Straight from the Heart

by Tami Hoag

  “Whatever you say, sweetheart.” Jace stepped off the bed and sauntered toward the bedroom door as naked as the day he was born.

  Wild-eyed, Rebecca jumped in front of him, plastering her back against the door. “For heaven’s sake, put some clothes on! I said to distract her, not give her a coronary!”

  “You’re the expert,” he said, his warm gaze traveling the length of her, taking in her long legs and white silk tap pants. He planted a hand on either side of her head and leaned toward her until their lips practically brushed when he spoke. “You sure know how to distract me.”

  Rebecca closed her eyes against the involuntary surge of desire his nearness evoked, and groaned in frustration. It was all she could do to keep from running her fingers through his chest hair. Sometimes she thought her weakness for him was more dangerous than any chemical addiction. It was certainly as strong. “Jace…”

  “Okay,” he said, running a forefinger along the sleek line of her jaw. “I’ll get dressed. I’ll behave myself. You have to give me a good-morning kiss first.”

  The look she leveled at him was patently unamused.

  “Just a little one,” he said with a sweet smile. He brushed her hair back behind her ear. “You don’t want to make me feel like a cheap one-night stand, do you?”

  “Heaven forbid.” Rebecca’s tone was dry, but her eyes twinkled.

  Wrapping her arms around his neck, she tilted her head up and kissed him, fully expecting him to try again to lure her back to bed. When he didn’t, when he kept the kiss tender, she was surprised. She searched his face and was stricken yet again by the age in those indigo eyes she knew so well.

  “I don’t think I thanked you for staying with me yesterday,” he said softly. “I don’t just mean last night. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “I wasn’t sure how you would feel about me after meeting Casey.”

  “I love you,” she said, amazed by how simple those words sounded. There was nothing simple at all about her relationship with Jace or the feelings that tangled inside her, leaving her feeling uncertain.

  “Past mistakes and all?” he asked.

  “We can’t change the past,” she said sadly. How much easier their lives would have been had they been able to go back in time. She could have been spared a broken heart. Jace could have been spared a broken life.

  Rebecca couldn’t change the past, nor was she willing to forget it, Jace thought. She might have been in love with him, but she still had reservations about him. He could see it in her eyes. He could hear the subtle edge in her voice that asked him not to probe too deeply or push too hard.

  “Maybe we should talk about the future, then,” he said, knowing he was crossing a line, knowing she would back away from the issue. Funny, he thought, he’d never considered himself a masochist.

  Rebecca gave him a look designed to be teasing, but she wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I think we’re a little underdressed to have a serious discussion.”

  Jace glanced down. She had a point. It was difficult to have an important talk standing naked while one’s landlady played a tango on the organ in the hall. Maybe this wasn’t the right time for their talk. He could content himself to going on with Rebecca as they were for a while, giving her time to come to trust him, giving her time to see the love he was offering now wasn’t a shallow imitation but the genuine article—straight from his heart.

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said, stepping back. He picked her skirt up off a chair and handed it to her. “Here. You’ll be less conspicuous sneaking out if people can’t see your underwear.”

  She pulled his briefs off the doorknob and tossed them to him with a wry smile. “And you’ll be less conspicuous if people can’t see your…attributes.”

  They dressed quickly, hoping Muriel would quit practicing and go to the kitchen for her daily dose of oatmeal and stewed prunes. To their dismay, she played on and on with exceptional enthusiasm, going through her entire repertoire. Jace and Rebecca sat on the fainting couch in his sitting room playing “Name That Tune” as they waited.

  Finally the last few bars of “A Groovy Kind of Love” faded away. Jace went to the door and stuck his head out, then drew it back in.

  “The coast is clear.”

  “I’d better make a break for it,” Rebecca said, clutching her sandals in her hand.

  “Kiss me good-bye first.” Jace snatched her against him and gave her a quick, hard kiss. “I love you. I’ll see you later. Hugh and I are going to try to work the bugs out of Merlin this afternoon.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

  When Jace pulled the door open, Rebecca turned and tiptoed out into the hall—directly into the path of her father. For an instant they both froze. Then each jumped back, staring at the other in wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock.

  Hugh stood there in his stocking feet with his shoes dangling from one hand. Muriel stood behind him, her pudgy cheeks as red as ripe tomatoes. She couldn’t have looked any guiltier had she been holding a smoking gun in her hand. Rebecca was so stunned, she dropped her sandals. A cat jumped out from behind an umbrella stand and ran away with one.

  “Dad!” she exclaimed belatedly.

  “Daughter!” Hugh said with a gasp, his face flaming red.

  “Oooohhh…kitty litter,” Muriel muttered, her dimpled hand clutching and unclutching Chester’s fur until the gray cat howled a protest and jumped out of her arms.

  It was fairly obvious to Rebecca that her father and Muriel Marquardt had spent the night…together. When she’d told Jace that Hugh and Muriel had fun together, she hadn’t realized just what kind of fun. It was Fun, the grown-up kind, the romantic kind. Her father and Muriel the cat lady were having a fling!

  Not quite knowing how she should react, Rebecca glanced back over her shoulder. Jace leaned lazily in the doorway of his sitting room with a big grin on his face, obviously finding the situation wildly amusing. He waved to Hugh and Muriel. “Good morning, everyone. How about those Mavericks?”

  The Mishawaka Mavericks had to rank among the most hapless teams in the history of the great game of baseball. Other teams set the league championship as their goal for the season. The Mavericks aspired to nothing more than mediocrity. Most people agreed, they set their sights too high.

  The Mavericks were a team of has-beens, would-bes, and misfits. Their players were too small, too old, too slow, too green, too weird. They had a left fielder who would have been great except for a nervous condition that made him hyperventilate and pass out along about the sixth inning. They had Pat Wylie, a former big-league catcher whose arm was shot. They had Turk Lacey, who had a smoking fast-ball and a talking hand puppet.

  The Mavericks were something out of the twilight zone of sport. Their defense had more holes than Swiss cheese. Their team batting average lingered pathetically around a buck ninety-eight. While their neighboring team in South Bend drew legitimate crowds, the Mavericks’ fans followed them as a source of comic relief.

  Jace was introduced into the lineup in June. With Rebecca keeping a watchful eye on him, he resisted the urge to rush back into the game full force. He knew he risked injuring himself again if he pushed his knee too hard, but he was eager to prove himself. Lacing on his spikes meant his comeback was under way. One of the goals he had set for himself following his accident was within reach, and he wanted to reach for it with all he had.

  Rebecca monitored his progress with mixed feelings. The professional in her wanted to help Jace achieve his goal, to bring him back from his injury as quickly as was medically prudent, to keep him in top form so he could return to his former level of play. The woman in her was not so eager for that to happen. She caught herself being overly cautious in his therapy because a part of her didn’t want him to go back to baseball. Baseball had taken him away from her once. It would do so again.

  Their personal relationship had reached a plateau. They saw each other regularly. They were friends. They were love
rs. They had yet to have that talk about the future. Rebecca studiously avoided the topic. She told herself that if Jace made no promises, then neither of them could feel badly if things didn’t work out in the end. Somehow the thought didn’t offer much comfort.

  So they went on in a kind of limbo through the summer. They spent as much time together as their demanding schedules would allow. The Mavericks’ road trips often kept them apart for days at a time. When Jace was in town, his free time was divided among Rebecca, Justin, Hugh, and his inventions, and Muriel and the gradual renovation of her house. But for the most part, his focus was on baseball.

  Unfortunately for the Mavericks, Jace’s intensity was not reflected in their record. One talented, dedicated player couldn’t win games when there were eight other guys on the field to mess things up.

  “The big question is, can they keep up their record-setting pace?” Dominique asked as the group took their seats in the box Jace had reserved for them along the third-base line. “The Mavericks have a shot at the all-time Class A record for games lost in a season.”

  “I have complete faith in them,” Dr. Cornish announced, adjusting his royal blue cap to cover his growing bald spot.

  “Will you listen to that Muriel play?” Hugh said dreamily, as if “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” were a love ballad.

  “Mom, look! It’s Uncle Jace!” Justin hung over the railing, waving his oversize fielder’s glove at Jace.

  Jace glanced over, waved, and grinned at them, then turned his attention back to the warm-up routine. He snagged a throw from the first baseman and rifled it to second. Rebecca watched him with respect and awe for his athletic ability. Even with a brace on his knee, his every move was marked by an innate sense of grace and power. And he looked great in pinstripes too.

  She shook her head in amazement as she studied his uniform. The team couldn’t even manage to get their outfits right. The royal blue logo sewn across the front of their shirts was missing the “s.” It read “Maverick.” Apparently no one cared enough to fix them.

  As the rest of the team straggled toward the dugout, Jace trotted across the warning track toward the stands, his heart swelling in his chest at the sight of Rebecca and Justin waiting for him, smiling at him. Not even knocking Gooden’s fast-ball out of the park in the ’88 All-Star game had felt as good.

  Rebecca was a vision in a silky salmon-colored tank top and a loose-flowing summer skirt that was white with salmon-colored flowers on it. Justin was adorable with his gap-toothed grin and oversize Mavericks’ cap. As he approached the railing, Jace reached up and tugged the boy’s cap down over his eyes.

  “Hi, sport. Want me to knock one out of the park for you today?”

  Justin yanked his cap back up and stared at Jace as if he were Santa Claus. “Would you, Uncle Jace? That would be so cool!”

  “I’ll try.” Jace turned and pointed toward the left field fence. “See that sign for the Studebaker Museum? I’ll aim for that.” He looked up at Rebecca with warm blue eyes. “How about you, beautiful? Anything I can do for you?”

  “Come out of the game in one piece,” she said, laughing.

  “No sweat.” He smiled. “I’ve got the greatest physical therapist in the world, you know.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yep. You know what else?” he asked, beckoning her to lean over the railing so he could whisper in her ear. “She’s fantastic in the sack too.”

  The flush that stained Rebecca’s cheeks matched the roses blooming in the fabric of her skirt.

  “You should have worn a hat,” Jace said, teasing. “I think you’re getting a sunburn.”

  He winked at her, waved to the rest of the group in the box, and jogged away.

  “I’d turn pink, too, if I had him whispering sweet nothings in my ear,” Dominique said, crossing her long, bare legs. She wore a yellow romper that displayed her dark complexion to perfection. A straw hat shaded her exotic face from the afternoon sun.

  Rebecca’s expression was wistful as she watched Jace join his teammates. Sweet nothings weren’t what she wanted to hear from him, and yet she was the one keeping him from saying what her heart longed for.

  From the first it was vintage Mavericks baseball. Outfielders collided into one another and dropped fly balls. The second baseman threw a ball into the stands on a double play attempt and beaned a priest. The score was six to nothing at the end of five and a half innings. Jace had gotten two hits but had been left stranded on base both times. The most entertaining part of the game when the Mavericks were at bat was watching their batboy—Merlin the robot.

  Jace had dressed Merlin up in a catcher’s chest protector and taped a Mavericks’ cap to the robot’s bubble head. The little machine bustled up to home plate as Jace was warming up in the on-deck circle, shooed the umpire and catcher out of the way, and proceeded to clean the plate with a hand vacuum.

  The laughter of the crowd segued into cheers as Jace stepped into the batter’s box. He was the team’s only bright spot, and he didn’t disappoint his followers. He took a two-and-one pitch down-town—popping it over the sign for the Studebaker Museum on the left field fence. As he rounded third base, he grinned and waved to a wildly cheering Justin and Rebecca.

  At the top of the sixth, the left fielder started breathing into a paper bag between pitches. He had to be assisted from the field by his hypnotist when he dropped a pop fly, allowing a run to score. Not long after that, Turk Lacey was called in from the bull pen to take over on the pitcher’s mound.

  After throwing two smoking strikes, he threw three wild pitches—one of which bounced off Merlin, making the robot light up and spin around. The batter warded off the sixth pitch, hitting it in self-defense—right back at Turk. Turk caught the ball, turned, and for no earthly reason fired it to third base, catching Jace a glancing blow off the head.

  Rebecca’s heart shot to her throat as Jace went down like a felled tree. Before she even realized what she was doing, she was over the railing and running toward him. She pushed her way through the circle of teammates who stood around him, glancing from the groaning Jace to Turk Lacey.

  “Jace!” With no regard for her skirt, she knelt in the dirt beside him and pulled his cap off. An angry red abrasion marked the spot where the ball had scraped his temple. Every ounce of medical knowledge she possessed flew out of her head. All she could think of was that she loved him and he was out, cold as a mackerel. What if he never woke up? Tears pooled in her eyes.

  “Geez, Spacy,” Jerome Tarvin said, peeling off his cap and running his fingers back through his greasy black pompadour, “why’d you have to go and bean the only decent player we’ve got?”

  Turk’s bushy mustache twitched worriedly beneath his goose-beak nose.

  The team’s manager joined the group as Dr. Cornish knelt by Jace. “Is he okay, Doc?”

  “I don’t know.” Dr. Cornish took Jace’s pulse and lifted one eyelid to check the response of his pupil to light. “Jace? Jace, can you hear me?”

  Jace opened his eyes but couldn’t quite focus them as he looked at the doctor. “Would that I were a glove upon thine hand that I might touch thy cheek,” he recited in stilted tones. “Did I get all the words right this time, Mrs. Brutworg?”

  Dr. Cornish looked up at the manager. “He’s been knocked silly.”

  Rebecca bit her lip and stroked Jace’s hair. “Jace, sweetheart, it’s me, Becca.”

  “Becca.” He smiled inanely as he continued staring at Dr. Cornish. “Will you go to the prom with me?”

  Tears spilled down her cheeks as they helped him up and walked him to the dugout and down the hall to the locker room.

  “I’m all right,” Jace protested as he took a seat on a rubbing table in the trainer’s room, which was located between the locker area and the showers. He shook his head to clear it, then winced and cradled it in his hands as it began to throb.

  “Where are you?” Dr. Cornish asked calmly as he checked Jace’s reflexes.

 
; “The locker room in Mishawaka.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Jace Cooper.”

  “Do you think the Kings will have a decent shot at the pennant?”

  “Well—”

  “Stop it!” Rebecca shrieked.

  Both men turned to stare at her, stunned right down to their socks. Rebecca never shrieked. She couldn’t remember ever having a totally irrational moment in her life. Well, she was having one now.

  She threw a wet towel at Dr. Cornish. “How can you ask such a stupid question when Jace could have a concussion? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. Rebecca, he’s going to be just fine.” The doctor spoke to her slowly and carefully, as if he thought she were dangerously unbalanced and would go stark raving mad at the slightest provocation. “There’s no sign of a concussion.”

  Jace motioned Dr. Cornish toward the door as Rebecca started crying in earnest. The doctor shrugged and beat a hasty retreat.

  Easing himself off the table, Jace took Rebecca gently in his arms. She buried her nose against the shoulder of his dusty uniform and sobbed.

  “You scared me half to death!”

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Jace said sincerely. He stroked her ebony hair and offered her comfort.

  “Why’d I have to go and fall in love with you?” she asked angrily. “You make me crazy. I’m never crazy.”

  “No, sweetheart,” Jace murmured, kissing her ear, “you’re never crazy.”

  “Why’d I have to fall for a man with such a dangerous occupation?”

  “Baseball isn’t dangerous, honey. This was a freak accident.”

  She scowled up at him. “This team is a freak accident.”

  “You’ll get no argument about that,” Jace said. “With any luck, I won’t be playing with this team much longer.”

  Rebecca let her head fall back onto his shoulder again. For a long moment she didn’t say anything, just leaned against him, listening to the showers dripping in the next room. When she did speak, it was a truth she hadn’t wanted to reveal to him.