Second Thoughts: A Hot Baseball Romance

by Mindy Klasky

  “Men in tight pants, doing whatever I tell them to do? Poor Steven had better watch out, or I might leave him forever.”

  Jamie laughed and hung up the phone. Only then was she willing to admit the real problem that was making her pulse skyrocket. Olivia was the spitting image of her father. Nick would take one look at her daughter—their daughter—and know the truth. He’d know the lie of omission that Jamie had been telling for seven years.

  But she was being ridiculous.

  For one thing, Nick’s photos had all been finished the day before. There was absolutely no reason for him to set foot in the ballpark that afternoon, not in October.

  For another thing, so what if he did find out he was Olivia’s father? Jamie hadn’t broken any laws, keeping her secret. Nick was the one who’d chosen to walk out of her life, out of their lives.

  For a third thing, Jamie didn’t have any other choice, not when it came to picking up Olivia that afternoon. She was making mountains out of molehills, finding distractions just for the sake of distractions. She’d spent so many years demonizing Nick Durban that it was still a little unsettling to realize they actually lived in the same city, that she was working—at least for a little while—where he worked.

  Well, she was a big girl. She could handle Nick.

  Even if thinking his name was enough to make her remember that dream she’d had the other night. Dream, hell. She was reliving memories. She was feeling the ghosts of his palms stroking across her belly, making her arch against him. She was lost in the patter of his fingertips playing against the soft folds between her thighs, making her open to him, melt beneath him…

  She shook her head and ordered herself to forget about Nick Durban and his damned dream hands. She had a daughter to pick up from school. And then a job to finish at Rockets Field. She didn’t have time for ghosts from the past.

  She slipped her key into the ignition and turned it. The engine ground, but refused to catch. Jamie pounded on the steering wheel. “Not today!” she moaned. The car had been threatening to die for the past two months, but she’d always been able to cajole it back into starting.

  She took a deep breath and tried again. One more time. The engine finally grabbed on the fourth attempt, and the car sputtered to life. Jamie offered up a silent prayer to whatever supernatural creature watched over single mothers who were nearly late to pick up their daughters.

  And for once, the traffic gods smiled upon her. She made it to Olivia’s school in record time, pulling into a parking space with almost ten minutes to spare. She took out her phone, intent on making sure Robert wasn’t reporting any emergencies at Rockets Field.

  Nothing from her assistant.

  But there was a message from the TrueLove app. RoadWarrior had replied.

  Jamie’s stomach tightened. Well, that was a good thing, wasn’t it? She wanted someone to reply to her email. Just one someone, so she could tell Ashley she’d tried. Then she could write off the entire stupid website and never go back there again.

  She clicked on the message. And she felt that little swoop in her belly as she read the answers to RoadWarrior’s Five Live Questions, tripping from the utterly mundane to the undeniably intriguing.

  Favorite pet: Stuffed animal (see profile: I’m on the road a lot)

  Why even bother reading the rest of his responses? The guy’s profile made it clear he traveled a lot, a fact he underscored with his very first answer. That wasn’t a great basis for building a relationship.

  But truth be told, Jamie was used to having a lot of space, more than her share of breathing room. It might be nice to date a guy who didn’t hover, who didn’t have to be catered to day in and day out. Jamie knew herself well enough to admit she chafed at feeling confined. RoadWarrior’s travel schedule was actually a selling point.

  Favorite wine. Glenlivet. Okay, he was willing to color outside the lines. Another point for RoadWarrior.

  Favorite movie. What a stupid question. Favorite movie depended on what mood she was in—if she wanted something classic, or something funny, or something romantic, or… He obviously thought the question was dumb, too.

  Body part. Sexual position. How the hell was she going to answer those questions?

  She knew herself. If she didn’t fire off responses now, she’d find a million reasons not to. She’d blow off RoadWarrior, and everyone else on TrueLove. And even though Jamie had never asked for the dating service, now that she had someone—an actual flesh-and-blood man—interested enough to send her a response, she felt like she had to follow suit. Damn Ashley and her conniving interference!

  Jamie glanced at the school door. The crossing guards were just coming out to take their places. She probably had three minutes before Olivia came bouncing out to the car. Three minutes to come up with breezy, seductive answers. Or, you know. To tell the truth. She started typing.

  Favorite pet: Hamster. At least, that’s my daughter’s current favorite.

  Favorite wine: Malbec.

  Favorite movie: Anything with George Clooney. But don’t let that intimidate you.

  Favorite body part: Yes. I have one.

  Favorite sexual position: Oh, yes. I definitely have one. Yes.

  Even as her cheeks flushed, she read back over her less racy answers. She had to be up front with RoadWarrior about Olivia. She wasn’t ashamed of her daughter. She skimmed over her other replies and pressed Send, just as the front doors of the school exploded. The air was filled with the shrieks of two hundred children scrambling for their buses, running to their carpools. Jamie opened her door and stood beside the car, waving until Olivia saw her.

  Of course, it was easy to spot her daughter in the crowd. That flame-red hair could be seen for miles. Olivia’s bright pink backpack clashed terribly, as did the orange dress she’d insisted on wearing that morning. But Jamie couldn’t help but smile as her daughter came running over to the car. Braids askew, dirt ground into the knees of her tights, a smudge of tempera paint high on her cheekbone, Olivia flung herself at her mother.

  “Mommy! Where’s Lauren?”

  “She had something come up, so I came to get you. You’re coming to work with me, okay?”

  Olivia was already letting herself into the back of the car, settling into her booster seat. Jamie passed her a juice box and a snack of string cheese and apple slices before she eased the car into traffic. “So?” she asked, once she was clear of the school. “What did you learn today?”

  Olivia spouted off a dozen answers. Her favorite class was math, because she was going to grow up to be a scientist, and scientists needed to be very good at math. But reading was fun, too, especially when she got to read out loud, like she had that morning.

  Jamie laughed at her daughter’s enthusiasm, and they chattered all the way across town. Olivia was such an easy-going girl, so different from Jamie’s own rebellious self at that age. Olivia took whatever was thrown at her. No babysitter today? Fine. Not going home right away? No problem. Pulling into a dark parking garage and standing next to the car while Mommy collected two huge bags of equipment? Okay!

  Jamie followed the signs to the executive offices, only to be greeted by a perky intern who told them everyone was waiting down on the field. Olivia was enchanted by the baseball-shaped pin the intern gave her, and then all three of them hurried down to the photo shoot.

  As Jamie emerged from the corridor into the playing area, she could see that Robert was in his element. Her assistant stood on the top step of a short flight of concrete stairs, leaning against a blue-painted railing like he’d spent the better part of his life in the dugout.

  He was talking to a ballplayer, a slim-hipped wonder with short blond hair and piercing blue eyes. She’d never seen Robert look so happy. “So,” he was saying. “In that perfect game—” But he cut himself off as soon as he saw Jamie. “There you are!” he called out.

  There were introductions all around. Robert gave Olivia a bear hug and walked her over to the furthest corner of the dugout,
far from the tangle of lights and reflectors and other photographic equipment. He helped her unzip her backpack and made sure she had an adequate supply of fresh, unbroken crayons to create a series of masterpieces.

  DJ Thomas was nice enough. Jamie realized, chatting with him, that she’d actually heard something about the ballplayer. The man was engaged to a former beauty queen, to a woman who’d started an after-school music program at Olivia’s school.

  It was easy to talk to him as she guided him through the shoot. He was familiar with publicity photographs; he’d probably been subjected to hundreds of them in his career. He paid attention when she told him to lower his chin; he kept “right” straight from “left”—a feat that proved surprisingly difficult for the vast majority of her subjects—and he moved easily from pose to pose.

  As Jamie worked, she felt the old spell settle over her. Holding her camera, she was able to relax. She could see the world around her in a different way from her normal, everyday vision. She wasn’t tied up with what was; she could create what might be.

  That was the thing she loved about photography. People thought she was merely recording reality. But she was shaping that reality, framing it, setting it in a specific window. She could change the entire world by adjusting a single angle. She could shape her subject, and doing that, she could shape herself.

  Time fell away while she worked. She forgot about whether Olivia had enough paper, about what she, Jamie, was going to cook for dinner. She didn’t worry about whether she had clean underwear in her dresser at home, or whether she needed to do laundry before she could fall into bed. She wasn’t distracted by the rough fingernail she’d meant to file or by the stack of bills leaning against the African violet on her kitchen counter.

  She just was—herself, and the camera, and the ballplayer in front of her, the abstract of a human man that she turned into something intriguing, something inviting, something pleasing for all the baseball fans who were going to flip through the pages of their calendars.

  So Jamie was a million miles away when she finally took a step back and dropped her camera to her side. She was lost in the magic, wandering in the art. She barely saw DJ relax, scarcely saw him stretch his back and twist his neck from side to side. She wasn’t really aware when he looked past her shoulder, when his face brightened with greeting.

  “Hey, Professor,” he called, and she was still three steps behind parsing the words. “What brings you to the park? You’re supposed to take advantage of the off days!”

  Professor. Before she turned around, she knew exactly who she’d see.

  She just didn’t expect Nick’s eyes to be riveted to the far side of the dugout, captivated by the quietly drawing Olivia. She didn’t expect to read the shock and hurt carved into every inch of his body, every line of his face. She didn’t expect to feel the wrenching of her heart as her entire world toppled off its easy, smooth axis and crashed onto the rough concrete floor of the Rockets’ dugout.

  CHAPTER 3

  His world turned upside down.

  Sure, he’d read the words before, maybe even thought them a handful of times: the instant his Little League team won regionals… The moment he opened his acceptance letter to University of Raleigh… The heartbeat when he saw Jamie for the first time and the earth-shattering eternity when they first slept together…

  None of it meant anything.

  Not one of those moments prepared him for seeing his own daughter sitting in a corner of the dugout, scribbling intently on a piece of paper. There was no question—the kid was his. Her bright red hair was the first give-away, the way it flew from her face in waves that refused to be tamed by braids. But there was more than that—something about her chin, about the rim of dark green around her lighter irises, identical to his own weird eyes.

  “Twelve?” he said to Jamie, still staring at his daughter.

  “Nick.” He knew that tone of voice. He’d heard it a hundred times before. She was fighting down emotion, trying to keep herself bottled up. Once upon a time, he’d done everything he could to break down her control when she got like that. He’d reveled in setting her free. Now, though, he was strangely grateful for her rigid restraint.

  She wasn’t an idiot, of course. Never that. She closed her computer with absolute authority and said to her assistant, “Robert? Can you keep an eye on Olivia for a moment?” She flashed an automatic smile at DJ. “I just need a short break. I’ll be back in five.”

  Nick didn’t care about DJ. Robert either. Nick only cared about Olivia.

  Shock. That’s what he was feeling. His chest felt like a runner had slid hard into second, cleats up. Nick knew he’d fallen badly, been spiked somewhere vital. But the pain wasn’t real yet. The injury wasn’t known.

  Mechanically, trusting to the muscle memory of four years playing for the Rockets, he stumbled down the hallway toward the locker room. No. Not the locker room. Anyone could be in the locker room. Guys might be meeting with trainers, hanging out, shooting the shit.

  He straight-armed the door to the laundry room.

  Jamie followed him in. Give her credit. She wasn’t a coward. Never had been. She was the one who’d asked him out to dinner the first time, raising the stakes from coffee. She was the one who’d asked him back to her dorm room, a single, five flights up in an old stone building that looked like a medieval castle. Jamie had always figured out what she wanted, then gone for it.

  “What the hell?” he asked, the instant the door bumped closed. His shout was absorbed by the countless stacks of white towels, the mountains of neatly folded terrycloth waiting patiently on metal shelves.

  “I found out I was pregnant a month after graduation,” she said evenly.

  A month. He’d been in California then, proving himself on a minor league team. Showing he had the stuff to make it in the majors. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her mouth set in a tight line. That was the look she’d given the director of the on-campus art museum when he’d pulled two of her photos “to make room for other students’ work.” It was the look she’d given him, when he’d first said he was going to Cali. It was the look she’d retreated to after he cut her loose.

  “We were through, Nick. I’d already given you back your ring. The last thing you needed was a baby to distract you, to keep you from succeeding.” She looked him straight in the eye and said, “It was tough where you were going. There weren’t luxuries, weren’t opportunities for a soft life. For an easy life.”

  Shit. She’d memorized every word he’d told her that day. Every trite, overworked phrase his agent had fed him, that he’d recited like a goddamn parrot as he’d paced the scarred floorboards of her dorm room.

  His belly tightened like someone had just punched him in the solar plexus. The acid in his throat was guilt. If he’d known about…Olivia. “I would have been there for you, Twelve.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  Stop calling her that? That’s what he’d called her the entire time they’d been together. That’s how he’d thought of her in the seven years they’d been apart. But that was the least of his problems now. “Jamie,” he said, treating the two syllables like they were made of glass. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. What did you do? Go back to Connecticut?”

  She nodded. “Until she was born. For almost a year after. And then I had to get out of there. Had to get my own life back, stop letting my family do everything. You know how they are. I was living in the basement at Mom and Dad’s. My sisters traded off babysitting so I could work at the photo place in the mall. My brothers and their wives just ‘happened’ to invite us over every weekend, and no, there was never anything I could bring.”

  He nodded. He’d seen the Martin clan in action. He’d been part of the Martin clan for four years. Four years of visits—winter, spring, and summer—when he’d slept in the frilly guest room, every single time. Even if Twelve had slipped into his bed every single night, she’d awakened in her own stuffed-animal, pretty-pink-p
rincess bedroom every goddamn morning.

  “Ashley said you moved to New York?” Back when he’d talked to Ashley regularly. Before the college roommates had closed ranks against him.

  “Ashley has a big mouth.” She pursed her lips in eloquent frustration. “Yeah, I lived in New York. Spent most of my time working in music clubs.”

  “That’s what you always said you wanted.” He could feel her lying next to him in bed, the countless times they’d talked about their futures, their dreams. Shit, that was why he’d broken up with her, to give her a fair chance to do all that. It had comforted him to picture her working in the smoky clubs. If she couldn’t be with him, at least she was happy.

  “I loved it,” she said, and her voice softened around the words. “Until I didn’t. All of a sudden, I realized I needed to change things for Olivia. She needed more stability than I could give her with my crazy hours, with that crazy life. I had missed so much…Was only going to miss more. So I called Ashley, and she helped me find a place down here. And a babysitter. And a couple of starter jobs, industrial stuff, shooting food for restaurant ads. Building my portfolio for corporate work.”

  He heard the pride in her voice, justifiable, after everything she’d achieved. But even after she’d chosen to move back here, she hadn’t called him. She hadn’t forgiven him, despite seven long years.

  Of course she hadn’t.

  He could remember ever second of their last conversation, every single thing he’d said in that goddamn dorm room. It had been hot up there, only May but the radiators had been jammed on, just like they’d been for the past four years. The windows were blocked open, a breeze cutting through the sweat on his palms as he recited the words he’d practiced since midnight.

  Ep had told him what to say. Jeremy Epson, the guy who was going to be his agent, the second he picked up his diploma. The guy who still represented him in every negotiation of his professional life. He’d needed Ep; he’d relied on him to show the way through the exciting, terrifying, life-changing transition from college to professional ball.