Reaching First (10 page)

But the queasy somersault of her belly told her there was no lunch in her future. She settled for filling the teakettle and putting it on the stove. A bracing cup of English Breakfast—that was the only thing her aching body could begin to consider.

As she waited for the water to boil, she picked up her phone. There were two messages waiting.

She pressed the button and listened to the first. “Hey, Em.” It was Anna. With a shock, Emily realized she hadn’t spoken to her best friend in days—which Anna was acknowledging in her spirited message. “Sorry I’ve been so scarce. Things have been crazy with the team and getting Zach settled into his new job. Gramps is screaming bloody murder from the rehab facility. Why don’t you come to the game tonight? With any luck, we can grab a drink after and catch up. I’m leaving tickets at the box office—see you at seven!”

Emily shook her head. She couldn’t imagine grabbing any sort of drink, ever again. But it would be good to catch up with Anna. She pressed the button for the other message. “Hey, Ms. H.” It was Will; she’d recognize the handyman’s rumble anywhere. “Tyler said you were in a meeting all morning. Call me when you’re done, and I can get started on the floors in the dining room.”

Tyler said…

That must mean that Tyler had waited around to talk to the guy. He’d spent the night, while she’d been sleeping off her overindulgence. Great. This day was getting better and better.

But it had been nice of him to send Will away. Tyler had given her several hours to sleep. To recover. Not that she’d ever find the nerve to thank him.

Gritting her teeth, she returned Will’s call, keeping the conversation short because she had no idea what “meeting” Tyler had dreamed up to pre-empt the handyman’s work. Will said he’d arrive shortly.

The kettle whistled, and Emily brewed herself the strongest cup of tea she could imagine. The thought of sugar or milk turned her stomach, so she sipped it black, willing herself to accept the bitterness. It was what she deserved. A punishment for what she’d done the night before. For what she’d tried to do.

The doorbell rang when she was only halfway through the mug. Somewhat grateful, she set the bitter brew on the counter and answered the door. “You really
did
get here fast—” she said, before she realized she wasn’t speaking to Will.

Instead, she was speaking to a young man. A young man in torn jeans and a green-stained T-shirt. A young man half-hidden behind the largest bouquet of flowers Emily had ever seen. There had to be four dozen stems, all calla lilies. The blooms ranged in color from peach to burgundy, each the length of her ring finger. Together, they were breathtaking—a wild forest of color that whispered of sensuality.

“Ms. Holt?” the man asked from behind the flowers.

“Um, yes?”
 

“Sign here, please.” They executed a complicated ballet, transferring the vase—lead crystal, she realized, from the weight of it. The delivery man offered her an electronic tablet, and she scrawled something that might have been her signature if she hadn’t been so overwhelmed. He hurried down the steps to his van before she could say anything more.

Stunned, she carried the flowers into the kitchen. A card nestled in the heart of the arrangement, speared on a clear plastic fork. With trembling fingers, she slipped open the envelope.

“Thanks for the warm welcome home,” it said, in the impersonal letters of a computer printout. And it was signed “T.”

Warm welcome
. Well, that was one way of looking at it. Even as she buried her face in the flowers, her memory flashed on the heat of Tyler’s mouth on her breast. On the feel of his belt against her throat, raw and sexy.

She winced in reflex. But when she opened her eyes, the flowers made her realize that maybe she
hadn’t
managed to ruin everything between them. She carried the flowers to her office and placed them in the center of the credenza that faced her desk.

She had to thank him. She had a decent idea of what such a bouquet must have cost. Sure, the guy was a millionaire baseball player, but this extravagance was overwhelming. Especially when
she
should be the one apologizing to him.

She retrieved her phone from the kitchen. It should be enough to text him. Just a quick thank you. Maybe send a photo of the arrangement.

But Aunt Minnie would haunt her forever if she took that coward’s route. She set her jaw and pressed the button to dial Tyler.

* * *

Tyler guided his new pick-up truck into a convenient parking spot in the garage of the Whitmore condo building. He’d just finished the paperwork on the vehicle an hour earlier, signing where the eager salesman told him to sign, initialing a dozen different forms. The guy assured him everything was much simpler because he wasn’t financing the truck, but he’d be damned if there’d been anything simple about it.

Still, it felt good to have his own wheels. That rental car had been driving him nuts with its little lawnmower engine. Now, if he could just find time to meet with a real estate agent, to find a place to live, things would almost be back to normal. The team was generous, putting him up in this high-rise condo, but the place was boring. The carpet, the couch, the curtains—everything was a different shade of beige.

Beige… Like the scraps of cloth Emily had worn last night.

As if on cue, his phone buzzed. He looked down and picked out the first three numbers. Sure enough, it was Emily—like thinking about her, remembering her hot mouth around his cock, had made her call.

He answered from the cab of the truck. He was pretty sure this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have in public. Not if anyone else was standing around the lobby, innocently picking up their mail.

“Hey there,” he answered, smiling around the words.

Silence.

He pulled the phone away from his ear, confirming the call was still connected. The counter flashed its numbers, measuring out the seconds. “Emily?” he finally asked.

She made a funny little sound, something between a cough and a laugh.

And Tyler knew what he had to do. Talk to her. Keep on talking, until she was ready to answer back. It was like the time his youngest brother had scared Miss Fitz up the live oak tree in the back of the house. Everyone else had been shouting out ideas about how to rescue the cat—calling for a ladder, shouting for a can of tuna fish. He’d been the one to climb up there, to talk to the terrified animal until she finally dared to take a step closer to him on the branch, another, and another, until he could finally gather her up and carry her down to safety.

“Now I can tell you didn’t take my advice,” he said. “If you’d drunk the water I left by your bed, you wouldn’t have that frog in your throat. They say you should have a full glass of water for every ounce of liquor. But that might keep you busy till sometime after midnight tonight. A few gallons of water, and maybe an entire bottle of Advil. I didn’t check how many you had left. If you run out, you can probably find some pharmacy to deliver. Or maybe one of those services that brings groceries to your door. Maybe—”

“Thank you,” she interrupted, and he was relieved to hear a laugh behind the words. “The flowers are beautiful.”

“Flowers?” he asked, as if he’d never heard of such a thing.
 

“I’ve never had a guy do anything like that before,” she said.

“Sounds like you haven’t been with the right guys.” He leaned back against the headrest, breathing deeply of the new-car smell. Her tension vibrated over the airwaves, and he could picture the uncertain frown twisting her lips.

“Seriously,” she said. “
I
should be the one giving something to you.”

“You gave me plenty, babe.” Even as he said the pet name, he felt her fingers digging into his hips. His cock twitched, ever hopeful against his button fly.

“We both know that isn’t true,” she whispered.

“I’m the man who got to see you open that door last night. I’m the guy you brought upstairs.”
I’m the guy who got the best head of his life,
he wanted to say, but the words sounded too crude, too much like something that would scare her off forever. “It’s not your fault I put the brakes on, beautiful.”

“But it is,” she insisted. “If I hadn’t been sloppy drunk—”

“If you’d been
sloppy
drunk, nothing would have happened last night. I would have known from the second I got there that you weren’t ready.”

“But I was!” she wailed.

“Mm-hmm,” he agreed. But he let the silence remind her that she was the one who’d poured herself all those drinks. She was the one nursing what had to be a killer hangover today.

“Maybe…” she trailed off.

He had to rescue her. “Maybe it was too far, too fast. We both know I’ve got a lot of my sentence left to serve.”

“Yes!” she said, and he had the distinct feeling she was grabbing on to a lifeline.

“Maybe when I’m no longer a threat to public safety, things will be different.”

“You’re not a threat—”

“No,” he agreed. “I’m not. But you’re not really going to believe that till my one hundred hours are done. And
that
makes me the world’s biggest idiot.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I waited on your front porch until Will got there this morning. I sent the guy away, because I thought you needed the sleep. I should have let him come in. We could have sanded the entire dining room. The living room, too. Maybe even the back rooms. We would have made a hell of a lot of noise, woken you up
way
before you were ready, but I’d be five hours closer to ending my sentence.”

Her laugh made his own lips curl into a smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “The way my head was pounding, I might have forgotten to record the hours.”

“
That
,” he said, “would be something I could never forgive.”

That time, they laughed together. She caught her breath and said, “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for the flowers. Really. They mean a lot to me.”

“So did your welcoming me home.” He held the phone loosely against his ear. He wasn’t surprised that she stayed silent. “Really, Em,” he said.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you have to get back to work. Do whatever you’re doing to get Minerva House ready. And I’ll talk to you after tonight’s game.” He waited, but when she didn’t recite all that, he said, “Okay. That’s your signal to hang up.”

“
You
hang up.”

“Not this again. I’m not even on the road.”

“I know,” she said, and he could tell she was smiling. “In fact, I’m going to the game tonight. I’ll be in the owner’s box with Anna.”

His heart clenched tight in his chest. “Tonight?”

“See you there.”

Then, she
did
hang-up. And he was left feeling more nervous than he had since his first Little League game.

* * *

Emily nursed her Coca-Cola, grateful for the crushed ice that mostly filled her cup. It took a supreme effort, but she managed to ignore the smell of hot dogs and popcorn, the ballpark food that everyone around her was enjoying with abandon. Anna slipped into the seat next to her during the break between the top and the bottom of the second inning.

“You’re not eating?” Anna asked.

Emily shook her head and stole another sip of soda. “Not today.”

Anna laughed. “I know that look! Or more precisely, I know that tone of voice. Let me guess. Chocolate martinis?”

Emily groaned. “Vodka tonics. Extra lime.”

“Who were you out with? And why didn’t you call me to come along?”

“I couldn’t call you. You’re practically a married old lady.” But Emily couldn’t help but glance toward the dugout. Tyler was in the on-deck circle, swinging a weighted bat and looking like he was posing for his picture on a baseball card.
 

Anna looked shocked. “Oh. My. God. You and Tyler?”

“Hush!” Emily practically leaped out of her chair.

“Don’t tell me to hush!” Anna leaned closer. “You’re not saying I’m wrong.”

Emily found the hem of her T-shirt fascinating. She picked at the stitches as if she might discover a cure for cancer among the threads. “I don’t know
what’s
going on. I mean, I thought I knew, before he sent me the lilies—”

“He sent you
flowers
?” That was loud enough for half the people in the box to turn around. Emily sank deeper into her seat, wishing she could disappear. Before she had to answer, though, the umpire settled into place behind the plate, gesturing impatiently for Tyler to step into the box.
 

He took his time digging in, planting first his right foot, then his left. He dipped the bat toward second base three times in rapid succession. He pulled it back, holding it nearly upright, like a giant exclamation point over his right shoulder.

Emily leaned forward. She’d never been a huge baseball fan, but she’d watched plenty of games with Anna. Her eye had gotten better; she could see the difference between balls and strikes, read the different pitches by the time they reached the plate.
 

That fastball, for example. The one Tyler was just behind, for strike one. The ball that followed, intended to brush him back from the plate. Another fastball, one that Tyler just got a piece of, enough to send the ball flying into foul territory down the first base line. And that curveball, the one that didn’t break until the very last moment, leaving Tyler swinging like he was going for a grand slam, even though the bases were empty. Strike three. He stalked back to the dugout.

Anna made a quick notation on her score sheet, tapping her purple pen against the paper as the next batter came up. Emily pretended there was nothing more fascinating than watching the left fielder strike out on three fastballs. Unless it was the second baseman, who worked his way to a full count before he struck out.

By the time the inning was over, Anna was eyeing her with a look as sharp as the hash marks she’d made on her paper. Emily considered saying she needed to go to the bathroom, but she was pretty sure Anna would just follow her there. She was certain, in fact, when Anna said, “Spill. Tell me everything.”