Back in the Game: A Stardust, Texas Novel (29 page)

What was she going to do? She couldn’t back out of the book deal. She had credit card bills and she had asserted her independence to her family. How could she turn back now? She was the one who’d forced him into following through on the contract when he wanted to quit.

She
had
to stay.

Reality smacked into her like a wrecking ball—hard and relentless, laying waste to the fib she’d convinced herself was true. She could
not
separate love from sex. After last night, after the beautiful thing he’d done to and for her, there was no way out of this.

She
was
going to end up with a broken heart.

On Monday
morning, queasy about having to face Rowdy again, Breeanne arrived at his house. Part of her wanted to call in sick, or consider quitting the book. But she’d signed a contract. Made a promise. Things might be awkward, but they’d get past it.

That was her hope anyway.

Warwick opened the door. “He’s in the pool.”

Oh great. He was half naked again. As if this wasn’t hard enough when he was fully clothed. Bracing herself, she went into the backyard.

He was swimming away from her toward the far end of the pool. He hadn’t seen her yet. It wasn’t too late to run.

She closed her eyes against the red-hot memory, embarrassment burning her from the inside out. She’d been foolish to think she could handle a cosmic baseball star and his devastating smile, a man who trailed broken hearts in his wake. She was simply the latest casualty.

“Good morning, Breezy.” His cool voice soothed, balm on the sunburn of her shame.

Her eyes flew open.

He sauntered toward her, water trickling down his flat abdomen, toweling his hair, and grinning like he knew a big secret. He did. He knew how to make her come.

Her cheeks flamed. She needed more of that balm.

“Have a seat,” he invited, and nodded at the umbrella-covered patio table. For the first time she noticed the table had been set with breakfast for two—orange juice and mini-quiches and fresh fruit.

She’d had a bowl of cereal earlier, but he’d gone to so much trouble, she zippered her lips.

He draped his towel over the seat of the patio chair, and waved her down beside him.

It was hard to breathe sitting so close to so much bare masculine skin. Not knowing what else to do, she settled her laptop on the table and sat down. Nolan Ryan, who’d been lying in the sun, got up and came over to sit between them.

“Try the spinach.” He slid his cell phone from the middle of the table over to the side, and pushed the tray of quiches toward her. “They’re the best.”

She accepted one, nibbled on it, bits of flaky crust falling to crumbs on the table. She tried not to fidget, but it was impossible while he was looking at her with that unruffled, carefree gaze.

“Mmm.” She couldn’t taste a thing, not while he was watching her like she was a canary, and he was a hungry tomcat.

Nolan Ryan looked baleful.

“Not good for you.” Rowdy shook his head.

Nolan Ryan trained his woe-is-me-eyes on Breeanne.

“Don’t go begging to her. She’s not falling for it either, buddy.”

Nolan Ryan turned his head back to Rowdy, stared at him without blinking.

“Okay, but just half of one.” He broke one of the cheese quiches into two pieces and slipped it to the bloodhound.

He leaned back in the chair, letting his arms dangle, and studied her for a long moment. Unable to hold his gaze, she reached for a strawberry, but that made her remember the chocolate-covered strawberries, and she left it on her plate uneaten.

Finally, he said, “Give me your phone.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m going to program my phone number into it.”

“I’ve already got it programmed in,” she said.

“No, you have the number of my public phone.”

“You have more than one phone?”

“Yes. Only a few people have access to my private phone.” He nodded at the cell on the table between them. “My mom, my sisters, Zach, Warwick, Price . . . and now you.”

Her heart fluttered erratically. “Are you sure? It sounds like your special number is reserved for special people?”

He lowered his eyelids, and his voice, but kept his gaze trained on her. “I thought we’d already determined you’re pretty special to me, Breezy. Do you want my private number?”

Omigosh. What did this mean? Hoping he didn’t see that her hand was trembling, she pulled her cell phone from her purse and passed it to him, watched while his shaggy dark head of hair bent to program his number into her phone. This was one time when special felt good.

He handed her the phone, smiled.

“How many women besides family members have you given this number to over the years?” she asked.

“What don’t you get about being special, Breezy? You’re the only one.”

“I promise not to use this unless I absolutely have to.” She clutched her cell phone, still warm from his hand, to her chest.

“Use it anytime you want,” he invited.

Wow. This was really happening. She had access to Rowdy Blanton’s private phone number. That twelve-year-old kid he’d come to visit in the hospital would have been pinching herself black and blue. Oh, who was she kidding? It was all she could do not to pinch herself right now.

“I’ve been thinking about Saturday night,” he said, casually tossing the topic on the table like it was perfectly normal breakfast conversation.

If he was going to be straightforward and broach the subject boldly, there was no point playing coy. What she wanted to say was
I have no memory of Saturday night.
“So have I.”

At the same time he said, “If you want to do this, I’m game,” she said, “Let’s pretend it did not happen.”

They both said, “What?”

“You’re in?” she asked.

“You’re out?” he said.

Their eyes met, they laughed at the same time. Her laughter was jittery, his easy.

Breeanne pressed her knees together, tucked her feet underneath her chair away from him. “Why did you change your mind?”

“I got to thinking,” he said. “You’ve been so long without one of life’s finest pleasures, who am I to deny you?”

“Well, thank you so much, Mr. Ego. But don’t feel obligated to do me any favors.” She started to get up, but she wasn’t mad. If he was doing this to ease her embarrassment over Saturday night, it was working.

He reached out and touched the hand she’d placed on the table. “That sounded douchy. I didn’t mean that way.”

She stared at his hand, his touch was already melting her like the chocolate she kept dropping on herself. But she was already a goner. Had been since Saturday night. “How did you mean it?”

He pushed back the chair, went down on his knees in front of her, held her hand as if he were about to propose.

What was he doing? A flutter of something scary yet wondrous flapped its wings inside her chest.

“Breeanne Carlyle, will you do me the honor of allowing me to be your humble coach in the ways of lovemaking?” It was so like him to make a joke of it.

Before she could stop it, the thing in her chest pushed a giggle out of her. Oh great, now she sounded fourteen. She opened her mouth to reply, but he held up a quelling palm.

“But wait,” he said, in the comically dramatic tone of an infomercial huckster. “Before you give me an answer, there are ground rules.”

Curious, she leaned forward. He still had hold of her hand, and the look on his face was surprisingly earnest for the silly conversation. “Sell it, Casanova.”

“I am the coach, and you are the rookie. You don’t start pitching your first night in the bigs.”

“Meaning?”

“Rookie Rules for Great Sex. We do this my way, the slow way. No bedroom ambushes. I’m in charge.”

“Do I get to voice an opinion?”

“You can voice it, but I have final veto.”

“That gives you all the power.”

“No it doesn’t. You can always walk away. No harm, no foul. Now that you understand the terms of the agreement, you may give me your answer.”

“Seriously, do women usually fall for this shtick?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the first one I’ve tried it on. Is it working?”

“I have to admit it’s a generous offer, but . . .” she said coolly as if her inner Snoopy wasn’t gleefully dancing. She was going to have sex with Rowdy Blanton.
Woo-hoo.
But it wouldn’t hurt him to sweat over her answer.

He cocked his head, closed one eye, as if it would blunt the sting of her rejection.

“Well?”

She said nothing for a long moment, letting him fret.

He got antsy. Shifted his weight back and forth, clenching and unclenching his fists.

Once Breeanne accepted that she was heading for heartbreak no matter what she did, heading down the risky path was easier. She wanted this. The adventure of a lifetime.

Smiling, she let him off the hook. “Did you really have any doubts?”

CHAPTER
21

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion,

a screwball can be a pitch or a person,

stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire’s eye or on the ball.

—
J
IM
M
URRAY

According to Coach Blanton, the Rookie Rules for Great Sex were deceptively simple. Do nothing for three weeks but kiss. Hands below the shoulders were considered fouls, and resulted in an immediate time-out.

Breeanne protested. It was impossible to keep such rules.

“Think of it this way, sweetheart.” Rowdy kissed her forehead. “You’ve missed out on a lot of kissing.”

“What comes after three weeks?” she asked eagerly. “After all the kissing?”

“Two weeks of second base.”

“What exactly
is
second base?”

“Wait and see.”

“And after that?”

“A week of third base.”

“Didn’t we get to third base the other night?”

“We got tagged out and had to start over. Besides,
I
got to third base, you didn’t, and this is all about you. You’re the rookie.”

“Yes, Coach,” she said, and snuggled against him, heating over the memory of their night together. Damn, would she ever stop blushing over sexy thoughts?

“Now is your time to play catch-up for lost time.”

The man could kiss! She quickly discovered there was a whole world of kisses, and they wasted no time mapping the territory.

Instead of a means to an end, kissing became a destination unto itself.

They kissed while they were working, pausing between sentences and paragraphs to smooch. She’d read what she wrote out loud and he would clarify or suggest changes. They’d celebrate another page written with more kisses.

They kissed until their lips chapped. Sharing one breath, drinking from the cool pool of each other. They kissed copiously, ravenous. They kissed rollickingly playful. They kissed flagrantly bold.

They kissed as if they’d invented it—in the kitchen, in the living room, on his desk, in the gym, at the lake on blankets in the sun. They kissed furtively, sneaking quick sips when they were in town. Ducking behind the canned goods aisle at the HEB, in the Escalade while in the Dairy Queen drive-through lane, in the back row of the picture show where they went to see an action-adventure flick they couldn’t remember the name of afterward.

Each kiss was different. Adding layer upon layer to the foundation of that first kiss, that first day when he kissed her in front of those other women and claimed she was his girlfriend.

Was she his girlfriend now for real? It was a question she was afraid to ask. A boat she hated to rock in case the answer was no. She didn’t know what this was, but she was determined to enjoy every second of it.

By the end of June, she’d finished writing and editing the outline and first chapter of Rowdy’s autobiography and sent it off to the editor at Jackdaw Press. Rowdy’s kisses had worked them both up into a fevered pitch and they eagerly proceeded to second base.

Which she discovered, in addition to the kissing, extended to anything above the hipbone, and that included bare skin. She couldn’t get enough of touching his muscled chest and abdomen.

Touching him led her outside herself, and when they explored each other’s scars, tracking tongues and fingertips over ridges, puckers, and flattened spots of healed cuts, she felt connected to him in a way she’d not felt with another human being. They rejoiced in the feel of each other. Touching his bare skin gave her a different grasp on life, a new perspective. He made the world more tantalizing, richer than it had ever been before. Until she touched him, it was as if she’d lived in a sensory desert, and had now stepped into a lush forest full of exotic surprises.

Rowdy started giving her thoughtful little gifts—a cheetah-print book light, a coupon for a free dipped cone, a box of her favorite herbal tea, a small soap figurine of a bunny eating a peanut.

“Where on earth did you find this?” She laughed.

“I carved it,” he confessed.

“Seriously? Where did you learn how to do that?”

“In rehab. My physical therapist had me start whittling soap to help me regain fine motor skills.” He wriggled the fingers of his left hand like he was going to tickle her.

She giggled and stepped out of reach.

Life was romantic and sweet and fun. Being with him was the easiest thing in the world and she tried hard not to think about the future. Right now was future enough.

He taught her how to make spaghetti carbonara, putting her at the stove in front of him, encircling her waist with his hands while he whispered instructions into her ear. He’d just taken her hand and was helping her stir the onions as they caramelized when his private cell phone, which was sitting on the bar, dinged that he’d gotten a text.

“Do you need to check that?”

“Concentrate,” he said. “We need more butter.”

She sliced another chunk of butter from the stick beside the stove and dropped it into the skillet with the onions.