Be My Baby Tonight (11 page)

“I don’t know. Maybe. But he doesn’t always
do what Jack does. I mean, nobody saw any baby on his doorstep. And
he’s not—well, yeah, he is married, isn’t he? How about that.”

Then Mort stood up, started toward the back
of the box as the door opened and Jack and Keely Trehan walked in.
“Hey, you’re late,” he said, grabbing Keely in a hug.

Suzanna swiveled around in her seat to get
her first look at Keely Trehan.

Beautiful. The woman was beautiful. Neither
too tall nor too short. Huge brown eyes. Honey blond hair pulled
into a casual knot of curls on top of her head—the sort of hairdo
that took either forty minutes in order to look as if the person
had just grabbed a rubber band and a few clips and tossed it up
there, or the sort of hairdo that came so easily to those with
naturally curly hair.

Suzanna would have placed a bet that Keely’s
hair curled naturally. This woman had too much life dancing in
those brown eyes of hers to waste a moment of it with something as
mundane as working hard for casual disarray.

Keely wore pencil-slim red slacks and a
red-and-white striped blouse that curved over her
pregnancy-expanded belly. She looked like a candy cane, and the way
her husband looked at her, it was clear he thought she was good
enough to eat.

“Hiya, Jack, long time no see,” Suzanna said,
getting to her feet as Jack left his wife’s side and headed toward
her.

“Suze,” Jack said, putting out his arms so
that she’d walk into them, let him hug her. “Just when I think my
little brother’s lost his last marble, he goes and does something
brilliant.” He kissed her temple. “Welcome to the family,
sweetheart.”

“Thanks, Jack,” she said, hugging him back.
“You don’t mind?”

He put his hands on her shoulders, pushed her
slightly away from him. “Mind? Why would I mind? This is perfect,
just perfect. Tim needs a keeper.”

Suzanna watched, bemused, as a hand with
nicely rounded scarlet nails reached out, gave Jack a poke in the
arm. “Introduce us, you dope, then go apply for that job as a
smooth-talking diplomat. Right after you take your foot out of your
mouth.”

Jack grinned at Suzanna. “Suze? The lady with
the good right arm is my wife, Keely. Keely, one of my oldest and
best friends, and Tim’s keep... er... wife, Suzanna.”

Keely grinned at her. “Hi. Excuse the guy
choking on his size twelves. He’s a man, you know.”

“I know. Sad, isn’t it?” Suzanna said,
returning Keely’ s smile. Her sister-in-law’s smile. Wow, she had a
sister-in-law. Well, Tim did. Surely she could think of Keely as
her sister-in-law, too.

“Okay, okay,” Jack said sheepishly. “I can
tell when I’m not wanted. But be careful, Suze. Keely learned her
interrogation skills with the FBI, I swear it.”

“Go talk to Mort, he’s looking ready to
burst,” Keely said, lifting her face for a quick kiss, and Jack
obediently went away.

“Jack looks great,” Suzanna said, watching
Tim’s twin go back up the few steps to where Mort waited. “And he
looks at you like you’re his whole world.”

Suzanna watched as Keely, a very fair-skinned
woman, blushed straight to the roots of her hair.

“He does, doesn’t he,” Keely said, then
sighed. “We’re so happy it scares me sometimes.” Then she moved
toward the seats, sitting down, patting the one beside her. “Now,
come talk to me before I pull out two dozen snapshots of Candy and
bore you into jumping over that railing.”

* * *

The small Philadelphia apartment was quiet,
the bedroom shrouded in darkness, with a spill of moonlight shining
through the window and falling on the couple curled together on the
king-size bed.

Suzanna, snuggled tight against Tim’s chest,
giggled.

“What?” he asked, stroking her bare arm. “I
was laughable? I thought I was pretty damn good, personally.”

“Oh, you were, you were,” she told him,
moving up so that she could kiss his chin. “I was just thinking
about the press conference after the game, that’s all. Mort’s
amazing. I swear, Tim, he knows more about me than I know about
myself. How did he do that?”

“He probably pumped Jack all during the game.
Which we won, by the way, so you can applaud again at any time. In
which I hit a home run, not so by the way. To right center.” He
sighed theatrically. “I’m so good sometimes I even amaze
myself.”

Suzanna gave him a quick, playful punch in
the gut. “Show-off,” she said, then quickly removed herself from
the bed before he could tickle her, covering her naked body with
the thick white terry-cloth bathrobe he’d been given at some hotel
he’d stayed in somewhere.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” she said, sitting down at the
bottom of the bed. “I just think maybe it’s safer down here.”

He tried to look innocent. “But I don’t even
remember how ticklish you are, honest.”

“Yeah, right, you forgot,” she said, rolling
her eyes. “No, Tim, I have a question for you.”

She couldn’t know it, but her spikey dark red
hair was standing up all over her head. She looked like a
firecracker, and he had to resist the urge to light her fuse one
more time. Then again, why resist? They were married. They could
make love all night if they wanted to. Except that Suzanna didn’t
look as though she wanted to make love.

So what did she want? She wanted to ask him a
question? That couldn’t be good.

“I take it we’re going to talk now?” he
guessed, suddenly feeling very tired. Not that he was getting old
or anything, but crouching behind the plate for nine innings wasn’t
exactly a cakewalk.

“Only a little. I want to hear about the
curse.”

He opened his mouth to ask, “Who told you?”
But then he closed it again, knowing that was the last thing he
should say. So he shrugged, and said lazily, “Oh, that. Yeah, some
sportswriters started that crap last year, when I ripped the tendon
in my finger. It never even hit any of the columns. Just a private
joke making the rounds among the guys. No big deal.”

“No big deal? Jack has to leave the game in
the spring, and you get injured early in the fall, and it’s no big
deal to you? Now, why don’t I believe you?”

Because you’re too damn smart and you know
me too damn well,
Tim thought, then also wisely, did not say
out loud.

“Maybe because I’m all grown up now?” he
suggested.

“Really? Do you still chew three pieces of
bubble gum during games?”

“I like gum. And nobody chews tobacco
anymore.”

He did not like where this conversation was
heading. “Uh-huh. And you had spaghetti tonight, Tim.”

“Carbs. Good to load carbs before a
game.”

He’d tell her. One day, he’d tell her. But
not yet. Cripes, not yet.

“The line you draw on home plate?”

Tim was getting antsy, moving around in the
bed. “Habit,” he said, then went up on his knees, reaching for her.
“Are we done yet? Because I’m starting a new habit. I begin right
about here,” he said, nibbling on her earlobe, “then sort of work
my way down.”

“Tim, we’re talking here,” Suzanna said, even
as he pulled her onto her back on the bed, began working on the
terry-cloth sash she’d tied at her waist.

“Wrong, we’re not talking here,” he said,
pushing the robe out of the way before he lowered his mouth to her
belly.

They were so damn compatible. In the past.
Hopefully, in the future. As long as they didn’t talk too much.

He kissed her flat stomach, then moved lower,
trailing his lips down one thigh, back up the other.

“What... What are you doing?” she asked, her
voice sounding nervous, and yet excited.

How he wanted her. Any way, every way. They
were so good together, so very good. His good old Suze, just what
the doctor ordered. He couldn’t get enough of her. Gently, oh, so
gently, he spread her thighs, lowered his head.

“Tim? Tim, I don’t really know if I’d
like—oh. Oh! Oh,
Tim.”

I always hate to throw a guy out of a game, but

sometimes it was necessary to keep order.

— Cal Hubbard, umpire

Suzanna turned on her laptop and went on-line
to check for messages. There were three from the home office, and
another two from Sean Blackthorne, owner of the company.

“What does he want?” she grumbled out loud in
the Saint Louis hotel room, her finger hesitating after she’d moved
the track ball to hit the OPEN icon.

Oh, hell, delaying things wouldn’t help any.
Sighing, she opened the first e-mail, scanned it quickly to see
that Sean had decided to join her in Saint Louis later that
afternoon.

“Oh, peachy,” she said, deleting the e-mail
and opening the second one. There was only one word in the message:
Dinner?

“Dinner,” she said out loud, hitting the
Delete button once more. “Now, what does that mean?”

Suzanna quickly scanned the messages from her
office, saw nothing earthshakingly important, and shut down the
computer in favor of the Room Service breakfast that had arrived a
few minutes earlier.

“Dinner,” she repeated, knowing she was
talking to herself, and also knowing that she’d been doing it for
years and had ceased to worry that she might be going nuts. She’d
been traveling alone for so long, living alone in so many different
hotel rooms. She just liked the company.

“Could it hurt?” she asked herself, lifting
the metal lid on her scrambled eggs, home fries, and ham. “We only
dated a couple of times, and that was months ago, before I told him
I didn’t think dating the boss was a good idea. And the man knows
I’m married now.”

Tim. Her husband of almost two months. One
month and a day short of three weeks, to be more precise about the
thing.

Suzanna picked up the controller and turned
on the television, flipping stations until she found ESPN. Tim and
the Phillies were out on the coast, and even at home in Allentown
the game wouldn’t have come on TV until eleven o’clock. Not that
Phillies games would be broadcast in Saint Louis anyway.

She’d hit the sack here at nine last night,
unreasonably tired after a day spent trying to undo the damage
Forrester and Sons’ resident computer guru had done to their newly
purchased Blackthorne accounting system.

She looked at the scrambled eggs and decided
they didn’t smell all that appetizing and she didn’t want them.
Maybe just the wheat toast, that would be enough.

Munching the toast, she waited through recaps
of a few other games before the announcers turned to the
Phillies-Giants game.

As it had been lately, the recap of
highlights of the latest Phillies’ win looked pretty much like the
Tim Trehan Show. Tim was on a tear, plain and simple. No home run
last night, although he already had more four-baggers this season
than any other catcher in either League. But last night it was a
triple and two singles. Five RBIs. Three runs scored.

And one heck of a throw to second to cut down
a base-stealing attempt to end an inning.

Suzanna turned up the volume when the tape
switched to the clubhouse and she saw Tim sitting in front of his
locker, a towel wrapped around his neck, fielding questions from
reporters.

“It’s been a good road trip,” Tim was saying
into a crowd of microphones shoved into his face. “Dusty’s playing
well, Rich Craig made one heck of a catch in the ninth to rob
Gomez, and Jeff Kolecki started, what? Three double plays? We’re
just clicking, that’s all. Everybody’s giving one hundred and ten
percent. A real team effort.”

“And there he is, ladies and germs, Mr.
Modest,” Suzanna said, taking another bite of toast.

“Now we head home,” Tim said, “and that’s
good. This has been a long road trip.”

“Home to your bride, Tim?” one of the
reporters asked, and Tim just grinned at him as the tape ended and
the station went to commercial.

“Oh, be still my heart,” Suzanna said,
turning off the set, and then grinning herself, definitely pleased.
What a smile that man had. Without effort, Tim could always have
the whole world eating out of his hand.

Except that he was making noises about her
quitting her job, going on the road with him when the team
traveled, and she’d been resisting him.

She didn’t know why.

Yes, she did.

One hundred million dollars.

They were married now, sure. But she didn’t
want to look like some sort of gold digger. Get married, quit her
job the next day, wrap herself in Tim’s money? No, just the thought
made her nervous.

Besides, she’d worked long and hard to get
where she was, and she liked her job. Loved her job.

Even if it had meant not going to the coast
with Tim. Maybe
because
it had meant not going to the coast
with Tim.

Because there were flaws in her marriage, and
she knew it.

One of them was that Tim had never told her
he loved her, which meant that she sure as hell wasn’t going to be
the first one to say the words.

Besides, he had to know she loved him, had
loved him for so long that she couldn’t remember ever not loving
him.

And he still called her “babe.” She hated
that he called her babe. It made her feel like one of a crowd of
babes, maybe even interchangeable babes.

Except he’d given her a ring, and his name.
She’d moved her clothing into his house.

They were man and wife.

“So how come I don’t
feel
like we’re
man and wife?” she asked out loud, heading for the bathroom, to
take a shower, start yet another day.

It was Monday. By Wednesday night, Tim would
be home, to begin a home stand against the Mets on Thursday. She’d
be home herself on Wednesday, maybe even tomorrow if that damn
computer geek at Forrester and Sons would just keep his sticky
fingers off the keyboard until she could undo the damage he’d
inflicted and get the company up and running again.