Center Stage: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 8) (7 page)

“Did what?”

“Ditched CRT.”

“Congratulations.” And he’d almost leaned over and kissed her—right then, right there. But she’d been clicking her seatbelt closed, ready to head off on another adventure, so he reminded himself that she was one hundred percent off limits, and he kicked the car into gear.

The silence was comfortable until they hit the highway. Then, she leaned forward, peering into the darkness. “You know what I want?” she asked.

“A starring role in a Broadway play.”

Her laugh was easy. “I’ll work up to that one. No, I want something to eat. I’m starving. I think it must be something about this car, something about driving fast.”

It was his turn to laugh, even as he glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “I don’t think we’ll find a restaurant that’s still serving.”

“That’s okay. Junk food from a gas station will be perfect. It’s not like I need to squeeze this body into some ridiculous animal costume any more, right?”

As far as he was concerned, she could squeeze her body— He cut off the thought before he could make a mistake, before he could say anything out loud. “Your wish is my command,” he said instead, and he negotiated the off-ramp with the type of care he’d give to making a pit-stop in the Indy 500.

When he pulled up next to a gleaming pump, he asked, “So? What do you want?”

“Surprise me,” she said.

And there was that laugh again, that sexy laugh that seemed to tug down his zipper and slip inside his boxers. He unlatched his seatbelt and let it slither back across his shoulder, and the whole time it took him to walk into the station he told himself not to be an asshole.

Inside, he stared at the possibilities. What the hell did she want to eat? No sane woman would consider one of the hot dogs that rolled on the bars by the cash register. Ditto, the microwave pizza and anything with burrito in its name.

In the end, he grabbed a couple of packets of neon-orange peanut butter crackers. He added a bag of corn chips and half a dozen candy bars, then took a couple of Cokes from the cooler. There had to be something she’d eat in all that crap.

Standing at the register, he eyed the display of Trojans. “Anything else?” the clerk asked, drowning him in waves of nicotine breath.

He shook his head. The last thing Lindsey needed was another guy trying to get into her pants. Not tonight. Not after yesterday’s disaster at the church. Not with Zach in the background, ready to swoop down like some avenging angel. He picked up the paper bag and his change and headed back to the car.

He was halfway around the back end when he realized Lindsey was sitting in the driver’s seat. She held her hand out the open window, and his gut tightened as he saw the perfect red teardrops of her manicure. “Keys, please,” she said.

“You planned this all along,” he said.

She ran her right hand over the dashboard as she looked up at him through her eyelashes. “Can you blame me?” she purred.

Shit. He didn’t like handing his keys over to someone else. Especially not someone who had nearly gotten herself T-boned by a minivan the night before.

But that was then. This was now. Tonight, she wasn’t running away from the church where she’d been jilted. She looked calm, relaxed, and he had to figure she’d gotten some sleep the night before.

Hell, he was the one who’d somehow appointed himself the one-man Bridal Recovery Team. He’d agreed to head out to Chester Beach without a second’s hesitation, even though he was supposed to be getting the final treatments on his hamstring tomorrow, even though he should sit in the dugout with the team and watch the guys thrash Atlanta.

But he could see a trainer on the Satellites staff; he’d already figured that out. And heading to Chester Beach gave him a chance to check up on Dad, to live up to the promise he’d made his mother. Hell, Lindsey had made the decision on her own; he was only keeping an eye on her, exactly the way Ormond would want him to.

Christ, he was a damned good liar.

He swung around to the passenger side. If Lindsey showed any lack of judgment behind the wheel, if she slipped up in any way whatsoever, he’d have her pull over to the shoulder in a heartbeat. Hell, it was only a two-hour trip to Chester Beach. What could happen in two hours?

He passed her the snacks once he’d closed his car door. Peeking inside the bag, she looked like a kid with a Christmas stocking, and she squealed about the peanut butter crackers like they were caviar on toast. She gulped down three before she looked up at him, orange crumbs caught in the corner of her mouth.

“Want some?” she asked, delicately licking away the evidence with the tip of her tongue.

He shook his head, not trusting himself to deliver a civil reply. Instead, he grabbed for one of the Cokes, drank a quarter of it and barely resisted the urge to press the cold bottle against the pulse point in his wrist.

What the hell was he doing? This was Lindsey
Ormond
, for God’s sake.

Time to retrench. He had to get Lindsey to Chester Beach. Get her tucked away safely in the guest bed at Dad’s place. Walk down to the ocean with her to see the sun rise, make this crazy Senior Skip Day a reality. Take her out for cotton candy and French fries on the boardwalk in the afternoon, then drive her back and leave her with her sisters. Maybe even leave her with Zach.

That’s what friends did.

He started reciting the litany again: Chester Beach, guest bed, French fries, home. He hadn’t cleared the word
bed
, though, when Lindsey cleared her throat. He recognized a pointed question when he heard one. “What?” he asked.

“Keys?”

Right. He handed them over, telling himself this was all going to work out just fine. Chester. Beach. Guest. Bed.

She started the ignition, and the Ferrari’s powerful engine thrummed beneath them, ready to tear up the road. “Okay?” she asked.

And for just one second, he saw a question in her eyes. She wasn’t a Bad Girl Bitch, intent on driving him nuts with her sexy smile and her straight-to-his-cock teasing.

For just that moment, she was his teammate’s baby sister. She was a wounded girl, who’d been hurt by some guy she’d trusted, who’d been embarrassed and torn apart in front of the people she wanted most to impress. She was scared. She was unsure. She was Lindsey.

So he made himself smile. He locked his seatbelt into place, and he grabbed the handhold above his door. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She waited until they were back on the freeway before she floored it.

~~~

Lindsey concentrated on the road in front of her. She knew she should be talking—that’s what polite people did on long car rides. She should at least tell Ryan to tune in a radio station, to blast whatever music he liked.

At least she should dig for one of the candy bars, to show her appreciation for his thoughtfulness.

But she didn’t do any of those things. Instead, she focused on the rumble of the car’s huge engine. She felt the vibrations in her thighs, measured them with each notch of her spine. She felt the sheer energy throbbing through her foot on the gas pedal, and she reveled in the power as she edged the Ferrari ten miles above the speed limit. Twenty. Thirty.

She was astonished when she saw the exit for Chester Beach. They couldn’t have driven across half of North Carolina, not in such a short time. But they had, of course. They had, because she’d floored the car. They had, because she’d ignored the rules, ignored the speed limit.

Ryan gave her directions once they were off the freeway. It was all simple enough—a handful of turns marked by an ice cream parlor on one corner, a miniature golf place on another. Everything in Chester Beach was shut up for the night, lights turned off, parking lots empty.

The last turn took her onto the cement apron of a driveway. She shifted the car into first and turned off the engine.

She should be exhausted—one night of sound sleep was hardly enough to make up for the craziness of the week before her would-be wedding. But the long drive had given her a fresh wave of energy. Staring at the road and concentrating on the tremendous power of the vehicle had boiled down all of her nerves. She felt like she was the same old Lindsey Ormond she’d always been, but concentrated, made a hundred times more pure.

She climbed out of the car.

The first thing she noticed was the scent, carried on a steady breeze from her left. It was sharp with salt, the pure, fresh smell of the sea. She caught her breath, the better to hold the aroma at the back of her throat, and then she could hear the ocean waves, soft and steady, like a murmuring giant.

She braced her palms on the roof of the car as she looked across to Ryan. “How far are we from the beach?”

“Two blocks.”

She was stepping onto the sandy asphalt of the street before she looked back over her shoulder. “Come on!”

“Lindsey,” he said, and he would have made a perfect actor because his voice conveyed urgency, even though he wasn’t speaking above a whisper. “It’s after two. Let’s go inside, and I’ll get you a beer. We can walk on the beach in the morning.”

She raised her chin to look up at the full moon, which was suspended halfway to the horizon. “The moon won’t be out in the morning,” she said. And then, just like they’d reached some decision, she headed down the road.

She’d known he would follow her—if only because she’d slipped his keys into her front pocket. She wasn’t surprised when he fell in at her side, walking closest to the road, guarding her from the would-be threat if any car came down the deserted street. Ryan was shaping up to be a pretty good knight in shining armor.

Not that she was some sort of princess, deserving to be rescued.

Princesses were good girls. They stayed in their castle chambers, combing out their golden hair. They edged their perfect feet into their flawless slippers, and they danced at balls until midnight, laughing and joyous and light.

Screw that. Lindsey’s hair was a tangled mess, and she’d traded in yesterday’s hideous blister-rubbing wedding shoes for summer sandals. Besides, she’d never been a fan of dancing, even when she’d been a child, standing on top of Zach’s toes, letting her big brother teach her the one-two-three steps of a waltz.

A row of buildings blocked the end of the street. Ryan led her to the right, through a narrow passage between a French fry hut and a pinball arcade. He hauled himself up one tall step to a boardwalk that gleamed silver in the moonlight, and then he turned around to offer her a hand. She made the leap herself, though, grunting only a little as she joined him on the wooden path.

The town of Chester Beach was closed up for the night. The nearby shops were dark, and chairs were stacked beside rugged metal tables. She turned on her heel and began to walk away from the sleepy buildings.

Ryan fell in beside her. If he thought she was nuts, he didn’t say so. He didn’t say anything at all, just shoved his hands in his pockets and matched her pace easily, even when she hopped off the boardwalk and started walking through the sand toward the ocean.

She only got a few steps when her feet slipped inside her sandals. Her ankle twisted hard against the straps, but before she could fall, Ryan’s fingers closed over her elbow. His grasp was firm, steady. “Easy,” he crooned. He shifted his fingers as soon as she was stable, letting his palm rest against her forearm.

Her breath hitched, but she told herself she was being an idiot. So what, if she’d fallen? She would have looked stupid, but Ryan had a pretty good idea that she wasn’t some perfect cheerleader, the type of girl whose makeup was always flawless and whose life never slipped out of control. Hell, he probably wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d fallen on her butt and made sweeping sand angels with her arms and legs. So what if she lacked dignity? She hadn’t exactly been the queen of grandeur for the last forty-eight hours.

Anxious to break the tension, to say something to take his mind off her clumsiness, Lindsey asked, “What’s that?” She nodded toward a structure looming down the beach.

“A fishing pier. During the day, there are vendors on top, with balloons and kites and stuff for kids. There are benches at the end, where some guys sit for hours, telling lies about the fish that got away.”

She laughed, pretty sure he’d told some whoppers in his day. His hand was still warm on her arm. Something about his steady touch, though, made her feel off balance, like she was slipping through the sand, tumbling toward the soft waves that were breaking on the beach below them. Her heart fluttered like it was fighting for balance too, and she gave herself a stern admonition to get walking, to stop talking.

She focused on the pull of her thighs as she lengthened her stride on the shifting sand. She leaned her head forward, narrowing her eyes just a little to focus on the hulking pier beneath the moonlight. She stretched out her fingers, ordering some of her tension to flow away, to leave her forever.

It felt good to use her body, to shake away the last of the tingling vibration from the Ferrari’s thudding power. It felt good to gulp down deep breaths of ocean air, cool and sharp with salt. It felt good to see Ryan out of the corner of her eye, one pace behind her, two steps closer to the water, steady and quiet as they closed the distance to the pier. It felt good to have her life—even this little bit of it, even the next single hour of it—predictable and easy and under control, even if she’d broken the rules to get here.

~~~

Lindsey Ormond didn’t have the first clue what she was doing to him. She didn’t realize that every time she took one of those deep, determined breaths, her shirt stretched tight across her chest. She didn’t know that the moonlight emphasized the faded lines of her jeans, the curve of her tight ass as she marched down the beach.

She didn’t know that he was about one second away from jumping her, right then and there, from pulling her down to the sand and rolling with her, edging his knee between her thighs and supporting his own weight on his forearms as he bent over her and tested her full lips, tracing them with the tip of his tongue.

Yeah. Right. And then he’d head back to Raleigh and stand up straight against his locker, bracing his abs to take the pounding Zach would give him. Maybe he’d be lucky—get off with only a few broken ribs.