Rules of the Game

by Lori Wilde

  He came toward her, her pulse jumping with each step as he drew closer and closer. “You’re wearing it,” he said, his nose twitching. “Our perfume.”

  “You can smell me from that far away?” She laughed.

  “Sweetheart, I could pick you out in a roomful of a thousand women, blindfolded and with my hands tied behind my back.”

  “That would have to be a very big room.”

  “Outdoors then. In the Grand Canyon.”

  “Are you saying I should have taken a second shower today?”

  “I’m saying no one on earth smells as good as you.” He stepped closer, murmured, “You have no idea how bad I want to kiss you right now.”

  “As badly as the last time we were in this restaurant together?”

  “Worse,” he promised, his grin turning wicked.

  Jodi fanned herself. Yep. She should have taken an ice-water shower.

  “Listen, I know this is a crazy idea with everything we’ve got going on tomorrow, but what if you followed me back to my place after dinner? Just for a few hours. There’s some things we need to talk about.”

  Jodi’s heart jumped against her chest. “What things?”

  “Just wait, my little control freak.” He kissed the top of her head. “All will be revealed. Can you come?”

  She should say no. There was so much on her to-do list. If she went with him, she wouldn’t get a lick of sleep and she’d look terrible in the photographs tomorrow, but she couldn’t resist. She was gone. So gone.

  “Just for a little while,” she said. “We both have a lot to do tomorrow. I’m leaving your place by midnight, no matter what.”

  “Thank God,” he said. “I thought you were going to say no.”

  The rehearsal dinner went off without a hitch. Everyone got along, food and drink and conversation flowed. No one got soused or made a scene. It was a perfect evening, and by nine-thirty they were back at Jake’s place. He took off his coat and suit jacket, loosened his tie. She removed her coat and started to carefully hang it up, along with his clothes, but stopped herself and dropped the coat to the floor to show she didn’t always have to organize and control things.

  “We’ve got two and a half hours,” Jodi said. “I suggest you make the most of it, Coronado.”

  Instead of yanking her into the bedroom as she’d anticipated he would, Jake took her hand. “I didn’t bring you here for sex.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Well, I did bring you here for sex.” He grinned. “But later. First there’s something I have to tell you …” His eyes searched her face as if he was getting ahead of himself and trying to guess how she was going to react. That dinged Jodi’s alarm meter.

  “Um, you’re scaring me a little.”

  “Don’t be afraid.” He took her hand. “I’m not.”

  “Okay, now I’m terrified. If you’re secretly an axe murderer, kill me now and get it over with.”

  He laughed and kissed her cheek in a slightly different way than he’d kissed it before, as if he was prepared to kiss that spot every day for the next fifty or sixty years. “I love your sense of humor.”

  “Time.” Jodi tapped the boxcar charm bracelet on her wrist like it was a watch. “Wasting.”

  He took a deep breath, his face going from happy to sad like a solar eclipse.

  Uh-oh. She’d been teasing before, but now she was kind of frightened. “Jake?”

  He was still holding her hand. Squeezed it. “Come with me.” He led her down the hall toward his bedroom.

  Okay. Good start. Not so scary.

  But then he stopped outside The Door. The one he’d hollered at her not to open.

  Oh no! Was he going to show her his porn stash and admit to being an addict? Was he going to lead her into his S&M sex dungeon and show her fifty shades of Coronado? Was he going to handcuff her and stuff her into a closet and auction her off to the highest bidder as a long-in-the-tooth sex slave? Was he going to show her a candlelit altar shrine with numerous photographs of Maura wallpapering the room?

  “You’re shaking,” she said, really alarmed now. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded. Swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple quivered.

  “What’s going on?”

  “My past.”

  Jodi sucked in her breath, held it, tried not to freak out. This was good. He was opening up to her. But was she strong enough to hear whatever it was he had to tell her about his wife without feeling insecure or less than?

  Squeezing his hands, she looked deeply into his eyes. “It’s okay, Jake. Whatever you have to tell me, it’s going to be all right.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Because I love you. She couldn’t say it. Not yet. Not until he said it to her first, but she put all the love in her heart into her eyes and simply smiled at him, softly, tenderly, acceptingly.

  “I believe in you.” She held her breath, heard her heart beating in her ears at the crazed tempo of jungle drums.

  Did she really want to see what was inside that room? Did she really want to discover he was not the man she’d thought he was? Or that he might harbor dark secrets that could destroy them both? Did she—

  “Shh,” he said as if he could hear the anxious thoughts pelting her. “It’s going to be okay. This is just something I have to move beyond before I can tell you the other thing I want to tell you. Do you trust me?”

  Mutely, she nodded, bobbed her head like she was completely hunky-dory with whatever freaky-deaky, porno-S&M-sex-slave-psycho-shrine thing he might be hiding behind that door.

  She fished around inside her, rounded up every ounce of courage she could find, and braced herself. “Show me.”

  He gave her a smile of pure gratitude, turned the knob, pushed open the door, reached around, and flipped on the light switch. Because she had convinced herself there was some sort of strange sexual peccadillo he’d been keeping secret in this room it took a second for her brain to fully register what she was seeing.

  Big boxes of unopened baby furniture, labeled with what was inside. Crib. Changing table. Dresser. And on the floor, still wrapped in plastic, were a car seat, stroller, and diaper bag.

  Confused, she looked from Jake to the items and back again and her heart just broke. “You had a baby?”

  Jake pressed his lips together, and his eyes misted. He blinked hard, gulped. “Yes …” he said. “No. Almost.”

  “You’re shaking,” she said, really alarmed now. “Sit down.” She pressed on his shoulder and he slid down the door frame, his knees bending up in the doorway as his butt touched the floor. Jodi knelt beside him. “Jake? Are you all right?”

  “I wasn’t there for her.” He dropped his head into his open palms. “Maura needed me and I didn’t protect her.”

  She reached out to hug him, but he looked so encapsulated in his anguish that she was uncertain if that was the right thing to do. Her hands hovered, but she backed off, interlaced her fingers.

  Jake raised his head, met her gaze. “She was …” He trailed off, ran a hand over his mouth.

  She didn’t prompt or interrupt. This was his story to tell. He could do it on his own timetable. She sat next to him, pressed her back against the open door, stared at the baby things, felt sympathy pangs deep in the pit of her stomach.

  “Maura had gone to a convenience store a block from our apartment in Chicago at ten o’clock at night to buy a pregnancy test kit when the store was robbed,” he recited in a robotic tone.

  “Oh Jake, I had no idea.”

  “My agent was able to keep that part out of the media,” he said. “Maura had just bought the kit and tucked it into her purse when the robber came through the door.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He rubbed red-rimmed eyes. “They found out during the autopsy that she was six weeks pregnant.”

  Her heart broke. She couldn’t hold back any longer. She wrapped her arms around him, held on tight. He leaned against her. “What a blow,” she said. �
��I can’t imagine. You lost not only your wife, but your entire future that night.”

  He tucked his lips around his teeth, shook his head.

  “Do you know why she was buying a pregnancy test kit at a convenience store that late at night?”

  “Yeah.” His voice broke and he pulled from her arms, leaned his head against the wall. For the longest time there was no sound in the room except for their breathing. “It was because of me. I called her after the game, like I did every day when I was on the road …”

  He paused, closed his eyes, clearly struggling with something. “We argued.”

  Jodi said nothing. What was there to say? She could offer no lifeline. No absolution. This was his sorrow. His story to tell. And she would listen. It was all she could do for him.

  “She said we needed to talk and she sounded so serious it scared me. I thought she was going to tell me she’d been having an affair or something.” He gave a shaky laugh, pulled a palm down his face. “I was scared she was going to tell me she wanted a divorce.”

  “Jake,” she whispered. “Was your marriage that precarious?”

  “No. Not at all. But I loved her so much. My greatest fear was losing her.”

  The man had so much love in him. So much to give. Jealousy lay in Jodi’s lap like yeast dough, rising higher, expanding, growing. How could she be jealous of a dead woman? She wasn’t petty. She wasn’t that person. She punched down the jealousy, smashed it flat. This wasn’t about her.

  “I cracked a few jokes because I didn’t want to take her mood seriously.” He hunched his shoulders, shot a glance over at her.

  Another long minute passed.

  “What did she say?” Jodi whispered, unable to bear the suspense.

  “She said she wanted to start a family. Hell, Jodi, I panicked. I wasn’t ready to have kids. My career was just taking off and that’s all I could focus on. And when we got married, well, I thought we were on the same page about kids. I told her I didn’t know if I wanted kids. Ever. The sound she made …” He shook his head, regret and sorrow rolling off him in waves. “If you could have heard her. It was as if I’d punched her in the face.”

  “What did she say?”

  “In a voice so quiet it strangled me, Maura said, ‘You really don’t want kids?’”

  He hauled in a stuttering breath like he was standing on a thin precipice with hurricane winds at his back. “Selfish idiot that I was, my mind was on my career, and all I could think about was how I wouldn’t be able to give a kid the kind of attention he deserved and I told her no, I didn’t think so.”

  “Oh Jake, how were you to know she was pregnant?” Jodi kept rubbing his arm, trying to dissipate the tension cording his muscles into knots. “You couldn’t know that. Please stop beating yourself up.”

  “When I found out that she’d gone to the store specifically to buy a pregnancy test, that if she hadn’t needed a pregnancy test she wouldn’t be in that damn store in the first place, I knew it was all my fault. She must have suspected she was pregnant and couldn’t wait until morning to find out if that was the case. I was the reason she was in that convenience store. I’m to blame.”

  Jodi touched his hand.

  He flinched.

  Quickly, she moved her hand away, tried not to feel hurt.

  “If I’d have told her I wanted kids … that I was as eager and excited to have them as she was, then she would have waited to take the test when I was with her. She probably would have told me that night that she was pregnant instead of keeping quiet. If I’d only manned up.” He buried his head in his hands.

  “It’s not your fault, Jake,” she soothed. “Would you still be beating yourself up if Maura had gone there to buy a box of cereal?”

  “But she didn’t go there to buy cereal. She went there because she was having my baby—” He choked off, his shoulders moving in silent torment. “When we first got together she was like me. Not sure she even wanted kids. That’s why it was such a curveball when she told me she was ready to start a family. It was like a switch had been flipped and the bright light blinded me because I’d been enjoying the dark.”

  “You’ve got to let go of the guilt.”

  “But here’s the thing,” he said. “Here’s the worst part of all. After I got off the phone with Maura, I called a couple of my teammates and asked them about their kids. Their voices lit up and they told me it was the best thing they ever did and becoming dads had made them better ballplayers and I realized I was ready to be a father. To let Maura know I’d changed my mind, I got online and ordered all this—” He waved at the baby stuff. “And had it shipped to Jefferson in care of Maura’s parents, because this is where I wanted our baby to be raised …”

  Another long pause swelled the room.

  “I’d no sooner gotten off the computer when the police called to tell me what had happened. In the chaos, I forgot all about ordering this stuff until it was delivered here the day of Maura’s funeral. Talk about crap timing.”

  She ran her palm up and down his spine, it was the only thing she knew to do. No wonder he’d thrown the baby stuff in this room and closed the door, unable to face dealing with it.

  He sagged heavily against her shoulder and she cradled him, kissed the crown of his head. “Jake,” she whispered. “You can’t change the past. Maura wouldn’t want you to suffer like this.”

  “Easy to say, a damn sight harder to do. My wife died thinking I didn’t want our child. That’s the stumbling block I can’t push past.”

  “I didn’t know Maura,” she said. “But I know you. I know how kind and loving you are. I saw you with Tobias. You would have been a great dad and I bet you anything Maura knew that too. I’m sure she believed that you would come around once the pregnancy was a reality. I’m certain she knew that you would love a child as much as you loved her. You have so much love to give, Jake, how could you not?”

  He sat up, met her gaze, looked hopeful. “Do you really think so?”

  “I know so. I suspect she didn’t tell you she was pregnant because she wanted to be absolutely sure before she told you. I bet she wanted to set the scene so the timing was just right.”

  “I wish I could believe that.” He stared down.

  Jodi grabbed his chin, forced his jaw up, put flint in her eyes and granite in her voice. “Choose to believe it, Jake. Choose to believe she knew you inside and out. Choose to believe she knew you had a good heart. That you are a good man who would always do the right thing, no matter what.”

  He stared at her as if she’d given him a great treasure. “You think it could be that easy?”

  “Picture her in your mind,” she said. “Imagine Maura standing here.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now. Do it.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Do you see her?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s smiling at you,” Jodi coached.

  He nodded, and a corresponding smile spread across his own face. The heaviness in Jodi’s stomach deepened, but she put a lock on jealousy. It had no place here. She wanted only love in her heart. For Jake. For Maura. For herself. Because she loved him even more now than she had before he’d told her of his secret guilt, and she wanted to help him find the peace he so richly deserved.

  “Maura is telling you it’s okay. That she loves you and that there is nothing for her to forgive. Imagine it. See her, hear her.”

  A single tear slid down his face. He opened his eyes, reached for Jodi’s hand, squeezed it. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “You’ll never forget her. She’ll always be a part of you.”

  He pulled Jodi into his arms, kissed her hard and long. “What did I do to deserve you?”

  “You loved with all your heart.”

  “I’m making progress,” he said. “I opened the door. I showed you what was inside the room, inside of me.”

  “Thank you for that.” She stroked his cheek, looked into those dear dark eyes she’d
come to love so much in such a short time.

  CHAPTER 23

  Jodi Carlyle’s Wedding Crasher Rules: For God’s sake do

  not fall in love.

  Jake took her to the bedroom, and made love to her.

  How different this time was from their previous couplings. There was a depth and breadth to their lovemaking that hadn’t been there before. Was it a new sureness in their relationship? Was the difference trust? Or was it something more? Jodi had changed. Jake had changed her. And in those alterations, she’d become more her true self.

  Jodi dug her fingers into his back, felt the thickness of his skin. Breathed in his scent so warm and male. This was love. Not just the joining of their bodies, although that was magnificent. No, this was far more than that. Their souls were entwined. Their hearts united. Because of everything they’d suffered they were bringing to their union a softness that a lot of couples did not have. An empathy and understanding that stretched them as people. They could overcome whatever obstacles life threw at them because they were stronger together than apart.

  She looked into his eyes as he moved inside her. Their gazes locked. Their bodies one. On this exalted plane time did not exist.

  They came together, collapsed panting against the sheets. They held each other for a moment, suspended in peace, and pleasure.

  She dozed for a moment, knowing she couldn’t allow herself to fall into full slumber. She had to get back to Stardust. Breeanne was counting on her. But for a sweet, short section of time, Jodi was the happiest she’d ever been in her life.

  Something startled Jodi awake. She sat up. Disoriented for an instant, she blinked into the darkness and spied the man sleeping beside her and her heart smiled.

  “No,” Jake mumbled.

  “Are you awake?” Jodi sat up.

  “No.” His eyes were closed, his brow furrowed. “Don’t go.”

  “I have to,” she whispered, easing back the covers.