door on the most glorious day he’d ever known.

“We hardly ever see you, and I don’t know why you have to watch a hockey game while you’re here,” Deborah Verden said to Noel.

No, you wouldn’t know why, because I haven’t told you about Nickolai and me.
Her stomach turned over—like it had at least a thousand times in the last three days since he’d said he loved her and alluded to the two of them having a home together. Could be it was time to at least tell the family she and Nickolai were seeing each other. Maybe after the game, if she could summon up the energy to answer all the questions that were bound to come.

“I told you before I came that I was going to miss the game last night because I’d be traveling, and I intended to watch this one.” Noel set her sewing basket on the floor and settled herself on the leather sofa in Webb’s study. Apart from the big flat screen that her brother-in-law had installed over the mantel, the room hadn’t changed since Noel had come here as a child to sit on her father’s lap and eat the lemon drops he’d kept in his desk drawer. As far as Noel knew, that television was the only thing Webb had asserted himself about in eight years. Noel thought she would never hear the end of it.

“When I come in this room, I still expect to see the fox hunting painting above the mantel, and I’m always disappointed,” Deborah said. “I despise that television.”

And apparently she still hadn’t heard the last of it.

“I’m well aware that you do.”

Deborah was a slave to preservation, and if something wasn’t original to the house, it was evil. Never mind that Deborah, like Grandmama, had grown up in Chattanooga and gone to Belmont, where they’d lived their glory days as Phi Mus. Deborah had come to this house as a bride, and Grandmama had moved in not long after, when Noel’s grandfather died. But you’d think they had milled the lumber and built the house themselves.

“I believe in small televisions in bedrooms,” Deborah said.

Noel clicked to the NHL channel. “That doesn’t really promote family unity.”

“Why does family unity have to center around television?” Deborah settled into a wing chair. “Those of us who are fortunate enough to have been entrusted with wonderful historic properties have a responsibility to care for them for future generations.”

Noel had heard it all before. It was ironic that her mother couldn’t be bothered about what she couldn’t see, like bad plumbing and a roof that needed replacing—at least until there was a rust stain on a claw foot tub or a water stain on a plaster ceiling medallion.

“I hardly think hanging a television on the wall compromises the integrity of the house.”
Integrity of the house
was one of Deborah’s favorite phrases.

“Mama, are you at that again?” Paige and Constance entered the room, and it looked like they were here to stay for a while because Paige was carrying a bucket of pink Legos. “Are you sure you don’t want your Barbie dolls, sugar?”

“No, ma’am. Legos, please.”

“Don’t you have the sweetest manners? I’m so proud of you!” Paige dumped out the Legos on the floor and sat down among them with Constance. “Now, what should we build?”

“So, is Grandmama coming to watch the game, too?” Noel asked.

“She’ll be right along,” Paige said. “She’s getting her needlepoint. Though I don’t think any of us are going to watch the game. We just want to be with you.”

Fabulous.
Is there any chance at all that you want to be with me quietly?
Never mind that, except for sleeping time, they had been with her nonstop since she’d arrived last night. Family unity was overrated.

Noel had sent Nickolai the text message at the appointed time, though she’d had to step away from the dinner table to do it. Now, the pregame show was coming on. Maybe they’d get their conversation over before the game started. Not likely, but she could hope.

“Aunt Noel, you want to play Legos?” Constance asked.

“No, precious. But thank you for asking. I’m going to hem your Easter dress while I watch the hockey game.” She reached for her sewing basket, but having developed a little ritual of her own, she wouldn’t actually start to sew until the Sound scored. And the sooner, the better. Keeping her hands busy might calm her nerves. She wanted this win for Nickolai. The Sound had lost 5–3 in Tampa and won in Winnipeg 4–0. Nickolai had scored two goals against the Lightning and one against the Jets, but they needed this win tonight for a guaranteed place in the playoffs. Nickolai wouldn’t talk about it—probably another one of his endearing little superstitions—but Noel knew how much he wanted it.