Surely he had to know that even if she spent all night talking to Ray Hernandez, it meant absolutely nothing? Dylan watched as he held the arm of a server who walked by him and asked for a refill of his wine. She tried to make eye contact with him to reassure him, but he would not look at her.
“So Marcos,” Pedro Lima’s booming voice rose above everyone else’s. “How is Wilfredo? I haven’t seen the old man in years.”
“He’s good,” Mark said, looking up. “I forgot he was your coach as well.”
“Many years before you,” Pedro said. “But yes. Patricia was just a kid then. Beautiful still, but just a kid. But of course, by the time Wilfredo coached you, she was just old enough, eh?”
Pedro laughed his boisterous laugh. Dylan noticed a look pass across Mark’s face and Pedro quickly stopped laughing, taking a gulp of his water and turning to talk to someone else.
After dinner there was coffee and desert, and then more drinks inside. Dylan stood with a wineglass in hand, but didn’t drink any more. She was already feeling lightheaded and full and a little tired. After all, she’d spent most of the day moving and most of the evening anxious among a new group of people. She was exhausted and wished that Mark would look at her so she could signal that she was ready to go. It was unlike him to keep his distance like this and she only hoped that what she suspected was bothering him was not the case. Still, since he did not—or would not—she decided to go to the powder room instead to splash some cold water on her face and hopefully make herself feel a little more alert, when Ray Hernandez stepped into her path.
“I’m going to tell my wife to call you,” he said. “I think we should hang out, me and Mark and you and Cindy. We can go to our place upstate and do some skiing.”
“That would be great,” Dylan said distractedly.
She had long since lost any interest in talking to Ray Hernandez, being too tired at this point to be impressed by anything he said.
“Good. I’ll get your information before I leave.”
“Ahm. Get it from Mark,” she suggested, smiling at him. “Excuse me, I need to . . .” Dylan didn’t bother finishing her sentence, but headed in the direction she’d seen several of the other ladies go.
The powder room door was ajar, and she was about to push it open when she heard two voices, one of which she recognized as Vanessa Lima’s. It was her use of Mark’s name that made Dylan pause and listen.
“ . . getting to know them anymore. I mean, why bother, right? They never last once the guys go on the road.”
“But she seems nice enough,” the second voice said. This voice Dylan could not place. “Poor thing has no idea what’s in for her.”
“The long kiss goodbye,” Vanessa said, with a delicate laugh. “My god, you’d think they would learn. Get the ring. No matter what he tells you, get the ring.”
“And not Dominican either?” the second voice said. “Not a chance. And did you see when Pedro brought up Patricia? She had no idea, I could tell.”
“They were engaged at one point, weren’t they? I think that’s what she said when I met her at that press junket when she was with Mark that time. Engaged when he was in the minors, and then I guess she left for the DR and that’s what ended it.”
“I bet she’s sorry she let him go.”
“Well, she may get him back,” Vanessa said. “I don’t know why I didn’t put it together that they aren’t actually married, since he was with Patricia that time. Not that being married stops some of them. But him and this Dylan girl? I mean, some random American girl doesn’t stand a chance against the mafia of Dominican mothers. And that Bronx network is so tight. That’s how Pedro knew Mark . . .”
Dylan turned on her heel, having heard enough. Her heart was racing and her head was spinning; only she wasn’t sure what from. Learning that Mark had been engaged to someone, that he was likely to dump her, or was it just all the wine? She was walking with her head down, when she slammed into someone, who grabbed her elbow.
“Whoa there!” It was Lauren.
“I was looking for another bathroom,” she mumbled. “That one’s occupied.”
“Oh, let’s see.” Lauren steadied her and led her through the kitchen and just off the terrace where another powder room was tucked under the eaves. “Here we go.”
Dylan offered her a dim smile. “Thank you.”
“You okay?”
“A little too much to drink,” she said.
Lauren nodded. “I understand. It’s a lot to take in your first time at one of these. Why don’t I just go whisper to Mark that you’re ready to go?”
Dylan nodded gratefully. “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”
“No worries. Happy to do it,” Lauren said.
And before Dylan turned to go into the bathroom Lauren held her shoulder. “Listen,” she said. “I just wanted to say something. And I don’t want to offend you, but I think you should know.”
Dylan sagged. She wasn’t sure she was up for any additional revelations tonight. “Yes?”
“It’s about Ray,” Lauren began. “I know his attention can be . . . intoxicating. He is . . . well, you know. But that’s his thing, okay? So don’t take it seriously. He uses wives to get to their husbands, if he feels threatened by them. And Mark is the next best thing, y’know?
“A lot of people are already saying that he’s going to blow Ray out of the water in terms of popularity, endorsements . . . he has a subtlety that Ray doesn’t have. So Ray may be threatened by that. And if he is, he isn’t above using you to get into Mark’s head, to throw him off his game.”
“Don’t worry,” she said smiling at Lauren. “I’m not interested in anyone but Mark.”
Lauren smiled back at her as though that was the quaintest thing she had ever heard. “You aren’t, are you?” she said. Then she turned and headed back to the party.
Dylan shut the bathroom door behind her and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She was relieved to see that she looked no worse for the wear. On the outside, she looked just as well puttogether as she had been when Ava got done with her. She looked composed though she felt anything but.
Mark had been engaged to a woman named Patricia, who was probably the daughter of his old coach Wilfredo, whom she’d met at the party at Mark’s parents’ house. And what was more, Mark had taken Patricia to an event even after he met her. She knew right away who Patricia was—the woman Mark had been photographed with. The one she’d decided not to ask him about; the one he didn’t explain. The one who made him get that tense, guilty sound in his voice when he called her after the picture ran.
And now Patricia was back from the DR? Living in New York, maybe? Dylan took a deep breath, trying to quell her fears. Mark was not like other men she’d been with, she reminded herself. He liked to have clarity, and he told her, unprompted, that he would never give her any reason to doubt him. That had to count for something, surely.
But then again, everyone knew that some Latin men were Lotharios. Look at Matt for instance; Mark’s own brother was single when he felt like it, and committed to his girlfriend when it suited him; and apparently not at all plagued by any sense of having done something wrong. Maybe Mark . . .
Someone knocked on the door and she knew without asking that it wasn’t another of the women. The knock was too loud, too insistent and determined. She wondered for one panicked moment whether it was Ray Hernandez.
“Just a moment,” she said, trying to sound breezy.
She turned on the water and rinsed her hands, drying them and then reaching for the lotion that was next to the sink, quickly slathering some on and then taking one last breath, composing herself again before unlocking the door.
Mark was standing there and looking none too pleased, either. He crowded her into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, leaning against it. In the small space, he towered over her.
“Did Lauren talk to you?” she asked. “I’m really getting tired, Mark, I’d like to . . .”
&n
bsp; “What was going on with you and Ray Hernandez?” he interrupted.
She knew he was drunk because his accent was thicker, and she could see that he was much more bent out of shape than she’d realized at dinner.
“Mark . . .” she began.
“¿Te gusta lo?”
“You’re speaking Spanish,” she said, wearily.
“I said, do you like him? Are you attracted to him?”
“You’re being silly. He was sitting next to me at dinner. There was no way to avoid talking to him.”
“It didn’t seem like you wanted to avoid it.”
“No, I didn’t want to avoid it. Why would I?”
“Because you knew I wouldn’t like it,” he said.
Dylan studied his face. Was he serious?
“He’s your teammate, Mark. We’d never met. Of course I’d talk to him.” And because he had no reasonable response to that—because there was no reasonable response—she continued. “Look, let’s not have this argument standing in the bathroom, okay? In fact, let’s not have this argument at all. You’re overreacting.”
“Coño . . .” he ran a hand over his face and seemed to have a moment of clarity, pulling himself together. “Let’s go home.”
“I don’t think you’re okay to drive,” Dylan said shaking her head.
“How about you?” he asked.
She shook her head. She’d been drinking too much as well, and was too shaken up by the revelation about Patricia and by what had just happened here. No way could she drive either. For one sober moment, she had the image of her and Mark swimming surrounded by sharks. Tonight they’d both been knocked off the comfortable equilibrium they’d built during their vacation. That was all it took; one party.
“Fuck.”
“Mark,” she said, her voice quieter, calming him though she didn’t feel calm herself. “It’s not a big deal. We can call a cab.”
“No me gusto . . . I don’t like it. When you spend that much time with other men, I don’t like it,” he said, shrugging. “There. That’s it.”
She nodded and looked him in the eyes. “I get it. Okay.”
Mark became visibly more relaxed. “Let’s go home,” he said.
He took her by the hand and opened the door. When they returned to the party, more than a few pairs of eyes were on them. Clearly their absence had been noted. Pedro came over, looking at Mark.
“¿Ta to ‘mano?”
“Everything’s fine,” Mark said. “Pero, estoy borracho.”
Pedro laughed and clapped Mark on the back. “You’re drunk? Well, we can take care of you. I have my driver here, for just this situation. He’ll take you home and tomorrow I’ll have someone bring you back your chacarra.”
Mark handed over his keys and he and Dylan said their goodbyes. As they were leaving, Dylan glanced over her shoulder and Ray Hernandez smiled at her from his place near the bar, where he was placidly sipping a drink. She wondered whether his entire evening’s mission had been to get under Mark’s skin. If so, he had clearly succeeded. And Dylan had unwittingly helped him do it.
7
Sports Illustrated was doing a shoot of Mark at the ballpark; a fact that was apparently not interesting enough for him to share beforehand. Dylan was in the middle of making pasta for dinner when the doorbell rang and Mark came out of the bedroom, shirtless and barefoot as always.
“It’s just the Sports Illustrated guy,” he said, as though it was no big deal.
But for him it really was no big deal. Not because he had already grown accustomed to being famous, but because he didn’t care about being famous. All of Dylan’s predictions about what would happen once Mark finally realized his fame had thus far not come to pass. He did realize it; he just didn’t care. So while she was a little in awe of things like a “Sports Illustrated guy” showing up at their front door, Mark didn’t even think it was an occasion that merited putting on a shirt.
“Shouldn’t we have cleaned up or something?” she asked, looking down at her marinara saucesplattered t-shirt and putting a hand up to check her hair.
“No,” Mark said. “I’m trying to get them out of here in fifteen minutes.”
He opened the door and Dylan heard as he greeted a woman and a man, inviting them to sit and offering them something to drink, which they both refused.
“I’m excited about this shoot,” Dylan heard the woman say. Her voice was familiar, and made Dylan stop to listen further as she tried to place it. “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
“So should we go over the concept?” the male voice said.
“Sure,” Mark said.
“So what I’m thinking is that we’ll do some shots of you in the locker room, you’ll be a little dirty, like it’s after a game. Maybe we’ll have you without your shirt, like you are now,” the man laughed a little. “And we’ll have Paige dressed as she does when she’s doing her reports, leaning in with a microphone as if she’s interviewing you.”
At the mention of the name Paige, Dylan stiffened.
Oh. Now she knew who the voice was. Paige Allen.
She was a sportscaster for New York 1 news channel. She was notorious for barging into locker rooms and interviewing half-naked—and sometimes fully nude—male athletes as though it didn’t faze her at all. No one would have cared if she was male, and no one would have cared if she was unattractive. But Paige Allen was far from unattractive; she was a knockout who had been a finalist in the Miss Universe competition before starting her career in broadcasting.
That was who Mark would be spending twelve hours working with tomorrow? Dylan reached for the bottle of red wine she’d planned for them to have with dinner and opened it, pouring herself a glass. Then she slipped into the bedroom and changed her sauce-stained shirt for a snug tank top. Paige Allen may have been a Miss Universe contestant, but Dylan was comfortable that her own physique could go up against the best of them. Sure, she was probably several inches shorter than Ms. Allen, but in terms of fitness, she was definitely a contender.
She checked her hair in the mirror and stopped in the kitchen to retrieve her glass of red before wandering, oh-so-casually into the living room. As she walked in, Mark did a double-take, probably noticing right away that she was braless and wearing something completely different than when he’d seen her just minutes earlier.
“Hello,” she said, as though she’d happened across them by accident.
“Hey,” Mark said. He extended an arm to her and Dylan went to him. He was sitting on the arm of the sofa and pulled her to him so she was perched on his knee. “Dylan this is Paige and Vince.”
Paige Allen smiled and Dylan noted sourly that she was way better looking in person than she appeared on television, and wearing blue jeans and a pale blue shirt, she looked effortlessly chic. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and looked lustrous and beautiful like something out of a shampoo commercial.
“Nice to meet you, Dylan,” she said, warmly.
“Good to meet you,” Vince nodded. “We were just going over with your . . .”
“. . . boyfriend,” Dylan supplied, suddenly feeling dissatisfied with how weak the label was. Nevertheless, she checked for a reaction from Paige, hoping that it registered with her that Mark was taken.
“. . . going over with Mark his photo shoot for tomorrow.”
“It’ll be my first time in Sports Illustrated as well,” Paige said. “But I’m happy even to be used as prop. My father’s going to be so excited.”
“So the other shots,” Vince continued, “will be outside, with you, Mark, in a variety of poses like you’re in the middle of a play and Paige on the outside, again with the mike, as though she’s trying to interview you.”
“In the middle of a play?” Mark asked.
Vince laughed. “Yeah, I know. That would never happen. But we like to use some creative license, and our readers like shots where there’s some action.”
Mark nodded. Dylan could tell even though she couldn’t
see his face that he’d already lost interest in the conversation. Vince pulled out what looked like an artists’ portfolio from next to him and produced out some large sheets of paper.
“I’ve got some mock-ups here,” he continued. “At first we thought we would do only Mets uniforms, but now we’re thinking variations on the uniform, with Mets colors of course. Your front office was very clear on that.”
“Okay, let’s see what you got,” Mark said. He reached around Dylan so she stood, satisfied that she had sufficiently staked her claim.
“Wine for anyone?” she asked as she headed back to the kitchen.
“No, no thanks,” Vince said.
Paige Allen smiled and shook her head. “I’m great. Thank you though.”
Dylan went back into the kitchen to finish dinner and found that while she’d been planting her flag in Mark, she’d overcooked the bow-tie pasta. She dumped it all out and began again.
When Paige and Vince were leaving, they called out their goodbyes which Dylan cheerfully returned. She’d set two places for dinner at the butcher block center island for her and Mark and poured them generous glasses of wine. He came in and sat down, picking up his wine and taking a sip.
“A little or a lot?” she asked as she spooned meat sauce over his pasta.
“A lot,” Mark said. “I’m twice as hungry as when they got here.”
Dylan put the plate in front of him and watched with satisfaction as he dug in. She couldn’t remember having ever cooked for a man before, with the exception of the occasional breakfast if they slept over. But she hadn’t lived with anyone before either, or felt about them the way she felt for Mark. All of the fears in the back of her mind—about being taken for granted, or about him becoming bored— had been unfounded so far. Still, they’d only been living together for two weeks, so there was plenty of time for things to go awry. Especially if he would routinely be working with women as gorgeous as Paige Allen.
After spooning out her own meal, Dylan sat across from Mark and began eating, enjoying the contented silence between them.
“So, Dylan?” Mark said.
The Seduction of Dylan Acosta Page 11