by Pamela Aares
And beautiful she was, though he could tell she didn’t know it.
She was unaffected and open, with eyes that kept calling to him. And her lips . . . well, those were calling too.
He asked her what she’d like from the appetizer buffet and stared into her sea-blue eyes as she rattled off a few items. When he reached the table spread with hors d’oeuvres, he couldn’t remember what she’d asked for. That wasn’t like him. Remembering details was one of his strengths. As a starting pitcher, not only did he have an arsenal of pitches, he’d watched hours of video and memorized the talents and weaknesses of the hitters he’d face during the season. Remembering details was his lifeline.
He stood in front of the table, scanning it. Women usually liked small, easy-to-eat foods that weren’t runny or crumbly. He scooped up a few potstickers from a huge bamboo steamer and some puffy pastry-looking things from the table next to it. On a whim he grabbed a handful of strawberries and piled them on top of the heap and then snagged two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter. He plunked the plate and one of the glasses onto the table in front of Chloe, knocking over a tent card as he did. Under it were two gift cards for Crossroads, an independent bookstore that he particularly liked. He could get lost in there and nobody bugged him.
“I hope you’re not waiting for me to ask you to sit down.” Chloe laughed. “Not after all that.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant by all that, but he did know that he had the unnerving urge to kiss her. As she dug into the plate of food and he saw how ravenously she ate, he figured she’d been hungrier than she’d let on.
“Dinner should start any minute,” he said.
“Umph,” she said, swallowing a mouthful. “I never count on liking these dinners. Great appetizers though.”
What a mouth. She had one of those little bows in her upper lip that, if he’d seen it on a sculpture, he’d have called it pretentious. But on her it was perfect. It made him want to kiss her all the more. It’d been only a week since he’d last had sex but from the way his body was responding to her, he’d have guessed it had been a year. He took a sip of his champagne and sat, scooting his chair close to hers. At least the tablecloth hid his arousal. She pushed the plate toward him.
“You’re not hungry?”
He was. In more ways than one.
He plucked a potsticker from the mess, wishing now that he’d grabbed a few of the meat bits the waiter had called lamb lollipops. Tiny appetizers never made much sense to him. He’d grown up on a farm; food came in portions large enough to fuel a hard day’s work.
“What do you do when you’re not dazzling men at balls?” he said to Chloe.
“I warn you, I’m allergic to flattery,” she said with a laugh. “I teach. Cosmology.” She took a bite of potsticker and tilted her head, watching for his reaction.
“Cosmology wasn’t a major when I was at UCLA,” he said. “I had to end around it by majoring in astrophysics.” He paused and basked for a moment in the surprise that lit her eyes. “But that route was disappointing,” he added. “Too many equations and not enough of the mystery.”
Her lips curved into a wry smile, and he felt he’d passed some sort of test. Most guys probably didn’t want to talk about the universe, though the topic no doubt held endless fascination for her.
“Nothing lights my students up more than when they realize that the powers that form the universe are alive in them.” She waved a strawberry with enthusiasm. “I love the look on their faces when they get a feel for the fact that they too are at the heart of a vast unfolding of creativity and promise.”
It’d been too long since he’d thought about the powers that fired the universe, even though they’d been his passion in college. The glow on Chloe’s face had him thinking that maybe it was time to get back to them. He'd signed up for an online master's degree in astrophysics but the idea of going broader, of seeking a degree in cosmology, was intriguing. He'd need something to fall back on after baseball, a pursuit he could pour his energies into. But right then the pursuit that most interested him was her. He wanted to know more about her world, and in his mind he’d already clicked off a plan to sit in on one of her classes.
“I’m not up on the latest news,” he said, wishing he was. “But I can calculate how many days it would take to send you to Mars.”
“And back, or would it be a one-way trip?” She bit into the strawberry and the juice colored her lips. He was determined to kiss them.
“Last I checked, still one way.”
“What do you do when you’re not discussing astrophysics at balls?” she asked as she nibbled at another strawberry.
He dreaded telling her he was a ballplayer; he’d been relieved when she hadn’t flinched when they’d been introduced. But telling the truth was something he prided himself on, even if it hurt.
“I pitch for the Giants.”
Her hand, reaching for another strawberry, stopped midreach. “I’m sorry,” she said, blushing. “I should know these things. I’ve been pretty buried in my work, so I’m not up to speed on the game this year.”
“Don’t apologize; it’s refreshing. Even I can get tired of talking about the game.”
That wasn’t quite true. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever tiring of talking about baseball, not with someone who knew it from the inside out.
But it was true that he liked that she hadn’t taken an interest in him just because he was a player. Two nights ago he’d excused himself from another near-disaster on the road. The woman he’d taken to his hotel room had practically asked him to sign her body, she was so caught up in being with a player. He'd reined in before things went too far. After she’d left, he’d made a vow to change his ways. His first couple of years in the majors he’d been thrilled with all the open smiles and invitations for sex. But in the past couple of months, he’d realized he’d begun to look for more than casual hook-ups with star-struck baseball groupies. A few of his friends had decided to settle down and start families and while he wasn’t ready for that, there had to be something more than what he did have.
He watched Chloe as she ate the last of the buffet food. Something about her woke him up, just as his first dive into the cold blue waters of the Pacific Ocean had done. She called to a part of him that had been lurking, waiting, a part of him he didn’t know, that he’d been content to leave in the shadows. But that first taste of the Pacific had changed his life, and only for the better, so no way was he going to brush off Chloe’s entrance into his life.
A waiter circled the room, stroking a chime and calling the guests to dinner. That meant no more Chloe; he’d be sitting near the back since he’d bought his ticket at the last minute, and the McNalleys would be at the head table.
“How about a dance after?” Where he’d summoned the balls to ask, he didn’t know. A voice in his head said caution, but he silenced it. What harm could there be in a dance?
She smiled. She was going to say yes. He couldn’t believe his luck.
“I can’t. My father and I have a previous engagement.”
She’d said no. He couldn’t believe that either.
Maybe it was the champagne, maybe it was the dancing, but what he did next surprised him. He stood, reached out and circled her wrist with his fingers, and drew her up from her seat. He pulled her into the shelter of the curtained alcove behind the tables. In the darkness of the alcove, he dipped his head and pressed his mouth to hers. He felt her hesitate. But then she parted her lips. He tasted the sweetness of strawberries and the honey richness below it that could only be her. He pulled her closer and for a moment melted into the searing pleasure of their kiss. Then he came to his senses. He broke off the kiss and let go of her wrist. He felt her hand move through the darkness. If she slapped him, he would deserve it.
But she ran her fingers up the back of his neck and pulled his lips back to hers, kissing him until he wasn’t sure he could let her go.
“I forgot to thank you for the food,” she whi
spered against his lips even as she pulled away.
She ducked out of the alcove, back into the din of sound and motion, and he followed, dazed and wanting more. Wanting her.
Not fifty yards away, Chloe’s father stood at the entrance to the dining salon, staring right at them. There was no hint of rage on his face but what Scotty did see, he couldn’t peg, and that disturbed him even more. Yet maybe McNalley hadn’t seen them exit the alcove. He hoped not.
Chloe simply smiled and glided over to her father and took his arm. As they left the room, she glanced over her shoulder and flashed a smile.
God, he loved that smile.
Chapter Three
The overly calm call from her father’s assistant had shocked Chloe. She’d excused herself from the meeting with one of her graduate students and driven faster than she wanted to remember from Stanford up to the medical center in San Francisco. The heels of her boots clicked on the polished floors as she made her way toward the room where they told her she’d find her dad.
The hospital smell made her stomach contract. The lighting was irritating, true, but the smell was worse. It wasn’t the antiseptic scent of the cleaning agents or even the ever-present smell of cafeteria food. Below those common odors, every corridor reeked of worry and tension and fear.
She walked down a glaring hallway and considered that she’d been wrong about the smell being the worst thing. It was the sounds of hospitals that really set her on edge. The beeping of the machines, the whispers of nurses and doctors conferring, the rumble of carts and gurneys being wheeled across the hard floors. The closer she got to the Intensive Care Unit, the more sounds picked up in volume and speed, an insistent cacophony far worse than a poorly tuned symphony.
She entered the ICU, and a woman immediately stopped her. She wore one of those lab-style coats with little bears and bunnies on it. The cut of the coat told Chloe she was staff, and the nametag made it clear she was the case manager. Bears and bunnies did not disguise the mortal seriousness of the work of this unit. ICU was one of those places where the border between life and death was a knife-edge, one of those places where it was impossible to ignore the tension of lives hanging in the balance. Chloe introduced herself. The woman blinked, then looked away, just for a millisecond, then she brought her gaze back to Chloe’s. It was the woman’s blink that sent shudders through Chloe; it told her in seconds what hours of reading medical reports might have.
But no medical report could’ve prepared her for what she saw when she entered her dad’s room. His face was pastry-dough pale, and he was hooked up to an oxygen tank, an IV and several high-tech monitors. The room buzzed with beeping machines and the hiss of the blood pressure cuff as it inflated on his arm.
A nurse or tech or someone who knew what she was doing was bent over his arm, focused on filling a vial with blood. Chloe went lightheaded.
She wasn’t squeamish. It hadn’t been blood or the thought of surgeries that’d made her choose to become a cosmologist rather than a doctor, and a nurse taking blood was not a big deal. What made her feel faint was the look her father gave her when he lifted his head and saw her. She couldn’t have endured seeing that look from dozens of people every day, week in and week out—it would’ve broken her heart. Right now that look brought her very close to losing it.
She pasted a smile on her face and crossed to the far side of the bed. Her dad’s reading glasses had slid down his nose. He pushed them up, bumping his oxygen tube and then fussing about it.
“Good God, Chloe, it’s not as bad as all that. Wipe that fake smile off your face and pull up that chair.” He waved a newspaper toward the only chair; the room was so crowded with equipment, there wasn’t room for much else. “I told Madge not to call you. No basket of iced Santa cookies for her this year.” His chuckle, sounding much as it always had, didn’t match the gravity of the surroundings.
Madge Jenkins, her dad’s assistant, got much more than iced Santa cookies. Besides paying the woman what she was worth, her dad had insisted on co-signing a loan so she and her boy could have a proper house in a safe neighborhood with good schools. He was just that kind of guy.
“If Madge hadn’t called me, I’d have been furious.” Chloe brushed a kiss to his forehead. “You should’ve called me.”
“I went from my doctor’s office straight to the ER and landed here within two hours. It wasn’t the morning I had planned.”
He waved the newspaper at her. She saw where he’d made marks alongside the box scores.
“I still want Tory Griffin—he’s hitting like a madman.” He tapped the pencil on the rail of the bed. “But we’ve got some amazing kids in triple-A.” He looked up. “You should see them, Chloe. All dreams and energy and determination.”
“The determination I’m interested in right now is getting you over whatever got you in here and getting you out.”
“My goal precisely.”
She pulled the newspaper from his hand and laid it on the table beside his bed. She closed her hands over his. His fingers were cold and felt waxy.
“Care to clue me in?”
“It’s nothing for you to worry about; I’ve got it handled.”
A nurse walked in, nodded at Chloe and hustled over to read the printout from the blood pressure machine.
“Mr. McNalley, we’re taking you down to radiology to run the tests your doctor ordered.” She looked at her watch and then glanced up at Chloe. “You’re welcome to stay here, but you might want to go down to the café. A couple of hours should do it.” The nurse tapped some notes into the computer and walked out.
“Don’t stick around here,” her dad said. “It’s bad enough I have to. Go get something to eat.”
A man in scrubs came in and started unhooking tubes, moving cords and unplugging machines.
“You won’t get off that easy,” Chloe said, lacing her fingers through his. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”
He squeezed her hand. She had the dreadful feeling that he wasn’t telling her because he didn’t want her to know, but rather because he didn’t want to think about it, whatever it was. That was worse than him keeping something from her.
“I plan to be out of here tomorrow. They’re making a fuss out of nothing.”
It looked like a hell of a lot more than nothing, but she didn’t want to upset him by saying so. “You win. For now. Don’t let it go to your head.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “Shall I bring you a burrito?”
He grinned. “Oatmeal cookie. No, two. And you have one. You’re too thin.”
Back to his usual antics. She kissed him again and watched as the orderly wheeled him down the hall. She approached the woman in the bunny and bear lab coat.
“Can’t I go to radiology and wait with him?”
“He’s having a CT scan. It’s really better if you wait in the family waiting area or go downstairs—I heard they have a salad special in the café today.”
A hospital salad would likely do her in. She rifled through her purse and came up with a bent business card.
“Here’s my cell number. Please call me if he gets out early. I’ll stay close by.”
Chloe walked out of the med center and into what vaguely registered as an unseasonably lovely day. So often June in San Francisco was foggy and cold. She felt the sun on her arms, but it didn’t warm her. She walked several blocks without noticing much of anything.
When she finally focused on her surroundings, she was standing in front of the Crossroads bookstore. The wooden door was propped open with a chubby iron gnome. She stepped in. The scent of books and tea and dust mingled with the breeze swirling in from the open door. She walked inside and to the café and ordered a mocha. It was an indulgence she rarely allowed herself, but she needed the comfort of the sweet chocolate and the boost of the caffeine.
Clutching the mocha in one hand, she carried it like a torch toward the back section of the bookstore. It turned out to be the sports section. Posters of players s
miled back at her from their perches along the wall. Their fixed cardboard smiles only made her feel worse. She started to walk away, but a book about the Sabers caught her eye. She parked her mocha on the top shelf and thumbed through the book. When she got to a sidebar praising her dad, the tears she’d hidden from him ran down her face. She dabbed at them with her sleeve, wiped the book page with her elbow and snapped it shut. She reached up to grab her mocha but stopped short and leaned her face against the bookshelf, her arm stretched over her head.
Baseball didn’t usually make her cry.
She’d grown up with it, gotten even more of the game after her mother died when she was only five. After that she’d spent more time at the ballpark than at home. Baseball had been her school, her babysitter, her playground. Until the day she turned thirteen. That was the day her father announced that the world of baseball was no place for a blossoming young lady. He’d said he couldn’t give her the guidance she’d need for life, that living in a man’s world, the sports world, wasn’t enough. He’d decided to send her away to a boarding school—an all-girl school—in Virginia. She’d thrown a rare fit that evening and had snuck out, leaving a desperate note on his desk saying that she would never, ever go away. When they’d found her in the groundskeeper’s cabin at the edge of the estate, she’d begged her dad to let her stay in the life she’d grown to love.
But he’d sent her off anyway.
And maybe he’d been right.
At Laughton Hall she’d learned to ride, to love literature and philosophy, to identify plants and flowers in the surrounding hills and forests. And she’d made friends for life. From those friends she learned the truths only young women can share, the things she’d probably been sent there to learn. And it was at Laughton that Miss Hollings, the science teacher, had introduced her to the wonders of the universe. She’d become fascinated with the heavens, with the stars and astronomy, and had gone on to earn her Ph.D. in cosmology. Her dad had been so elated the day she’d landed the teaching spot at Stanford. He’d surprised her by funding their new planetarium the next year in a show of support. But his generosity had put a rift in her placid life at the university. And it hadn’t helped at all that her mother’s family was a fifth generation San Franciscan and the trust her mother left her had already made her an heiress. Money—too much, too little, and everything in between—always made people crazy. She might love what she taught, but the university didn’t provide much of a community, at least not for her. She was an academic, but not a starving one. She simply didn’t fit.
