The Trouble With J.J. (24 page)

Who in their right mind would refuse him? she wondered. As he led the way toward the entrance to the field, she glanced back nervously toward the locker room. “My friend Amy—did you happen to see her in there?”

“Mmmmmmmm …” he purred.

Genna gulped.

As they stepped onto the playing field, lights came on just above the lower deck of seats. Not the bright lights the team played night games under, but more like security lights. They were just enough to illuminate the artificial turf with a hazy glow. At center field stood a table set for two, draped in fine white linen. As they drew closer to it, Genna could see the gleam of china and silver, the sparkle of crystal. A dozen white tapers burned in sterling candelabra. Across from it, delicate pink tiger lilies were displayed in a Waterford vase.

Genna was too stunned to think, much less speak, as Brutus seated her at the table. She sat back and listened to the stadium organist playing a mellow, romanticized version of “Lady of Spain.”
Brutus retreated with her cookie box to the sideline, where he stationed himself like a monolith.

Otis appeared in a tux with a lavender bow tie. He filled her champagne glass and the one at the setting opposite her. Still, Genna said nothing. She was too dumbfounded even to speculate. One thing was certain, this party wasn’t set up for a bevy of bigwigs. It was strictly a pairs event—one pair, and she was half of it.

“Your waiter’s name is Stephan,” Otis said in a well-modulated voice. “The main course this evening is fondue Bourguignonne.”

“And here I thought a hot dog was the best you could do at the ballpark,” Genna said with a weak laugh.

Otis merely smiled politely. “May I direct your attention to our scoreboard, Miss Hastings?”

The ultramodern electronic board came to life in a blaze of lights.

WELCOME TO HAWKS-RIVERSIDE STADIUM

HOME OF THE WORLD CHAMPION

HARTFORD HAWKS!!!

The organist interrupted his song with a brief rendition of Charge!

TONIGHT’S CONTEST: HASTINGS VS. HENNESSY

GO HAWKS GO! GO HAWKS GO! GO HAWKS GO!

GO HAWKS GO!
A BIG HAWKS-FAN WELCOME FOR LEAGUE MVP

J. J. HENNESSY!!!

The last sentence was punctuated by several bars of an Irish jig from the organist, who then promptly segued into a tango.

Genna put a hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles as J.J. approached from the other end of the field. She still didn’t know what was going on, but she no longer felt apprehensive. Jared couldn’t have been too angry with her to have arranged such an elaborate affair.

She couldn’t believe how good it was to see him. He hadn’t been gone a week, but she’d been afraid the only time she would see him up close again was at parent-teacher conferences. Even his wild getup looked good to Genna. He wore a black fedora pulled low over his eyes and a very trendy Italian-cut silver-gray suit, over which he wore a long coat of billowing white parachute silk. As he neared her, she could see his diamond earring glittering under the lights.

J.J. felt as if he had a live hamster in his stomach as he walked across the field. What if Amy were wrong? What if Genna really was through with him? Just because she didn’t know about his proposal didn’t mean she’d say yes when she found out. She’d probably call him an uncouth boor and dump the ice bucket over his head.

She looked like a million bucks in that dress. He’d been so miserable missing her, he’d been driving his teammates nuts. Several of them had suggested he take a soak in the whirlpool—headfirst. If she didn’t want him—

Before he could turn tail and run, Brutus appeared beside him to take his coat and hat, and then returned to the sidelines.

“Hi, gorgeous,” Jared said in a voice like dark velvet as he slid onto the chair across from Genna.

“Hi,” she said with a tremulous smile. She gestured to the stadium in general, the elaborately laid table in particular. “How did you manage all this?”

“Bribery.” He grinned.

Her smiled faded away. “What for?”

“Peace offering. An apology dinner.”

Genna sat back, tearing her gaze away from the hypnotic blue of his eyes. “I’m the one who should
apologize, Jared. I had no right to blow up at you the other night. I got too involved when I knew I shouldn’t have, and … well … I set myself up for it, and heaven knows I can take it on the chin with the best of them. I was just feeling sorry for myself and I took it out on you. If you can forgive me, I’d still like us to be friends.”

Speech ended, she tried to clear the tears out of her throat without sounding like a longshoreman. She kept her watery eyes trained on the delicate rose pattern that edged the china.

A little more sure of herself than he had been, Jared leaned across the table, hooking a finger under Genna’s stubborn little chin and tipping her face up so he could see into her eyes. “We had a little misunderstanding—”

“I know.”

“About the note I left.”

“Could we just drop it, J.J.?” she asked, trying not to sound annoyed. Why did he have to go on beating that poor dead horse?

“You missed page two,” he said, sitting back in his chair. While she squinted at him suspiciously, he took a fortifying sip of champagne.

“There was no page two,” Genna said flatly.

“Yes, there was.” It had never occurred to him she wouldn’t believe him.

“Why are you doing this to me, Jared? I apologized, what more do you want?”

“Page two—and I quote—” he said. “‘Then we can make plans to go looking for an engagement ring. I love you. Jared.’”

As he might have predicted, she was speechless. For all of two seconds.

“Baloney!” Genna said, ignoring the part of her that wanted to believe him. If he’d wanted to marry her, he’d have said so. He’d had plenty of opportunity. “There was no page two. What kind of sick joke is this, Hennessy?”

“Joke?” Jared roared indignantly.

“I can tell you right now, it’s about as funny as a nuclear holocaust,” she said furiously, her eyes scanning the cutlery for a good weapon.

“Look, I like a good joke as much as the next guy, but I’m not about to rent a whole football stadium to play one in. I’m telling you there was a page two!”

“There was not!”

“I ought to know, I wrote it!”

“You ought to have your head examined! There was no page two and this is
not
funny!”

His eyes round and incredulous, Jared raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. Women! “Genna, I want to marry you. Why would I make this up?”

“Because …” Abruptly the fight drained out of her. She remembered how Jared had stuck up for her with Allan, how appreciative he’d been of her help with Alyssa and Simone. She remembered what she’d taken for pity in his eyes that night in the potting shed. She twisted her pink linen napkin in her hands, then swiped at the tears that suddenly clung to her lashes. “You’re so sweet. You’d do that kind of thing out of some sense of obligation, like that business with your T-shirts. I got in over my head, and you think you have to stick with me because we’re a team and all that—”

“Genna, honey,” Jared interrupted gently as a sudden thought occurred to him. He covered her hand with one of his, “you’re behaving very irrationally lately. Are you pregnant, sweetheart?”

Genna’s head came up as all the color washed out of her face and a wave of nausea hit her. It seemed fate had an exceedingly poor sense of humor. Allan hadn’t wanted to marry her because she
had been
pregnant, now Jared wanted to marry her only because he thought she
was
pregnant.

She stared at him for what seemed like an hour,
hurting in ways she had never even dreamed were possible.

“No, Jared,” she said in a deadly whisper, pulling her hand out from under his and sliding her chair back. “You can breathe easy. I’m not going to trap you into anything.”

She rose with the dignity of a queen, then turned and bolted for the exit, tears of pain and anger stinging her eyes. Her short legs on high heels were no match for one of the top running quarterbacks in the league, however. While he cursed himself for being ten kinds of a fool, Jared’s long legs ate up the yards of turf until he was no longer behind her, but blocking her path. He grabbed her by the shoulders and held firm when she struggled.

“Let me go, Hennessy!” she yelled, resorting to kicking at his shins. He dodged her feet and managed to haul her against him so she couldn’t move enough to wound him.

“Genna, honey, I swear on a stack of Bibles that thought came to me just now. It had nothing to do with my proposal—not with the one I just made or the one I left you on Saturday. Ouch!”

He let go of her and grabbed his side where she’d pinched him. Genna backed away, glaring at him. “Drop the phony-note business. I’d throw
myself in a shark tank before I’d let you marry me out of some noble sense of duty.”

“And I’d jump in ahead of you before I’d offer to do that, Genna,” he said, looking as serious as she’d seen him. “I made that mistake once. I wouldn’t do it twice. There’s only one reason I want to get married again. It’s because I love you.”

He chanced a step closer, then another. One hand seemed to reach out of its own accord to touch her cheek. She seemed tiny and fragile, her smoky eyes wide and full of uncertainty. Jared thought his heart would burst with love for her, his Genna, who seemed so practical and capable on the outside but was so vulnerable on the inside. He wanted her in his arms, safe forever.

“You really believe we just had a summer fling. You think it’s all over between us, don’t you?”

“Isn’t it?” she asked, her heart in her throat. She didn’t dare let herself hope. If she had let herself hope, then she really would be lost when she found out she’d been right all along.

Once again Jared’s hand lifted to touch the peachy softness of her cheek. What if she listened to all his arguments and still said no? His heart thudded in his chest like a faulty fuel pump. When he spoke, his voice was that whiskey-on-the-rocks
rasp that made Genna’s pulse race. “Not if you don’t want it to be.”

Genna tried to force herself to breathe normally, but it seemed she’d forgotten how. What if he were just being a gentleman and giving her a chance to decline first? She’d been so sure he’d wanted nothing more than the summer. But what if she were wrong?

“I love you,” he whispered. “I only said that stuff about us being a summer thing so I wouldn’t scare you off. I was afraid to pressure you. You hardly even liked me at the time. I thought if I told you we’d keep it light, you’d give me a chance to prove I wasn’t the jerk you thought I was.”

Her look was skeptical. He gave her his roguish grin, the Jack Nicholson grin that made Genna’s knees sway threateningly. He rested his big hands on her shoulders, repeating his claim with heart-stealing tenderness. “I love you. I told you that.”

Genna trembled. She’d heard those words before, and they hadn’t meant what she had hoped. They hadn’t meant anything. “You told me that in bed, but—”

“But nothing,” he said, his expression uncompromising. “When I told you I loved you, I meant
it. For all time, not just when you’re all warm and soft beneath me.”

“Ja-red!” She blushed to the roots of her hair and cast a furtive glance back at Otis and Brutus, who were nearly fifty yards away, sitting on a bench studying their playbooks.

Chuckling, Jared slipped his arms around her waist and started to cuddle and kiss her, attacking her throat with tiny nips and licks. “So, how about it, Teach? Will you marry me?”

“I don’t know,” Genna said soberly, for once immune to his touch. “I can’t get away from the feeling that it’s not what you really want. I know I’ve been a basket case the last few days, and I can see Amy’s fine hand in all this.” She waved a hand at the empty stadium. “I wouldn’t put it past her to have pleaded my case until you broke down and offered to marry me.”

J.J. let a smile tease his lips. He brushed a wild lock of chestnut hair from her eyes. “Hey, I’m a great guy, but I wouldn’t go as far as marrying someone just to make them feel better.

“Genna, you ought to know by now, I don’t play by other people’s rules. I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t mean it with all my heart. I don’t do anything I don’t want to—”

“What about becoming normal?” Genna asked warily.

He made a face. “That was mostly a way to get you to spend time with me. It seemed like a great way to kill two birds with one stone.”

Genna gaped at him, furious, and at the same time aware of an undeniable joy flooding through her. “You tricked me!”

“Sort of.” He grinned, his eyes alight with mischief. “You wouldn’t have had anything to do with me otherwise. I’m not your type, remember, Miss Tunnel Vision? You’d still be looking for a Hart Schaffner and Marx mannequin if not for my brilliant strategy.”

“I should bean you for your boneheaded strategy!” She pinched him on the arm and wriggled out of his grasp. “You’re a filthy sneak, Hennessy!”

“Ouch!” He rubbed his arm and leered at her teasingly. “I love it when you get abusive, Gen. Do it some more.”

“And you’re perverted too.” She danced away from him. He pursued. She wheeled to face him. They both dodged one way, then the other. Genna turned to retreat, and Jared caught her from behind with his arm around her waist, hauling her
back against him. His lips nuzzled the sensitive spot beneath her ear as she wriggled against him in a way that encouraged his hands to wander.

“You’re a strange man, Hennessy.”

“Yeah,” he drawled, sighing into her ear, “but you love me for it … don’t you?”

She slanted a look at him over her shoulder, her heart swelling at the vulnerability in his eyes. “I guess.” She smiled softly. “I guess I love you so much it scares me.”

He grinned and resumed nuzzling. “So you’ll marry me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Aw, come on, Gen,” he pleaded, turning her to face him. “I love you. Alyssa loves you. My family loves you. My dog loves you. My brother’s a priest; we’ll get a discount on the ceremony.”