Sliding Into Home

by Joanne Rock

  He’d never asked for charity. In fact, Javier had busted his hump to bring in money, but just keeping up with living expenses had been tough and Manny wasn’t the kind of brother you argued with. He’d had the kind of steely will and work ethic Javier had always admired and Manuel always said his turn would come when Javier made it big in the majors.

  “He sounds like a great guy,” Lisa observed, her fingers scratching a light rhythm over his skin in the dark.

  “He was.” It had been seven years since Manny died and the hole inside Javier still hadn’t closed. Although, he realized, the cavernous depth didn’t yawn quite so wide with Lisa tucked against him. “But he never had his turn to play since a heart attack took him from us before his thirtieth birthday.”

  Javier felt Lisa wince beside him and she buried her forehead on his shoulder.

  “How awful.” The simple words summed it up well. “You must have been devastated to lose him.”

  “I was never much of a risk taker before he died.” He’d been a straight arrow, comfortable with Manny’s vision of the future and never thinking it might not happen that way. “But afterward, it felt wrong to take any moment for granted, you know? I kept thinking that Manny wouldn’t want me to put off any happiness or any pleasure because he’d put off his dreams and got robbed before he could see them through.”

  “So you’ve lived the dreams for him?”

  “It seemed like the right thing to do.” He shrugged, wondering if a shrink would think he was off his rocker. “I never overthought it, I guess. I just felt like all that force and will of his shouldn’t die with him. It deserved to be remembered.”

  A soft kiss landed on his cheek.

  “I bet he would be so proud of all you’ve accomplished.”

  The words squeezed his heart like a vise—in a good way. Hell, they squeezed so tight he felt the sting of tears. Good thing he was Latin enough not to give a rip that his emotions lived close to the surface.

  “Thank you.” He swiped a hand across his eyes to chase the burn away. “I was feeling pretty good about it until the other day when we went kite surfing.”

  She tried to interrupt, but he wouldn’t let her, knowing if he didn’t finish spitting this out now it could go unsaid for another seven years.

  “Isn’t it enough that I’m playing in the majors? What the hell would it prove if I break my neck before I’m thirty, too?”

  “I didn’t know your brother, but I’m willing to guess he wouldn’t want you to screw up your career.” She rested her chin on his chest, peering up into his eyes.

  He could see her clearly now that dawn had broken, the flimsy hotel curtains not nearly heavy enough to keep out the coming day.

  She appealed to him in so many ways. From her unflappable, easy acceptance of who he was to her clear-eyed ability to call a spade a spade. He didn’t know if he could trust his instincts on a night that had packed such an emotional punch, but he knew he was falling hard and fast for her.

  “You’re probably right.” Framing her face with his hands, he kissed her, rolling her underneath him to claim her all over again.

  The peal of his cell phone ring tone shattered the mood.

  Although tempted to ignore it, he didn’t protest when she thrust the phone in his hand and slipped out from under him.

  “I’ll go shower,” she insisted, picking up her purse and a handful of clothes on her way.

  Regretting the loss of her touch, he thumbed the on button after recognizing his agent’s number.

  His surprise at seeing Scofield’s number didn’t begin to compare with the shock he felt at the sight of Lisa walking toward the shower. Now that the beginnings of dawn light permeated the curtains, he could see a spider web of intricate markings on her hip, the scars of an old injury he hadn’t felt during the night. Scars he hadn’t seen that day at the beach since her bathing suit would have covered most of them.

  “Javier?” his agent’s voice called him out of his brooding thoughts.

  “Yeah, I’m kind of busy right now.” He planned to confront Lisa with all haste to find out what those scars were. Were they from her old thrill-seeking days?

  “Have you seen the morning news?”

  Javier checked the bedside clock.

  “It’s not even seven.”

  “Somebody dug up the dirt on your trainer girlfriend.” Scofield didn’t sound pleased and Javier tensed, wondering what beef anyone could have with Lisa. “And I don’t think the Flames are going to appreciate you dating someone who is as much of a head case as you.”

  LISA WARBLED HER WAY through an old show tune as she rinsed the last of the hotel conditioner from her hair. She was in the process of enjoying the sting of hot water on her back for an extra decadent moment when the stream stopped short. Blinking fast, she discovered Javier in the shower beside her, his arm bracing the curtain open while he cut off her spray.

  “I hope you’re going to make that up to me—” Her words halted as she spied the expression on his face. At once blank and forbidding, he stared at her with the dispassionate regard of a stranger. “What’s wrong?”

  “Apparently we made the morning news.” He handed her a towel even though his gaze never slipped south of her eyes for a second. “Someone snagged a photo of us at the beach last week and I can only guess they sat on it so they could do a little investigative reporting to maximize the value of the picture.”

  Lisa’s skin chilled. Her heart hitched for a moment at the disappointment—anger—in his eyes.

  She wrapped the towel around her and sidestepped him in the steamy bathroom.

  “And?” She could only imagine what an investigation into her past would bring.

  “And you nearly died in a plane wreck eight years ago.” He placed his hand on her hip, clearly having seen the scars on her leg from that very same accident. “While I don’t give a damn what my manager has to say about me having a relationship with a woman who lives on the edge as much as me, I definitely give a damn that it never occurred to you to tell me—”

  “You knew I had a similar past.” Feeling defensive, she reached for a second towel for her hair. Had she lost any chance they might have had at a relationship by not confiding in him?

  “But I didn’t know it had almost killed you.”

  His words burned a hole in her heart, making her wonder why she’d withheld that piece of her past even after he’d opened up to her about his brother. They had found something special together, but if they weren’t careful, they could hurt each other in the end.

  She might have already hurt his career irrevocably, in fact. She’d taken her job with the Flames to try and help him past that need to take risks, but instead, she’d allowed herself to be caught up in the irrepressible hunger for life she saw in his eyes. Now, the chances the Flames management would send him packing had increased ten-fold because of her.

  “It made me stronger in the end.” She pulled away, worried their time together might be drawing to a close and unable to think how to salvage a relationship without hurting each other more. “I shattered my hip and had to relearn how to walk. But it made me appreciate every second. I learned to appreciate my own worth.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” He studied her as if he’d never seen her before and she realized maybe he hadn’t. Javier had been so forthright about who he was and what he wanted from life, but she’d grown more guarded than that. She wasn’t used to baring her secrets. Exposing herself and her fears.

  “I have a hard time—” She cleared her throat and wondered how she would walk away from someone who truly understood her and cared about her. His tender concern made her eyes burn for what they might have shared. But how could she allow him to sacrifice his place on the Flames for her sake? “Listen, maybe it would be best if I go.”

  He did a double take that was so overt it would have been cartoonishly funny if it hadn’t been a heart-wrenchingly awful moment.

  “Leave? You want to leave after what we s
hared?”

  Guilt pinched her, but not as much as the guilt she knew she would feel if he got booted off the team because of her.

  “Do you really want to lose out on your baseball career after all your brother’s sacrifices?”

  He shook his head. “My God, Lisa. You can’t seriously hold that over my head.”

  The tears behind her eyes built until they threatened to spill over at the slightest movement.

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t imagine that you’d be happy without the career that’s meant so much to you. It’s one thing to walk away from the risk taking, but it’s another to walk away from baseball.” Just saying the words aloud reassured her it was the right thing to do to leave. “You’re too talented for that, Javier. You deserve a place in the stat books and a long, lucrative career that will entertain fans for years to come. I would never want to give your team a reason to release you after how hard you’ve worked to get here.”

  He watched her for a long moment before he shook his head. The stark look in his eyes cut her to the quick.

  “When we met, it was me who was trying to send you running and now that I’ve succeeded, it’s the last thing I want.”

  “I never meant for this to happen,” she assured him, swallowing past the lump in her throat. She reached for her clothes near the bathroom door. “Goodbye, Javier.”

  Closing the door between them, she dressed quietly and left the room, knowing she’d never seek him out again.

  5

  LISA DIDN’T TAKE ANY satisfaction from the hitting slump Javier fell into after she left him that day.

  His slugging percentage took a nosedive over the next five games, a fact that was front page news in the Tribune’s sports section after their last home game. Not that she was obsessed with the man who got away or anything. Javier’s stats were just common public knowledge since Chitown loved its sports heroes.

  A love she was afraid she might share.

  In the last week, her heart had experienced a worse pain than that prop plane crash eight years ago. She had renewed understanding for what it felt like to be broken and vulnerable, except these hurts were all on the inside, too deep for any therapy she knew.

  She entered the Flames’ training facility on an off-day, knowing the team was traveling for a road game the next afternoon. She’d been putting off the chore of cleaning out a small locker at the center, not wanting to run into Javier after the way things had ended between them.

  Thankfully, interest in her had died down when the media failed to snag any other photos of the two of them together. The Flames had come out in support of Javier despite the earlier insinuations in the press that Lisa was a daredevil who wanted to lead him even further astray. The flap had ended after a few days and she’d wondered if she’d been overcautious to take the allegations so seriously.

  Since then, her former supervisor had asked her to come in for an exit interview and to pick up her things, and he’d been glad to let her do the first over the phone and the latter during off-hours since the Flames wanted to low-key her involvement with the team after the news coverage. She’d turn in her key before she left today and then her last tie to the sexy third basemen would be broken.

  It felt odd to be in the training facility alone. Some of the staff traveled with the team and those who didn’t had already left for the day. She passed a door for the club house and tried not to think about Javier.

  “Lisa.”

  A man spoke her name from the shadows of what she thought was an empty conference room and she yelped in surprise.

  Slowing her step to see who was inside, she saw a heart-achingly familiar silhouette.

  Javier.

  “I didn’t think you’d be here,” she said, realizing too late how revealing that statement must be. Since when did she sneak around trying to avoid someone just because he had the power to break her heart? Straightening, she ignored her galloping heart rate and walked on. “Excuse me,” she murmured.

  “Wait.” He stepped out into the carpeted hall behind her, his tall frame flanked by historic posters advertising old games. “I’ve been trying to see you.”

  He tucked his hand around her elbow lightly enough, but it was a touch she felt in every fiber of her being. She hoped he didn’t feel the small, bittersweet shiver that trembled through her on contact.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” She’d be throwing herself at him in no time.

  “I shouldn’t have let you have the last word the other day.” He gave her a rueful grin. “That’s truly unlike me and it should tell you how much I value your opinion.”

  She clutched her building keys tighter in her fist, needing to exit the conversation before her heart melted like ice cream at the ballpark.

  “I appreciate that, but—”

  “But you were dead wrong.” He silenced her with his words, calling the shots in a way that made her smile despite her misery.

  “How do you figure?” She avoided his eyes, staring instead at the whiteboard where the trainers scheduled the therapy rooms ahead of time. She noticed her old schedule with Javier had been erased, though no one else had taken the slots with him.

  “We shouldn’t end this.” He reached for her shoulders, approaching her slowly, giving her time to object.

  She remained silent, longing for something she had told herself all week she couldn’t have.

  “We belong together, Lisa.” His hands landed gently on her shoulders. “Before you left to take a shower that morning, I was already making plans for taking you sailing and diving. Then when that phone call came about our pictures in the press and your past—” He clutched his chest. “I was just caught so damn off guard.”

  Seeing this big, strong man hold on to his heart like it was a fragile thing warmed her insides like no amount of words could have.

  “I should have told you about the accident—”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You would have told me in your own time. Being in the spotlight the way I am—it puts my life under the microscope and forces things onto center stage that don’t necessarily deserve to be there. I think the only reason I let you leave that day was my own fear that we’re so alike that you’d hate living in a fish bowl in the long run as much as I do so maybe us being apart was for the best.”

  She tried to follow his train of thought, confused but liking the direction of the words very, very much. A spark flared over the ashes she’d been stomping for nearly two weeks.

  “Still, I should have told you about the accident. It was important.” As much as she had practically swooned at the chance to touch him and feel his gorgeous body all over hers, she knew now they should have spent more time talking first. “But everything happened so fast that night.”

  “I was in a hurry to be with you.”

  The warm rasp of his voice told her that he had the same delectable memories of that night that she did.

  It would be so easy to step right back in his arms…

  “But maybe falling into bed wasn’t a good idea for us.” She didn’t want to make the same mistakes with him. Not after how much it hurt the first time.

  “No. It was the best idea ever.” He sounded so damn sure of himself. So arrogant. So oddly charming.

  She couldn’t help a grin. “How do you figure?”

  “I found out how wildly passionate I am about you.” He said it the way only a Latin man could—as if he was swearing a vow, as if his life depended on the words. “If I didn’t know that, I probably would have just slipped out of that hotel room the next day and gone on with my life, none the wiser that I might be walking out on the most amazing woman I’d ever met.”

  Javier held his breath, hoping his words would penetrate the cool veneer Lisa had worn from the moment she’d spied him in the conference room tonight. He’d been begging the training staff to get her back here for days, needing to see her in person to straighten out the mess they’d made of their relationship. To make his case for a future
.

  But it wasn’t until tonight that she’d agreed. He’d probably be fined if he didn’t find a way to get to that game tomorrow, but if it took all night to convince Lisa he was worth a second chance, he’d gladly pay the fine.

  And right now, he wasn’t sure if he was making any headway on that front. She wasn’t easy to read, even in the harsh office lighting outside the training staff room.

  “I don’t want to—” she made a vague gesture between the two of them “—melt all over you again.”

  The breathless quality of her voice made him wonder if that was a real possibility. He never would have guessed it from her straight shoulders or her tilted, defiant chin.

  “Even if I made it very worth your while?” He didn’t touch her, but he stepped closer. Close enough to breathe in the clean scent of her shampoo. The crisp fragrance of her perfume.

  Her eyes dilated, but she shook her head.

  “If we talk instead of—” she made that vague gesture again “—jumping into bed for the second time, we might understand each other a lot better.”

  That meant there was the possibility of jumping into bed in their future. His heart lightened.

  Determined to do whatever was necessary to reach that point—not just because of the sex but because of what it would mean to Lisa—he squared his shoulders and prepared himself.

  “Then we will talk.” He kept his voice low in deference to one of the janitors pushing a mop cart.

  The building was quiet, but not deserted.

  “Talk is not a dirty word, you know.” Turning, she used one of her keys to open the door to the staff room. Letting him in, she shut the door behind her and he found himself in an area he’d never seen. Lockers on the wall were interspersed with health-related posters and life-size diagrams of various knee and ankle injuries.

  “Too bad.” He sat down on one of the benches near the small lockers. “I might like it better if it was. But what should we discuss?”