Out of His League

by Cathryn Parry

  Outside, Brandon was chattering at Jon, whining about wanting to sit up front, too, but Jon was firm. Then a rear passenger door opened, and Brandon was escorted inside. “Put on your seat belt, buddy.” And then Jon slid inside, beside her.

  She opened her eyes and he was regarding her with a calm, small smile on his face. “Brandon is really looking forward to this,” he said in a low voice.

  Brandon pulled on the back of her seat, in case she hadn’t gotten the message. “Guess where we’re going?”

  Hmm. What did Brandon like? “The ballpark,” she said. Which was exactly why she hadn’t worn her sneakers, because she was not participating in any kind of sport activity, no way, no how. “Somewhere to hit balls and play catch with Brandon.”

  Jon turned to her and raised his brow. “No,” he said flatly.

  “Guess again,” Brandon yelled.

  “Um.” She was kind of sorry she’d insisted that Brandon come with them. What else did he like? “The zoo.”

  “Strike two, Auntie.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I give up.”

  “Don’t tell her yet,” Jon commanded Brandon. Her nephew sighed and settled back in the seat with his electronic game.

  Jon started the engine and drove out of her condominium parking lot. Elizabeth peered at him from her peripheral vision. He glanced sidelong at her as well. She just couldn’t get over him with short hair. She decided she liked it.

  He could almost be someone she worked with. But her colleagues didn’t smell so good. They didn’t set her senses on edge. She closed her eyes and breathed in again. This would not do, to feel so aroused sexually. What had she gotten herself into? Jon was probably going to take them someplace with other baseball people. Their wives, their children. Normal families, not like hers. She’d been dreading this day all week. Meanwhile, Brandon hummed along to a song that played only in his head.

  It could be worse. Her nephew could be homesick for his mom, and so far, she’d avoided that difficulty.

  She was lucky. They’d had a few bumpy days, but as long as he got to see Jon at the hospital every other day after school, he was placated.

  She owed Jon so much. Surely Jon knew it, too.

  That was the problem.

  The SUV slowed, and Jon pulled into a parking garage by the Charles River. Elizabeth peered out the side window. She hadn’t been paying attention to their surroundings, so lost was she in her crazy, mixed-up thoughts. Jon pulled a ticket from an automatic dispenser and tossed it on the console, before roaring up the slope to find an open parking space.

  Elizabeth picked up the ticket. The Museum of Science?

  Jon was taking her to the Museum of Science?

  Her hand shook and she put the ticket down. Was he pandering to her? Was the jock trying to impress the doctor freak? Because what could Jon possibly find interesting about a museum of science? Brandon was no student, either. His interest in anything remotely intellectual was nil. It was all she could do to get him to sit still and read a storybook to her before bed.

  Actually, he’d been getting better at reading aloud. He liked Jon’s selection of books. A lot of sports stories geared toward young boys.

  “Are you okay?” Jon asked her as he shut off the engine.

  “I...don’t think I’ve ever been here,” Elizabeth said, unbuckling her seat belt and stepping into the garage. She smelled the exhaust from cars and saw groups of children herded by adults. “Maybe once when I was a kid on a school field trip, but that was so long ago I can’t remember.”

  “I used to come here all the time.” Jon held open the SUV door for her nephew, and then shut it and activated the lock. “My mother taught seventh grade science. She used to bring us into Boston on the weekends. Even though my brothers were little, they loved the hands-on stuff.”

  This was the first time he’d spoken of them to her. He hadn’t even introduced his brothers to her the day she’d intruded upon them at his apartment.

  She fell into step beside him, following the line of people straggling to the elevator. “I met your two brothers and your father at your apartment last week. Your father is in...Arizona now, right?”

  “On vacation.” Jon raked back his hair, frowning, as if he still wasn’t used to the blunt edges. “He works construction on big projects in Boston, or he used to before he retired this summer. He met my mother when she came to Boston as a college student from California. They were an unlikely pair. But, she married him and moved here.”

  “I...” Jon was walking fast, so Elizabeth hurried to keep up with him.

  He blocked the elevator door until she and Brandon were inside. “Sorry I’m rushing, but we have timed tickets.”

  “For...?”

  “You’ll see.” And he still didn’t tell her, even when they were inside the hustle and bustle of the museum itself. He led her and Brandon without consulting a map, so he obviously knew where he was going. So much was happening around them. Elizabeth glanced from side to side, taking it all in. Everything she gazed at, Jon watched, too. She was almost ready to believe that he hadn’t pandered to her, that he genuinely enjoyed the place. Why hadn’t she ever come here on her own? The museum was interesting. Yes, crowded with families and children, but she could overlook that because they were her kind of crowds: science lovers.

  And through the winding trek, no one stopped them to ask for an autograph from Jon or to take a photo with him. The haircut had done its job.

  She felt herself relaxing.

  “Here we are,” Jon said.

  The exhibit sign read Pompeii.

  Elizabeth gasped. “There’s an exhibit on the Pompeii excavation, here, in Boston?”

  And, indeed, there it was, everything about the nearly two-thousand-year-old city—buried beneath the ash of the volcano Vesuvius and not found again for nearly seventeen hundred years—that she’d been reading about since she was a child.

  She drank it all in, unable to contain her excitement, darting from exhibit to exhibit: the Roman frescoes, the statues, the dinnerware, the plaster casts of the food on their plates. And more fascinating, and terrible: the plaster and resin casts made from the impressions in ash of the people caught up in the eruption, huddled, their faces covered with their hands. She stopped before a plaster cast of a small dog, its collar clearly visible.

  “He looks just like Oliver,” Brandon marveled beside her, referring to his and Ashley’s little dog. “Can we go visit him at Sharma’s house sometime?”

  “Of course.” Elizabeth smiled at Brandon, understanding that not everyone was such a nerd as to enjoy the fruits of an archaeological dig. To be able to use one’s imagination to see clearly how these ancient, doomed people had lived, so long ago, didn’t come easily to everyone. But it did to her. Vividly, she could imagine their pain and their fright at the overflowing volcano as viscerally as if she’d been there herself.

  She felt, rather than heard, Jon step behind her. His face was reflected in the glass of the artifact case before her. She put her hand on his image. She’d had no idea this exhibit was coming to her home city. “How did you know I would like this?”

  “Brandon,” he said softly.

  Her nephew held Jon’s hand and beamed at her. She knew better. Brandon may have told Jon about the books and brochures scattered over her house, but Brandon didn’t understand the significance and would not have known about this exhibit, or this museum.

  She met Jon’s gaze. He was the one who understood. Maybe if she showed him what she felt, he would understand that, too.

  She lowered her eyes. “I...had been thinking about taking a cruise that stopped in Naples so I could visit Pompeii in person. And now...I don’t think I need to go.”

  “A cruise still sounds good,” Jon said.

  It did. But not with Albert as her partner, or anybody else who didn’t care or understand what it meant to her. She turned back to the exhibit.

  “I knew you would like family fun day, Auntie,” Brandon whi
spered by her side.

  Yes. Yes, she did.

  * * *

  JON STOOD NEAR a live animal exhibit, one eye on Brandon, while Lizzy stood beside him. There were similarities between them he hadn’t realized until now. Lizzy had escaped from the pain of her childhood by diving into history books. He had escaped by hurling himself at the science and mechanics of baseball pitching.

  “How did you develop an interest in archaeology?” he asked her.

  “From books I picked up in the library as a kid.” Even now, she was thumbing through a book she’d picked up in the museum gift shop. “Then, when I was in college, even though I was a premed major, we were allowed one elective per semester on anything we wanted. I chose courses from the archaeology program, because I loved the thought of digging to see ancient civilizations.”

  Her cheeks were pink, and she looked...excited. She was also standing close to him, her arm brushing his. He didn’t move, just watched her enthusiasm. It was like seeing a flower open and bloom for him.

  “One year,” she continued, flipping to another page, “I got to assist on a dig in Jamestown, Virginia. It’s one of the most important archaeological sites in our country, and it was...amazing. I got to unearth a prehistoric Native arrowhead, along with pottery shards and some pipe remnants.”

  She grinned at him, looking more excited and natural than when she performed her surgery, he’d bet.

  “Why didn’t you become a historian?” he asked.

  “No way,” she said, tucking the book into her purse. “What I’m doing at the hospital is practical. There’s never any worry that I won’t be able to pay my bills or have to rely on somebody that I don’t want to rely on.” Her jaw set. “No, history is just my hobby, and that’s fine by me.”

  Still, her face clouded over. If only she could see how personally powerful she was. He figured this woman could pretty much handle anything she set her mind to.

  A teen came rushing by, almost knocking Lizzy over, and she grimaced. He stepped in front of her and deflected a second kid following behind. But Liz’s face was pale. She really disliked crowds. On the other hand, crowds exhilarated him. He got energy just from being near them, and pitching for the Captains, in a ballpark with tens of thousands of people, was a rush unlike any other.

  Brandon barreled over and grabbed Lizzy’s hand, then hopped up and down. Jon would bet that the kid felt the same way he did; he reveled in the noise and the stimulation. No wonder Lizzy doubted herself when it came to Brandon.

  “Do you want to move on?” Jon asked her. “I read there’s a butterfly exhibition. It’s probably quieter. Butterflies don’t make much noise.”

  She smiled tremulously at him. “I don’t want to be so one-sided. What do you want to look at?”

  You, Lizzy, he thought. I like looking at you.

  They started following after Brandon, who was meandering from kiosk to kiosk. “I guess I just like watching people’s reactions—people watching,” he said.

  “Did you have any interest in the Pompeii exhibit?”

  “Sure, when you explained what the different pieces meant in context.” He thought for a moment. “You know, you’re talented like that. You’re an awful lot like my mom was.”

  “Was?”

  He shook his head. Don’t go there, he told himself. “It’s a compliment. I’m used to scientific-minded women.” He’d missed it, actually. Too much.

  “Do you date many doctors?” she teased.

  “I don’t date anybody.”

  “Too busy?”

  “The travel.”

  She nodded. “From April to October, right?”

  “Yeah. Spring training starts mid-February in Florida and lasts until Opening Day in April. Then we play 162 games over 180 days. Eighty-one of those games are on the road, all over the U.S. and Toronto, Canada.” He paused, but she was listening closely. She understood what he was telling her, that he was unavailable for relationships. Real ones, anything that went beyond “fun days” or fleeting one-nighters.

  “And if you’re Rico Martinez,” she mused, “you also have playoffs and the World Series to contend with.”

  “Got a crush on the pitcher, do you?” He grinned at her. “Yeah, with the postseason, the schedule can last until almost November. So that leaves us with just November, December and January to ourselves, pretty much.”

  They were in the main part of the museum now, and the feeling was airy with the cavernous ceiling and wide-open lack of walls. Lizzy looked up and squinted into the light.

  “That’s a heavier schedule than I thought,” she said in a small voice.

  Maybe he’d thrown a cloud over what had been, until now, a pretty good day. Mentally, he kicked himself.

  But she stopped and picked up his right hand, the scar still healing, and traced her finger over it. “It sounds like you’re totally focused on your goals, the same as I am.”

  He liked the feeling of her hand on his. He intertwined his fingers in hers. His hand seemed to swallow hers up. “Is that okay with you?”

  “It’s a relief, actually.” She gave him a dazzling smile that lit up her whole face.

  He looked into her big brown eyes, and he felt his body stir. The curvy brunette just...gave him an instant hard-on. He’d been walking beside her, behind her—enjoying her amazing round ass and her root-beer-colored eyes. The thought of her spending the night with anyone besides him made him feel antsy.

  “Are you seeing anyone?” he asked point-blank.

  Her cheeks flushed pink. “No. Of course not.”

  He felt relief, though maybe he shouldn’t. That doctor in the coffee shop had been interested in her. “Your sister says you want a family one day.”

  She pulled her hand away and resumed walking. “Brandon should not have said that to you.”

  He caught up with her in two seconds. “It’s not a big deal, Lizzy. I do, too. Just not until baseball is over for me.”

  She glanced across the room at Brandon, jumping up and down like a human pogo stick. “What happened to your mom?” she asked. “You started to tell me. Then you stopped.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  He paused. But she wouldn’t use it against him. She wouldn’t tell anyone—she was so ridiculously private. “She died when I was...Brandon’s age.”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth opened. “So...you grew up without a mom?”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and moved ahead. This wasn’t something they needed to talk about.

  She caught up with him and tugged his hand. “I grew up without a dad. But you already know that from Brandon.”

  “I do.”

  She swallowed and nodded. Maybe it was too much. Maybe he’d lost her. Dating, hanging out with a woman, whatever you wanted to call it—it was supposed to be casual and fun. A distraction from all the stress on the road. Usually an escape from a difficult loss or bickering teammates or media people whose probing questions were a pain in the butt.

  But not...this. This...fascination mixed with aching and wonder. And the constant, buzzing attraction. She rested her hand against his belt loop and bumped her hip into his. And then his good hand—his pitching hand—had her small hand intertwining with his again.

  His groin tightened. They locked gazes. Man, what he wouldn’t give to gather up Brandon, toss him in the SUV and drop him off at the babysitter’s house while he drove Lizzy—sexy Lizzy, enigmatic Lizzy—back to his apartment for a fun day of their own, family be damned.

  Brandon chose that moment to come running over. “Can we see the electricity display?” He turned and pointed. “It’s that way.”

  But there was already mad electricity where Jon was standing.

  Lizzy dropped her hand from his and stepped back. “Yes. Good idea.”

  Aw, what the hell. Nothing was going to happen between him and Liz, anyway. He had too much to lose to let himself get distracted, and she had her own plans. “Sure.
Let’s go.”

  He kept lots of space between them for the remainder of the afternoon. Brandon was good for that.

  It was going to have to be enough to watch Lizzy come out of her shell and enjoy that. Nothing more.

  * * *

  AT THE END of the day, when it was just turning dark outside, and Brandon was yawning and there was nothing left but to bring them both home, Jon parked the SUV and walked them to Elizabeth’s condo.

  “Jon, that was awesome!” Her nephew threw his arms around Jon in an exuberant hug that only an eight-year-old could manage. “We did pretty good with her, didn’t we?” he whispered.

  Elizabeth smiled to herself. She heard every word, and Jon knew it before he answered the boy.

  “Yeah, I think we did, buddy.”

  “And you’ll bring me those baseballs you promised?” Brandon asked him.

  “Will do.” Jon glanced over Brandon’s head at her and in the lamplight, met her gaze.

  She held her breath. She wanted him. But did she dare?

  Brandon ran ahead down the pathway and scooted inside the door to the brick condo building. Jon put his hand on the doorjamb as if to follow Brandon upstairs. But at the last moment, he turned. With a sigh, Elizabeth made her decision, and let herself melt closer to him.

  His face was shadowed from the light in the hallway behind him. She couldn’t see his expression, but...she could feel his heat. His chin was tilted toward her, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath. And his smell. His hand went to the back of her head, his palm just skimming the back of her neck.

  Yes, she trusted him not to crowd her, not to lean on her, not to direct her. He would let her be who she was. And he wasn’t scared away, either. “Come here,” she whispered.

  His face came closer to hers. Their mouths were nearly touching, but not quite. Her lips were just a whisper from his.

  She licked her lips, and he made a soft noise.

  “Auntie?”

  Jon stepped away from her and smoothly yielded to Brandon at the same time. In the darkness, her nephew saw nothing.

  “Good night,” Jon said to her, his hands at his sides.

  “Are you leaving?” she asked stupidly.