Playing for Kinley (Cruz Brothers Book 1) (3 page)

Kinley

I swear, if I spent half my time on location and in hotel rooms, the other half was spent on airplanes. I was one of those people who could never, ever sleep on planes, though. So over the years, I had created a carefully thought-out plane package, if you will, so I wouldn’t die of boredom during my trips.

A portable DVD player, my laptop, a stack of magazines, my Kindle, word search booklets, and Dramamine—the original formula that made you drowsy—in case none of the above worked and I just needed to knock myself out.

Yep, learned that lesson after a thirteen-hour flight to Taiwan early in my career, during which I spent most of my time wide awake and freezing cold, listening to the screaming baby in front of me. I had also watched all of their available movies within the first six hours of the flight.

Never again.

I pretty much had it down to a science now.

Thankfully, once my plane touched down in Dulles International, I had no problems obtaining a rental car and was on my way over to my parents’ house before dusk even set on the city. Despite the reservations I always had about coming back to this city for fear of running into a certain someone, I was excited to spend some time with my family in my childhood home. The last time I was here was for Clay’s election back in November, but I had booked so many shoots around the area for that week, I had barely given myself time to relax.

I was trying to make sure that I stayed away from
him
.

Parker.

I wasn’t even sure why I always stressed about that so much. He was the third baseman for the Boston Red Sox, so he lived in Boston. He had two older brothers but they both lived in Baltimore. In fact, the only thing actually in D.C. that would ever bring him here was my family. But if he did visit, he usually stayed with Clay at his place, although that was before Clay had started dating Gwen McKindry.

Parker was usually around my parents’ house for the major holidays.

And Christmas was the most major of all the major holidays. At least for my family.

I hadn’t been able to bring myself to ask my mom about him and whether or not he would be making an appearance. I should actually say
when
. When he would be making an appearance because I was sure that he would be.

I didn’t know how I was going to handle it, either.

The past two times we had been around each other hadn’t exactly gone well. First, there was the Fourth of July.

I could feel him watching me.

I could feel every time his eyes were on me, could feel every move he made. My body had practically been linked to his ever since he first arrived.

And that pissed me off.

My body shouldn’t still respond to him after all these years. After he hurt me the way he had. I’d tried to avoid him for so long—making most of my appearances at home short and sweet for fear of running into him—and seeing him before me, watching me, all those years of hard work suddenly felt moot.

He wasn’t even supposed to be here. His game had got rescheduled to earlier in the day, though, and he immediately hopped on a plane from Boston to make it here for the weekend festivities. This marked the first time he and I had been around each other like this in…years. I wasn’t even sure how many exactly.

He showed up right as the fireworks show was starting at the National Mall festival. I hadn’t spoken one word to him, other than “hi” so my family wouldn’t suspect anything. They never knew about Parker and I, had no clue how deep my feelings for him had once run. I planned on keeping it that way.

He wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance to engage me in conversation either. In fact, he looked a little nervous around me.

The second I’d seen him walking toward us, though, all those old feelings had sprung to the surface, much to my frustration. The anger, the hurt, and dammit…the love. I felt it all and didn’t want to. I wanted to put all of that behind me and finally move on with my life. It had been long enough. I should have been able to by now.

But my stupid heart protested every time I made any progress in that area.

I was contemplating all of this in my old bedroom at my parents’ house later that night when I heard a soft knock on the door. Assuming it was my mom, I told her to come in.

It wasn’t my mom.

Parker stood there, closing the door behind him, his deep chocolate eyes locked on mine.

“Hey, Kinley,” he said in that low, steady voice of his that I loved. I could remember it whispering my name right before he’d smother me with kisses.

Don’t think about that now.

“What are you doing in here, Parker?”

If he expected a sweet reunion between us with hugs and smiles and forgiveness, he was going to be severely disappointed.

He took a tentative step forward and my body stiffened. “I need to talk to you.”

I tried to keep my voice calm. “About what?”

My body wanted to get as far away from his as it could, but his stare pinned me where I was on my bed. “You can’t keep avoiding me,” he replied. “They’re going to know something is up.”

Was that what he was worried about? The laugh I released held no humor in it. “It’s worked so far. Don’t worry. I’ll keep up this annoyed routine, so they’ll assume I’ve never been anything more to you than a bratty little sister.”

“Kinley…” he warned. His voice had an edge to it.

“That’s the truth, isn’t it? That’s all I’ll ever be to you.”

He took another step forward but stopped himself from advancing further. “No, that’s not the truth. I—” he paused, looking uncertain about what he wanted to say. “I’m sorry, okay? How many times do I have to say that? I’m sorry for how I handled everything back then. I’m sorry that I hurt you. I thought—”

I put my hand up. “Don’t,” I grated, trying to subdue the temper rising in my tone. “We’re not re-visiting the past tonight. It’s dead and buried. I don’t need your apologies, Parker. I’ve moved on from that. We both have. So just leave it alone.”

I would not soften at the hurt I saw flash in his eyes. “This was why I resisted things for so long, you know,” he said, the words gutting me. “So that
this
would never happen. I never wanted our entire relationship to be ruined.” I wasn’t looking at him but I could hear the emotion when he added, “I never wanted either of us to get hurt.”

My head snapped around to see him standing there with his hands on his hips and his head down. He looked dejected but it didn’t stave off my anger. “And whose fault was that?”

He nodded and then looked back up at me, his eyes pleading. “How can I make this right, Kin?”

The use of the nickname that he always had for me felt like a punch to the solar plexus. “There’s nothing to make right. It happened a long time ago. We’re both adults now so I’m sure we can handle being in the same room together.”
Maybe.

His jaw clenched and I could tell he wanted to say more. But he also saw my expression that was very clearly telling him it wasn’t an option.

I was done with re-opening old wounds today.

He eventually nodded slowly and started to move backward to the door. When he had the door partially cracked, he stopped but didn’t turn around to face me again. His voice was barely a whisper when he spoke but I heard every word.

“You were always more than just Clay’s little sister to me. You’ve always been more than that.”

Then, he left.

And I cried myself to sleep over Parker Cruz for the first time in a very long time. Even after I’d told myself many years before that such a thing would never happen again.

I would be stronger this time, though. I had an invisible force field around my heart and I wasn’t going to let anything he said or did penetrate it. No matter how gorgeous he looked or how much my body wanted to be close to his.

It wasn’t going to happen.

Besides, based on the last time we had seen each other in person—at Clay’s election in November—he seemed to have learned his lesson and hadn’t brought up the past once. In fact, we hadn’t said more than four words to each other before I hightailed it back to New York.

But even though we hadn’t talked to each other, the experience had still been as painful as it had been in July. Because at the election results party, I had to watch him flirt with other women. It was the first time I had been exposed to that in person since we had our falling out.

While I was visiting with family and friends and silently supporting my big brother, I had to stand there and watch Parker charm the pants off every woman under the age of forty in that bar. The jealousy was so irrational and I had been so incredibly angry at my heart for still being that vulnerable around him. I had to watch him smiling at them, making them laugh, while they drooled all over themselves, and understandably so. I had once been on the receiving end of those smiles.

The man could be irresistible when he wasn’t breaking your heart.

“Hi, honey!” my mom greeted me at the front door.

I could barely even remember the trip to their house, I was so lost in my thoughts.

I smiled and leaned in to give her a hug, inhaling the smell of her cinnamon candles the second I stepped through the doorway. “Hey, Mom.”

“How was Canada?” she asked.

“Cold but good. I think the shoot went really well. They should be happy with what I got.”

She smiled and hugged me again. “That’s good. I’m so happy you’re home. It’ll be nice to have everyone here this year.”

Does everyone include a certain baseball player?
I couldn’t ask, though.

“When will Clay and Gwen be here?”

“Actually, they should be here anytime,” she responded, looking over at the clock hanging on the living room wall. “Clay called me this afternoon and said they would be here by six.”

I heard grunting coming from the hall and smiled. I turned to see my dad walking toward us with his head focused on whatever he was tinkering with in his hands. It looked suspiciously like the faucet from the downstairs bathroom sink.

His entire face lit up when he saw me. “Kinley!” He wrapped me in a big bear hug and kissed my cheek. “It’s about time. I had to play gin rummy with your mom last night because you weren’t here.”

I laughed as mom smacked him and said, “Hey! I wasn’t that bad.” She turned back to me. “Go put your suitcase upstairs and then you can help me peel potatoes.”

When I went upstairs I literally dropped my suitcase in my room and practically ran back out the door. I didn’t want to go down memory lane just yet. Because that old bedroom was sure full of memories.

I could torture myself with that in due time.

Thirty minutes later, my mom and I were cooking while she caught me up on everything that had recently gone down with Clay and his girlfriend Gwen when we heard Clay’s voice coming from the living room. We both put down what we were doing to greet the two of them.

“Hey, Sis,” Clay said as he pulled me in for a hug.

“Hello, Mr. Mayor.”

I leaned back to see the proud smile he had at hearing that title. He should be proud. He had worked his ass off to get where he was. I turned to hug Gwen to see that same smile on her face, too. They were good together, no question.

“Good to see you, Gwen.”

“You too, Kinley.”

It really was nice to see both of them safe and healthy, especially since that wasn’t entirely the case back in November. I still couldn’t believe what had happened the night of the election after they both left the results party. It was something out of a movie…or a nightmare.

Gwen and Clay had been seeing each other when she broke up with and left her fiancé, William Callahan, who was also Clay’s opponent in the mayoral election. I wasn’t sure of the details but it was clear they had been having an affair while she was still with Callahan, something that had both surprised and disappointed me.

Then, I heard the rest of the story.

Apparently, Callahan was a psycho and had been abusive to Gwen over the course of their relationship. Callahan found out about her relationship with Clay and had completely freaked when he heard he lost the election. He attacked Gwen that night and would have done more had Clay not shown up when he did. He beat the crap out of Callahan who was arrested shortly after. Now, he was in jail awaiting trial and my brother and Gwen were still dealing with the media fallout that came with such a scandalous story.

Looking at them now, though, I could tell they were going to be fine. And I loved Gwen. She was a sweetheart who had clearly been dealt a crappy hand, and I was so happy they had each other.

I grabbed ahold of Gwen’s arm and started pulling her into the kitchen. “Clay, you’re on Dad Watch duty,” I yelled at him over my shoulder. “He’s decided to remodel the bathrooms in a day.”

“
He’s what
?” I heard Clay storm down the hall to the downstairs bathroom. Then, “Dad! Where did all of this water come from?”

I heard my mom sigh beside me. Then, she groaned when we heard, “I’m not calling a damn plumber!”