Center Stage: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 8)

by Mindy Klasky

  What the hell did he know about any of that? But he had to fill the angry silence, so he tried, “What changed?”

  “What changed is I had a birthday. I’m now officially too old.”

  “Jesus,” he said, before he could bite his tongue. “You’re not old.”

  “I am for acting, at least at CRT.” She sighed and took another little sip of beer. “I’m twenty-five. Most everyone else is still in college. I’m sort of a freak for sticking around. Or maybe an idiot. Strike one: my so-called job. Strike two: my so-called wedding.”

  He was in way over his head, but he knew enough to say, “What happened today wasn’t your fault.”

  She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “It wasn’t my fault, no. But I should have seen the signs. I should have had a clue.”

  Ryan looked at her, stretched out in her wooden chair. The cool moonlight picked out the long lines of her arms. Stretched out straight, her legs looked like they went on for miles. Her hair outlined her face, made her look like a grieving angel.

  But he was having distinctly unangelic thoughts, the type Zach Ormond would beat out of his skull in a heartbeat, if his teammate had the first clue what Ryan was thinking. As Lindsey licked her lips, he flashed back to Hart’s crude speculation about bedding one of the wedding guests. Ryan couldn’t help but think about other things Lindsey’s tongue could be doing.

  She took a deep breath, and her T-shirt stretched tight across her chest, emphasizing her curves in a way he knew he shouldn’t notice. She exhaled deeply, shuddering a little, and his body registered the sound as something distinctly different from the sigh of an exhausted, jilted bride.

  He shifted in his hard wooden chair, grateful for the darkness of the summer night. At least he wasn’t too far gone to keep his voice steady when he finally found the words to answer her. “Men are pigs,” he said.

  “My brother says that all the time.”

  “You should listen to him,” Ryan said, trying not to think piggish thoughts, nothing about getting that T-shirt wet and dirty, or wrestling close-up, or the soft snuffling noises she’d make as he rooted his snout around—

  “I’ve listened,” Lindsey said, apparently unaware of just how sexy it was for a woman to spring out of a chair, to pace with controlled steps to the very edge of the porch. He eyed those tight jeans he had no business studying. “I’ve listened,” she repeated, and he had just enough time to drag his eyes to her face when she whirled toward him. “Goddamn it,” she said, and for just a heartbeat, he thought she’d caught him staring at her ass. “I am so tired of being the good girl!”

  He froze, having no idea what to say, what to do. That was fine, though, because Lindsey wasn’t finished yet. “Every day, I get up and I follow the rules. Every day, I go to that damn box office. When I’m cast in a play, I’m early to every rehearsal. I learn my lines—I’m off book before the schedule says I have to be. I memorize my blocking. I figure out the emotion behind every single word my characters say, even when I’m playing the Poky Turtle. And what does that get me? Nothing!”

  Her raw anger pulled him to his feet. “Lindsey—” he said, but he wasn’t sure how to follow up, didn’t know how he could make it better.

  “It was the same with Doug,” she said. “With Will. We went out. We had a good time. They told me they loved me, they said they couldn’t imagine life without me, they offered me engagement rings. And I said yes, because everyone expected me to say yes. Because that’s what good girls do.”

  Shit. She was crying now. Not hysterical sobbing, not gasping for breath, not leaving ugly streaks of makeup down her face. There were just two little lines of tears, silver tracks that stood out in the moonlight like someone had painted them on her cheeks.

  “I’m so tired,” she said, and now her voice was so soft he barely heard her. “I don’t want to keep doing this, the same thing, over and over, audition after audition, boyfriend after boyfriend, for the rest of my life.”

  “Then don’t,” he said.

  “I have to—”

  “No. You don’t.” He cut her off so sharply, her mouth snapped shut. “You don’t have to be the good little sister, because your family’s going to love you no matter how you act. You don’t have to be the good actress, because what’s it called, CRT? CRT can find someone else to be a cute little animal, and you can find a real play to act in. You don’t have to be the good fiancée, because you’re not engaged anymore. You can be whoever you want to be, Lindsey. You can do whatever you want to do.”

  “I could…” Her voice trailed off, just like a little girl dreaming of frilly dresses or ponies or whatever it was little girls dreamed of. And then she set her jaw. “Screw it,” she said. “Screw following the rules. Screw being the good girl.”

  Screw me, he waited for her to say. His fingers twitched, ready to tangle in her hair. He felt the pressure behind his zipper, the urge to close the distance between them, to wrap his arms around her and feel her melt against him, hotter than the summer night, willing and wet and ready.

  But he wasn’t an idiot. Lindsey Ormond had just had her heart broken. She didn’t want to jump into bed with the first person she talked to who had a dick between his legs. Christ, she hadn’t even trusted him enough to invite him inside the house.

  Not to mention the fact that Zach would de-nut him if Ryan even thought about stealing a kiss—much less everything else his body was screaming for him to do. If he had any brains at all, he’d put down his beer right now. He’d walk to his car. He’d call out a goodbye and hit the road, only stopping when he was ten miles away, to take out his phone and call Ormond, let him know Lindsey had gotten to the farmhouse safe and sound.

  But he didn’t have his phone. He’d given his cell to Zach, back at the church when the hunt had still been on for Will Fucking Templeton.

  It didn’t really matter anyway. Lindsey never said, “Screw me.” And from the look on her face, she wasn’t going to be thinking about men that way for a long, long time. Not when her jaw was set like that, not when she was showing all the determination of a world-class hitter at the plate—three balls, two strikes, bases loaded in the bottom of ninth with her team down three runs. She’d been through hell tonight, but she still stood strong. What was that poem, the one he’d had to memorize for English Lit? Her head was bloodied, but unbowed.

  So that left him with one good option: to listen to Lindsey. To find out what she meant by abandoning the rules. He took a deep breath and thought calming thoughts—a bucket of ice spilled across his crotch, Ormond’s fist connecting with his jaw.

  “So?” he asked, and he only had to clear his throat once. “What do bad girls do?”

  ~~~

  Lindsey laughed.

  Despite everything—losing the coveted role in Itsy Bitsy Mouse, being jilted again at the altar, feeling alone and adrift and abandoned in the farmhouse where she’d once been an innocent child—despite all that, she could laugh.

  Because Ryan hadn’t told her she was crazy. He hadn’t looked at her with the tolerance she knew she would have found in Zach’s eyes if she’d had the same conversation with her brother. He hadn’t tried to talk her out of her new-hatched plan, hadn’t told her that she didn’t have it in her to be bad like Beth, that she’d slip back into following the rules before breakfast.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I don’t have a lot of practice. I never even sneaked out of this house after curfew.”

  Now he did look at her like she was crazy. “Not even in high school? You never climbed out of one of those windows? Drove to the lake with beer in the back seat? You never TPed someone’s house?”

  She shrugged and looked away. “I’m a loser,” she said, even though she’d never thought of doing what was right as losing before.

  “Not a loser,” he said. “You just have some ground to make up.”

  “Right. Like I’m going to go buy toilet paper and shaving cream and take out my frustration on some innocent
person’s house.”

  “Not an innocent person. Does Will Templeton have any trees in his front yard?”

  Does Will… “Yeah,” she said. And for about seventeen seconds, the idea sounded ridiculous. But then, she couldn’t imagine not following through. “He does,” she said. “Two huge magnolia trees.”

  “It can be a little tricky to get the roll over the top. You might have to try a sidearm throw.”

  She laughed. “Leave it to a baseball player to have a strategy for vandalism.”

  “Hey!” He sounded hurt, but she could see the corners of his lips turning up in the moonlight. “I’m just trying to help here.”

  “Let’s do it.” She stood before she could chicken out.

  “Are you serious?” But he was climbing to his feet too—either because he thought decorating Will’s house was a great idea or because he was too much a gentleman to stay sitting once she was up.

  “I am,” she said. And she had to swallow her amazement. Because she was serious. She’d never broken the rules in her life. But Will had this one coming to him. And what harm could it really do? No one was going to be hurt by a little toilet paper. By a little shaving cream. She walked down the farmhouse steps with new determination in her stride.

  When she got to her car, she looked up at Ryan. “Are you coming?”

  He shook his head. “Not in that car.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my car!”

  “Except I’m willing to bet Will Templeton can recognize it from a mile away.”

  “And a red Ferrari is going to be more anonymous?”

  “It’s a better get-away car,” he said. “Zero to sixty in three point four.”

  Well, she couldn’t argue with that. “Okay,” she said. “You drive. But I’m buying the goods.”

  He only paused long enough to peel off his suit jacket and to strip away his tie. He tossed both behind the driver’s seat, and then they hit the road. They had almost reached the all-night grocery store in Miller’s Corner when her phone rang, sending a cheery little marimba melody through the close confines of the car. “804,” she read, and she recited the strange number on the screen.

  “That’s me,” Ryan said, darting a glance toward her hand.

  “What?”

  “It’s Zach,” he corrected himself. “He’s got my phone.”

  She thought about letting it go to voicemail. That’s what a bad girl would do—duck the calls she didn’t want to take and not waste a second worrying about who might be frantic on the other end of the line.

  But Zach didn’t deserve that. Zach hadn’t done anything wrong. “Hello?” she answered, pretending she was puzzled by the strange number.

  Zach’s familiar baritone was loud against her ear. “I just wanted to make sure you got to the farm okay.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  And the crazy thing was, she was fine. She should tell Zach she was with Ryan. She should tell him his teammate had followed her home, had made sure she arrived safely. She should probably even tell him she was planning on TPing a house, Will’s house, for the first time in her entire life.

  But telling Zach all that would only make him crazy. And she couldn’t purposely drive her brother nuts; she wasn’t like Beth. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  “I’m fine,” she repeated. “And I’m hanging up now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Zach. Or the next day. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I always worry about you.”

  She smiled, because he only spoke the truth. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that. Good night, big brother.”

  To his credit, he only paused for a heartbeat. “Good night, little sister.”

  She suspected the conversation would have lasted a lot longer if he’d known exactly where she was, exactly what she was doing. And exactly who she was doing it with.

  Ryan waited in the car while she went in to buy her contraband. She picked up a twelve-pack of toilet paper and four cans of shaving cream. Those things looked suspicious in the shopping cart, so she cruised up and down the aisles, tossing in camouflage. Potato chips. A six-pack of Diet Coke. A package of Oreo cookies.

  “What the hell is all that?” he asked, when she wrestled the supplies into the car.

  “Ammunition. And dinner. I’m starving. I never got anything to eat tonight.” As she said the words, she knew they should hurt. They should trigger something in her belly, that queasy twist, that exhausted sorrow. The memory of the emotion was there, clean and fresh. But she didn’t feel the pangs directly. Instead, her loss was veiled in a wash of adrenaline.

  “Knock yourself out,” he said. “Now how do we get to his house?”

  She gave him directions around a mouthful of chips. She knew the way to Will’s as well as she knew the way to her own home. It wasn’t until they were a mile away that she realized she was supposed to be sleeping in that house tonight, celebrating her first night of wedded bliss. She almost gagged on the trite phrase.

  At least they hadn’t paid for a honeymoon. They’d been waiting until the fall. Until she’d be free from rehearsals for whatever show she was in. Until the rates dropped at all the romantic spots they’d considered.

  She’d postponed her honeymoon for work and a sale. Sheesh. Maybe she’d had her suspicions about Will all along.

  Ryan drove right past the split-level ranch when she pointed it out. “Hey!” she said. “That’s the one!”

  “And we’re not going to park right in front of it. You can run half a block, can’t you, Killer?”

  “Killer?”

  “We need code names out there. We don’t want anyone overhearing us talk to each other. We don’t want them figuring out who did this.”

  “If I’m Killer, then who are you?”

  “That’s your choice.” He was laughing at her. He was laughing, and he was daring her, and he was making her feel like she might actually live through the night with her heart intact.

  “All right, Hotshot.” He rolled his eyes. “What? You want me to call you Rocket Man? Or something even more obvious? Because how many people other than the Rockets’ center fielder drive a red Ferrari around Raleigh?”

  “Hotshot it is,” he said, parking the car at the end of the block.

  When she climbed out, her heart was pounding so hard she could barely take a full breath. “What do we do now?” she whispered.

  He ripped open the plastic wrap that surrounded the toilet paper and passed her half a dozen rolls. “Pull off a yard or two and hold it in your left hand. Then throw the roll over the tree with your right. I’ll be on the other side, and I’ll toss it back. You’re on your own with the shaving cream.”

  She nodded, clutching the paper tight. How was it possible that she was twenty-five years old, and she’d never done this? Why hadn’t she been a normal teenager, like everyone else she’d ever met?

  What the hell difference did it make? She was doing it now. The roof of her mouth prickled, and she realized she was about one minute away from hyperventilating. Time to get the show on the road.

  Pretending more confidence than she felt, she led the way back to Will’s house. The lights were off inside. It had to be close to midnight. She walked to the closest magnolia tree, trying to ignore the way her knees were turning to water.

  Her first toss was wild—it rose up in the air, as high as the top of the tree, but then it came hurtling back toward her, dropping at her feet in a soft pile of paper. “Sugar!” she swore, remembering to whisper. She was bending down to pick up the roll and try again when a soft white missile sailed over the tree.

  “Throw it back, Killer!” Ryan’s voice was soft in the darkness, pitched just loud enough for her to hear. She picked up the roll and bit her lips, reminding herself of everything Zach had ever taught her about throwing a ball. The toilet paper arced over the tree in a perfect parabola.

  After that, it was easy. They covered the first tree and moved on to the second. They made a few quic
k passes around the bushes by the front porch. In a moment of inspiration, she wrapped the mailbox, securing the ends with shaving cream.

  Ryan took one of the cans and sprayed a white carpet in front of the door, long enough and wide enough that Will could never step outside without getting his feet dirty. She added to the handiwork, painting the garage door with the word “Loser!” in giant foamy letters.

  “That’ll hurt,” Ryan said, closer to her than she expected.

  “The truth always does.”

  There was one roll of toilet paper left. Ryan took her hand and guided her to a spot in front of the house. “There you go, Killer. Over the roof.”

  “I can’t make that!”

  “Sure you can.”

  Her first try missed completely. The second hit the roof with a thud that sounded like a small bomb exploding. She waited for a lifetime, watching the roll snag on the shingles, waiting for it to roll down, to bounce over the gutter. She picked it up and tried one more time, clearing the roof, watching the paper sail into the backyard.

  A light snapped on upstairs, in the master bedroom. She pictured Will tumbling out of his striped sheets, tugging at his pajamas as he staggered toward the window.

  “Hotshot!” she cried, not bothering to whisper any longer. “Run!”

  Ryan grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the car. Their feet pounded the sidewalk together, like they were running the bases in some crazy suburban game. She realized he’d left the car doors open. All she had to do was roll into the front seat, and he was slamming her door closed, rolling over the low hood as he got to his own side.

  A dog started barking—not Will’s, because Will didn’t have a dog. He was allergic. Ryan’s door slammed, and the Ferrari’s engine roared to life. They took the corner hard, before she’d even had a chance to scramble for her seatbelt, but Ryan’s arm shot out toward her. His forearm was rock hard against her chest, stable, steadying, just until she was safe, and then his hand was back on the gear-shift, jumping them up to escape velocity.