Page 103 of Playboy Pitcher
Andmyheart, that thing I thought couldn’t possibly hurt any more, stutters a beat. “I’m so sorry. I hate that you have those memories.”
“I’m not,” she deadpans, lifting her chin defiantly. “Remembering the mother that I didn’t have just makes me appreciate the one I do. Will, I call you my sister, but you’ve always been more like a mom. Without you…” She shrugs, a bit of that tough girl facade cracking. “I’d probably be dead too.”
“Oh, Emma.”
“Okay,” she exclaims, leaping to her feet. “Enough of this heavy stuff. I’m getting myself a date, so you can go home and get all beautiful before heading over to your husband’s house to do”—grinning, she rolls her eyes while waving her hand in the air—“whatever it is you two do.” Twisting at the waist, she cups her hand around her mouth and yells, “Hoyt!”
Way on the other side of the bleachers, Hoyt tips his hat. “Emmy-girl, what can I do for ya?”
Flipping her long blonde hair over her shoulder, she cocks her hip. “How about you take me to dinner tonight, your treat?”
Hoyt laughs, shaking his head at her theatrics. “I’d say that’s an offer I can’t refuse. Meet ya at my truck.”
Once he leaves, I grab her sneaker. “Em, you don’t have to do this.”
“Consider it my birthday present to you.” Flashing me one last grin, she turns and takes the bleachers two at a time. When she’s almost at the top, she yells over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I won’t wait up!”
* * *
Walking to the parking garage where Buford sits waiting for me, I smile thinking about birthday surprises, possibilities, and the future.
Yes, I, Willow McBaine, have hope.
It’s a feeling as foreign as the word itself. However, somewhere from the stadium exit to the garage, I made the decision.
I’m leaping too.
Ben ended his career tonight on blind faith. I could easily renege on our deal, leaving him with nothing, but he trusted me to keep my word. He leaped, and now if I’m right, he’s going to do it again, this time on a much more personal level.
If he can put that much belief in me, I can do the same for him.
I’ll never take away Ben’s dreams, but I know I want to be a part of them. I want to share them. I want to be a team. I want to return the blind faith of a man I have fallen in love with in only three and a half weeks.
I want to come clean.
Anticipation quickens my step, and by the time I reach Buford, I’m almost floating. Until I see the man in a double-breasted suit with sparkling cuffs leaned up against him.
“What the hell do you want?” I growl, rushing around to the driver’s side. “And get off my car before you dent it.”
Before I can open the door, Drake circles around me and slams it closed. “I told you twenty-eight days, princess. I’m back to make a deal.”
“And I told you there was no deal and to fuck off.” I jerk on the door handle again, only to have it slammed shut again. “I swear to God, Drake, if you don’t stop that shit…”
“I saw your little talk show appearance,” he presses, his thin lips pulling back in a smile that never reaches his eyes. “You and LaCroix looked like such a happy couple. You really sold it. If I didn’t already know your sham of a marriage was a bunch of fabricated bullshit, I might have believed it.”
“What do you mean ‘already know’?” I don’t have to say any more. One look at his face answers everything. It’s twisted in the superior smile that always hid a mid-talent player with back alley morals. It’s present in the cold stare that always watched for the fast track to success no matter who he razed on his path to glory. “It was you,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “You were the one who leaked our marriage certificate to the press. But how?”
“Princess,” he says, his devil eyes full of false pity and hate-fed narcissism. “If you think I haven’t had eyes on you since the minute you strolled your drenched ass into that godawful bar, you underestimated me.”
Bar? What the hell is he talking about?Then it hits me. The man I bumped into on the way out. The familiar voice I couldn’t place.
Oh God.
“That was you.” Blinking up at him, the voices connect in a sickening chorus of karma. “In the bar. That first night in West Palm.”
“You knew it was me, Willow.”
“Fuck you!”
