Authors: Mindy Klasky
Tags: #Romance, #Adult, #office, #wedding, #baseball, #workplace, #rich, #wealthy, #sport
The first Saturday game on the road, he wished he’d set different terms, weeks ago, when he’d started down this crazy path. He should have pushed for Amanda to come to away games too. He should have bought her a ticket in each stadium, left her sunglasses on different seats around the country, waited for her at the beginning of batting practice, holding his breath for the moment when she looked down at him and said, “Sure,” in that half-laughing, half-sarcastic way.
He knew that wouldn’t change his game. His hitting streak didn’t depend on what she did when he was on the road. But he was aching to see her. He was dying to have company in lonely hotel room after lonely hotel room.
He played ball for a living. Away games were part of the deal. He had his phone; they could talk until they both nodded off, until the sun was rising back in Raleigh.
It wasn’t the same as being with her. His cock announced that every single night. His brain wasn’t far behind, as he thought about how nice it would be to sit at a dinner table like a regular guy, to ask about her day, to reach across and brush a strand of hair from her cheek before he gathered up their plates and carried them over to the sink.
A week and a half left to go in the regular season. Seven more games on the road. He could survive that. He could survive anything. He lay back against the shiny veneer headboard and called Amanda.
~~~
So, it came down to this. Amanda ran through the numbers again in her head. The Rockets’ September had been rough. Their catcher had broken his thumb and gone on the disabled list for the rest of the year. The heart of the order had lapsed into a cold streak, like men dropping with the flu. Two games had been rained out in San Francisco, forcing them to double up games, sending them home aching and exhausted just before they met their division rivals in the final home stand of the regular season.
By some miracle—or the power of positive delusions—Kyle’s hitting streak had survived. The pressure on him was enormous as he reached forty-eight games, nearing the record in the major leagues. And now the Rockets needed to beat New York, or their post-season dreams were toast.
Amanda checked her teeth in the bathroom mirror, just off the main concourse at Rockets Field. It was hard to remember that first game, weeks earlier. She’d hidden inside the cool confines of the bathroom then, too, not wanting to waste her time with people from the office, not wanting to be forced into socializing when she had work to do.
How different things would be if she’d headed back to the office that afternoon, if she’d never taken her seat in the stands. She never would have met Kyle. She never would have had the most exciting two months of her life—in the bedroom, sure, but also in her daily life.
People stopped her on the street. Just the day before, she’d been walking into the federal courthouse and the security guard had said, “Wait a second! Aren’t you Norton’s girl?”
Norton’s girl
. Four months ago, she would have bridled at the implied insult, at the thought that she wasn’t someone of value on her own, that her life only had worth because she was associated with a man.
But she knew that wasn’t what the guard meant. Hell, she was at the courthouse because of
her
job,
her
case, the scheduling hearing she had to attend in front of a judge. So she’d smiled and said she was, and the guard had asked for her autograph.
Now, she made her way to her seat, walking down the familiar stadium steps with an ease she couldn’t have imagined two months earlier. The pasteboard box was waiting for her.
And so was a reporter. An entire camera crew. “Ms. Carter,” the man said. “My name is Rory Michaels, and I’m with the broadcast team for this game. May I ask you a few questions before the first pitch?”
Her belly tightened. She didn’t want to be on camera. Her fifteen minutes of fame were supposed to come in a courtroom, not a baseball stadium.
She glanced at the scoreboard clock. “In a moment,” she said. Kyle was already trotting over from the dugout. She had to hurry to open the box, to unwrap the sunglasses, and all the time she was painfully aware of the red light on the camera, the unblinking eye that told her she was being filmed.
She stepped up to the railing just in time to go through the familiar routine. “Hey, sweetheart,” Kyle called.
That first day, his greeting had been casual, an offhand endearment that carried no meaning. Now, her heart fluttered in her chest because he’d called her
sweetheart
when he’d kissed her shoulder that morning, when he’d smoothed back her hair and traced her lips with his finger, before he headed down to the ballpark.
He barely looked like the same man now. His hair was long, almost down to his shoulders. His beard was wild. Like Samson, he insisted that he couldn’t stand a trim and a shave, that his hitting streak depended on his not changing a thing.
She’d argued with him. She’d told him he was changing his underwear, so why couldn’t he clean up his hair a bit? She’d tugged at his beard and told him she liked less of it. She wanted to feel his cheeks when he rubbed his face against her breasts, her belly, her thighs.
He’d laughed and set about proving that she wasn’t
that
opposed to his beard. Not to the point where she didn’t scrape her fingernails across his back and call out his name as she tumbled over the edge into yet another devastating orgasm.
She shook her head, resigned to his crazy superstitions. And then she completed his routine, tossing him the glasses. He put them on with a flourish and, with the formula complete, he blew a kiss to her and turned back to his fellow players.
Rory Michaels was waiting. “If you don’t mind, Ms. Carter? A few questions?”
She minded. She wanted to keep her life private. But half of Raleigh had just seen her accept Kyle’s airborne kiss. And she was pretty sure Michaels wouldn’t give up without a fight. So she took the microphone he handed her. She settled back in her seat. She ran through a brief recital of the points she always rehearsed before a hearing, before any public speaking—modulate her voice, don’t say “um”, keep her fingers from twitching at her jewelry. And she set about winning the hearts and minds of Rockets lovers everywhere.
~~~
Amanda stood by the players’ parking lot. Fans streamed by behind her, high on extra innings, overdosing on adrenaline. The Rockets had won on a run driven in by Kyle’s long single, his only hit of the game. The team had made it to the post-season.
Kyle’s streak continued. The season continued. And all—he would say—because she’d stood in the stands and dropped a pair of sunglasses into his waiting hands.
She knew people were staring at her as they celebrated the Rockets’ victory. She’d had her face on the huge centerfield scoreboard; everyone had seen her answering Rory Michaels’ questions. Now, fans snatched photos with their phones, surreptitiously claiming her as part of their own red, white, and blue Raleigh Rockets triumph.
She tightened her fingers on the chain link fence and waited. Kyle would be celebrating with his teammates. There’d be reporters in the locker room, congratulatory interviews because he was the man who’d secured their shot at glory. He’d saved the entire team’s chances for the post-season.
The crowd finally thinned behind her. A couple of the other players came out. She watched them climb into their luxury cars, a Ferrari, a tricked-out Audi. They called across the lot to each other, laughing and relaxed. Amanda told herself to go home, to stop waiting. She should go to the
office
. She had one week left before her trial began; she had no business at all standing in a baseball stadium.
But she couldn’t make her fingers let go of the fence. She couldn’t make herself step back.
And finally, finally, Kyle walked out of the metal door at the far end of the lot. He was halfway to his car when she couldn’t wait any longer. She called his name, low and urgent, like she was trying to warn him about a looming disaster.
He turned, faster than she thought any man could. He closed the distance between them in a heartbeat. His fingers closed over hers, pressing the wire fence into her skin, but she barely felt it. She didn’t care.
“Thank you,” he said. Just those two words.
But she heard more. She heard,
thank you for feeding my superstition long enough for me to achieve my dream.
She heard,
thank you for letting me help my team.
She heard,
Thank you for getting us this far, for clearing the path for us to go all the way.
And she heard,
Thank you for staying. For being here. Now.
She leaned against the fence, wishing she could make it melt away.
“Come home with me,” Kyle said.
“My car is in Lot C.”
“Screw Lot C. Let them ticket you. Let them tow. Come home with me and let me thank you the right way for everything you’ve done.”
And so she did.
She stepped back for long enough to let Kyle go to his car. She watched as he cleared the security gate, as he leaned across and opened the passenger door for her to climb in. She leaned back as he drove the city streets, taking care around the stadium for the celebrating fans who spilled out of bars, who gathered on busy corners.
I should work on my opening argument for the trial.
She quashed the thought. She could work on her opening argument tomorrow. She could work on her opening argument while the Rockets traveled to play the first game of the best-of-five division championship.
For tonight, she let Kyle lead her through the cool echoes of his apartment building’s garage. They stood close in the elevator, so close that the heat of his body threatened to ignite the zipper on her sundress. The brass doors opened into a penthouse apartment, a huge living room that she barely had time to see before he swept her off her feet. He carried her into a bedroom that was larger than her entire apartment, and he sank beside her on a bed that dwarfed anything she’d ever slept on before.
And then she stopped making comparisons. She stopped thinking altogether. She gave herself over to her body, to her need, and to the desire of the man beside her.
Amanda looked up from her stack of deposition transcripts as Harvey cleared his throat in the doorway of her office. “You live life right, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?” she asked, still distracted by chemical reactions, drug half-lives, and the minutiae of the case that was consuming her every waking moment.
“Haven’t you checked your email?” When Amanda started to make excuses, Harvey just laughed. “Dr. Phillips. He’s finally agreed to testify.”
Amanda didn’t trust herself to breathe. Dr. Antoine Phillips. The key to her entire case. “I didn’t think—”
But she knew better than that. She should never admit to weakness, never give any hint she’d lacked absolute confidence that Phillips would come around.
Harvey nodded. “Your persistence finally paid off. Things will be tight, though. Phillips says you can have four hours on Friday afternoon before he heads back to Africa. All you have to do is fly up to meet him in Washington.”
Amanda’s mind was already churning. Four hours… That would barely be enough time to outline her case, to get the doctor’s crucial analysis of pharmacokinetics. Well, she’d have to make it be enough. UPA’s continued existence depended on it—not to mention the bonus she’d earn when she won the case.
She looked up at her old mentor. “You can trust me on this, Harvey.”
“I know I can. Now get to work. Friday will be here before you know it.”
Her phone rang as Harvey walked away. One glance quickened her heartbeat. “Kyle,” she said as she picked up. His name pooled in the back of her throat, soft and warm.
“Hey there, sweetheart.”
She couldn’t remember another person who’d ever called her by an endearment. Not her mother, and definitely not Warren. None of the guys she’d dated along the way—she’d been lucky if they’d bothered to drop her name into conversation every once in a while. Maybe that’s why she felt like she was basking in a hot ray of sunshine as his words melted through the phone in her hand.
“What’s up?” she asked. Because endearment or not, it was unusual for Kyle to call her during the day.
“They just released the schedule for the division series. I wanted you to know as soon as possible, so you can clear your schedule.”
Clear her schedule. A sliver of foreboding cut through the sunny joy in her belly. “What do you mean?” she asked. Even though she knew exactly what he meant.
“There are two day games in the first series. There might be one more, in the championship series. But all the World Series games will be at night.”
She licked her lips. Maybe this wasn’t a problem. Maybe the dates would line up. “When are they?”
“The first is Thursday. One o’clock.” She exhaled a little. So far, so good.
“And the second?”
“Friday. Four in the afternoon.”
Impossible. She couldn’t shift her meeting with Antoine Phillips—the doctor had no flexibility in his schedule. And he was far too valuable a witness for her to ignore. No baseball game—post-season or not—was going to get in her way.
“Amanda?” Kyle’s voice cut through her thoughts.
“I’m here,” she said, putting on her best lawyerly voice. She had to explain why she would head to DC, make him understand that her entire case turned on the trip. Before she could say anything else, though, the phone on her desk rang. She hated the wave of relief that washed over her. “I need to get that.”
“Amanda!”
“Let’s talk tonight,” she said as the phone rang again.
“Fine,” he said, but she heard wariness in his voice. “Come to my place after work.”
“I might be late.” One more ring.
“I’ll be here.”
She grabbed the other line just before it rolled over to voicemail. “Carter,” she snapped.
“Mandy.” Her mother, sounding worried. “I’m sorry to bother you at the office, but I’m afraid this couldn’t wait.”
“What’s wrong?”
Silence, just long enough for Amanda to grit her teeth as a gigantic slug of dread oozed across her belly. Then her mother’s usual matter-of-fact speech, the way she’d always delivered bad news, shooting words out like shells from a Gatling gun. “I just got back from the doctor. I finally have the second opinion about my back, and it’s just as bad as the first.”
Amanda grabbed for a pad of paper and started scribbling down prime numbers. She’d known her mother was going in for this consultation; it was long overdue. But Amanda had let herself ignore the details, had let herself forget the specific dates and times because there was nothing she could do to control the situation, nothing she could do to make everything better.
2. 3. 5. “What did the doctor say?” Amanda asked, letting the flow of numbers even her tone.
Her mother took a deep breath and then started delivering her diagnosis, clearly reading from some written material. Sacral curvature. L3. L5. Spinal degeneration. Spinal stenosis.
7. 11. 13. Amanda wrote the numbers across the top of the page, even as she recorded all the medical terms.
“Bottom line,” her mother said. “It’s surgery now or a wheelchair within three months.”
17. 19. “What type of surgery?”
She heard pages rustle, and then the medical recitation began again. Invasive. Unique presentation. Uncertain results. Potentially incapacitating.
23. 29. 31. 27. 41. The primes weren’t helping. Nothing could help. Amanda floated on familiar waves of guilt. The diagnosis might have been different if her mother had gone to the doctor years ago, when the pain first started. Surgery might have been simpler then, more likely to succeed. Less likely to leave Laura in agony for days, weeks, months, as she attempted complete rehabilitation.
But Laura hadn’t dared try anything earlier. She couldn’t risk the cost.
Swallowing bitter self-condemnation, Amanda asked, “And there’s no other option?”
“There
is
another procedure.”
Amanda sat up straighter. “Yes?”
“Dr. Greer would refer me to a specialist, someone connected with the university.”
Something was wrong here. Something made her mother uneasy, afraid. And through the years, no matter what had happened, no matter what disasters Warren brought on the family, what crises the credit bureaus and the banks had presented, Laura Carter had never been
afraid
.
“What is it, Mom? What aren’t you telling me?”
“The procedure is non-invasive. Recovery would be measured in weeks instead of months. But it’s experimental. Not covered by insurance. And the hospital requires payment up front.”
Amanda blinked hard at her string of primes, at the perfect, pure numbers. They couldn’t be reduced. They couldn’t be broken into component parts. They were strong and stable and steady, no matter how they were manipulated.
Her mouth was too dry for her to swallow, but she forced herself to ask, “How much?”
“Thirty-two thousand dollars.”
“What?” Amanda’s throat choked closed on the number.
“That covers the anesthesiologist, and all the lab tests, the operating theater, and follow-up scans.”
It should cover gold-plated scalpels
. But Amanda couldn’t say that to her mother. She understood the complex tangle of Carter pride and privacy. Laura would never have called if she’d seen any other way to take care of herself, if there’d been any other option at all.
Amanda sighed. “When do they need it?”
“The surgeon had a cancellation in his schedule. He can fit me in for surgery next Wednesday.”
Amanda chewed on her lower lip. If she’d worked in a standard office, she might be able to raid her retirement account. She might negotiate a loan against a pension. But the law firm’s partnership didn’t give her any of those luxuries.
This was insane—another massive debt coming due in the space of two months. She should have planned better, should have managed her life with greater attention to detail.
But she
did
plan. The only predictable expense had been her payment into the partnership. The rest of it—Hunter’s aides, the DC office, her mother’s surgery—those were emergencies. Unpredictable. Variables she couldn’t control.
She
wasn’t a failure; the world just had a way of laughing at her most careful plans.
She tested her voice inside her head before she said, “Let me see what I can do, Mom.”
“It it’s too much trouble…”
Right. Like it had been too much trouble for Laura to work double shifts the entire time Amanda was growing up. Like it had been too much trouble when Amanda needed poster boards for school science fair projects. Like it had been too much trouble when Amanda needed a programmable calculator for her first college-level class, way back in her freshman year of high school.
“Of course it’s not too much trouble. I just have to shift some money around between accounts.”
And that was all Amanda could say. She couldn’t tell her mother the truth, couldn’t admit that she didn’t have two pennies to rub together. Because Carters kept their problems to themselves. Carters didn’t gossip. Carters didn’t tell tales.
Privacy above all.
The only thing Amanda had to decide was whether to beg Kyle for the money before or after she told him she couldn’t attend his game on Friday.
~~~
“Go ahead,” Kyle said to the doorman over the in-house line. “Send her up.”
He tossed some ice cubes into a tumbler and added a generous pour of Ketel One. He was waiting by the elevator as the door to his penthouse opened.
God, she was gorgeous. It wasn’t just the straight black hair. It wasn’t only those huge green eyes, looking hungry and innocent at the same time. It wasn’t even her body, the curves he could picture beneath her prim and proper suit, the calves stretched into a perfect taut line by those heels she wore.
It was all of that, but it was something more. She might act like she was in charge of the entire world, like she could reduce everything to a perfect scientific equation, but
he
knew the way her lips parted when she’d reached the point of no return. He knew how her voice sounded when she gasped out his name while he was deep inside her.
He handed her the vodka and then he shoved his hand into his pocket so he wouldn’t crush her against his chest before she even had a chance to sip. She nodded, almost like she was distracted, and she dropped her briefcase on the couch. He expected her to kick off her shoes. He
hoped
she would peel off her jacket.
Instead, she crossed the room and stood in front of the picture window, staring out at the Raleigh skyline. She gulped from her glass like she needed the fortification, and then she shook her head.
“Amanda?” he asked. But she didn’t turn to face him. A fist of ice colder than anything in her glass punched his spine.
He crossed the room to stand behind her. She flinched—he couldn’t ignore that. But he slipped his hand beneath the waterfall of her hair. He bared the nape of her neck and leaned down to brush his lips against her vulnerable skin. He felt a shiver ripple across her shoulders. His cock rose in response, urging him forward, telling him to turn her around, to give her the kiss he really wanted to give, to forget about kissing altogether and just drag her off to his bed.
“Amanda?” he asked again, this time barely raising his voice to a whisper.
She tried to pull away, to slip to the side. His hands closed over her hips, and he turned her gently, not fighting when she insisted on staring into the clear liquor in her glass.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
Her breath caught in her throat. He saw her glance toward her briefcase, like she was trying to take refuge in whatever files she’d carried home—numbers and charts and graphs that would force her entire world to make sense. He caught her chin gently between his thumb and forefinger and forced her to look up at him.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” he said. “It can’t be that bad.”
She licked her lips, just the tip of her tongue tracing the path he longed to follow. “It is,” she said. And then she seemed to reach some decision. She looked at him, really
saw
him for the first time since she’d entered his home. She raised her palm toward his face, like she was going to cup his jaw, but she pulled back from his full beard. “That was my mother calling this afternoon. When we were on the phone.”
So she
did
have a mother. This was the first he’d heard of her family. He waited.
And finally she said, “I can’t tell you why. But she needs thirty-two thousand dollars. She needs the money, and I can’t get it for her.”
This time, she
did
step away, to the very edge of the window. She tossed back the rest of her drink and folded the glass against her free wrist, like she was trying to ice her veins. She spoke to the Raleigh skyline. “My first thought, the second I hung up the phone, was to take out my file on Spring Valley.”
Against his will, his gut tightened.
He saw the way her shoulders stiffened. She clearly wanted to run across the room, to push the button for the elevator, to get the hell out of the condo forever.
Instead, she turned to face him. She looked at him steadily and said, “I couldn’t do it. I
wouldn’t
do it, Kyle. Not now. Not when I know you. Not when I know how different you are from the boy who went to Spring Valley.”
He
was
different. He was a man now. Not just in body, but in spirit, too. He was a better person, because of the past two months with Amanda. He’d finally grown up.
And for the first time since that horrible freshman year, he realized that he
could
tell the truth. In a few weeks, anyway—after the season ended. If the Rockets went all the way—and there was no reason they wouldn’t, not this year, not with his hitting streak still going strong, not with the rest of the team firing on all cylinders—that would soften the blow. The newspaper guys were already moving on to cover football anyway, and basketball would heat up in a month. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of room for a story about a world champion right fielder’s stupid mistakes on the way up.
With Amanda by his side, he could do anything. He could admit to all his stupid mistakes, tell the world he’d screwed up when he was a kid, he’d fucked up even more by keeping things secret for so many years. He could say that, because he had Amanda beside him, because she trusted him. Because he trusted her.