Wedding Homerun in Loveland, Ohio

by Cathy Liggett

  Hopefully, her mom wouldn’t notice she’d been crying. The last thing she needed was to listen to her mother right now. But … as she shut the car door and walked up the drive, she wondered if she should’ve listened to Allie.

  True, in the end she’d done what she thought was right—what first came to her heart. But oh, how it hurt. Oh, how it felt so wrong!

  Chapter 18

  Even with all the people swarming around his farm for Volunteer Day, and even though he was bent over a makeshift worktable involved in making a wooden booth from scratch, Mac could still sense exactly where Megan was at all moments.

  They’d barely said a polite hello to one another when she’d first arrived with Sammy and her parents. Quick as they could manage, they’d gone their separate ways busying themselves with all there was to do with All-Stars Sports Day just a week away. The problem was, even hours later, he could still feel her presence as if she were tethered to him.

  Unfortunately, where Megan was concerned, he had a natural sixth sense about her. Similar to the sixth sense he’d had on the pitcher’s mound where he could easily pick off runners who were trying to steal bases behind his back.

  Only with Megan, it was far worse. There was no reprieve. No three strikes and batter’s out, with a time to rest during the next half inning. Instead, the feelings didn’t stop. Making it super difficult to concentrate on all the pieces of wood strewn around him while he could perceive her traipsing across his property, helping out the groups of volunteers. And making it much harder than it needed to be to construct a simple, last-minute balloon stand, especially when all he really wanted to do was reach out for her—which apparently was exactly what she didn’t want from him.

  Much as he couldn’t stand it, as he bent over his work his mind was totally focused on her and clearly not on the task at—

  Hand!

  “Ah, for the love of Pete!” He shot up straight, flicking his hand in the air, trying to shake the pain from his thumb.

  “It works a lot better when you hit the nail with your hammer. Not your thumb,” a male voice came up from behind, razzing him.

  Mac craned his neck around to see. “Thanks, Dan,” he grumbled, too irritated to greet the older man any other way. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  “Hurt much?”

  It hurts something awful, he wanted to say. But, of course, Dan was talking about his thumb and not everything else that was aching inside of him.

  “Only when you keep talking about it.” He slung back a gruff retort. Too gruff. But Dan let it slide. He only chuckled.

  “Place is crawling with volunteers, Mac.”

  “It is at that,” Mac agreed. He rubbed his sore thumb on the leg of his jeans before bending back over his project. “Lots of them here today.” And he was particularly glad there was assigned staff to coordinate the entire group so he could be off working on his own projects, on his own time, and in his own space. As it was, he wasn’t in any mood to have to act diplomatic and pleasant with the rest of the world.

  “You and Megan have done a great job organizing this event. I can already see it’s going to be tip-top,” Dan complimented. “Next Saturday is going to be unforgettable for a lot of kids and their parents. Yeah …” Mac glanced up from his hammering for a moment to see Dan looking around, sizing up the surroundings where many of the booths and activities were already in place. “You and Megan make a good team for sure.”

  Good team. Yeah, right … He’d said the same thing to her the night they’d first kissed. So much for that kind of thinking.

  “Whatever.” He shrugged and turned back to something far simpler for his mind to figure out—the two-by-fours and nails. But Dan wouldn’t let it go.

  “Well, you do,” he insisted. “You two are a perfect pair togeth—”

  “Oh jumpinjehoshaphat!” Mac yelped, dropping the hammer, grabbing onto his throbbing thumb once again.

  Dan sniggered. “Lucky for me, I was just about to offer to hold the board for you. You’re kind of dangerous today. You okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay. It’s just a hammer.”

  “I mean you and Megan. Are you and Megan O’Donnell okay?”

  “Me and Megan?” Shaking his head, Mac bent over to pick up the hammer he’d thrown on the grass. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Really? Because I saw Megan the other day at the clinic, and she was doing the same thing. Trying to avoid talking about you the same way you’re trying to avoid talking about her. So, what did I do?” Dan cocked his head, tucking his thumbs into the brown belt holding up his baggy blue jeans. “I put one and one together.”

  “You mean you put two and two together.”

  “No. I mean, one and one. Making two. You two. You and Megan. I’ve seen the way you act around each other at the meetings. First there was this rivalry between you both.” He chuckled. “That was amusing to watch. But for a long time now, things have been different. I definitely think there’s something going on between you and Megan. In fact, I know there is. After all, I might be growing old and senile—but I’m not an idiot.”

  Mac felt his insides uncoil a bit at Dan’s self-deprecating comment. “Nothing senile about you, Dan. You’re one of the smartest men I know.”

  “Yeah. I know, I know.” Dan laughed. “I was only saying that to try to get you to smile. But … since that didn’t work, maybe I can get you to talk. Would you rather talk some?”

  “Trust me, Dan. There’s nothing to talk about, and I’ve got to get this booth built pronto. There’s a crew of volunteers waiting to paint it.”

  “Okay, you don’t want to talk? Fine. I’m here. I volunteered. I can risk my life and stand and hold the boards for you. We don’t need to talk.”

  But that promise didn’t last long. As soon as Dan shuffled around to the end of the boards Mac was nailing together, he started up again.

  “What do you think about the Hawks?” he asked over Mac’s pounding. “They’re doing pretty good in this series with the Sox.”

  “Haven’t been following it.”

  “Haven’t been following the Hawks?” Mac detected amazement in Dan’s voice even over the noisy clash of the hammer.

  “Nope. Not really.”

  “Why do you think that is? Because you still have a bum elbow? Because you don’t think you’ll be playing again?”

  “No. My elbow is perfect. No pain while I’m hammering. See.” Mac stopped long enough to stretch his arm, twisting it every which way. “It’s fine.”

  “Well, now.” Dan’s chest inflated and a genuine, broad smile filled his face as if he had something to do with Mac’s recovery. “That’s something to celebrate!”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I thought about celebrating,” he said, his mind trying hard to block out thoughts of Megan again. As if it was possible.

  “But then?”

  “But then …” He puffed out a disgusted sigh. “Okay. You’re right about Megan. Yeah, we’ve been, well, together. Really together. I’ve never met anyone like her. I’ve never felt this way, and …” He stopped, suddenly wondering why he was telling the old man so much. Wondering why, too, it felt good to be doing it. “Bottom line, I was going to tell Megan. She was the only person I really wanted to tell.”

  “And then …” Dan urged him on.

  “Nothing ‘and then.’ She came by last night and pretty much said we were over. Just like that.”

  “Hmmph.” Dan’s white-tipped, wiry eyebrows narrowed into one long stripe. “She threw you a curveball, huh?”

  “Seriously, Dan? A baseball pun? Not really in the mood for baseball puns right now.”

  Dan’s shoulders scrunched upward in apology. “I didn’t mean for it to be a pun, Mac. It’s more of a saying than a pun, I think. A colloquialism.” He paused, as if to consider that fact before he pried more. “Did you try to call her and ask her why?”

  “Are you kidding?” Mac grabbed the joined boards, laying them aside. Reaching
for the next pair of boards to be nailed, he could feel the anger—and well, hurt—surging through his veins again. “Look, I’ve done everything to show her I care. Everything. For her and for Sammy. And if she can’t see it or feel it—or whatever—I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Oh, I get it.” Dan nodded. “It’s the pride thing.”

  Mac ground his teeth. “No, not the pride thing,” he objected, even though everything inside him was working to tamp down the idea that it might be a 100 percent true. “It’s the right thing,” he argued instead. “She wants me to leave her alone? Fine, I’ll obey her wishes. Even took her number out of my phone so I wouldn’t be tempted to call her.”

  “So after you got mad, and deleted her number from your phone, then what did you do?”

  “What did I do?” Mac felt his jaw drop a foot. “Dan, are you not hearing me? I did nothing. That’s what she wants. That’s what I did. Nothing. If she wants to talk to me, she’ll have to call.”

  What else could he do? He’d woken up two mornings ago like he’d been waking up for months now, thinking of Megan. And of Sammy. Thinking the three of them were—a team—a pact—a something. Thinking they were on their way to becoming a unit. A family, hopefully. And then to find out Megan wasn’t feeling the same way … it left a hole in his heart, far bigger than the entire Hawks’ baseball stadium.

  Oh great. He shook his head at himself. Now he was conjuring up stupid baseball references. Lame! He dug into his work apron for a half dozen nails.

  “Well, you could’ve at least prayed,” Dan piped up. “Have you done that? Have you prayed about it?”

  “Pray about it? Of course I’ve—” Mac stopped mid-sentence, his thoughts churning while a new kind of heat flamed his neck, his cheeks. Embarrassment.

  He hadn’t prayed, had he? He’d only kept asking why. That really wasn’t much of a prayer, was it? It was more like a theme for a pity party.

  “You know, your Uncle Jake, God rest his soul, had a saying.”

  “I think I know what you’re going to say, Dan.”

  “The one about—if your problem is big enough for you to be troubled by, it’s big enough to pray about. But if it’s not big enough to pray about, you shouldn’t be troubled by it.”

  “Yeah, I remember. And, well, believe me, I’m very troubled.”

  Mac suddenly sensed Megan’s presence even more, as if she were so close, right behind him. Looking up toward the house, he saw her there, her form outlined behind the curtain as she stood by the kitchen window. “Of course, praying … I mean, it still doesn’t mean she’ll change her mind, does it?”

  Dan shook his head sympathetically. “I don’t have all the answers, my friend. I can only suggest you go to the One who does.”

  Megan was glad when Wendy asked her to help retrieve the sandwiches the sub shop had donated for the volunteers’ lunches from inside Mac’s house. Quickly depositing Sammy with her mom, she was happy to escape the great outdoors and head in. Mostly because no matter which field she found herself in or which booth she helped with, she couldn’t get far enough away from Mac and the feelings for him that kept welling up inside her.

  But then, what was she thinking? Because standing at Mac’s kitchen sink, washing her hands, didn’t offer any relief from thoughts of him either. She had to force herself not to pull back the thin cotton curtain to glimpse at him while he hammered away at his project. Had to mindfully tell herself “no, no—and no” since everything inside her felt so drawn to him.

  And, why hadn’t it occurred to her how vulnerable she’d feel being in his house again, anyway? Especially in the kitchen surrounded by his familiar everyday things—his oversized olive green coffee mug, his baseball cap lying on the oak kitchen table alongside a folded morning newspaper.

  And then, there were the more than ordinary things that permeated the area like lingering, taunting ghosts—the memories of being there with him sharing an evening. A meal. Laughing with him and Sammy over something silly. Not to mention how she could almost feel the way it used to feel when he’d come up behind her as she stood at the sink and he’d place playful kisses at the nape of her neck, sending shivers and tingles all the way up to her—”The guys from the sub shop put the drinks for the volunteers over there.” Wendy’s slight Kentucky accent snapped her out of her reverie. Thankfully!

  Megan turned from the window to see her pointing to a row of Styrofoam coolers lining one side of the kitchen wall.

  “And I’m crossin’ my fingers all fifty sandwiches are in the fridge just like the sub shop guys promised me they’d be.” The door squeaked as Wendy opened the refrigerator and peered inside. “Yes ma’am. They’re here, all right,” she said. “Plenty of room for them, too. Doesn’t that poor Mac ever do any grocery shopping? Or know how to cook a supper or two?” She peered over the refrigerator door. Clearly amused, her eyes twinkled at Megan. “You need to teach that boy his way around the kitchen.”

  Megan was surprised the refrigerator could be as empty as Wendy was saying. It’d always been stocked when she and Sammy used to come over. “He makes a really good pizza from scratch….” she murmured, wondering why she felt a sudden urge to defend him.

  But Wendy barely heard her. She was already back to business, as usual. “Now I’m thinkin’ all we need are some baskets. Or a couple of trays to carry the subs outside to the picnic tables.”

  Wordlessly, Megan moved over to the island and bent down, pulling open the cabinet doors. She sifted through the items stored there, pots and pans clanging together, making a racket until she finally retrieved two metal cookie sheets.

  “How about these?” She rose up with the pair in her hands.

  “Great. You want to hold ‘em while I load ‘em up?”

  “Sure,” she said lightly, even though she felt an instant heaviness come over her.

  It wasn’t that it was hard to stand and hold cookie sheets, by any means. It was just that it weighed on her sadly, recalling how she’d put the cookie sheets to use one rainy night. Mac had pulled Sammy’s wheelchair up to the kitchen table and the two of them sat there, working on a model car together. Meanwhile, she had happily busied herself making chocolate chip cookies. It felt so right, the three of them together like that.

  Luckily though, Wendy’s chatting distracted her from memories again. “Is Mac doing some major renovations in here? It sure appears that way,” she commented. Looking up from her task of mechanically placing subs on the tray, she nodded at the huge sheets of plastic draped through different parts of the living room. “What all is he doing?”

  “He’s making some of the rooms bigger and hallways wider and …” Megan shrugged, her eyes downcast, watching the pyramid of sub sandwiches grow on the sheet. “Just doing some general remodeling, I guess.”

  She and Mac had never talked in any great detail about the renovations. He’d always been somewhat vague, like he simply planned to give the place an overhaul—a facelift. She’d never really thought to question him beyond that. It wasn’t her place to as far as she was concerned, and honestly, she wasn’t that interested. They’d always had so many other things to talk about.

  “His Uncle Jake lived here for a long time,” she explained to Wendy. “So I think he wanted to make a few improvements here and there. Which is good, I guess, especially if Mac ever needs to move out of state and put the house up for sale.”

  The thought had come to her just as she said the words out loud. Had that been in the back of Mac’s mind all along? The truth of the possibility jolted her full force, jerking her head back on her shoulders. Evidently Wendy had the same sort of reaction. Her head shot up out of the cold cavern.

  “Move? Sell? Why would he do that? Now that his elbow has been cleared, he’ll be back playing with the Hawks next season, won’t he?”

  Mac’s elbow was cleared? The cookie sheet suddenly dipped from Megan’s grasp, causing the stack of subs to skitter across—and almost off—the metal tray.

  �
�Whoa. Is that thing getting heavy?” Wendy reached out to upright the sheet.

  “No. It’s—it’s fine.”

  And Mac’s elbow was fine. He’d been cleared. Something she’d never doubted would happen. In fact, it was exactly what was supposed to happen—Mac getting back to playing ball again. Still, the news—hearing that it was for real—threw her insides totally off-kilter.

  “That’s twenty-five sandwiches anyway,” Wendy was saying. “I’d say we’re ready for the second cookie sheet.”

  In a haze, Megan walked over to the island and slid the full cookie sheet off the top of the other one and onto the counter. Keeping the remaining empty sheet in her hands, she moved back over to the refrigerator, standing like a sentry once more.

  “How did you find out?” she asked Wendy. “About Mac’s elbow, I mean.”

  “Oh, he mentioned it to Ted this morning,” Wendy told her, leaning into the refrigerator, pulling out handfuls of subs. “When we first got here. He also invited Ted to go to the Hawks’ game with him this Thursday night. Guess he’d planned to go with someone else,” she chatted, hands moving the whole time. “But the plans fell through, and—okay—” She stood up to her full height. “That’s it for the subs. That’s the last twenty-five.” She shut the refrigerator door then paused. “Hey, wait a minute. Weren’t you supposed to go with Mac? Didn’t ya’ll mention that at one of the meetings? They’re announcing the event at the game, right?”

  “Yeah, but I just—can’t.” Megan tried to avert her eyes from Wendy’s. “I’m glad Ted gets to go though.”

  She didn’t want to share the reason why, and Wendy was kind enough not to press her.

  “Oh, Ted is thrilled. He gets to meet all the players and everything. I’m so sure I’ll be hearing about it all for days and days.”

  For a moment, it filled her mind—the hurt look in Mac’s eyes when she told him she couldn’t go with him. And then, when she told him … Well, she didn’t even want to think about it. Didn’t want to remember the way he looked at her. Confused. Hurt. Disgusted. She couldn’t blame him for any of it. But now he’d be playing ball again. Now it would be all good for him again. She knew it would….