Home Ice by Catherine Gayle Page B

increased.
    I was a mess over him, but for some odd reason, I couldn’t seem to make myself mind.
    While he was gone to deal with practice and other work with the Storm on Sunday, I used that time to clean my house, try to make a dent in the massive piles of laundry that had built up over the course of the week, and go grocery shopping in preparation for the week to come. There was a brief moment when I debated taking a nap, but I brushed that aside. I could nap when my girls were grown and living on their own. I didn’t often have time to myself like this, and I knew better than to let it go to waste.
    There was still a Mt. Everest-sized pile of laundry waiting to be washed when the doorbell rang, signaling that my time alone was at an end. The instant I opened it, Mattias put his arms around me and gave me a toe-curling kiss, as if he hadn’t seen me in months instead of hours. I wouldn’t have minded continuing with what he’d started if not for the fact that Dan’s weekend with the girls was at an end, and I needed to go pick them up.
    Mattias came with me to get them. “I’ll stay in the car if you think it would be better,” he suggested once he’d parked in Dan’s driveway.
    I shook my head. “No need for that.” In fact, it was better for my ex to meet Mattias now, because I had made up my mind that I wanted to take things further. I wasn’t sure what it would look like, and I was even less positive what the girls were ready for, but I wanted to make things as smooth as possible for my kids. That meant their father needed to know there was a new man in my life.
    Zoe answered the door and let us in, giving Mattias a wide-eyed look. “Just so you know, that was all my phone’s fault.”
    She’d barely gotten that out before Sophie came running, arms wide for a hug. But instead of jumping into my arms, she made a flying leap for Mattias. She hugged him hard, nearly strangling him with her grip around his neck.
    It was too much for me. I stepped back, blinking down the tears stinging behind my eyes. My baby girl had decided he should be part of her life, so who was I to say otherwise? Even if I hadn’t already been leaning toward making this relationship with Mattias more official, I would have given in upon seeing this.
    Once Mattias extricated himself from Sophie’s exuberant display of affection, he shook Dan’s hand and exchanged a few pleasantries while I helped the older girls pack up the last of their things so we could head home.
    We were in the SUV heading back to my place when Sophie piped up with, “Bergy?”
    “Yes, Sophie?” He glanced at her in his rearview mirror.
    “Good job on kissing Mom. Zoe showed me the picture.”
    Everyone burst out laughing, including Mattias. Everyone but me. I bit down on my lower lip, unable to decide between snort-laughing along with the rest of them or burying my head in the sand like Zoe kept threatening to do.
    “Well, we had a deal, right?” he said after the laughter died down.
    “Right. So when can I skate?”
    He turned onto my street, smiling like he’d just won the lottery. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he answered her before I got the chance to overanalyze it. “Soon,” he said. “But first, we need to start doing some exercise so we can build up your muscles.”
    “Like what kind of exercise?”
    “Do you know what crunches are?” he asked.
    “Yep.”
    “Well, we’ll do things like that. You’ll need strong core muscles to be able to skate.”
    “We can all do it together,” Izzy said. “So we can all skate.”
    “Sure,” he replied, and his grin just kept getting bigger. “We can call it Workouts with Bergy or something like that.”
    “Can we work out with Levi?” Evie asked.
    Mattias chuckled. “Not sure I can make that one happen, but maybe we can get some of the guys involved when we’re ready to skate.”
    That was apparently enough to get the girls chattering and giggling. Hormones .
    Sophie wasn’t