Perfect Pitch (9 page)

She caught her breath—in surprise he thought, but then
he
was startled to feel her index finger trace the line of his towel, trailing the folds where the terry cut against his obliques. He looked down at her, letting a lazy smile spread across his lips.

“Is this an approved activity during your probation, Miss Summer Queen?”

“Most definitely not,” she whispered.

Pulling her close with one hand, he slipped the other beneath her skirt. She gasped as his palm smoothed up her thigh. He wasn’t surprised—pleased, but not surprised—to feel lace at the edge of her panties.
 

He wanted to tear them off her. He wanted to push up the prim hem of her skirt, to lift her up until she had no choice but to close her long legs around his waist. He wanted to throw his towel to the floor, carry Sam to the center island, spread her out before him, so he could give her all the attention she deserved, with his fingers, his mouth, his dick, which had made its own intense interest known, in no uncertain terms.

But Trey was playing computer games, one room away. And Isabel would be home any minute.

He swore softly and forced his fingers away from the treacherous lace of those panties. Settling his hands on the waistband of her skirt, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. He forced himself to take a steadying breath. Another. A third, and he was finally steady enough to speak.

“Give me your phone.”

“My phone?” She matched his whisper with one of her own, but he could hear her confusion, stirred together with a little breathless amusement.

He stepped back enough to let her reach her purse. When she handed over the device, he wasted no time dialing his own number, hanging up after one ring.

“There,” he said, pressing the phone into her palm. “Now you can reach me for the next two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” The flush was fading from her cheeks, but that only made him desire her more, made him want to restore that flash of color.

“Road trip,” he said. “Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit.”

His heart sped up at her look of disappointment. She glanced toward his office, though. “What about Daniel?”

“He’ll stay here. He’s got a full-time nanny, because my schedule is so crazy.”

“Crazy. That’s one word for it.” Her glance lingered on his towel for long enough that he found himself second-guessing his earlier restraint. She took mercy on him, though, easing back a step and making a show of slipping her phone into her purse. “When do you leave?” she asked.

“Tonight. After the game.”

“Game?” She glanced at the clock on the stove.

“I have to be at the park by 5. I pitched two nights ago, so I get to sit on a bench and watch tonight.”

“I shouldn’t keep you, then.” There. She sounded all prim and proper again. The perfect Summer Queen.
 

Unbidden, he thought of the raunchy dialog balloon one of his teammates had scrawled on that goddamn photo. For just a heartbeat, he wondered what Sam would say if he made
that
proposition.

Instead, he nodded toward her purse, toward her phone. “You’ll keep in touch?”

He saw her interest kindle at the last word, watched her consider some double entendre. He tried not to feel disappointed when she settled for leaning in, for brushing a quick kiss against his cheek. “I just might do that,” she said with a smile. And then she collected her purse, and he showed her to the door.

Damn. He’d have to take another shower before he headed to the park. A cold one, this time.

The first night, Saturday, she called him just before she got ready for bed. She’d had the game on in the background as she put together materials for the next week’s Musicall sessions. The Rockets had beat Chicago by an easy three runs.

The phone rang four times before it rolled over to voice mail. “Hi,” she said, wrinkling her nose at how stupid her voice sounded. “It’s me. I hoped I could catch you right after the game. Have a good night!”

She hung up and immediately wished she’d said something else. Something funny. Or sexy. Or even just a comment to let him know that she’d watched the game.

This was ridiculous. She was acting like she was in high school. She climbed into bed, pretended to read for half an hour, and finally turned out the light, disgusted with her brain’s insistence at replaying the bubble-headed message she’d left.

Her ringing phone woke her from a dream. She scrambled for the device before her eyes were open, before she’d fully realized DJ
wasn’t
in bed beside her, that he
wasn’t
tracing the line of her ribs with his tongue. “Hello?” she gasped.

“I woke you.” His voice matched the tones he’d used in her dream—low, warm, like he was telling her a secret.

“No!” she said, pushing herself to sit up against her pillow. “I mean, I was up. Um, I was dreaming.”

He chuckled. “I shouldn’t have called. But I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. Didn’t want to take the chance of missing you.”

Her belly thrummed at his possessive note. She pulled her covers up close under her chin. “I’m glad you called.”

“What were you dreaming?” His voice was so soft, so suggestive. It was like he could reach inside her head, could read the images that had played out there, in living color. Like he could plant
new
ideas, ones she’d never dreamed before.

She shook her head, feeling herself blush from head to toe, even if no one was there to see her squirm. “I’m not going there.”

He laughed.

“Seriously,” she said, waking a little more. “Tell me about your day. What’s it like in Chicago?”

She felt his hesitation more than heard it. She imagined him leaning back in the upholstered chair of some anonymous hotel room, his hair glinting in a pool of light that was a shade or two too dim. He’d slipped off his shoes the instant he got to the room. He’d taken off his shirt, too, and an easy smile spread across his lips as he considered cajoling her, trying to get her to play his game. But she pictured him remembering what he’d said at Artie’s. He’d take his sign from her.
 

He almost swallowed his resigned sigh before he said, “It’s still cold here. Winter cold. There’s a chance it’ll snow tonight.”

“I love snow!”

“Yeah, it would be great if I was on a ski vacation.”

She laughed. “My mother used to take me for ice cream the first snowfall every year, no matter where we lived. We had a whole tradition—double scoops, one chocolate and one vanilla, both rolled in jimmies. Then we’d go to a movie theater and watch the last show of the day, no matter how late it started. We’d sit in the exact middle of the back row and lean against each other for the entire movie.”

“Sounds like fun. But I can do without the ice cream today.”

“What’s your favorite flavor?”

“Butter pecan,” he said. “But for years, I just ordered a mint chocolate chip for Trey and ate what he couldn’t finish.”

They talked about ice cream and movies and childhood memories until she couldn’t disguise her yawns anymore.

“Sweet dreams,” he whispered. They counted to three out loud and hung up at the same time.

* * *

The second night, she was apprehensive. The Rockets had played a miserable game, huddling in the dugout, pulling their coats close whenever they weren’t forced out into the field. Chicago had won, eight, zip.

DJ sounded tired, but he answered after the first ring. “Tell me your day was better than mine.”

“I’m sure it was,” she said. “I went grocery shopping. And I did my laundry.”

“Tell me about your laundry,” he said. “What color are your panties?”

“DJ!”
 

He laughed wearily. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“I just might,” she said tartly. And then, because she was afraid to let the conversation linger there, she said, “Come on. Tell me about your best day ever.”

“Ever?” She heard the surprise in his voice, and there was silence as he obviously considered her question. “Best day ever,” he said. “Had to be when I got The Call. The day Coach told me I was going to play in the majors.”

“Tell me about it.”

And he did. He seemed to remember every detail—where he was, how it felt to hear the news, the fellow minor league players who congratulated him with a mix of joy and jealousy. “Okay, sweetheart,” he said at the end of his story. “I showed you mine. You show me yours.”

His endearment was casual, tossed off in keeping with the comfortable tone of their chat. But she couldn’t deny that his words warmed her from within. She swallowed hard before she said, “My father took us to Disney World, in Florida. He was about to be deployed, and we were changing bases stateside. But we had two whole days to spend in the park, from Sleeping Beauty’s castle to the Pirates of the Caribbean. The last thing Dad did as we left was buy me a giant sucker, one of those swirled things in every color of the rainbow. It was as big as my head, and I refused to take it out of its plastic. I kept it in a box under my bed for years. Until I went to college, actually.”

“And the ants didn’t get it?”

She laughed. “You’re such a romantic! No, the ants didn’t get it. I never really thought about that. I guess I just
knew
it would be safe. It had to be, because my father got it for me. Unconditional father love, or something like that.”

* * *

DJ heard a thousand conversations in the tossed off words:
Something like that.
Sam’s laugh seemed designed to ease the sting of her poignant thoughts. She continued to talk about her father, about the man who had dragged his family halfway around the world, time and time again. It had to be a pain in the ass to move so often, but Sam didn’t seem to hold it against him. Instead, apparently loved her father. Respected him.

He sipped from his glass of bourbon and willed himself to relax in the faux leather armchair. He rarely raided the hotel minibar, but this night felt like a celebration. He’d spent the entire day looking forward to calling Sam. He’d imagined her voice, sweet and dark, like the whiskey he now swirled around ice cubes.

Sure, the team had blown it that evening. Yeah, he had to pitch tomorrow, with his arm a little tight after eighteen complete innings in his last two starts. Of course, Pop hadn’t bothered to call, hadn’t deemed two complete games worthy of picking up the phone. Only one of those games had been perfect, after all.

But none of that mattered when he pictured Sam on the other end of the line. He fed her another question, asked for more details, anything to keep her on the phone and stretch out the hours till dawn. As she complied, laughing through another story, he sipped more bourbon and told himself he didn’t mind life on the road.

* * *

The third night, they talked about pets, how neither of them had been allowed to have a dog or cat because their family lives were too chaotic. The fourth night was all about food, likes and dislikes and favorite memories built around meals. The fifth night, they talked until the sun rose over Raleigh, and the sixth, they stayed on the phone until it was dawn in the Midwest.

Talking to Sam felt like coming home. It was comfortable, easy. Everything fell into place. He listened to her stories, to the things she loved, the challenges she’d faced, and he felt like he’d known her forever. It was easy to tell her his hopes, all those secret dreams he’d never dared tell anyone before.

And it didn’t hurt that he got hard at just the thought of her lips curving into a smile.

On Saturday, they played a day-night doubleheader; he pitched the first game. He made it through seven innings, gave up one run, but ended up with no decision when the reliever gave it away in the eighth. He should have been pissed.
Would
have been pissed, no matter what good-sportsman face he had to put on in the clubhouse.

But he told himself to wait until he got back to his anonymous hotel room. To hold on until he could pick up his phone. To keep himself in check until Sam answered, her voice a little blurry because she’d fallen asleep waiting for him to call.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as soon as she answered. “I wish there was something I could do to make it better.”

“Is that so, sweetheart?” He leaned back against the headboard. “I’m sure you can come up with
something
.”

He felt her hesitate, her silence like a physical blanket smothering the airwaves. And then she laughed, a throaty chuckle that twitched his cock to life. “Give me a moment,” she said. “I just need to…slip into something more comfortable.”

“Like what?” he asked, a hundred images tightening his throat around his question.

“Hmm,” she said, and he could picture her head tilted to one side. “Like silk panties. Cherry red ones. With tiny little rosebuds sewn along the edge.”

He groaned as she breathed the last word, and his fingers curled around his pillow. “Go on,” he said between gritted teeth. And she did. In painstaking, mind-numbing detail.

* * *

Six days later, Sam looked out at the classroom, smiling as she studied the busy hive of fifth graders. She had given the group a challenging assignment—each group of students needed to find a different way to represent whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes, creating a three-dimensional model to share with everyone in Musicall. Sam had lugged in half a dozen crates of art supplies—old magazines to cut up for collages, tempera paints with a variety of brushes, dozens of glue sticks.

And the kids had repaid her efforts.

One group had created a veritable bakery’s worth of pies and cakes, taping together masses of crumpled paper into sliced “baked goods” that symbolized the musical notes. Another group had woven strips of paper together to create huge mats of brightly colored “fabric,” shaping them into the appropriate sizes. A third group was doing something that involved tempera paint, hand-prints, and an unbelievable amount of laughter.

This
was why Sam had created Musicall.
This
was the joy she wanted to share with kids.

And Daniel Thomas seemed to be having more fun than anyone. He whooped as he grabbed a stack of newspapers, stammering with excitement as he described his idea to his teammates. They caught on quickly and grabbed their own supplies. Soon the quartet was challenging each other to make more “notes,” faster and faster. They stopped to beat out rhythms on the table, using music as shorthand for entire conversations.