by Alison Kent
"Sorry. I'm sorry." Jack put up one hand, put on an expression of complete seriousness and tried again. He did a good job, too, making it through the entire windup and delivery with no sign of his former descent into levity.
That was when Ben took over. “Hey, batte-batte-batte-batter. Batte-batte-batte-batter. SWING!"
Heidi swung. And missed. Not surprising in the least since she hadn't even seen the ball. She looked over Ben's head at Ronnie, the officiating father-to-be. "Can he do that?"
Ronnie wiped his sweaty forehead in the crook of his elbow. "Yes, ma'am. He can."
"Hmpf." She raised a high brow down at Ben. "I won't fall for it again."
"We'll see," he said and grinned roguishly, the dark hair and dark sunglasses and dark blue bandanna the uniform of the dread Pirate Tannen.
Damn distracting man. Damn distracting scar. She whipped her head up and away and dared Jack to bring it on. He did, she swung and missed. She knew she missed.
She didn't need the groans from the dugout or Randy's, "Eye on the ball, Heidi. Watch the ball," or Quentin's sympathetic shrug from the outfield or Jack's unsympathetic gloat.
And more than anything she certainly didn't need the low sexy chuckle behind her, way too close to her hip, close enough that she wasn't sure she didn't imagine the heat of Ben's body or the clean sweaty smell of his wet hair and skin.
She knew she didn't imagine her body's response, the shaking knees and sweating schoolgirl palms. Or the all grown-up flutter deep in her belly. Or the quiet insistent trembling closer to her heart.
Then Ben cleared his throat and said quietly, "You know, Heidi. It's been fifteen years. Now that we've made it out of the parking lot, don't you think it's time we stopped trying to bust each other's balls?"
Thwack. Jack's third strike caught Heidi out and looking, but looking at the bane of her existence, not the pitch. She towered over and glowered down. "What I think is that if we're going to continue reliving our past, you should stand up and I'll see if I can finish knocking some sense into your hard head."
Ben stood slowly, pushing up on those well-toned legs until he ruled one side of the plate and Heidi ruled the other. The pulse in his neck matched the beat of her heart. The set of his shoulders was rigid, the set of his features was tight. Then the tic in his jaw slowly eased. And he smiled.
He tucked both ball and glove beneath one arm and pulled his shades from his face with the opposite hand. His eyes twinkled and his mouth twitched so Heidi never felt a hint of a threat when he waggled his fingers in a bold "come hither."
"You want me, baby? You come get me."
The tension on the field of the ballpark rose along with the heat in the air. Heidi could barely breathe, even though she pulled in one long breath after another. She considered flight, considered retreat, considered digging a hole to the center of the earth.
But this challenge was a part of their "long time coming" and she took an equally bold step forward.
She jabbed the head of the bat into Ben's six-pack abs and gave a gentle push. He stumbled backward theatrically, arms flailing wildly as he went down and dropped ball and glove and shades to the ground.
Heidi rolled her eyes. "If you're going to be this easy on me, I'm not going to waste the effort."
Ben grinned his cocky pirate grin and got to his feet. He reached forward and flicked the end of her nose. "You won't believe how incredibly easy I am."
"How incredibly arrogant, you mean," she said and this time jabbed a little harder.
He took another long slow-motion fall and landed flat on his backside, sending smoky dust rising in a cloud. A very effective pratfall judging by the gasps of the onlookers.
Struggling to his feet, he swiped the dirt from his rear and backed a step away. Heidi advanced, wielding her bat and giving the audience what they wanted to see. This was Mighty Heidi in her element, arguing her case, proving her point, defending The Joker's life.
Ben hit the chain-link backstop, feigned panic, crossed his arms over his face to ward off her imaginary blows. From the dugouts, the field and the bleachers, giggles and heckles and howls reached her ears, but Heidi didn't stop.
She pressed forward, adrenaline making good on the part of her attack not covered by the thrill of payback. When was the last time she'd felt this fire for anything but a case? Oh, Ben. You're in for it now.
She'd gone as far as she could go without pushing Ben through the backstop. Holding the broad head of the bat to his middle, she smiled sweetly and tapped the wood to his belly. "Now, watch my mouth and say, 'I'm sorry for distracting you, Heidi. I'm sorry I caused you to strike out.'"
Ben was silent for a moment, his gaze fastened on her lips as instructed. Then his eyes flared and grew a smoky dusky green. "Do I?"
"Do you what?"
"Do I distract you, Heidi?"
"You know you did with all that batter chatter. Telling me to swing." She raised the bat, slowly touched the smooth tip to his chin.
And then her stomach clenched. She felt that she was quite out of breath. But still she slid the head of the bat along the length of his scar. The sound of her own voice barely reached her ears. "What did you think you were doing, Ben? Telling me to swing?"
"I meant at the ball, baby. Not at me." He took the bat from her hand and lowered it to the ground.
She blinked, frowned. What just happened? And why had he called her baby? And what was she doing standing so close when she'd seen last night that distance was vital?
Her eyes were level with his collarbone. His skin was damp and dusty. And since she was already out of her mind, she reached up and cleared a finger-wide path through the coating of grime.
His skin was resilient. Supple and healthy and glowing and hot. The hair on his chest deserved exploration. She softly raked three fingers through, stopping when Ben sucked in a sharp breath.
"What're you doin' here, Heidi? You gonna hitme? Hurt me? Tie me in knots and make me beg?" He smiled then. An evil smile. A twisted deviant devilish smile. "Or are you wanting to give these fine people the show they've been waiting to see for at least fifteen years?"
Chapter Seven
BEN TANNER HAD picked the wrong woman to mess with. Because Heidi was in a serious don't-mess-with-me mood. She'd struck out and let her teammates down, a minor offense. She'd threatened to smack Ben again, although teasingly.
She was acting the jackass in front of people who for years had expected nothing better from her—and when she'd been so determined they'd walk away from this weekend having changed their minds.
But more than any of those don't-mess-with-me reasons causing smoke to pour from her ears was that she was standing here with out-and-out lust on her mind.
And that made her angry—at herself, at Ben, at the way hormones and old times couldn't keep their hands off one another.
It wasn't a nice lust, either. It was a lust with bedroom potential. A lust begging her to explore. This man. His body. His body with hers. She couldn't believe that sex was what this weekend was coming down to. Not when she'd arrived in Sherwood Grove with purely adult goals and motives.
What? Like sex doesn't fit that category?
She was so out of her mind. If only Georgia could see her now. No, she needed to keep Georgia out of this. The other woman would only cheer Heidi on, then gloat with a big bad I-told-you-so.
Besides. It was time. They'd reached the midpoint of the weekend. And Ben was the reason she was here. She pulled in a deep breath, blew it out in a slow long stream.
And then she said, "You got my IOU on you, Ace?"
Ben took a minute to react, and his reaction was all Heidi had expected. He took her by the shoulders, his fingers slipping beneath the rayon fabric of her sleeveless white blouse, and then he was the aggressor, spinning her up against the backstop fence.
"I can have it on me—" he glanced at his dusty watch face "—in an hour. No, forget that. Come home with me. We can be there in thirty minutes."
What thrilled her most
was that he was serious. Urgently serious. What made her stomach burn was that he was serious. Deadly serious.
Oh, he was serious. And she was going to be sick. He wanted her, this man, this man who had been an intrinsic part of her life since she was fifteen years old, wanted her.
And she wanted him. Here, on this ball field, in front of God and the opposing team. She wanted to make love with Ben Tannen. His nostrils flared, his eyes blistered and Heidi was lost in the fog of his heat.
She wanted to bathe him, to wash the dirt and grime from his body, to touch his wet skin, to feel him in soapsuds, to smell all the male parts so clean and so luscious.
She wanted to undress him, to slowly peel away his bandanna and finger the texture of his hair, to flip open the buttons of his fly, to see how he looked in nothing but briefs, to see how he looked in nothing at all.
She wanted to listen to the sound of his breathing, the sound of his voice, the sound of his pleasure and his pleasure in her. She wanted him naked. She wanted him inside of her. She wanted all those things and she wanted them now.
She'd wondered at times about women she'd represented, how they could get themselves into so much trouble based on hormone-driven choices.
Now, she understood.
She laughed, nervously, a sound that couldn't belong to her, Heidi Malone. "What's your hurry, Ace?"
"You're right." He lifted one—only one—exasperated hand from her shoulder, shoved the bandanna from his head and stuffed it into his pocket. "Right. What's the hurry. It's not like I've been waiting fifteen friggin' years."
"You have?" she said, her voice ingenuously soft. "You've been waiting for me?"
"Call it a sick and twisted fantasy, but yeah." He reached for a sprig of hair that had escaped the clasp of her ball cap and twirled it around his finger. "I've been waiting for you."
"I'm your fantasy?" She reached up and touched his face, and the hair that had fallen loose on his brow. "I don't think I've been anyone's fantasy before."
Ben's eyes slowly closed, slowly opened. His mouth pulled into a regretful smile. "You were everyone's fantasy, Heidi. Didn't you know that?"
“What do you mean?" she asked, and frowned at his statement. This was becoming ludicrous. What was it she'd been so blind to all these years?
“Nothing. Later." His annoyance was plain.
Her mood had shifted, taking on a hint of perturbation. They weren't even in a relationship and she already had a headache. Not a good sign.
"We can't go anywhere. We're in the middle of a ball game," she said, though most of the audience had long since dispersed.
"This ball game stopped about seven minutes ago." The hand still on her shoulder fondled the strap of her bra. “What we're in the middle of is a game with different rules."
"Rules?" Finally. The return of her backbone. "And who sets these rules?"
“I do. You do. We do."
"I see. And if I decide I don't want to play the game?"
"That's not going to happen," he said and reached for her hands.
He laced their fingers together and raised their joined hands. Hooking his fingers through the backstop fence, he gently held her there. His body wasn't quite as gentle when it pressed forward.
"You want to play just as much as I do. I can see it in your eyes."
She frowned, squinted. “No you can't."
He nodded, his lips fighting a twitch. "And I can see it in the way you're breathing."
That she didn't doubt for a minute. There was probably no one in the park who couldn't see the rise and fall of her chest, even with a sports bra mashing her breasts into pancakes.
“You have a wild imagination, Ben."
"It's in the way you hold your mouth, Heidi."
She released her tongue, which was caught between the bare edges of her teeth.
"And the way you let me so close. I don't think you've allowed this with many men, have you?"
She wasn't going to tell him. She wasn't going to tell him. She wasn't going to tell him, so she didn't say a word.
"I didn't think so," he answered, and then his mouth came down on hers.
It wasn't a very nice kiss. It was all body and all mouth, the kiss Heidi would have imagined had she any idea a man could kiss like this.
There was desperation and there was hunger and there was loneliness and relief. She knew all these things, could name every one, because Ben drew the same from her.
He drew more, as well. From the woman's deep, center of her body, he pulled up longing and rapture, which was the only word to describe the bliss she found in his mouth. Greed, which surprised her. She hadn't known she could want this badly.
And that it would be Ben she wanted...
Heidi squeezed his hand, leaned her head forward and gave him his answer, told him with her movements that he'd been right about all of it.
His tongue was so sweet as it slid against hers. Sweet and inviting and arousing and hot. His lips pressed hard, his beard scraped. His day off and he hadn't shaved. She liked that. She wanted to touch his face.
But he refused to let go of her hands. He held her fast when she made a weak struggle, growled a deep, "Uh-uh," in his throat. And the fight between her heart and her head lost the battle to her body.
She surrendered, giving in to Ben and sensation. His body was heated and hard and he smelled like the sun and clean sweat. His lips pulled at hers and his tongue tangled with hers and she pulled and tangled and kissed him right back.
Ben was the first to break contact. He opened his eyes and looked down, moving their joined hands to his hips, working to catch his own breath.
Her breath was long beyond catching. Her thumbs grazed the skin above his waistband and she sighed, then hooked them inside the denim. And inside the elastic of his shorts.
He hissed in a breath. "What're you doing to me, Heidi?"
She lifted her chin, met his eyes. "Playing this new game you started. Using my rules."
"I think I like your rules." He smiled, let go of her hands then, and moved his fingers to her waist, his thumbs to her waistband and beneath.
She whimpered softly; she couldn't help it, and she hoped he couldn't hear. But from the start of this contact he'd heard her every silent entreaty. So, of course he heard the one which reached his ears.
"Heidi. I want to touch you."
"You are touching me."
"No," he said and moved his fingers. "I want to touch you."
She answered him with her hands, sliding the flat of her palms from his waist to his ribs. It was all she could say.
Ben went on, his words barely reaching her ears. "I want you to touch me."
"I am touching you."
"No." He shook his head, resting his forehead on hers. His voice was tight when he said again, yet for the first time, "I want you to touch me."
She wanted to touch him. The way he asked. The way he begged. The way he wanted. How could she not want to please this man? He'd been everything to her all those years ago and her heart had not forgotten. It beat with his pulse even now.
But her mind remembered and she sighed, backing that first difficult step away from the moment. It was then that her common sense had room to intrude, her logic the space to prevail. He may have been everything to her then, but he could be nothing to her now—not until she'd repaired the ancient damage.
For even more than she owed that to Ben, she owed it to herself.
A loud intrusive cough drew Heidi's attention. She blinked slowly, accepting what her peripheral vision had insisted was the truth. They had an audience. A captive audience. A captive audience of three.
At her groan, Ben cut his eyes to the left, to the right, then he reached for Heidi's hands where they remained measuring the width of his ribcage.
He slid his palms from her wrists up her bare arms to her shoulders and, holding her captive like a pirate's possession, he swooped down and plundered her mouth one last time.
Then he stepped back, loo
ked at Randy on his right, Jack on his left and shrugged. Arms crossed, the two men nodded at one another and moved in. Taking hold of Ben's upper biceps, they dragged him away. His heels left twin tracks in the dirt.
Heidi rolled her eyes and leaned into Quentin's side as he walked up and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "Now that was worth the price of the trip."
He had no idea. "Glad you feel like you got your money's worth."
I know I did.
THE SHERWOOD GROVE Country Club had been built during the years Heidi had been absent from the Austin area. The impressive white stone facade stood as a testimony to wealth, guarding a section of the city into which she'd never had entrance as a child.
Amused by the valet's wide-eyed reaction to her sleek sports car, she slipped the claim check into her red evening bag and made her way up the flagstone walkway winding between pink-and-white roses and accents of deep summer green.
Smiling at the doorman, she took a deep breath and, full steam ahead, slipped inside as he held open the door. Funny how she felt completely at ease in the grand foyer of plush pink, gold and white, even while a tiny voice inside her head insisted she didn't be-long.
She did belong. She fit in and had as much right to be here as any Tannen. Her designer dress of scarlet silk fell in classic lines from the capped sleeves on her shoulders to the floor. The neckline plunged discreetly, but daringly. The look fairly oozed Hollywood glamour.
Her shoes were Chanel. Her one accessory, a jeweled cuff bracelet, was elegantly understated. Her hair was swept up in a sleek chignon. She dared anyone to find evidence of the river kid who, unwelcome and unwanted, had spent four years at Johnson High.
Yet that's exactly who she was beneath the dress and the shoes and the bracelet that together cost half as much as she'd earned her first year out of law school. Almost as much, in fact, as the debt she'd repaid Ben Tannen.
The first debt, she amended. The monetary debt. She still had another debt to repay.
And she would. Before the end of the night she'd insist they talk about the assault. Because they couldn't take the night anywhere else, couldn't take this afternoon's game to its natural conclusion, until they did.
