He was doing his best to be up-front and honest. This isn’t fantasy baseball, and we aren’t a fantasy team, Mike had said before she’d left that morning. I want the real thing.
Alaina shook herself.
There was a difference between being realistic and procrastinating. She loved Mike. The grown-up Mike, not the boy from her childhood fantasies. And with that acknowledgment, the dream faded and reality came into focus, with a brighter, fuller vibrancy that any dream could ever hold.
* * *
EMILY WAS ABLE to fill her Saturday with activity, but after an early-morning visit with Stella Luna on Sunday, the rest of the day loomed long and lonely. At length she decided to work on the yard, so after church—where Sarah McGregor urged her to come to Sunday dinner—she went to the nursery and bought several fruit trees.
She was digging her third hole when Trent arrived.
“Take it easy,” he said as she wiped a drip of perspiration from her jaw. “I can plant those for you.”
She gave him a tight smile. “So can I.”
“Uh, yeah, sure. I came to take you out to the ranch. We usually arrive early for dinner.”
Emily shook her head. “It was nice of Sarah to invite me, but I can’t intrude.”
“Mom will be hurt if you don’t come. She’s expecting me to bring you.”
“Oh. Um...can you wait while I get cleaned up?”
“Take your time.”
He eyed the shovel, so Emily took it with her. She didn’t want to come back and find the trees had all been planted in the time it took to wash her face.
* * *
TRENT KNEW IT hadn’t been fair invoking his mother, though nothing he’d said was a lie. He’d mentioned wanting to bring Emily, and Sarah had been delighted. Of course, Mom had also gotten her hopes up because he’d never brought a woman to Sunday dinner...or any family event, for that matter.
I must have been waiting for the right one, Trent thought, even if I didn’t know it. It might sound sappy, but somewhere, deep in his heart, he must have known Emily was the right one from the beginning, or she never would have gotten through his defenses.
* * *
EMILY LAY IN bed that night, again unable to sleep.
Hope, stubborn and intractable, kept rearing its head.
Trent had stayed close at the weekly McGregor barbecue, even convincing her to go riding with him after the meal. He hadn’t joined in with the family merriment, but he was less standoffish and seemed more at ease.
As for Mike and Alaina?
From what Emily had seen, it was obvious they were going to be okay. No doubt another family announcement was coming, a far more pleasant one this time.
It wasn’t light yet outside, but she got up and decided to wear some of her new clothes—it turned out that form-fitting T-shirts and shorts were just as comfortable as skirts and blouses that billowed like curtains in the wind.
Emily was putting the ingredients together for chili when Trent knocked at his usual time. She hesitated, abruptly self-conscious about her outfit, but it was too late to change her mind.
“Hey,” she said casually, opening the door.
“Uh, yeah. Good morning.” Trent gazed at her figure longer than usual and Emily gritted her teeth. If he was still attracted to her, why didn’t he do something about it? The excuse that he was adjusting to having a female buddy was growing thin, but he hadn’t made any effort to really kiss her in weeks. Just quick little pecks. It was discombobulating...a word that usually made her smile, except she was too exasperated to find anything amusing.
That evening, as usual, Trent stayed after the others had left.
“How about Mexican for dinner?” he asked. “Manuela’s has started delivering, but we could go out if you want a change of pace.”
She’d had enough.
“Stop it,” Emily said. Loudly. “Stop paying so much attention. Stop ordering dinner. And stop looking at me all the time!”
He didn’t stop. Instead he looked at her all the more closely, his chest rumbling with a low, gravelly laugh that sent electric pulses down her spine.
* * *
TRENT HAD WONDERED how long Emily’s patience would last.
“Why should I stop?” he asked. “I love you and I won’t stop until you agree to marry me.”
Shock flashed across her face. “That’s ridiculous.”
Trent shook his head. “The idea of living without you is ridiculous, and it’s just as ridiculous that I took so long to figure it out. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and what could be better than loving my best friend with all my heart? What’s wrong with wanting you in my bed every night and making babies and raising our children together? Is there something bad about finding you more desirable each time I look at you?”
She stared and he laughed again.
“Hell, Emily, I thought my heart would fail when I saw you in those shorts this morning. You’re gorgeous no matter what you wear, but—”
“Don’t say that,” she interrupted.
“I said gorgeous and that’s what I meant,” he told her firmly. “For God’s sake, stop listening to that nonsense you grew up hearing. You’re stunningly beautiful, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. I don’t want a boring blonde Barbie. I want you.”
A sober expression crossed her face. “I’m flaky. Don’t deny that’s what you think, or that you don’t consider it a compliment.”
Panic tightened his gut. He took a deep breath and decided to be honest. “Okay, I went through a time...a lot of times, maybe, when I was trying to figure things out. You’re different than anyone I ever knew in Schuyler and I kept trying to put you in a category I could handle, or at least understand.”
“Like a woman who uses people.”
He swallowed. “Yes. I also wondered if you were one of those people that always need to be rescued, unable to deal with real life. People like that suck you under. Now I know better.”
“How do I know you wouldn’t start pigeon-holing me again?”
“Because I expect our relationship to grow. Most of the reason I was doing it in the first place was to keep myself from envisioning a relationship. You turned my world upside down, or so I thought. Now I know you turned it right-side up.”
* * *
EMILY’S HEAD WHIRLED. Trent was saying the kind of things she’d dreamed of him saying, but she needed to stay rational. Maybe this isn’t the time to be the smart George sister, a voice whispered. Perhaps it was Wild Rose Cottage talking, or maybe just her wishful heart.
He reached out and tugged her close, his lips brushing her cheek, her neck and finally her lips.
“You say you get feelings about places, not people,” he murmured. “Yet when you saw me taking that gun from the wall, you trusted me, before there was any reason for trust. Please listen to your heart again. Please have faith in me, the way I have faith in you. Please love me.”
The hope that had been growing inside of Emily went bounding out of control. She did love him. As for trust...maybe she mostly needed to trust herself and the honest certainty she saw in Trent’s eyes.
“I’ll always love you,” she whispered.
His kiss was fierce, stealing her sanity for an endless minute. After a long, long time, he pulled back a few inches and stared at the smile on her face. She saw the excitement in his...not only the surge of desire, but a joy that went deeper.
He took a velvet box from his pocket and opened it. Inside was the most beautiful ring she’d ever seen.
“They’re all sapphires, but the center stone is from Montana,” Trent explained, slipping it on her finger. “I wanted something unique, just like the woman I love.”
Emily hadn’t known sapphires came in different colors and her eyes widened
; he’d chosen something exactly right for her.
“You’re the only future I will ever want,” Trent promised. “We can build our dream house on my ranch, the place I showed you with the wonderful views, or we can live here and be Wild Rose Cottage’s second chance.”
“I think someone else is supposed to make it their home,” she said slowly, finally understanding what the house had been trying to tell her... Wild Rose Cottage had been remodeled just for her, but they could build a home for both of them out on the ranch. “Let’s build the other house. I have a really good feeling about that piece of land. I think it wants us there.”
Trent smiled and kissed her. “You’re right. Absolutely and wonderfully right.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from BETTING ON THE ROOKIE by Stephanie Doyle.
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Betting on the Rookie
by Stephanie Doyle
PROLOGUE
“RICHARD, TELL ME again you didn’t do this thing.”
Samantha sat behind the desk in her office and continued to read the Tweets on her phone even as she waited for the person in front of her to prove he couldn’t be guilty of what he’d been accused.
She knew Richard. She’d followed him his entire college career and was the first to call him when he committed to the NFL draft. She’d sat down with his family, she’d talked to ex-girlfriends, former teachers. Everyone had glowing things to say about him.
Who didn’t love Richard Stanson, the all-American quarterback?
Samantha prided herself on having a small close-knit clientele. These weren’t just people she represented; they were people she knew. Her entire business model was built on the idea that trust was the number one component of each and every relationship.
They had to trust her with their careers, their compensation, and she had to trust that she was working for the right people. Good people who understood what it meant to be not just an athlete, but a professional. It wasn’t just about the money for her. It hadn’t been since she’d left Barkley Partners to go it alone.
She wanted to be an agent on her terms. She wanted only the best kind of clients, and she wanted to make sure she did right by all of them.
Richard had been one of her first major wins. Everyone wanted him, but he chose her because he said he trusted her the most. He’d legitimized her agency. He’d legitimized her.
If an all-American quarterback didn’t have a problem with a woman as an agent, then who would?
“Sam, I didn’t do it.”
Samantha closed her eyes. He looked so earnest. Sometimes she forgot he was only twenty-six. Still, in many ways, just a kid playing a game.
“Come on, you have to believe me,” he said again, putting his hands on her desk. He had immediately flown to Chicago when the story had been about to break. He said it was because he wanted her to hear his side first, and he wanted to do it in person, so she could see his face when he told her.
Too late about getting to her first.
Social media was already beginning to tear down America’s quarterback. Guilty before even having a chance to say he was innocent.
Samantha’s phone had been buzzing frantically all morning. His sponsors would want constant updates. She didn’t blame them, not when the man whose face was on so many of America’s favorite products had just been accused of hitting a woman and knocking her down a flight of stairs.
“I’ve been with you for four years,” he told her. “You know what kind of person I am. You have to.”
Samantha stopped reading the Tweets and set her phone aside for now. She looked into his eyes, really looked into them as she tried to evaluate whether or not he could be that good a liar.
He sounded innocent. He looked innocent.
In the four years he’d been her client nothing like this had come out before. But in the past seven months of him dating Juliette, the supermodel, things had been different. Their relationship at best could be described as intense. At worst volatile. Several of their verbal arguments had been caught on camera outside various nightclubs.
Samantha had at one point suggested that maybe they weren’t a good fit. Richard had shrugged it off and just said that they were working through their issues. The next thing Sam heard, they were engaged. When he’d called to tell her that news, he’d promised Sam that they were better. More relaxed as a couple. He seemed so certain she was the one. That their love was the real thing.
Would a man who loved his fiancée hit her?
Sadly, Sam knew the answer to that question all too well.
“People are reporting hearing shouts in the stairwell before you opened the door and called for help.”
“We were drunk,” he insisted. “Yes, we were loud and obnoxious before it happened. I’ve got no excuse for that, I can only tell you it’s the truth. Hell, that’s why she fell. And I was too drunk to catch her before she went down.”
It wasn’t the most unreasonable story. They had left the hotel bar late at night and decided to take the stairs to their room on the second floor. They had been drunk, clearly loud enough for people in the hotel lobby to have heard them. Juliette had tripped in her four-inch-high stilettos, fallen, hit her chin on the stair railing and knocked herself out cold.
The concierge had opened the door to the stairs, only to find Richard picking up his out-cold fiancée with a severe red mark already forming on her face. He did the next logical thing and called the police.
Only, Juliette had revived by the time the police got there and backed up Richard’s story. No formal complaint had been filed, and the police left the hotel.
However, someone in the lobby, who must have realized who Richard was, had apparently snapped a picture of the quarterback with his unconscious fiancée in his arms. From there it was nothing more than a few reTweets to social media obliteration.
“You need to let me get out there. Let me tell them my side of the story. They’ll believe me. Hell, they will believe Juliette.”
No, Sam thought. They won’t. Not when a woman is about to marry a man who is about to become the highest paid NFL quarterback of all time.
“You’re not saying anything,” she told him. “I’ll hold a press conference in the large con
ference room downstairs. I’ll tell them everything you said exactly as you said it and let them ask me their questions. If you and Juliette are seen together, I think it will just lend more credence to a false accusation. Besides, her face must be a mess. I’ll handle it.”
“I knew you would believe me,” he said, smiling and nodding. “I knew you would never think that of me.”
“Just one last question.” Samantha had gone over the series of events Richard had detailed for her, coupled with the police report and the story she’d heard directly from the concierge at the hotel. One thing hadn’t sounded right.
“Why was her shirt ripped?”
“What?”
“Her shirt, the concierge said a bunch of buttons were at the bottom of the steps, and it looked like her shirt was ripped in front.”
Richard shook his head. “Maybe when I reached for her, I grabbed her shirt from behind?”
“Maybe?”
Richard groaned. “Come on, Sam. I already told you. I was drunk. Freaking blitzed. It happened in a second. One minute she’s standing next to me, the next she’s at the bottom of the steps.”
It all came down to trust.
Did Sam trust Richard or didn’t she?
* * *
THE NEXT DAY Sam stood in her conference room, which was filled to capacity with press. ESPN had sent a film crew, and it was clear they were disappointed only Sam would be speaking.
“Richard Stanson is innocent. I’m not saying that as his lawyer or his agent, but as his friend. He is the victim in this case. The victim of a picture taken out of context by a person who didn’t have all the facts.”
“Can you tell us the facts as you understand them?” one reporter called out.
Samantha laid out Richard’s perfectly reasonable explanation for the events of a few nights ago.
At Wild Rose Cottage Page 27
