by Ann Evans
“We’ll tell him you won’t be able to hit anything if he’s not there. That you need him for good luck.”
Pete made a face. “I’m not gonna say that.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause it makes me sound like a baby. Like I’ll get all spooked if he’s not there to see me hit something. And then I’ll look stupid when I do.”
“When you do what?”
“Hit something.”
“You’re not gonna do that,” J.D. said, but Pete didn’t think he meant to be mean—the whole family knew he stunk. “Let’s call him, Petey. And we need to get Mom to wear her blue dress. Something pretty, not old jeans and a sweatshirt.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Tell her it’s your lucky dress. Tell her you always do good when she wears it.”
“But I never do good,” Pete said with another frown. “No matter what she’s wearing.”
J.D. punched him on the arm. “Say it, anyway.”
“Okay,” Petey said after thinking it over for a long moment. “Let’s call him.”
They slipped down the hallway. No one was upstairs but them. Downstairs the television was on. They could hear Grampa laughing at some show he liked. The only phone upstairs was in their mother’s room. J.D. closed the door gently while Pete dialed the number on the card. The phone rang, but after a few seconds, Mark’s answering machine came on.
Pete left a message saying he hoped Mark would come to the ball field tomorrow—he tried not to sound too goofy. When he hung up, he felt disappointed even though J.D. looked pleased. Suppose Mark didn’t listen to his messages that much? Or suppose he really didn’t want to come? This had been a stupid idea.
They went back to their bedroom. J.D. looked happy. Like he’d found out he was gonna be in the next Captain Treadway movie. He glanced over at Pete. “So tomorrow, when he gets there—”
“He’s not gonna come,” Pete said.
J.D. looked really surprised. “Why not? You asked him to.”
“He’s probably busy. He won’t come.”
“Mom’s right. You’re a pestmiss. He’ll come. Mom should take a bath before the game so she smells real nice, too. How can we get her to do that?”
Pete refused to talk for a minute. J.D. thought all you had to do was ask someone to do something and they did it. But Pete knew better. Sometimes grown-ups let little kids down. Even for really important things.
“This was a dumb idea,” he said at last.
That made J.D. mad. “It’s gooder than yours,” he said in a hot whisper.
“I didn’t have an idea.”
“That’s what I mean!”
“Go to sleep,” Pete ordered his brother.
J.D. settled back down. A few minutes later Pete heard him snoring softly. It was a long time before Pete started to feel sleepy. Maybe J.D. had been wrong about Mark coming to the game, but he was right about one thing: Mom needed to be nicer to Mark, and tomorrow he might get up the nerve to tell her so.
“SON OF A B—”
Mark slid the computer mouse away in disgust. He’d just finished creating a carefully worded, multipage report to the company attorney regarding Harvey Dellarubio’s embezzlement. And with one careless, absentminded keystroke, he’d sent it off into computer oblivion. Four hours of work. Gone.
He snapped the computer off and kicked back in his chair to glower out the window. He didn’t like his Atlanta office. The lighting wasn’t right. The view, of another concrete-and-glass monstrosity, depressed him. If he ever decided to spend more time with this crew, he’d make changes.
Of course, if Jenna had anything to say about it, there was a very good possibility he wouldn’t be here all that often.
He rubbed his eyes, wondering why he was so tired. He thought he’d caught up on his sleep. The problem with Harvey Dellarubio’s “creative accounting” certainly hadn’t brought the worry and sleeplessness Mark had expected.
After formulating a plan with Dale Damron, they’d called Harvey into the office and steeled themselves for his denial, only to have the guy break down in tears with the first accusation. He’d claimed that living with fear and guilt so long had made him a nervous wreck, and he was actually glad to have everything out in the open.
Over the next two days, Harvey had confessed to one misdeed after another, to the tune of half-a-million dollars taken from the company. The guy seemed repentant and scared. Now all that remained was to figure out how he could, and should, make restitution if they decided not to prosecute.
When Harvey had confessed, Mark had actually considered calling Jenna. After all, she was the one who’d discovered the dummy accounting. He missed her. Had there been any more cause for concern about the baby? How was Pete doing with his batting? He was even curious to see how J.D. had done at soccer.
It didn’t really surprise him that he missed the interaction with the boys. Jenna had wondered why he seemed so natural with them, and at first, he’d wondered that himself. Good instincts? A businesslike approach? Calm, consistent treatment? Maybe some of that came into play.
But mostly the answer was rooted in a much deeper truth.
He realized that over the years, in his mind, he’d already lived that kind of fantasy father/son relationship a thousand times. He knew what to say. What to do. Well, most of the time, anyway. The moments he’d shared with Jenna’s kids were the sort he’d wanted so badly to share with his own father and never had. What a shock to discover that, in spite of all his arrogant protests about the need to live a life grounded in reality, he could fantasize with the best of them.
He wondered what Jenna and her sons were doing right now. He could call, but he’d promised to give her time to think. He’d pushed her enough already. He’d never exposed so much of his past and how he felt about it to anyone before. But he knew now it hadn’t helped much. She needed distance and perspective.
Hell, Mark thought, he wouldn’t mind getting a fresh perspective himself.
It wasn’t that what he wanted out of marriage had suddenly changed. It hadn’t. It was just that he had a heck of a time reconciling that kind of comfortable, complacent existence with Jenna as his wife.
Always, always, when he’d pictured spending the rest of his life with Shelby, he’d known he could keep his wits about him. His life would stay on the neat, tidy track he’d planned, and so would hers. No emotions mangled and twisted into weapons. Never a danger of losing control.
But with Jenna?
Forget tame. Forget calm. All the skills he’d acquired over years of dating women went right out the window when he touched her. Everything she did made him want more. Anytime she was near he felt his command over every thought, every movement, trickling away like rain-water down a window.
Damn, he was pathetic.
So he, too, needed this time away from her. To think. To recoup. He needed to get away from maverick dreams that made no sense and only brought heartache.
Oh, Jenna, Jenna. If you’d witnessed half the hell there was in my parents’ house, you’d know why the kind of love you want is so dangerous.
She would never know, thank God. His parents were dead now, both killed in a car accident eight years ago, on one of the few occasions they’d been willing to ride together. And since their deaths, he’d stopped raising the phantoms of those hellish years. The other day with Jenna, he’d explained as much as he comfortably could.
She’d understand. Eventually she’d see his side of it.
She had to.
He pushed back from his desk, deciding it was time to go back to his hotel room. He wasn’t accomplishing anything here.
Opening up his briefcase, he stuffed a few files inside and noticed that the message light on his cell phone was blinking. He caught his breath for an instant. It might be Jenna. The haste with which he retrieved the message made him feel like a lovesick teenager.
The caller wasn’t Jenna, but it wasn’t a complete disappointment. It was Pete, soundi
ng hesitant, but hopeful. Inviting him to tomorrow’s game. He could hear J.D. in the background, egging him on.
Mark cut the phone off with a smile. For the first time that day, he dared to hope that everything wasn’t well and truly lost.
Jenna might not want to see him anytime soon.
But her kids did.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“PETEY, COME ON!” Jenna shouted up the stairwell. “Get a move on.”
It was Saturday—Little League game day—and if they didn’t get started soon, they were all going to be late. Again.
Jenna dragged a hand through her hair. She didn’t really want to go and she wasn’t the only one. No one in the family seemed to be in the mood for it. Her father’s arthritis was acting up. Christopher had come straight from a fight with Amanda. Trent—who could usually be counted on to entertain them in the stands—had a cold and had turned into a 220-pound baby. Even J.D. was grouchy.
With the threat of rain in the forecast and up against an opposing team that hadn’t lost once, today’s game promised to be long, boring and painful.
Of course, the past four days hadn’t been that great, either.
Four days since Mark had snuffed out the final, foolish dream she’d had about what married life could be like between them. And four days since she’d come face-to-face with the humiliating fact that she might be falling in love with him all the same.
You win. Let’s do it. Let’s get married. She could see herself saying those words, and only one thing stopped her from calling him up to say so.
Regardless of how the two of them might manage, the boys needed someone permanent in their lives. Someone who would stick it out when times got rough. And Jenna still wasn’t certain that Mark could be counted on to do that.
She sucked in a deep breath. A little more time, that was what she needed. Time to see if Mark and her sons could build a relationship. Time to…to be sure.
She walked into the living room, where her father and brothers were waiting. Since they’d returned from working on the family cabin, their attitudes had been doing a gradual thaw. They seemed to be accepting, albeit grudgingly, that Jenna planned to buy the Victorian fixer-upper and regain some independence. Maybe Mark had been right about that. Maybe they just needed to see she was serious and they’d back off.
Jenna scooped up paperwork she intended to work on in the stands. As if things couldn’t get worse this week, the latest edition of Fairy Tale Weddings had hit a few snags and was in danger of not going out on time. Since Petey was dead last in the lineup, and flowers could bloom in the outfield before he ever came up to bat, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to kill two birds with one stone. The deadline for getting the magazine out was so tight she’d probably have to work tomorrow, instead of taking the boys to Six Flags as she’d promised.
J.D. trudged sullenly into the room, dragging his space cannon, along with his feet.
“Look alive, buddy!” Jenna’s father said. “You look as grumpy as a beaver with a toothache.”
“Nobody listens to nothin’ I say,” J.D. replied inexplicably. He jabbed one sneaker-clad toe over and over again into the carpet.
“Stop doing that,” Jenna said, then counted to ten. J.D. had been impossible today, fighting with Petey and making a general nuisance of himself the whole time she’d been getting dressed. “Are you still sulking about the blue dress? I told you, I’m not wearing one of my best outfits in a grandstand.”
“Even if it’s Petey’s lucky dress?”
“A lucky glove. A lucky rabbit’s foot,” her father said. “But nobody in softball has a lucky dress, J.D.”
Her brothers laughed. They definitely weren’t helping matters. She threw them a dirty look. Just then Petey walked into the living room. He wasn’t in uniform. By the shape of his mouth, Jenna could see trouble ahead.
Great. I need this on top of everything else.
“Why aren’t you dressed?” she asked.
“I’m not going. I quit.”
That didn’t surprise her. Petey quit at least twice a week, though this was the furthest he’d ever gone in actual rebellion. “You can’t quit. Now go get ready. And hurry up.”
“I’m not going,” he repeated. “Coach says I can quit if I want.”
Behind her, she was aware of long sighs and impatient movements from the men in her family. J.D. looked suddenly panicked, his eyes darting back and forth between them.
“You don’t wanna quit,” he told Petey. “’Member how today you feel so lucky? ’Member how today is gonna be different?”
“Today’s no different,” Petey said. “It doesn’t matter what you think. It’s all gonna be the same ’cause nothin’s changed. I don’t feel lucky. I just wanna quit.”
“Petey….” J.D. muttered in a drawn-out whine.
“Shut up, squirt.”
Some sort of coded conversation seemed to be going on between the two boys, but Jenna had no patience today for sorting it out. She could tell Petey didn’t want to budge, but quitting was definitely not an option.
“Don’t talk to your brother like that, Petey.” She squatted in front of him, catching each of his thin arms in her hands. “You must have misunderstood Coach Williams. I talked to him this week. He says you need more practice, but that you’re getting better all the time.”
Petey shook his head. “He just says that ’cause you’re my mom. He knows parents like to hear that stuff. What he says to us is different. He tells us all the time that we’re a bunch of losers. That we ought to give our uniforms to kids that really wanna play.” He caught his lip between his teeth. “He said a girl could hit better than me, and I ought to go play on their team.”
Her father made a gruff, dismissing sound. “He’s just trying to toughen you up, Petey-boy.”
“Dad, please,” Jenna said with a look back over her shoulder. “When did he say this, Petey?”
“Last practice. I tried to tell him I been working on a new way to bat so I’ll do better, but he didn’t listen. He said I don’t get paid to think. He said—” Petey’s brow furrowed as he tried to remember the conversation “—he said I should consider myself lucky to even be on the team, and if I didn’t, I should quit. So I am.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to finish up the fall schedule. If you want to stop playing ball after that, we can discuss it, but you’re not quitting now. As for Coach Williams, I’ll speak to him today about the way he talks to you and the others.”
Petey jerked in her hold, and his eyes went wide with alarm. “Mom, you can’t!”
“Of course I can.” Inside, she could feel her maternal instincts behaving like rottweilers. If the conversation had really gone as Petey claimed, Coach Williams needed a talking-to. The man had no right to belittle her son that way.
“The kids will make fun of me!” Petey cried, looking horrified now.
She was aware of movement behind her—Christopher moving forward. “That’s not a good idea, Jenna.”
“I didn’t ask you, Christopher.”
Her father came into her line of vision. “Honey, Little League coaches have to be hard on their boys sometimes. They have to get them fired up, make them realize they’re part of a team that depends on each player. Otherwise they’d be out in the field goofing around, instead of paying attention.”
“Jen, don’t act like such a girl,” Trent threw in, around blowing his nose.
She felt ganged up on. Petey squirmed in her grasp. She let him go and rose, giving the men in her family a stern look. “Don’t try to turn this into some sort of male-bonding thing. There’s a difference between being hard on kids and berating them.”
Christopher pulled off his ball cap and ran his fingers through his hair. She could tell he thought he was dealing with an unreasonable woman. “You run interference for Petey, and every kid on the team will never let him forget it. His life will be hell.”
“Petey, go upstairs and get changed. Now. J.D., will you run up to my be
droom and bring my black coat out of the closet? I think it’s going to be cool today.”
J.D. brightened. “You could wear—”
“My black coat, J.D.” Jenna shot a sharp look at her youngest son. J.D. wisely accepted defeat and ran out of the room. The adults remained silent until Jenna was sure both her sons were out of earshot. Then she turned to her father and her brothers, her expression hard.
“Uh-oh,” her father said with a grimace at his sons. “I feel a lecture crawling up my backside.”
“No lecture,” Jenna said calmly. “I just want to remind you all that Petey and J.D. are my responsibilities. Mine. Not yours. And I’ll do what I think is best. I don’t need any of you second-guessing me, especially in front of them.”
“We’re just trying to help, sis.” Christopher said.
Jenna crossed her arms. “Well, it’s not working. So butt out, all of you.”
THE GAME, and the day, was just as dismal as it started out.
The air had a real fall snap to it, but off and on it misted lightly, so that rain gear came out and umbrellas popped open in the stands like colorful mushrooms. Since her blue dress was silk, it was a very good thing she hadn’t given in to J.D.’s bizarre request.
The opposing team was full of pint-size all-stars. In no time the score was embarrassingly lopsided. It wouldn’t have surprised Jenna a bit to hear that every one of those little Tiger phenoms had Major League aspirations. Poor Petey and the rest of his Cardinal teammates, even their best hitter, looked as miserable as the gray skies overhead.
When she wasn’t watching Petey standing glumly in the outfield or sitting in the dugout, Jenna watched Coach Williams. She never heard him say anything inappropriate. In fact, he seemed more in control than some of the fathers who sat in the stands. But she still felt dismayed that he could encourage Petey to quit.
Right at the end of the fourth inning, the rain picked up for a few minutes and everyone took a break. Seeing this as her chance, Jenna snatched up one of the umbrellas and over the sour looks of her father and brothers, went down the bleacher steps.