Reaching First (12 page)

Sweat pooled in the small of his back, the cold trickle of failure. Christ. Why hadn’t he told her he couldn’t do this? Made up a lie? Told her he had to get to the ballpark?

He tossed the pages on her desk. E. He squinted at the next letter. Tried to force it into place. It twisted around itself, flipped upside down.
 

He stared at the stack of documents. He’d be here for the rest of the day. Rest of the night. Sure. Emily would let an idiot like him stick around for the night.

Swearing, he shoved all the papers into a single file—the old ones he’d spilled and the new ones she’d asked him to file. He left the entire goddamn mess in the center of her desk and stormed down the hall to his truck.

“Hey!” Will called out from the dining room. “Aren’t you going to finish the trim?”

“Can’t, buddy,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Gotta get to the ballpark. They just called a team meeting.”

His heart thundered as he slammed the front door. His stomach burned like he’d swallowed a flaming brick. Trying to read hadn’t made him puke since he was ten years old. He leaned his head against the steering wheel. Deep breaths. Eyes closed. Calm down. Don’t think. Just breathe.

When he opened his eyes, the entire world was tinged with a light green glow. That was just from the sun shining in his face, through the red of his eyelids. He was fine. He rubbed his eyes, hard.
 

And then he noticed the note on the passenger seat. The paper was plain white. He saw his name, in all capital letters. Two hearts beside it.

Swallowing the acid that rose in his throat, he flipped open the paper. It was signed E. Same as the goddamn page he’d tried to file.

E for Emily.

Emily, his name, and hearts.

She’d continued the same game she’d started that morning, the flirtation that had been fun until the moment she left him alone in her office. He crumpled the paper into a ball.
 

He better get the hell out of the driveway, or Will was going to come looking for him. He’d said he had a meeting at the ballpark. Might as well head over there. Couldn’t hurt to see one of the trainers. Get a massage, work on that tight hamstring. If only the team docs had something that could cure the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

Emily stared at the papers spilled across her desk.
 

What game was Tyler playing? Sure, office filing wasn’t his favorite job, but what the hell?
 

She couldn’t believe he’d actually sabotaged her hard work by ransacking her existing files. He probably thought he was being cute. He’d piss her off, and she’d demand he come back and clean things up.
 

But she didn’t feel like playing. Not with three weeks left before her Minerva House deadline. Not when she’d spent the entire morning smiling and posing and feeling like an idiot having her picture taken again and again and again. Not when she felt most like an impostor, pretending she was a competent businesswoman, launching a major mental health enterprise on her own in seven short days.

And here was something else she was screwing up—monitoring Tyler’s community service. She
shouldn’t
count the time he waited for the inspector. And she definitely shouldn’t count the hours he’d spent messing up her previously filed papers.

The more she thought about his sabotage, the angrier she got. Their flirtation that morning only emphasized the lies she’d been telling herself. How was she supposed to get up in front of a court and say Tyler had served his time?

It wasn’t just the sentence getting to her. He
knew
how stressed she was. He
knew
she was running out of time to meet Ethan Samson’s demands. She’d told him she’d lost sleep over the simple project she’d asked him to help with.

Gritting her teeth, she turned on her heel and strode down the hallway. “Will?” she called. “Did Tyler say when he’d be back?”

The handyman looked up from the trim he was painting. “Nope. He tore out of here about ten minutes after you left. Said he had some sort of team meeting.”

Team meeting, my ass. And he’s probably thinking I’ll count three more hours toward his total.

But all she said out loud was, “Thanks.”

Tyler didn’t answer when she phoned him, and his cheerful outgoing message merely stoked her frustration. Staring at the scrambled files, she snapped into her phone. “This isn’t working for me, Tyler. We need to talk.”
 

She couldn’t confront him here, though, in Aunt Minnie’s house. He’d turn it into a chance to play, a challenge to distract her. She firmed up her tone. “Meet me for lunch tomorrow. Noon, at Callie’s Café. Don’t be late.”

She slammed down the phone and started on the filing.

* * *

Emily slipped into a booth at Callie’s, positioning herself so she could see the door. The cafe always cheered her up, with its bright green and yellow wallpaper.

Which was fortunate, because she needed some major cheering up. She’d barely slept the night before, worrying about this meeting. After twisting in her sheets for hours, she’d finally turned on her light at four in the morning, sitting up in bed to write down her thoughts.
 

She needed Tyler to work with her on this. She needed him to prioritize completing his community service. It was like completing his sentence would make a statement about their entire relationship. He had to
want
to succeed—and that was completely separate from how badly she wanted him to support Minerva House. To support her.

She glanced at her phone. He still had five minutes before she could call him late.

And she felt the tiniest bit relieved, when he walked through the door as she returned her phone to the table. At least he’d taken her seriously about the time.

He slid into the booth opposite her, an easy smile on his lips. “I’m guessing this place is a little short on rib-eye steaks.”

“You’d guess right.” Damn. That came out sounding a lot more bitter than she’d planned. She set her jaw and forced herself to stop playing with the paper wrapper from her straw.

The waitress came by. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked Tyler.

He nodded toward Emily’s glass. “Tea would be great.”

“And do you know what you want to eat?”

“He hasn’t had a chance to look at the menu yet,” Emily said, more annoyed than the question warranted.

“No, I’m fine,” Tyler contradicted her. “Go ahead and order, and I’ll figure out what I want.”

She frowned. She didn’t like him telling her what to do. Not today. Not when she had to make him understand how important this conversation was to her. But that wasn’t the waitress’s fault. “I’ll have a Sunshine Salad,” she said. “Dressing on the side.”

Tyler closed the menu. “Make that two.”

Great. She wasn’t any happier when he agreed with her.

They sat in silence until the waitress brought him his tea and topped off Emily’s own nearly-full glass. Then, she was out of excuses. She fortified herself with a deep breath and said, “Tyler, this isn’t working for me.”

She saw him start to say something sly, and her pulse picked up as if he’d actually delivered the flirtation. But she tamped down the reaction, just as he swallowed hard and looked at her with those hot fudge eyes. “What isn’t?”

“The community service thing. You’re putting me in an impossible position. I
have
to report on you. Whether I have good news or bad, the court will make me swear to a statement. And when you pick and choose from your assignments…when you ignore my instructions and just leave piles of paper on my desk—”

She realized her voice had gone sharp, and she washed away the rest of her complaint with a healthy swallow of tea.
 

His face had slammed shut. His fingers curled into fists. His lips set into a tight line, clasped so tight they were almost gray. It didn’t take a mind-reader to know how angry he was with her.
 

Dammit. She knew better than this. She’d majored in psychology, for God’s sake. She knew demanding to see him would be a threat, and her tone made it even worse. Her words had to feel like an attack.

She took a deep breath and started over again. “When you ignore my instructions, I feel like you don’t care about your community service.”

“I care.” His voice was dangerously low, as if he were holding back a thousand other things he wanted to say.

“When I saw those papers on my desk yesterday, I felt like you were deliberately ignoring me.”

“What about when you saw the new floors, Emily? What about when you saw the new wiring for the overhead lights? When you read the inspection certificate from the county? How did you
feel
then?”

She nodded, trying to rein in her own frustration. “I felt like we were playing on the same team. But not when you slack off with the other stuff—organizing the books and the flyers, and checking out the computer site. You owe a hundred hours, and every one of them has to count. If I tell the court you were great for the first eighty, but then you decided you were done, they’ll throw a fit. Don’t ask me to sign off on that.”

She gave him a chance to answer, but he didn’t even try. Fine. Maybe they’d do better if she moved on to another project. If they just agreed to disagree about the filing and the rest of it. She sighed and asked, “Did you at least pick up the kids’ table?”

“The kids’ table?” It was like she’d suddenly spoken to him in Ancient Greek.

“The table and chairs, along with the toy box. Didn’t you get the note I left in your truck?” The note with the hearts. The note she was seriously regretting right now.

“I got it,” he said quickly. “I got it, but…”

But what
? she wanted to shout.
But I didn’t care enough to swing by the store. But I didn’t feel like doing it. But I thought I knew better than you do about how to set up Minerva House, about what you have to do to succeed.

Before he settled on an answer—one she knew she didn’t want to hear—the waitress brought their salads. Emily used hers as a distraction, poking her fork into the mixed greens. She focused on distributing the dried apricots, the pistachios, the golden raisins and slivers of almonds.
 

Tyler looked disgusted as he dumped his entire bowl of dressing over his greens. He lifted a huge bite of lettuce to his mouth and chewed like a child holding his nose through a plate of pickled beets. She was a little surprised when he bothered to take another bite, but then she realized he was avoiding answering her.

“Don’t ignore me, Tyler,” she warned.

He swallowed grimly and pushed his bowl halfway across the table. “I’m not ignoring you.” He gulped at his tea. “Emily, I haven’t been honest with you. I haven’t been honest with a lot of people. You deserve to know—”

“Why, if isn’t Bluebell herself!”

Emily jerked back in her seat, suddenly aware that she’d been leaning across the table, that she’d been reaching for Tyler’s hand. The look in his eyes was pure pain. Whatever he had to say was tearing him apart. It wasn’t just an excuse about paperwork, about children’s furniture. He was bracing for something terrible.

But none of that mattered.

Because Emily recognized the voice that called across Callie’s Café. Reflexively, she lifted her chin and pasted on her best Southern smile. But her stomach plummeted to her toes as she turned to face her worst nightmare.

The past seven years hadn’t been kind to Caden Holloway. His hair had organized a rapid male-pattern retreat. His days at the country club hadn’t served him well. His face had the leathery look of a man who spent far too much time in the sun, and his watery eyes testified to too many hours at the nineteenth hole. His sky-blue polo shirt was tucked into bright green pants, and he could have used a size larger in both garments.

“Caden,” she said, hoping her greeting was chilly enough to send him on his way.
 

But she was pretty sure her hopes were futile. Caden had an audience—three other guys who all looked like they’d started the day with a Bloody Mary brunch. At least that’s what she gathered from the dull expressions on their faces and the spill of tomato juice on Caden’s shirt.

Her nemesis shoved an elbow into the ribs of his nearest buddy. “Bobby,” he crowed. “Here’s Blueball, er, Bluebell Holt. You remember. I told you about her.”

Emily felt the blood drain from her face. It was bad enough that Caden had given her the embarrassing nickname. Worse that he’d obviously turned her into a dirty joke for his golf buddies. But that Tyler had to overhear the dig…

She couldn’t look across the table. She certainly couldn’t look at Caden’s slavering companions. And she could only stare at her salad for so long.

Impossibly, her agony was interrupted by Tyler easing out of the booth. “Hey,” he said, just like Caden had started a civil conversation. “Tyler Brock.” He held out his hand, like he was honestly interested in making a polite introduction.
 

Emily would have given just about anything to disappear into thin air.

* * *

The shitbird was grinning like a dog rolling in dead ’possum. “Caden Holloway,” he said. His handshake was too firm, like he was trying to prove something.
 

Tyler knew the type. The guy would screw around for a while, finally ask his buddies to take a picture of the two of them. He’d fish around for free tickets to a game. Act like there was something in it for Tyler.

The hell with that. Emily looked like she was staring at a ghost. And that was
before
Tyler told her the truth about himself. He was still jumpy with the adrenaline from
that
near-miss.

“Everything okay, Em?” he asked over his shoulder.
 

“I’m fine,” she said. But he could see freckles on her cheeks, freckles he’d never noticed before because now she looked pale enough to faint.

He turned back to the jerkoff. “Sorry, buddy. We’re having a private lunch.”

Holloway elbowed one of his friends. “Private,” he said, making the word sound like an order in a whorehouse. The asshole jerked his chin toward Em. “So, Bluebell. Lotta water under the bridge, huh? Guess a guy has to be a big baseball star to spend some
private
time with you these days.”