Need You Now (Love in Unknown) (16 page)

“Too much info, man.” Gage winced then frowned, catching the ball and tossing it up in the air in front of him before catching it again. “Best way to handle Mel? Be more stubborn than she is.”

Caine let out a deep belly laugh. “That’s a pretty tall order, little brother. She might be the most pig-headed woman I’ve ever met.”

“Definitely. But one of the only ways to get through to her is to dig your heels in and refuse to blink.”

“You’re saying I should play chicken with her?” They’d played that game so many times as kids on their bikes, racing at each other at a dead spring until one of them swerved.

Gage grinned. “Exactly.”

Play chicken with Mel. Show her he’d fight for them when no one else had. The idea swirled around his head for the next few days, not quite taking hold long enough to come up with a real plan. All he could come up with was to have a literal face-off with Mel. Dig his heels in and not give up until she agreed to go on a date with him.

A week after he kidnapped her, Caine took the Mayor Mobile and parked it in front of the practice. Step one: let the town know where he was. Check. He’d heard rumors that there was a Facebook page dedicated to keeping track of where he was spotted in the damned cart. If he had the town on his side, he stood an even better chance of winning. No more hiding, no more pretending they’d never dated. He meant business.

He knew things at the clinic would be pretty slow today. Fridays in Unknown meant a lull everywhere as people geared up for the whirl of activity that came with the weekend, with the games and recitals and all of the tourists milling around. He also knew that Sandra left early on Fridays, which meant there would be no audience aside from Anna, who hated gossip. While he wanted to declare his intentions to the town, he still didn’t want every detail of his public life retold and distorted at will for the next week.

Anna sat at the front desk, a battered romance novel in her hands. She smiled as he walked in. “Don’t tell me our handsome mayor is sick.”

“Not sick. Is the lovely new doctor in? I have some business to hash out with her,” he said, turning on the charm as he leaned against the desk. He needed Anna on his side for this one.

She gave him an appraising look. At fifty-five, there were few things that got past her. “She’s in with Teddy Allen right now, checking up on his arm. She should be done soon.”

“Would it be all right if I wait for her in her office? I have a few items I need to discuss with her.”

“Go on up.” The nurse narrowed her eyes. “Just try not to kidnap her again. She’s been in a snit all week since Sandra and I didn’t stop you.”

Caine laughed. “Understood. Oh, and could you not tell her I’m here? I need every advantage I can get with this one.”

Anna chuckled, shaking her head. “Never thought I’d see the day when a Maddox was the underdog.”

Caine went up the stairs as quietly as possible and settled himself in Mel’s desk chair, one of those fancy ergonomic numbers that supported the back. Not a bad place to stage a sit-in. Gage told him that Friday afternoons were when Mel dedicated most of her time to paperwork and research. She couldn’t really do that if he occupied her chair. Grabbing one of the medical textbooks on her desk, he settled in to wait.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Mel’s outraged voice put a smile on his face even before he saw her. Let the battle begin.

He casually looked up from the book. Hair pulled back in a low ponytail, Mel wore capris pants and a nice blouse in a pretty blue color. Damn, but she was pretty. The sight of her always made his heart skip a beat. “Hello to you, too, sunshine. Miss me?”

“No, in fact, I didn’t.” Mel yanked off her lab coat and threw it over the sofa. She didn’t look at him. Classic Mel Fib-Face. “Now, get out of my chair and let me get back to work.”

He rubbed his chin, as if considering the order, then shook his head. “Sorry. Don’t think I will.”

Mel crossed her arms, hazel darts shooting from her eyes. “And why not? Don’t you have your own office to bum around in?”

“It’s a lovely spring day outside and I thought I’d come see how my favorite doctor was doing. Thought I might see if you wanted to—“

She held up a hand. “If you say ‘play doctor’, I may have to strangle you.”

Caine laughed. God, she was sassy. “I was going to say ‘go on a date with me.” You do remember what those are don’t you?”

“Yeah, I’ve been on several of them lately.”

Point to Mel. Flickers of jealousy sizzled through his veins. It stung that she’d dated every schmuck her mother suggested, but refused to give him a chance. He knew it was just because she was scared, but it still did a number on a guy’s ego.

“Then it won’t hurt you to go on one with me.” Time to prey on her hyper-logical side. “Think of it as an experiment if you want. Go on a date with me, then compare the results to all your other dates. You decide it’s a sucky date, I’ll back off.”

Mel raised an eyebrow, sitting down on the sofa. She crossed her legs, accentuating the curve of her sleek calf. He liked that calf. Especially when it was pressed against the small of his back. “You’re giving me a lot of license there, Mr. Mayor. For all you know, I could declare it’s a sucky date just to get you off my back.”

“Yeah.” He leveled her with a look he hoped told her just how serious he was. Time to make her blink. “But you won’t. And I won’t leave until you say you’ll go on a date with me.”

She rubbed her forehead, pain in her eyes. Indecision. Not a bad sign. If she was dead set against the idea, she wouldn’t even consider the possibility of agreeing. He just needed to push her a bit. “I’m not leaving until you say yes. Come on, Mel. You know you enjoyed the other night. I definitely enjoyed it.”

“I’d have to be dead not to enjoy that.” She rolled her eyes, slouching a little more. “That’s beside the point, and you know it. I don’t want to re-visit the past, especially this chapter of it. I’m not the girl I used to be, and you’re definitely not the guy that I got all dewy-eyed over when I was eighteen.”

An opening. “Exactly. Aren’t you the one who said you wanted to start over, have a fresh life here? Why can’t that include our past? Forget everything that happened in Providence. Forget Andrew the Asshole. We’re just two adults who share enough chemistry to set the whole town on fire. If I met you for the first time in a bar tomorrow or at the grocery store, would you agree to go out with me?”

Silence. Not good, but not necessarily bad. He continued to watch her, willing her logical side to win out over the mess Andrew Thornton had made of her emotions. She’d said she trusted him. He had to trust that she’d keep her word.

It felt like an hour before she finally looked up at him, resignation on her face. Blink. “Damn you, Caine Maddox. Damn you to hell and back.”

“Is that a yes?” He held his breath. Caine had come prepared to stay all day if he had to, but there were lots of things he’d rather do than argue with her about this. Like plan their date.

Mel glared at him before burying her face in her hands. “Yes. It’s a yes.” She lowered her hands. “But you get one shot, mister. That’s all.”

“Full count, bases loaded. I got it.” He tried to keep his grin to a moderately triumphant level. It took a lot of willpower for him not to go over and kiss her right now.  “When do you want to go out?”

A sign of a good negotiator, he’d learned, was the ability to give the opposition some measure of control. Her mouth drew together in a tight line. He almost expected to hear her say “never.”

“Pick me up tomorrow night at seven. Even you can’t get into too much trouble between now and then.”

Caine laughed. “You know how I love a challenge. I’ll be at your apartment at six fifty-nine.”

Chapter 11

Caine kept his eyes trained on the field, watching as the next of his boys went up to bat. They were behind by two, bases loaded, and only five minutes left in the game. He glanced over at his brother standing beside third base and nodded. Alex Rice, their leading hitter, glared at the pitcher with a steely determination that looked a little out of place on his ten-year-old face. Here came the wind up and the pitch.

Right over the plate. A crack echoed through the field as wood connected with the leather ball. Caine watched the ball sail over the heads of the infielders and toward the back of the same field he’d played on that their age. Cheering broke out.

“Come on, Jack. Run, Tony!” Arms signaling madly, he willed his boys around the bases. A quick glance told him the outfielders were scrambling for the ball. By the time Alex sped past second, the center fielder finally had the ball. Caine watched his boy fly by third as the ball began to make it toward home.

“Slide!” Caine’s order came at the same time as his brother’s.

Alex’s body flew through the red dirt. The small hand connected with home plate a bare second before the catcher caught the ball. The umpire’s call boomed through the field. “Safe!”

Behind him in the dugout, Caine heard his boys cheering and high fiving, the chant going up. “Rangers win! Rangers win!”

Gage cuffed him on the back, grinning at him as he came to join the team. It took several minutes for them to get the boys calmed down enough for them to shake hands with the opposing team. During the chaos, Caine looked at the crowd. He loved that most of the town had come out to the game on a beautiful spring day. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw familiar chestnut hair in the front row, but the boys demanded his attention before he could confirm his suspicions.

He joined his team in shaking hands with their opponents, then gathered them together for a brief meeting.

“All right, men. Great job today. I know we had a rocky start to the season, but you just proved what you can do out there. Go home, rest up, and I’ll see you at practice Tuesday night.”

He attempted to clean up the dugout, but he was stopped every five seconds to shake hands with parents and members of the community as they came up to congratulate him. Baseball came second only to football in Unknown, and having the mayor as the coach was an added bonus.

A hand trailed down his spine, startling him. He whipped around to see Mel smirking at him as she leaned against the wooden wall at the back of the dugout. “Not bad, Coach. Nice to see that not all of your players end up with broken bones.”

“Hey. Teddy’s a great kid, but he’d make Big Bird look graceful.” He pushed up his hat to see her better. The early summer heat had brought a little glow of sweat and color to her cheeks. Her silky brown hair was contained in a ponytail, lifted off of her neck where he imagined it was a little bit cooler. “What brings you here?”

“Well, you see, I’m pretty good friends with one of the coaches. It boosts his ego when I come to watch him at sporting events. Been a tradition since we were kids.” Mischief lit her face. Excellent. Whatever reservations she’d had about their date, she’d obviously put them aside for now. And he was so excited about this date, he couldn’t even muster up the energy to be jealous that she’d come to see his brother and not him.

Caine looked over his shoulder to where Gage was gathering up their extra equipment. “Believe me, that knucklehead doesn’t need an ego boost. Any bigger and he’d need an extra chair by his desk for it to sit in.”

Mel shrugged. “I also happen to like baseball. And it gave me the opportunity to ask you a very important question.”

“What’s that?” Caine leaned forward, bracing his hand above her head on the dugout wall. From his vantage point, he got a teasing glimpse of cleavage down her V-necked cotton shirt.

Mel wagged her eyebrows. “What should I wear on our date tonight? You never told me where we were going.”

Caine bit the inside of his cheek for a moment. Dirty images fitted through his head before he could stop them. It would be too easy to forget they were in the middle of the park with his baseball players still milling about, their parents not far off. This woman was dangerous to his reputation as the upstanding mayor. Not that he was complaining. “What would you say if I told you to wear that lingerie I got you and nothing else?”

“I’d say…” She ran her finger along the top of his jersey, then reached up to pat his cheek. “Dream on, mister. You promised me a real date and I’m holding you to it.”

“Fair enough.” He caught her wrist. “But if you decided to wear it under a nice sundress, I wouldn’t object.”

She laughed, a light, happy sound that he loved to hear. “Wow. Your ego almost matches your brother’s. So, a sundress. I can work with that. Do I get any more details?”

Caine considered for a second. “Sandals might be a bit uncomfortable.”

With a sigh, she pushed back and away. In spite of the hot air around them, he missed the heat of her body. “In that case, I’ll go start getting ready while you head home and shower. Don’t want you to be stinky for this big date of ours.”

He watched her leave, anticipation and lust pounding through him.
No
, he told himself. Not the time to get excited. The crowd had thinned out considerably, but there were eyes everywhere in Unknown. They were already bound to end up as the main story on Merna’s Matches tomorrow morning.

“Down, boy,” Gage teased, coming into the dugout to grab his bag. “Save it for later.”

Caine shoved his brother playfully. “Shut up, doofus. Are we done here? I’ve got… two hours before I have to pick Mel up.”

“Need time to do your nails and curl your hair?” Gage snickered. “Yeah, everything’s cleared up, no thanks to you.”

They walked out to their cars. “Where are you taking her, anyway? She said you refused to tell her.”

“Uh-uh. For all I know, she’s bribed you to ask me so you can text her and warn her.” Caine shook his head, hefting his bag up on his shoulder. “Nobody knows and nobody will know until Mel does.”

Gage tossed his bag in the back of his Jeep. “I do know that it has something to do with Race’s Drive-In. One of my officers spotted you out there yesterday with a small crew.”

Narrowing his eyes, Caine set his bag in the bed of his truck. “You didn’t say anything to Mel, did you?”