David Connor

Being part of an Olympic skating pair should be excitement enough for one life, but for Erika that's only the beginning. Her skating partner, Tom Alan, is her ex-husband, who fell in love with former British ice dancer Milo, and all three of them live together and raise her daughter, whose father is Erika's ex-boyfriend, Bill, a rabid hockey fan who is old friends with Milo. Whew! As if that's not enough, Erika still loves Bill, loves Tom Alan, and might just love Milo, too. Add a couple of troubled teenagers to the pile, and suddenly training for the Olympics is the easy part. But Erika's never been a fan of the conventional, and one way or another the four of them will find a way to make their strange tangle of love, sex, and family work.

Transitions

Tom Alan laughed. Then Billy did. It was a wonderful, unabashed, deep, loud bark that came from his gut. Erika had loved it from the very first day she’d literally fallen at his feet at Irina Mischen’s rink and uttered the foulest word she could think of when he jerked the jumping cable.


“You did that on purpose, you…hockey thug.” She had accused.


“We’re not allowed to curse in here,” he’d told her. “Try to act like a lady, will ya?”


She looked at her two men in the water, side by side, blocking out the others with her hand. They both had facial scruff. Billy had just recently started growing his. It was scratchy against her fingertips, not soft like Tom Alan’s, yet she still couldn’t wait to feel it on her cheek. “Do I have to take your toys away?” she asked the group.


When Billy got out of the pool for a drink, she followed him into the kitchen with Etsuko on her hip, and took him aside. “Maybe you can tell them tonight.”


Chapter 34