Back in the Game: A Stardust, Texas Novel (34 page)

“Wow,” Breeanne said.

Behind them, something made a big splash in the water. The smell of spent fireworks still lingered in the air.

Rowdy lowered his voice. “My parents were high school sweethearts and Mom got pregnant in her junior year. They both dropped out of school, got jobs. Their whole life was about nothing more than struggle, and raising kids. Dad never got to enjoy a damn thing in his life. It wasn’t fair, Breezy. It damn well wasn’t fair.”

Here was the link into Rowdy’s psyche she’d been searching for. The thing he’d been hiding from her. The reason he was so afraid to get serious about relationships. He was afraid of ending up trapped and in pain.

“Everyone has regrets, Rowdy. It’s a shame your father chose to express his doubts so vividly, at such a dramatic time to a confused teen. It marked you,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he admitted, and rubbed a palm down his face. “Any time I got the slightest urge to take a relationship beyond that initial thrill, I’d break things off.”

“You won’t end up like your father, Rowdy. You’ve got enough money to last you a lifetime. You’ve had your share of fun. Marriage and kids wouldn’t wreck your life.”

“I’m finally starting to realize that.” He peered deeply into her eyes and her heart gave a berserk thump. “Tell you the truth I should have been in therapy. My whole family should have, but we were on that ugly ridge of the income level, a hair over the poverty line. We didn’t qualify for freebies, but neither could we afford the luxury of mental health care.”

“Still,” she said. “You’ve managed to not only survive, but thrive. Look at where you came from and all you’ve accomplished. Baseball saved you. Be proud of yourself.”

“I can’t,” he said. “Because it’s all based on a lie.”

His dark secret. They were finally getting to it. Cold clung to her bones.

“After my dad died, I was so desperate to get out of my neighborhood, to get out of Stardust, and do something big with my life. I was already a pretty damn good ballplayer. Playing ball is all I did. And being a lefty gave me an edge. But it wasn’t enough. I had to make
certain
I got out of here.”

She wondered where this was headed, but she wasn’t going to guess or press. It was his story. He was in charge of telling it his way.

“Price and Warwick . . .” His voice cracked. “They felt the same desperation. They wanted out as badly as I did. My situation was bad, but at least my parents loved me. Neither Price or Warwick had that.”

She wrapped her arms around him again, put her ear against his chest once more, and held him to let him know his secret didn’t scare her.

He squeezed her tightly. After a long time he finally went on. “In our neighborhood, getting your hands on illegal substances wasn’t all that hard. A baseball scout was coming to town.”

Silence dripped like spilled milk oozing off a breakfast table.

“I took steroids. I did drugs.” Sandbags of regret weighted his voice and he loosened his arms from around her.

Breeanne stepped back so she could see his face, settled her hands to her hips, knocking the recorder off her waistband. She’d forgotten it was there. The recorder clattered to the ground. She picked it up, checked to make sure it was turned off, and stuck it into the back pocket of her shorts.

“Sorry about that,” she apologized. “Go on.”

“I took drugs to boost my performance. Warwick and Price did too. We rolled the dice, took a chance the way only stupid teenagers can. It worked. We impressed the scout and suddenly, everything we dreamed was coming true . . .” His eyes were tortured. “Because we cheated.”

“You don’t know it was because of the steroids. You could just have easily impressed the scout without the drugs,” she said.

“I’ll never know. It’s tainted.” He swept a hand at the Escalade, a symbol of his success. “All of it.”

“But that was the only time you took performance enhancing drugs, right?”

“I never touched them,” he said. “Price and I got away with the doping. Back then the drug testing was random, not mandatory. But Warwick, because he was so big, and older than the other kids, he got tapped for testing. His baseball career was over before it ever started. He ended up going into the marines, while Price and I skipped off to the Mariners farm team.”

“It’s why you hired Warwick as your bodyguard. You feel guilty.”

“He’s loyal to a fault. Never ratted out Price and me. We had our careers because of him. I owe him more than I can ever repay.”

“Okay.” She pressed both palms downward. “Let me get this straight. Potts found out that you and Price used steroids to jumpstart your baseball careers and that was how he planned on getting you to go along with
his
doping scheme?”

“Yes.”

“He thought because you’d done it once, you were corruptible.”

“Yeah.” Rowdy folded his lips inward. “When we refused to play ball, Potts threatened to doctor our clean lab results to look dirty.”

“The reverse of what he was doing with dirty players.”

“You got it. He said, ‘You cross me, Blanton, and I’ll make sure your pee will light up like a Christmas tree. When people find out you used steroids in high school, it won’t be an isolated incident. It’ll be a pattern.’ How could I fight that?”

“He had you in a straitjacket.”

“Not completely. I had one move. Walk out of the Gunslingers in protest over Price’s being let go.”

“Which got you suspended.”

“But that ended up backfiring on him because the suspension caused more media attention than my walking out.”

“So he hired someone to get rid of you permanently.”

“Not completely, I’m still here, but that’s why he acquired Zach. To stop me from uncovering his cesspool in my autobiography.”

“There’s something I can’t figure out. If no one ever knew you and Price took steroids, how did Potts find out?”

Rowdy shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s got uncanny ways of digging up dirt.”

“I wish you’d trusted me enough to tell me this sooner,” she whispered.

“I didn’t want to know the bad things I’d done,” he said. “You’re so pure and—”

“Not that pure,” she said. “And I’ve always tried not to judge people. It’s easy to draw conclusions about people’s behavior but until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes you have no way of knowing what they’ve been through.”

“Ah, Breezy,” he said huskily, “I don’t deserve you.”

“Rowdy,” she said. “You deserve all the happiness in the world.”

Was that a mist of tears glimmering in his eyes? He blinked and it was gone, but he took her in his arms and lifted her off her feet.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, rested her chin on his shoulder, whispered in his ear everything she felt in her heart. “To hell with third base, take me home, slugger, and make love to me with all you’ve got.”

CHAPTER
25

This is a game to be savored, not gulped.

There’s time to discuss everything

between pitches or between innings.

—
B
ILL
V
EECK

The minute they were inside his house, Rowdy dropped his keys on the foyer table, held out his arms, and said, “C’mere.”

Breeanne hopped into Rowdy’s arms as if she’d been doing it her entire life, and would continue to do so for the next seventy years or so. It was that easy.

He held her close, and nuzzled her neck.

She locked her legs around his waist, hanging on for all she was worth. A level five tornado couldn’t have sucked her loose from his embrace. Her breasts were smashed flat against his chest, and she could feel the strong, steady pounding of his heart.

He plucked at the scarf around her neck—the incredible softness of the scarf that only the two of them could detect—loosening the knot, sliding it around the nape of her neck where it flowed like water, before letting it fall off his fingertips and drift to the ground.

A sigh popped from her lips, dreamy and poetic.

He slipped her glasses off her face, settled them onto the table with his keys. He kissed her neck, while one hand slipped up her shirt to stroke the small of her back. “Sweetheart, are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”

“I don’t want to lead you on. I can’t promise to tell you what you want to hear. My life’s a mess. I’m a mess—”

“Shh.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “I know that. I don’t care. I just want to live in the moment, to be happy right this minute. For today, tonight, I can be happy with you. We can be happy together now. Nothing further required.”

“I could—”

She pretended to button up his lip. “I don’t want to hear another word about it. All your secrets are safe with me.”

He tilted his head back, looked up at her, his eyes gleaming with sexual hunger.

For her. This glorious, flawed man wanted her. It was enough. Tonight, he was all hers and she was going to enjoy every second without worrying about tomorrow.

“After this, will we still be friends?” he asked.

She smiled at him, her heart wobbly with a bittersweet joy. “We will
always
be friends.”

His eyes darkened and the muscles at his mouth tightened and he looked as if he wanted to believe that as much as she did. As if he wanted not only friendship but a whole lot more.

A flicker of hope caught fire. He was changing, and so was she. Could they find a way to each other?

Don’t, Breeanne. Don’t sugarcoat reality. He’s vulnerable now because he told you his secrets. It doesn’t mean he sees this as a permanent thing.

And yet she had all this hope, and nowhere to place it except on him.

“Let’s make this a night for the record books,” he said, and carried her upstairs to his bedroom.

When they got through the door, she dropped her legs and slid down the length of his hard body. He gazed deeply into her eyes, tilted her jaw up with three fingers, and lowered his head.

The pressure of his warm, moist mouth kindled a blistering heat that ravaged her nerve endings, and it felt as if every quivering cell in her body had been preparing for
this
moment, with
this
man. How she loved him!

His lips were firm, but gentle, and she parted her teeth, and let him in.

He slipped the tip of his tongue between lips, slow and easy, sending her pulse into a heady gallop. She went up on tiptoes to thread her fingers through his silky hair, tugging his head lower, and meeting his tongue with her own.

The hem of her blouse rode up, the cool of his air-conditioned bedroom sent goose bumps over her skin. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the air-conditioning, and everything to do with the man teasing her with hot kisses.

Tonight’s the night
. And the Rod Stewart song of the same name played inside her head.

Everything
was
going to be all right. No matter what happened. She’d chosen the right partner to have her first sexual experience with. Of that, she had no doubt. It was not a hastily made choice. She was one-hundred-percent committed.

His tongue slid in deeper, and she reached up to cradle either side of his face between her palms. His heavy beard, already growing stubble again, was scratchy against her skin. She pressed her body as close to his as she could get, eliminating any last bit of space separating them.

She savored every detail, every breath—his taste, his heat, his touch. Her hands roamed to his shoulders, her fingertips dug into the rippled muscles there. They could have been in the middle of a six-lane freeway and she wouldn’t have noticed traffic whizzing past. They might as well have been on the moon.

Her head spun. She’d been so engrossed in cataloging every sensory detail that she’d forgotten to breathe. Gasping, she broke their connection, whimpering because she’d been forced to do so.

He inhaled simultaneously with her, chuckled. “I forgot to breathe too.”

“Old hand like you?” she teased. “I thought breathing while you kiss was second nature.”

He growled low in his throat and nibbled the outside of her ear.

She gasped again.

“Exhale,” he murmured.

“I can’t.” She squeaked, her lungs seizing up, holding on to the stale air. “Not as long as you’re doing
that
.”

“You don’t like having your ear nibbled?”

“No. I love it so much that I can’t breathe.”

He pulled back. “Now there’s a dilemma. Loving something so much that it’s bad for you.”

Oh, she already knew that. Breanne let out a desperate exhale.

“How about this?” He migrated from the top of her ear to the lobe.

“Rowdy.” She panted.

“What is it, Breezy?”

“I’m ready for the good part.”

“Patience,” he said. “Relax and enjoy the journey.”

“I’m going to rip your clothes right off your body if you don’t stop that.”

He nibbled some more.

“Oh, so that’s how you want to play it?” She grabbed the hem of his Western shirt and pulled her hands in opposite direction. The snaps popped open as easy as shelling peas.

“Whoa.” He laughed.

His glorious, naked chest was in front of her, just waiting to be touched. She ran her palms along his sculpted pecs. Trembled.

He shrugged out of the shirt, letting it float to the ground. Snatching her wrist, he tugged her to the denim love seat beside the huge bay window. He sank onto the plush cushion, pulled her into his lap so that she was straddling him. He’d slouched and they were almost eye to eye, and her crotch was level to his. His rigid erection strained against his blue jeans, poking against the thin cotton material of her shorts.

He was so big. Was this going to hurt? She hadn’t considered that.

“See what you do to me?” His voice came out heavy, and husky.

She dipped her head to hide her pleased smile.
She
, mousy Breeanne Carlyle who’d never had a boyfriend, had caused Rowdy B’s ginormous boner.