Out on Highway 60, she peered through the darkness in search of the sign for her father’s ranch. Her stomach tightened when she spotted it. She’d been hoping to surprise him at the stadium because he was always in a better mood there. Or at least that had been true three years ago, when she’d last seen him.
But she’d waited too long in the parking lot, trying to screw up her courage, and then a man with a BB gun and a ballplayer with incredible green eyes had ruined that plan.
Spotting the sign for Bullpen Ranch, she turned off the highway onto the private road that led to the ranch. The car rattled over a cattle grate. In five minutes she’d be at her father’s door.
For a desperate moment, she contemplated turning the car around and taking Trevor Stark up on his invitation. He was beautiful, like an avenging angel, with those slashing cheekbones and sensual mouth, his eyes the clear light green of the Caribbean on a crystal calm day. But he wasn’t calm, not underneath. She sensed turmoil behind his controlled exterior. Maybe that’s what made him so magnetic and compelling.
The sight of his muscled back, wide at the shoulders, lean at the waist, powerful everywhere in between, was still branded on her eyeballs. A massive tattoo filled his entire back and shoulders, although she hadn’t been able to make out any details before he disappeared into the lobby. His physique had stunned the breath out of her, the perfection of each muscle and bone gilded by the hotel lights.
Her father’s big circular driveway was packed with the usual array of vehicles. Inside the ranch house, a sprawling glass and steel structure, lights glowed. For better or worse, he was home. “Moment of truth, Jerome,” she told her cat.
She got out of the car and took a deep breath of Texas air, cooler here than in Kilby proper, flavored with mesquite and alfalfa and a hint of cow manure.
Delaying the inevitable, she picked Jerome up from the passenger seat. As usual, he went floppy as the rag doll his breed was named after. He loved to be carried like a baby. “You keep quiet and let me do the talking.” She put him into his carrier, where he went right back to sleep.
Heart beating like a bongo, she hurried up the steps. She put down Jerome’s carrier and knocked on the oversize wood-planked door. Footsteps sounded inside. Please be happy to see me. Please don’t be a jerk.
The door opened and Crush Taylor stood before her, his tall, rangy frame as fit as ever, squinting at her with bright hazel eyes. He blinked a few times, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “Paige?”
She burst into tears.
Chapter 3
AFTER A LONG moment during which Paige fought to get a grip on her sobs, Crush finally opened his arms and pulled her in for a hug. “Aw, kiddo. Come on. You know there’s no crying in baseball.”
“S . . . sorry.” Crush hated tears. All his ex-wives and their children knew that. Paige knew it more than anyone, because she’d always been the sap in the family. “It’s been a long trip.” Through her hiccuping sobs, she breathed in the familiar smell of her father, a mixture of tobacco and grass and bay rum.
“From Italy?”
She nodded against his chest.
“Hudson?”
“We’re getting divorced. I mean, we are divorced.” She pulled back and wiped the tears off her cheeks. “And if you say ‘I told you so,’ I’ll get right back in the car.”
He made a sound that could have been a chuckle or a protest. With his hands on her shoulders, he scrutinized her face. “When did this happen?”
“A month ago.”
“You never said anything.”
“We haven’t exactly been communicating.” A few strained emails over the past three years barely counted.
“Jenna didn’t mention it either.”
“She doesn’t know.” Telling her mother she was divorced at the age of twenty-four . . . Yeah, she was not looking forward to that conversation.
“Well, you’d better come in, honey. I bet you’re hungry. Divorce can give you a real appetite. I ate like a farmer after all three of mine.”
Crush’s caustic sense of humor came in handy sometimes. Her entire body relaxed, all the anxiety about her homecoming released in a long exhale. She’d done the right thing, coming here. Despite their epic battles over Hudson, Crush would never turn her away. And he wouldn’t interrogate her the way her mother would. She wasn’t ready to answer her mother’s inevitable million and five questions.
“So . . . uh . . . you planning to stay awhile?” Crush asked when she was through the door, car carrier in hand.
“For now, if that’s okay.”
She saw concern simmering behind his curious gaze, but he merely nodded and walked with her up the stairs to the bedrooms. In the upstairs hallway, she stopped short. Both walls were lined with Kilby Catfish posters, each featuring a different player, along with the bold blue Catfish logo with its curving, jumping fish.
The poster next to her old bedroom featured none other than Trevor Stark. Trevor, in full Technicolor, wearing a Catfish uniform that hugged the muscles of his thighs and arms as he held a bat on his shoulder. Those killer crystal eyes stared into the distance with a look of pure distilled intimidation. You could put that look in a bottle and win a war with it. He looked epic, legendary, fearsome.
And yet, in the car with him, she hadn’t felt intimidated. Not for a second.
“Trevor Stark,” Crush said, eyeing the poster with an expression of extreme animosity. “Sorry, I’ll get the housekeeper to move the posters.”
“Don’t bother, I’ll consider it homework. I should get to know your players, right?”
“Wrong. Especially that one.” He gestured at the poster of Trevor. “Stay very, very far away from that one.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. Should she mention that it was already too late for that? No, she had more important information to unload first.
Inside her bedroom, she put Jerome’s cat carrier on the floor and opened the door. He prowled out and sniffed his new surroundings.
“Cardio for this one.” Crush squatted down next to the enormous ball of white fur. “At least an hour a day. Maybe two.”
She laughed, bending down to pet Jerome, who immediately began to purr with a sort of voracious joy. “Leave Jerome alone. I’ll be down in a second, Dad. Let me just get him situated.”
“Does he need his own room? His own kitchen?”
Affectionately, she shook her head at Crush. She’d missed his sarcasm.
Crush left to put together some snacks, while she got Jerome set up with his litter box and some food and water. He only bumped into the wall a couple of times while exploring the room. His missing eye made him more awkward than most cats—maybe that’s why she’d related to him the second she’d spotted him in a side alley in Rome. She curled up on the bed, still covered with the same lily-patterned coverlet from her teen years, and petted him for a while, soaking in the comfort of home.
Home. Until a month ago, home had been the little apartment in Rome. What was Hudson doing right now? It was nearly morning in his time zone, so he was probably snuggled in bed. Maybe on the road, maybe with Nessa.
The familiar headache gathered, the aftermath of all the arguing and tears and upheaval making her shake on her old bed. She had no one but herself to blame. She should have stayed in college instead of trailing across Italy with Hudson Notswego. Hudson needed someone to decompress with after a game. He needed a back-rubber, a hand-holder, a dinner-preparer and complaint-listener. He needed someone to wear cute clothes with the other players’ wives, to look emotional when the camera turned her way, to cheer him on through all the ups and downs. He needed someone to root for him while he labored in the Italian League, hoping to catch the attention of the NBA. He needed her.
Until he’d met Nessa.
Ugh, she didn’t want to think about Hudson. She’d spent enough tears on him. She was back in Kilby for one reason only. Make a fresh start. Get her own life back, before it got hijacked by Hudson Notsw
ego’s basketball career.
Starting now.
She jumped to her feet, startling Jerome, and hurried down the wide, curving stairs that led to the expansive living room.
Paige was on the tall side, having inherited her father’s rangy pitcher’s build, although none of his hand-eye coordination. But even she felt dwarfed by the cavernous open space that formed the main living area of the ranch house. All the furniture was immense, most of it covered in some kind of animal hide. The center of the room featured a stone hearth so vast a toddler could stand inside it.
She found Crush pouring himself a root beer at the polished teak bar. A plate of cheese and sliced bread awaited her. “You’re drinking root beer?”
He gestured with the tumbler, inciting a clink of ice against glass. “It’s my new crutch since I quit drinking.”
“I fully support that habit. It’s a lot better than the last one.” He rarely drank around her, but she knew that partying had been one of the things that ended all three of his marriages.
“Hell on the waistline. I’ve been spending a couple hours in the gym every day just to keep up with the young sprouts.”
The young sprouts . . . did that include the much too fascinating Trevor Stark? She realized that the ballplayer hadn’t left her mind much since she’d first laid eyes on him striding arrogantly across the parking lot. Just the mention of his name brought back the feel of his presence in her nerve endings, like the aftermath of adrenaline.
On the other hand, there was the actual adrenaline of the attack and the car chase. That’s probably what this was, she told herself, not interest in another pro athlete. Because she was never, ever doing that again.
She folded a slice of cheese around a chunk of bread and chewed for a moment. But she hadn’t been very hungry since things fell apart with Hudson, so after a moment she put it down.
Crush cleared his throat. “So, Paige, you might as well let me have it. Was it a clean break?”
“A clean break? What exactly does that mean?” She busied herself scanning the options in the small fridge under the bar. Basically root beer or root beer. She went with root beer, and pulled out a tray of ice cubes while she was at it.
“Mutual, amicable, no collateral damage. Don’t forget you’re talking to an expert on breakups here. Scale of one to ten, how finished is it?”
“It’s completely over, but I don’t know how your scale works. Would that be a ten or a one?”
“Nine is divorce. Ten is divorce with no chance of sex with the ex.”
In the midst of cracking the tray of ice cubes, she pressed too hard and sent ice cubes bursting out of the tray. Crush, his reaction time still lightning quick, managed to catch one of them. She lunged after the others before they skidded off the bar. “Can you please try to remember that you’re my father?”
“Hard to forget, with you following in my footsteps so soon.”
She bristled as she plopped the runaway ice cubes into her tumbler. She’d entered into her marriage with complete determination not to get divorced. But maybe divorce was a genetic flaw, one she’d inherited from both parents. “It wasn’t my intention, believe me. I’ve been lecturing myself the entire trip from Rome.”
“Aw honey.” He leaned forward and patted her knee. “Skip the lectures. I’m not sorry to see Hudson gone.”
Hot and immediate, her usual resentment flooded to the surface. “That’s because you had a problem with his—” Color, she was about to say, since Hudson was black. But Crush smoothly finished the sentence for her.
“Sport. How the hell did you think it would work out with a basketball player? Even football would be a stretch, but basketball?”
“If you’re trying to make me laugh, don’t bother. There is nothing to laugh about here.”
“Sorry.” He slouched back onto his bar stool and sipped from his root beer. “What happened? Did he cheat? There’s a lot of temptation on the road.”
“You could say that. As a matter of fact, he’s already engaged.” The humiliating words felt like dirt in her mouth. “To Nessa Brindisi.”
“The cooking show chick? Cooking is Easy with Nessa Brindisi? The one with the big baz—” He sketched a large bosom in the air in front of his chest.
“Yes! God.” She dug her hands into her hair. “You’re. My. Father. Can you please?”
“Sorry. Paige, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Bad habit, you know me.”
Still simmering, she took a long swallow of her root beer. Sweet, but missing something. Would it be tacky to look for something stronger? He’d quit drinking, she hadn’t. “Hudson was a guest on her show. You know that steak rub he’s so proud of? With the rosemary and thyme and all? She invited him on TV to share that recipe.”
“I suppose he rubbed more than her steak.”
She surged to her feet. “That’s it. I’m going to bed. It’s been a long trip and I’m exhausted.” She’d been dead wrong, after all. Coming to Kilby was a terrible idea. Crush never took anything seriously.
“What? What did I say? No, honey, sit down. I want to hear the whole story. Come on.” Crush slid off his bar stool and snagged her arm as she charged past. She felt tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. God, hadn’t she cried them all out already? “Want the truth?”
Paige nodded, blotting the tear with her thumb.
“I’m cracking jokes so I don’t try to murder the asshole. He was never right for you. Ever.” Crush’s hazel eyes drilled into her, stealing her words. “Selfish, self-absorbed, willing to take whatever you’d give and offer nothing in return, except the privilege of being married to a star athlete. You deserve better.”
Wow. That was the most passionate, sincere thing she’d ever heard her father say to her. It took her a moment to recover from the shock. Blotting more tears, she managed a smile. “Better? You mean a point guard instead of a small forward?”
Slow delight spread across Crush’s face. “Aw honey. You cracked a joke.” He swept her into a big hug, the sweet scent of root beer and his usual bay rum cologne flooding her with comfort. Right at that moment she could have fallen asleep, right there in her father’s arms, and rested for a month.
The phone rang. Of course it did. The business of being Crush Taylor never ended. She stepped away so he could answer.
“Yeah.” His face darkened. “Are you fucking kidding me? How bad?”
After a long moment of listening, his expression hardening as the caller spoke, he ended with, “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
“What’s going on?”
“Trevor fucking Stark. Biggest pain in the ass player I’ve ever had on the team. Mother-effing Christ, it’s just one thing after another with that guy.”
Oh my God. She’d bet anything the call was about the attack in the parking lot. But that wasn’t his fault, was it? She opened her mouth to explain that some stranger with a BB gun had gone after him and she’d impulsively driven her rental into the midst of it, risking her own safety, then spent the next fifteen minutes verbally sparring with Big Bad Trevor Stark . . . yeah. No. Best to keep all that to herself.
“Anything you want to share, Dad?”
“Not right now. Go to bed, honey, we’ll catch up more in the morning. Got some calls to make.” He squeezed her arm, but the familiar absent look in his eyes told her he was mentally already far away. Dealing with Trevor Stark.
Funny, her mind was also filled with Trevor Stark at the moment. For the first time, she wondered what exactly Trevor had done to earn the ire of that BB-gun wielder. Maybe he’d deserved those BBs. Given the intensity behind his flirty manner, she wouldn’t be surprised.
The next morning, Paige woke to the smell of coffee and bacon. She took a few deep breaths, inhaling the scent. The food in Italy was amazing, but the coffee didn’t smell the same and they didn’t eat bacon for breakfast. She stretched, head to toes, nearly knocking Jerome off the bed. Good thing he weighed about as much as a bag of cement.
A big part of he
r wanted to sleep for another day or so. It had been so hard to drag herself out of bed the past few months. But she was here to make a new start. That was the whole point. And it had to begin with getting out of bed.
Once upright, she pulled on a pair of shorts and an Olimpia Milano T-shirt—the biggest rivals of Hudson’s team, so there. On her way down the hall, she paused at the poster of Trevor Stark, still aiming that crystal gaze into the distance, still posing with those tremendous muscles. With a flash of searing heat that went straight to the pit of her belly, she remembered the moment when he’d stripped off his T-shirt and handed it to her. His manner hadn’t been fearsome then. It had been teasing, playful, sensual, but still with that dark edge underneath. What would a man like Trevor Stark be like in bed? Powerful, relentless, teasing, focused . . . she shivered.
She had no business thinking about that.
In the kitchen, Crush, still sweaty from his morning workout, plopped a mug of coffee and a plate of bacon and eggs before her, then slid a fork and knife across the breakfast bar.
He propped his elbows on the granite surface. “So, Paige, what’s your plan? Something tells me you don’t have one yet. Very understandable, and it works out well for me. I have a proposal for you.”
She groaned, tempted to turn around and go snuggle with Jerome again. “Can I drink my coffee first?”
“Nope. I called Jenna. She said it’s best to approach you first thing in the morning while you’re still vulnerable, like a sleepy gazelle in the savannah.”
“You called Mom? I haven’t even talked to her about any of this yet.” Head beginning to pound, she slid onto a stool and poured about half a carton of cream into her coffee. Her mother, Jenna Jarvey, had been the first of Crush’s three wives. He’d met her when she was interning for a newspaper. She was now a newscaster in Philadelphia. Paige often wished those journalism skills could stay at the news station. Being grilled by her mother was nothing to look forward to.
Drive You Wild: A Love Between the Bases Novel Page 3
