Perfect Pitch (8 page)

“Are you not good enough for the team?”

He shook his head and refused to meet her eyes. Sam wasn’t a fool, though. She knew that if she waited, he’d be forced to fill the silence. Her own pulse beat loud in her ears, and she had to fight the temptation to shift from foot to foot. But her instincts were right. Daniel finally said, “I’m the best hitter we have. And I’m the best at second base, too.”

“What’s the problem, then?”

Another interminable wait. This time Sam nearly
did
break the silence; she couldn’t believe the boy would ever gather the wherewithal to speak. His eyes were filled with misery when he finally pulled his gaze from his tangled fingers. He whispered, “I’m not as good as Daddy.”

Her heart swelled with pity. “Daniel, your father is a grown man! He’s had years and years to become the baseball player he is today! I’m sure you’re
better
than he was, when he was ten years old.”

The boy shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Daddy
wants
to play for the Rockets.”

“What team do you want to play for?”

Apparently, that was the wrong question. Daniel lost his valiant effort to keep his lower lip from trembling. Instead, tears broke over the dams of his eyes, flooding down his cheeks. His sobs were all the more pitiful because they were silent.
 

Without thinking, Sam gathered the boy toward her. The instant her arms folded around him, he started crying in earnest, shaking, and struggling to fill his lungs. He buried his face against her blouse, sobbing as if he were six, not ten.

“Hush,” she whispered, rubbing his back. “It’s going to be okay. Take it easy…”

Sam knew this type of tears. She’d cried them often enough, when her father came home and announced he’d been posted to yet another new base. She’d sobbed as if her heart would break every time she had to leave behind a new best friend, a new favorite teacher.

That was why she’d finally thrown herself into her music. She’d never need to leave music behind, no matter how many times her father’s career cast the entire family into upheaval.

But that had been years ago, when music classes were still funded.

The only good thing about such a violent emotional storm was that it couldn’t rage for long. Daniel’s gasps slowed. He drew a shuddering breath. Another. He pushed himself away from her and, embarrassed, dragged his sleeve across his face. He looked at the door, as if there were no place he’d rather be than the now-quiet hallway.

Sam forced her voice to sound cheerful, as if she spent every Friday afternoon with desperate pre-adolescent boys. “I’ll talk to your father,” she said. “I’ll explain to him that you want to do Musicall.”

Daniel stared at her, the expression on his face aging him half a dozen years.
Right
, his gaze said.
Like
that
will do anything.
When he spoke out loud, he said, “Forget it. It was stupid for me to ask.”

“It wasn’t stupid. It was very brave of you to ask me.”

She could see the longing on his face, the desire to believe that she was telling the truth. But he shook his head. “I don’t have time for music,” he said. He raised his chin as he spoke, looking for all the world like a soldier facing discipline.

“We can make time,” she said.

He shook his head again. “It was a dumb idea.”

And Sam didn’t have anything else to say. She couldn’t
force
Daniel to abandon Little League to join the music class. Instead, she followed his lead and climbed to her feet, dusting her palms together. “Well, then. Let’s call it a day.”

The boy led the way down the aisle to the hallway. In the corridor, the school was eerily quiet. Sam could hear the squeak of gym shoes on a floor, somewhere far to her right. The light was on in the school office in front of her, but there wasn’t a student to be seen.

Daniel looked guilty. “I think I missed the bus.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I can drive you home.”

The boy said, “I can call my niñera.”

“Your what?”

He shook his head a little. “My nanny. She can come and get me.”

“That’s ridiculous. My car is right here.” Sam didn’t realize until the words were out of her mouth, that it might not be appropriate to offer a ride to a child. But she wasn’t exactly a stranger.

Daniel must have come to the same conclusion—she was safe. No threat at all. “Thank you,” he said, all proper and polite.

Sam made short work of walking him out to her beat-up old Ford. The car was a far-cry from DJ’s luxury sedan, but the child didn’t make any comments as he buckled his seat belt. Instead, he gave Sam directions to his home like a pro, telling her when to turn left and when to turn right.
 

She soon discovered that her car wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t up to DJ’s standard of living. The neighborhood she turned into from the main road was a far cry from her own suburban enclave. Here, the houses were set far apart, each invisible at the end of a long, winding driveway. At Daniel’s instruction, she pulled up in front of a particularly magnificent house, stopping in front of a double garage.

Daniel thanked her and got out of the car, skipping up the front steps of the house without looking over his shoulder. When he pushed on the front door, though, it didn’t budge. He tried again, with no better result.

He turned back to the car, as Sam rolled down her window. “No one’s home,” he said. Before Sam could figure out a solution, Daniel said, “That’s okay. I can go in through the garage.”

She couldn’t let a child enter an empty house on his own. She grabbed her handbag and called out, “Wait up, there!”

Daniel punched four numbers into a keypad built into the frame of the garage door. One. Zero. One. Five. The garage door clanked up, and Sam followed Daniel into the house as he said, “My niñera probably realized I missed the bus. She must have gone to school to get me.” From the tone of his voice, he’d missed the bus before. Probably lots of times.

“Can you call her?” she asked, but Daniel was already reaching for the phone.
 

He punched in a number from memory. Apparently, it was answered on the first ring. “
Si, Isabel
,” the boy said. “
Soy yo. Lo siento. Estoy en casa.
” There was more, a torrent of Spanish that Sam couldn’t follow. Daniel said, “
Lo siento,
” again, and then he hung up the phone. “She’ll be home in a minute,” he said.

“You speak Spanish to your nanny?” Sam asked.

Daniel nodded. “Dad says that’ll help me when I play. It won’t matter if my catcher speaks English or Spanish, I’ll be ready.”

Sam made some sort of response, a sound that was meant to imply it was perfectly normal for a ten-year-old to practice language skills for a job that was at least a decade in his future. Even as she tried to seem nonchalant, she looked around the house.

The kitchen blended into a great room. From her vantage point, she could just make out the corner of a home office and the edge of a formal living room. A hallway led into the distance, presumably to bedrooms.

Everything looked tight, controlled. The floors were polished hardwood, swept perfectly clean. In each room, she could glimpse the identical rug—short pile, sturdy weave, an indeterminate color somewhere between beige and grey. In the great room, there was a couch and two armchairs, all settled around a glass-and-chrome coffee table. The furniture was upholstered in charcoal-colored leather. Each corner was perfect, as if the pieces had just arrived off a furniture showroom that morning. Three massive photographic prints were framed in brushed steel—black and white abstracts that might have been scenes from a skyscraper under construction.

Astonished that a home could bear so little personality, especially one with a ten-year-old child in residence, Sam looked around the kitchen. The appliances were all brushed aluminum; there wasn’t a surface to hold a single magnet, much less the collage of schoolwork and photographs and general household jetsam that Sam would have expected. The cabinets were faced with glass, and Sam could make out neat stacks of plain white dishes nestled beside clear drinking glasses.

The house was like a museum, an exhibit on twenty-first century life. Every single thing was measured. Perfect.

What a horrible place for a boy to grow up.

Before Sam could say anything, a door opened to her right. Those must be the steps to the basement, she told herself. They were finished with the same immaculate hardwood that stretched through the rest of the house. The paint on the walls matched the cool white—

A tiny portion of her brain babbled on about home decorating. But that was only because the vast majority of her consciousness was filled with awareness of the man who stepped into the kitchen.

“Dad!” Daniel yelled as he threw himself across the kitchen, slamming his arms around his father’s waist.

* * *

DJ automatically reached down to ruffle Trey’s hair, but he froze when he realized that the woman standing by the center island wasn’t Isabel.

Wasn’t anything like Isabel. Wasn’t anything like a sixty-year-old, plump Honduran woman, whose tight grey curls were more likely to smell like baby powder than honey and cinnamon.

His abs tightened as he realized that he knew
exactly
what Samantha Winger smelled like. He knew what she felt like, too. Knew enough to want to feel more.

What the hell was she doing, standing in his kitchen? It was like all his daydreams had come true, all the thoughts he’d had as he ran his ten miles on the treadmill downstairs.
 

Of course, the guys at the clubhouse had spent the past week doing everything they could to plant those thoughts in his mind. He still hadn’t figured out who had taped that goddamn picture to his locker, the full-color spread from the newspaper. Even Old Man Benson wouldn’t be able to protect the guy who had added a thought balloon that detailed DJ’s distinctly X-rated intentions—once DJ figured out who had been the brilliant jackass.

He’d torn down the first copy of the photo. And the second one. Third one, too. He’d finally given up, though, when yet another copy of the damn thing was there after he returned to the locker room from his morning treatment. Coach would have his hide if he realized how tightly DJ was clenching his fists. Coach was big on pitchers resting one hundred percent the day after they went. And DJ had gone another nine innings the night before. Not a perfect game, but a complete one. And his arm was only a little tired, two days later.

Now, standing in his own kitchen, DJ was suddenly aware of the fact that he was wearing a towel—and nothing else. Right about now, his routine of showering downstairs and coming up to the master bedroom to put on clothes seemed pretty goddamn foolish.

And it wasn’t going to get any better, with him standing here gaping at Sam. “Um, hello?” he said, far too belatedly. And damn if that didn’t come out sounding like a question.

She obviously took it as one—she started babbling on about that music program of hers, and Trey’s school, and missing the bus, and—

“Hey,” he interrupted. “Thanks for driving Trey home.”

That stopped her short. He glanced over at his son. The kid followed up as if they’d rehearsed the moment. “Can I have screen time, Dad?”

“Half an hour,” he said automatically, and he even managed to make it sound routine. Not desperate. Not like he would have allowed Trey to take an hour, two, the rest of the entire afternoon and evening, hypnotized by his games on the computer and safely away from the kitchen. And Sam.

But what the hell difference did it make? Isabel would be back soon enough, guaranteeing that DJ couldn’t do half the things he’d imagined as he’d tossed and turned the past few nights.

Trey barreled down the hall to DJ’s office, as if he were afraid the treat of computer time would be rescinded. That left DJ alone with Sam. With Sam, and his memories of the catcalls from the guys just that morning. He could only imagine what those wise asses would say if they saw him now.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked, nodding toward the kitchen cabinet.

“No, I’m fine,” she said, too quickly.

He realized she was keeping her eyes on his face. In fact, he wasn’t sure the last time anyone had ever paid so much attention to the spot precisely between his eyebrows. He wondered if Sam’s eyes were starting to burn; she was staring so hard, she wasn’t allowing herself to blink.
 

He couldn’t resist taking a step toward her. Her eyes grew just a little bit wider, and he heard her swallow in the silence of the kitchen. He caught her glance toward his waist, and he grinned as she resolutely locked her gaze back on his face.

“I’m sorry about the article,” he said. But he knew he didn’t sound sorry at all. “I hope you didn’t get into too much trouble.”

“The Fair wasn’t thrilled. I’m on probation.”

He winced, only to become aware that the motion flexed his abs. Or, rather, he became aware that
she
became aware. His fingers twitched, and he barely resisted the urge to pull her close, hazards of a tucked-in cotton towel be damned. He cleared his throat instead and asked, “What does probation mean?”

“Well, for starters, I’m probably not supposed to be standing in your kitchen without a chaperone.”

“I’d tell Trey to come back, but that didn’t really seem to help things Sunday night.”

She licked her lips.

And that was it. He had to taste her, had to return for the rest of the kiss those damn photographers had interrupted on her front porch.
 

She was ready for him. Waiting. Her lips were soft beneath his, but they opened before he even started to press forward. Her tongue was hot satin, slipping against his.
 

He cupped his hand against the back of her head, perfecting the angle. Her hair flowed between his fingers, sleek and soft as he caught it close to her neck. He felt her gasp more than heard it, and he edged his lips to the line of her jaw, to the pulse point that beat hot and steady on her throat.

This time, she moaned, and her fingers close around his hips. He felt the scratch of her nails, the pressure of her need, and he shifted to let her feel the hard length of his arousal.