Thrown By Love (16 page)

Maybe it was love.

He lowered his arm and tracked his finger along her collarbone, stopping at the base of her throat. Her pulse leaped under his fingertips and his eyes widened. He missed little, this man, very little.

“It’s called the Swan Nebula because it looks like a ghostly swan swimming through the sky.” He turned her to face him. “We really need a telescope.”

“I haven’t unpacked mine yet.”

“Been busy?”

He pulled her close. The scent of wood smoke clung to him. Wrapped in his arms and talking about the stars felt like heaven.

“You should be the one teaching my class,” she murmured against his chest. “Students love hands-on viewing.” She tipped her face to his. “But then we’d have to find another pitcher, and that’d be harder.”

His eyes clouded with an expression she couldn’t read. She hadn’t meant to bring up anything to do with the game. She slid her gaze to the binoculars clutched in her hands.

With a whir and a click, the clock in the library began to chime out midnight.

“I need to get back,” he said. “Charley scheduled an early practice.”

Though she nodded, everything in her wished he would stay. Just as everything in her knew he shouldn’t.

He lifted the binoculars from her hands and placed them back on the desk. Then he crossed to their picnic spot in front of the fire and put his glass on the tray and stacked the hodgepodge of bowls and plates beside it.

He lifted the tray and she reached to take it from him.

“I’ll handle this,” she said. “You need to go. It’s a mile to the kitchen.” Her laugh sounded forced, so she tried to relax. Near the door to the hall, she lowered the tray to a side table and stepped to the nearest shelf. She pulled out her signed copy of
The Green Dragon
.

“You can borrow this if you’d like,” she said, offering it to him.

He tucked it under his arm. “You’ll get it back in perfect condition.”

The book might fare well, but as she gazed into his easy smile, she wasn’t so sure about her heart.

After teasing her with a handful of sweet kisses—to her cheeks, her nose, her forehead—Scotty tenderly kissed her mouth. “We never had that talk you promised,” he murmured.

Explaining how she’d come to own him was the last thing she wanted to do right then or at any time. The truth was, she really didn’t know how he’d come to the Sabers.

“I think we’ve moved beyond that,” she said against his lips.

“I’ve always been a fan of beyond.” He brushed a tender kiss to her cheek. “If I don’t leave now, I might never make it home.” He ran his fingers from her shoulders down her arms and took her hands in his. He stroked the back of her hands with his thumbs and then lifted them, kissing first one, then the other. The simple, gentle gesture sent fireworks through her veins.

“Thank you, Chloe. For tonight.”

Words failed her and she nodded. It was possible that tonight was all they’d have, and she wasn’t about to spoil it with words.

He turned, jogged down the steps and drove away without looking back. Chloe watched until the lights of his car were swallowed by the night. She knew they’d shared one of those rare moments, a time out of time, a time that couldn’t last. But she stood in the comfort of the night, trying to hold on to it anyway.

The house was quiet, too quiet after he left. She sat on the edge of her bed and brushed out the tangles in her hair. An oak leaf fluttered to the floor. She stared at it and snippets of their conversations drifted back to her, keeping her company. When she slipped into bed, she wondered what he’d meant when he said that when she knew him better, she’d discover he was just a regular guy, a one-trick pony who could throw a ball.

She laughed at the memory. Surely he didn’t believe it was true.

He had an eye for the land. No, he had a heart for it. He’d known more about the gardens of Woodlands than she did and she’d spent her life there. And hardly anyone she’d met had the keen curiosity about life that he had—how many guys were fascinated by the story of the universe or could comprehend the science that made delving into its mysteries possible? She hadn’t been surprised when he told her he didn’t fit easily into the world of baseball.

For that matter, neither did she.

But it was her body that held the most piercing memories. No man had ever made her want with a force so strong that the wanting was painful, with a joy and a bliss that pushed at the boundaries of what was possible to bear.

She hadn’t dared to imagine there was a man like him in the world. Even harder to fathom was that he’d appeared in hers.

Chapter Thirteen

Scotty shook the water out of his hair and toweled off his face. He hadn’t pitched well that night and hadn’t for a couple weeks. He was getting his speed back, but the right side of the plate still eluded him. Something in his mechanics was off, but neither he nor Mullen, his pitching coach, could isolate what it was. He usually pitched well in New York, but that had been in the Mets’ stadium when he’d been with the Giants. Yankee Stadium was another place entirely. Another world. He might love the iconic ballpark, but he wasn’t used to it. Yet he’d always wanted to pitch there; dreams of El Duque and Catfish Hunter had danced in his head, egging him on, since he was a boy.

The switch to the American League had bothered him less than he thought. Designated hitters were a challenge, but not what some of his buddies had built them up to be. And the Sabers were a good team; he liked most of the guys, respected them. Except for three players that everyone considered Fisher’s boys—Chern, Lantz and Becker—and who’d been brought onto the team the previous month. Chern and Lantz had hot bats but in late innings, both had missed easy plays in the outfield. Astoundingly easy plays. Watching them had set the bile deep in Scotty’s gut churning. Maybe Alex’s hunch about Fisher gambling on games was true. And maybe he’d roped in a couple of players to help those games go his way. But Scotty couldn’t imagine any player—much less three—intentionally throwing a game. It just wasn’t done.

It would be more than a black eye to baseball. It would be a sick disease.

Hal Becker was another story. He was an older player, and three or four years back he’d been a decent DH. But he’d done next to nothing since he’d come to the Sabers. Being benched didn’t help and could make a grump of anyone. Besides his bad attitude in the dugout, Becker had a bad habit of taking up way too much space in the locker room. Unfortunately, Becker’s locker in the visitor’s clubhouse was right next to Scotty’s.

“Maybe if I was sweet to McNalley’s girl she’d get me off the bench,” Becker said with a snap of his fingers. Although he spoke to the general area, Scotty felt the challenge stab through him. “I see the way she looks at you.”

“Maybe if you hit a few over the wall during practice, Kemp might think you had some wood,” Pete Little said from the other side of the row of lockers as he zipped into his khakis. Pete was from the Bronx. Scotty had the feeling they settled scraps in the Bronx the way they did in Nebraska. At six foot five, there was nothing little about Pete. In a fight, you wanted Pete on your side.

“Word has it Donovan has her ear.” Becker grinned. “A friend of my wife’s saw the two of you at the planetarium. Very cozy from the sound of it.”

Scotty wanted to launch a fist and lay him flat on the clubhouse floor, but decking the guy would only hurt Chloe.

Scotty turned to his locker and forced himself to cool down. He hadn’t counted on feeling the wash of shame that oozed through him. He hated Becker all the more because of it. It wasn’t like he’d set out to brownnose ownership. He was there to pitch.

“Maybe it was more than her ear,” Becker said, putting spin on his dig.

Scotty whipped around and squared off with Becker, even though he knew he should let the dig slide.

Pete Little ambled into the mix and stood like a ready second next to Scotty. The look he shot at Scotty had
don’t do it
written all over it.

“Do you have a sister?” Scotty asked, louder than he meant to.

Becker’s face froze. Scotty could almost smell the skidding of the guy’s brain cells as they were forced to reposition.

“Yeah, I have a sister.”

“McNalley deserves, at minimum, the respect you’d want your sister to have in her workplace.”

Pete Little’s eyes crinkled with his grin, but the fists he held at his sides sent a stronger message. Scotty stood, feet planted wide, ready to launch.

Becker looked from Scotty to Pete and then pivoted and stomped toward the showers.

“Nice save,” Pete said as he tossed his bag over his shoulder and walked out of the clubhouse.

Scotty wasn’t so sure.

As he walked to the team bus that would take them from Yankee Stadium to their hotel in downtown Manhattan, the text message tone on his phone sounded. Chloe had flown in that afternoon, it said. She’d missed the game. She was staying at a friend’s apartment, a friend conveniently away in Paris for the weekend. Would he like to have dinner? She’d texted the address.

It hadn’t taken him more than a few seconds to text back and tell her he’d by there by eight.

He caught a cab uptown. Before this, he’d only been on Fifth Avenue to buy toys for his nieces and nephews at FAO Schwartz; the district was even swankier by night. Women clicked by in high heels and skinny skirts, and the men had an air of rush about them, as if there weren’t enough hours in the day. Lights hung in the trees lining the street in front of the apartment building where the cab stopped. It wasn’t a holiday, but the lights made it look like one.

The building had a doorman. Scotty hadn’t counted on a doorman.

He unfolded the slip of paper where he’d scrawled the apartment number. He planned to slip past the guy and into the elevator, but hadn’t made it two steps inside before the elderly man held up his hand.

“May I help you, sir?”

Scotty hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt. “Number twenty-two. I’m expected.”

“And your name, sir?”

“Donovan.”

The elderly man slipped on his reading glasses and looked down a list, flipped a page and then nodded. “Use the right bank of elevators. You’ll need this card. Swipe it in the slot to your right as you enter the elevator.”

It turned out twenty-two meant twenty-second floor. The entire floor. The elevator opened into a short hallway with a set of double doors. They were the only doors. He knocked.

Chloe opened the door. She wore some sort of clingy dress. He’d planned to keep it casual since the scene with Becker made it all too clear that the energy between him and Chloe wasn’t as well camouflaged as they’d thought. He’d planned to back off, have dinner, enjoy her company. But as she stepped back from the door, he couldn’t have said what the apartment looked like because he backed her against the wall and kicked the door closed behind him, crushing his lips to hers and tasting, drinking her in, as if it had been months instead of days since he last saw her.

She wriggled free of him.

“Dinner,” she said with a mysterious smile. “Or did my auto spell send a different message?”

She crossed her arms in front of her, pressing her breasts up so that the curve of them showed in the vee of her dress. She probably didn’t do it on purpose, but it affected him all the same.

He wasn’t interested in dinner. No restaurant could assuage the hunger raging in him. All he wanted was to get her out of the filmy outfit and under him on a bed.

“I hear that restaurants stay open late in New York.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her down a short hallway and into a room with a million-dollar view of the New York skyline. “Which way is the guest room?”

She laughed.

It was all the permission he needed.

Chloe searched through her friend Olivia’s carefully organized cabinets and came up with plates and glasses. They’d called out for Chinese. She smiled to herself as she laid out two places on the counter dividing the kitchen from the vast living room—they might as well run through all the clichés of a forbidden affair in one night. She shook her head. Perhaps some women imagined themselves having affairs, wild, taboo and exciting, but the idea hadn’t crossed her mind. Now she realized that minds had very little to do with it.