Big Girl Panties (10 page)

“Ah.” Chase read between the lines, his conclusion reached. “A new Frankenstein's monster for you, I see. It has been a while.”

“That's cold,” Logan said, feeling a bit outwitted. “You want to talk about Frankenstein's monsters? It didn't even take you a New York minute to turn a savvy businesswoman like Amanda into a total spoiled brat. Besides, I prefer to think of it more like the story of the ugly duckling. Women are all beautiful once they realize their potential and live up to it.”

“That analogy is
so
much better,” Amanda said, chiming in sarcastically, not the least bit offended by the brat reference and more intrigued than ever. “But I don't think I'm buying it.”

Logan thought about Holly's ashen face as she sat on the floor in a room full of rented medical equipment that should have been returned over a year ago. He thought about her all alone for nearly two years in an oversized house still full of her dead husband's belongings. He wasn't sure he knew how to share what happened last night with the friends he knew lived such a charmed life. He was troubled by it himself. “This one is different, guys. This one really needed a friend.”

It was plain to see the change in Logan's posture. He sounded worried. Amanda could tell right away this was not a normal Logan condition.

“Do you think she could use another one?” Amanda asked sincerely.

“Another friend? I'm not sure she's ready for the likes of you,” Logan teased her affectionately.

“None of us were,” Chase chimed in, winking at his wife.

Amanda wrinkled her nose in mock annoyance at her husband before turning back to Logan. “Look, if you say she's a recent widow, surely she could use a bit of fun. Why don't you let us give her the royal treatment at Kings Stadium for the night? You usually take in a game when the Red Sox are in town; why don't you bring her along? We'll show her a good time.”

Logan considered it for a moment. The Walkers were excellent hosts. And it could serve a dual purpose. Once Amanda met Holly, she would abandon all efforts at trying to see the situation as anything more than what it actually was. Leaving Amanda to let her imagination run wild and come to her own conclusions could end up making him miserable. Besides, Holly could use the opportunity to break free from the confines of that house for a while. “I think it's a great idea. Thanks for the offer.”

Amanda quickly turned back to Chase. “Pick a night.”

“Saturday,” Chase replied, sounding more impatient.

“Oh, and just for the record, one of the last women I dated had a PhD,” Logan added.

“More like a Ph
double
D.” Amanda couldn't resist one more dig. “And maybe after the game we can do dinner or drinks or something. What do you think, honey?”

Chase had his questions answered and had hit his limit of husbandly indulgence. He needed to pump some iron. He made his way over to the leg press, where Logan was waiting, while switching into borderline-disciplinarian mode. “Fine. Whatever. Logan, tickets will be at the will-call window. Amanda, if you don't stop talking, I'm going to drag you over a weight bench, and it won't be to spot me.” After giving her loving husband a tiny smirk, Amanda turned back to the treadmill and kicked it up to a jog. He would have to catch her first. And later on that night, she would make sure he did.

Chapter Eight

L
ogan was waiting for Holly right where he said he would be, outside the stadium entrance nearest the will-call window. He had offered to pick her up, but she told him not to bother. It gave her more time to come to grips with the fact that she was really going out, being social. She wasn't even sure she knew how to do that anymore, not that she was ever really all that good at it to begin with. And she wasn't just going to be social; she was going to be front-and-center, hanging-with-the-in-crowd social. Just the thought was overwhelming and her first instinct had been to politely refuse. But when Logan explained that the invitation was issued because he was late to his most famous client's appointment after falling asleep on her couch, she really didn't see where she had much of a choice. She had woken up the next morning to find herself covered up and alone, convinced she had dreamed the whole night, until she saw she was still wearing her sneakers and found the ice cream spoon in her sink. The memory came flooding back. She had told him nearly every single detail of her sad, pathetic life, short of the most pathetic secret of all. She hadn't married Bruce Brennan because she was deeply in love. She married him because he was the first person who asked, the only person who showed any interest in her at all, and because it enabled her to make her escape. He had been an acceptable means to an end. He was kind and considerate but quirky and a bit of a loner, much like she was. Bruce was a classic left-brained overanalyzer, supremely logical and willing to believe only what he could calculate to a successful conclusion. Even the way he proposed was more like a complex equation of vectors and variables than any heartfelt declaration of love and devotion. When she accepted, it felt like she had just completed a business transaction, but she entered into the binding agreement telling herself they were kindred spirits who would get stronger by leaning on each other. He wasn't overly emotional when he found out about her parents, calmly telling her that her past wasn't nearly as important as their future. When her parents didn't attend their wedding, he married Holly and whisked her away, never mentioning them again unless Holly did, only to remind her that what was ahead of her certainly couldn't be worse than what she'd left behind.

They stumbled awkwardly through life in the beginning but learned to trust, and she could honestly say that love did grow. Maybe not the white-hot, passionate love she read about and saw in the movies, but more of a mild-mannered, dependable coupling. Bruce conducted sex the same way he did everything else—carefully programmed. It was always in bed, always at night, and always a predictable routine that started with several quick openmouthed kisses. What followed was a pattern of synchronized touching; mounting, with a few pants from her and the occasional grunt from him; then release. An underlying sound track of porno music wouldn't have made it exciting.

But they had a steady, respectful, mutual caring that surely would have endured the test of time. However, they weren't afforded the opportunity to put that theory to the test. Instead, he withered and died before Holly's eyes, refusing to leave his care to anyone but her. She would take it to her grave that near the end of his life, she resented Bruce Brennan. Resented him for convincing her that as long as they had each other, they would never need anyone else—then leaving her, more alone than when she started. She resented him for having made her assume the role of his nurse, with all the nonstop mess and anguish that came with it. For lingering on the brink of death as long as he did after he no longer recognized her, having left her behind in the haze of a hospice-approved morphine drip weeks before. She began to blame him. That his illness had resulted in the very things she ran away from—caregiving, death, and having to clean up afterward. The only thing worse was the guilt over the resentment after he was gone.

The internal battle of grief versus guilt raged within her for countless months to follow, allowing her to come to terms with neither. The presence in her house that prevented her from selling it was his ghost, languishing and all-knowing of her inner struggle, reminding her of how she'd failed him. His spirit refused to help her because it knew the truth.

Logan had called her amazing the night he came to her house to save her from eating herself into a coma. Holly wondered just how amazing Logan Montgomery would think she was if he knew those cold hard facts. He would likely tell her that she had received the ultimate payback for consenting to marry a man under false pretenses and then emotionally deserting him in his final hours. And he'd be right. Karma had bitten her on her big fat ass. She swallowed the tears of self-pity that threatened and shook herself as she walked through the Kings Stadium parking lot.

Holly slowed her pace when she caught sight of him, taking a minute to privately watch him from afar. Logan was wearing carpenter-style jean shorts and a blindingly white hoodie with what she assumed was a Kings T-shirt underneath, and spotless white sneakers to match. Of course he wasn't wearing a cap, she mused. It would be unheard of for him to muss up his hair. All in all, he reminded her more of an Abercrombie and Fitch model than a guy going to a ball game.
How the hell does he do it?
she wondered.
How hell does he manage to always look like a million bucks, no matter how casually he's dressed?
The singular adjective that kept popping into Holly's mind was “beautiful.” Logan was actually beautiful while remaining wholly masculine.

He was standing on the sidewalk, casually playing with his BlackBerry, the late-afternoon sun glinting off his shiny thick hair. While his head was down, the outline of his profile was nothing short of incredible, with his straight nose and square chin. Holly counted no less than five women who openly gaped as they neared him, several unable to resist looking back after they passed in the hopes he would look up. Several men did, too. Logan was oblivious to it all and kept his attention on his phone, with the occasional scout-around to see if she was coming. When he spied her, he grinned, and with one more push of a button on his phone, he stuck it into one of his pockets. It was showtime.

“I can't believe I'm doing this.” She smiled up at him as she approached.

“Come on, let's go have some fun,” he replied, grinning back. “I already picked up the tickets.”

They casually made their way through the stadium's front gates and began weaving through the maze of fans toward the field level. The Walkers had purchased both an indoor and an outdoor box, so that when their families came to watch, they didn't have to worry about the weather. Chase also enjoyed hosting the families of some of the special-needs children from his favorite charities. Amanda disliked sitting in the seats designated for the players' wives or girlfriends. When they were dating, Chase was sure she was doing it just to tick him off, until he found out she was also a not-so-secret Bleacher Creature and had two foul balls to prove it. Although she alluded to it, he could never get her to confirm if one of those balls was hit by him. She rarely sat upstairs in the luxury suite, and since it was a beautifully cool midsummer evening, Logan wasn't surprised to find that the tickets waiting for him were ten rows up from the first-base line.

Once the surprise at seeing Holly wore off, Amanda liked her immediately. Logan had been right when he said Holly wasn't his type, and that was okay with her. Amanda had gotten used to trying to make conversation with Logan's dates. They were always long, tall drinks of water, phony high-maintenance types who tried too hard to ingratiate themselves to Amanda. They giggled too much, wore too little, and bragged too often. And blond—they were nearly always blondes.

Holly wore almost no makeup, save a little mascara and lip balm. Her dark red hair was pulled back with a headband and she wore jeans with a cotton button-down shirt and loafers. It was painfully obvious Holly hadn't bothered to buy any new clothes since her now forty-five-pound weight loss, so it was hard to discern the details of her shape with her shirt practically swallowing her. Amanda felt like jumping for joy. Surely it meant something that this woman had entered Logan's life.

It took Holly a while to get comfortable with Amanda. After all, Amanda was a pseudocelebrity, and her husband was a bona fide one. Amanda confirmed the superstar wouldn't be meeting up with them until after the game. That was a good thing. It would give Holly some time to get acclimated to the situation. Luckily Amanda was laid-back and cheerful, and instead of inundating Holly with questions, she opted for teaching Holly all about baseball. Holly already knew the basics but took advantage of the opportunity to sit back and let Amanda do all the talking. Amanda was down-to-earth, without any of the pretentiousness Holly had been afraid she might encounter. She refrained from name-dropping and ignored the fact that half the people in the stadium were wearing her last name on the backs of their jerseys and T-shirts. The only indication of who Amanda really was came right before her husband was introduced and ran onto the field. Seated between Amanda and Logan, Holly noticed Amanda suddenly stop her chatter, and with a shy smile, she turned her attention to the field. And then they announced his name and the nearly packed stadium broke out into a deafening roar.

Seeing Chase Walker in person for the first time, there were two things that instantly came to Holly's mind. One: that Chase looked like an adorable little boy, with eyes so piercing and bright, she could see them clearly from her seat. It was impossible not to see them when the first thing he did after high-fiving his fellow Kings players and taking his place was to look in the direction of his wife and smile at her. Two: he was a giant, dwarfing most of the men who stood in line with him as the introductions continued. He was muscle on muscle, with a barrel chest and stocky thighs that reminded her of her own, only his didn't jiggle when he ran. It was an intriguing combination, and Holly found it impossible to look away from him. He was an imposing figure to say the least, even with his seemingly perpetual easygoing smile. As soon as “The Star-Spangled Banner” was over and the teams went into their respective dugouts, Amanda went back to telling Holly all the ins and outs of the game. Between them, they had a great time watching, even keeping up and filling out the scorecard—all but ignoring Logan, which seemed fine by him. They stopped keeping the book when it became apparent that the Kings were going to lose, even though Chase didn't have a bad outing. When it was over, the three of them waited in the clubhouse for Chase to join them, and he appeared a half hour later. The little boy was gone, replaced by a sandy-haired, perfectly groomed, exceptionally handsome gentleman.

Immediately after kissing his wife and greeting Logan, Chase extended his monstrous and multiskilled hand to Holly and thanked her for coming. He apologized for not making her first Kings experience a winning one. Luckily, he was pulled away by a reporter and Holly was spared having to respond.

When Chase returned several minutes later, Amanda suggested they go out for a bite to eat, someplace quieter, away from the baseball crowd.

Chase instantly admitted he was starving.

They ended up at a local sushi bar, and Holly actually had a good time, once she got past the intimidation of meeting the Golden Boy and the flood of attention that followed them as soon as he was recognized. And to Chase's credit, he made sure she did get past it, showing a genuine interest in her. He knew Toronto, courtesy of the countless road trips the Kings took there, and asked Holly to expand on some of the things he knew about her old hometown. He even complimented the color of her hair, referring to it exotically as “cinnamon” and making her blush.

This didn't go unnoticed by Logan. He felt a pang of something he refused to label as jealousy, which only made him more uneasy. There was just no need for it, no matter how much blushing Holly did. Chase had always been a notorious charmer and had been making women blush since the day Logan met him, including most of Logan's previous girlfriends. It also was no secret that Walker preferred his women with meat on their bones. But he was only interested in his wife's bones, and despite the charisma he couldn't turn off, he had no desire to stray. Besides, Logan had no stake in Holly, other than a professional one. In the end, Logan decided what he was feeling wasn't jealousy at all, but indigestion from a hot dog he consumed during the third inning.

The more relaxed Holly got, the chattier she became. Conversation flowed freely and heated up when Amanda and Holly took the opportunity to gang up on Logan about what a rigid borderline-dictator he was on the job.

“Oh my gosh,” Amanda giggled, practically bouncing up and down in her chair with energy. “Do you ever check out his face while he counts your reps? So intense and serious. He looks like a math professor!”

“It's called focus, Amanda. You should try it sometime,” Logan shot back.

Holly chimed in. “Amanda, how about when you're just finishing a set, and he sort of yells, ‘You got this!'? He usually does it when I'm on an incline bench doing a chest press with a forty-pound barbell over my head. Thank God he's spotting, 'cause it's so startling I almost drop the weight onto my throat.”

“
Et tu,
Brute?” Logan sighed at Holly, smiling and shaking his head.

Amanda continued. “Ever tell him something hurts? After he calls you a wimp, he makes sure every exercise incorporates just the part of the body you had the nerve to complain about.”

“Holly never complains. That distinction is entirely yours, Mrs. Walker,” Logan replied. “And quite frankly, even I'm not sure how to work around the body part called ‘everything.' ”

“I don't know what either one of you is talking about. Dude is a total punk. After I'm done working out with him, I feel like I've just taken a nap,” Chase commented drily, in macho loyalty.