id you want your latte skinny or mocha?”

Georgeanne asked Mae as she packed the metal filter with espresso.

“Skinny,” Mae answered without taking her attention from Pongo, who lay curled up crunching on a doggie biscuit. “Damn, that’s pathetic. My cat is bigger than your dog. Bootsie could kick his butt.”

“Lexie,” Georgeanne called out, “Mae is saying bad things about Pongo again.”

Lexie walked into the kitchen, shoving her arms through the sleeves of her raincoat. “Don’t say bad things about my dog.” She scowled and grabbed her backpack from the table. “He’s sensitive.” She dropped down on her knees and pushed her face next to the dog’s. “I have to go to school now, I’ll see you later.” The puppy stopped eating his biscuit long enough to lick Lexie’s mouth.

“Hey now, I’ve told you about that,” Georgeanne scolded as she took a carton of skim milk from the refrigerator. “He has bad habits.”

Lexie shrugged and stood. “I don’t care. I love him.”

“Well, I care. Now, you better get over to Amy’s or you’ll miss your ride.”

Lexie puckered her lips for a kiss good-bye.

Georgeanne shook her head and walked Lexie to the front door. “I don’t kiss girls who kiss dawgs who lick themselves.” From the entrance she watched Lexie cross the street, then she turned back to the kitchen. “She’s absolutely nuts about that puppy,” she told Mae as she headed toward the espresso machine. “She’s had him five days, and he’s taken over our lives. You should see the little denim vest she’s made for him.”

“I have something to tell you,” Mae blurted quickly.

Georgeanne looked over her shoulder at her friend. She’d suspected something was up with Mae. She usually didn’t come by so early for coffee, and she’d been acting a little distant for the past few days. “What is it?”

“I love Hugh.”

Georgeanne smiled and filled the espresso machine with two cups of water. “I love you, too.”

“No.” Mae shook her head. “You don’t understand. I love Hugh, the goalie.”

“What?” Her hands stilled and her brows lowered. “John’s friend?”

“Yes.”

Georgeanne set down the glass carafe but forgot to turn on the machine. “I thought you hated him.”

“I did, but I don’t now.”

“What happened?”

Mae looked as perplexed as Georgeanne felt. “I don’t know! He took me home from a club last Friday night, and he never left.”

“He’s been living with you for the past six days?” Georgeanne walked over to the kitchen table. She had to sit down.

“Well, for the past six nights mostly.”

“Is this a joke?”

“No, but I understand how you might think so. I don’t know how it happened. One minute I was telling him that he couldn’t come into my house, and then before I really realized what had happened, we were both naked and fighting over who got to be on top. He won and I fell in love with him.”

Georgeanne was numb with shock. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. He was on top.”

“I didn’t mean that!” If there was one thing that Georgeanne wished she could change about her relationship with Mae, it was Mae’s tendency to share details Georgeanne didn’t care to know. “Are you sure you’re in love with him?”

Mae nodded, and for the first time in their seven-year friendship, Georgeanne watched tears well up in her brown eyes. Mae was always so strong, it broke Georgeanne’s heart to see her cry. “Oh, honey,” she sighed, and moved to kneel by Mae’s chair. “I’m so sorry.” She wrapped her arms around her friend and tried to comfort her. “Men are such jerks.”

“I know,” Mae sobbed. “Everything was wonderful, and then he had to do this.”

“What did he do?”

Mae pulled back and look into Georgeanne’s face. “He asked me to marry him.”

Georgeanne sat back on her heels, speechless.

“I told him it was too soon, but he wouldn’t listen. He said that he loved me, and he knows that I love him.” She grabbed the end of Georgeanne’s linen tablecloth and wiped beneath her eyes. “I told him that I didn’t think we should get married right now, but he just wouldn’t listen.”

“Of course you can’t marry him now.” Georgeanne held on to the table and pulled herself to her feet. “Last week you didn’t even like him. How can he possibly expect you to make such an important decision in such a short period of time? Six days isn’t long enough for you to know if you want to spend the rest of your life with him.”

“I knew after the third night.”

Georgeanne found her chair. She felt dizzy and had to sit down again. “Are you confusing me on purpose? Do you want to marry him?”

“Oh yeah.”

“But you told him no?”

“I told him yes! I tried to tell him no, but I couldn’t,” she said, and burst into renewed tears. “It may sound foolish and impulsive, but I really do love him, and I don’t want to throw away this chance to be happy.”

“You don’t sound very happy.”

“I am! I’ve never felt this way. Hugh makes me feel good, even though I never knew I could feel any better. He makes me laugh, and he thinks I’m funny. He makes me happy, but...” She paused and wiped her eyes again. “I want you to be happy, too.”

“Me?”

“The past few months you’ve been miserable, especially after what happened in Oregon. I feel horrible because you’re unhappy and I’ve never been happier.”

“I’m happy,” she assured Mae, and wondered if it was true. With everything happening in her life, she hadn’t stopped to think about how she felt. If she thought about it now, the only word that came to mind was shock. But now wasn’t the time to pull out her feelings and look at them. “Hey,” she said with a smile, stretched out her arms in front of her, and patted the table. “Let’s concentrate on your happiness right now. It sounds like we have a wedding to plan.”

Mae put her hands in Georgeanne’s. “I know this whole thing sounds impetuous, but I really do love Hugh,” she said, her face lighting up when she spoke his name.

Georgeanne gazed into her friend’s eyes and let the romance and excitement of it all override her doubts— for the moment. “Have you picked a date?”

“October tenth.”

“That’s in three weeks!”

“I know, but the hockey season starts on the fifth in Detroit, and Hugh can’t miss the first game of the season. Then he’s in New York and St. Louis before he’s back here on the ninth playing against Colorado, and he never misses a chance to best Patrick Roy. I checked our schedule and we’re real slow the first three weeks in October. So Hugh and I are getting married on the tenth, honeymooning on Maui for a week, then I’ll come back here to help cater the Bennet party, and Hugh is off to Toronto for a game against the Maple Leafs.”

“Three weeks,” Georgeanne whimpered. “How can I plan a wonderful wedding in three weeks?”

“You’re not going to. I want you to be in the wedding, not in the kitchen. I’ve decided to hire Anne Maclean to cater the whole thing. She operates out of a large banquet hall in Redmond, and she’s still hungry enough to take the job on such sort notice. I only want two things from you. I would appreciate it if you’d help me pick out a wedding dress. You know I’m clueless about that sort of thing. I’d probably pick out something hideous and never know it.”

Georgeanne smiled. “I’d love to help you.”

“And I want you to do something else, too.” Her grip on Georgeanne’s hands tightened. “I want you to be my maid of honor. Hugh is going to ask John to be his best man, so you’d have to stand next to him at some point.”

Tears clogged Georgeanne’s throat. “Don’t worry about the problems between John and me. I’d love to stand up with you.”

“There’s one more problem, and it’s a biggie.”

“What could be worse than planning a wedding in three weeks and standing next to John?”

“Virgil Duffy.”

Everything inside of Georgeanne stilled.

“I told Hugh that we couldn’t invite him, but Hugh doesn’t see how to avoid it. He thinks if we invite his team members, and the trainers and coaches and management, we can’t overlook the owner. I suggested that we just invite close friends, but his teammates are his close friends. So how can we invite some and not others?” Mae covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Of course you invite Virgil,” Georgeanne managed, feeling her past coming back to haunt her. First John, and now Virgil.

Mae shook her head and dropped her hands. “How can I do that to you?”

“I’m a big girl. Virgil Duffy doesn’t scare me,” she said, and wondered if it was true. Sitting in her kitchen, she wasn’t scared, but she wasn’t so sure how she would feel when she saw him at the wedding. “You invite him, and whomever you want. Don’t worry about me.”

“I told Hugh that maybe we should fly to Vegas and get married by one of those Elvis impersonators. That would solve the problem.”

There was no way Georgeanne would allow her friend to run off to Vegas because of her past mistakes. “Don’t you even think about it,” she warned with her nose in the air. “You know how I feel about tacky people, and getting married by Elvis is white-trash tacky. I’d have to buy you an equally tacky wedding present. Something from Ronco, like that glass cutter so you could make your own stemware from Pepsi bottles. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think I could love you any longer.”

Mae laughed. “Okay, no Elvis.”

“Good. You’re going to have a beautiful wedding,” she predicted, then went in search of her day planner.

Together she and Mae got down to business. They called the caterer Mae wanted to use, then jumped in Georgeanne’s car and drove up to Redmond.

Over the next week, they talked to a florist and looked at a dozen wedding dresses. Between Heron’s, her work on the television program, Lexie, and the rapidly approaching wedding, Georgeanne had no time for herself. The only hours she had to sit and relax were the Monday and Wednesday nights when John picked up Lexie and Pongo and took them to puppy-training classes. But even then she couldn’t relax. Not when John walked into her house, tall and handsome and smelling like a late summer breeze. She would see him and her stupid heart would flutter, and when he turned to leave, her chest would ache. She’d fallen in love with him again. Only this time it felt more wretched than the last. She’d thought she was finished loving people who couldn’t love her back, but apparently not. Even though he broke her heart, she would probably always love John. He’d taken her love and her child, leaving her empty. Mae was getting married and moving ahead with her life. Georgeanne felt left behind. Her life was filled with things she enjoyed, yet the people she loved were moving in directions she couldn’t follow.

In a few short days, Lexie would spend her first weekend with John and meet Ernie Maxwell and John’s mother, Glenda. Her daughter belonged to a family that Georgeanne couldn’t give her. A family she wasn’t a part of, nor would ever belong to. John could give Lexie everything she would ever want and need, and Georgeanne was left out and pushed aside.

Ten days before the wedding, Georgeanne sat in her office at Heron’s alone, thinking about Lexie and John and Mae, and feeling lonely. When Charles called and suggested she meet him for lunch at McCormick and Schmick’s, she jumped at the chance to get away for a few hours. It was Friday afternoon, she had a big job to cater that evening, and she needed a friendly face and pleasant conversation.

Over clams and soft-shell crabs, she told Charles all about Mae and the wedding. “It’s a week from this coming Thursday,” she said as she wiped her hands on a linen napkin. “With such short notice, they were lucky to get a small nondenominational church in Kirkland and a banquet hall in Redmond for the reception afterward. Lexie is the flower girl and I’m the maid of honor.” Georgeanne picked up her fork and shook her head. “I still haven’t found a dress to wear. Thank goodness this will all be over soon, and I won’t have to go through it again until Lexie gets married.”

“Don’t you plan to get married someday?”

Georgeanne shrugged and looked away. When she thought of getting married, she always pictured John as he’d looked in that formal tuxedo the day of the GQ photo shoot. “I haven’t really thought about it much.”

“Well, why don’t you think about it?”

Georgeanne looked back at Charles and smiled. “Are you proposing?”

“I would if I thought you’d accept.”

Her smile slowly fell.

“Don’t worry,” he said, and tossed a clamshell onto a pile on his plate. “I won’t embarrass you right now by asking, and I won’t subject myself to your rejection. I know you’re not ready.”

She stared at him, this wonderful man who meant a lot to her, but whom she didn’t love as a wife should love a husband. Her head wanted to love him, but her heart loved someone else.

“Don’t reject the idea out of hand. Just think about it,” he said, and she did. She thought about how marriage to Charles would solve some of her problems.

He could provide a comfortable life for her and Lexie, and together they would be a family. She didn’t love him as she should, but given more time, maybe she could. Maybe her head could convince her heart.

John tossed his T-shirt on the heap of socks and running shoes on the bathroom floor. Dressed only in a pair of jogging shorts, he covered his lower face with shave cream. As he reached for his razor, he looked up into the mirror in front of him and smiled. “You can come in and talk to me if you want to,” he told Lexie, who stood behind him, peeking into the bathroom.

“What are you doing?”

“Shaving.” He placed the razor beneath his left side-burn and scraped it down.

“My mom shaves her legs and her pits,” she mentioned as she moved to stand next to him. She wore her pink and white striped nightgown, and her hair was messy from sleep. Last night was the first time she’d stayed with him alone, and after he’d killed the spider in her bedroom for her, everything had gone real smooth. After he’d smashed the insect with a book, she’d looked at him as if he walked on water.

“I get to shave when I’m in the seventh grade,” she continued. “I’ll probably be really hairy by then.” She peered up at him through the mirror. “Do you think Pongo will ever get hairy?”

John rinsed his blade and shook his head. “Nope. He’ll never get much hair.” When he’d picked up Lexie the night before, that poor little dog had been wearing a new red sweater with jewels glued all over it and a matching stocking cap. When he’d entered the house, the dog looked at him and ran into another room to hide. Georgeanne had speculated that he might be afraid of John’s height, but John figured that poor Pongo hadn’t wanted another male to see him looking like such a sissy.

“How did you get that big ouchie in your eyebrow?”

“This little thing?” He pointed to his old scar. “When I was about nineteen, a guy shot a puck at my head and I didn’t duck in time.”

“Did it hurt?”

It had hurt like a son of a bitch. “Nah.” John raised his chin toward the ceiling and shaved beneath his jaw. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Lexie watch him. “Maybe you should get dressed now. Your grandma and great-grandpa Ernie will be here in about a half hour.”

“Will you do my hair?” She held up one hand and showed him a hairbrush.

“I don’t know how to do little girls’ hair.”

“You could put it in a ponytail. That’s real easy. Or maybe a side pony. Just make sure it’s high, ‘cause I don’t like low ponies.”

“I’ll try,” he said, rinsed shave cream and stubble from the razor, then went to work on his other cheek. “But if you look like a wild child, don’t blame me.”

Lexie laughed and laid her head against his side. Her fine hair brushed his skin. “If my mommy marries Charles, will my name still be Kowalsky like yours?”

The razor came to an abrupt halt at the corner of John’s mouth. His gaze slid down the mirror to Lexie’s upturned face. Slowly he lowered the blade away from his face and held it under the hot water. “Is your mother planning on marrying Charles?”

Lexie shrugged. “Maybe. She’s thinking about it.”

John hadn’t really given serious thought to Georgeanne marrying. The thought of it now, of another man touching her, tied his stomach up in a twist knot. He quickly finished shaving and turned the faucet off. “Did she tell you that?”

“Yep, but since you’re my daddy, I told her to think about marrying you.”

He reached for a towel and dabbed at the white cream beneath his left ear. “What did she say?”

“She laughed and said it wouldn’t happen, but you could still ask her, couldn’t you?”

Marry Georgeanne? He couldn’t marry Georgeanne. Even though they’d gotten along fairly well after the Pongo incident, he wasn’t convinced she would ever like him.

He could honestly say that he liked her. Maybe too much. Every time he went to pick up Lexie, he envisioned her without clothes, but lust wasn’t enough to support a lifetime commitment. He respected her, too, but respect wasn’t enough either. He loved Lexie and wanted to give her everything she needed to be happy, but he’d learned years ago not to marry a woman because of a child.

“Couldn’t you just ask? Then we could have a baby.”

She gazed up with the same pleading look she’d used to get her puppy, but this time he wasn’t about to give in. If, and when, he ever married again, it would be because living without the woman was hell. “I don’t think your mommy likes me,” he said, and tossed the towel on the counter next to the sink. “How are we going to do that ponytail?”

Lexie handed him the brush. “You comb out the tangles first.”

John got down on one knee and carefully ran the bristles through the back of Lexie’s hair. “Am I hurting you?”

She shook her head. “My mommy likes you.”

“Did she tell you she does?”

“She thinks you’re handsome and nice, too.”

John chuckled. “I know she didn’t tell you that.”

Lexie shrugged. “If you kiss her, she’ll think you’re handsome. Then you can have a baby.”

Although the idea of kissing Georgeanne had always been one hell of a temptation for him, he doubted one kiss would work like magic and solve their problems. He didn’t even want to think about making a baby.

He turned Lexie to the side and lightly brushed a tangle beneath her left ear. “It looks like you have food stuck in your hair,” he said, careful not to pull too hard.

“Probably pizza,” Lexie told him unconcerned, then they sat in silence while John combed the fine strands, fearing he was doing more harm than good. Lexie remained quiet, and John was relieved that the subject of Georgeanne and kissing and babies was over.

“If you kiss her, she’ll like you more than Charles,” Lexie whispered.

John pushed aside the drapes and gazed out at the Detroit night. From his room at the Omni Hotel, he could see the river looking like a long oil slick. He felt restless and edgy, but that was nothing new. It usually took him several hours to come back down after a game, especially after a match with the Red Wings. Last year the team from Motown had barely edged the Chinooks out of the play-offs with a one-goal backhanded fake by Sergei Fedorov. This year the Chinooks started the long season with a 4—2 victory over their rivals. The win had been a nice way to start the season.

Most of the team was in the bar downstairs, celebrating. Not John. He was restless and edgy and too stoked to sleep, but he didn’t want to be around people. He didn’t want to eat bar peanuts, talk shop, or fend off rink bunnies.

Something was wrong. Except for the blindside hit he’d given Fetisov, John had played textbook hockey. He was playing his game the way he liked to play it, with speed, strength, skill, and hard body checking. He was doing what he loved to do. What he’d always loved to do.

Something was wrong. He wasn’t satisfied. You can have your career with the Chinooks, or you can have Georgeanne. You can’t have both.

John dropped the drape back into place and glanced at his watch. It was midnight in Detroit, nine in Seattle. He walked to the table next to the bed, picked up the telephone receiver, and dialed.

“Hello,” she answered after the third ring, stirring something deep within him.

If you kiss her, she’ll think you’re handsome. Then you can have a baby. John closed his eyes. “Hi, Georgie.”

“John?”

“Yep.”

“Where are... What are you...? Cryin‘ all night, I’m watching you right now on the television.”

He opened his eyes and looked across the room at the closed curtains. “It’s a delayed telecast on the West Coast.”

“Oh. Did you win?”

“Yes.”

“Lexie will be glad to hear it. She’s in the living room watching you.”

“What does she think?”

“Well, I believe she really liked it until that big red guy knocked you down. Then she got upset.”

The “big red guy” happened to be an enforcer for Detroit. “Is she okay now?”

“Yes. When she saw you skate around again, she was okay. I think she really likes watching you. It must be genetic.”

John glanced down at the notepad by the telephone.

“What about you?” he asked, and wondered why her answer felt so important to him.

“Well, I don’t normally like to watch sports. Don’t tell anyone, because as you know, I am from Texas,” she drawled, “but I like to watch hockey more than football.”

Her voice made him think of dark passion, reflections in windows, and hot sex. If you kiss her, she’ll like you more than Charles. The thought of her kissing her boyfriend made him feel as if he’d taken a boomer to the chest. “I’ve got tickets for you and Lexie to the game on Friday. I really want you both to come.”

“Friday? The night after the wedding?”

“Is that a problem? Do you have to work?”

She paused for a few long moments before she answered, “No, we can be there.”

He smiled into the phone. “The language gets a little salty sometimes.”

“I think we’re used to it by now,” she said, and he could hear the laughter in her voice. “Lexie is right here. I’ll let you talk to her now.”

“Wait, there’s one more thing.”

“What?”

Wait until I get home before you decide to marry your boyfriend. He’s a wimp and a weenie and you deserve someone better. He sat down heavily on the side of the bed. He didn’t have any right to demand anything. “Never mind. I’m really tired.”

“Is there something else you needed?”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “No, put Lexie on.”