by Joanne Rock
Damn it, she wouldn’t waste Heath’s time or hers talking to someone who’d already tossed her aside.
“I’ll think about it. But I have to go now.”
With a muttered goodbye, he was gone. Leaving Amber confused and a little off her game. She needed to relax. Play. Enjoy a man who only wanted a good time.
“Is everything okay?” Heath asked her, shoving his own phone back into his pocket. “I asked the cab to wait, but if you have things you need to take care of, I can let him go.”
“No.” Flustered, she gripped the handle of her suitcase and jammed her phone into an exterior pocket, not wanting to answer it again for a long time. “My flight was great and I’m ready to be with you.”
Heath took her suitcase from her and nodded toward the double doors ahead to indicate they should get moving.
“Is that because you are totally enamored with me? Or because Brent was too little too late?”
“All of the above.” She wasn’t surprised he’d overheard. And she had nothing to hide.
“You want to talk about it?” He held the door for her even though he was the one with all the bags.
She had to admire the chivalry.
“There’s not much to talk about. We dated for nine months and I thought we had carved out an intelligent, balanced relationship. He thought I had the emotional quotient of a computer. End of story.”
She slid into the cab he indicated, waiting inside while he gave the bags to the driver. Palm trees and the pastel walls of a nearby parking tower told her they were in California. Otherwise, the airport hummed with the same kind of traffic as any other major hub. Hotel and rental car shuttles vied for the best position near the curb while airport security motioned cars and people to where they belonged.
Eighties tunes played on the cab’s radio, but the young driver turned down the music when he got into the car. Heath directed him to a hotel and they were on their way, cocooned in semiprivacy with the plastic divider closed and cabbie singing along to The Bangles.
“I only picked up the phone, by the way, because I figured it would be you looking for me,” she explained, feeling awkward about the whole business.
Brent had no right to butt into her life after he’d told her they needed time apart. No, after he’d dumped her.
“You don’t believe in caller ID?” Heath asked, picking up her hand where it lay on the seat between them and folding it into his own.
She warmed to his touch. To him. How was it she found him so easy to talk to when she’d been reticent around guys her whole life? She made a mental note to try to find out if he had any secret nerdy tendencies—that might help explain her feeling more at home around him even though she didn’t know about them.
“I was anxious to tell you how cool it was to fly first-class so I just answered the phone and blurted that out, thinking it had to be you on the other end.”
He laughed as the cab pulled out of the final airport exit and out onto a highway that was massive even by Boston standards.
“I’m sorry that wasn’t me on the phone. I would have liked to have had that conversation with you.” His eyes told her that he would like a lot of other things with her, too.
A flutter started in her chest, her breath catching. How did he make her think about getting horizontal with him without even trying?
“I don’t act like myself around you,” she admitted, having lost most of the filters that usually helped her navigate conversation with men. “Usually I check caller ID. I check e-mail. I measure my words. I overthink things. With you I’m really shooting from the hip and I’m not sure why.”
The cab wove through three lanes, dodging and darting around traffic so that she scooted closer to Heath. If they got into an accident, she’d prefer to have her body ejected near his.
“Vacation romance, maybe. That’s why the kids have so much fun on spring break, I hear.” He pointed out the Hollywood sign up on a hill.
“Maybe.” She wasn’t sure at all. “I would have never even considered a vacation fling until recently. Usually, my vacations in the past meant I read for pleasure instead of work.”
“You’re a real wild woman, Amber.” He released her hand to tug on her braid.
“You see my point? I’m so totally not. I would have thought I’d be terrified to be with someone famous and accomplished—”
“Let me stop you right there.” His hand fell to her thigh, and he nudged her whole body to face him. “I’m a divorced, washed-up player trying like hell to stay in the majors. There’s a good chance they’ll boot my butt out the door before the season even ends. I’m just trying to give it one last battle, all the while knowing I need to prepare myself somehow if it all falls apart.”
Flashes of that intensity Rochelle had talked about glittered hard in his eyes. He really saw himself that way. A washed-up player.
“That’s your secret nerdiness.” She should have seen it all along.
“What?” He looked at her as if she’d sprouted an extra head.
“Sorry. I just had been thinking earlier that maybe I relate to you because you have some nerdiness of your own stashed away in that gorgeous exterior. You know how I’m a book dweeb with my matching dust jackets? Well, you’re not exactly a devil-may-care, swing-for the-fences kind of baseball player that saunters in for his five minutes of fame and retires on a fat salary to write a book. You’re a baseball nerd. This sport means everything to you.”
Heath told himself she was babbling. That her lightbulb moment in the back of the cab was cockamamy B.S. and the only reason they really related was hot sex.
But the longer the words rolled around in his head, the more he wondered if she had a point. Not that he could truly speak to the reason she liked him.
And she did—he could tell by the way she moved closer to him whenever he was near. The way her eyes would find him in a crowd with unerring speed, drawn to him as powerfully as his gaze was to her.
No, he wasn’t sure what had made his brainy book reviewer notice him instead of some professor type who knew all about the ancient dance of gender politics and the assorted think-y stuff that interested her.
But he knew she had a point about his lifelong fascination with baseball. He’d never played the sport like a mere game. For him—corny as it sounded—baseball was poetry and a philosophy. An approach to life. It colored his perspective of everything from how he read the newspaper (box scores first) to how he interpreted the weather (rainy years in the Caribbean meant less practice for future prospects and possibly a worse crop of players).
Other guys played the game. They passed through the sport year in and year out, going on to do other things after they left the majors. Heath had adopted a way of life where the world only gave you so many strikeouts. A bad day at bat meant hours in the cage to straighten out your swing.
That was why he couldn’t mess up his last stand as a manager. He had to stay in the sport because it was the only place where life made sense to him. He understood the rules. And somehow, being with Amber while he led his shaky team through a key series felt like the right thing to do. Before he’d met her, he’d gotten ejected from a game because he’d been so damn tense, and that wasn’t serving the greater needs of an uneasy young team that needed leadership. His veteran players were letting him down in that department, so he probably needed to step up and be more of a hard-ass with the younger kids. Basically, he had to have his head together. And Amber made him feel more level than he’d been in a long time.
“I think we’re here,” she pointed out, nodding toward the old-school Beverly Hills hotel that would house the whole team for the next few days. “Sorry if I was out of line about the baseball thing. I’m sure you couldn’t be nerdy if you tried.”
She bit her lip and didn’t try too hard to hide a smile. Ragging on him again.
God, she was a handful. He couldn’t imagine what this wisecracking, honest, sexy woman had ever seen in the stodgy, idiotic Brent back home. She
seemed to have opened her eyes, though. She was here with him in L.A. instead of listening to Mr. Intellectual catalog faults she didn’t have.
If nothing else came of this road stand, Heath planned to make damn sure Amber Nichols knew her own worth. He was just the man to show her how irresistible she was.
10
“OH, MY GOD, that’s Heath Donovan.”
The same phrase, with minor adjustments, was whispered, squealed and hyperventilated throughout the upscale Beverly Hills hotel lobby. Amber must have heard it a dozen times already and they hadn’t even hit the elevator bank yet.
She’d been so busy preparing herself for the new experience of vacationing with a hot guy just for fun—a wild and utterly new venture for her—that she hadn’t thought to steel herself for the scores of female fans eyeing Heath.
As they wheeled bags toward the elevator banks, their room keys already in hand thanks to the advance legwork of the travel administrator, women of all ages paused to swoon. Amber knew they weren’t just looking at Heath. Diego and the rest of the team caught a fair share of admiring stares. But Heath was still a star in his own right, his playing days not so far behind him that he didn’t have a fan following in the lobby. One woman grabbed her girlfriend’s arm and jumped up and down in high heels with the friend’s shoulder for leverage, panting, “Heath, Heath, Heath, oh, my God, it’s Heath,” as they walked by. Amber tensed, debating ducking and running for cover, but Heath gave a terse nod and shouldered right through the crowd, letting one of the team’s assistants deflect the attention.
When Amber and her famous companion entered the elevator, the doors closing them into semiprivacy with the catcher Brody Davis and pitching sensation Jay Cannon, she had to give herself a shake to call back reality.
“You guys have shown me what it means to be invisible,” she announced to no one in particular, surprised not one of them mentioned the hubbub they’d caused. “You would think people in L.A., of all places, would be accustomed to seeing a few famous faces.”
“My wife used to try to smuggle me through a back door when she traveled with me,” the catcher admitted, grinning. “But somewhere along the line she decided she’d rather tattoo herself to my side and march me through the front to make sure the women of the world know I’m taken.”
The gold band around his left ring finger glinted in the fluorescent light as he held the elevator door for someone hopping on the lift on the third floor.
“I don’t even hear it,” the pitcher joined in, pulling free the earbuds he wore, the sound of Metallica evident even four feet away from him. “My dad says to keep your head in the game, not in the fame.”
He tucked the buds back in, and Heath nodded affirmation.
“Wise man.”
He didn’t say any more, however, leaving her in the dark about how he reacted to his apparent legions of admirers.
On the sixth floor, the players piled out with their bags. Heath reminded them to be at the ballpark early the next day and then hit the button to put them up one floor higher. Amber remained silent in the interim since a teenage boy rode with them. At their floor, she stepped into the hall and a new wave of nerves assailed her as she took in the wide hallways of the elegant, Italian Renaissance-themed hotel.
What did she think she was doing with this famous, sought-after man whose career took him all over the country, where women threw themselves at him?
Up until now, she’d avoided those fears since she hadn’t fully appreciated how much of a total woman-magnet he was. But old insecurities ran deep, tied up with fears of being abandoned, fears of letting anyone get too close.
She could simply not afford to grow attached to Heath. As long as she kept her head screwed on straight, she’d be okay.
She hoped she’d be okay.
Heath had opened the door by now and he held it for her, revealing a suite that had probably been featured in world-class travel magazines. The living area where they entered was big enough to host a basketball game. A wide, white stone chimney housed a giant flat-screen television above the hearth. A uniquely arranged bouquet of exotic flowers graced a coffee table near a basket of fruit.
“I’m panicking.” She hated to be a downer, but she figured she might as well cop to the truth since they had a nice honesty thing going between them and she didn’t want to blow it now for the sake of an ego that wasn’t all that rock-solid anyway. “The women, the perks, the first-class… I didn’t really comprehend the lifestyle even though I knew it intellectually.”
Heath set down the suitcases and drew her purse off her arm to set it on a nearby stand. Divested of baggage, he took her shoulders in his hands and looked her in the eye. His Italian silk suit and understated tie bore little resemblance to the T-shirt and jeans he’d been wearing at the bar where they met. French cuffs bore links engraved with the Aces’ logo and a number. His old player number?
Not in a million years would she have risked talking to him if he’d looked like this when they first met.
“We are overpaid and overprivileged,” he told her. “It’s not right that a man can make more than the Gross National Product of a Third World country just because he can throw a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball or hit off a left-handed pitcher. But that’s the reality of the game and the value other people place on a narrow skill set. It doesn’t make sense, and I know that.”
“You do?” She hadn’t expected him to tackle the issue head-on—and with such a self-deprecating perspective—but there it was. Groundedness. Maturity. “I can see why you make a really good manager. I’ll bet it’s healthy for your players to be reminded of that sometimes because this—” she gestured to the well-appointed room “—could go to people’s heads.”
“It can and does. And, yeah, I like to think I bring some hard-won wisdom to that dugout, but unfortunately, it takes a hell of a lot more than that to be a successful manager.”
The panic eased, her worries seeming kind of superficial next to his. He really wanted this job to work, really needed it to, from what he’d explained in the cab. For him, baseball wasn’t about the groupies—damn it, she of all people should know that. It meant everything to him.
“You really think you’ll only get this one season to prove yourself?” She would have hated to work in a field where you had so little time to grow your talent.
“Most definitely.” His hands smoothed over her shoulder and then moved lightly down her back, as if he could rub out the rest of her nervousness and transition her to another level, a tension deliciously different from the stress she’d been feeling. “The sport has the potential for big earnings, but it only rewards the smallest fraction of a percent who are at the top of their game.”
“Sounds stressful.”
“It takes a lot of competitive drive.” His fingers rode down her spine in soft circles until she swayed closer. But then, his massage faltered and she felt him tense. “It cost me my marriage.”
She straightened, curious. He’d mentioned being divorced that first night in the bar, but she hadn’t been paying much attention. At the time, she’d just been relieved to know he wasn’t married, given how they’d been flirting.
“What happened?” She didn’t want to think about him caving to the temptations of the road. She could only imagine how aggressive the women would have been back in his playing days if they were this assertive now when he walked through a lobby with another female on his arm.
“Too much time apart. I had to be away for eighty-one games a year in twenty-six or twenty-seven different cities, give or take. Add to that the travel days to get there and back, plus sometimes heading straight from one city to another for a long stretch on the road.” He shrugged and the helpless gesture made him look less like the slick manager and more like a normal guy just as confused as anyone else about how to hash out a relationship.
“She didn’t want to travel with you?”
“It was too much time on the road for her. The season starts when pitchers and
catchers report to spring training in the middle of February. Then, if you make the playoffs, you’re playing into November. Basically, by the time I was done, she was so fed up we hardly talked over the holidays.”
“That would wear on a relationship.” And, not that Amber would dare to ever think about Heath in those terms, it would devastate someone like her who would always worry about infidelity and being left behind. Her own father had checked out on her, for crying out loud. What reason would she have to trust a boyfriend?
That was why she tended to go for men who approached relationships intellectually. She figured guys who looked at commitment through rational, practical eyes would be more likely to stay for the long haul.
“It did. Big-time.” Heath shook his head and seemed to will away bad memories. “But I don’t want to bring you down. That’s been over for three years and I don’t have feelings for her anymore other than regret. Besides, I brought you here to have fun.”
She nodded, wondering how to separate the baggage from his past and his fame from their time together. Heck, she had a tough enough time untangling herself from Brent, apparently, since he was still calling. Not to mention, her feelings for Heath grew more complicated by the hour.
“It was all good while I was still operating under the champagne buzz from the airline service in first-class.” She’d only been focused on the fun side of her impulsive decision to come with him then. Now, she felt her tendency to overthink things creeping back into her head.
“I’ll bet you I can bring the buzz back.” He brushed a kiss along her forehead, and the contact spurred several ideas for her.
She couldn’t help but appreciate how easily he could make her whirlwind of thoughts grind to a feel-good stop. Her hands landed on the hard plank of his chest, the muscles honed from a lifetime of athleticism. She would take him at his word about what he wanted and not let anything else get in the way, damn it.
“I think I’m already humming pleasantly inside, now that you mention it.”