"She has a way with little boys. Not surprising since we had three of them."
A shadow fell across me. I turned and came face-to-face with Jensen's father.
He smiled at me. "My wife wasn't too hard on you, I hope."
I smiled back. "She caught me off-guard, but it's all good. Unless you're here to play bad cop to her good cop?"
He laughed. He had a great laugh and now I knew where Jensen had gotten it. "I imagine Selka played both good and bad cop. I had no idea she planned to ambush you until my daughter-in-law called to tell me Mama Bear was on the prowl. So I'm here to bat cleanup."
"You Lunds and your sports analogies."
"Par for the course with all of us."
"Omigod. Jensen gets his love of puns from you!"
He laughed again. "Guilty." He offered his hand. "I'm Ward, by the way. It's great to finally meet you, Rowan. Jensen hasn't told me much about you, but his happiness the last two months tells me all I need to know."
And . . . there was the charm my man had inherited too. "Jens and I are twin beams of happiness, according to our neighbors on the second floor."
"So you and Jensen are out, loud and proud, as a couple?"
"Yes . . . and no. Jensen has lived at Snow Village longer than I have and he knows everyone. He claims they're trustworthy, so we hang out at the pool and the playground with Calder's friends' parents. As far as us going out together? Either as a couple on a date or with Calder? Right now we're content to stay home. I work all day and Jensen is dealing with pretraining stuff. We're happy to flop on his ridiculously large couch and chill."
"And here at camp?"
"The staff knows we're . . . close. The kids don't pay attention. It's not like we're even here at the same time most days. My parents know we're involved, but they keep it to themselves." Guilt hit me. I shot him a look. "Shoot. I'm sure Jens meant to tell you sooner-"
"He did tell us. But that was weeks ago and we've been out of the country. So now we're back and Mama Lund tends to take matters into her own hands."
"I'll remember that."
"Now I'm going to sneak off before Selka gets back and chews me out for spying on her." He squeezed my shoulder. "Hope to see more of you, Rowan."
"You will. It was nice meeting you."
When he reached the side door, I said, "Ward? Can I ask you something?"
He turned. "Of course."
"What's Jensen's middle name?"
He laughed. "Ask his mother. It was her idea."
Twenty-two
ROWAN
The hot summer days and hotter summer nights with my man flew by.
Camp Step-Up was winding down even as Vikings training camp started in two days.
The more I worked with Astrid, the more she impressed me. I wished I had the budget to offer her a paid position scheduling practice and workout times at the campus training center, because we needed someone who could multitask.
Jensen returned home every night exhausted. I'd never overstepped my bounds and told him to train less or not push himself so hard, but I was sorely tempted after he'd nearly fallen asleep at the dinner table.
In addition to the physical demands of being a professional athlete, with the impending opening of the new stadium, it seemed the team PR machine had hit the overdrive stage. All of the players were in demand for interviews and appearances at community events. The only good thing about the accelerated promotion schedule was that no one questioned why the players and the cheerleaders were together so often. Jensen and I didn't avoid each other, but we also weren't making out in the locker room or walking hand in hand to events. I wasn't sure how things would change once we'd passed the preseason; I just knew things would change.
Whether that would be a good change for us . . . only time would tell.
I still hadn't heard from Martin about when he and Verily planned to return. Part of the deal with us subleasing from them? I was supposed to be looking at houses to buy. But besides occasionally browsing online, I'd pretty much blown off the house search. Did I have visions of moving into Jensen's apartment after Martin returned? I wasn't ready to answer that honestly. Since Calder was starting at a charter school, the school district we lived in was irrelevant.
The main issue for me was that I'd been an apartment dweller since I'd lived in the dorms my first year of college. It sounded weird to a lot of people-my folks included-but I liked living in an apartment complex. I'd heard the "throwing your money away on rent" argument more times than I could count. But the thought of being responsible for even more things in my life-yard work, shoveling snow, home repairs and maintenance-sent me into panic mode. I hadn't mentioned my aversion to becoming a homeowner to anyone except Martin. That was how I'd ended up subleasing his place: because he understood. He'd told me unless he moved out of the Cities completely, he planned to live at Snow Village indefinitely.