“Coach RJ!” one of them said. “Billy hit me in the head with a ball!”
“Let’s see if you’ve got a bump on your head.” RJ brushed the boy’s hair from his forehead. “Looks like you’ll live to play another game. I’m sure it was an accident, wasn’t it Billy?”
“It was! His head got in the way of the ball at the last second.”
RJ made sure not to laugh, or to even break into a grin, as he said, “Shake hands, both of you, and then we can practice a bit before the other team arrives and the game starts.”
They made their way over to the field and RJ set them off running some quick sprints to warm up.
When he turned to Rose, she was smiling.
“So this is your Little League team?
I always wondered if I’d ever get to see Coach RJ in action.”
He’d come by the field a couple of years ago to see if they needed some help re-seeding on the field, and when it turned out that the kids didn’t have a regular coach he’d stepped in. It was why he’d brought her here with him today, rather than dropping her off at the chalet first. He knew the only way he could get Rose to stop stressing out about her wedding was to get her involved in helping other people. After all, it was why she’d built the Rose Chalet; to give people one special, perfect day.
“How about being my official assistant coach for the afternoon?”
“Well,” she said with a slow smile that utterly transformed her face from pretty to stunning, “I have always been a bit of a baseball fan.”
The kids were done with their sprints by then, so RJ got them practicing throwing and fielding grounders while Rose threw a ball for one of the smallest, shyest boys to catch. She’d always been so good around kids. Yet he knew kids weren’t exactly on Donovan’s agenda, at least if the original specifications for the house his brother Patrick had designed for them were anything to go by.
The more time RJ spent with Rose, the less he could work out what she was doing with her fiancé. Judging by the art gallery earlier, Donovan seemed to see her more as an ongoing project to hone and refine, rather than simply as someone he loved. Though maybe given what he did for a living, that wasn’t so surprising.
RJ could see how happy she was as she declared each of the kids safe while they practiced sliding into home plate one after the other. Very quickly, she forgot her reservations and self-consciousness. And it was impossible to be elegant and restrained when running about after a bunch of kids, even in a nice blouse and skirt. Especially in those, because they showed the mud far more than dark jeans and a T-shirt would have.
After the other team arrived, they took their place on a set of old bleachers that held an assortment of parents and elder siblings who had come to watch the game. The field didn’t yet have a real dugout–RJ was working on the plans with the city to build one soon–so he usually either stood against the fence or sat in the front row of the bleachers to give instructions and encouragement to the kids.
Rose rubbed at a spot of mud on her skirt and RJ said, “I suppose I should have told you to wear jeans. That way it wouldn’t matter if you got them dirty.” He gestured to his own clothes, now every bit as muddy as Rose’s.
“And you,” she said with a wicked little spark in her eyes, “should have worn a baseball uniform.”
Hmm...was that her way of saying she would have liked to see him in the tight white pants and short-sleeved shirt?
RJ could see Rose continuing to relax minute by minute, play by play. Pretty soon, she was shouting out encouragement with everyone else. She even leapt up out of her seat when the parent who had volunteered to umpire called Billy out at first base.
“Out? He was
not
out!”
RJ grinned, then looked around for the ice cream seller who usually made it around while the games were going on. He spotted the man and touched Rose lightly on the shoulder.
“Want an ice cream?”
He’d half expected her to say no given that they’d only just had lunch together, but Rose nodded instead. “Why not? I’ll get them though. You need to be focusing on coaching your team to the win.”
She was right, and normally he never would have shifted focus from his team. But he had a reason for everything he was doing today. Including this.
“It’ll only take a minute, and anyway, I have you to fill in for me, don’t I?”
She looked a little panicked at that suggestion. “Me? I don’t know enough about baseball to coach your team while you’re off getting ice cream.”
“Maybe not, but you do know about keeping people organized. You’ll do fine,” RJ assured her. He headed over to the man with the ice cream cart and ordered two ice creams on a stick, one in the shape of Sponge Bob and the other in the shape of Spiderman, both with gum ball eyes. All the while, he kept an eye on both his team and Rose.
When he came back to the bleachers, she was busy giving encouragement to the next batter.
“
You can do this,” she assured the small boy. “You’re going to hit the ball so far that everyone on base will have time to score before the other team even gets to the ball.”
“But I’ve never hit a home run before,” the boy pointed out.
“Are you arguing with me, Michael?”
“No, Coach.”
The boy went out to the plate. The first pitch crept past his bat, and so did the second, but he knocked that third pitch right past the shortstop and into the outfield, where the left fielder let it pass right between his legs.
“Come on, Michael!” Rose yelled. “Run, run, run!”
“See? What did I tell you, you did just fine.” RJ handed her the ice cream. Sponge Bob’s face had started to melt off a bit, but it was still a big yellow square of ice cream on a stick.
Rose stared at it like there was still a part of her that wanted to complain that she didn’t eat food like that, but apparently that part was quickly overruled because she grabbed the ice cream and promptly licked off one of the bubble gum eyeballs.
“This is really fun,” Rose said. “I love how enthusiastic they all are,” Rose said, before jumping up out of her seat when another great hit landed in the outfield.
“It looks like they aren’t the only ones.”
She smiled at him. “Honestly, this is the most fun I’ve had in a very long time.”
For RJ, though, the best part about the baseball game was just being next to her, close enough that he caught everything she called the umpire under her breath when she thought no one could hear.
It would have been so easy to reach out and touch her, if only that wouldn’t have risked ruining the whole day.
Until, a few second later when the game was tied and the tension on the bleachers had ratcheted up several degrees, Rose reached out and took RJ’s hand in hers. She held onto it while the last of their batters lined up at the plate. With a runner on third base and two outs, they needed a good clean hit to win the game, but right then, RJ could barely keep his focus on the game, could barely think about anything other than the feeling of Rose’s hand in his.
He could remember the kiss they’d shared
—
every last detail. It was the best kiss he’d ever experienced. It had been the closest he’d ever felt to any woman, including his ex-wife.
Yet right then, just holding hands on the bleachers with Rose was even sweeter.
“Yes!” Rose yelled, dragging him to his feet as the ball sailed into the outfield. “We’ve won!”
For a moment, he thought that she might hug him, and maybe that would have been even better than the hand-holding, but Rose dropped her ice cream stick into the garbage can and rushed forward to congratulate the kids instead.
And even when she told him she needed to get back because Donovan would be picking her up soon for a champagne toast one of his colleagues was throwing the two of them, RJ knew the afternoon had gone better than he could possibly have hoped.
Rose had held his hand. She’d sat on the bleachers during a Little League game with him like a couple would have done, and it had felt so right.
More than that, the afternoon had proved that the real Rose was still in there somewhere, and that she was still a smart, funny woman who would rather eat an ice cream at a children’s baseball game than go to an art gallery any day.
Chapter Ten
The party was everything Rose had come to expect from Donovan’s friends. It was stylish, elegant, refined...and she kept having to hold back a yawn. Of course, she reminded herself, they were all here to celebrate her and Donovan, so that should be enough.
Rose had barely had time to get home and change before Donovan had picked her up. She’d thrown on a sleek navy blue dress and heels, but without the time to put together anything better, she felt severely underdressed next to the collection of plastic surgeons and their model-beautiful wives and girlfriends. Donovan had assured her that she looked lovely, but she’d had a hard time believing he meant it.
Maybe it was because of the way he’d said, “You look lovely tonight, Rose,” as calmly as if he’d been telling a client how well her surgery had gone, and with just as little passion.
She knew he had a measured approach to life, but she hadn’t wanted to just be told that she was looking good; she’d wanted to
feel
it. She’d wanted his smoldering gaze to silently tell her that what he really wanted was to cut the party short, take her back to his place, and get her out
of the dress she was wearing.
The trouble was, she’d never seen Donovan give a look like that. It wasn’t exactly the proper thing to do, was it? As for going to bed together…well, they’d hardly seen much of recently, and when they had, they’d both been so busy with planning the wedding.
Donovan always told her he believed the key to a successful relationship was clear and open lines of communication. Now, if only they could find enough time to work on those lines.
Well, now wasn’t the moment; that was for sure. They were currently standing beside one of Donovan’s friends who was telling a story about the time they’d both talked a senatorial candidate into a face lift and the apparently miraculous results it had produced for his career. She had been introduced to Edward at a champagne toast earlier in the week. He had a different woman by his side tonight, though to Rose’s eye they were more or less interchangeably blonde and pretty.
“…and now we have at least one friend in high places,” Edward said, “thanks to Donovan.”
“His eyebrows are in a high place, at least,” another surgeon joked. “Permanently, now.”
That got a laugh from everyone, and Rose remembered to join in at the last second.
“To Donovan and his lovely bride to be,” Edward finished.
His toast was abbreviated to simply “To Donovan!” when everyone else said it, but Rose was willing to let that go. After all, he
was their friend and she knew she should be making more of an effort. The trouble was that half the things she felt like saying weren’t exactly things she suspected the group would think of as witty or funny...or even appropriate.
“It’s nice of so many people to want to wish us well, isn’t it?” Donovan said a short while later.
“It is,” Rose agreed with a smile that felt brittle, especially when compared to how much fun she’d had out at the Little League field earlier that day with RJ and the children.
Thinking of RJ during this party had Rose feeling terribly disloyal. She reached for Donovan’s hand, but as she did so, her mind immediately flicked back to the feel of RJ’s large, calloused hand in hers during the game. Reaching for him had been such a simple, natural thing to do.
God, what was wrong with her? She shouldn’t be thinking about RJ at all this close to her wedding. Yet thoughts of him kept coming, kept intruding. Like how she could imagine the way he’d liven up this party, for one thing. Even without saying much, he’d make it so easy for her to feel comfortable. With RJ, she’d be able to relax.
Why should she need him around to do that though? Maybe all she needed here was to loosen up just a little. Rose resolved to try it with the next couple they ended up talking to, another plastic surgeon with another pretty blonde on his arm.
“Frank,” Donovan said, “it’s good to see you.”
“I wouldn’t miss your celebration, now would I?”
Donovan nodded to the woman with his friend. “Tiffany, you’re looking great as always.”
“So, what do you do, Tiffany?” Rose asked.
The other woman looked surprised by her question. “I’m a model. Thanks, in large part, to Frank’s brilliant work.”
The words,
A little re-modeling before the modeling?
sounded in Rose’s head, but she knew better than to say them. Instead she simply forced her smile to remain fixed on her face.
“Frank,” Donovan said, “weren’t you telling me that you were planning on opening up a new practice?”
“That’s right. Not too far from you, as it happens. But don’t worry, I won’t steal all of your clients,” he said with a slap to Donovan’s back. “I know you still have a wedding to pay for. Unless, of course, it’s on the house since the wife-to-be owns the wedding venue!”
Wife-to-be?
Rose clenched her teeth together behind her smile. She had a name. It was Rose.
“My staff volunteered to work our wedding for free as a gift,” she explained, “but I couldn’t possibly allow them to do that when they have bills and mortgages to pay.”
Donovan gave her just a small shake of his head; not disapproving, exactly, because he was never that, but gently warning her away from continuing to talk about the finances surrounding their wedding.
Rose felt her insides curl up into a tight little ball knowing she’d made a faux pas by talking about money at all, even though Frank had done just that with his un-funny joke.
When Donovan was dragged away to talk business, Rose found herself standing in the corner listening to Tiffany talking about a photo shoot she’d just done.
“The photographer had every ounce of his attention focused on me. It made me feel so sexy. But then, you must know exactly what that feels like. After all, you’ve got Donovan, haven’t you?”