Emotion swelled, threatening to swamp her.
“You don’t have to say that,” she managed. “Whatever we tell the rest of the world, you have to tell me the truth.”
“I am.” He covered her body with his, his long limbs stretching beyond hers. “It’s possible that my Superhero Complex and your act-before-you-think personality might have been a bad combination. And I know I should regret it, because now you’ll have to fight to lift that emergency order. But I can’t regret everything that’s happened between us. I just can’t. Donna, I—”
He broke off, leaving her wondering frantically what he’d almost said. That he . . . loved her? Was it possible? A deep panic ripped through her. What if he was on the verge of saying, “I love you,” but wouldn’t now because they had to break off the engagement? She knew him. His instinct would be to protect her from more trouble by walking away.
Desperately, she threw her arms around him and it was like flying into the sunshine. One last ride into bliss. One last drink from the narcotic of sex with Mike. One last dose of her baseball player—and it would have to last her forever. No more Mike—the thought turned her heart into a desert, bleak and empty.
Unless . . . A last-ditch idea flashed into her mind.
Deep in their kiss, she tried to pull away, but couldn’t. She pounded her fists on his back to get his attention. Finally he released her, his eyes deep, dark pools of green fire. “What?”
“I have an idea. What if we break off the engagement publicly but keep seeing each other secretly?”
“Huh?”
Mike’s brain didn’t usually operate this slowly; he must be foggy with lust, which she completely understood.
“As far as the world knows, we’re through. We don’t appear in public together. We deny that we’re involved. We go on with our lives. When it’s safe and no one’s paying attention, we sneak away and go at it like freaky little bunnies.”
“Freaky little bunnies?” He still seemed a bit dazed.
“Or some other metaphor that’s maybe not so disturbing.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, as if trying to circulate blood back toward his brain. “You’re saying . . . sneak around? Hide our relationship?” When she shrugged in carefree agreement, he shook his head. “I don’t get it. What exactly would our relationship be?”
“Well, we just go back to the basics. It all started with a flirtation. Remember, from the Roadhouse?”
“Of course I remember.”
“Then came the big brawl, when you rode to my rescue. Then we ran into each other at the library. That’s when we segued into the kissing and snogging and all that.”
“Snogging?”
“Harry Potter fan from way back. After the snogging, we got fake-engaged.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, which had the effect of drawing her unwilling eyes to that magnificent part of his body, the dusting of dark curls shading the hard slopes of his pectorals. Seriously, maybe he should be required to put clothes on for this conversation. He was simply too distracting.
“I never considered it fake,” he told her.
“I know. You considered it something along the lines of a good deed. A good deed with benefits.”
“Now you’re just pissing me off.” A frown drew creases between his eyebrows. “I swear to you I’ve never seen you as a good deed with benefits.”
Keep it light. Don’t show how much he means to you. She waved one hand airily. “Fine, you can use whatever phrasing you like. But it was a good deed and there were benefits. Excellent benefits, if you ask me.”
Judging by his stormy expression, Mike didn’t seem impressed by this line of conversation. Alarm bells were going off all over the place, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
“Sounds like you’re making a joke out of this,” he said slowly.
The similarity to Harvey’s accusation gave her an unwelcome jolt. “No, I’m not. I’m just saying that we’ve gone about this backwards. You like me, I like you, we like sleeping together, but we never would have gotten engaged if not for Zack. Admit it, Mike. Just admit it!” For some reason, this felt very important. As if everything else would seem like a lie if he didn’t agree with that statement.
He narrowed his eyes at her, a tiny muscle flexing in his jaw. “Fine. I admit that. But I was serious about it. I was going to marry you. I wanted to marry you. It wasn’t just a so-called good deed. And I thought you were serious about it too.”
Serious? How could she have been completely serious about it when he never came close to the topic of love? Which ought to belong in the same sentence as the topic of marriage?
She couldn’t bring “love” up. That would be pure disaster.
“I gave an interview to the Kilby Press-Herald, didn’t I? Would I have done that if I wasn’t serious?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
That comment sounded ominous, but she decided to ignore it. She rose onto her knees.
“We’re getting off track here. Here’s what I’m suggesting. Let’s just go back to before everything happened. Before we got engaged. Except that we keep sleeping together, because we’ve already done that, so why stop now?”
“And no one else will know.”
“Exactly. No one else will know.”
“What if they find out? Bonita busted us over a kiss.”
“We just have to keep it low-key for a while, until all the attention dies down. Until everything is back to normal with Zack.”
“So when my family asks me what happened to my fiancée, I say, oops, another broken engagement. But really I’m still secretly boning you?” His eyes glittered with some mysterious emotion she couldn’t name.
She scrambled off the bed, planting her feet on the carpet. “I don’t know why you’re so mad at me. It makes perfect sense. You still get to have sex, but you don’t have to go through with something you never really wanted anyway! You ought to be loving this idea.”
“And what about my vow?”
“Your vow? It’s already . . . It doesn’t apply anymore.”
He grabbed his shirt, which had gotten tumbled in with her sheets, and yanked it over his head. “You really don’t know anything about me, do you?”
“What . . . of course . . .”
“You want me to deceive my family, dishonor my vow, and put your future at risk if anyone finds out. Three things I would never do.” He bounded off the bed, located his boxer briefs, and pulled them on.
She watched, horrified, feeling like someone who had thrown a stick of dynamite onto a fire. “You’re twisting it all around. That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s what it comes down to. All so I can get some booty. On the down-low, so nobody knows.”
“You make it sound so . . .” Dirty. Immoral. Sinful. Wrong. She’d never thought of sex with Mike as any of those things. “You think of me as ‘booty’?”
“Of course I don’t. That’s the whole point. I was going to marry you. Give you my name, my support, my life. But you’re fine just sneaking around with me. Who do you think you’re dealing with here?”
She picked up a pillow and hurled it at him. “You’re being crazy, Solo.”
With elite-level reaction time, he swatted the pillow aside, then found his jeans and dragged them on. “I thought you knew me better by now, Donna.”
The chilly disappointment in his voice made her want to scream. Taking advantage of the fact that his hands were occupied with his pants, she threw her other pillow at his head. He ducked and it knocked over her new lamp, the one with the base shaped like a football.
“You ought to know me by now!” she cried. “You ought to know—” She broke off, because the thing he ought to know was the thing she couldn’t tell him. That she loved him and that’s why she wanted to keep seeing hi
m. Because the thought of not seeing him was like death.
While he was able to walk away without blinking an eye.
He righted the lamp. “Starting another brawl, Donna? Great strategy. That ought to really impress the judge.” He strode toward the door, all athletic grace and male confidence. Maddening, and so sexy she wanted to rip his head off.
She picked up pillow number three and winged it across the room with all her might. He turned at the last minute and plucked it from the air.
“Wild pitch, babe. One more and the batter walks.” He tossed the pillow over his shoulder on his way out the room.
“I hate baseball!” she shouted after him, but heard only an unintelligible answer before the front door slammed shut.
“I hate you,” she whispered after him, before collapsing backward onto her bed, which still smelled of his aftershave and essence of Mike. No, she didn’t. “I wish I hated you,” she added helplessly to the ceiling. Hatred would be so much easier than this bottled-up, invisible, frustrating love.
Mike had never been so happy to be going on the road. Tacoma, Colorado Springs, and Salt Lake City? Bring it on. Anywhere but Kilby, Texas, sounded good to him. He showed up fifteen minutes before the scheduled bus departure time to break the big news to Crush in person.
“The wedding’s off,” he said, poking his head around the frame of the door of Crush’s office. “I’m really sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll pay for whatever work the planner’s already put in.”
Crush, who’d been napping, boots propped on his desk, chair tilted back, opened one eye. “I see. She couldn’t handle a gay brother-in-law, huh?”
Mike bristled. As furious as he was with Donna, he couldn’t let something like that stand. “That’s not it. She’s the one who told me to go public.”
“Hmm. Problems with the pre-nup? She refuse to sign?”
“What? No. Nothing like that. Donna’s not after money.”
Crush uncrossed his legs and spun the chair around to face him. “Must have been the kid then. Can’t blame you for not wanting to raise another man’s child.”
“Christ, no. That wasn’t it. Zack’s the greatest.”
Crush shrugged. “Well. Young love. It’s a roller coaster. What are you going to do?”
Young love. What was the man talking about? He wasn’t all that young, and love didn’t even come into this situation. That thought gave him a weird, sick sensation in the pit of his stomach. As if he’d done something wrong. But he hadn’t, had he? Donna had been way off base. Not him.
Crush picked up his iPhone and thumbed through it. Mike decided to give up on this aggravating conversation. “Anyway, just wanted to let you know that you’ll probably get some more media attention.”
“Lucky me.”
“Is . . . uh . . . I mean, I hope I didn’t cause any problems with my PSA.”
“No. I told you before you shot it. If I’m going down in flames, at least it’ll be for a good cause.”
“I appreciate that.”
“And you know, some days I wonder if it wouldn’t be simpler to just let the team go. Let me ask you this, Solo. You’ve had to make some tough calls in your time. Giving up the kidney. Leaving the Navy.”
Oh no. The last thing he wanted was a heart-to-heart with Crush Taylor. “Boss, the bus is going to leave any minute—”
Crush carried on as if he hadn’t said anything. “This town has been good to me. Except for that ice queen of a mayor and some ladies who have morality clauses tattooed on their asses.”
Nice. “Seriously, the bus—”
“If you had a choice between selling the team to a family you’ve hated ever since they put your daddy out of business in second grade, or moving the team to another town that meant nothing to you, what would you do?”
“The Wades did that?”
“That’s a tiny blip on the radar of what the Wades have accomplished here. You know, people thought I was crazy when I took over this team. The previous owner was going to move it out of Kilby, but even though this town’s on the small side, the Catfish get a lot of support here. Sure, I might earn more profit somewhere else. But is profit really that important? The sewage plant makes a nice profit. Maybe I should go run that. Probably less crap to deal with.”
With a laugh, he dug out his silver flask and tipped it toward Mike, as if offering him a sip. Mike shook his head no, and Crush took a long swallow. When he was done, he looked at Mike as if he’d just noticed him. “Don’t you have a bus to catch? What are you doing here shootin’ the shit? The Grizzlies aren’t going to beat themselves.”
To a glare from the driver, Mike jumped onto the chilly, air-conditioned bus, the last one to claim a seat, which meant . . . oh hell, he was right behind Yazmer. Luckily, the pitcher wore mirrored sunglasses, headphones, and a deer hunter cap tilted over his face. No interaction necessary. He settled into his seat with a sigh of relief. For the length of this road trip, he could put thoughts of Donna on the back burner.
“Hey, Solo,” Trevor Stark called from across the aisle, two seats down, as the bus rumbled underway. “Heard you’re a free agent now. Romantically speaking.”
So much for not thinking about Donna. Sweet Jesus, how had word gotten out that quickly? “Did you really just say ‘romantically’? Who are you, Fabio?”
“Fabio wishes he were me. Couple of the guys have been asking about your cute little ex. Just wanted to see if they have the all-clear. If it was me, I wouldn’t bother to ask. But some guys have ‘morals.’ ” Trevor air-quoted the word “morals.”
“Which guys?”
“What does it matter? You’re not with her anymore, right?”
He was saved from answering by a vibration from his phone. Incoming text. He clicked on it. It was from Jean-Luc. Joey in the ER. Come as soon as you can.
Chapter 20
CHICAGO IN THE summer. Sticky, muggy heat radiated from buildings and sidewalks. A gray haze hung outside the windows of Chicago General Hospital. Inside, Mike sat at Joey’s bedside while Jean-Luc slouched against the wall, looking as worn and weary as a cosmopolitan businessman possibly could.
“How long has this been going on?” Mike still couldn’t believe they hadn’t called him earlier.
“Don’t yell at me, little brother. Doctor’s warnings.” Joey looked terrible. His skin hung loosely from his neck, its color a pale puce. Dark circles ringed his eyes.
Mike sank into a chair next to his bed. “I should have been here.”
“To do what? Watch me die?”
He buried his head in his hands. “You’re not going to die.”
“I am, Mike. We all are. I’m just going sooner than anticipated.”
“No. No.” He couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t stand to hear Joey talking this way.
“Listen to me, Michael Xavier Solo. I’m not interested in making a drama here. I just want to spend some time with you. I don’t want recriminations or rendings of clothing. I nearly died four years ago from the E coli. I’m at peace with whatever’s coming.”
Mike glanced at Jean-Luc, who was staring miserably at his loafers. “What about Jean-Luc? Is he at peace with it?”
“It’s harder for him. Don’t make it worse,” Joey said sharply. “Now come on. I want to hear about you. Something good. Something I can think about while . . . while I lie here.”
Something good. Mike’s brain was operating about as well as a plateful of fried worms. What was good in his life? “The PSA is getting a lot of attention.”
Joey brightened. “So I hear. I’ve had to decline all requests for comment, but I’m happy it went over well.”
“It did.”
His mind wandered away from the PSA, toward the conversation with Donna that had inspired it. His brother would love her. He could just imagine him leaning close, pepperi
ng her with questions, eyes shining with the delight of meeting someone new and refreshing. And Donna would have teased him the way she did everyone. She would have become his favorite little sister in the time it took her to give him a nickname.
But he and Donna were through. That was never going to happen.
He realized Joey had asked him a question about the Friars and his chances of getting called up. “Duke thinks it’s a possibility. Their catcher’s got a pulled groin muscle and their reserve catcher’s in a massive slump. Hasn’t gotten a hit in the past twelve games. It’s still early, so they could bring me up to get some games under my belt before things heat up in September.”
“So, it could happen. After all your hard work. Everything you sacrificed.”
“I didn’t sacrifice shit,” Mike said fiercely. “Nothing that mattered.”
“Angela?” Joey asked softly. “You sacrificed her.”
“She made that choice all on her own.” He didn’t want to talk about Angela. In fact, it made him nervous because she volunteered at this very hospital, accompanying Father Kowalski during some of his end-of-life visits. That was one of the reasons he’d fallen so hard for her, that compassionate, angelic side of her.
“Has Angela ever come to visit you here?” he asked abruptly.
“No. Why? I’m sure she knew she wouldn’t be welcome.”
“Just wondered why you wouldn’t qualify for a dose of her saintly presence.”
Jean-Luc spoke from across the room. “I saw her in the cafeteria once. She asked about you, Michael. Asked how you were doing with the team.”
“Oh, I’m sure she cares deeply about that. She told me I’d never make the majors.”
“What?” Joey reacted with more vigor than he had since Mike had arrived. “When was that?”
A nurse tapped on the door, then entered, wheeling a tray with several shrink-wrapped trays of food.
“After she dumped me. One of her reasons was that I couldn’t take care of a family if I didn’t have a career. I told her my plan to switch to baseball and she laughed. Said that was a kid’s dream. Told me to grow up.”
Caught by You Page 20