by Elley Arden
“That’s because the right one got away,” she teased.
Ben’s smile widened. “You know what? Today just got a million times better.”
“Agreed.” She couldn’t stop the head-to-toe tingles, not that she wanted to after the lackluster way she’d been feeling all morning. She just expected them to disappear once the initial shock of seeing him wore away. It’d been twenty years! They were different, older people. Surely her body understood it was overheating and overreacting on outdated information.
He called her beautiful. She nibbled the inside of her cheek. God, she was a good fifteen pounds heavier than she had been in high school. Maybe he hadn’t notice. Or maybe he did and didn’t care. Ben always had been a flirt. He was probably just being nice to an old friend.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
“I have a day full of meetings.”
“I have a seven-oh-five game.” He tugged on the brim of his ball cap like he used to in high school, and Scarlett’s heart clenched. “I also happen to have access to an extra ticket if you have the time and inclination to catch a game.”
“I’d love to!” Her voice raised an octave, making her sound silly and overenthusiastic. There wasn’t room for silly in her life these days.
“I’ll have it waiting for you at Will Call.”
“Excellent!” She clapped, feeling unbelievably foolish but so damn thrilled at the same time.
He stood there, nodding, flashing that trademark smile. Time had made him even more handsome. “Maybe afterward we could grab a drink?”
“I’d like that,” she said, trying her damnedest not to clap again.
Chapter Two
Scarlett excused herself as she squeezed past a man and woman occupying the two seats closest to the aisle. She was headed for the empty seat in the center of row JJ, one level up from the cushy seats behind home plate. The view was good. She smiled as she looked at the players scattered around the pristine field, excitement bubbling through her veins. She hadn’t seen Ben play baseball in person since high school. Heck, she hadn’t been to a game in years.
She glanced at her ticket to confirm her seat number, and then sat, smiling briefly at the imposing man to her right. Who came to a baseball game in a suit? Even a complicated meeting and ungodly traffic hadn’t stopped her from sprinting back to the hotel to change her clothes.
Perched on the edge of her hard plastic seat, Scarlett drew in a deep breath of popcorn-scented air and squinted into the evening sun, eager for a glimpse of Ben. She could pick him out of a lineup anywhere. Her familiarity with his movement after all this time stole a bit of the air from her lungs, causing a flutter in her heart. She’d thought of him often over the years, even when she probably shouldn’t have. But as her personal life raged out of control, it was easy to wonder what if. And now he was here. He stood with his hands on his hips down the third base line, taller than most of the guys around him, broader, too, which was certainly saying something, considering he was surrounded by other professional athletes. When he turned his back to home plate, she saw the number twelve. The same number he’d worn in high school. The memory warmed her. Nobody else in this stadium shared that kind of history with Ben. It was a hot and heady connection.
As she pulled an elastic from her purse and fastened her heavy hair into a ponytail, careful not to hit the man beside her, Ben disappeared into the dugout. She tried in vain to find him amid the distant crowd. Music blared from the sound system, and video flickered on the big screen. The atmosphere was electric, but all she wanted was another glimpse of Ben.
A few minutes later, the beer man passed, and Scarlett waved him down. “Light, please.”
“That’ll be $7.50.”
The suit beside her snickered. “Nothing like paying an arm and a leg for a can of water.”
Scarlett laughed as she reached across him to pay for and accept her beer. “Yeah, but there’s something about the way beer tastes in a ballpark that makes me not mind paying the outrageous price. That and the fact that it’s ninety-eight degrees.”
She sat back as she sipped, relishing the ice-cold liquid’s path down her throat. Florida was an inferno in late June. She had no idea how Mr. Suit could stand it. She shook her head and was just about to ask him about it — maybe he was here on business — but before she could form the words, Ben appeared, trotting toward home plate decked out in catcher’s gear. No amount of cold beer could cool the heat inside of her.
This was going to be a blast. To think she’d expected to spend tonight scanning reports of industry trends she’d already committed to memory and watching cop shows she’d already seen. And yet here she sat, sipping beer, watching her high school sweetheart crouch behind home plate.
She had to be dreaming.
Half an inning later, Ben struck out. And just like he had in high school, he gave the pine a frustrating tap against the dirt. Scarlett ached as she watched him make the long walk back to the dugout from home plate. The suit beside her swore beneath his breath. She wanted to tell him to cut Ben some slack — it was his first game with a new team, after all — but she bit her lip instead.
Two innings later, Ben walked up to the plate again. Scarlett held her breath and squeezed her hands as the pitcher wound up and fired it in, only to have Ben swing and miss.
“Come on, Ben,” she whispered, closing her eyes briefly, willing him to hit. He needed this. Heck, she needed this. He wasn’t going to be much fun over drinks if he went Oh-for-anything tonight.
The next pitch was high and outside, bringing the catcher to his feet. Scarlett drew a shaky breath and tried not to pay attention to the suit fidgeting beside her. He should’ve dressed smarter. All that movement was making her nervous as hell.
The next pitch didn’t have much on it, and Scarlett leaned forward in anticipation, eyes glued to Ben’s broad shoulders and chiseled forearms. The blur of motion and crack of the bat knocked the wind out of her. She jumped to her feet, screaming with delight, as Ben sprinted to first.
“Right fielder caught it,” the suit said in a mood-crushing monotone.
Oh, my God! She looked like an idiot, didn’t she? She dropped to her seat, aware of eyes upon her from every direction.
The suit chuckled. “I take it you’re a Border fan.”
She wanted to crawl in a hole. “Um … actually, an old friend.”
“Well, hello, Ben’s old friend. I’m Jordon Kemmons, his agent.” His arm crossed the armrest, and his hand hovered above her lap.
She shook it, despite the total embarrassment threatening to immobilize her. “Scarlett Dare,” she whispered.
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Dare. How do you know Ben?”
She swallowed, feeling slightly less pathetic with every breath. People around her had lost interest in the crazy fan girl and were now heckling the umpires over a call at second base. “We went to high school together in Jersey.”
“And you live in Orlando now?”
Scarlett shook her head and watched the teams trade places. Ben was the last one to trot onto the field in full gear. “Temporarily. I’m guiding the implementation of the marketing, publicity, and advertising departments for Pace Waterman’s newest location.”
Jordon was quiet for the longest time, so quiet Scarlett forgot he was there. She was mesmerized by Ben’s motion again. The crouch. The catch. The hop. The throw. Over and over. Occasionally, when there was a pause in play, he’d turn to the umpire for a quick chat. She wondered what they were saying.
“Pace Waterman is that big investment firm, right?” Jordon sounded surprised and maybe even a bit confused.
“Right,” she answered, holding her tongue at the temptation to tell him the gig wasn’t quite as glamorous as he might’ve been thinking.
“Did you find Ben or did he find you?”
Scarlett looked at the man, still wrapped tight in a suit despite the roasting temperature. “Actually, we bumped into each other in the hotel elevator. A total fluk
e.”
“You don’t say?” The Cheshire Cat smile that accompanied his words was a little unsettling.
“I know, right? Crazy.” Kind of like this conversation, she thought, returning her attention to the field.
“Maybe not,” Jordon said.
Scarlett didn’t know what to make of that, and her usual urge to analyze faltered when her attention zoomed toward Ben striding to the plate. Mm, mm, mm. She owed a world of thanks to whomever invented baseball pants.
As she watched him crouch, she forgot all about the strange interrogation from Ben’s agent.
• • •
Ben hit the showers, feeling hopeful. He caught a good game, made decent contact twice at the plate, and his new teammates weren’t ignoring the old man who took an injured Hernandez’s place. But the main reason for his hopefulness was waiting for him across the street.
Scarlett. He whistled as he washed, unable to believe this twist of fate. He never thought he’d see her again after the breakup. While they’d been in love, they’d also been young and ambitious. Those ambitions took them in different directions. Loving her, missing her, hurt so much the first few months of his minor league career, he worried he’d become too distracted to play. So he ceased contact. It helped dull the pain to an ache, but not a woman went by without a comparison to Scarlett, and not a daydream of his future didn’t turn toward her first.
He’d expected to love her all his life, but he never expected to see her again, certainly not single and sharing space in the same hotel … bed was the next word that popped into his head. Ben knew where he wanted this to go, but maybe she felt differently. Maybe he misread the signals she was sending his way. For him, it was hard not to think about sex when he thought about Scarlett.
She’d been his first, and the one he thought about more than anyone else.
That was probably only natural, he thought, as he toweled off and dressed. She’d been a big part of arguably his best years. He’d probably made her into some sort of paragon of women without realizing he was doing it.
As he made his way across the busy street, he remembered the first time they’d had sex, on her grandfather’s fishing boat, tucked behind her family’s cottage on Lake Hopatcong. The act was awkward and fantastic all in one breathless moment — and that was really how long it took. He smiled as he walked with the revolving door. He wanted the chance to make love to her again, now that he knew what he was doing.
“Mr. Border,” called a woman behind the reception desk. “There’s a message for you.”
With a “thank you,” he took the paper she held out to him, fighting a wave of dread that told him Scarlett had changed her mind.
When he unfolded the note, familiar chicken-scratch littered the hotel letterhead:
Hey,
Caught a late flight. Whatever you decide, you’re going to be fine.
I’ll talk to you soon.
~J
P.S. Tell Scarlett I enjoyed meeting her.
Jordon met Scarlett? The ticketing office must have sat them both in the same comp row. There might be some damage control. Jordon kept a wary eye on the women who came “sniffing around” his players. Although this time, Jordon didn’t have to worry. Scarlett wasn’t like that. If she was, she would’ve clung to Ben for dear life after he had been drafted. Instead, she’d placed a sweet kiss on his cheek and told him she had her own dreams to conquer. Later, after he got used to the pain of being without her, he actually admired her drive and independence.
Tucking the memories back into their place and the note into his jeans pocket, he headed for the hotel bar where they’d agreed to meet. Tabletop candles flickered in the late-night low lighting. Dark wood walls added to the mystique. His heart pounded an erratic beat, and his palms splotched with sweat, but there wasn’t an inch of him that considered turning around, especially not when he laid eyes on her.
Scarlett sat in a barrel chair in the corner of the bar. She was watching the door when he walked in, and an immediate, familiar, crooked smile crossed her pretty face. He’d always thought she looked like a fallen angel, like she was up to no good — in the best way possible. She stood, tugging on the hem of her yellow T-shirt and then smoothing hands over the wrinkles on her khaki knee-length shorts. She was a classic beauty, and twenty years later he still wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.
“Hi,” she said. “Nice game.”
To hell with formalities. He hugged her, brought her in tight and whiffed deeply from her sweet-smelling hair. “I’ve played better,” he said, not letting her go.
Her hand was pinned between them, resting over his heart. “Not in front of me.” She pulled back, looking at him, the smile lingering on her face. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you play professional baseball in person. It’s kind of a big deal. You’re kind of a big deal.”
Ben just wanted to hold her, to listen to her talk, to smooth his hands over her back and bottom while he sniffed her hair. That probably made him an A-1 creep, so he let her go. “You might be biased.”
“Maybe.” She flipped her hair behind her shoulder with the brush of her hand. “Sit. What are you drinking? I opened a tab.” She raised a finger toward the bar before she returned to her seat. “I know so much about you, but I don’t know your drink of choice, otherwise I would’ve ordered. See? And I was worried we wouldn’t know what to do together after all these years.” She winked. “We have sooo much to talk about. We can spend hours right here.”
Her laughter washed over him in warm thrills, and he wished for a cold shower. Hours in this bar with a table between them amounted to torture.
“I drink beer,” he said. “Vodka tonic when I’m feeling fancy.”
“And how are you feeling tonight?”
“Lucky.” He grinned. “I don’t know what drink goes with that.”
A waitress appeared, and he ordered a beer. For the next hour or so, he caught up on Scarlett’s life in Jersey, her career achievements, friends and family he used to know. They laughed at old memories and sulked over a few, too, especially when she got to the part about her nasty divorce, which ended in her paying alimony.
“He sounds like a jerk,” Ben said, staring at the bottom of an empty pilsner glass. The minute she brought up the guy named Craig, a sense of protectiveness tinged with jealousy gripped his throat.
“He wasn’t always,” she said quietly. “People change, I guess. When I married Craig, he had the restaurant. He had dreams and goals. But then it started losing money, and he lost interest, and he didn’t know what to do, so he let it tank, and he called it ‘retiring.’” She yanked her fingers in angry quotation marks. “But that didn’t make him happy either, so he started seeing doctors and therapists and holistic healers, and … ” — she polished off her martini — “ … there’s nothing worse than a man without direction.”
Ouch. For the first time since he walked into the bar, Ben looked away from her. He studied the dismal nautical painting above her head. He was talking about retiring. He was questioning his direction. But he wasn’t the same as her whacked out ex, was he?
“Oh, hey! I met your agent.”
At the change of subject, Ben looked at her again. His stomach churned. Jordon was the only other person in the world who knew he was considering retirement. Surely he hadn’t hinted at that during his meeting with Scarlett. Of course not. The bigger concern was that Jordon had been a prick, suspecting she was a gold digger.
“I hope he behaved,” Ben said. “He can be … rough.”
She laughed, and her eyes twinkled in the candlelight. “He was fine. A little overdressed, but otherwise fine.” She ran a finger around the rim of her empty martini glass. “I prefer my men underdressed.”
Ben’s worry and discomfort vanished, replaced by a heady desire for the flirt across the table. He stretched his arm over the glossy wood until his fingertips touched hers, smiling the entire time.
The waitress returned. “Another round?”
Scarlett’s eyes never left his face, and that crooked grin had his muscles stirring. “What do you think, Ben?”
What did he think? “I’m good.” So good.
“We’ll take the check.” She glanced at the waitress, and then back at Ben. “I hope this doesn’t mean our evening is over.”
Hell, no. They were just getting started.
Chapter Three
Bolstered by too many indecent thoughts of Ben and two dirty martinis, Scarlett closed the gap between them once the elevator doors slid shut. She leaned in just enough for the tips of her breasts to brush his shirt. “Your room or mine?”
He answered her verbal come-on with a physical one, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her the rest of the way to him. Hot and hard. “Whichever one is closer.”
“Mine,” she said.
Although his smiling green eyes were the same, he smelled older, more expensive, and his body was thicker. His hands were bigger, too, roving her back, covering every inch, leaving a heated path in their wake. The combination of sensations ratcheted her desire, making her squirm in her oversensitive skin.
The heels she wore brought her up to his chin, and Scarlett pushed onto her toes, inching her lips closer to his. Would kissing him feel the same?
The elevator beeped, and the doors slid open before she could find out the answer. She took Ben by the hand and pulled him into the hall, moving at a brisk pace. “End of the hall,” she rasped.
No other words were exchanged. The whole situation was surreal. He’d been her first, when she was painfully inexperienced and scared beyond reason. Thank God, she was neither of those things now. Oh, the things she could do to him! Excitement welled in her chest, leaving her breathless, making it hard to keep the pace without sounding like an out-of-shape fool. And all the while he held her hand, gently pressing circles with his thumb into the soft pad of her forefinger. Simple. Luscious. Pressure.
At the end of the hall, she shoved her keycard into a door and tugged him into her room. They faced each other in the tiny entry hall.