Page 10 of Sweet Trouble
“Did you have fun playing in the hose with Posey?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah,” he admitted. “How did you know?”
“Mrs. Holmes might have mentioned something,” she said. “Also, your jeans are still wet.”
“I squirted her by accident, so I let her squirt me back,” he admitted. “It was only fair. That one’s a pistol—got me good.”
“That’s Jillian Johnson’s little girl,” Allie said lightly.
The information hit him like a sledgehammer in the chest.
Jillian Johnson.
A vision of Jillian back in school flashed through his mind, soft blonde hair held back in a ponytail, serious green eyes always trained on some invisible but important future as she moved through the halls with the grace of a dancer and the determination of a general. If he closed his eyes, he could hear her soft voice.
“Well, JillianPricenow,” Allie amended.
He glanced over, but Allie’s eyes were on the school building, as if she knew he might want space to react to this information.
But of course he already knew all about that.
Not every detail, of course, but Jillian was Coach’s granddaughter. That was how he’d first noticed her back in school, bundled in her coat and scarf at the rink during practices from time to time, her nose in a book.
He’d tried to impress her with his moves on the ice, but he was pretty sure she had never once looked up.
These days, he paid regular visits to Coach and Mrs. Johnson. They were neighbors, and he knew they didn’t have family close by. A month ago, when he stopped by to bleed the radiators, Coach had mentioned that their granddaughter was coming back tolive with them.
Tripp hadn’t dared to hope that the granddaughter he meant was Jillian.
Since then, there had been more excitement each time he dropped in. Tripp learned that there would also be two great-granddaughters, and he wondered if there was a grandson-in-law who would be tending to the house.
He did as much to help out around the old place as Coach allowed, which wasn’t really a whole lot—mostly just a regular weekly “milk delivery” when Tripp stuffed the fridge as full of groceries as he could manage, and the occasional clearing of ice and snow, or removing fallen branches from the big trees lining the property.
The old man had relented when Tripp said the parking area and back porch steps were getting treacherous if a man wanted to pay a friend a visit in wintertime. So he’d been allowed to lay fresh gravel and repair and repaint the steps.
Coach had also allowed Tripp to surprise Mrs. Johnson with a fresh coat of paint in the kitchen for her birthday.
Otherwise, Tripp had to turn a blind eye to the state of the place if he didn’t want to offend Coach. He tried to just be glad the door was always open to him so he could keep an eye on the two people who had made his teen years special.
There was no reason for a tiny town like Sugarville Grove to have an above-average high school hockey team. But Coach Johnson had played in the minors in his youth, and he brought the Fighting Woodchucks to thestate playoffs every single year of Tripp’s high school career.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Johnson sponsored parties and raised funds for special training and to cover uniforms and fees for the kids whose families couldn’t have afforded for them to participate otherwise.
Generations of kids had benefited from their generosity. Tripp felt that the least he could do was look out for the two of them now, as much as they would let him. It was also one of the main reasons he’d started coaching hockey himself—he liked the idea of giving something back.
Besides, he genuinely enjoyed sitting in their kitchen and listening to Coach tell old stories or give him coaching advice to the rhythmic clicking of Mrs. Johnson’s knitting needles.
It suddenly hit him where he’d gotten that spare hat, and that he’d just unknowingly given Posey her own great-grandmother’s gift to him.
“You okay?” Allie asked.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, trying to shake the whole thing off.
“I know you always had a thing for Jillian,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Don’t be a meanie,” he said, giving her a light shove. “Just because you’re married off doesn’t mean you can give me a hard time about my high school crush.”
She laughed at that and headed for the school as he turned toward the lot.
