The Practice Proposal (3 page)

Chapter Three

The early evening sun shone in the window of the truck and shimmered on Liza’s silky
hair. Cole had never dated a redhead. And as far as he knew, he’d never dated a woman
who hadn’t wanted to go out with him. Girls had frequently been available, so he’d
rarely had to chase them. Frank could’ve made things easier on him if he’d picked
a girl Cole didn’t have to win over. Why had Sylvia Sutherland insisted on Liza going
out with him? Liza had known him when he was a nobody, and he wondered if she’d been
more impressed by him then than she was right now. The longer she sat next to him,
the more uncomfortable he felt about his intentions.

“It’s been a long time”—Liza reached into her purse and pulled out an old baseball—“since
you gave me this.” She bunched her lips, distracting him a little, and handed him
the ball.

Cole knew immediately it was the one he’d autographed for her years ago at John Sutherland’s
baseball camp, where he’d spent the better part of his teenage summers. Cole remembered
the first day he’d shown up at camp in Baltimore, thanks to an anonymous benefactor
who’d paid for him to go. He’d been wide-eyed and in awe of Sutherland—the Hall-of-Fame
shortstop who had set records and played in three World Series, one as MVP.

John Sutherland had inspired him with his easygoing coaching style. He’d helped Cole
sharpen his skills and work on his weaknesses in the game. Even more than that, Sutherland
had assured Cole that he had talent
and
the potential to go pro. Just as Cole’s father might have done, if he’d had one.
And just like his mother might have done, if she could’ve torn herself away from countless
boyfriends long enough to come see him play.

Over the course of three summers, Sutherland became the father figure Cole had always
longed for. And Sylvia had treated him special, too. Then, that last summer, Liza
had started hanging around. Skinny and awkward, but easy-to-talk-to Liza. On the last
day of camp, he’d autographed the baseball and given it to her. In hindsight, it seemed
like an arrogant thing to do. But at the time, he’d been naive about his future. He’d
felt more like a star then than he did today. And Liza, all bones and braces, might’ve
been his first real fan.

He rolled the ball around in his hand, pressing the seams with his fingertips and
rubbing his thumb across his carefully signed name. “This might be a collector’s item.
I can actually read my signature.” These days, he signed so many autographs in such
a hurry that his signature had become two Cs and a squiggly line.

“Guess I was smart to keep it,” she said lightly. He couldn’t decide if she was teasing
him or not. “I slept with it under my pillow for weeks.”

Now that was news, coming from Miss Undecided. But after thinking about it a second,
he remembered how smitten she’d seemed with him back then. It was hard to believe
the woman sitting next to him and that teenage girl were the same person. “For real?”

“I kind of had a crush,” she said shyly. “And I was sure you’d be a superstar.” She
shrugged. “Turns out I was right.”

“That’s cool of you to say.” He pressed his lips together tightly. “But there’s way
more to the story than that.” It was no secret he had struggled over the years, going
from the minors to the major league and back. Becoming a superstar hadn’t been the
short, happy journey Liza made it sound like. “Would you like to have it back?” she
asked, offering up the baseball.

Another first. No one had ever returned something he’d autographed. “You don’t want
it?”

“Sleeping with it under my pillow gave me a crick in my neck.” She grinned.

He lowered his eyebrows. “You never heard of ‘The Princess and the Pea’?”

“I can’t believe
you’ve
heard of it,” she teased.

Cole remembered his grandma reading the story to him from a thick, worn book when
he was a kid. “There are plenty of things about me you might not believe.”

She looked at him curiously, a glimmer of mischief in her eyes. “Me, too.” He put
the baseball in the cup holder, still unsure if her giving it back to him had been
an insult or a compliment. He wasn’t used to women who kept him guessing, but he thought
he kind of liked it.

They had made good time getting out of the city and into the rolling hills of Virginia.
After several more miles, Mack turned the pickup off the road and onto a long, winding
gravel driveway flanked by lines of magnolia trees. On either side, fields and pastures
stretched out until they met the woods beyond. Now that they’d arrived, Cole started
to relax a little, but an undercurrent of uneasiness tugged at his conscience. He
wasn’t sure he’d be able to get Liza to agree to a second date, much less something
longer-term—and fake. Even so, the farm was perfect for what he and Frank had planned.

“This is beautiful.” Liza gazed around, wide-eyed, with a hint of a smile, and Cole
caught a glimpse of that small-town wholesomeness he’d seen in her Twitter profile
picture. She seemed to have relaxed some, too.

Mack stopped the truck in front of a well-kept barn, painted white with a red tin
roof. “Y’all wanna jump out here?” he asked. “I’ll head around back and hitch up.”

Liza furrowed her brow and looked at Cole. “Hitch up?”

He nodded. This time the mischief was in his eyes. He got out of the truck, walked
around, and opened the door for her. She stepped down next to him, the scent of her
perfume swirling in the air. It was fresh and simple—like a bouquet of wildflowers
might smell, not heavy like those perfumes that hung thickly in the clubs where he
partied.

As soon as they were out of the truck, Mack drove around the back of the barn. The
autumn breeze nipped at Cole’s neck as the sun sank lower in the sky. He hoped the
sunset would be as postcard-perfect as the farm. He needed Frank’s plan to work, after
all, whether he felt right about it or not.

Liza turned in a circle, taking it all in. He didn’t miss the chance to check out
the way her jeans hugged her curves and tapered down her long legs to her sexy-yet-sensible
boots. Her silky long hair caught a ray of the fading sunlight, and he imagined combing
his fingers through it.

She faced him with her chin tipped up, a little wonder in her eyes. His gaze instinctively
skimmed the smooth curve of her neck, dipped quickly to the V-neck of her sweater,
and shifted back to her lips. He inhaled sharply. She was fine from every angle, but
he wasn’t sure she knew it.

“I figured you for more of a swanky-restaurant, glitzy-nightclub kind of guy,” she
said.

She’d have a better idea of what he was all about from their conversations years ago
than she would judging from what she guessed now. Cole was the same guy deep down—still
looking for a place to belong.

Most people took him for a high-life kind of guy—and he’d given them every reason
to think that. Now it had all backfired, and the one thing that mattered to him was
at stake. According to Frank, faking a romance with Liza was just the way to fix things,
but now that he was out with her, Cole had even more doubts. Sure, she seemed like
an upstanding girl who conveniently happened to work for an antidrug foundation associated
with baseball. All that sounded good, but she was also the one girl who might be able
to see through him.

He kicked at the dirt with the toe of his boot. “Like I said, there are things about
me you might not believe. This could be one of them.” He made a sweeping gesture.
“I enjoy a night out like this—no limos or chefs or drinks with fancy names. If someone
else had won the auction date, that might’ve been what she got.” He gave Liza a sidelong
glance, and she looked at him skeptically. “But when I found out it was you…”

Her questioning gaze met his, and he worried that she’d never believe what he was
about to say. Man, those pale-green eyes were something. “I just wanted things to
be different.” Was that really a lie? Frank had suggested the farm for their date,
but Cole
had
liked the idea. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

With a hint of a smile, she held his gaze a beat longer, then looked away just as
Mack strode around the corner of the barn, a satisfied look on his weathered face.
“We’re good to go ’round back. Anytime you’re ready.”

“Thanks,” Cole said. “We’ll be there in a second.”

Mack nodded and headed back around the barn.

Cole turned his attention to Liza, “Ready?”

She shrugged her narrow shoulders, a corner of her mouth quirked up, and there was
that spark of mischief again. “Sure.”

“Let’s do it.” Cole led her in the direction that Mack had gone. Beyond the barn,
the sun sank closer to the horizon and the sky swirled with brilliant orange and pink.
“Our timing is just right.”

Liza stopped abruptly and faced him, wide-eyed. “What did you say?” Her voice was
a little wobbly.

He hesitated before repeating himself, trying to figure out what had spooked her.
“Our timing is just right. The sun is about to set.”

She narrowed her eyes and searched his face, but he had no idea what she was looking
for. Then she smiled sadly and, without a word, started walking again. Cole followed
her closely, shaking his head in rhythm with the mesmerizing sway of her hips. They
rounded the back of the barn just as Mack tossed a couple of blankets next to the
hay bales stacked on a trailer he’d hitched to the truck.

Liza bit her bottom lip, grinning a little. “We’re going on a hayride?”

“Please don’t say you’re allergic to hay,” Cole teased. “Because then you’d have to
drive, and I’d be stuck cuddling with Mack and watching the sunset.”

Mack scrunched his nose. “Ain’t no way that’s happening.”

Liza laughed, and Cole was struck by how much it changed her. She looked even prettier—carefree
and sexy in a playful sort of way.

“I’ve never been on a hayride,” she said.

“Really?”

She nodded. “I’m excited. Let’s go.”

The date Frank had planned couldn’t have been simpler, but Liza was making it complicated
for Cole. He’d never been out with a girl quite like her. Most of them were so predictable,
so easy. But Liza had his head spinning like a nasty curveball. He wasn’t sure if
she liked him now or not, but she’d thought he was pretty cool years ago. The sun
slid closer to the horizon, and he had the same sinking feeling in his stomach. He
only had a few hours to convince her he was still the same guy who’d given her that
autographed baseball.

…

Liza settled in the hay near Cole, their legs stretched out in front of them, facing
the sunset. Since this didn’t qualify as a
real
date, she wasn’t sure how close she should sit, or how close she could let herself
get to him even so. Her best friend, Paige, would think she was crazy not to be on
his lap by now, and Liza understood why. They could make a Cole Collins calendar to
last for the next century and never run out of hot pictures of him. And Liza noticed
the details—the way his shirt tightened perfectly across his muscular shoulders, how
his blond hair flipped up a little in the back at the base of his collar, the way
his long fingers had caressed that baseball. She didn’t remember noticing things like
that when they’d been teenagers. Cole simply being Cole had been enough to captivate
her. But now, every little nuance had her full attention.

Mack pulled the truck and trailer onto a meandering dirt road that led away from the
barn, heading east.

“This farm is like something out of a storybook,” she said.

“Right? With a road special-made for sunset hayrides.” Cole tipped his head back and
gazed at the kaleidoscope sky, looking relaxed.

She took a deep breath herself, catching the heady scent of his cologne—definitely
one of those with
bleu
in its name. She had no idea how a man could smell like a color, but blue was her
favorite, and that’s what Cole smelled like. Her heart skipped a beat faster, and
she shifted just a little closer to him.

“Who owns this place?”

He narrowed his eyes, as if he were trying to think of a name. “A friend of Mack’s.”

“It was nice of them to let us come here.” She and Cole had each grabbed a beer for
the ride, and Liza sipped hers.

He raised his eyebrows playfully. “They’re big Nats fans.”

“Of course you have to go and ruin it for me.” She grinned. “Deep down, they probably
secretly like the Orioles, too.”

“Um, no,” he said with an impish gleam in his eyes. “They secretly do not.”

“Ouch. Glad I came in disguise.”

“I’m thinking that was a smart play.” He smiled and ran his tongue across his bottom
lip. Liza’s insides went tingly. That was one mannerism of his she did remember—fondly.
“I’m pretty sure the
No Trespassing
sign posted at the entrance was meant for Orioles fans.”

“It was not!”

“Betcha.”

Liza rolled her eyes. “Still, I’d love to live on a farm like this.” She nudged him
with her elbow and came up against taut muscle. “Where all sorts of fans would be
welcome.”

“You would?” He sounded surprised.

“Welcome all sorts of fans?” she teased. “Sure. I’d be an equal opportunity entertainer.”

He shook his head, his lips curving up at the corners. “I just wouldn’t have guessed
you’d even think about living on a farm like this. That condo building of yours is
very—what is it they call it?—cosmopolitan.”

“It was kind of a convenience purchase,” she said. Wes had preferred the city, but
she had talked him into moving to suburbia someday, although someplace rural would’ve
been ideal. But the two of them had never gotten the chance to live together at all.
Her heart hurt just thinking about it. “I had…other plans that didn’t work out, and
I needed a change. My condo
is
cosmopolitan, but it’s convenient to work, safe, peaceful.” She shrugged. “But a
place like this was my dream.”