Abby stared at Elaine, her chest aching with her shallow, teary breaths. Good old feather-headed Elaine. Abby shook her head in disbelief. “I couldn’t I couldn’t even move.”
“Then how the heck did he get you up that rock wall?”
“He—he carried me.”
“Wow! No kidding? Oh, I’d like to get my hands on that brawn!”
Abby turned away, away from the river, away from Elaine, away from the two young men in their wet khaki shorts and polo shirts. “I’m going to get some dry clothes from the van. I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah. Meet you at the food!”
Leaning against the door of the van, she wondered briefly if she had the strength to climb inside. But she knew it would be warm in there. Quiet. She pushed herself up and staggered down the aisle. In her backpack were a change of clothing, a sweater, socks, an extra pair of tennis shoes, a hairbrush. Hugging the pack to her chest, she made it out of the van and to a lean- to marked: “Ladies Only: Keep Out, You Bums!”
Inside the air was close, stifling. Without warning, her stomach coiled in a knot. In another minute she knew she’d be sick. Quickly, she pulled open the door and stumbled out.
Jack had been sitting on an overturned barrel with a cold beer in his hand, watching for her. Now he rose, waved the others back, and strode across the clearing. He caught her before she fell, and held her against his chest, cradling her gently. “Damn stubborn woman. I thought I told you to take it easy.”
“I—I was just going to change my clothes.”
“In there? I’d suggest you spend as little time in there as possible!”
“But—but—”
“Stop arguing with me.”
That was all he said. Dark eyes flashing, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her up the path to a tent pitched in a circle of pines. Inside was a cot. He sat her on its edge and disappeared. In a moment he was back with a towel and a bucket of water. He waited while she splashed water on her face and neck, then washed her hands and arms, and splashed some more on her throat.
“Not feeling too good, huh?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I’m ever going to feel good again.”
“You will, if you’ll just listen to me. I’m talking from experience.”
“Oh, you make a habit of rescuing drowning women?”
“I make it a habit to see no one needs to be rescued! No, I meant firsthand experience; the river’s knocked me around a bit, too.”
She looked up at him, too exhausted to ask questions. Everything ached. Everything hurt.
She just nodded in surrender.
“Here,” he said, pouring amber liquid from a bottle into a dusty glass. “Drink this.”
She did, and gasped as it burned a path down to her stomach.
“One more,” he said, filling it again and handing it back.
Tears stung her eyes, but she drank it all.
“Good. Now get out of those clothes. I’ll wait outside. And put on something loose and comfortable.”
“But this is all I have,” Abby whispered, pulling a T-shirt out of her backpack.
“Here.” He fished in a trunk and came up with a huge faded sweat shirt. “Try this.”
Her arms felt heavy as lead and her head was beginning to whirl, but she didn’t dare disobey. She pulled off her wet and muddy clothes, including her bra and panties, and slipped into his sweatshirt. The heavy cotton hung in folds across her soft breasts and narrow waist, its ragged lower edge coming all the way to the middle of her thighs. She could see that her legs were scraped and filthy, her knee caked with blood and beginning to swell, but she couldn’t figure out what to do about it. Her feet were bare and cut. She must have lost her shoes and socks in the river—she couldn’t remember. The liquor had the world spinning; if she had to sit up for another minute, she would faint.
Trying to keep the dirt off his bed, she leaned her head down against his pillow.
All she wanted was the comfort of her own pine bed, the boards polished smooth by her father’s hand. And her quilt made from squares of calico and hopsacking, homespun and denim, and the one square of her mother’s wedding gown, yellowed now but the satin so smooth, smoother than anything she had ever touched as a child and therefore precious. She wanted it now. Needed to feel its warmth and promise of safety. Needed to be held and loved—
“Ready?” Jack called from outside, scattering her thoughts.
“Ready.”
“Now,” he said, filling the door of the tent with his body, “sleep!”
“Ah, a man of many words.” She laughed softly, liking him for his directness, his strength.
“So I’ve been told.” He grinned back. “Good night.” He stepped close and began to unfold a blanket.
“Oh, but I’m a mess! I’ll get your bed dirty.”
“It’s seen worse.” He tucked the covers up to her chin.
“But where will you sleep?”
“You sure do know how to worry, don’t you? How the hell did anyone talk you into getting in that raft?”
“I don’t even know how I g-got talked into C-Colorado!” she stuttered, her teeth beginning to chatter again. “Oh, no! What’s happening? I thought you said I’d feel b-better.”
“You will. Later. You’ll probably feel worse for a while, but you’ve got to ease up and let it all out. There’s no other way to get rid of that kind of fear. Here, I’ll hold your hand for a while.”
“Oh, you d-d-don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m just cold.…”
“Damn stubborn woman,” he said, and climbed into bed next to her. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up against him.
She rubbed her face against the front of his shirt. “What if this is a dream and I’m still down there?” she wailed. “Please—please save me.”
He held her tighter, wrapped one hard leg around hers to stop her shaking, and stroked her hair. His hand was cool, his body warm and solid and wonderfully real. “It’s all right,” he whispered into the top of her hair. “All right. I’ll save you.”
He held her until she fell asleep.
Read on for an excerpt from Linda Cajio’s
The Perfect Catch
ONE
“Whoooo! Struck him out, the stinkin’ loser!”
Elaine Sampson clamped her hand over her month and flopped back into her seat, horrified at her outburst. It didn’t matter that the crowd at Veterans Stadium was roaring its own approval as the Atlanta Braves batter walked away dejected from the plate, struck out by Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Curt Schilling.
“Mom!” her son, Anthony, exclaimed, staring at her with a thirteen-year-old’s complete mortification for his mother’s embarrassing action. His face was bright red as he glanced around to see if anyone was looking.
“Hot damn! Leave her be, sugar,” Cleo Burfield said to Anthony. The big black woman patted him on the back in commiseration. “First home game of the season and your mama’s ready for action.”
Anthony grinned at Cleo. If Cleo approved, it was cool.
“Never thought I’d hear that from you, Elaine,” Mary Ososa said, pressing her rosary beads one after the other in silent prayer as the next batter faced Schilling. Mary was as prim as Cleo was sassy, although she was grinning at Elaine.
“It’s about time we heard that from her, Mary,” Jean Keenan said, laughing. “We’ve been the Widows’ Club for nearly two years now, and she’s never lost it before at a game.”
“I’ve got to stop listening to the morning guys on WIP radio,” Elaine muttered, slouching down in her seat. She still couldn’t believe she had shouted like a fishwife. Her, a seventh-grade schoolteacher with a master’s degree, for goodness sake. But the Phils were the Phils. They had to win their home opener.
The two men in the row in front of her had turned around at her outburst, and she realized they were still staring at her. Their more formal clothes gave them away as businessmen
attending the game, probably in their company’s block of seats, a business entertainment phenomenon of the last few years. “Suits,” the fans called the corporate types, because they just sat and did deals, barely watching the game. Certainly they never cheered for the team, either team. They never clapped for a player. And they always left before the eighth inning, to beat the inevitable traffic jam. Even worse, by getting season tickets to choice seats, they moved more fans to the upper levels of the stadium, out of the lower 100, 200, and 300 levels. Elaine felt lucky her little crowd still managed to get in their same 300-level row year after year when they bought their own season tickets.
One of the men in front of her, with the perfect hair pulled back in a tiny male ponytail, and with the perfect tan, and with a pierced hoop earring in one ear, glared up at her as if she had uttered absolute filth at him. She knew he was thinking she was one of “those” kinds of fans, abusive and without manners in general. The other man, although wearing an expensive suit and also sporting a perfect, if shorter, haircut, looked less urban-plastic than his companion. He was older, for one thing—around forty, she judged. His face was lean and rugged, with age lines beginning around the mouth. His hair was dark except for a few silver strands at his temples, just one or two, as if he’d earned them early rather than through the normal aging process. Elaine had noticed him before, when he had sat down. Throughout the opening innings, she had found herself catching glimpses of his profile, which had somehow piqued her curiosity and made her wish she could get a full look at him.
Her wish had now come true. As the man stared at her, her heart beat at lightning speed, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her brain turned to complete mush. But her insides were swirling with a deliciously warm sensation that left her breathless. The intensity scared her, for she hadn’t felt like this in a long, long time.
His eyes held her own gaze. They were a deep brown, the same color as the eyes of a fawn she had once nursed to adulthood. Gentleness, though, wasn’t in the depths of these eyes. They were hard-edged … speculating … impossible to turn from.
Panic shot through Elaine as if she’d just found herself teetering on the edge of a cliff. The noise of the crowd faded to a vague mumble until the world seemed to darken and close in around her and the man. He glanced lower, his gaze traveling down and back up again, taking in her red Phillies cap with her ponytail poking through the gap in the back, her hooded sweatshirt, jeans, thick white crew socks, and sneakers. He couldn’t see much of her body, not with the way she was huddled in the molded plastic seat. But every inch of her felt the shock of his gaze. Here she was, a thirty-seven-year-old widow with one adolescent son, and she couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked at her like this. She ought to be flattered, but she felt as vulnerable as a rabbit under a wolf’s paw. She also wished she was ten pounds slimmer and in a strapless gown. Heck, this kind of male assessment came along once in a blue moon, and she ought to look good when it did.
“Mom … Mom!”
The man turned forward again, finally breaking their locked gazes. Elaine blinked. She took a deep, cleansing breath, trying to regain her equilibrium. The world came back into focus.
The bright lights of the Vet blazed down on the field, illuminating the players. The crowd’s cheers were suddenly deafening, the salty odor of popcorn and the sweet scent of soda overpowering. People all around her were on their feet, screaming at the top of their lungs.
Curt had struck out another one.
She grinned at her son, who was cheering and hugging Cleo. She knew he would die a thousand deaths before he hugged his own mother in public. Cleo was different.
“Bottom of the fourth, and my boy’s coming up!” Cleo announced proudly.
“If Lenny Dykstra really was your boy, we’d have the story of the year,” Jean said, chuckling. She was tall and angular where Cleo was short and busty.
“I couldn’t be his mama!” Cleo laughed with glee. “Lenny’s Mr. Excitement. Whenever he’s at bat, he gives me that sexual high.” She belatedly put her hands over Anthony’s ears. “You cover your ears, baby, you’re not near ready for this. But, oh my, if my Luther were still alive, I’d be saying ‘Get ready, Luther, tonight’s your lucky night!’ ”
The three older widows erupted into laughter. Anthony grinned. Elaine, normally used to this banter, found her face turning red because of the man in front of her.
“You hush up and watch, Jean,” Cleo added. “We’re down one run, and Lenny is about to tie it up.”
“He better,” Mary muttered, the beads moving through her fingers at record speed. “If someone doesn’t break this game open soon, those you-know-what Braves are going to win.”
It was odd how she had come together with these women, all of whom were in their sixties, Elaine thought. They had met years ago right here in this row, when Anthony had been little. She hadn’t had an interest in the game at the time; she’d come for her husband’s sake. But they had become friendly with their seat “neighbors.” Mary’s husband had already passed on after a long illness, so Elaine had never met him. Jean’s husband had died from a stroke the year after they’d met, and four years back Luther’s heart had given out suddenly.
And then her own husband, Joe, had died, long before he should have. It had happened a little over a year and a half ago, Joe had gone out for bread and milk, and someone had run a red light on Route 70 when Joe had been crossing. She had been left with a house with a too big mortgage payment, a young son, and little insurance.
The women had been staunch support then, and she often felt she had been blessed with three extra mothers. Cleo, Jean, and Mary hadn’t given up their season tickets after their husbands’ deaths because they were true aficionados of baseball. Elaine had continued going to the games for Anthony at first, because the boy needed men to look up to, men who could show him man things, who could show him that hard work and dedication paid off. A baseball team he had idolized all his short life seemed a good place to start. She had had to learn the finer points of the game for her son’s sake, and slowly she’d become a true fan.
Jean had started calling them the Widows’ Club, and Elaine had evolved into a chauffeur for them all. With this season opener at the Vet, she sensed something big about to happen with the team, and it had infected her. Baseball. Springtime with the ail-American pastime. Somehow the combination had pushed itself into her soul, and at that moment, nothing was finer.
It had to be the game, she told herself, because it couldn’t be the man in front of her.
To her horror, Cleo leaned over and tapped both “suits” on the shoulder. “You boys better be watching this, or you’ll miss the play of the game.”
“But he’s down two strikes already!” the younger man said in disbelief to Cleo.
Cleo sniffed. “That’s just part of Lenny’s show. He’ll work that count to a full one and make that pitcher throw ten times, just trying to get him out. Wears those snotty pitcher boys down and gets them off the mound early.”
“Here endeth the lesson of the day,” Mary said.
“Amen to that!” Jean added.
Elaine looked for heavenly salvation herself, because mortification of the flesh was already guaranteed. Those three were in rare form tonight.
The younger man made a face. The older one just shook his head. Elaine resisted the urge to dump her soda all over them. Cleo was only being friendly, which was more than she could say for those two—even if one was sexy as hell.
The tension in the stadium built to a fever pitch as Lenny Dykstra sent several pitches foul into the stands and passed on a few more, until his count was three balls and two strikes, just as Cleo had predicted. A few more pitches went foul as Mr. Excitement lived up to his name. Elaine forgot about the man sitting in front of her. She forgot about “suits” in general … and her name, her job, and other vital pieces of information as her exhilaration level built with each pitch. She squeezed her soda cup, threatening to overf
low the contents, grabbed Jean’s hand with her free one, and thought her heart would burst through her chest as she waited for each windup and pitch. It was going to happen, she thought, feeling the truth of it in her bones.
The Sure Thing.
She suddenly understood Cleo’s need for Luther, because her whole body was thrumming with anticipation, her blood whirling hot along her veins. She was desperate for something to relieve the growing sensuality … for someone …
Her gaze dropped to the disturbing man in front of her. To her shock, he turned around at that very moment as if her body had called to his. If his first stare had sent her spiraling, this one catapulted her into dizzying heights as her body responded to the physical attraction she felt toward this man. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t focus on anything but him.
The man broke the gaze as the smack of wood against leather was heard over the stadium roar, as a ball was hit with tremendous force. Elaine looked up in time to see the little white ball sailing back … back … The outfielder ran to the warning track … his arm was outstretched … he jumped right at the wall …
The ball sailed over the right-field fence into the Phillies bull pen. A home run.
Elaine screamed and leaped to her feet, flinging her arms up with joy. Just as she did, she realized she was still holding her soda cup, and the soda inside was taking a leap of its own. She watched in fascinated horror as it moved in almost slow-motion time out of the cup and into the air, the dark liquid spreading out in a kind of wall twinkling with crushed ice. The soda hit the man in front of her with a solid splash, and the world, which had been frozen for that one terrible instant, suddenly returned again in all its loud noisy glory.
The man yelped and jumped to his feet, soda dripping down his head and the back of his suit jacket.
“Omigod, omigod!” Elaine exclaimed, grabbing up her napkins and rubbing at his hair and back She could feel her face heating with embarrassment and wondered if she was getting psychic in her old age. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry!”
Bounty Hunter Page 20
