From Left Field: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 7) (3 page)

She could see approval growing in Mr. Reeves eyes. He took another swig of coffee before he said, “There’s a tradition to having animals on the property. It’s the largest single parcel left in Wake County. You know we started as a dairy farm years ago. There’s still a stable and a barn and a passel of smaller structures.”

Haley knew those buildings. She’d never admit it to Mr. Reeves, but she and her brothers, and Adam too, had sneaked over the fence countless times during their childhood. They’d dared each other to climb to the hayloft, and they’d played massive games of hide and seek around the old smokehouse and corn crib and dairy. She’d even spent hours in the stable, daydreaming of Black Beauty and Misty and the Black Stallion, all the horses in her childhood books.

No reason to mention all that to Mr. Reeves now. Far better to move this meeting forward, to make herself face the hard part. “Let me be honest with you, sir. Paws for Love is an amazing organization. We’ve been prudently managed, and our books are in perfect order. But we’re not a wealthy group. It would be a stretch for us to buy any property. And a property as large as your farm, still inside the county limits, with so many structures still standing…” She trailed off with purposeful delicacy.

Mr. Reeves was no fool. He planted his mug squarely on the table, earning an inquiring look from Darcy, who watched eagerly from his spot in front of the stove in clear hope that a petit four would spontaneously leap from its plate to the floor. “Well,
I’ll
be honest with you,” the old man said. “Money’s important to Maggie and me. We’re fully retired now, and we’re not seeing regular income any more.”

Haley heard the words, and she understood their meaning. Buying the farm had always been a stretch for Paws, and now she knew it would be a greater challenge than she’d first hoped. But Mr. Reeves wasn’t opposed to the
idea
of the animal shelter buying his farm.
 

She’d never backed away from a good fight before. And she wouldn’t give up now—not when her dreams for Paws could finally come true.

~~~

Adam lurked in the kitchen doorway, reluctant to interrupt the conversation in there. Haley looked like she was dressed for some sort of boardroom meeting—navy pants and a soft white blouse that hinted at as much as it covered up.

Shit. He shouldn’t be thinking about Haley that way. He wouldn’t have, if she hadn’t brought him that quilt last night. The light from the hallway had cut through the thin fabric of her T-shirt, outlining every inch of her body in a hell of a lot more detail than she’d ever shown him before.

And he’d responded like he was still a teenager, like he was on some adolescent sleepover in her brothers’ room. He thought he’d covered his lap with the blanket before she’d seen. But there’d been nothing to disguise the way his throat tightened, the way his voice dropped about two octaves when he’d said her name.

Jesus. This was
Haley
he was talking about. If he even
thought
about making a move on her, her brothers would kill him. Forget about her brothers—
Haley
would rip him a new one. Adam had been on the receiving end of her acid tongue often enough to know nothing would keep him safe if he was actually stupid enough to say out loud any of the thoughts that had kept him tossing and turning until morning.

He should just back away from the kitchen slowly. Forget about Haley, at least forget about her like
that
, in her nightshirt. He should head upstairs, crawl back into bed, and pretend to sleep until she headed out to work.

And he could have carried that off, too, if that damned dog Darcy hadn’t chosen that exact second to look up from his worshipful attention to the kitchen table. The beagle bayed a welcome that echoed off the room’s ceiling.

“Darcy!” Haley snapped, but there wasn’t any heat to her tone. Her order seemed to remind Heathcliff that he might be missing out on some breakfast treat, and the living mop that was Killer wasn’t far behind. “Out!” Haley ordered all the dogs, pointing to the kitchen door. Adam barely had time to escape being bowled over by a couple of hundred pounds of canine starvation.

So much for escaping. Old Man Reeves was staring right at him. Time to man up. “Good morning,” Adam said, walking into the kitchen like he hung out there every day of his life.

Haley barely acknowledged his existence. “Grab yourself some coffee.”

She wasn’t looking at him. Bad sign. The room must not have been as dim as he’d thought last night. Or he hadn’t been as fast as he’d hoped, covering his boner with the blanket. Jesus, this was worse than when he was thirteen. When he was thirteen, there hadn’t been Old Man Reeves sitting there, looking like he knew
exactly
what Adam was thinking.

At least the other man broke the tension by saying, “Adam Sartain! Back home for the season?”

“Yes, sir,” Adam said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. As he shook, he said, “Haley was kind enough to let me sleep in her guest room last night. My water heater’s on the fritz.”

Reeves glanced from him to Haley, looking like he didn’t believe a word of Adam’s story. And Adam had to admit, he wouldn’t have believed it either. He cleared his throat and said to Haley, “Thanks for the crash space. I’ll get out of your hair now, head over to my place and take a look at the damage before I get to that Foundation meeting.”

“Sounds like a plan.” She smiled as she said it, but her eyes still missed his.

I’m sorry about what happened last night.

Sorry about what didn’t.

Right. Like he’d say either of those things, with Old Man Reeves sitting there, shoving bites of cake into his mouth like he’d never eaten breakfast before. Adam was saved by Haley turning a blinding smile on the old guy. “What do you think, Mr. Reeves? May I come over to the farm with you now, just to look around?”

And this time, miracle of miracles, Haley
did
catch his eye but only to flash him a warning:
Don’t mention all the times we sneaked onto Reeves’ property
. Her voice was prickly as she said to him, “Mr. Reeves is thinking about selling the farm. I was just telling him it would be perfect for Paws for Love.”

“Sounds great,” he said, backing away from the spikes beneath Haley’s words.
Don’t let Reeves know we were all little juvenile delinquents
. “Good luck with that.”

And then silence settled back over the kitchen, thick and heavy. Reeves glanced between them, and the old guy obviously knew something was up. Haley seemed to remember she needed to turn that plate of little cakes around, just a little to the right, no, to the left.

Adam shrugged. “Well, I’ve got to see how bad things are next door.” He nodded toward Haley. “Thanks again.” And he ducked out of the kitchen before he had to spend another second thinking about the bedroom upstairs.

~~~

“Well,” Haley said to Mr. Reeves, bravely trying to breathe past the gaping hole in her chest. “Shall we?”

She gestured toward the door Adam had just left through. Mr. Reeves obliged, pushing in his chair and carrying his coffee cup over to the sink. Haley told him not to fuss, and she led the way out of the kitchen, down the steps, across the damp grass of her back yard.

She babbled as she walked, telling her neighbor about the great work Paws did. She wanted him to understand that he could be part of something bigger, something important in so many lives. But the entire time she chattered, she thought about that awful moment when Adam had walked into the kitchen.

Awkward
. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like if Mr. Reeves hadn’t been there. Part of her had wanted to blurt out the thoughts that had kept her awake all night. A wiser part, though, had told her to keep her damn mouth shut. She’d survived three decades of successful friendship with Adam Sartain. She wasn’t going to blow them now because of one crazy, overtired shot of lust.

It was bad enough she was letting that soul-shattering swoop distract her from the business at hand. She shoved down her crazy fantasies and launched herself straight back on the road to normal. She was just in time to hear Mr. Reeves recite the history of the outbuildings.

“There’s been some sort of stable here since 1829. This one was built in 1926, after a fire leveled the old one. There are twenty individual stalls, each opening off a central aisle, with a large tack room and a bunk room occupying the far end of the building. The stonework was completed by some of the finest masons in the tidewater area, and the carpentry was notable even in a time when handmade was the rule.” He exhaled and said, “Maggie made me memorize all that. We’ve been getting ready to show the place to real estate agents. But you don’t need me to tell you anything. Why don’t you look around inside, and then we can head up to the farmhouse?”

Haley nodded and took advantage of the man’s gallantry, entering the stable in front of him. She caught her breath at how perfect the building was. The stalls had long ago been swept clean of any hint of their former equine occupants. But Mr. Reeves hadn’t been joking about getting the place ready to sell. He’d filled the mangers with bales of fresh hay, and the sweet smell permeated the building.

Haley took her time walking down the aisle. Paws would have to pave the stalls, putting down solid concrete floors for the dogs. They’d have to hire a contractor to install fencing outside too—a couple of enclosed runs to complement the huge open spaces where dogs could engage in heavily-supervised off-leash exercise.

It would cost a lot, but it would be worth it.

She turned to Mr. Reeves. “The building’s fully electrified, right?”

He nodded. “It’s got lights and a heating system. There isn’t any air conditioning, but you can see those giant fans in the eaves. They keep the air circulating in the summer. With the stone walls, the place stays pretty comfortable year-round.”

“It’s perfect,” she said. And it was.

“Isn’t it a little large for your operation?”

She’d asked herself that already. “Paws wants to make a one-time investment in infrastructure. We’ll make one move to last us for decades. At least until I’m ready to retire.”

Mr. Reeves chuckled, clearly amused by the notion of her thirty-something self retiring. He led the way toward the barn.

Haley’s heart beat a little faster as they stepped into the huge building. It could easily be adapted to shelter cats, giving her feline population a variety of places to climb, to hide, to carve out their own spaces in their usual solitary way. Paws’ fencing contractors would have their hands full here too, creating a connected, enclosed outdoor space. The cats would ultimately feel like they were stalking prey on the veldt, but they’d be protected from circling hawks, kept safe from speeding cars on the road that marked the southern boundary of the Reeves farm.

She asked, “How long has it been since this was a working farm?”

“Well, aside from small crops, a roadside stand, that sort of thing, it hasn’t been planted in over forty years. There’s still a lot of old equipment in the garage down the hill—a tiller, some baling trucks. I don’t know what else.”

“It takes a lot of work to keep a farm running,” she said. It couldn’t hurt to remind her neighbor of all the reasons he was ready to move on.

As they chatted, Haley looked up in the loft, imagining it full of sweet-smelling hay. She’d long dreamed of expanding Paws to include larger animals. She’d love to provide a refuge for horses that had grown too old for labor, either on farms or for riders. There were other creatures too—pot-bellied pigs that grew larger than their owners had anticipated, the occasional llama or alpaca that proved not to be the investment ideal touted to its owners. Maybe even some goats.

At last she turned away from her dreams, stepping out of the barn and back into the spring morning. The view was astonishing—green grass stretching all the way up to the farmhouse, acres of it. Half a dozen outbuildings stood between the barn and the house, some made out of red brick, some faced with wood siding.

The old farmhouse itself—the home that Mr. Reeves had shared with Maggie for the last fifteen years—was perched on the top of a gentle hill. It didn’t take much of Haley’s imagination to picture the home turned into administrative offices and classrooms. They could have a room for puppy classes, another for obedience training. In Haley’s dream of dreams, they could convert some of the bedrooms into a surgical suite, employ a part-time veterinarian to care for the animals.

She shook herself a little, realizing she was getting way ahead of herself. She had to convince Mr. Reeves that Paws deserved this land. She had to make sure he quoted a reasonable price, one the animal shelter could hope to raise, with enough left over to do all the renovations that would make the farm perfect.

This was her chance to finally make her dream come true.

~~~

Adam wrestled with his temper as he waited for the elevator to take him up four stories to the Sartain Foundation offices. He’d spent over an hour at his house, surveying the damage. It was in a lot worse shape than he’d first thought—the basement walls were toast, and the flooring would have to be replaced. His free weights would dry out, but the treadmill was history. The elliptical could go either way.

He wasn’t an expert on home repair, not by any means. But it looked like the water had been standing for days—at least if the black mold on the walls was any indication. What the hell had Reiter been doing? When had the guy last swung by to check on the house?

Even with frustration raising his blood pressure, a smile curled Adam’s lips as he pushed open the door to the Foundation’s reception area. The room was furnished with a couple of couches and a handful of chairs, all upholstered in the bright red of the Rockets logo. The walls featured large photographs of kids who’d been helped by Foundation programs—a line of kids playing tag in a huge field, a little boy lying on his back and staring up at clouds that looked like cotton candy, a cluster of girls playing in a stream and bending over lily pads searching for frogs.