Drive You Wild: A Love Between the Bases Novel (15 page)

Someone settled into the driver’s seat.

“Trevor,” she exclaimed, still blissed out from the scent. “Where on earth did you find these this time of year?”

“Shut the fuck up, chick.”

The door slammed shut as she whirled around.
The stalker with the BB gun.
She’d recognize him anywhere. He jammed the key in the ignition—how did he have
the key?—and started the engine. She tried to open the passenger door but he pressed the All Lock key.

“Let me out,” she cried. “Take the car, I don’t care. Just let me out.”

“Stark took my girl, I’m taking his.” He slammed his foot on the accelerator and the Escalade sprung forward.

Oh, shit.
“I’m not his girl.”

“You’re in his car, that’s good enough for me.”

“This is kidnapping! You’ll go to jail.”

He was careening across the lot as if he was crazy or on some kind of drug. She didn’t know which possibility was scarier.
Talk him down.
“Listen, I’m sorry Trevor did that to you.”

He grunted.

“But I had nothing to do with that. Hurting me isn’t going to hurt Trevor. It’s just going to get you into trouble.”

“Shut up, bitch.”

Oh my God. What had happened to all the security Crush had set up? The video cameras and fence reinforcement? What was this man planning? Did he even have a plan? Her cell phone was in her purse, and he’d surely notice if she went after it. Her best bet—keep talking.

“Do you ever watch the Food Network?”

“Huh?”

“You know that show,
Cooking Is Easy
with Nessa Brindisi?”

He frowned, pulling the wheel tight to the right to avoid a lamppost. “Yeah, so?”

“Right at this very moment, on TV, she’s getting married. To
my
husband. Well my ex-husband. But he was married to me when he met her, so the point is that I know what it feels like to have someone hurt you.”

His throat worked, the Adam’s apple moving up and down his thick-fleshed neck. “She hates me now.”

“I’m so sorry. I’m sure you don’t deserve to be treated like that.” Or maybe he did. But this wasn’t the moment for honesty.
Keep him talking.

“I love her so much.” He gave a ragged, gasping sound.

“I know you do. You seem like a man who . . . uh . . . loves deeply. What’s her name?”

“Louann. She’s my baby. But I can’t even talk to her anymore.”

Restraining order? “Why don’t you pull over and we’ll go get a cup of coffee and you can tell me all about it.” While she figured out a way to call 911. “Sometimes it helps just to talk about something. You can tell me how you met, everything.”

At first she thought her tactic worked, because the Escalade slowed. But then he punched the steering wheel, making her heart jump into her throat. “I said
shut up
!”

She shut up, as the Escalade zoomed full-tilt toward the exit. Her mind raced, Plans B, C, D, and E forming. For a split second she’d reached him, she knew it. She just had to try again, with a different tactic, maybe in a few minutes when he’d calmed down. Her heart pounded, adrenaline thumping in her veins.

Just as it reached the exit, the Escalade slowed, as if it had lost power. “What the fuck?” the man screamed. He stomped on the accelerator again and again. But it kept slowing, and then the door was being wrenched open and two muscled arms reached inside. As if the beefy man at the wheel was nothing more than a rag doll, he was yanked out of the SUV and thrown to the ground.

Trevor stood over him, fury vibrating in every line of his face and body.

“Watcha gonna do, pretty-boy?” the man taunted.

Trevor pressed his foot to his neck. “It’s already done. Cops are on the way.”

Paige’s hands were shaking so hard she couldn’t get the passenger door open. “I think he might be on something, Trevor,” she called through the open driver’s side door. “Don’t aggravate him.”

She watched him struggle to control himself.

“Get off me, Stark,” the man shouted, his voice made into a squeak by the weight of Trevor’s foot. “Let me go or I’ll tell the cops everything I know about you. About Wayne County.”

Trevor’s foot didn’t move, even though the man clawed at it.

Sirens sounded, red and blue lights flashing through the parking lot entrance. Armed police officers jumped from the car. Trevor didn’t release the man until the cops had reached them. They rolled him over and cuffed him.

Thoroughly shaken, Paige tumbled from the Escalade. Trevor ran to help her, gathering her into his arms. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbled into her hair. “I’m so, so sorry.”

She clung to him, every one of his hard muscles a kind of reassurance. “Another date ruined,” she whispered. “This is getting ridiculous.”

T
REVOR KEPT
P
AIGE
tucked under his arm while she gave her statement to the police. He couldn’t believe how cool she’d stayed under pressure, trying to calm down the asshole, relate to him on a personal level. Then again, maybe he shouldn’t be surprised after the way she’d come to his rescue last time.

He gave a statement too, confirming that the carjacker was the same man who had attacked him in the parking lot last month. He explained that he’d come out of the stadium to see his Escalade driving crazy across the lot, and that he’d at first assumed Paige was playing a joke on him.

Then he’d seen that two people were in the SUV. He’d run after it, cut the power with his spare remote key, and dragged the man out before he could harm Paige.

He didn’t mention what the man had said about Wayne County, even though it kept clanging through his mind like warning bells. Maybe he knew something, maybe he didn’t. The only thing that mattered—the only thing Trevor cared about—was keeping Paige safe and getting this man off the streets. Going after him, that was one thing. Mess with Paige . . . fuck no.

The only bright side was that he’d just had a giant wake-up call
. Stay away from Paige.
He should tattoo it on his forehead.

Finally, all the official business was over and he was alone with Paige. She still looked pale, but not quite as shaken. “I’ll drive you home,” he told her.

She crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest. “Have you forgotten we’re on a date, Trevor Stark?”

“Have you forgotten what just happened? You got kidnapped because of me.”

“I got kidnapped for about two minutes, if that. By a moron who didn’t even think you might have an override key. And you rescued me. Nope, sorry, none of that lets you off the hook. You asked me out, and you’re taking me out.”

“Paige . . .”

God, he had to make her understand what a mistake it would be to get involved with him. He cupped her elbow and turned her to face him. “There are things you don’t know about me,” he made himself tell her. Once she knew those things, she’d run screaming.

“I know you put apple blossoms in your glove compartment. I know you called the cops even though you hate cops. I know you never would have let that man hurt me. I know you want me the same way I want you.” Her eyes were huge in the lamplight, sapphire-dark and urgent.

Desire for her thrummed in his blood like a drug. “Yeah, all that is true. And more. But I’m nothing but trouble for you. What am I supposed to do, put you in danger because I want you?”

“Maybe you should let me have a say,” she whispered. “Tell me why I shouldn’t be with you. Why you’re so bad for me. What’s so terrible about Trevor Stark?” She lifted a hand to interrupt him. “And Nina told me that’s not your real last name, so you can start there.”

He stared at her for a long, long moment, hiding all his turmoil behind the glacier of his face. It felt as if the ground was crumbling from under his feet, as if he stood on a lonely cliff face about to be washed away by the sea. No solid footing, no way to hide. Paige had just been kidnapped because of him, and that man had mentioned Wayne County. He needed to tell her. Even if he lost her.

And he would. He had no illusions about that.

Finally, his voice like a rusty hinge, he said, “Not here.”

“Take me to your hotel room.”

“Okay, but we’re not—”

“Just take me.”

S
he’d nearly ended up in his hotel room the very first night she met him. Then, it would have been a one-night stand type of thing, a shallow encounter between two strangers. Now, it was perhaps the opposite. It was Trevor dragging his hand through his hair, pacing the room, looking scraped raw. It was Trevor tugging his shirt off his back, showing the burn scars in the shape of a W—the gang emblem of the group that had drawn his father into their criminal web.

Now, it formed the skeleton of a hawk that had been tattooed in meticulous detail around the scar.

“That’s to remind me never to stop watching my back,” he told her, while she stared, speechless, at the work of muscled, inked beauty that was his back. Wide shoulders, tapering to a taut waist, with endless ripples and ridges of sinew in between. Hovering over it all, the harsh image of the hawk, wings spread open.

“That’s . . . beautiful.”

He gave her an odd look over his shoulder, then pulled his shirt back down and leaned against the wall while
she sat cross-legged on the bed. “I don’t know where to start with this fucking story. My dad was a pharmacist. Normal, middle-class guy. Taught me baseball, soccer, everything. Then my mom died, and he went to pieces. Started using drugs from the pharmacy. Then he got into harder stuff, using the pharmaceuticals as payment to the dealers. It got worse and worse, but I didn’t know most of it. I was always playing baseball. Nina would come to me sometimes and ask what was wrong with Dad, but I had no clue. She was at home more and she knew something wasn’t right.”

He passed a hand over his forehead, as if even talking about this hurt. “Then I think my dad tried to get out, but they sent some thug over to muscle him into line. That’s when . . . well, the guy was no match for a baseball bat. I went into juvenile detention for the rest of high school.”

Horror flickered through her. “Did he die?”

“No. Brain damage.”

She frowned, sorting through the story. It didn’t seem to completely add up. “If you attacked the man who was hurting your father, wouldn’t that be considered self-defense?”

He was quiet for a long time. “It didn’t play out that way. And I can’t say any more about it. Just that my father worked it out with them so the gang wasn’t suspected of anything. He was going to take the blame, but I was only fifteen. If he’d been sent to prison, Nina and I would have been on our own. I wanted her to be safe, so I confessed and got sent to juvie. I think my dad thought I’d be safer that way. I probably was, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“A couple months after I went in, they bribed a guard. He knocked me out and I woke up on a folding table next to a smelting oven. That’s when I got the scar on my back. They wanted me to know that my time
in juvie wasn’t payment enough. That they owned me. They said there was more to come after I got out.”

She touched the scar on his cheek. “This?”

“That’s the first line of a W, but that happened three years ago, and I wasn’t unconscious. He didn’t get far.”

A chill shot through her.

Trevor’s jaw worked, his eyes a turbulent green. “Soon as I graduated, I changed my name and got the hell out of town. I had to change my name once more after that, after a Detroit cop put it together. He was working for them. After I signed my major league contract, I sent for Nina. I got her set up somewhere safe in another city. I don’t know if they’re looking for me anymore, but I know they’d still love to find me. And that’s why you should have nothing to do with me.”

The flat finality of his voice shook her up even more than his words. And the truth was, she could see exactly what he meant. Anyone would say he was a dangerous person to be around; her father sure would. But was it his fault that his father had gotten involved with drugs? His fault that some gang enforcer had attacked his father? His fault for rushing to his father’s defense?

She got up and walked slowly to his side. He tensed. She could practically see the electric barrier rising between them. “Where’s your father now?”

“He died of an overdose while I was in juvie. I only saw him a few times after that night.”

The stark sadness of that statement horrified her. God, none of this was fair. “I’m so sorry, Trevor.”

She took his hand, rubbing her thumb across his big knuckles. After the way he’d manhandled that carjacker, she could imagine what he’d done with his father in danger. With a baseball bat or bare hands, Trevor was a warrior. He defended those he cared for. She’d seen it over and over.

Lifting his hand to her lips, she kissed it. “Is the Trevor part real?”

“Yes.”

He tried to pull his hand away but she didn’t allow it.

“Paige, listen. I’d like to think all of that is dead and gone forever, but the truth is, it could come back to bite me anytime. I’ve changed a lot since fifteen, but they’d still recognize me if they saw me. Hopefully, they never will. But I can’t guarantee that. And you don’t want anything to do with those guys. They’re evil.”

His eyes darkened, and he shifted his back muscles in an unconscious gesture. She thought about Trevor, a fifteen-year-old baseball prodigy, thrown onto a folding table and branded with a hot iron.

“It’s not fair,” she burst out. “How long are you supposed to live in fear of them? Forever?”

“I don’t know. If it was just me, I’d say to hell with it. But I have Nina to think about. She’s what matters most.”

“Nina?” Paige frowned. Would they go after her as a way to find Trevor? It seemed like a stretch, but what did she know about this kind of thing? Absolutely nothing. And then something else clicked. “You don’t want to play in the majors, do you?”

His head shot up, his startled reaction telling her she was onto something.

“You think it’s too risky. You might have to play in Detroit. Someone could spot you and put two and two together. It’s safer here in Kilby. Who ever goes to Triple A except the locals? That’s why you keep sabotaging your career.”

He yanked his hand away from her and strode to the window. “I don’t sabotage my career. Have you seen my stats?”

“Yes, I’ve seen your stats. I’m working in the ac
counting office right now, and it’s like Moneyball back there. I’ve seen your personnel records too. You keep screwing things up right when you’re about to get the call. Drives my dad nuts.”

“That’s not my problem.” Ice cold, as always. But now she knew what was behind that uncaring mask. She wasn’t falling for his act anymore.

“They’re not going to keep you in Triple A forever. You have a monster contract. What then?”

He turned away from her, rubbing the back of his neck, the flex of muscle in his forearm reminding her of the panorama on his back. “The more time that passes, the better. People die off in that world. Eventually they’ll forget about me and my family.”

God, it all made so much sense. Trevor’s past, his fear, his protectiveness, the behavior that drove Crush nuts. He wasn’t disrespecting baseball—he was trying to shield his family. “Just tell Crush, Trevor. Tell him what’s really going on.”

He was across the room before she could say another word, strong hands gripping her upper arms. “No, Paige. You have to promise. I told you all this in strict confidence. You’re the only one I’ve ever told. Literally, ever. You can’t tell. It’s not safe for Nina. You gotta promise me.”

“But Trevor, you shouldn’t have to carry this alone. It’s not fair. What about you, your baseball career, your life?”

He spoke in a low, tight growl. “Fuck all of that.
This
is my life. It’s the way it has to be. I’d do anything for Nina. I would have quit baseball because of the risk, but she wouldn’t let me. Would you do any different if you were in my shoes?”

She swallowed hard around the tightness in her throat. What would she do if she had to face such a
terrifying situation? Again she remembered the harsh scars on his back, the way he’d made that brand into his own. The scar on his cheek. “Maybe not,” she whispered. A tear spilled from her eye; she felt its soft tickle on her cheek. Then another. She didn’t try to hide them, not that she could, the way he was holding her.

He watched her cry for him, everything about him softening with each tear. His grip loosened, his tense posture eased, the lines of his face relaxed into something like awe. After a few long moments he lifted one hand and used his thumb to wipe a tear off her cheekbone. She grabbed his wrist, keeping it right where it was, next to her face. He extended his fingers to cradle her jaw, his hold as tender as it was firm.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “I can hardly stand it.”

She smiled through the tears that kept falling. “Says Baseball’s Hottest Outfield.”

“None of that now. I’m talking about you.” His thumb brushed over the skin of her cheekbone, his gaze traveled across her features as if noting every freckle and eyelash. “The way your eyes dance when you smile. The way you catch the light, wherever it is. You’re always shining. Even now, in this crappy hotel room, tears on your face, all the light in the room is on you. Everything else might as well not be here.”

Her breath snagged in her chest. Never in her life would she have expected such poetic words from stone-faced Trevor Stark.

“Trevor,” she whispered. “I—”

“Don’t say anything. Just let me . . .” He trailed off, words disappearing into breath, breath disappearing into the press of his lips against hers. It felt like the softest kiss in the world, like an inevitability, two paths crossing right where they were supposed to. They kissed
long and deep, every barrier between them evaporating like mist under the morning sun. His touch turned her body into a river of fluid sensation, everything in her wanting to soften, to welcome, to surrender.

“We shouldn’t—” He began.

“Don’t.” With a fierce kiss, she plucked the words from the air between them, swallowed them before they could shatter their fragile new connection. “You’re not alone in this, Trevor. Not anymore.”

She tilted her hips forward, seeking his erection. Under the denim of his jeans, it pressed against her thigh, hot and demanding. Sensation hot in her belly, she swayed toward him. She wanted him hard against her, surrounding her, cradling her the way he had after the carjacking. She wanted him inside her, his strength and power pouring into her. She wanted him in her mouth, in her hands, against her tongue. She wanted him now, all night, again and again.

But he was still fighting with his conscience; she felt his silent struggle for control. Hot desire battling against the urge to protect her.

“Please,” she whispered. “Stay with me, Trevor.” She closed her eyes, put his hand on her breast, over her heart, praying that her aroused nipple and catapulting heartbeat would do her talking for her.