Amber's Ace (7 page)

“Knew your parents, boy,” Gee had said. “You, too, when you were a tiny cub, before you left Los Lobos. Your mom did the right thing taking you out of here after Magnum killed your dad. You did well for yourself, Riley. True Los Lobos success story. Did right coming home here, too, boy. You belong here. Your mama, too. How’s she getting on?”

“She’s in Florida. Got her a big house on the beach when I signed my first contract. Weird for a wolf, huh? But she likes the sun and sand, the warm weather, and loves the ocean. She runs under the moon along the beach when no one’s about, dancing in the foam of the surf, letting the waves slap her paws. Tried to talk her into coming back here. Maybe one day.”

“Maybe when you give her a reason. Like grandcubs.” Gee nodded and slid him another frosty mug, along with a second burger. He gestured toward Riley’s gnarled left hand. “Couldn’t figure out what the hell happened to you out there that day. Not at first.”

“That makes two of us, Bear,” Riley said into the foam. “Ball just popped right out of my damned glove.”

“Just like that, huh?” He shook his head. “That was a strange day here in Los Lobos, too. You might have heard a little about it. The little Northridge twins—Brick and Summer’s kids—were kidnapped. During the search and rescue, we found their long-lost aunts, Amber and Garnet, imprisoned at a secret compound of Magnum’s. Damnedest thing. The girls had a TV on in that cabin they were hiding in, tuned to the Kings-Phantoms game. Happened to catch that ball just popping out of your glove when we burst in. Interesting expression you had on your face there, big guy. Kinda like you’d been struck by lightning. And that was before the accident.”

“Heard something,” Riley muttered.

“Yeah? Like what? Must have been hard to hear anything over the fifty thousand screaming fans.”

Riley chugged down the rest of the beer in two gulps. Another cold one appeared in front of him. “Heard
her
.”

“Her?”

“You’ll think I’m nuts.”

“Doubt it. Listen, kid. I’ve pretty much heard it all. Nothing you can say will shock me.”

“Heard my mate.”

Gee swabbed the countertop with a wet rag, his eyes thoughtful. “Your mate’s here in Los Lobos, you know.”

“Yeah, I know
now
.”

“Was she asking you for help? She needed it back then.”

“No.” Riley shook his head. Her voice rang in his ears, the way he’d heard it that day. Sweet, melodic, a little urgent. She could have been sitting on the barstool beside him.

“Like she…recognized me. And…
claimed
me.”

Gee paused what he was doing to study Riley’s expression, weighing the truth in the younger male’s words. Then he resumed wiping the bar in lazy, circular strokes.

“Long distance remote mate call, huh?” The were bear nodded. “Heard of that once or twice. If memory serves, your granddad found your grandma that way. Heard her call and traveled all the way from a pack in the Sierra Nevada to Los Lobos to find her. It’s rare, but not unknown.”

“So, you don’t think I’m crazy, Bear?”

Gee shrugged. “Well, I know two things. Your mate’s here in Los Lobos. And that’s how you looked the day of your accident. Struck dumb and stupid. Like you’d gotten the call.”

“Shocked the crap out of me.”

Gee passed him another dish of fried pickles and a bowl of steamed broccoli, just as Paul set a plate with a hot, greasy cheeseburger in front of him. “Eat up, Riley,” Gee advised. You’re gonna need the stamina. Your mate’s gonna require a whole lotta attention and patience.”

Riley thought about the conversation with Gee as he walked back and forth in front of the picnic table set up on the new baseball field. So far, he’d been the soul of patience. Most of the time when he tried to get close, to start something up, she bolted and he let her, sensing she needed her space more than she needed him. Was it his imagination, or were those instances getting fewer? Was his patience finally paying off?

Maybe he’d been wrong, though. Maybe she
did
need him. He had to speak with her. To touch her. Maybe just quiet conversations to start. Hard to ever get her alone, though. He didn’t know what to do. Didn’t want to be too aggressive and scare her away.

Surprisingly, he was enjoying life in Los Lobos way more than he’d suspected he would when he banished himself to South Dakota after several rounds of surgeries and months of physical rehab. His mom had suggested the place, hidden and secret, a good place for him to recuperate without the noise and the crowds and the press.

Turned out he liked small town life, though—knowing everyone, being accepted by all. He liked interacting with Drew and Gee and the others in the pack. He liked feeling useful, as he did when he taught the kids. Giving back, paying forward. Much more worthy than MVP’ing his team to the play-offs and series. Drew wanted to put him to work doing that full-time, coaching them, teaching them sports, counseling if necessary, and being there to listen to them like a big brother or kindly uncle when they couldn’t go to their parents or to Drew. He was totally down with that.

The four elder women had suggested he open a juice bar and smoothie shop. He could do that, too. Lots of possibilities, thanks to the thick financial cushion provided by his lost major league career.

And the best incentive of all? His mate was in Los Lobos. Whether Amber yet knew that or not. If he could only figure out how to get her to notice him more.

He’d taken Gee’s advice and tried to be patient and thoughtful. He hoped he might be making a small bit of progress on that front. At least, she no longer froze like a deer in the headlights whenever he was around, or ran from him like a skittish colt.

A few days earlier, out by the watering hole, she’d even helped him with his gaggle of kids. At first, he hadn’t realized she’d hidden herself nearby and watched them through the trees.

He had a bunch of little ones in tow, some still afraid of the water, and was teaching them to dip their toes in, to accustom them to the chill, to teach them to be less fearful.

As one small cub named Danny stood timid and tearful on the bank, an older boy, Joey, came up from behind and pushed the youngster into the spring then stood on the shore, taunting the small one and howling with laughter.

“Come on, guys, let’s show him how it’s done.” Riley picked up two of the smaller kids, and holding each securely in an arm, ran with them to the edge of the bank, jumping in with a howl and crazy shout like Robert Redford plunging off a cliff in the iconic scene from
Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid
. Splashing around in the water, the kids climbed his back and shoulders, chortling. He gathered all the wet boys to him in a giant bear hug.

The boy on the bank frowned, the tables turned on him. The ones in the water had fun while he remained stuck on dry land.

“Why’d you do that?” Joey demanded of Riley as he climbed out of the water, the other kids clinging to his arms, legs, and back like giggling monkeys.

“To teach you something about compassion,” Riley said. “Because we don’t make fun of our friends and our teammates, especially not when they’re littler than we are, and when they’re afraid. We don’t make them cry or bully them. We’re a team. All for one and one for all. We have each other’s backs, all the time. We don’t do things like pushing someone under the bus. Or into the water when he’s not ready to go.”

“Okay, I get it.” Joey picked up the smaller boy, patting him all over to make sure he was all right. “I’m so sorry, Danny. Friends?”

The littler cub looked at Riley. When Riley nodded, he turned to the other boy again, nodded tearfully then wiped his eyes and sniffed.

“I’ve got you, Danny,” Joey declared. “We’re pack.”

As the scene unfolded, Amber approached them carrying the pile of towels he’d stacked nearby and, to Riley’s shock, handed them out to the little boys.

“I like what you did,” she whispered to him. “And what you said. Especially about watching out for each other. It’s like me and Garnet. That’s how we got by when…. You know.”

He took a towel from her and dried off, trying to meet her eyes. Her gaze focused on his bare chest, and a rosy blush spread across her cheeks. His wolf preened beneath her regard, and he scented her heightened interest. Placing two fingers beneath her chin, he lifted her face. Their eyes met. For a split second, she showed him her longing. His wolf leaped with ecstatic joy.

Mate
, the wolf growled.
Claim
.

Careful
. Riley tamped down his excitement. “I’ll have your back, too, Amber. Always. Whether or not you’re ready to let me be more…to ever acknowledge the link between us. I’ll always look out for you, angel. Do my best to protect you.”

She sighed. “I have two brothers who do that, already.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve met them. They send me killing looks whenever they see me in Gee’s.”

“Are they giving you a hard time?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.” Wow. They were actually having a conversation. Something he’d done had impressed her. A minor thing, not even as big a deal as his record-breaking consecutive string of strikeouts or his multiple Cy Young Awards. He’d never had such trouble getting to first base with a female in his life. “Besides…it’s my job, not theirs. To protect you. That’s what mates do.”

“Mate?” she echoed. A gaggle of conflicting emotions, ranging from longing to fright, chased each other across her features. She took a deep breath, and he watched with relief as she deliberately stifled the brief panic shaking her. She gazed at him, a little stunned, a lot intrigued. “You think that’s what you are?”

“I know it.”

“You’re that sure?”

“Hells yeah. Never been more certain of anything, angel face. And I’m pretty sure you know it, too.”

She kept studying him, denying nothing. Her scent hit him full-on, a fresh, perfect blend of flowers and spring, mixed with the homey perfume of all his favorite foods and the lure of his most secretly craved sweets. His wolf sat up again, excited and aroused, like another part of him. Jesus. The wolf’s claws pricked at Riley’s skin in a fervor to get at its mate.
Down boy.
He’d vowed to take it as slow as she needed, given her history, but damn, she killed him a little more every day. Goddess, his cock ached. Difficult to hide his throbbing erection from her with just a towel.

He quickly turned away so she couldn’t see the immediate effect she had on him. “Your brothers don’t give me half as hard a time as you do, angel.”

A few days later, she returned, dragging a bat in an awkward, unwieldy fashion.

He shut his eyes, offering a prayer to the baseball gods that they would not take it out on her for using the sacred instrument with such disrespect.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Miss Lonnie asked me if I’d bring it to you on my way home. Owen from the lumber mill dropped it off.”

“I ordered a few from him.” He scratched his head. “Strange he brought it to Miss Lonnie.”

Amber shrugged. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”

“No. Wait.” He grabbed her hand without thinking, but she didn’t flinch away from him. “Come. I’ll show you,” he said more gently. “Use you for a model to demonstrate to the cubs the proper way to hold the bat.”

She stood still as a statue, but let him put his arms around her, her hands rigid on the bat. He sucked in the delicious scent of her. She dragged in a deep, shaky breath, and when she leaned against his chest, her body suddenly relaxing, he suspected she was doing the same.

“I won’t hurt you, angel,” he murmured into her ear. “Never.”

“I know. I….” She sighed and rubbed her cheek against his neck. He tightened his arms around her in tiny increments. Carefully, he placed his hands on her forearms and positioned her properly. His voice raw and gruffer than steel wool, he somehow managed to give the kids a short lesson. With his hands guiding her, she swatted a pop fly and chortled gleefully as she watched the ball sail away.

With pride, he watched her happy gaze follow the arc of the horsehide sphere. Then she turned to him, her face aglow, grin broad.

“Thank you for that, Riley,” she murmured. “No one else…. No one really tries.”

“Always, angel.”

She nodded then scampered away.

So…progress. Slight, maybe, but he’d take what he could get.

Riley shook himself back to the present and studied the delectable array again. His nose twitched at the aromas wafting up from the baskets. He took a step away from the table. Hot and sweaty from chopping trees and clearing the outfield all morning, he didn’t want to drip perspiration on the pretty creations, some gaily festooned with ribbons and cloth napkins, others with colorful see-through cellophane. Well, they weren’t
all
so pretty, he amended. Some basically consisted of postcards, stating what was up for bid and from what member of the pack.

Drew’s mate, Betty, had balked at the idea of an auction where the males alone would bid on the females’ picnic baskets, vying for the honor of sharing a picnic blanket and lunch.

“Hey, this isn’t a fifties Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and Los Lobos isn’t Oklahoma! The dominant males may think they run the show in pack territory, but could we get any more chauvinistic than that? We women should be able to bid, too. I know some of the males must have talent.”

Drew had agreed, and a number of males had tossed in contributions of their own particular specialties, culinary or otherwise. Brick Northridge, for example, would award his highest bidder a commissioned sculpture. Chance Northridge had fired up a barbecue grill where slabs of steak and fat hamburgers would soon sizzle for his winner’s extended family.

At the less than subtle urging of Miss Claire, Riley himself had spent long hours deep in the woods near Hidden Maiden Creek, sifting through moonlit waters for the most perfect polished pebbles and colored gemstones he could find, one particular female in mind.

With the help of the older woman and Miss Fern, he’d painstakingly arranged them in a glass globe that showed them off to advantage. The colorful gems and smooth, semi-precious stones fairly glowed, when the sun—or moon—hit the globe the right way. He only hoped the dazzling finished product wouldn’t attract other bidders. He was only interested in one particular customer.