Back in the Game: A Stardust, Texas Novel (2 page)

Marion County’s wealthiest doyenne, Irene Henderson, had died at the age of eighty-five after being thrown from the saddle of her Arabian horse. Breeanne couldn’t help admiring the elderly woman’s fearless spunk. How did anyone get to be that brave?

Jodi parked the van. Armed with tote bags, they all got out.

Kasha paused and, nostrils flaring, tipped her face to the sky still sprinkled with stars. “It’s going to rain.”

“Not according to the weather forecast,” Jodi said, but she unlocked the van and retrieved two umbrellas. Kasha had an uncanny ability to predict the weather.

A swath of headlights kept coming as more cars pulled in.

“Fierce competition,” Jodi said. “We should split up. I’ll scout antiques. Kasha, you go for the kitsch. Suki, shop for the tearoom, and anything Art Deco. Breeanne, you’re assigned to—”

“Books.”

“Don’t attempt to carry them. Text us if you find any, and we’ll cart them back to the van for you.”

Breeanne traced two fingers over the top of the scar lurking beneath the neckline of her blue and green Dallas Gunslingers baseball jersey. “Don’t baby me. I tote tomes around the bookstore every day.”

“Let’s not push it. You’ve been doing so well. The last thing you need is a setback.” Jodi tucked a strand of auburn hair behind one ear.

“I’m fine,” Breeanne insisted. How long would it take for her sisters to toss the kid gloves?

Jodi raised an admonishing finger. “Text us.”

Her sisters took off in different directions, leaving Breeanne to wander the expansive lawn strewn with rows of folding tables, clothing racks, and metal shelving loaded down with the contents of a life well lived. A man in a security guard uniform policed the area, hands clasped behind his back. He stabbed her with suspicious eyes.

She daubed on a smile and raised I-don’t-want-any-trouble palms, and backed off.

Somewhere coffee percolated, tingeing the air with the scent of French roast. People rummaged through items, haggled over prices. Someone elbowed her out of the way. Someone else, headed for an overburdened shoe rack, shoved past her. Another person pushed in, and then another, and another, a current of shoppers washing Breeanne to the outer shore of the yard.

Wasn’t that just the theme of her life? Marginalized on the outskirts.

She sighed. What she wouldn’t give to be at home working on her book with Callie purring in her lap. Suck it up. Smile. They would be here only a few hours. To pass the time, she leaned against the trunk of a pecan tree, and people-watched as dawn crept over the horizon.

A frowning woman shoved a baby carriage stuffed with knickknacks over bumpy terrain. An Ichabod Crane–esque man in an argyle sweater swung a practice stroke with a driving wood that was much too short for his elongated frame. A family of five, every member almost as big around as they were tall, licked fast-food cinnamon roll glaze off their fingers while investigating a used treadmill.

A brash black Cadillac Escalade muscled through the gate. Heads turned, and a wave of murmurs surfed through the crowd. The SUV did not pull obediently into the field with the other vehicles. Instead, it sailed arrogantly to a stop near the front door, sending pedestrians scattering.

The passenger door swung open, and the town’s biggest celebrity—the Dallas Gunslingers former star lefty pitcher—got out. The very same pitcher whose number was on Breeanne’s jersey.

Rowdy Blanton.

Her inner fan girl drooled.

Instantly a funnel of humanity swirled toward him, surrounded him, went crazy over him. Breeanne longed to join the rush, but her feet grew roots, anchoring her to the earth. People pushed and shoved to get at him, especially the women, as they all shouted at once.

“Rowdy, Rowdy can I have your autograph!”

“We love you Rowdy!”

“I want to bear your children!”

“I wanna get rough and Rowdy with you!”

The driver of the SUV, a big, bald, beefy bodyguard type, moved people aside, lining them up like he’d done this a million times. Once he had everyone somewhat organized, he took a box of baseballs from the vehicle and started passing them out to excited kids.

While Bodyguard Dude handled crowd control, Rowdy stood beneath a security light, signing autographs, shaking hands, and clapping backs. His laughter burst the dawn, warm and friendly. He wore a baseball cap embroidered with the logo of the Stardust Drillers, the local high school baseball team, cocked jauntily on his head. Tight-fitting Levi’s jeans hugged muscular thighs, and a simple white T-shirt accentuated his tanned skin. He moved with the impertinent, nimble-limbed strut of a man fully at ease with life.

She couldn’t take her eyes off him. What she wouldn’t give to be one of those kids again.

Rowdy glanced up, and stared through the crowd.

Heated estrogen cruised Breeanne’s veins, settled deep in her pelvis. Her stomach pinched, and her heart gave a funny stutter that had nothing to do with the medication she was on. Soon, she’d be able to go off even that, prescription-free for the first time in her twenty-five years.

For one heartbeat of a second their eyes met. Full-on freight trains on the same track speeding straight toward each other collided.
Bam.

Oh.

My.

God.

She could almost hear the screech of metal, smell smoke, feel the jolting impact. She ceased breathing. Ceased thinking. Ceased doing anything except staring at him.

Cool blue eyes, the arresting color of a clear mountain stream, gave her a startling shock. Cheekbones like flint rock. Chiseled chin. Knockout jaw dusted with beard stubble. One corner of his mouth lifted, telegraphing her a gorgeous lopsided grin. Slowly, he winked as if they shared an intimate secret.

And for that sweet second, no one else on earth existed.

Rowdy spied
the lone woman standing against the pecan tree, and thought,
This one hasn’t ever been off the bench.

Their eyes met, and he felt . . . well . . .

Weird as hell.

Out of the blue, for no earthly reason whatsoever, he winked at her. Quickly, she hot-potatoed his gaze, and stared off into the distance.

He waited for it. One heartbeat. Two.
C’mon, let’s have it, sweetheart. Shoot me The Look.

Nothing.

Hmm. Maybe she was coyer than most.

Normally, when a woman broke direct eye contact with him, it was a coquettish come-hither signal. He expected her to glance back. Interested women
always
glanced back.

But not this one.

Instead, she pulled a paperback from her tote bag and started reading.

Huh? He blinked, surprised. She wasn’t interested?

His cockiness shriveled. So what? Big deal. No skin leaving his teeth. In fact, it was sort of a relief to know that not every woman in the world wanted to hop into his bed. But now he had an overwhelming urge to run over there and charm that denim skirt off her.

He stared at the mousy woman, confused by his thoughts and the way his body hardened.

There was nothing special about her appearance, except for what he could see of shapely legs below the knee-length hem of her skirt. In fact, he’d be hard-pressed to find a woman more ordinary.

No one would ever accuse her of being a beauty. She was far too skinny, and her hair was a blah shade halfway between blond and light brown. It had no particular style. Not short. Not long. Not straight. Not quite curly either. Thick, black-frame glasses smothered her petite features. Her clothes looked like she’d raided the closet of a middle-aged 1950s housewife in the dark. Not a single thing about her screamed sexy, although she
was
kind of cute in a girl-next-door way with those big green eyes, and that bunny rabbit nose.

But he wanted her all the same.

Why?

He tilted his head, squinted, imagining her without the glasses, a better haircut, and several helpings of his famous spaghetti carbonara inside her. Nope. Still not seeing the appeal. Except it dawned on him for the first time that she was wearing a Gunslingers baseball jersey with number eleven emblazoned on it.

His
number.

C’mon, was his ego that big? He wanted her just because she was wearing his number?

“Rowdy! Rowdy!”

He looked down to see an exuberant gap-toothed eight-year-old tugging on the hem of his T-shirt, and clutching the autographed baseball he’d just signed for the kid.

“My dad says I can throw a screwball better’n you,” the boy bragged.

“No kidding?”

“Wanna see? Wanna see?”

“This might not be the best place to throw a ball around what with—” Rowdy didn’t get to finish the sentence because, lightning-fast, the kid cocked his left arm, and slung an impressive screwball that sailed over a table burdened with collectible glassware.

Sending people gasping, scattering and ducking out of the way. Except for Plain Jane standing against the tree reading her book.

She never looked up.

The baseball smacked into the tree trunk above her, and then plopped squarely on top of her head. Her eyes rounded, her mouth curled into a startled O, the book fell from her hands . . .

And she keeled right over.

“Jimmy, what have you done?” the boy’s horrified mother exclaimed.

The crowd turned to gawk.

Rowdy was already in motion, instinct shooting him toward the woman as fast as he could run.

CHAPTER
2

The more self-centered and egotistical a guy is,

the better baseball player he’s going to be.

—
B
ILL “
S
PACEMAN”
L
EE

Good grief. How embarrassing.

Breeanne lay on the ground, staring at the baseball with Rowdy Blanton’s name scrawled across it in red Sharpie, and she quickly put two and two together. One of the kids he’d given a baseball to had done what kids inevitably do when they had a ball in their hands.

Unfortunately, she’d stuck her nose in a book, determined not to let Rowdy see that his sly wink and killer smile had slammed her with such a one-two punch that she hadn’t seen the baseball headed her way.

Briefly, she closed her eyes, assessing the damage.

Her head stung a bit where the ball had landed, but the impact had been fairly minimal since the tree had taken the brunt of the ball’s momentum. She wasn’t dizzy, and her thoughts were clear. She knew her name, the day of the week, and who was the current president of the United States. The unexpectedness of the blow had caused her to startle. She’d toppled more from surprise than the actual hit.

Good to go. She was okay, unless her sisters found out about this. They’d kick up a huge fuss and insist she go to the hospital.

Get to your feet. Now!

Acutely aware that she was sprawled on the ground in a skirt, she tried as gracefully as she could to gather her legs beneath her.

A big masculine palm, wearing a World Series ring, appeared from nowhere, reaching down to help her up.

Rowdy Blanton.

A burning heat scooped a hole in her stomach. Dear Lord, had he seen her cheetah-print panties?

His firm grip enveloped her hand, and he tugged her gently to her feet.

And there she was nose-to-collarbone with the object of so many of her midnight fantasies.

Most preteen girls got their first crush over boyish pop music stars or baby-faced actors. For Breeanne, it had been this sexy major league pitcher. On her twelfth birthday, and not long after her seventh major surgery, she’d been lying on the couch in the living room with Dad, watching their hometown hero take the mound during his television debut as a rookie pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.

Rowdy had been so green he could have passed for a spinach smoothie, and he walked three batters before the manager pulled him. But he’d strutted off that field as cocky as if he’d struck them out. Anyone who could remain that self-confident in the face of total failure was a rock star in her book.

Two days later, something went wrong with her recovery, and she ended up back in the hospital, facing surgery number eight. That next weekend, the Mariners were in town playing the Gunslingers, and Rowdy had swaggered onto the teen ward at the Dallas Children’s Hospital, signing autographs, telling stories, handing out jerseys, and baseballs. The moment he’d signed a ball and pressed it into her perspiring palm, she’d become his lifelong fan. She’d had the baseball mounted, and still kept it on a bookcase in her bedroom. But she wasn’t about to tell him that, and only partially because her tongue was welded to the roof of her mouth.

“Are you all right?” His deep, husky voice rasped.

She bobbed her head. Could he feel her pulse jumping through her veins like a steeplechase stallion on race day?

“Do you know what your name is?” he asked.

He wanted to know her name. Um . . . um . . . For a freakishly long second she forgot her own name. Not from the bump on the head, but from this alpha male’s distracting scent tangling up in her nose.

She nodded again still unable to speak.

“Can you tell me what your name is?”

Breeanne was vaguely aware that a crowd had gathered, but of course, Rowdy drew a crowd wherever he went. She tugged her hand from his, the loss of contact with his skin finally knocking her tongue loose.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” She turned to the crowd, which included a hangdog little boy and his worried mother. She assumed this was the child who’d thrown the ball. “I’m good. All is well. Go back to your shopping.”

People lingered.

Rowdy tossed the autographed baseball back to the boy. “Could you folks give us some space?”

Immediately the crowd dispersed.

“What’s it like having people jump to do your bidding?” she asked, unaware that the question was going to pop from her mouth.