The calamity Janes (10 page)

She hooted at that. “And you’re some sort of superstar baseball player?”

“Could be,” he lied. He was a Little League dropout, but she certainly didn’t need to know that. He had a hunch his primary useful skill today was going to be rattling the manager of the opposing team.

Emma frowned at him. “We’ll see.”

Ford leaned down and planted a hard kiss on her lips, then retreated. “We certainly will,” he said, and strolled out to the mound where Ryan was having a conference with the other men. He could feel Emma’s gaze on him the whole time.

“Glad you could join us,” Ryan said to Ford, amusement threading through his voice. “I thought for a while there you were going to join the
other
side.”

“I doubt she’d have me,” Ford said.

“That’s not the way it looked to me,” Ryan needled. “How about it, guys? Think Emma would take on Ford?”

The question drew a few ribald responses, along with a grin from Ryan.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” the sheriff said. “But since you’ve chosen to be with us, how about playing center field?”

“Why center field?”

“You’ll be directly in the line of sight of anyone up at bat,” Ryan said deviously. “I expect you to make the most of that when Emma’s up. She’s their strongest hitter.”

“I thought she was just managing,” Ford said.

“Not today. Some of her key players—”

“Lauren,” the other men said in a chorus.

“Right, Lauren. She’s not here. Emma’s filling in. I don’t want her on base. Not even a walk. That means I need to pitch strikes and Ford needs to rattle her composure. How about it, pal? Think you’re up to it?”

Ford grinned. “It will be my pleasure.”

It wasn’t long before he had the opportunity to test his skill. Emma had placed herself in the lineup batting cleanup. Her lead-off batter was on base. The next two batters had struck out.

Ryan glanced over his shoulder at Ford. “Ready?”

Ford acknowledged the question with a salute, then focused all of his attention on Emma. She had a loose and easy stance at the plate that was belied by the intensity of her gaze, which never once shifted from Ryan. Ford concluded that drastic measures were called for. He stripped his T-shirt off over his head. Her attention caught, Emma blinked, mouth gaping. Ryan’s perfect pitch sailed right past her.

“Strike one!”

Emma whirled on Stella, who was umpiring the game. “You call that a strike?”

Stella held her ground. “I do.”

“I wasn’t ready.”

Stella gestured toward the outline of the batter’s box. “You were standing there, weren’t you? Can I help it if your attention wandered?”

Emma muttered something that had the diner owner grinning, but she eventually returned her attention to the field and stepped back into the batter’s box.

Ford turned his back to the plate and bent down to tie his shoe. He figured it was the ultimate test of whether those women who’d voted him as having the best butt at the Chicago paper were right.

“Strike two!” Stella said.

If Ford wasn’t entirely mistaken, she was chuckling when she called it out. Turning slowly around, he saw that Emma, however, wasn’t the slightest bit amused. She looked as if she might argue the call, then shook her head and scowled in Ford’s direction. That look said that she knew what he was up to and didn’t like it. No, he corrected, what she disliked most was the fact that it was working. Baseball might not be his strong suit, but strategy was quite another matter.

Emma’s gaze locked on Ryan. Just as he wound up to pitch, Ford touched his fingers to his lips and blew a kiss in Emma’s direction. She swung the bat and missed the ball by a mile.

“Strike three! You’re out,” Stella said, laughing openly now.

Ford began jogging in to the bench only to find Emma firmly planted in his path, eyes blazing.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

He managed what he hoped was an innocent expression. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Of course you do! You’re deliberately trying to distract me.”

“You mean the same way Lauren was distracting the men the last time you played?”

“Exactly,” she said, then blushed. “Never mind. Just stop it.”

“Sorry, darlin’, I can’t do that. Ryan gave me an assignment.”

“What assignment? You’re playing center field.”

“But I have a much more important defensive role for the team than chasing after the one or two fly balls your players are likely to hit.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Which is?”

He winked at her. “I think you already know the answer to that.”

“I’m your assignment,” she said slowly. “Me specifically.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Because he wants to win, of course.”

“But why concentrate on me?”

“Because you’re good, I imagine.”

“Well, of course I am,” she said impatiently. “I meant why would he use
you
to get to me?”

Ford chuckled at that. “It seems to be working.”

She frowned, apparently realized that her gaze seemed to be locked on his bare chest, then snapped impatiently, “Oh, put your shirt on.”

“Seeing me bare chested doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“I have seen bare-chested men before,” she assured him.

“Not me.”

“I can’t imagine why you think that would make any difference. You, Ryan, Randy, it’s all the same to me. A chest is a chest.”

Ford grinned. “Randy’s not wearing his shirt.”

“He’s not?” Her startled gaze shot to the man jogging in from left field.

“The only bare chest you noticed was mine. I rest my case.”

“Oh, go suck an egg,” she muttered, stalking past him and heading for her position at short stop.

Ford knew that she resorted to that particular expression only when she was most at a loss. He’d heard her use it when her friends were hitting just a little too close to some truth she didn’t want to acknowledge.

“Good job,” Ryan said, patting him on the back. “Just one thing? Without turning this game into something X-rated, what the devil are you going to try to get her attention next time she’s up at bat?”

A
fter the baseball game, the entire crowd descended on Stella’s, where Emma found herself the target of a whole lot of good-natured ribbing. For the most part, she took it in stride, but every now and again, when Ford caught her eye, she felt her cheeks burning.

She had let the man get to her, not just during one at-bat, but during three. She hadn’t been able to tear her gaze away from him. All that exposed skin and sinewy muscle had heated her body worse than the blazing sun.

And he knew it, too, damn him. He had enjoyed every single second of knowing that he had that much power over her. She could have denied it, but the air practically crackled with electricity when she got within a few feet of him. It would pretty much have destroyed her credibility if she’d brazenly tried to lie about it.

“Something on your mind?” Ford asked, slipping into the booth beside her when Cassie vacated the spot.

“Not a thing,” Emma fibbed blithely.

“Sorry you lost.”

“Don’t even try to pretend you’re sorry,” she retorted. “I saw you gloating with the men on the way over here. You’re their hero.”

He regarded her with a totally fake innocent expression. “Me?”

“Yes, you. And why not? You neutralized my team’s best player.”

He grinned. “That would be you?”

“Of course.”

“Neutralized, huh?”

“Oh, don’t be so blasted proud of yourself,” Emma snapped. “It was a sneaky, low-down tactic.”

“One with which you ought to be especially familiar,” he responded.

Emma ignored the reference to her use of Lauren’s particular talents in the last game she’d managed. Better to stay on the offensive. “I should have expected it of you,” she said. “Do you have a single ethical bone in your body?”

Ford held up his hand. “Let’s not go back to that. I thought we had established that my ethics are firmly in place.”

“I don’t seem to recall that. Journalist? Ethical? Hmm, it doesn’t compute for me.”

“Okay, Emma, that’s it,” Ford said, clearly losing patience with her attitude. “If you’re going to keep saying things like that, I deserve to know what’s behind it. I want you to tell me exactly what happened to make you so suspicious of journalists. Obviously something did. Were you quoted out of context? Did somebody
report something you’d said off the record? What the hell happened?”

“Forget it,” she said, facing him stubbornly. “I’m not talking about it.”

“Yes, you are,” he said just as firmly. “You owe me that much.”

She stared at him incredulously. “I
owe
you that much? I don’t
owe
you anything.”

“Sure you do. You’re doing exactly what you once accused me of doing. You’re condemning me without a trial. Worse, you’re doing it based not on something I did, but on what someone else did. I’ll take any knocks you want to deliver when I screw up, but I’m getting tired of paying for what somebody else did to you.”

There was barely contained anger behind his words, and something else, she realized with a sense of shock. There was real hurt. She’d had no idea she could hurt Ford Hamilton. Even though they had both acknowledged the attraction simmering between them, she’d been convinced it didn’t go any deeper than that. She hadn’t realized she had any power at all to touch him with her accusations and her distrust.

Actually what she’d really been convinced of was that he didn’t have any emotions at all. Her mistake.

“I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be blaming you for something you had no part in.”

“But obviously whatever this was affected you deeply. I need to understand it,” Ford insisted.

“Why?” she asked, genuinely perplexed about why it seemed to matter to him so much.

“You need to ask that?”

She nodded. “Apparently I do. Spell it out for me, so there’s no miscommunication.”

“Because you’re starting to matter to me, Emma. If I’ve got an uphill battle to fight, I need to know all the obstacles.”

She stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “I matter to you? What does that mean?”

He shook his head, his expression pitying. “You honestly don’t know, do you?”

“I know you’re attracted to me,” she acknowledged after a brief, though charged, silence.

“And?” he prodded.

“That’s it. There’s an attraction.”

He sighed heavily. “Okay, I suppose that’s as good a place as any to start.” His gaze locked with hers. “But it’s just the start, Emma. I think there’s going to be a whole lot more before we’re done.” He touched her cheek. “If you’ll let it happen.”

Emma trembled at his touch. Could she let anything happen? She honestly didn’t know. There were a million and one reasons not to. How many were real and how many were roadblocks she had deliberately put in their path to prevent any risk of heartache? She had no idea. Her ex-husband had hurt her in so many ways, and her ability to trust had been damaged as a consequence. More than that, he’d called into question her judgment when it came to men.

“Will you let something happen between us?” Ford asked quietly.

“I shouldn’t,” she replied, desperately wishing it could be otherwise. Ford was the first man to make her want a relationship, the first to rekindle her desire.

A smile tugged at his lips. “Neither should I. We’re like oil and water, but that doesn’t seem to stop me
from wanting you. Will you let this progress to its natural conclusion, Emma?”

“What conclusion?”

“We won’t know until we get there.”

“I can’t make any promises.”

“But you’re not saying no?”

His persistence exasperated her, even as it set off a tiny thrill deep inside. “You’re determined to pin this down, aren’t you?”

“Like you said earlier, I don’t want any misunderstandings down the road.”

“Okay, then, I’ll try not to shut any doors.”

“Will you open one by telling me what happened to you that made you so skittish about journalists?”

She thought back to that terrible time in her life, to how much she had almost lost, to the unbearable sense of betrayal that had almost destroyed not just her career, but everything she valued. Only the backing of some very important people at her law firm had pulled her through, both professionally and emotionally.

“I can’t talk about it,” she said, feeling the surprising sting of tears. She thought she had shed all the tears she had a long time ago. “Not yet.”

Ford seemed to accept that. “One day, then. When you’re ready.”

“I might never be ready,” she warned him.

“You will be,” he countered. “You just have to realize that you can trust me.”

She searched his gaze, wishing she could believe in him, that she could make the leap of faith. “Can I?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “You can.”

Looking into his eyes, feeling his strength and compassion, she wanted to believe that. Maybe he was right. Maybe one of these days she would.

It had been weeks now, and Emma was just as much of an enigma to Ford as she had been when he first met her. It would have been annoying, if he hadn’t seen just how deeply troubled she was by whatever had happened in her past. There had been real torment in her eyes when he had pushed for answers. That was the only reason he had backed off and agreed to wait.

Now he sat in front of his computer and stared at the blank screen. The temptation to jump onto the Internet and see what he could find by digging around in the Denver newspaper archives was tremendous, but a nagging voice in his head kept reminding him that he had told her she could trust him. If she found out that he’d been checking out her past to fill in the blanks she refused to discuss, she might never forgive him. And Ryan had made his feelings on that subject known as well. Ford didn’t want to disappoint either of them.

He sighed, turned off the computer and headed for the door. If he was going to be so blasted honorable, he needed to get away from temptation.

Or else track down the biggest temptation of all, Emma herself.

He found her at the ranch, sitting on the front porch once again, staring into space, looking as if she were at peace with herself, a glass of lemonade close at hand, an open book lying on the seat beside her. He realized that every time he’d found her there, the restless energy he’d associated with Emma from the beginning was nowhere in evidence. Since it was one of the things that had attracted him, he couldn’t decide if its absence was good or bad.

“Busy?” he asked from the bottom of the steps.

The question seemed to startle her. “What?”

“I asked if you were busy. I was joking, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Where were you, solving the riddle of the universe?”

“Nothing so important,” she admitted. “Just trying to decide whether I can get back to Denver this evening or if I should wait till Monday.”

“If it’s up for a vote, I say Monday.”

Her lips twitched. “Is that so? Any particular reason?”

“I have big plans for us this weekend—starting right now, in fact.”

“Oh, really? What plans? Grilling me for another story?”

He held up his hands. “My grilling days are over, for the time being, anyway.”

“What then?”

“A date,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately casual. “Dinner and a movie, maybe. Caitlyn can come along.”

Her eyebrows rose at that. “You want my daughter on our date?”

“I thought
you
might.”

“Why?”

“Protection.”

“She’s six.”

He grinned. “Exactly. I’ll have to keep my hands to myself.”

“True,” she said thoughtfully. “How would you feel about driving somewhere to a mall?”

It was his turn to be startled. “A mall?”

“Don’t say it as if it’s an alien concept. I’m sure you’ve been to malls before.”

“I have, just not on a date. Not since high school, anyway.”

“Then this should make you nostalgic.”

“Okay, a mall it is. Mind telling me why?”

“I need some clothes that are less—”

“Uptight?” he suggested.

She frowned at that. “I’ll have you know I was voted one of the best-dressed women in Denver last year.”

“Really?” he said with blatant skepticism.

“The article said I had class and style.” She regarded him with genuine puzzlement.

“You really think my clothes are uptight?”

“The power suits certainly are.”

“When have you seen me in a power suit?”

“At Sue Ellen’s arraignment. The rest of the time, you just
look
as if you’re wearing a power suit. It makes my blood run cold.” He emphasized his comment with an exaggerated shudder.

“Then I’m surprised you want to spend any time with me at all,” she said stiffly.

“That’s okay. Mentally I just strip you out of them.”

Emma choked on her sip of lemonade.

“I have a really vivid imagination,” he added, thoroughly enjoying her reaction.

“Apparently.” She studied him with evident curiosity. “If I had other clothes, do you think it would put a stop to these thoughts of yours?”

“Do I get to pick them?”

“Probably not.”

“Then my hunch is you’re going to choose a new wardrobe that I’ll have to work just as hard to strip away—mentally, that is.”

“Mentally. Of course.”

“Unless you’d like me to act on it,” he suggested hopefully.

“I think we’ll just wait and see on that,” she said. “So, are we on for the mall or not?”

“We’re on.”

She beamed at him. “Good. I’ll get Caitlyn.” She stepped off the porch. “This could take a while. Make yourself comfortable. Can I bring you a glass of lemonade?”

“No need. I’ll just finish yours.” He tipped up the glass, sipped, then made a face. “It’s tart. Haven’t you ever heard of sugar?”

“Tart suits me,” she responded, then sashayed off in search of her daughter.

“It would,” Ford muttered, setting the glass aside.

He heard a sound, turned and found Millie Clayton, a fresh glass of lemonade in hand.

“I think you’ll like this better,” she said, grinning at him. “Of course, where my daughter’s concerned, you seem to be satisfied with her just the way she is. Am I right?”

“You are.”

She regarded him with obvious pleasure. “Smart man. I don’t think Emma’s likely to change for any man. Her husband tried.”

“Did he succeed?”

“Only in discovering that he was sadly mistaken to think he could change one single thing about her.”

Even though she had given him the perfect opening, Ford resisted the urge to probe more deeply. Information—unless, of course, it just happened to fall into his lap—needed to come from Emma herself. He caught Mrs. Clayton studying him.

“I thought you’d have a million questions,” she said.

“I do.”

“Why aren’t you asking them?”

“Because Emma’s the one who has to answer them. I don’t want her to think I’m prying.”

Mrs. Clayton’s smile spread. “Something tells me you’ll do, young man.”

“Do?”

“For Emma.”

“Then you approve of me seeing her?”

“It’s not
my
decision,” she said righteously, then grinned, “but yes, I approve. And if you can get her to stay here, I’ll love you forever.”

Emma, here for good? Ford was taken aback. “Is that even a possibility?”

“Not to hear
her
tell it,” she admitted candidly.

“Then what can I do?”

“Use your imagination,” Millie said, getting up as she spotted Emma heading their way with Caitlyn in tow. “From what I heard earlier, it’s highly developed.”

For the first time in his adult life, Ford felt himself blushing. “I’m sorry,” he stammered.

“Don’t be. Use it to your advantage.” She patted his shoulder. “That’s my advice.”

He regarded her with amazement. “You’re quite a woman, you know that?”

“Well, of course, I am. Why do you think Emma turned out so well?” Millie turned toward Caitlyn. “Have you been playing in the hayloft again?”

“Uh-huh. I’ve got straw everywhere.” She regarded Ford shyly. “Hi.”

“Hi. Are you going to the mall with your mom and me?”

“If she can ever get me clean,” she said with a resigned expression.