Catch of a Lifetime: A Cricket Creek Novel (13 page)

“Oh, Ty.”

“I used to hear her cry at night, Jessica.” He closed his eyes as if trying to erase the memory, and then sighed. “Look, there are some really great guys in baseball, but I also saw a lot of ballplayers cheat on their wives. I didn’t want to be one of them. So I never stayed with a woman long enough to let her care about me. That’s my fear.”

She swallowed hard.

“So when does it end, Jessica? Isn’t it about time to quit letting the mistakes of others rule our own lives? Damn, I look at Olivia and Noah, see their happiness, and I want that. Don’t you?”

She thought of the
Modern Bride
magazine and felt emotion well up in her throat, but refused to answer.

“At least give yourself the chance. Give
me
the chance. That’s all I’m asking.”

Jessica gazed down at the gorgeous man looking imploringly up at her. “I must be crazy.”

“To give me a shot?”

“No.” She took a quick step closer to the bed. “Not to.”

It seemed to take a moment for her answer to sink in, and when it did, he smiled slowly. “Now you’re talking.” He arched one eyebrow. “After all, you’re not getting any younger.”

“Gee, thanks.” Jessica gave his shoulders another quick shove, sending him tumbling backward, but when he made a move to get up, she pointed a finger at him. “Don’t move a muscle.”

“Why? Just what are you planning on doing?” he asked with a hint of suggestion.

“I . . .”

You can do this.

“I’m waiting.” He looked at her with challenge in his eyes.

“Well, for starters”—Jessica put her hands on her hips and raised her chin a notch—“I plan on taking you up on your generous offer to let me have my way with you.”

“It was rather gracious of me, wasn’t it?” His mouth twitched as if suppressing a smile. “I am such a nice guy. I’ll keep my hands to myself and let you explore to your heart’s content. I’m all yours. Have at it.” He leaned back on his elbows in silent invitation.

“Okay,” Jessica said in the same matter-of-fact tone, but then stood rooted to the spot. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and wondered just where to begin.
What have I just gotten myself into?

“Come here,” he urged softly, and patted the bed.

“What am I doing? This is crazy.”

“I know.” He grinned. “But fun.”

“Fun?” She murmured the word with a sense of wonder.

“Yeah . . .
fun
. Not work. Not worry. Just plain, good, old-fashioned fun. Are you up for it?”

“Apparently you are,” she quipped with a grin of her own.

Ty glanced down and then cocked one eyebrow. “I won’t even try to deny it.”

Jessica tossed her head back and laughed.
Really
laughed with sheer joy, and, God, it felt good.
This is fun,
she thought, and just then something shifted inside her. A weight that she didn’t even know she had been carrying suddenly lifted, leaving her feeling light and free to simply enjoy the amazing, handsome man just waiting for her touch.

Happy birthday to me. . . .

Jessica shook her head, thinking that life could be really crazy at times. Who would have ever thought that she would be climbing into bed with Tyler McKenna?

“Please don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts. Damn, Jessica, you’re hurting my ego.”

“Good! Your inflated ego needs to be popped!”

“Get over here. Or I might just have to break my own rule and grab you.”

“Really, now? Well, maybe I’ll just have to tie you to the bedpost.” As soon as she said it, she clamped a hand to her forehead and her eyes widened. “Sorry—must still be the bourbon talking.”

Ty shrugged. “Do it if you want to. I don’t mind being at your mercy.”

“Really?” Her heart thudded at the erotic image that skittered through her brain.
Oh. Dear. God.

“Sure.” He angled his head toward a walk-in closet. “You can look around in there. Use a necktie or something?”

“Okay.” With an eager smile, she turned on her heel. She couldn’t really wrap her brain around the fact that she was going to tie him to the bedpost, but doing something so out of character, so daring, gave her such a heady sense of exhilarated freedom that she decided to just do it.

Lordy, lordy . . . she’d gone crazy at forty!

Jessica put a hand to her mouth as she looked around the neat and tidy closet and found the tie rack. With shaking fingers she picked up an orange one (did he really wear that?) and a blue one, swallowed hard, and then hurried back into the bedroom before the bourbon buzz faded and her good sense returned.

B
ella inhaled a deep breath and snuggled closer to the warm body next to her. “
Mmm
, David,” she purred, thinking it felt so nice to be in his arms. Maybe that whole jobless, homeless, getting-cheated-on thing was just a nightmare. She’d wake up to everything being normal. With that in mind, she placed a possessive hand on David’s chest and rubbed leisurely back and forth. Wait . . . she stopped caressing when she encountered smooth skin instead of crisp hair. Bella refused to open her eyes, hoping that David had finally shaved his chest.
Interesting,
she thought, and then trailed her fingers over his warm skin, but instead of a wiry, lanky build, Bella’s fingers found sculpted muscle.

Oh, boy . . .

She opened her eyes a mere slit and witnessed a strong jaw covered in golden stubble rather than black.

Bella winced.
Oh, please . . . don’t tell me.
Swallowing hard, she raised her gaze to shaggy blond hair. Yep, Logan Lannigan. She swallowed again and tried to recall the events from Jessica’s birthday party, but it was fuzzy. Had she really gotten that hammered? She didn’t feel all that hungover.
Think!
Okay, she remembered dancing. Laughter. Jell-O shots! Wait, did she sing karaoke to the Dixie
Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl” with Madison and Aunt Myra?
Um . . . yes.
She remembered walking from Sully’s back to Madison’s condo—no, wait. She rode piggyback with her legs wrapped around Logan, after she had complained that her high heels hurt her feet! It was like a blurry movie running through her head, but the one burning question remained: Did she have sex with the man lying next to her? She had no blurry memory of
that
.

Sunlight sliced through a gap in the drapes, and she dearly longed to raise her head and get her bearings, but she didn’t want to wake Logan. His chest rose and fell beneath her palm.
Good. He is sound asleep.
Maybe she could slip silently from the bed and sneak out of . . . good God, where exactly was she? Holding her breath, she oh so slowly started to slide her hand away from his warm skin, but just when she smelled success, he reached up and trapped her hand against his chest.

“Mornin’, sunshine.” He opened his sky-blue eyes and gave her a crooked grin. “Just where are you sneakin’ off to?”

“I . . . uh.”

He reached over to a bottle of water on the nightstand and came up to one elbow to take a swig before offering it to her. “Thirsty?”

“Yes, thanks,” Bella replied uncertainly. She rose and took a grateful swig and then handed it back to him. He guzzled the rest, and when he twisted and leaned to put the bottle back on the nightstand, the sheet slipped below his waist. She swallowed and tried to sneak a peek to see if he was naked, and caught a glimpse of a very nice ass. Apparently, he was sleeping in the buff. Not good news for her no-sex theory.

Bella looked down and realized she was in his Cougars shirt.
Oh . . . snap.
“Um, I have a tiny question.” She pressed her lips together and held her finger and thumb an inch apart.

“Okay.” Logan came up to his elbows with a delicious
show of rippled muscle. Surely she would remember having sex with that gorgeous body. “Shoot.”

Did we sleep together?
The question remained on the tip of her tongue. “Where, um, are we?”

He arched a tawny eyebrow. “Your condo.”

“M-my condo?”

“Well,
our
condo.”

Her heart pounded like a jackhammer. Was Cricket Creek one of those little towns where you could get married in a tacky little chapel with a blinking neon heart? “Oh, right,” she said, trying to play it cool even though a bead of sweat rolled between her shoulder blades. She licked her lips and then said casually, “Nice that it’s furnished, huh?”

“I know, and with high-end stuff. I’m used to GW.”

“GW?”

“Goodwill. But, damn, there’s even a flat-screen TV in the joint.” He nodded his shaggy head happily and had the nerve to look sexy as hell, all sleep rumpled and . . . naked. “Yeah, all we have to do is keep it tidy so Madison can show it.”

His little nugget of information triggered a memory, and she all but snapped her fingers. “Oh, it’s nice that Madison snagged the job showing the model unit, since she doesn’t start teaching until the fall semester.” She smiled, so proud of her sudden recollection. “And we ate birthday cake back at her condo!” She blurted this random memory without sliding it into the topic of conversation. “With Madison and Jason.” If she could remember that tiny detail, surely she would remember getting married. And having sex. She looked at his golden, tanned chest. Especially the sex.

He grinned and then casually scratched his chest. “Just how much of last night do you remember, Bella?”

“Everything,” she scoffed. “I don’t even feel that hungover.”

“You bitched and moaned, but I insisted that you hy
drate. Luckily, our fridge was stocked with bottled water. Hydration is the key to not feeling like shit the next day.”

Our fridge
sent a little slice of uh-oh through her brain. “Sounds like you’ve been there before.”

“Yep, a time or two.” He grinned. “You can thank me now or you can thank me later.” He arched an annoyingly knowing eyebrow. “So, you remember everything, huh?”

“Absolutely.” The memory had to be there somewhere. She just had to get her brain to function, and she was sure last night would all come flooding back . . . unless her brain was taking pity and shoving some shocking event from her mind. Like getting married, for example.

“Really?” He leaned in and ran a fingertip over her bottom lip. She tried not to be affected by his touch, but a shiver of awareness ran down her spine. “Everything?” He drew out the word suggestively.

“Okay,
some
things.” He was really starting to annoy her. “Maybe
other
things weren’t so memorable.”

“Is that right?” He looked at her mouth for a long, hot moment.

“Oh yeah.” She nodded slowly. “I don’t care how many Jell-O shots I sucked from those little plastic cups. If we had”—she almost said
made love
, but stopped herself—“done the deed last night?”

“Yeah?”

“I would have remembered.”

His lopsided grin turned into a full-blown smile that flashed straight white teeth against his golden tan. “Bella Diamante, I do believe I am going to thoroughly enjoy living with you.”

“Um.” Her eyes widened. “About that. We’re not”—she stopped and pressed her lips together.
Married
just would not come out of her mouth—“uh,
hitched
, are we?”

“Hitched? You mean, like, married?”

She gave him a jerky nod and looked up at him wide-eyed.

*  *  *

“Baby, there isn’t enough alcohol in the universe that would get me to tie the knot.” The image of his mother and father screaming at each other filtered into his brain and he had to suppress a shudder. “The only diamond I’ll ever care about is on the baseball field,” he added.

“Thank God.” She breathed a sigh of obvious relief and allowed tense shoulders to slump against the feather pillows.

“Hey, I’m not such a bad catch!” he protested.

She gave him a deadpan stare. “I’m talking off the field.”

“Okay, I am,” he admitted with a chuckle. “How in the world could we have gotten married last night anyway? Don’t you need a license and blood tests and stuff?”

“Hey, maybe I’m not thinking quite so clearly this morning.” She blushed and then lifted one shoulder. “But I had a friend who went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, for a weekend and came back to Chicago on Monday very much married.” She raised her left hand and pointed to her ring finger. “And it happens in Vegas all the time,” she said defensively. “I was just covering all the bases.”

“Ah, baseball analogies. Maybe you are my soul mate,” he joked, but something sad in her eyes hit him hard in the gut, and he wished he had kept his damned mouth shut.

“Soul mate?” she muttered darkly. “
Pfft
. Like there is such a thing. I am so done with dudes,” she ground out, but the anger in her voice failed to match the haunting hurt in her warm brown eyes. “I mean no offense, but who needs them?”

“Well, I could think of one particular need,” he said, drawing a deeper blush from her.

She wrinkled her nose. “There are battery-operated devices for that.”

He ran a gentle finger down her chin. Damn, she was smokin’ hot with bed-tousled, chestnut brown hair tumbling over her shoulders. Just a tiny little thing like Eva
Longoria, but sexy and sultry and sporting a don’t-mess-with-me attitude that Logan thought was a major turn-on. “Oh, but a poor substitute for the real thing. Luckily, you now have a live-in boy toy.”

Her brown eyes widened. “Wait, Logan. So that part is true?”

He was momentarily distracted by hearing his name on her lips. He had never been too fond of Logan, thinking it sounded too frat boy–ish for a ballplayer, but hearing her sultry voice utter his name made him long to hear her say it again . . . but with passion.
Wait . . . what?
He gave himself a mental shake. What the hell was he thinking? Baseball was his one and only passion. Okay, so Bella had gotten to him last night with her tearful tale about Dastardly David, as she called him, who had dicked her over. And, yeah, he’d like to beat the guy to a pulp just for shits and giggles. But that was as far as this was going to go. This uncharacteristic softness he felt toward Bella Diamante would soon pass. And if their situation was going to work, he needed to keep his hands and other body parts away from her body parts.