Thrown By Love (34 page)

“Scotty Donovan,” he said. It felt like a silly game but if it made her happy, he’d play along. “And this is my dog, Smokey.”

He bent down and teased the ball from Smokey and threw it toward the cliff. It sailed behind the driftwood hut.

“Still working on your tennis ball slider, I see,” Chloe said with a quiet laugh as she hiked up toward the cliff to fetch the ball.

He loved seeing her move. Hell, he loved everything about her. She disappeared behind the makeshift structure. There were probably a dozen lost balls back there. Smokey nosed around the logs of sun-bleached wood at the base of the hut, but didn’t come up with one.

“Donovan?”

He turned. A woman approached him. A tiny poodle tethered to a rhinestone-studded leash pranced beside her.

“
Where
have you been keeping yourself?” She tiptoed up and kissed him, smack on the mouth. He took a quick step back.

“Laurie.” He remembered her name, amazing himself at the quick recall. Well, he should remember her, since he’d slept with her more than once in the past. But that past seemed eons away right now.

“I was playing for the Sabers,” he said as if that explained the months since he’d seen her.

“I heard you’re back with the Giants,” she said. She looped her arm through his, not noticing that he kept backing away. “We need men like you in San Francisco. Welcome back.” She curved into him, touching him with the length of her body. “Remember that spa up in Napa, the one with the mineral baths? I think we should give that a go again. That was
such
fun.”

He tugged away and glanced up to where Chloe stood near the hut. She stared, clutching the tennis ball in her hand.

The poodle wound itself around his legs.

“Don’t mind Missy, she likes men too,” Laurie said as she bent to untangle the leash.

Smokey ran up, growling.

Laurie scooped up her tiny dog and hugged it to her chest. “You should keep a dog like that on a leash.”

“He’s harmless.” Scotty knelt down to Smokey, grateful to put distance between himself and Laurie. “He was just saying hello.”

“I know what hello looks like.” Laurie knelt and laid her hand on his forearm before he could tug it away.

A sharp
thwack
hit him square between his shoulders; no doubt a tennis ball. He looked up, and Chloe gave him the wave he hated as she headed for the stairs. He leaped to his feet and ran up the beach after her.

She turned and put her hand out in an unmistakable sign.

“No, Donovan. No thanks. I’ve seen quite enough.”

He ran toward her and circled her wrist. “Wait. It’s not what it looks like.”

“Apparently nothing is with you.”

He saw that she was trembling, felt some helpless emotion rising in his chest in response. Would she let him explain? Damn, they were close. She couldn’t think a woman on a beach was a threat.

Chloe raised her head and shot a look at Laurie, then shut her eyes and shook her head.

“I can’t do it, Donovan. I just can’t.” She backed away a step. “I won’t.”

“Do what?” He’d never been so out of his depth.

She opened her eyes, stared into his. “Be an oodle. It’s not in my repertoire.”

She kept staring until Scotty felt she was searching his soul the way philosophers searched the stars, hoping to understand but guessing they never would, guessing that what was foreign and unfathomable would remain so forever.

Then she smiled at him, just a lifting of her lips. But before he could speak, she pulled her hand free and thrust both hands out in front of her, a clear sign any ballplayer understood. “I want it all. The memories
and
the dreams, Scotty.” And then she turned and walked up the stairs, head high, not once looking back.

Scotty stood watching until she disappeared, ignoring Laurie and paying no mind to Smokey nudging at his legs.

He wanted the memories and the dreams too, wanted everything that had brought them to this moment as well as a long, long future with Chloe.

He squatted down to rub Smokey.

“We’re not out yet, boy.”

Whatever an oodle was, he was going to move heaven and earth to overcome it.

Chapter Twenty-nine

This, my friend, requires a full court press,” Alex said as he tossed back a swig of whiskey. “Nothing else will do. This screw-up requires that you do it by the book.”

Alex must’ve seen the puzzled look in Scotty’s face. He pulled an envelope off a stack of mail on his coffee table and began writing on the back of it.

“Basically, if you want to win Chloe back, you have to do everything you’ve always imagined was hokey and unnecessary. I’ll make a list.” He scribbled on the envelope. “The first step you have covered in spades.”

“And that would be?”

“Make her jealous.” He made an exaggerated check mark on the first line and then grinned up at Scotty. “Check.”

Scotty wasn’t having nearly as much fun with this as Alex was. But the man knew women; he’d give him that. And neither the fact that Chloe was rich nor that she owned a baseball team fazed Alex. He’d grown up in a castle, he reminded Scotty. He’d argued that it was just walls and bathrooms and kitchens and the like. What mattered was what you did in the places you lived and who you did them with.

“Okay,” Scotty said, giving in. “So how about step two?”

Scotty knew that step two was going to be even more painful than step one had been.

Scotty ran the last of his wind sprints in the outfield. But his attention was on Max, the teenager he mentored.

He watched as Max made his way to where Chloe sat in the stands. Jackie was in the seat beside her and Chloe’s friend, Brigitte, sat on her other side. Max settled into the empty seat next to Brigitte and shot Scotty a subtle thumbs-up. Scotty could feel Max’s excitement all the way in the outfield. Max had been thrilled to come to the game and honored to have a mission. But Scotty still thought that having him deliver the note to Chloe after the game was over the top. Scotty had protested the plan, but Alex had insisted it was perfect.

Just last week he’d nearly caved, had nearly called Chloe after their road trip, but Alex had cautioned him not to.
Trust me
, Alex had said—he’d won Jackie, hadn’t he? Scotty couldn’t argue with that. Then Scotty shot a glance to Jackie when it occurred to him that he’d never heard the full story of how Alex had won her. He should’ve asked.

Scotty walked off the field feeling ridiculous. Caveman days, when all a guy had to do was fling a woman over his shoulder and carry her off, were sounding pretty good to him.

But this was Chloe McNalley. She wasn’t the type to appreciate the desperation of such a move.

Scotty showered and changed into his game jersey, but going through the motions didn’t dissolve the dread that gnawed at his gut. His teammates chatted around him as they prepared for another game. Business as usual. For them.

He walked out onto the field and threw a few warm-up pitches to Aderro, his catcher. His arm was loose, his body felt good. He glanced over Aderro’s shoulder. He hadn’t counted on seeing his mother, father and G’maw walking to seats behind home plate. Alex must’ve sprung for tickets. G’maw waved at him, and he tipped his head. She scowled. Maybe she’d expected a wave, but he was on the mound, for jeez’ sake.

But he had to admit—it felt good to have his family in the stands. If the plan failed, at least he’d have allies to fall back on.

He scowled up at the scoreboard.
That
part of the plan was really, really hokey. Not to mention it’d cost him a huge wad of cash. And it might backfire—Chloe hadn’t wanted to flaunt their relationship. But that was when she owned him. The field was level now. At least he hoped it was.

It was all Scotty could do to keep his pitching sequences in his mind. He knew the Rockies’ hitters, had kept himself from going out of his mind the past few days by obsessively memorizing minute details on every single one of them.

In the top of the seventh, the Rockies got two hits off him. When they brought up their left-handed slugger, Walsh yanked Scotty from the game. It made sense to bring in Torres to throw against a powerful lefty, but it jangled Scotty’s already-raw nerves.

He sat on the bench, and the fist in his gut tightened with every throw. He ran the scenarios of the plan he’d crafted with Alex, deciding he shouldn’t have gone along with it. It’d made sense over beers in Alex’s living room, but now that it was unfolding, the whole thing seemed absurd.

Torres got them out of the inning, and Scotty relaxed. The runs would’ve been his if the guys he’d let reach base crossed the plate, so he owed Torres a beer. But as his teammates ran off the field and began crowding into the dugout, he couldn’t swallow down his rising agitation.

Alex grabbed a bat, shot Scotty an
okay
sign and headed up to the on-deck circle.

Scotty shook his head. Nothing was okay. Having his future depend on a scoreboard message and a note passed to Chloe from a kid she didn’t know made absolutely no sense. She was more important than that.

They
were more important than that.

He flew off the bench and ran up the dugout steps. He grabbed hold of the rail and leaped over the fence, charging past gawking fans singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and ran into the stands. He kneed his way past a very surprised-looking Jackie, grabbed Chloe by the arms, stood her on her feet and pulled her into the aisle. In a flash the whole stadium was calling
kiss, kiss, kiss
. Scotty leaned down to an elderly couple sitting in row beside where he stood with Chloe and whispered to them. They laughed and embraced and the camera framed their kiss. Scotty took advantage of the diversion and threw Chloe over his shoulder. She wriggled against him and said something in protest, but he held firm. He was in no mood to stop and discuss anything. The noise from the crowd told him the stadium cameras once again had him and Chloe in their sights. If they wanted color, they had it, but not for long. He charged down the stairs past a laughing security guard and into the tunnel that led to the clubhouse.

Once inside, he set Chloe on her feet. She teetered and leaned against the wall.

“I suppose this is your way of making me trust you?” she said as she thrust her hands to her hips.

“Nope. This is my way of making you marry me.”

Before she could say anything to deter him, he dropped to a knee and took off his cap.

“Chloe McNalley, I love you. Marry me.”

It hadn’t come out as romantically as he’d practiced, not even close. But he couldn’t believe it when she just stared down at him. Maybe Jackie had read Chloe wrong. Maybe everybody had been wrong. Maybe he’d been wrong.

“No oodles, just you, Chloe. Just us forever.”

Her eyes widened.

“You’re supposed to say something.” He put his cap back on and stood, scanning her face.