Binding Arbitration (19 page)

I mocked his tone, “That or you’ll wish you were.”

He closed the distance between us, pulling me by the lapel, kissing my cold nose, then nuzzling my neck with his cold lips. Cass snickered on the breeze.

“Don’t make me use my gun on you,” I grumbled trying not to giggle.

“Mines bigger,” he laughed against my goose pimpled skin.

Another snickering voice made us jump apart. “Hey mister, Lola here says that she’s seen you on TV. Is she just messin’ with us? She says that you play for the Cubs?”

“I’ll deal with you later.” He winked conspiratorially before addressing the kid. “Lola is correct. I’m on the Cubs.”

“Can we play baseball with your kid, Mr. Band-Aid?”

“We can only play an inning before it’s too dark and cold.”

The kids jumped up and down excitedly as we divided up into two teams. Cass and the biggest boy were captains. Cass must have felt some sense of loyalty because I was his first round draft choice while the other team took Aidan. The rest of the kids were picked from the biggest to the smallest.

Cass was pitching, and I was the catcher. They had a runner on first, who had been picked off on a grounder. When Aidan came up to bat, he fouled off Cass’ first two pitches. “How about a little wager?”

“What did you have in mind?” I repositioned myself, so I could see Cass stumping the mound in nervous agitation.

“If I get a home run you cook dinner for us.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I’ll buy you dinner and take you home. I’ll even convince Cass that it was his idea.”

“You’re on.” I nodded toward Cass, letting him know that I was ready he let go. The ball slid over the plate.

“Strike one,” Lola sang out in a sweet high-pitched voice.

The second pitch was almost as fast, but when it reached the plate it slowed down and dropped, Aidan swung and missed.

“Strike two.”

“That kid of ours has talent.” Aidan chuckled as he stepped out of the batter’s box, kicking at his spikes with the bat. When he stepped back into the box he said, “I forgot, after you make us dinner you’ll spend the night with me.”

Cass wound up and it was a perfect pitch until Aidan made contact and it sailed over everyone’s heads, but couldn’t quite make the fence. Before he dropped the bat, he said, “In the park homer,” and started off around the bases at a clipped pace.

Cass was watching as the outfielder recovered the ball and threw it back toward the mound. Cass barely caught the ball, but he smiled a breathtaking smile at Aidan just as he was rounding third base. Then he wound up so fast that I didn’t even see the ball coming.

A solitary thought throttled my brain. My stomach did a little flip. I think Cass was falling in love. I looked back trying to find Cass only to see the ball coming straight at me.

I did stop it though—with the middle of my forehead.

15

EXPAND THE STRIKE ZONE

Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Thomas Jefferson

Aidan 1 a.m.

The stairs creaking overhead startled me awake. A bright stream of light fell across my body through the cracked door, into the room where Cass and I were sleeping. My bad shoulder had become Cass’ pillow and his new baseball glove was wedged into my bare armpit. Kitchen cabinets were opening and closing and I wondered what Libby was searching for.

Cass’ covers were tangled around his ankles and I pulled them up as I placed my hand on his forehead, wanting to feel his skin one more time. He turned into my hand without waking and mumbled in his sleep, “I love you.” Hearing the sweetly spoken words meant for his mother made me long for something that I hadn’t known existed. I smiled as I slipped downstairs on silent feet approaching the light, to find Libby standing over the sink and wrestling with the Tylenol bottle.

“Need some help?”

She jumped, and the contents flew in every direction. I picked up two capsules from the floor, reached for a clean glass and turned on the tap before she’d caught her breath.

“Are you trying to scare the shit out of me?”

“Seven swears. I’m looking forward to settling up.”

She took the capsules and tossed them back in a single swig while I admired the long column of her neck where it plunged into her revealing tank top. Max looked none too happy when he dropped off a bag for Libby earlier, but Suzy must have packed it with mischief in mind.

A treads width of shiny silver chain rubbed against her satiny skin, something on the end of it dangled between her breasts. She peeked at my bare chest before taking a step back.

“I didn’t want to go through your medicine cabinet.” She picked up the empty bottle, and the chain swung free.

I picked up the end of the sparkling chain, as she rose to her feet. A small green enameled ring barely fit on the tip of my finger. “What’s this?”

“A ring.” She tried to turn away. “Sorry I woke you.” She moved to go around me, but I refused to relinquish the chain.

“This ring looks familiar to me.” Because I had given her that ring, for Christmas, the same night I had given her Cass. Seeing her face light up when I put it on her finger was as thrilling to me as watching her climax in the soft moonlight.

“I’m going back to bed.” She pried it out of my fingers. “If Cass wakes up he’ll be scared.”

“He’s not the one afraid. Besides, Northwestern’s marching band couldn’t wake him up. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

When I came upstairs, I placed the tea tray on her lap and squeezed in next to her against the upholstered headboard. She startled, when the hair on my arms brushed her satiny skin, she squirmed. Instead of calming, I had to choke back a reaction. “Done pouting over the bet?”

“I don’t pout. I took a screwball to the head. I have a headache.”

I chuckled. “I bet I could make you forget it.”

“You need to keep your paws off me, or Cass is going to get the wrong idea.”

I pushed her hair over her shoulder, so I could see the side of her face. “I called Father Schimkowski and told him we’d come by to meet Ms. Gutierrez after 10:30 Mass, then go to lunch. Or do you take Old Mr. Rodgers to lunch on Sundays?”

“Cass told you about Mr. Rodgers on Sundays?” She peered at me out of the corner of her eye. “That kid talks too much.”

“He gets that from me.”

“What makes you so sure I’m going to help Ms. Gutierrez anyway?” She set her tea cup down on the tray.

“If you go to see an old man in a rest home every Sunday out of a sense of duty, I’m sure you’d want to help a single mother who’s in trouble.” I moved the tray to the nightstand. “Isn’t that why you went to law school?”

“I went to make oodles of money so I’d never have to go back to French Lick and live near my relatives.”

“What’s going with you and your mom?” Although Libby’s mom smiled lovingly at her, something rippled and quaked right below the calm surface between them. Perhaps Libby was embarrassed by her mother. I found her unusual, but no more so than any other parent. But Libby would feel it a reflection of her.

“Jeanne thinks that at twenty-nine I need to be parented. She didn’t do such a hot job at nine, so I’m not interested in a repeat performance.”

“But what was going on when she showed up today?”

“I have no idea why she showed up dressed like a clown.”

“When I went home, I walked in on my parents playing maid and butler, your mom in a clown get up is much tamer.” I laughed pulling her along with me as I descended into the covers, holding her against me until I felt her stop struggling.

She shivered. “Your hair is tickling me.”

“You keep wiggling like that, and it’ll be more than my hair tickling you.”

She became stock still. I spooned around her and my forearm rested between her breasts; her necklace fell into my hand. “Why’d you keep this all these years?”

“Stupid sentimentality, I guess.”

“The chain it’s on is so fragile; it’s as fine as a strand of your hair.”

“Cass saved his allowance, for I don’t know how long, to buy it for me last mother’s day. He said, ‘I don’t want to be the only thing that you carry from my father forever.’”

“He says these profound things.” I waited until her breathing slowed before I whispered, “All day I’ve been trying to remember who Cass reminds me of. He makes sounds in his sleep like my brother Andy.”

“I thought your brother’s name was Avery.”

“I had an older brother, Andy; he was nineteen when he died right before my tenth birthday. He was going to Florida for spring training to play for the Marlins. It was cold and icy, but he insisted on driving the Corvette my grandparents had given him for his birthday.”

When Andy hit a patch of black ice, and careened off a bridge into the Ohio River, a piece of each of us had died with him. In my childlike mind, I’d assumed he was my father’s favorite, because he’d made it to Triple A right out of high school, and my father was a sports fanatic. My mother had wanted Andy to attend Yale, and then play ball, but my father had insisted Andy was old enough to make his own decisions. And he’d died because of them.

“I was jealous he was going to play ball all day, and I had to go back to school. He said I was coming to see him for spring break, and I was so mad I told him that I never wanted to see him again. When he died, I thought I was responsible.”

Libby was quiet for a long time. “So you wanted to make it to the majors to take his place?”

“I know it’s crazy, but I thought I was supposed to move up in the ranks and take Andy’s spot. I had the notion baseball was the way to my father’s heart. By the time I figured out that it didn’t work that way, I was already in college, and I had to finish what I started.”

Just like you’re going to finish what you’re starting now, kid, and this, you might even enjoy.

9 a.m.

Libby was already moving around in the kitchen. I dressed in slacks and a polo shirt and went down to the kitchen, where I found her standing over the stove.

She turned in anticipation of me, my breath caught in my throat. She was dressed in a pale pink cashmere dress, ivory hose and boots. Pink, square-framed glasses, matching her lips perched on her face. Her necklace hung in the deep v of the dress, along with loose strands of her unbound hair.

“Suzy certainly knows your clothes,” I said in greeting when the desperate housewife spun the spatula in her hand like a magic wand. “We made the front page of the entertainment section.” She nodded to the paper in the middle of the plates, cutlery, and juice glasses and turned back to flip pancakes.

Chicago Cubs Player Plays the Field

By Winslow O’Leary, Entertainment Reporter

Word about the Windy City is that Cubs closer Aidan Palowski has been seen about town with a new lady on his arm. This is no
CELEBUTANTE
, but one of the city’s finest criminal defense attorneys, Elizabeth Tucker of Whitney, Brown & Rodgers, the law firm that handles anything from crooked politicians to celebrity scandals. It’s the law firm that’s kept the Accardo family out of Cook County Jail since the early 1920s.

Speaking of celebutante scandals: sources close to the parties involved report that Band-Aid paid New York’s Vanessa Vanderhoff a red-eye visit to San Francisco to close out the game with her. Sources say she
GETS
to keep the ring. He didn’t take long to find a nice Midwest girl and word on the street is that this new face is no second stringer. One has to wonder where and when the two were first acquainted. Both share Indiana University as their Alma Mater; they graduated the same year.

Perhaps an old love rekindled? The new couple has been seen in a local bar in Wrigleyville, the 737 Restaurant for a romantic candlelight dinner, where more than food passed between them, eyewitnesses report. And just yesterday, they were sighted together shopping on North Michigan Avenue, playing ball in Lincoln Park before she was
DUMPED
by a ball which caused no serious injury but sent our lovebirds home for a quiet evening with Thai Palace take-out for comfort.

Things are never more exciting than when this Golden Glove is around town
AGAIN
, but this situation might be as sticky as cotton candy on an August afternoon since Ms. Vanderhoff, when asked to comment, said only, “We’re on a temporary break.” Which doesn’t seem to jive with what Omni patrons observed watching Band-Aid close a new deal with a lady who’s in a league of her own.

The ump laughed hysterically.
‘Celebutante gets dumped again.’ I love this O’Leary guy.

I swallowed down willing myself to concentrate, but between the ump’s laughter and Libby’s backside, I was distracted. “The article’s not all that bad and the good news is that it doesn’t mention Cass.” Her glare made me swallow the lust in my throat. “Obviously, a lot of people think highly of you.”

She pointed with the spatula that turned from wand to deadly weapon. “I wouldn’t be mentioned at all if it wasn’t for you. I’m used to the main section, when I’m just listed as someone’s attorney. I don’t like being fodder for entertainment reporters.” She stacked pancakes on a platter. I watched as she poured more batter on the griddle and then she dropped diced apples on each one. The vision was enough to make me want to drop to my knees and propose.

I moved behind her. “Would you like to be fodder for a baseball player’s fantasy?” I gave into the impulse to draw her into my arms. When she came grudgingly, our jaw lines connected and the sweet scent of apple pancakes and Libby engulfed me.

Too soon, she stepped away. “Stop puttering around, and wake Cass so we won’t be late for church.”

“Do you need to confess that you spent the night?”

“This accusation coming from a man who’s slept with a troupe of Rockettes?” She raised a single brow.

“Maybe you just need to confess to libidinous thoughts.” I pulled her back, pressing her arms around my neck. I didn’t go to her lips, instead I placed kisses along her neck and down over the curve of her breasts. She threw her head back, closing her eyes, chanting under her breath. If my face wasn’t buried in the deep V of her dress, I might’ve smelled the burning before the smoke detector squealed to life, careening us apart.