by Alexis Anne
And that didn’t help at all, because all it did was remind me how much I loved the way his body moved—always so fluidly together—from his eyes to his jaw, all the way down his strong shoulders to his trim waist, and over his muscular thighs.
I sucked in a little breath and held it.
Did he feel this? Was his body humming with need and recognition like mine? Was his mind spinning faster than he could form thoughts?
“June,” he whispered, and I knew right then by the strangled way it came out that he was absolutely as affected as I was. “Please look at me.” His fingers tightened on my arms. “I’ve never stopped thinking about you.”
I looked up and the need in his eyes slammed into me like a wave. “Five years.” I tossed out the time it had been since we’d last spoken like a shield.
“I’m sorry. I’ve owed you those two words for so long.”
And I’d waited to hear them, but it wasn’t enough. It felt . . . incomplete. “You’re sorry?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the things I said but I’m even sorrier that I was so fucking stupid.”
“You weren’t stupid,” I bit out. An uncontrollable anger roared back to the surface. I’d fantasized a million different ways to make him hurt the way he’d hurt me. He’d gotten that satisfaction—seeing the pain in my eyes—right before I walked away. I hoped leaving him had hurt him but I didn’t know for sure and I certainly never got to see it. “You were weak.”
He flinched, and for a moment the satisfaction was everything I needed . . . until it wasn’t. He blinked several times and took a careful breath. “Well, that is something very different.”
I’d hurt him, just like I wanted, and instead of feeling relief or triumph or even closure, all I felt was wrong.
He cleared his throat and let his hands drop away from me. “I was stupid but you’re right, I was also weak.” He struggled to get that last word out. “I was stupid to waste the best thing that ever happened to me. I was even stupider for just standing there when you left. But you’re right, I was also weak.”
The two inches that separated us felt more like a mile of open black space that I was about to tip forward into and free fall to my own death. I knew Roman was a bad idea from the moment I felt the first pull of lust, but I’d ignored it. What was wrong with a little mental fantasizing about a hot ballplayer? But then we’d gotten stuck together in a dugout during a rainstorm. Alone. While he was on one of the most painful phone calls I’d ever had to listen to.
George St. James, Roman’s father, was an asshole. Girls have stage moms: the intense ladies who make their daughters act and enter beauty pageants to fulfill some sort of lost fantasy of their childhood, but boys had something similar: sports dads. And a sports dad who happened to be a Hall of Famer and had a superiority complex? George was the worst. He’d pushed Roman so hard and on that particular day I’d seen a young man defeated.
But then he’d put the phone away and steeled himself. And a minute later he’d asked me about my classes with genuine interest. No hate. No vendetta. Just genuine interest. He didn’t care about the feud any more than I did.
I started to fall for him right then and there. It wasn’t immediate. Ours was more of a long, slow, pleasurable slide into oblivion. But, as it turned out, the end wasn’t a soft landing. It was a painful kick in the ass.
“I should get back to work,” I murmured, reaching behind me for the wall.
“Can I buy you coffee?” He blurted it out so loud it echoed off the walls.
“No.”
“Please?”
I let out a frustrated sigh. “Why? Why would I do that, Roman?”
“Because we’re more than a failed affair.”
That was putting it mildly. “Whatever we were doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Yes it does.”
I didn’t understand why he was being so stubborn. Now. In the bowels of Tropicana Stadium. He could have written me an email or found me anytime in the last five years to apologize, but he didn’t.
“Why, Roman? Why now after all this time?”
“Have coffee with me and I’ll explain.”
“Explain now and then we can talk about coffee.”
He groaned and ran his hand over his face. “This isn’t going the way I hoped.”
“And what way is that?” Had he expected me to be pliant? To fall into his arms and let him kiss me?
“Well for one I didn’t think I’d spend more time concentrating on keeping my distance than actually saying what I need to say.” He threw his hands onto his hips and glared at me.
“I don’t understand what that means. Keeping your distance?”
“It means,” he growled, “that you keep licking your lips and breathing heavy and looking at me with those big fucking blue eyes that you know make me forget everything, and all I want to do is kiss you so hard you forget the last six years. Forget everything that happened between us before so I could meet you right now, for the first time.”
Oh. Well then . . .
He stepped into me before I could form a reply and ran a hand along my cheek. I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch before I could stop myself—it was instinct when it came to Roman.
“June . . . ” he whispered. His words reached inside me to places I’d closed off long, long ago. I couldn’t breathe. How was this possible? I’d had many fantasies about Roman over the years, but never this. Not even close.
“What about the feud?” I whispered. Even if I was open to the idea of a relationship with the man who had completely broken my heart, it didn’t change the fact that our families hated each other.
“Fuck the feud. It’s not our fight.”
But it was. Family loyalty meant a lot to me. He knew that. “I can’t do that.”
Pain flickered in the dark brown of his eyes. “Then I’ll just have to prove it to you. The feud is in the past and you will fall back in love with me. There is no other woman on this earth for me and I know there is no other man for you.”
I hated that he was right almost as much as I loved hearing how he felt about me.
I took his hands and gingerly removed them from my body. Each movement hurt on a deep molecular level. I wanted Roman. I wanted him desperately. But I couldn’t have him. Not with the feud and not with what had happened between us. Attraction was wonderful and maybe there’d been a shot at love for us once upon a time, but those days were long gone. The reality was that we could never be together. Not in any healthy, sane way.
He looked absolutely tortured by the way I pushed him back, but I knew it was what I had to do. “Goodbye, Roman.” I turned and walked away, my footsteps echoing with each step I took like some sort of doomsday clock.
“You’ve got that wrong, June,” he called. When I looked back he was standing exactly where I’d left him, his head down and his hands thrust into his pockets. “This isn’t goodbye. This was hello.”
I shook my head. “What does that even mean?”
He looked up, a huge grin on his handsome face and a gorgeous light in his eyes. “It means this was the beginning of something brand new.”
2
Five years earlier
“I s this going to be a problem?” Coach Williams asked, arms crossed over his wide chest as he glared down at me.
“Of course not. I’m a professional.”
He grunted. “Your fathers can’t act civil and they’ve been ‘professionals’ for years. Why should I believe you’ll be any different?”
I bristled at the problem being thrown on me. It was my internship that was at stake. Roman St. James was the starting third baseman for the Florida Gators. He was untouchable, while I was . . . what? Disposable? Intellectually I knew that was exactly what it was. He was the player. This was the team. While I was merely one of probably hundreds of students vying for the same opportunity to gain experience as an athletic trainer. The burden was on me, not him.
But it still pissed me off.
Coach nodded. “Please. For the love of God, just lay it on me. I’m so sick of tip toeing around this shit.”
I grinned in triumph. I always knew I’d managed to get a coach in my pocket once they started swearing in front of me. “Roman and I were very young when the incidents took place. In many ways we’ve grown up with this being our entire lives, but in the exact same way, we grew up with it being a very distant and early memory. It’s not our problem. If he can be cool, I’m fine working with him. If you’d prefer to let one of the other trainers work with him so we don’t spend much time around each other, I can deal with that, but I genuinely believe that this is a non-issue.”
He grunted again and rubbed his chin. “How old were you two when George blew his knee?”
“Four.”
“And five when Pop retired. Yeah…I can see your point on that. My daughter barely remembers the family trip to Hawaii when she was six, but her older sister still says it was the best time of her life. I get where you’re coming from.”
Thank goodness. When I lined up this internship my only thought was about how it would affect me. I would get to work with one of my favorite professors and get experience working with a team—something that I was going to need if I wanted to translate all this work to Major League Baseball. A lot of people became athletic trainers, but very few had the opportunity to work with elite athletes. Sure I was getting a leg up because of my name, but at the end of the day I wanted to be unforgettable because of my talent. Experience was precisely what would set me apart.
“Is there anything else you’d like to ask me, Coach?”
He shook his head. “I’m good. I’ve already spoken to Roman and he also promises to view you only in your professional capacity as trainer. But if either of you cause problems I can promise you this internship will be over.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you sir. I won’t let you down.”
“Just do you your job, Miss Daniels. I win games but I can only do that with healthy athletes.”
When I left Coach Williams office I was so relieved I could barely see straight. I wandered the halls without any thought to where I was going and wound up in the empty away team dugout. The guys were on the field running drills, paying zero attention to me, so I sat and watched.
I knew who each of them were. It was a habit I’d learned from birth—memorize numbers, names, and stats. I did it without even thinking. A few stuck out more than the rest. Rodriguez, their lefty first baseman, had been terrorizing base hitters all season with the help of pitcher Ryan Sanchez. It was pretty much impossible to steal second with those two on the field, and the rare player with enough courage (or stupidity) to try, usually wound up tagged out by Rodriguez.
Then there was Wes Allen, the catcher too tall for his position. The coaches had groaned and moaned when their recruit sprouted his sophomore year from five-foot-eleven to six-foot-three, but Wes had worked harder and stayed longer after practice to adjust to his sudden new height. He shouldn’t be as good a catcher, and for most men it was a problem, but for Wes it became an advantage. He learned to use his body to his benefit in a way most players never did.
I watched as he popped up from behind the plate, throwing back his mask with a wicked grin. He had dimples that popped when he smiled like that. He spun the ball in his hand as he sauntered down the third baseline toward me. Without really thinking I took careful inventory of the man. Lean, broad, blue eyes that could stop any sane girl in her tracks, and tall. He was a very good-looking man and my heart should be thumping in my chest just being this close to him, but it wasn’t.
In fact, my heart hadn’t thumped for anyone in months. I was in a dry spell of bad luck that started with the sweet boy from the horse farm in Virginia who was all right but did nothing for my sex drive, to the most recent blind date with the jerk who wanted me to pay for his dinner because I was “a rich girl.”
So it didn’t really surprise me that the hot catcher wasn’t turning me on. Maybe I was broken. Maybe there was a rule that after ten bad first dates your libido went into mourning and needed a magic elixir to wake it back up. Maybe . . .
And that’s when my thoughts stopped and all the air went right out of my lungs. I sat transfixed as Wes clapped a man on the back, his jaw ticking as he chomped on a piece of gum. My eyes traveled down Wes’s arm to this other man.
Oh, what a man.
His ass should be illegal. I sent up a prayer to the baseball gods that invented uniforms. The white pants hugged his hips and thighs leaving very little to my already active imagination. It was a good ass. Not too much muscle…just the right amount, really. The kind that could work all night but still be soft under my hands. The black glove tucked into his right pocket was like a beacon drawing my eye to stare at the way his body formed a perfect curve from the small of his back over his bottom and down to his long, lithe legs. I traced the pattern over and over again before I realized I was turned on.
I froze and checked my vitals. Pulse: pounding. Head: spinning. Loins? Most definitely throbbing. Well, at least now I knew no magic would be needed to wake me from my six month slumber.
My breath caught as his arm dropped to his side and my eyes locked on his forearm. Holy hell, what a forearm. Tan, strong, and with a vein that raced up to his elbow. All I could do from that moment on was imagine the way that arm would look as he grabbed my hips and pulled me against him. I liked strong men. It was a thing. Runners did nothing for me. They were too lean. Weight lifters were too much muscle and not enough finesse. But a guy like this? Someone with both strength and easy moves?
Oh yes . . .
Who was this mystery man who’d suddenly appeared right in front of me? I flicked my gaze up to the back of his head. There was a rim of whiter skin between his dark hairline and tanned skin—a clear sign he’d just had a haircut. His neck . . . oh I really shouldn’t have looked at that. As he turned I saw the way the muscles of his neck and shoulders moved together and I had to squeeze my thighs together.
And then I saw his profile and died a little bit inside.
“No . . . ”
I glanced down at the large “27” on the back of his shirt as all the blood drained out of my head. I knew number 27. I knew everything about number 27.
I shot up off the bench hoping to slip away before they saw me, but I somehow managed to trip over my own two feet. They heard and turned to see what the racket was just as I caught myself.
“You okay over there?” Wes called, but I wasn’t looking at him.
I was locked in the breathtaking gaze of Roman St. James. “I’m fine,” I called, righting myself and performing a small curtsey.
Roman’s eyes raked over me appreciatively—I know what it looks like when a man enjoys what he sees—warming and narrowing while a slow smile pulled up on his lips. He started toward me with a swagger, his hand reaching down into the dugout. “I’m Roman.”
His hand hung in the air in front of me and for a few terrifying beats I stared up at him, basking in the exquisite beauty of possibility. For a second I wasn’t a Daniels and he wasn’t a St. James. We were just two twenty-one year olds who liked what we saw. In that moment there were a hundred possibilities: friendship, flings, hot showers after games . . .
“June,” I said, taking his hand in mine.
His nostrils flared the moment our hands touched and I heard the sharp intake of breath. It was all a natural reaction to touching me. I know this because a second later it all hit him. His eyes widened and his muscles stiffened. His hand froze inside mine. “We finally meet after all this time,” he whispered. It wasn’t angry or even accusatory. If anything he sounded sad.
Sad for what? I didn’t know. All I understood in that moment was that it hurt to pull my hand away from him, and the moment I smiled and he frowned, an ache started to pound inside my chest.
3
Present Day
I pulled into the garage of my inherited two-story
home on Davis Islands. Long ago it had been my grandparents house, then my mother’s, then my oldest sister, Eve’s. She had lived here in college, then after taking a job with the Rays, carefully restored the house herself.
When I followed in her footsteps and accepted my position on the training staff she and her husband Jake decided it was time to move on. All the way to the house next door. It was bigger and had a larger lot, so they were able to renovate that house to fit the needs of their growing family while passing the family home on to me.
Eve hadn’t flinched too hard when I’d made some changes. Plus I was next door to my nieces. I had Tampa Bay only a few feet away and access to my sister’s boat any time I wanted. Life was good.
Quiet, but good.
I’d always hopped around—traveling more than I lived in any spot until now—so what friends I had were scattered. This was home, but it was still new. Some of my friends were also my sister’s friends. Sometimes I felt like I was borrowing part of her life instead of building my own, and in many ways that had always been the case. The curse of the youngest child. I was always expected to like the same thing my older sisters liked, play the sports they played, want the futures they built.
I think that was why I traveled so much. I hated disappointing my family and every time I didn’t fit into the mold, I ran rather than staying around to see the frowns and hear the sighs.
I threw my purse onto the rack in the foyer, then wandered into the kitchen to retrieve an open bottle of wine. I’d just plopped onto one of the plush chairs on my wide back porch when the gate that connected my yard to Eve’s opened.
“There better be a second glass,” Zoe called. At five-foot-five she was average in many ways, including height and weight, but in others, Zoe was so much more. She had this silky dark hair I would kill for and the kind of eyes and smile that you usually only found on celebrities. She was also incredibly sweet and kind—a rare thing to find in a friend these days.
