Crush (20 page)

Miranda waited for Rex and Meg to disappear before she turned to Hodge. “Krakow’s our union rep,” she said urgently. “I’ll go get him, and I’m sure you can get that leave stricken.”

Hodge laughed, shocking Miranda. Hodge rarely smiled, let alone chuckled, and this turn of events hardly warranted laughter. Miranda reconsidered her position when Hodge explained why he wouldn’t fight the leave.

“This is a prime example of how stupid Rex is,” he said. “As of tomorrow, I’m on personal leave anyway. I’m finally taking my kids to Disney World, before they get too old to enjoy it. I put in for leave three months ago.”

“But what about your record? Rex can still put the leave in your personnel file.”

“Randy, you should know by now that there only three reasons people leave the
Herald-Star
,” Hodge said.

“They quit, they retire, or they die on the newsroom floor,” Miranda said.

“You got it, kiddo.”

“Thanks for sticking up for me. I really do appreciate it.”

“I just want you to be happy, kid,” Hodge said. “If I can piss Rex and Meg off in the bargain, then I’ll just consider that a bonus.”

Hodge winked, sending Miranda on her way with the knowledge that she had at least one powerful ally at the
Herald-Star
.

* * *

Miranda rubbed her mittened hands together, trying to keep her fingers warm in the freezing ballpark as she paced before the first row of seats near the gangway leading to the home team’s locker room. Fenway Park had been her second home at one point. It was there she had first met Jordan, and where she had lived out her humiliation at his betrayal. Hodge had offered to put her on the professional hockey beat, but she had insisted on going about her usual routine. Hockey would have been a nice change of pace, but the last thing she had wanted was for Jordan to think that he had gotten the best of her.

Even though she hated the reason behind it, she was glad to be back on baseball. It was one of her favorite sports, truth be told, and she had missed it.

Miranda was recalling some of the best games she’d seen in Fenway Park when Jordan appeared and climbed up to her row of seats.

“You’re twenty minutes late,” she said by way of greeting.

“I hit some traffic.” His brown cheeks were ruddy with the chill December air. “I didn’t know that our meeting spot had been changed until I was already at Le Fin checking my messages.”

“Great,” she said absently. She lifted her backpack from one of the seats and led the way to the press room inside the stadium. Once there, Jordan took a seat opposite her at a small white table. Miranda took a pen, a reporter’s notebook and a microcassette recorder from her bag. She set the recorder in the middle of the table while Jordan took off his wool coat. Instead of his usual white shirt and khakis, he wore pleated wool slacks and an understated cashmere sweater.

“Why are you all gussied up?” Miranda asked suspiciously.

“Where’s the photographer? I was told that I’d be shot today.”

“I wish,” Miranda mumbled.

“Don’t be mad, Andy. This will be a lot better for both of us if we just keep it friendly.”

“My thoughts exactly.” She hit the start button on her recorder and uncapped her pen. “Jordan, you had the best batting average and the highest slugging percentage on the team last season, and you’ve asked to be compensated for your achievement. What makes you think you deserve more than what your original contract entitles you to?”

“I deserve more because I’ve shown that I’m worth more.” His charming smile was designed to blunt his conceit, but Miranda knew him well enough to know that he meant what he said. “If you looked at all of my numbers, you’d see that I had a career season.”

“I’m aware of your stats. What I’d like to know is how much of your success you can attribute to the new coaching staff, and whether you think the team is stronger since Marty Grobin, whom you described as ‘disagreeable, flaky and a whiny cry-baby,’ was traded.”

“Wow.” Jordan stroked his chin. “I said all that about Marty?”

“Yes. Right before you attacked him in the locker room last season after that New York game.”

“I punched him because he made a pass at you,” Jordan argued.

“I was handling it just fine before you pulled your dramatic He-Man crap,” she snapped. “We weren’t together anymore at that point anyway, so what did you care if Marty Grobin wanted to take me to dinner?”

Jordan stared at her. “Seeing Marty with you like that made me crazy. Almost as crazy as seeing you with Lucas Fletcher.”

Miranda stopped the tape. “Do you hear yourself? You’re the one who threw
me
away, remember? You’re the one who shacked up in a hotel room with not one but
two
naked women.” The memory no longer had the power to hurt her it once had, but Jordan’s next words stung her all the way through to her heart.

“You acted like you didn’t care if I strayed or stayed,” he said. “There’s so much temptation out on the road. Even guys with wills of iron give in once in awhile. What was I supposed to do? You never acted like you cared what I did while we were apart.”

Her throat felt like it was closing. “That’s your excuse for what you did? That it was
my
fault because I wasn’t a clinging vine who needed to call you every minute of every day just to make sure that you weren’t sleeping with some woman you picked up at a game? I trusted you, Jordan, and you knew perfectly well how I felt about you.”

“Actually, I didn’t,” he insisted. “You never said it. Not one single time. You never gave me your heart, Miranda.”

“Funny how it got broken, just the same.”

He rubbed his knuckles along the creases in his pants. “You never looked at me the way you look at Lucas Fletcher.”

“I didn’t come here to rehash the past.” She steered the conversation back to safer waters. “I need fifty-five lines by six o’clock, so could you please just answer my questions?”

He took her hand, startling her with his quickness. “I’m sorry, Andy. I humiliated you and showed a really nasty part of myself that night in St. Louis. There have been so many times that I’ve wanted to take that night back and do right by you. But I can’t go back in time. All I can do is look forward, and hope that there might be room for me in your future.”

His earnest delivery touched her, but she wanted to get the interview back on track. “Let go of my hand,” she said softly.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, and I’m not trying to interfere with your thing with Lucas,” he went on. “I just want you to know that I’m sorry. And that I really, really miss you.” His reluctance showed as he released her hand and pressed the start button on the recorder. “Now, about the Marty Grobin trade…”

* * *

Miranda sat alone at a wide, circular table at Chikakó, the Brazilian restaurant Calista and Alec had chosen for the Christmas Eve Penney-Henderson engagement dinner party. She watched her sister, who was breathtaking in a tight, ice-blue cashmere dress that made her look like Miss Universe. She set her right elbow on the table and half-heartedly picked at the pork cracklings on a plate of
mandioca
. She had spent her childhood and most of her adolescent years envying Calista’s incredible beauty. Now, seeing her on the down slope to thirty, she envied her sister all over again.

Calista looked so happy as she worked the room with Alec, chatting and laughing with various members of the Penney and Henderson families and flirting in Portuguese with Roberto Rosada, Chickakó’s owner. Alec fawned over his bride-to-be as though she were his fondest dream made real. He was the rare combination of a great athlete and a great man. He was never the most dazzling player on the field—that was Jordan’s specialty, the flashy combination of luck and aggression that made the highlight reels. But Alec was a strong, solid player. Where Jordan would tally three homers in one game after a two-week scoring drought, Alec would consistently score runners with solid singles and doubles. Alec had gone pro straight out of the University of Georgia, but he had planned for life after the pros with a double major in business and finance. With his ebony skin, tall, muscular build and dazzling black eyes, Miranda had no doubt that Alec and Calista would make beautiful children. Alec would be a wonderful husband and father, and Calista deserved nothing less.

Miranda stared vacantly at the centerpiece, an ice bowl with slices of fresh lemons, limes, coconut and sweet pea suspended in it. “
I
deserve nothing less,” she muttered, startling herself out of her reverie with a desire that she’d never meant to acknowledge. She glanced around self-consciously, hoping that no one heard her. Thankfully, the Penneys and Hendersons were having too much fun to notice her talking to herself.

Calista and Alec had invited their respective families to Boston for this big dinner party to give them a chance to meet. Miranda’s parents were only children and her grandparents were deceased, so the Penney clan consisted of four. Since Alec’s family lived in Dorchester and was ten times the size of Calista’s, Boston had won out over Silver Spring as the site for both the dinner party and the June wedding. And, as Calista had pointedly told Miranda, “If we have the dinner party in Boston, you won’t have any excuse to get out of spending Christmas with your family.”

Miranda sighed, missing Lucas all over again. The party would have been so much more fun with him there, and she would have loved introducing him to the family recipes Roberto had prepared at Calista’s request. Aña Penney hailed from Bahia, a region known for its neo-African cuisine, and Roberto had done an excellent job turning out dishes such as
frango a passarinho
, the fried, sliced chicken that had been a Sunday night staple in the Penney household. Lucas liked bananas, and Miranda was sure that he would have enjoyed
banana frita
, the fried plantains.

Miranda’s favorite dishes were
lombo à mineira
, grilled pork loin with sautéed collard greens, and
tutu de feijão
, a mix of thick, sticky cassava paste flavored with smoked sausage, beans, scallions and egg. Not terribly impressive on their own, they made Miranda’s taste buds dance when served over rice flavored with
dendi
oil. She was sure that Lucas would have savored the meal as well as the chance to meet her mother and sister.

She had wanted to visit him in Australia, but when she’d told him about Calista’s dinner party, he’d convinced her to stay in Boston by telling her that it was the “sisterly” thing to do. And she was doing it very well, if being sisterly meant sitting alone at the table while the plates were being cleared away to make room for the cornmeal pudding and caramel custard.

Miranda caught sight of Alec’s parents, who smiled and talked as they danced to music dominated by a six-piece percussion ensemble that specialized in
batacuda
, the African influenced rhythms of Brazilian samba. Alec’s parents were natives of Jamaica. They had been married for thirty years, and as they danced, Mr. Henderson looked at his wife as though she were still the fresh-faced teenager who’d been his first girlfriend.

Miranda found her own parents sitting near the open bar. Aña wore a red cocktail dress that complemented her petite figure. Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes as she looked at her husband, Clayton, who had his high voltage smile aimed at one of the pretty waitresses. If she looked at her father with an objective eye, Miranda knew that she would have seen a well-built, handsome man who was aging remarkably well. Silver threaded the black hair at his temples, and deep laugh lines creased the nut-brown skin at the corners of his hazel eyes, but Clayton Penney still had the star quality that had made him such a popular baseball player.

Beyond that, Miranda couldn’t view her father objectively. She knew too well what he was.

She knocked back the remaining drops of the mango martini she had ordered earlier. By the time she was slamming the glass back down on the table, she wasn’t alone anymore.

“Hey,” Calista said, taking a chair near Miranda.

“Hey what?” she grumbled.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since I hit Boston.” Calista gave her a crooked smile. “It’s a good thing the tabloids keep up with you, or I might never have known that Lucas Fletcher is practically my brother-in-law.”

“I’ve been busy with work and stuff,” Miranda said glumly.

“By ‘stuff’ you mean Lucas?” Calista persisted.

“Why do Alec’s brothers keep staring at me like that?”

Calista looked over her shoulder. “Like what?”

The Henderson brothers stood in a huddle at the bar. Chas was the tallest and youngest, and, like Alec, he had their father’s merry black eyes and mahogany skin. Chas kept peering over his shoulder in Miranda’s direction. Tucker, the oldest, repeatedly glanced at her over the tops of his glasses. Tucker had a slightly slimmer build, square jaw, and his mother’s dark cocoa complexion. The looks the handsome Henderson brothers gave Miranda didn’t bother her as much as the enigmatic little grins they kept flashing at her.

“Maybe they want you to get them tickets to Lucas’s next concert,” Calista joked, earning a scowl from Miranda. “What’s the matter? I was only kidding.”

“Is that all people see when they look at me?” Miranda whispered, leaning in toward her sister. “Lucas Fletcher’s girlfriend?”

“They see a smart, beautiful woman who’s been hiding out at this table all night. Is there something on your mind? Do you want to talk?”

“This is your big family powwow,” Miranda said. “You should be mingling with your future mother-, father-, sister-, brothers-, aunts-, uncles- and cousins-in-law.”

“Unlike you, the Hendersons aren’t family. Yet.” Calista scooted her chair closer to Miranda’s and elegantly crossed one knee over the other. “How are things with Lucas?”

A surge of unfamiliar emotion calmed Miranda. “Good,” she smiled. “Surprisingly good. We’re spending New Year’s in Barnsley Gardens.”

“Is that in Wales?”

A blush darkened Miranda’s cheeks. “It’s in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia. It’s sort of a resort. Julia Barnsley, the daughter of the man who built the place, supposedly originated the ‘With God as my witness, I will never go hungry again’ line that Margaret Mitchell used in
Gone With The Wind
.”