Restless Heart (4 page)

“Waitress!”

Tuned in only to the voices in her own head, Destiny kept right on walking and wrestling with her conscience.

Right. That’s why you can’t sit around waiting for someone else—someone like Billy Jackson—to make things happen.
You
have to make it happen.

Surely once her voice filled the room everyone would forget about eating and drinking. And Ralph would be grateful that she stepped in for his magnificent little Mandy who still hadn’t graced the stage with her presence. Right?

Undaunted by her own better judgment, Destiny moved on toward the stage, pulled by some invisible music magnet. Her heart thumped harder when she reached the first step and suddenly her heels were glued to the floor.

Feeling very alone in the crowded room, she looked again at the mike and the tall oak stool beside it. Then her gaze fell on the guitar propped in the corner. It wasn’t hers . . . but it would do.

If only Cooper were here to dare her . . .

“Hey, just what do you think you’re doing?” Mandy Mason shoved past her with a loud huff.

Destiny staggered backward and felt herself falling . . .

But instead of hitting the floor she landed on something human.

“Uh, sorry, but this seat is taken,” a familiar male voice said low in her ear as a pair of strong arms wrapped around her waist.

F
or four years, Destiny had managed to pick herself up and get herself past every little mishap life had thrown her way.

But she might have just reached her breaking point.

Seth Caldwell.

In Nashville.

At a glance, she concluded that he somehow looked exactly the same, right down to the familiar red baseball cap with a scripted letter W. Then she allowed herself to take in his rugged features at close range and saw that while his warm brown eyes and easy grin remained just as she remembered, Seth had matured from a cute high school boy to a hard-bodied man. His once shaggy brown hair that had given his mother fits was neatly trimmed close to his head from what she could see beneath the cap. Recalling how proud he’d been of the appearance of scraggly facial hair, she noted that Seth’s jaw was now shaded with a five-o’clock shadow, giving him a dangerously sexy edge that made her heart race.

She opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing here, but one of the young ballplayers sitting at his table spoke up before she could.

“Well, snap, Coach, why can’t something like that happen to me?”

“Face it, Brett,” said one of the others, “you’re not that great a catcher. Didn’t you figure that out back there in the bottom of the eleventh?”

“I keep telling you, the sun was in my eyes, Chase!”

“Look,” Seth put in, “I can’t help it if I have pretty women falling all over me. Doggone curse follows me everywhere.”

He added a long sigh that felt deliciously warm on the back of Destiny’s neck, and it was all she could do to suppress a long sigh of her own.

Pretty—Seth had called her pretty.

She was going to stand up any minute now . . . really.

“Guys,” he said, his arms still around her, “this is Destiny.”

“Sure is,” Chase said. “I mean, when someone drops right into your lap like that—”

“No,” Destiny protested, hoping her voice wouldn’t betray her breathlessness, “that’s not what he means. It’s my
name
. My
name
is Destiny. Although, really, of all the laps to fall in . . .” She reluctantly pushed herself to her feet. “How come you didn’t tell me you were going to be in town?”

“
I
sure would have told her,” one of the guys quipped, but his grin faded when Seth gave him a look.

“I was going to look you up later,” he told Destiny, “but suddenly there you were in my lap.”

“Yeah, I’m nice that way. Saved you the trouble. So . . .” She gestured at the uniformed players gathered around the table. “I didn’t even know you were coaching.”

Seth toyed with his napkin. “I guess we’ve been out of touch lately.”

“Guess so.”

They both knew why. Her parents weren’t the only ones who didn’t agree with her decision to leave Wilmot for Nashville.

“Why,” Seth had asked her on that long-ago summer night before they parted ways for the last time, “can’t you just work on your singing skills while you’re in college?”

“Because I finally know what I want,” Destiny told him.

“What happens when things go wrong? And they will. Things will get really trying and you’ll wish you had something to fall back on.”

“No, I won’t. Not me. I’m not taking the easy way out.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You have to make things happen, Seth, not sit back and wait for them to happen.”

“Things happen if they’re meant to, no matter what.”

“I don’t believe that. I think you make your own luck and seal your own fate. So I need to go after this full throttle, or not at all. It’s how I do things. Don’t you get that?”

No, he didn’t. Didn’t get
her
.

That hurt. So badly that she left town the next morning without stopping over to say good-bye.

In all the years of their friendship, she’d always been able to count on him. Even when no one else seemed to lend moral support, Seth always had—until he turned against her, along with the rest of the world, when she set out to realize her dream.

Then again, maybe she didn’t get
him
, either. After all, she didn’t see why, after going away to college and getting out into the world, he’d ever want to return to his small-town roots.

Hadn’t he once dreamed of becoming a major-league baseball player?

“I changed my mind,” he’d said simply, when she’d reminded him.

You mean you gave up before you ever had the chance,
she wanted to say.
You were so afraid of failing that you wouldn’t even try.

Oh well. They were obviously two very different people headed in opposite directions.

“I’m teaching American History and Political Science at Wilmot,” he told her now, “and I just took over coaching this summer when Dean Reynolds retired.”

“That’s great. Are you living with your parents, then?”

“I was, until February. That’s when they sold the house and moved to Florida.”

She wondered why no one back home had told her any of that.

Once in a while, her sister mentioned Seth in passing, but Destiny wouldn’t ask her to elaborate, and Grace wouldn’t think to. She considered Seth a brother figure, just as Destiny once had.

“So where are you living now?” Destiny shifted her weight. She’d been right; her feet were killing her already.

“In a crappy rental apartment over by the interstate. But only until I can find a place of my own. I’ve been house hunting.”

“You’re going to buy a
house
?”

“No, I said, ‘buy a house,’ not ‘eat a mouse.’ ”

“That’s what
I
said.”

“Really? Because you were looking at me like you thought I said I was going to eat a mouse, or do something even more insane.”

Oops. “It’s not that buying a house is
insane
,” she clarified. “It’s just that . . .”

“Don’t you think,” she asked, treading carefully, “you’re kind of young to be doing something so . . . permanent?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Someone once told me that if you know what you want, you should go after it full throttle. And I know what I want.”

Ouch
. Time to change the subject.

“What on earth are you doing here in Nashville?” she asked Seth.

“We got into a tournament out in Brentwood as a last-minute replacement for another school that had to drop out. We just came from the first game.”

“Did you win?”

“Barely. Went into extra innings and lost our first baseman to a knee injury.”

“Poor kid.”

“Yeah. He might be out for the rest of the season.”

“That stinks. But, hey, you guys won. That’s what counts, right?”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I didn’t mean at the expense of one of your players,” she said hastily. “Just . . . oh, you know what I mean.”

Winning—coming out on top. It was what Destiny had been working toward ever since she’d left Wilmot, and she wouldn’t be content until she’d succeeded. Seeing Seth Caldwell not only reminded her of how far she’d come, but of how far she had yet to go.

She cleared her throat, avoiding Seth’s probing gaze. “Well, I’ve got to get to my tables. Looks like I’ve got some thirsty customers. It was good seeing you, Seth. Guys, good luck with your tournament.”

She gave them a thumbs-up and a smile and started to walk away.

“Wait!” Seth reached out and grabbed her hand. “Are you singing later?”

“N-not tonight.” Destiny felt heat creep into her cheeks. No one back home knew how hard she’d been struggling to make it onstage—any stage—and she wanted to keep it that way. “I was supposed to, but . . .” She paused and then looked toward the mike, where Mandy was fussing around with her hands on her hips. “Mandy Mason is performing instead.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Seth gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze and she attempted a smile in return.

“Well, good luck, Seth. It really was nice seeing you.” She tugged her hand from his grasp, quickly turning around before she burst into tears.

“Destiny . . .” he said, but she kept right on walking.

 

 

 

“H
ey, Coach, you gonna eat that burger, or what?”

“Huh?” Seth dragged his attention away from Destiny, on the opposite side of the room, whispering in the bartender’s ear.

“I asked if you were gonna finish your burger,” Chase Miller repeated loudly over the music. “If not, hand that sucker over and let me do it for ya.”

He glanced again at Destiny, just in time to see her blow the bartender a kiss.

“Here you go.” Seth shoved his plate across the table and reached for his Coke, no longer interested in the juicy bacon cheeseburger.

Chase—who was always hungry and never got much to eat at home, thanks to a stepmother who was a lousy cook—devoured it, then went after Seth’s half-eaten fries and polished off the pickle spear. Within seconds the only thing left on the plate was a lonely sprig of parsley. Chase held it up and sniffed it as if he were thinking about eating it.

After tossing it aside, he looked at Seth and said, “That dude might be big, but you can take him.”

“Take who?”

“The bartender who’s hitting on that hot Destiny babe.”

“Now, why would I want to—wait, do you really think he’s hitting on her or the other way around?” Oops—that question was supposed to stay in his head.

“He was the one whispering in her ear, so he’s got some game. But, Coach, you can take him. We got your back,” Brett promised and the rest of the guys nodded.

“Nah, that’s none of my business.” Seth couldn’t help but grin at their loyalty—misguided or not.

“Come on, Coach. You’re totally into her. Admit it.”

“Guys, we’re just old high school friends.”

“Yeah, right.” Chase snorted.

“It’s true. We’ve always been . . . you know,
buddies
.”

“Gimme a break. Girls are not buddies,” Brett informed him. “Especially girls who look like her.”

Seth glanced in Destiny’s direction just as she bent over and put a glass up on the stage. He noticed several other guys checking her out and felt an unexpected flash of... what? Jealousy?

Destiny turned around again, and he felt the full impact of the beautiful woman she had become. All knees and elbows in high school, she seemed to have grown into her skin and somehow appeared . . . softer. Sexier.

He’d laughed when she fell into his lap, thinking she may have done it on purpose. Once upon a time, it would have been just like her to pull such a stunt. What he hadn’t expected was the pure male reaction to his arms wrapped around her while his nose had been buried in her soft, silky hair. Her sweet floral scent had filled his head and the desire to kiss the delicate curve of her neck had slammed into his brain. If he hadn’t been sitting with his team, he might have given in to the urge.

“We’re just friends,” he repeated, more to himself than to his players.