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turn. Maybe I needed to be spontaneous more often. Maybe it would be good for me.
    Maybe Paige would be good for me. And maybe I could be good for her.
    She glanced up at me, her brow arched. “Yes?”
    “Do you and your girls have plans tomorrow?” I asked. Her lips formed a perfect O, but she didn’t immediately turn me down, so I pushed through. “It’s still the weekend. We’ve got an afternoon game. I’d like you to come as my guests. If you want. And if you don’t have other plans. We could maybe have dinner after.”
    “I…” She looked as lost as she sounded, as if she was as out of practice was I was.
    But then one of her girls—probably the oldest one—came over to the buffet table and started fixing herself a plate. She glanced up at me. “Did you just ask my mom out on a date?”
    “I did.” I kept my eyes on Paige while I answered her daughter.
    “What she means to say is yes . And by the way, she likes tulips. Yellow ones.”
    “ Zoe ,” Paige said in a very mom-like voice.
    “What? You do like tulips.” Zoe gave me a cheeky grin. “Can we hang out with 501 during the game?”

 

     
     

    WITH MATTIAS’S HELP , I managed to extricate Levi from Sophie’s exuberant grip and guide all of my girls toward the parking garage after the StormSkillz event came to a close. Mattias came with us, actually, walking along beside me while my daughters raced ahead in a torrent of squeals pitched so high that only a dog should be able to hear them.
    “You think they had a good time?” he asked me, the deep rumble of his voice a pleasing contrast to their excited chatter.
    I chuckled. “I doubt they’ll stop talking about it for a month.” Even as I said it, Sophie turned her head to look at us over her shoulder, her smile as sweet as I’d ever seen it. Her eyes were all crinkled up, and her cheeks were flushed with exhilaration. She looked like she might never be able to stop smiling.
    “That’s good.”
    “Good, yes, but they might drive me insane with it before the month is out.” In a good way, though. Sometimes I complained about how excitable they could be when it came to boys and their crushes, but really I wouldn’t change it for anything.
    “I guess I’ll have to make that up to you,” he said, and my butterflies returned.
    They kept coming back, each instance stronger than the last, when he did even the smallest thing. Sometimes it was when he would smile at me with that panty-melting look in his eye. Once, they’d fluttered to life when he’d entertained Sophie while Levi escaped for a few minutes, answering every question she put to him as though it was the most important question he’d ever heard. Another time, the flutters caught me unawares when he took the time to explain what icing was to Izzy.
    How pathetic was it that this man could turn me on simply by taking an interest in my daughters? But it was the truth. He’d paid as much attention to each of the four of them as he had to me over the course of the afternoon, and he’d even taken a few moments to talk to his players and give them instruction for their own play based on some of the games and drills taking place on the ice below us. If I wasn’t careful, I might find myself falling for this man, and that wasn’t something that fit well in my plans.
    “They’re growing up too fast for me,” I admitted. “When they were little, there were times I couldn’t wait for them to grow up. Three was always a rough year. Whoever decided the twos were terrible must never have met a three-year-old. I didn’t think I would escape their threes with all of us being alive and intact.”
    Mattias chuckled. “But here you are.”
    “But here we are, and they’re teenagers. I think I blinked one day and they were practically adults. Now I regret all those moments I wished they would hurry past those difficult stages, and I’m praying they’ll slow down.”
    “Sadly, I don’t think it works that way.”
    “No, it