Page 33 of Putting Out
“Yeah. Bye.”
He watched Luke open the front door for her and follow her out onto the porch. For a while he stood there looking at the open door.
“Kenny, are you coming back?” Erica called out to him. “I need something to lean on.”
His services as a pillow were obviously required again. It was good to be needed. Yes, things were good with Erica. He was glad he’d gotten to see Tessa while he was home. Their encounter at Christmas had left him feeling a little weird. He didn’t want to assign a word to the emotion because he was sort of afraid that it might be regret.
Now that was behind him. She’d moved on and he had moved on with Erica. Erica was great.
Beautiful, fiery and…
“And since you’re up can you make me some popcorn? No butter, no salt. Thanks!”
Needy. But needy was okay.
* * *
“You weren’t tryingto make the moves on her, were you? Because she’s got a boyfriend.”
Luke rounded the corner after seeing Tessa off. Reilly was bundled in her coat waiting for him on the porch. He liked the picture she made standing there and climbed the steps to join her.
“Jealous?” She sounded jealous. Looked jealous, too.
“Who, me? No. But the mystery lady who you are pining away for might have something to say about it and I can guarantee you Kenny would flip.”
“Kenny is dating Erica. Didn’t you hear him when he shouted that fact to Tessa?”
Reilly shook her head. “She’s always been his weakest link. Never could figure out why he just didn’t… I don’t know. Then again this is Kenny and he’s horrible at commitments.”
“Unlike you.”
“And you. We’re great at commitments. It’s the sticking to them that gets in our way.”
“Well, I’m working on that,” Luke said.
“Well, I’m not. I’m more than happy to fly solo for a while. The last thing I need to be thinking about is my or Kenny’s love life. I sort of have this decision everyone is waiting for me to make and now there is a deadline.”
Luke leaned back against the porch rail. He crossed his arms over his chest in an effort to conserve body heat in the frigid night air. If he called time-out to get his coat, the moment might be lost and he sensed something important was coming.
“Tell me why this isn’t easy for you?”
Reilly shrugged causing the fuzzy stuff around the collar of her coat to brush her ears. Suddenly he was reminded of the girl he’d met the first day Kenny had brought him home. Damn, but she’d been cute.
“It’s just not. Heck, golf has never been easy in Nebraska. Pop would have to drive us hours each way just to play on an actual course where the greens could be sandier than the bunkers. Ask Kenny what it was like growing up a golfer in a committed football state. If he hadn’t been as cool as he is, high school would have been miserable for him.”
“None of that has anything to do with your decision.”
“Doesn’t it? I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to say I worked really hard to get here. I chose the oddball sport. I practiced. I sacrificed. I worked my ass off to be what some are calling the greatest female golfer of the twenty-first century, maybe of all time.”
Luke understood. “You don’t want to give that up.”
“No,” she whispered, turning the air into puffs of smoke. “I don’t. Erica wasn’t wrong. All those things she said are true. If I do this and fail miserably, my career on the LPGA, my reputation, my legacy… it could all be over. If I do this and finish average, I’m still not sure that leaves me a whole lot of places to go. The women on tour will hate me.”
“They hate you now.”
“True. But I would rather they hate me because they’re jealous of my skills than because they think I’m a traitor.”
“Is that how you see it? You think you would be betraying them?”
