On the Mend (Carolina Waves Series Book 1)

by Tina Gallagher

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Dan McMullen apologizing for saying damn.

  “Lexi’s my language patrol,” he explained.

  I looked back at her and smiled. “You must have your work cut out for you.”

  “It’s not so bad anymore.”

  “I try to behave,” Dan said.

  “Sometimes he forgets after a long road trip if I’m not with him, but he’s usually pretty good.”

  I had to remind myself that these words of wisdom are coming from an eight-year-old.

  Dan glanced over at me. “I don’t say anything really bad anymore.”

  “Lexi is obviously doing a fine job.”

  I shouldn’t have come. This outing was a big mistake. Instead of focusing my attention on Lexi like I’m supposed to be doing, more often than not, I find myself watching Dan. His patience with the girls is amazing, and they obviously adore him. Then again, they are female.

  “Hey Bri.”

  Dan’s booming voice broke into my thoughts. I looked up and he waved his arm in a “come here” gesture. How can he look so sexy and virile with a brace on his leg, a crutch supporting his weight, and twelve eight-year-old girls surrounding him?

  The short walk from my place on the bleachers to the field seemed to take forever. The women on the other set of bleachers whispered as I walked away. I wondered how many of them Dan has been with.

  “You beckoned?”

  He looked at me for a moment before answering. “Would you be willing to pitch some batting practice for the girls here?”

  “Batting practice?”

  He nodded and scratched his jaw with his thumb. “Our usual practice pitcher is out of town and George here isn’t so good at it.” Dan gestured toward the man in question then took the opportunity to introduce us. “I obviously can’t do it,” he added, his eyes gazing at me with an exaggerated plea. “So whaddya say? Think you can still do it?”

  “Got an extra glove?”

  Dan handed me his and smiled. “Okay girls, take your positions. Megan,” he pointed at an adorable red-head, “you’re up.” He leaned toward me and whispered, “Go easy on them, Bri, they’re just kids.”

  His warm breath caressed my cheek. My knees went weak and for a minute I thought about leaning into him for support. Before I could do anything so crazy, the buzzing started up in the bleachers once again, restoring my sanity.

  I took a step back and looked him in the eye. “Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.” Dan looked confused, then angry. I walked away before he could comment. Sometimes my poker face is better at relaying my feelings than any words could be.

  Dan

  This woman is testing my sanity. I love her more than life, but it pushes all my buttons when she gives me that look.

  When Lexi asked if Sabrina could come to get ice cream with us, I thought it would be a great way to spend more time with her. And the fact that she could pitch batting practice beforehand is just icing on the cake. Unfortunately, I forgot about the moms. I’m sure Sabrina thinks I’ve slept with them all. I mentally snorted. Not a chance.

  Since starting my career, the women I’ve met who want me for me have been few and far between. Back then, I didn’t care so much. I was trying to get over Sabrina and fucking her out of my system with as many random women as possible seemed to be the best way to do that. Eventually I figured out that wasn’t working and slowed down. Then I met Marie and my life changed forever.

  I watched Sabrina and swallowed. The woman literally takes my breath away. It’s not just her physical beauty, it’s her. And watching her pitch batting practice to Lexi’s team is making my heart ache. She’s glowing. I forgot how much she loved playing softball and how good she was. I wonder if she still plays.

  She jogged from the pitcher’s mound to home plate to adjust Gianna DelVecchio’s stance.

  “Now as my arm goes back,” I heard her stay, “you get ready to swing. Ok?”

  The little girl nodded.

  Sabrina ran back to the mound, giving me a very nice view of her backside.

  “Ok, here we go,” Sabrina said just before she went into her windup.

  Gianna swung and made contact…a rare occurrence. The ball sailed over second base and into center field. Sabrina and the girls cheered as Gianna’s smile engulfed her face.

  Gianna managed to make contact with a few more pitches, seeming to gain confidence with each hit.

  “Last pitch,” Sabrina said. “When you hit it this time, run the bases.”

  Gianna hit it over third base and it rolled into left field. She took off toward first base and Sabrina followed behind her. The little girl giggled as she rounded the bag and spotted Sabrina. The other players ran from their positions and fell in line behind and they all crossed second base, rounded third, and jumped on home plate in quick succession.

  The team circled Sabrina and she gave them all high fives and said what a great job they did. I watched as Lexi threw her arms around Sabrina’s waist and squeezed tight. She looked up and said something I couldn’t hear. Sabrina leaned down and whispered into Lexi’s ear. Whatever she said had my daughter grinning from ear to ear. Watching the two of them together made it difficult to swallow. I didn’t think it was possible to love Sabrina more than I had when she arrived, but she just proved me wrong.

  6

  Sabrina

  “You ate the whole thing?” Lexi asked, her eyes wide.

  “Yep,” I answered then spooned the last bit of hot fudge into my mouth.

  “Wow.”

  “You ate your whole sundae, too.”

  “Yeah, but yours was huge.” She held her arms out to demonstrate her last word. “Plus it had brownies in it.” She looked at me as though seeing me for the first time. “How do you stay so skinny?”

  I almost snorted the word back at her. Skinny? Me? I don’t think so. The best compliment I can hope for is that I’m athletically fit. But skinny? Not in this lifetime.

  As a child, I was what my mother referred to as “pleasantly plump.” Thankfully, my “baby fat” melted away by my junior year in high school. However, getting rid of all my fat wouldn’t do anything to shrink my frame.

  “Big boned” is another term my mom used to describe my physique. So while muscle may have replaced fat, my large frame still makes me look more like a linebacker than a ballerina.

  “I exercise,” I said when I realized Lexi was actually waiting for an answer.

  “Oh.” She pondered that for a second before shifting her attention to Dan. “Daddy, can I have some money to play video games?” She smiled sweetly and held out her hand. “Please?”

  Dan reached into his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill. He started to hand it to her, but pulled it back at the last second. “Okay, but stay where I can see you.”

  “I will,” she said as she grabbed the money.

  With my buffer gone, my nerves returned. Dan and I have had a lot of sparks flying between us all day—some good, some bad, but sparks just the same—and I don’t want to face them, or God forbid talk about them.

  “Thanks for practice today.”

  “No problem.”

  “Do you still play?”

  I shrugged. “Once in a while, but nothing organized.”

  “Why don’t you join one of those bar leagues?”

  “I joined one once and everyone got so drunk before the games, it’s a wonder they didn’t kill themselves on the field. Besides, most of those leagues are slow pitch, and I never did enjoy that as much.” I paused then added, “I joined a fast pitch, co-ed league once, but surprise, surprise, I sat on the bench with all the other women. I don’t know what the purpose of a co-ed team is if only the men play.”

  “That’s too bad. You should be playing. You’re very good and I know how much you enjoy it.”

  “I had a good time today. Maybe I’ll think about coaching.” I took a drink of water. “How do you manage to coach with your schedule?”

  “Normally I’m just a
n assistant and I make games and practices whenever I can. But when this happened, I knew I’d have some time on my hands so I gave Mark—he’s the guy who usually pitches—a break.”

  “You seem to enjoy it.”

  “I really do.” His face showed the surprise he’d felt about that fact. “The kids are great. They’re so honest and trusting, not to mention eager to learn.” He scanned the ice cream shop until his gaze fell on Lexi amusing herself with a video game. Dan smiled as he watched her skinny arms shift and steer. A lump formed in my throat at his expression.

  “So, where is Lexi’s mom?”

  He looked as shocked as I felt by the question. I will admit it’s been at the back of my brain, dying to be asked, but never in a million years did I think I would blurt it out like that. I suppose subconsciously I want to hear so I can harden my heart a little. Tales of Dan’s conquests should do a good job of that.

  “I’m not sure where she is right now,” he answered so quietly, I had to strain to hear him over the background noise. His eyes met mine and I definitely regretted asking the question. While the subject obviously troubled him, he looked happy that I’d asked.

  His words came back to me. Or don’t you care?

  “Does Lexi know her?”

  He shook his head and leaned back in his seat, looking weary. “If she had her way, Lexi wouldn’t exist,” he said as he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

  What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  A crooked smile flashed on his face. “I love the way your every thought shows on your face.”

  I stiffened. “Yeah, well I don’t.” The last thing I want is Dan McMullen being able to read my mind. Unfortunately, he is one of the few people who can look at me and know exactly what I’m thinking. My mother can do the same thing, along with a few friends. Why Dan is still included in that handful of people, I’ll never know.

  He chuckled and looked around the shop again in order to locate the topic of our conversation. Once he found her, he looked at me once again. “When Marie found out she was pregnant, she planned on having an abortion.”

  I shifted my eyes from Dan to Lexi and felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. She’s such a beautiful, wonderful little girl, the thought of her never having a chance at life definitely struck a chord.

  “Yeah,” Dan snorted. “That’s pretty much the way I feel every time I look at her.” He looked me straight in the eye. “I’ll admit I didn’t jump for joy when Marie told me she was pregnant, but when she asked me for money for an abortion, I nearly went through the roof.”

  “Were you married?”

  “No.”

  I opened my mouth to ask if he’d ever heard of birth control, but stopped myself. It seems cruel to tell the man he should have used something to prevent his beautiful daughter from being born. He wasn’t looking as those thoughts were running through my head, so imagine my shock when he responded to them anyway.

  “I’ve always been careful, Bri. Always.” His eyes bore into mine driving his point home.

  “So what happened?” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my tone, but don’t think I was very successful.

  “No birth control is one hundred percent effective.” I arched my brow. “Dammit Bri, the condom broke. Okay?” he growled. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Regardless of how or why Marie got pregnant, the fact is, she did. I’ve always believed in a woman’s right to choose, but I don’t know, when it was my baby she was choosing to get rid of…” He shook his head and glanced over at Lexi. “I just couldn’t let her do it.”

  “How did you stop her? I mean, it’s not like she would have needed your permission.”

  “No she didn’t, and she reminded me of it every time I failed to march to the beat of her drum.”

  “I can’t imagine you marching to anyone’s drum but your own,” I said, more with admiration than sarcasm.

  He chuckled. “You’d be surprised.” He took a long drink of his sweet tea and looked serious once again. “I wanted to get married and try to raise the baby with some sense of tradition, but she didn’t want any part of that.” He shrugged and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “When I look back, I realize how dumb that idea was. We would’ve killed each other.” He shrugged again. “But at the time, it seemed like the thing to do.”

  He paused again and ran his index finger up and down the condensation on his glass. I sensed his reluctance to speak as sharply as I felt his need to open up to me. What I couldn’t understand is why. Why is he telling me all this? Why does he seem to care what I think? And why the hell do I care at all?

  “If you don’t want to tell me—”

  He cut me off before I could finish my sentence. “No, I want you to know the whole story.”

  Why? The question rang through my head again, but I didn’t ask for fear of what his answer might be.

  Dan took a deep breath and started to speak, but smiled at a point behind my shoulder instead. “Hey munchkin, all out of money?”

  Lexi sat down next to me and nodded, grabbing her soda and taking a long draw on the straw at the same time.

  “Did you kick some alien butt?” Dan asked.

  Lexi laughed and rolled her eyes. “You are so old, Dad.”

  “Hey.” He pretended to look offended, but his eyes crinkled in amusement.

  Lexi looked at me wide-eyed and nodded. “He is, you know.”

  “Sorry Dan, I’ll have to go with Lexi on this one.”

  Even though Dan and I were technically the same year in school, I’m a year younger. We were both born in September just before the cutoff for Kindergarten, and while my mother decided to send me as soon as I was eligible, Dan’s held him back a year.

  “You’re insulting yourself then, because we’re the same age.”

  “You must have me confused with someone else. You’re more than a year older than me.”

  Dan rolled his eyes. “A whole year. Big deal.”

  “A year and a few days,” I explained. “And a year is a year, Dan.” Lexi and I shared a conspiratorial smile.

  Dan laughed and shook his head. “Let’s get going before you two really decide to gang up on me.”

  Dan

  “So how’d it go today?” Jeff asked.

  “Good,” I answered. “Great actually.”

  Jeff chuckled. “You are really gone over this girl. It’s fun to watch. I’ve never seen you like this, even with Marie.”

  “She’s the only one I’ve ever been like this over. Everyone after her was just to distract me from how miserable I am without her.”

  “How’s it going? Does she know you want to get back together?”

  I shook my head. “She finally doesn’t look like she wants to run from the room when I enter. I need to be patient so I don’t scare her away.”

  “That’s not really your strong suit.”

  “I’ll be anything for her.” Jeff’s look made me chuckle. “I know, it’s bad.”

  “I hope it works out for you,” he said. “You deserve to be happy.”

  “I just don’t know if I deserve her.”

  “So you fucked up when you were in college. We’re all young and dumb at some point.”

  “It was different with her. I asked her to marry me. We looked at rings.”

  “You never told me that.”

  I shrugged. “What difference did it make once she was gone?”

  Before things got too heavy, we turned our attention to the Waves game I’d put on before Jeff joined me. My teammate, and one of my best friends, Jack Reagan hit a line drive into the gap between left and center fields, scoring Cal Chase from second base, giving the Waves a 1-0 lead over the Rays. Jack ended up with a double.

  Jack is the person who convinced me to hire Sabrina as my physical therapist. He’d listened to me whine about her more than once over the years, usually when I had too much to drink. When things went south with Tim Rawlins, the trainer the Wav
es set me up with, he told me I should contact Sabrina.

  I’ll admit that I’m guilty of stalking her online and I know she’s well respected in her field. Heck, she was amazing back in college. So I know if anyone can get me back into shape, it’s her.

  The inning ended with a pop fly to first base, but the Waves had managed to score two more runs, bringing their lead to 3-0.

  “They’re looking good this year,” Jeff said.

  I nodded, not wanting to talk about the team. It really sucks that I’m not out there playing.

  “She asked about Lexi’s mom.”

  For a second, Jeff looked confused by my abrupt change of subject, but he quickly caught up.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “The basics.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Not a whole lot, but the look on her face said it all.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I was gonna tell her everything, but Lexi came back to the table.”

  “Everything?” He raised his brows. “The whole story?”

  I nodded. “The whole story.”

  “Not many people know that.”

  “No, but I want her to.”

  “Well, if nothing else, it should make her realize you’re not a total asshole.”

  “Gee thanks.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do,” I said. “And I hope you’re right. Because if this doesn’t work out with her…” I shook my head, “…I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  7

  Sabrina

  I had just curled up in the window seat, book in hand, when I heard a knock on my door. I set my bookmark as I walked across the room and opened the door. I’m not sure who I was expecting, but when Lexi stared back at me over the threshold, I was somewhat shocked. She looked adorable in a pair of purple Tinkerbell pajamas, her hair curling around her heart-shaped face.

  “Can I ask you something?” She looked so serious, I was almost afraid to hear the question.

  “Sure.” I stepped back and gestured for her to come into the room. “What’s up?”