Barefoot in the Rain (35 page)

It had to be Will.

“You mean what are the chances that there’s a condom handy?”

No, she didn’t mean that at all, but she wasn’t ready to tell him yet. Knowing Will, it would completely throw the game, and she wanted him now. All of him, inside her.

He reached over to the side of the bed to lift his shorts from the floor. He shook them and his phone fell with a clunk, followed by his wallet. “After last night? My wallet is stocked.”

He put on the condom, then got on top of her, holding her gaze as he slipped the tip against her still electrified womanhood.

And she knew: She should tell him. It was
wrong
not to tell him. He’d be happy. What guy wouldn’t want to be the first?

She took a breath and said, “I have to tell you something.”

A hint of frustration darkened his eyes as he throbbed against her. “
Now
?”

“Yes. Before I… we… before you’re inside me, you have to know something.” She reached up and touched his face. How would he take this?

“Joss, I’m showing more control and restraint than I even knew I had. Just say it, sweetheart. Say it. Tell me you love me.”

She bit her lip and lifted her hips, the move so natural. Because this was the way it was supposed to be. She loved him. She
loved
him. And really, at this moment, this close to the brink, that was
all
he needed to know. “I love you, Will Palmer.”

A slow, beautiful, completely heartfelt smile curled his lips. “Yeah?”

“Always have, always will.”

“Now that was worth waiting for.”

So was this.

Will gritted his teeth to keep from plowing forward, inch after mind-blowing inch of tightness wrapping around him, making him want to scream. She was so damn tight.

But he held back, watching her face, taking his cues, seeing her bite her lip to make him wonder if she felt more pain than pleasure at their coupling. Still, blind with need, braced on the bed, he went deeper until he was all the way inside her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She bit her lip again, nodding, working for each breath. He wanted to stop, or at least slow down, but each stroke was more incredible than the last, each plunge taking him closer to release.

“Will.” She pulled at him, her legs wrapped around him as their bodies moved and met perfectly. “Come closer. Come closer.”

His face nuzzled in her hair, her lips next to his ear. “Listen to me,” she whispered, her voice as insanely sexy as the body he was lost inside.

He barely nodded, blood pumping and pulsing, his breathing so fast and hard he could hardly hear her.

“Will.” She squeezed him harder, her movements slower and more controlled. “Listen to me,” she said again. “I want to tell you something. I have to.”

Let her talk. Say what she wanted. All he wanted was this insane pleasure that was about to—

“I’ve never…”

He shook his head, unable to hear her through the rushing blood. No words got through as sweet and silky morphed into fast and frenetic, the sounds of their breath and their bodies like a deafening whoosh that pulsed and screamed and finally spun out of control.

Completely lost in raw, relentless release, he spilled into her, stroke after stroke, pump after pump, a rush so intense he had to damn near howl.

He fell on her, exhausted, depleted, and so fucking happy he could cry. She loved him.

“What did you say, Joss?” he rasped.

“I said… I’ve never…” She closed her eyes. “Felt anything like that before.”

“Me neither. God, you’re like, oh….” Somewhere on the floor his phone vibrated. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think about anything except how amazing that was. And that she loved him.

She
loved
him.

The phone vibrated again.

“You going to get that?” she asked.

He managed to move his eyes to look at her. “No.”

One more time the phone vibrated, then the call moved to voice mail.

“Go ahead,” she urged. “I understand.”

“Nothing is more important than you.” Than what she’d just given him.

“It might be Guy. Does he have any idea where you are?”

Somehow he found the strength to drop his arm to the floor, feel around, and find the phone, dragging it back to the bed to read the caller ID.

Scott Meyers, Sports Management of America.

His agent?

“Is it important?” she asked.

“It’s not Guy.” But it might have been important. He pressed the number for voice mail, turning to look at her while he put the phone to his ear. Listening to it ring, he traced her jaw with his finger, then her lips.

Lips that had just said she loved him.

Under his touch, she smiled. “I made a decision, Will.”

“Hey, bud, where the hell are you? I have news.”

Will blinked at her, the buzz saw of his hyperactive agent’s voice feeling completely wrong while he was looking at Jocelyn.

“What is it?” He asked her the question, but Scott’s message kept rolling.

“Oh, what the hell. I’ll tell you. You got an offer, dude.”

“I don’t want to go back to L.A., Will. I’m taking Lacey’s job offer.”

“I… you don’t?”

“The Los Angeles Dodgers, dude! Fuckin’ Rancho Cucamonga needs a bull-pen coach. Interview is tomorrow in the AM. Get your ass on the next plane to southern California, Palmer. We did it, man!”

“I want to stay here in Mimosa Key, with you.”

There… here…
what
? His head almost exploded with the conflicting announcements.

“So call me ASAP. They’re desperate and we can swing a sweet deal. Congrats, buddy. This is the one you’ve been waiting for, right?”

Right
.

“Will?” Jocelyn perched up on her elbow, searching his face. “Is something wrong?”

Yeah. Something was really wrong. He’d waited too long.

N
ot so fast with those rash decisions, Joss.”

Something in Will’s voice unraveled everything inside her, his face falling fast as she told him her plans and he listened to someone’s message. All her words, promises, pledges, and heartfelt announcements about love just fizzled in the face of a man who just didn’t look like he wanted to hear them.

Of course he didn’t. What the hell had she been thinking?

Suddenly aware of how naked and open she was, she gathered up the old comforter, her fingers closing around the frayed edge. With the material almost to her nose she felt covered, but the old scent of Will’s room made her dizzy, intensified by the unfamiliar, tangy scent of sex and the look of sheer bewilderment on his face.

She cleared her throat, not trusting her voice, but he spoke first. “That was my agent.”

“Oh.”

He deliberately set the phone on the pillow between them, straightening it like he was buying time.

“Looks like…” His lips twisted in a smile that was more bitter than bright. “The wait is over.”

The wait. “For a new job?”

He nodded, slowly, his gaze moving over her face, looking for something, and maybe hiding something, too.

“Wow,” she said on a whisper. “That’s…” Incredibly bad timing. “Amazing. What is it?”

“Bull-pen coach, minor leagues.”

“What you wanted, right?” Except, sometime in the last hour or day or maybe week, she’d decided she wanted him. “You know, everything I just said—”

“Joss.” He touched her face again, cupping her jaw, inching his warm body next to hers. “The job’s in L.A.”

For a moment she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.

“Los Angeles,” he confirmed.

“With the Dodgers?” Her fingers clutched the comforter, the Dodgers blue comforter. The physical-embodiment-of-a-childhood-dream comforter.

“The Rancho Cucamonga minor league team.”

Holy hell. “That’s half an hour drive from my house in Pasadena.”

“So, about that decision to stay in Mimosa Key…” He stroked her cheek, curling hair around his finger.

“Yeah, you just complicated it.”

“Complicated it? Decision’s made.” He eliminated whatever space was between them, wrapping a leg over her thigh to cuddle her closer. “We’ll go together. We’ll
be
together. We’ll—”

She put a hand on his lips. “What about Guy?”

“What about him? Our plan is perfect. We’ll have him in a ho—”

“It’s
our
plan now? Up until Charity Grambling handed you some pictures you were doing your damnedest to convince me that it was a very bad idea, that Guy needed to be at home, with help, and—”

“Everything changed, Jocelyn.” He sat up, too. “Everything changed in the last two days. I know what happened—”

“So do I.” She backed away, still holding the blanket to cover her. “At least I have a pretty good idea. He snapped when that baby died. In fact, it makes perfect sense. Maybe he blamed my mother, maybe she had an accident, maybe—”

“No,” he said sharply. “No. You can’t just forgive him that quickly.”

She drew back. “You’ve been asking me to do just that since I arrived. And it’s not that quick. He’s been different, he’s so changed and—”

“No.” He took a deep breath like he needed to gather strength to make his point. “This is too perfect. This is meant to be. A job in Los Angeles. With”—he gestured toward the blanket—“my dream team. And you live there. Jocelyn, this is perfect.”

“But my father—”

“Kicked the holy crap out of you when you were young and defenseless,” he shot back, pushing himself out of the bed now and grabbing a pair of shorts. “And then he threatened to kill me or at least ruin my career, so you made the decision to never speak to me again.”

She started to respond, but he waved his hand to stop her. “And, I know, I went along with that, so I’m to blame,
too, but, Jesus, Jocelyn. Fate and the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball franchise may have just handed me everything I ever wanted professionally.” He stepped into the shorts, eyes blazing on her. “And five minutes before that, you handed me everything I ever wanted personally. And, damn it, I want both.”

“What about what I want?”
One time in bed and he got all the control
? Anger and resentment fired through her sex-sated cells. No, it wasn’t going to work that way.

He stared at her, as if the question made no sense. “You said you loved me.”

And he’d never said it back. “I was in the middle of a climax.”

He frowned. “Not exactly.”

“Close enough.” A lie, a complete lie. But he hadn’t said it back, so…

“And you said you made a decision not to leave.” He stabbed his hand in his hair, inching back, thinking. “But you haven’t told Lacey, have you? So, we’ll just go to L.A.”

“Will we?” She shot out the words much harder than she’d intended.

“Jocelyn, listen to me.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You can’t call the shots in my life. I don’t want to go back there with all that crap hanging over my head. You can’t…”
Not go to the Dodgers
. It was unthinkable.

She let out a long breath as the realization of what she was doing dawned. Once again she held the keys to his career. Last time she’d let him go have it. But this time? If she asked him to stay he would, once he gave it some thought. He was that noble, that loyal, that completely rock solid and reliable.

And, once again, she knew that the right thing to do was going to hurt like hell.

“When are you going?”

“Right away,” he said, reaching for the phone. “The interview is tomorrow morning. I have to call Scott now.”

“And I have to…”
Figure out what the hell to do with my life—and with my father.
“Go see my dad.”

His eyes flashed at that. “Since when do you call him anything but Guy?”

“Since I found out that he had a great tragedy.”

“A miscarriage isn’t exactly like he lost
you
.”

“But he did lose me.”

Will almost choked. “Because he damn near killed you! And he threatened to kill me.”

“But before you knew that, you forgave him, Will. You took care of him. You worried about him. You valued him. You…” Did she dare say it? Yes. “You
loved
him.”

He just sighed. “But now I know differently.”

“So you actually stopped loving him?”

“It made me…” He held his head like it was going to explode. “Yeah, I did. Look, we’ll figure it out. We’ll put him somewhere. We’ll make this work, Jocelyn. I don’t want to wa—”

“So you can stop loving someone that easily?” The reality of that made her breathless. “Just because they did one thing you think is wrong? You just walk away?”

“No, I—”

“What if you found out I really
did
have an affair with Miles Thayer?”

His eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but she saw the impact of the question. She didn’t care. She had to know. She had to know what he was made of. Because if
he wasn’t who she hoped he was, then he wasn’t worthy of the risk.

When he didn’t answer, she pushed harder. “Would you stop caring about me because I did something that was repugnant to you?”

He swallowed. “I don’t know why you don’t tell the truth.”

She had. To him. Wasn’t that enough? “You know what your problem is, Will?”