Playing for Kinley (Cruz Brothers Book 1) (33 page)

Pretty much any dumbass who knew that women had sperm-seeking ovaries.

“Hey, don’t let me stop you. These kids have got to learn about the birds and the bees sometime.”

She shook her head and sat back down in her chair. “You’re terrible.”

I waggled my eyebrows at her. “But you love me.”

Her face turned serious and when she looked at me, she didn’t even blink. “Yeah, I do.”

An hour and a funnel cake later, I was leading her through the crowd over to the giant castle. It was finally dark and everyone was gathered near the large structure to watch the lights and fireworks show that was guaranteed to light up the night sky. I guided Kinley to the front of the fence so she’d have the best view and placed her in front of me, wrapping my arms around her waist from behind.

With the sun gone, there was a light breeze in the air but it wasn’t cold, merely refreshing. It blew Kinley’s hair around, permeating the area directly surrounding us with its flowery scent. The light show started at nine o’clock on the dot, the colorful lights synchronized with various Disney songs, which I was only able to recognize due to numerous nights of babysitting the twins. We hadn’t exactly watched many Disney movies in our house growing up.

Finally, at nine thirty, the fireworks started.

They started shooting up into the air with loud bangs and brilliant flashes of color. The combinations were awe-inspiring and Kinley had gone still in my arms at the sight. I leaned down to peek at her profile to see her mouth frozen into a spectacular smile.

I hadn’t forgotten that fireworks were one of her favorite things in the world. That had pretty much been the point to all of this. It was clear the show was nearing its end when they started firing off about fifty fireworks at once. I watched the sky carefully, waiting patiently, until finally…

Kinley gasped and her hand flew up to her mouth.

Up in the sky in glittering letters, sparkling brightly, were the words “HAPPY BIRTHDAY KINLEY.”

“Oh my God, Parker,” she whispered through her fingers, never taking her eyes off the words. “How did you…?”

I leaned down and brought my mouth to her ear. “
I’m magic
.”

More like I’d had a roll of bills and the park was willing to help out one of the most popular professional athletes in the country. Funny what money and the right name could get you. But for Kinley, to see that smile on her face and her eyes glistening with unshed tears, I didn’t care about name dropping.

A giddy laugh escaped her mouth and I saw her quickly swipe her finger under her eye. “I can’t believe you did this.” She turned around in my arms and wrapped her own around my neck. “It’s amazing.”

“
You’re
amazing, Kin. I hope you know how much you mean to me. How I’d do anything for you.”

The kiss she gave me in response let me know that she did.

“I love you,” she breathed against my mouth.

I let out a short laugh, the sound carrying a note of disbelief. “You have no idea how much I love you, too.”

Kinley

I felt like death.

I hadn’t had the flu since I was in elementary school and threw up all over the floor of the nurse’s office when I hadn’t been able to make it to the trash can. So far, I’d been able to reach my toilet every time I felt my stomach revolt against me, but that didn’t make it any better. I was still clammy, still had cold chills, still only able to keep down saltine crackers, but just barely.

Like I said,
death
.

And wouldn’t you know it, the day I came back from the doctor with my medicine to then crawl miserably into bed for thirteen hours straight was the same day that my air conditioner decided to go on the fritz.

In the middle of June.

It would kick on and off, so it wasn’t totally stifling in my apartment but it wasn’t comfortably cool either. It was being as temperamental as my own body temperature. I could have asked to stay with someone like Norah or my parents, but I didn’t want to get anyone else sick. And I wasn’t sure I could travel anywhere at this point.

I was laying on the couch at the moment, watching the beginning credits of
Clueless
because I just needed to live in a silly, carefree world for a little while. For some reason, plaid skirts and knee-high socks seemed to make me temporarily forget about my bodily discomfort.

My phone buzzed on my coffee table. Just reaching out to grab it made me feel like I might lose the five crackers I’d scarfed down an hour ago.
Kill me now.

Parker:
How you feeling?

I tried to smile but I’m sure what eventually came out looked pretty pathetic. I hadn’t told Parker the extent of my illness because I knew that he had just landed back in Boston and had tomorrow off before he started another three-game series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. I knew he was tired and jet-lagged, and I wasn’t about to complain to him, making him feel obligated to come down and take care of me.

A little fever and vomiting never hurt anyone, right?

Kinley:
Not great, but I’ll live.
Sorry I can’t make it to your games.

Parker:
Don’t worry about it, baby. I just want you to feel better.

I was positive that he was the only man on the planet who could have made me forget how much my stomach hated me in that moment.

Kinley: Call me when you have a chance later.

Parker: Will do. I love you.

Kinley: Love you too.

I fell asleep sometime after that and I wasn’t sure for how long. All I knew was that when I opened my eyes, the DVD had went back to the main menu—guess I “watched” the whole thing—and someone was knocking on my door.

With a pitiful groan, I pushed myself up and threw the blankets off my body. I ripped my zip-up hoodie off, suddenly so hot I could barely breathe, and took a deep breath. Walking was going to be the hard part. I slowly and carefully lifted myself off the couch and, at a snail’s pace, made my way over to the front door.

“Who is it?” I asked since I had no peephole. I really needed to talk to the landlord about installing those on everyone’s doors. It was a matter of safety.

“Ryan,” came the voice on the other side of the door.

Ryan?

I hadn’t invited him over, had I? With the dosage of meds I was taking, my memory was crap so anything was possible at this point. If I’d had sex with Hugh Jackman I probably wouldn’t have remembered it.
Okay, maybe that’s going too far.
I had a vague recollection of telling Ryan that my new prints were going to be a little late getting to him because I was sick, but I couldn’t remember saying anything else.

I undid my locks and opened the door to find Ryan standing there in his tailored suit and signature toothy smile. “Hey, Kinley. You look like hell.”

“Ryan Moorehead, the charming comedian, everyone.” I turned back around, letting him in and hearing the door shut behind him.

“I brought you soup from the deli down the street,” he said. I heard him rummaging around in the kitchen as I gently sack back down on the couch. “Thought you probably needed something easy for your stomach.”

“I could give it a try but I haven’t been able to keep anything down, so you might not want to stay for the after party.” Whether or not he got any of that, I wasn’t sure because I mumbled all of it into my pillow.

“I’m sure I’ll survive.” Guess he did hear it.

A few minutes later, he came back in with a bowl full of soup, more crackers, and a bottle of water. He helped me adjust the pillows behind my back so I could prop myself up while I ate and placed a pillow over my lap where he set my bowl.

“Thanks for this. You didn’t have to do it.”

He shrugged and sat down at the opposite end of the couch. “Just figured that someone needed to be there for you.”

That comment didn’t exactly sit right with me. What did he mean by that? To make it worse, he took his suit jacket off and stretched his feet out on my coffee table. Meds or not, I damn sure knew that I hadn’t invited him to stay and get comfortable.

And this whole thing was suddenly feeling more intimate than I cared for it to be.

He knew I had a boyfriend. What was his game?

Because that kind of conversation with him was the absolute last thing I wanted to deal with right now—and because the soup was starting to smell fantastic—I decided to ignore it for now.

Over the next half hour, Ryan forced us to watch
The Walking Dead
as I attempted to force down the chicken noodle soup. I had several problems with this because: 1) It was
my
TV and
my
place, and he hadn’t even asked me what I wanted to watch. I was the sick one, dammit! 2) I had never seen
The Walking Dead
—it was on my to-watch list of TV shows—and it wasn’t the type of show you could just start in the middle of. 3) The gore factor of the show was making the queasy feeling in my stomach fifty thousand times worse.

Something one might think would occur to him but no.

And thanks to a zombie ripping some poor bastard’s throat out, the soup decided it wanted to make another appearance. This time, I didn’t get up from the couch gingerly but instead moved like rapid fire to the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.

“You okay?” Ryan called out after me.

“Give me a minute!” I replied before losing every ounce of soup I’d consumed.

I buried my head in the bowl, the cold porcelain against my fevered skin my only reprieve in the nightmare that was my rebelling body. I flushed the toilet and sat there for a few more seconds, ensuring that my stomach wasn’t trying to psych me out before wanting to release its contents again.

I finally decided it was safe and stood up to splash some cold water from the sink on my face and rinse out with mouthwash. I still didn’t feel anywhere near human, but I figured it was as close as I was going to get.

When I opened the bathroom door and stepped back out into the living room, I saw Ryan standing there with a tight jaw and my cell phone at his ear.

What the hell?

What was he doing with my phone?

“She just came out,” he said to whoever was on the line while maintaining eye contact with me. “Do you want to talk to her?”

Whatever the person on the other line said must have angered him because his eyes flared and he thrusted his hand out, passing the phone over to me. “It’s your boyfriend.”

Parker?

Oh, crap on a stick.
This probably wasn’t going to be good.

I put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“What’s going on?” Parker demanded in a loud voice, forcing me to hold the receiver away for a second. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said as I walked into my bedroom, closing the door behind me. Ryan didn’t need to hear our conversation, and I didn’t need another reason to be furious with him. “It’s just the flu but I’m okay.”

“The flu?” Again, his voice was not that of a mouse’s. “You told me your stomach was just bothering you. Why didn’t you tell me you had the flu?”

Oh yeah, he was good and pissed. But I guess he had a right to be. Still didn’t mean that I felt like dealing with this tonight.

“I didn’t want you to worry. You need to stay in Boston and get some rest. I didn’t want to make you feel like you had to come down here and take care of me or anything.”

“So,
Ryan
is? What the hell, Kinley? What’s he doing there?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to fight off another bout of nausea I could feel coming. “Could you please stop yelling? I didn’t ask him to come over; he just showed up tonight with soup. He hasn’t been here very long.”

His growl reached my ears over the line with piercing fury. “The asshole just invited himself over?”

“Yes. I was actually about to ask him to leave anyway because I started throwing up again.”

“Did he come on to you?” he asked in a lethal voice.

I huffed in exasperation. “No! Jesus, Parker. I look like I have the Plague. He wouldn’t touch me if his life depended on it. And besides, he knows I have a boyfriend. He knows the boundaries.”

“Yet he’s coming over to your place unannounced.” His murderous tone hadn’t deflated in the least. “I want him out of there, Kin. I don’t like the way he’s always hovering around you.”

I sighed heavily. “We work together—”

“I don’t care,” he said, cutting me off. “I want him gone. Now.”

“Why are you so mad at me? I told you that I didn’t ask him to come over.”

“I’m mad because the fact is that he’s over there when I’m not, supposedly taking care of you.” He lowered his voice and I cringed when I detected hurt in it. “
I
should be taking care of you. And worst of all, you lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You told me it was just a little stomach bug.
He
told me that you’d been to the doctor, had been throwing up for days and can’t keep anything down, and that you haven’t left your apartment in over two days. Lying by omission is still a lie.”

“I’m sorry,” I said weakly, hating myself for so many different reasons.

I was quickly finding out that disappointing and upsetting Parker was so much worse than the stomach flu.

“And you know the worst part about it all, Kin? I had to hear about all of it from
him
. I had to hear that my girlfriend was sick from another guy. I should be there helping you, but instead I’m talking on the phone with my replacement.”

“Parker, that—”

“I need some time. I’ll call you later.” Then, he hung up.

I stared at the phone for I didn’t know how long, disbelief taking up the bulk of my emotions. When I came back to my senses, I remembered that there was a certain man in my living room who I was still pissed at.

I found Ryan sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, head down. He looked up when he heard me enter the room. “I didn’t mean to cause problems. I’m sorry.”

Bullshit.

“No, I think you did.” He started to protest but I stopped him. “I’ve been away from my phone plenty of times at the gallery and you’ve never once answered it. That was so inappropriate of you, I don’t even know where to start. I shouldn’t even have to say this, but don’t ever do that again, Ryan.”

He stood up and faced me, arms flailing out in frustration. “I’m sorry, Kinley, but where is he? Where is your boyfriend while you’re lying here sick?”

That took me aback. “Excuse me?”

“If he loves you so much, then why isn’t he here taking care of you?”

I suddenly forgot my illness and concentrated instead on my anger, letting it take over. “Parker is a professional baseball player. He travels all over the country for his games. That’s his job. Just like that’s part of mine, too.”

“That’s exactly my point. He can’t be here even if he wants to be.”

I narrowed my eyes at him and crossed my arms over my chest. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that he’s no good for you.” Oh, he did
not
. “You need someone to be there for you, to support you and comfort you, to care of you when you’re sick. You need someone
here
, Kinley.”

“Someone like
you
?”

He pursed his lips and swallowed. “I could be what you need. He’s not someone who settles down. He’ll leave you when he gets bored of you. That’s what guys like him do.”

I held up my hand. I couldn’t hear anymore. “You need to get something straight. You have no idea what I need or want, and you don’t know anything about Parker. I wouldn’t be with him if I didn’t know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loved me and will always be there for me. And you know how I know that he’s a better man than you? Because he would never move in on another guy’s girlfriend.”

That looked like it shocked and hurt him in equal measures. I was too upset to be concerned about his feelings, though. I’d known that Ryan liked me on some level, but he wasn’t always a very considerate person and someone needed to finally put him in his place.