“He sounds like a smart man.” Luke slipped his arms around her waist.
“He's an amazing man.” When she leaned into him, he brought her down on the blanket next to him. When she looked up at him, her heart was wide-open. “You are going to be the best chef in Portland, Luke. I know it.”
“What if I fail again? Failed high school. Failed Ami's. Failed Red.” He brushed his fingers around her jaw and down her neck. “You.”
“Me?” Joy breathed in his confession as the glide of his fingers spread a soaking heat into her skin. “You saved me, Luke. If anyone's failed, it'sâ”
“Joy, marrâ”
“Luke”âshe sprang upright and pressed her finger to his lipsâ “don't ask me, please. I can't say yes and I don't want to tell you no. But how can I agree to marry you just because I don't know what else to do?”
The passion and pull of his kiss challenged her resolve, stirred and awakened her desires. Why didn't she just say yes? Tell him.
I love you
.
When the kiss ended, Luke moved away and pointed to Joy's side of the blanket. “Better sit over there. Being out in the open is no barrier for me.”
“Right, right . . .” Her knees caved as she moved back to her spot and picked up her chicken again, carrying the twinkle of Luke's blue eyes. He had a way of making her forget all about Wenda Divine and national humiliation.
“Tell me about this Roth House you're opening with your friend Linus.”
“It's part of an old warehouse . . . high ceilings, brick walls, thick walnut trim, original windows.” She loved the tenor of his voice. “But Linus does not do cheap. He's set up a spectacular place. The kitchen is all new, state-of-the-art. Imported crystal and linens.”
Under the autumn sky, they talked about Portland and restaurant life, about Lyric and Annie, growing up with Sawyer, and what went wrong with his decisions. About Red and ranching, winning rodeos and football games. From accepting NCAA Player of the Year, to life in the world's finest kitchens, to raising kids.
“I have a question.” Luke wadded up his napkin, reached for the jug of iced tea, grinning. “Could I hit your fastball? Be honest now.”
Joy sputtered, choked, and spewed the crust of her Chocolate Pluff Mud Pie. “Please?”
“Come on, I used to be a jock in my former life. Rode rodeo, played football, a little baseball.”
“Little league?” Joy covered her mouth to keep from losing her pie. Luke. Hit her fastball? It was just too funny to imagine.
“No, I played a season in high school.” Luke shook his head. “I batted four hundred. Tell you what, Ballard, I think I could swing with you.”
“Each man is entitled to his own fantasy, I guess. But there is no way you could get a hit off me.”
He considered his answer. “Yeah, I could.” Oh, foolish man.
Joy set her pie down, wiped her mouth, then hopped up. “Let's go, cowboy.”
“Go? Where?”
“See if you can hit my fastball. My gear's in the truck.”
“You have softball gear in your truck?” He jogged next to her, laughing.
“Asked the man with a picnic basket.”
“Can I just say it's so sexy to know a woman who travels with her own softball gear.”
“Luke, you're talking my language.”
At the truck, she tugged on her Bama cap and kicked off her flip-flops in exchange for cleats.
“Cleats? Seriously. You're wearing cleats.” Luke drew a bat from the bag and took a test swing, his button-down flowing about his waist, his baggy shorts pulling taut just above his knees.
“Getting scared, Redmond?”
“Yeah, maybe a little.” He tested another bat with a sharp test swing.
Joy raised her brow. “O-okay.” She chose a ball. It'd been a long time since she'd gripped a softball, and it felt good and right in her hand. A loose emotional wire grounded.
“O-okay? What does that mean.
Ooooo
-kay.” Luke cut the air with another swing.
“I'm just saying, cowboy, I'll still respect you if you want to back out.”
“Forget it.” He chose another bat, swung, and headed for the field. “You just be sure to give me your best shot. I don't want any pity pitches.”
“Trust me, no pity here.”
Joy fired practice pitches into the backstop. Her arm balked against the motion, but pitch after pitch, her muscle memory returned. When she finally called “batter up,” Luke looked ashen. “It's not too late.”
“Just pitch. But right when I'm about to swing, close your eyes.”
“What? And get beamed in the head? No, no, I'm looking and I'm laughing.” This was going to be a blast. She'd been longing for a good, soul-boosting laugh.
On the mound, Joy picked up her old routine. Wipe dirt between the lines, stand in the center of the mound, and face the scoreboard. She imagined a winning score before scanning the outfield, checking in with her imaginary teammates. When she faced the batter, she tossed the ball in her glove three times, closed her eyes, and mentally rehearsed her first pitch.
The wind twisted the ends of her hair and the hem of her top. With a deep breath, she let everything of the past weeks goâthe show, Wenda, Lyric, the balance of her future.
When she opened her eyes, Luke waited at the plate.
This was a good day.
“Right here, Ballard.” Luke tapped his bat on the outside edge of the plate. “Then say good-bye.”
She wound up without a word and let the ball fly. The same stinking fastball that burned the bark off Mama's tree and cinched her first National Championship. The ball crashed into the backstop. Luke didn't swing, move, or even blink.
“I'm ready . . . whenever you are . . . just let it go.” Then he broke, laughing, and tossed the ball back. “That was just to throw you off guard. I'm ready now that I've seen your pitch. I'm onto you. Just had to get my rhythm.”
“You have no idea what I'm doing. I'm the Road Runner and you are Wile E. Coyote.”
“Watch out, Joy.” Luke gave a couple of practice swings. “It's going over the fence this time.”
“Which fence?” Joy pointed to the outfield. “That fence?” She fired her drop ball at the plate. Luke stepped into the motion, cutting hard, twisting all the way around until he stumbled to the dirt.
“Which fence did you mean? That fence, Luke?” Joy pointed behind her. “There?”
“Shaddup.” Crawling off the ground, his back plastered with dirt, he bent for the ball and lobbed it to Joy. “I'm just warming up.”
“Yeah? Me too.”
She pitched, pitched, pitched, pitched, pitched. Luke whiffed, whiffed, whiffed, whiffed, whiffed.
“Come on, cowboy, give me something. A foul tip. A first-baser.”
Joy bent forward, holding the ball behind her back, her fingers on the seams. “A bunt. Something.”
“At least I can cook.”
Joy stood up, laughing. “You're rescuing your pride with cooking?”
“It's all I got.” He wiped his brow with the edge of his sleeve, then raised the bat, bent-kneed, waiting for the pitch. Joy threw another fastball. Luke cut hard, but whiffed.
A work truck rumbled up to the field and Pete Jordan leaned out the window. “Need a catcher?”
“Help me,” Luke begged in a deep-blue hush.
The BellSouth worker jogged onto the field, popping his fist in his glove, and knelt behind Luke. Joy pitched. He got a piece of it, tipping the ball foul. Pete scrambled for the catch.
A little compact car slowed as it passed the field, then turned sharp and pulled off in the grass.
“Joy's on the field.” A couple of girls from Lyric's former Dixie Belle league took to the field with their gloves, calling strategy and popping open cell phones to call for backup.
A Beaufort County Sheriff cruiser rolled past with blue lights flashing. Bodean and J.D. and two other deputiesâone male, one femaleâclimbed out, already dressed for PT.
“Looks like we got enough for a game.” Bodean strode toward home plate, taking command. “Boys against girls? Joy's worth two men. Who bats first?” Bodean tossed a bat to Joy. She watched it spin as it plummeted to the dirt, then snatched the bat at the base of the neck just before it hit the ground.
Bodean grinned. “Should've known better. Men, we're in the field. Girls are at bat.”
“Wait for me.” Marley, Bodean's wife, ran onto the field, kicking off her heels, drawing her hair back into a ponytail. She kissed her husband and started testing bats. “What's at stake?”
Joy looked at Bo, who looked at J.D., who looked at Marley. “Bragging rights? Get to pick the music at the next Mars versus Venus party?”
“Okay, pretty good, but let's just up the ante. Bragging rights, pick the music, and . . .” Marley hooked her arm around Joy's shoulder with an ornery and deviant sigh. “J.D.'s corn hole game.”
“Corn hole?” J.D. snapped to attention. “You can't barter my game. It's a Mars versus Venus party legend.”
Bo flashed his palm at J.D.'s nose. “What about the game?”
Marley jutted out her hip and clucked her tongue against her cheek. “You win, we never complain about the stupid game again. We'll embrace it. You can toss beanbags into plywood holes until the coyotes howl. But if we win? It burns.”
Joy gasped. J.D. sputtered, then stomped his foot to the rhythm of his fake laugh, patting Bodean on the back. “Funny, Marley, funny. Nice try, but we're notâ”
“Deal.” Bo stepped forward and shook his wife's hand.
“Deal? Bo, hold on, you can't barter my game.” J.D. appealed to Marley. “You're not burning my game.”
“Stop worrying, J.D. Contain Joy and we can win this thing. Men, to the outfield.” Bo ran to the pitcher's mound, calling out positions and strategy.
As they set up, another friend from high school, Wild Wally, and his suntanned, grass-stained lawn crew careened into the parking lot. “We got a cooler of water and sodas.” They filed into the bleachers, set a giant cooler on the bottom seat, and cracked open sodas, sitting back to watch the game.
“Luke, let's go. You're on first.” Bodean motioned him out to the field.
Luke slipped his hand around Joy's waist and leaned into her ear. “J.D. is sure going to miss that corn hole game.”
“Oh, it'll burn tonight. It'll burn bright.”
“Joy, batter up.” Marley beckoned to the plate. “Swing for the fence. The boys are too tired and too lazy to run.”
Luke backed down the faded white line toward first, then jogged back to Joy. “Next time you doubt yourself, Joy, and wonder what God has for you, I want you to remember this, right here, right now.” He gestured to the field and the players.
“A softball game?”
“A game. Friends. The power of you. These people ran onto the field because of you. See how you impact the world around you? The influence you exert? People connect with you.” He turned and ran to first base, waving to the fielders. “Back up, boys, Joy's swinging for the fence.”
Luke couldn't sleep. In Elle and Heath's kitchen he brewed a cup of coffee, doctored it with cream, then folded into one of the wrought iron chairs on the porch to watch the sunrise.
A strip of twilight knitted the dawn to a remnant shadows of night. A crane lifted from the bulrushes by silent Coffin Creek. Luke followed its flight until its white body became a dark silhouette.
Sipping his coffee, he complained to God that it didn't seem fair he had to return to Portland. Alone. How could he and Joy nurture and feed their newfound affection if he was a thousand miles away?
The moment he stepped back into Roth's House kitchen, he'd be embedded, working eighteen hours a day. Any less risked failure. And he couldn't fail, couldn't let Linus down. Himself. Joy. And in a year, if they were solvent, he'd take a day to sleep. Maybe have Red come for a visit. He liked the idea of Red traveling, seeing more of this great country.
When he heard about Lyric, he drove down to be with his friend, the woman he might love. But yesterday, he'd fallen in love. Between the dawn and the twilight.
“You're up early.” The porch boards creaked as Heath moved the Adirondack chair next to Luke. He sat with a sigh, setting his coffee on the wrought iron table. “Did you sleep?”
“Five minutes.”
“You fooled around and fell in love, didn't you?” Heath stretched his legs long and whistled to the dog roaming across the yard.
“Maybe.”
“Want my opinion?”
“If I say no?”
“She's worth it.” Heath reached for his coffee as he angled sideways to see Luke. “But give her time.”
“That's what her mom said.”
“Good coffee, man. Are you sure you have to leave?”
Luke laughed low. “Don't tempt me.”
“If it's meant to beâ”
“It'll be.”
“I heard the softball game was pretty wild.”
“I feared for my life at one point.” The competitive Joy was not the charmer he knew on the show. She was intense, fierce, and beyond confident.
Heath's chuckle echoed with familiarity. “Bodean and Joy go toe-to-toe?”
“Like crazed, hungry wolves. She kicked dirt on his shoes and he accused her of throwing a spitball.”
“She probably did.” Heath got up to open the door for a brindle bulldog named Toby. He dropped to the porch, panting. “What was the outcome?”
“Let's just say you won't be playing corn hole at Bo's parties anymore.”
“The corn hole game? J.D. must be in mourning. I'll have to call him later.”
“He's already planning a bigger, better game.” Luke stretched as he stood. “I'm loaded up. Guess I should head out.” He clapped his hand with his cousin's.
“Door's always open.”
“Tell Elle and Tracey-Love good-bye. And ask Elle, if she could, to do a bit of espionage on Joy.”