Читать книгу: «Marriage On His Mind»

One

Crack!

“Foul!” the umpire called.

Jack Stone heaved a sigh of relief from his position at shortstop on the baseball diamond. One less catch muffed. What the hell am I doing here? he asked himself for the hundredth time. Midlife crisis, remember? his mind whispered back.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he muttered as the pitcher tossed another softball underhanded to the batter.

Crack!

Oh, God, it was headed toward him. Please, let me catch it. Please. Otherwise, The Mouth—

The ball hit the hard infield once before magically bouncing into his glove. Stunned at his luck, he stared at the white orb nestled in oiled leather until the second baseman yelled at him to throw it to first. Jack cranked up his arm and threw—and missed the first baseman by six feet, the ball skittering to the fence as the runner chugged into second standing up.

“Hey, Ponytail, whaddaya need, a map?” a woman yelled from the stands of the small stadium hosting the men’s recreational league game.

The short, neat ponytail Jack sported suddenly felt as inconspicuous as Rapunzel’s hair, but he wouldn’t let The Mouth provoke him into cutting it, not after he’d gotten it long enough to stop using gel to hold it in place. After a year’s time, he could finally just pull it back and fasten it.

The ponytail served as a symbol, an important one. He saw it as a sign of his new independence and a reminder to be patient with the world, and he refused to buckle under to some loudmouthed, self-appointed bleacher coach who’d decided to make him her cause. This was only the fifth game of baseball he’d played in twenty-two years, since being thrust into the role of provider for his seven-year-old brother, Dan, when Jack had been only seventeen himself.

He hadn’t had time to play. Not just baseball, but anything. He’d been changing that, though. If only The Mouth—

“Strike three, you’re out!” the umpire called, ending the inning and Jack’s mental wandering.

“Sorry,” he said to the first baseman as they shuffled into the screened dugout.

“Turned out okay,” his teammate Scott Lansing replied. “They didn’t get any runs out of it. That woman in the stands making you nervous?”

“I don’t know what The Mouth’s making me feel. If she’d yell at someone else once in a while, it probably wouldn’t bother me so much. I just can’t figure out why she’s chosen me as her personal project. Stacy said she’d try to talk to her tonight.” Envy burrowed in as he watched a teammate knock the first pitch deep into left field, a skill Jack hadn’t mastered yet. “The woman was right about my switching positions with Drew. I’m more effective at short than I was at third. I needed that extra split second of reaction time. And I’ve almost gotten two hits since she told me to drop my front shoulder before I swing. I just wish she’d kept on passing instructions through Stacy instead of yelling at me on the field.”

“I give you credit for rising to the occasion, Jack. Most guys wouldn’t.”

He pulled on an earlobe as his gaze wandered to where The Mouth sat. “Unfortunately, she’s right too often to ignore.”

“And you abhor mediocrity, especially in yourself.”

Jack grinned as he stood and hefted a metal bat over his shoulder. “Some things I can’t change.”

Mickey Morrison watched the man she’d dubbed Ponytail stroll from the dugout to home plate. Keep your shoulder down, she ordered him telepathically as he sliced the air with the bat a couple of times. She tugged the bill of her L.A. Seagulls baseball cap a little lower on her forehead, grasped the wooden bench under her tightly with both hands and leaned forward in concentration, ignoring the person taking a seat beside her, jostling the bench.

“Strike one!”

Mickey groaned. “Both eyes, Ponytail. Watch the ball with both eyes,” she yelled at her self-appointed protégé. She saw him flinch, then bear down, his lanky frame hardening visibly as he focused on her instructions.

“Strike two!”

He’d missed the ball by a mile, she thought, frustrated. She’d seen such potential in him. A few weeks ago he’d been raw—the rookie of all rookies, doing everything wrong. But he’d obviously been working hard in the interim. That pickup he’d made in the field last inning proved he was keeping his eye on the ball more. Now if he would just focus as hard on the one being pitched to him.

Crack!

Mickey sprang up. He’d hit it! He’d actually hit the darn thing!

The ball caromed off an invisible divot in the field and angled past the center fielder’s legs.

“Crank it up, Ponytail. Take second,” she hollered as he hit first at full stride. She watched approvingly as he made a wide swing and pumped toward second. The outfielder snagged the errant ball, then fired it to the infield.

“Slide! Slide!” Mickey screamed, crouching, her arms extended in front of her as if she were on the field coaching him.

An explosion of dirt rocketed above the heads of the players near second. When the dust cleared, Ponytail lay stretched along the base line spitting dirt, his fingers digging into the base.

“Out!” the umpire shouted.

The call brought raucous cheers from the opposing team and supporters, and cries of outrage from those who thought “Blue” needed glasses. The man sprawled in the settling dust dragged himself to his knees, then uncurled slowly upward, wobbling a bit before taking a step. He brushed off his hands, Chung Li’s Pizza T-shirt and filthy jeans as he started a slow jog to the dugout.

“Hey, Ponytail! Real men slide feet first!”

Silence descended. She’d gone too far this time. She hadn’t only maligned his athletic ability but his masculinity, as well. Holding her breath, Mickey watched as he stopped, swept off his cap to whack dust against his leg, then pinned her to the bench with his direct look, his chest heaving from the exertion of the run. He changed direction and headed straight toward her, not stopping until he stood at the base of the stands, ten feet from where she sat.

“Why?” he queried, panting.

Mickey gulped, grateful she could read the single word on his lips, because the sound was swallowed up by her thundering pulse. “Why what?”

“Why should I slide feet first?”

The question penetrated the rhythm section in her head, and she straightened a little in relief. She’d been afraid he was asking why she was picking on him, and she didn’t have an answer to that, except that she admired his grit—and he seemed self-confident enough to take it. “Because you can ruin your hands going head first, either by jamming them into the base or by the baseman stepping on ’em.”

His fists propped low on his hips, the hat dangling from his little finger, he cocked his head as if considering her words. When his gaze—deep blue, she noted, a nice contrast to his ebony-colored hair—bored into hers, she tugged her cap down even farther.

“Can you teach as well as criticize?” he asked.

“What?”

“Can you teach me to slide?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I guess—”

“Monday at six o’clock, here?”

“I’m sure many of your teammates could give you the same instructions—”

“I’m asking you.”

“Play ball!” the umpire called.

“Monday at six,” he repeated, a man obviously accustomed to having orders obeyed. “Be here.”

Mickey watched him trot into the dugout, then make a comment to a teammate who laughed uproariously.

Well, she didn’t have to obey his command, she thought militantly. She hadn’t committed herself to anything. But if she didn’t show up, she couldn’t come to any more games, she argued with herself. And she wanted to keep coming. Needed to. She hadn’t felt so alive in years. Two years, to be exact.

“Hi.”

At the simple greeting, Mickey turned her head toward the young woman seated beside her. She recognized her as the one she’d spoken to the first game she’d observed, last month when she’d been in town looking for a place to rent. Always drawn to baseball games, whether professional or little league, she had found a seat and watched, then had become increasingly frustrated at the third baseman’s ineptness. She had sent him suggestions on how to improve, using the young woman as intermediary.

Mickey eyed her now, noting she wore a summer shift, as she always did, this one a tiny flowered print. Mickey returned the greeting, then asked, “Have you been sent to question my intentions?”

“How’d you guess?”

“The male ego is a fragile thing,” she said, drawing a grin and a nod from her companion.

“My name’s Stacy.”

A soft, feminine name to match her clothes and long, silky hair, Mickey thought with an inward sigh. The kind of woman every tomboy dreads. “I don’t have answers for you, Stacy.”

“Not even a name?”

“My name would mean nothing to him.”

“I see. You just dispense advice to the baseball-lorn. Sort of a Dear Yogi Berra.”

Mickey smiled. “Actually, this is the first time I’ve given advice uninvited.”

“Why won’t you at least tell us who you are?”

Because I’m trying not to lean on anyone. I need to find happiness alone, she thought. She forced herself to ignore Stacy’s friendly overture. Standing, she looked at the field briefly, then returned her gaze to the curious woman seated beside her. “Tell Ponytail—”

“His name is—”

“I don’t want to know his name. Just tell him to lose the jeans and buy some baseball pants by Monday.”

“That’s it? That’s all you could get out of her?” Jack queried Stacy, his voice rising above the din at Chung Li’s Pizza Parlor, where the team had gone after their losing effort. “Buy some baseball pants?”

“I’m not skilled at interrogation like you, Jack. She obviously doesn’t want to make friends.”

He drummed his fingers on the lacquered wood tabletop. “How old is she, can you tell?”

“Around thirty, I guess.”

“Wedding ring?”

Stacy smiled. “No-o-o.”

“She uses that baseball cap like a shield over her face.”

“Are you asking if she’s pretty?”

He turned to face her directly and noted the humor sparkling in her eyes. “All right. I’m humbling myself. I want to know everything you can tell me.”

“I’ve never seen her without sunglasses, but from what I can tell, she’s passably attractive in that woman-jock kind of way.”

Jack leaned back, resting an ankle over the opposite thigh. “You’re enjoying the hell out of this, aren’t you, Stace?”

Her glee-filled laugh made him frown.

“I’ve just never seen you thwarted,” Stacy said, the grin not leaving her face. “Or frazzled. To be honest, it fascinates me. In all the time we were married, I rarely saw you not in control. Impatient maybe, but in control. Not that I saw a whole lot of you, given your obsession with work.”

“I’m changing,” he said, gritting out the words.

“Yes, you are. Okay, I can tell you this much. Her hair is almost as military short as you used to wear yours. It’s kind of palomino blond, looks pretty straight around the edge of the cap. Her front teeth are white and even. I didn’t ask her to open her mouth—”

“Stacy,” he warned.

“Well, gosh, Jack. If I’d known I was supposed to be inspecting her like a horse at auction, I would have attempted to get more information.”

“Do you have any idea why she’s singled me out?”

“Could be your hunky body.”

Jack snorted. “Yeah. All five-eleven, one hundred and eighty pounds of me.”

“And she’s about five-four. Perfect height difference. In bed and out,” she added.

He straightened. “I’m not interested in her as a bed partner.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m curious. And I don’t like unanswered questions.”

“Ha! You’re attracted. You’ve never been challenged by a woman before, and it intrigues the heck out of you.”

He sipped from his mug of beer before responding. “Maybe.”

At a signal from her husband, Drew, the team’s third baseman, Stacy stood. “We’ve got to relieve the babysitter. Good luck Monday.”

“Thanks. Give Dani a kiss from me.”

Mickey’s decision to rent the cabin she now occupied had been based on several factors, the first being the town itself, Gold Creek, which was a forty-five-minute drive from the community college where she would soon be teaching algebra. Nestled in the foothills of Northern California’s mother lode country, Gold Creek was large enough to offer reasonable anonymity and small enough to feel like a home, not just a place.

Another lure was the stream that backed the property about fifty yards from the cabin. More than a trickle, less than a fisherman’s paradise, its appeal lay in the soothing sounds of nature, at rest and at play. Having lived her thirty-two years in the city, the adjustment had been a challenge, especially since she couldn’t hear traffic or sirens or even children playing. Her only neighbor within earshot was her landlord, who owned a huge log house just out of sight from her smaller version, his guest house.

The cabin itself shone in the natural setting like a topaz in gold. Newly remodeled by the owner, it was a house designed for easy living, amounting to a large studio apartment, with rooms hinted at by creative use of furniture or cabinets. A big pine bed sitting atop a raised platform pretended to be a bedroom, the bed cocooned by curtains on a ceiling runner, blocking it from the living quarters, although she never bothered pulling the curtains. She looked forward to winter, when she could enjoy watching the fireplace while she lay cozy in her bed. The bathroom, a rustically elegant large room containing not only a shower but a whirlpool tub as well, was tucked away on the sunset side of the building.

But the deciding factor in her choosing the cabin had been the window seat. Built into the back wall overlooking the stream and pine trees, it was a huge half circle of crystal clear glass that started two feet from the floor and ended at the ten-foot knotty pine ceiling. The pillows stacked on the oversize wooden seat invited snuggling. It had become her refuge, the place where she prepared her syllabus for class, wrote letters, daydreamed, escaped nightmares and faced her aloneness.

She burrowed there an hour after the game, watching the early-August sky darken and wondering what to do about Monday. She hadn’t wanted to get involved, with anything or anyone. This would force involvement when for the first time in her life she so wanted to be wholly responsible for herself.

She’d lost so much, and she needed to be free to grieve. She’d also given up a lot to embark on this quest for self-forgiveness and acceptance.

Eyes closed, she leaned her head against the window frame and pictured the tall, dark man whose ponytail proclaimed him a rebel. She didn’t want to find him attractive, or desirable, or even interesting—but he’d challenged her when she’d been a verbal tyrant to him, and that intrigued her.

She didn’t want to be drawn to him, and she wondered how she could stop the wheels she had unintentionally set in motion.