Back in the Game: A Stardust, Texas Novel (15 page)

Standing there in the kitchen, doing domestic things with Rowdy Blanton, made her want to laugh at the sheer romance of it all.

Calm down.

Everything she was feeling could be traced back to one source.

Sex.

Or the lack thereof. She’d never had sex. She wanted sex. And he was sex personified.

Whenever she was around him, she couldn’t keep from thinking about sex. One look from this man and boom! She was thinking shockingly lusty thoughts. Like what would he do if she were to reach out and touch his zipper? Would he drop those plates piled high with spaghetti carbonara? Would he groan, lift her up on the kitchen countertop, and have his way with her?

Oh yum!

Fantasies were fine. She could dream about him all she wanted. But she couldn’t cross that line no matter how much she wanted to do so. Because he had the power to move her in ways far beyond sex, and that was the truly scary part.

He said something, but she didn’t hear what it was because she was busy imagining him naked.

“Breeanne?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Are you ready to eat?”

You bet she was, but not just for food. “Yes.”

He carried the plates to the dining room table and they sat down across from each other. Thrown by the intimacy of the situation, she dug into her food, but avoided meeting his eyes.

“Oh my gosh.” She moaned helplessly at the first bite. “This is so delicious.”

“Told you.” He puffed out his chest, full of pride. “Carbonara is my specialty.”

“Forget baseball. You could be a professional chef.”

“Nah,” he said. “I cook to relax. If I had to cook for a living I wouldn’t enjoy it anymore.”

“If I were on death row”—she waved her fork—“I would request this as my last meal. Seriously.”

He laughed at that, and she thrilled knowing she had made him laugh. “Why, thank you for the compliment, Breezy.”

Breezy.

No matter how much she protested, she couldn’t get him to stop calling her Breezy. So she’d given up and decided to roll with it. Now, whenever he called her by the special nickname, the “z” sound humming softly off his lips, sparking a secret buzzing sound that vibrated through the cells of her body, tickling her insides in a wholly erotic way.

“Did your mother teach you how to cook?” she asked.

“Nah. Mom is a miserable cook. It was Uncle Mick. He told me women love a man who can cook.” He took off on a tale about his bachelor uncle and the man’s multitudinous girlfriends.

“I really don’t need to know about your uncle’s sexual adventures,” she said. “Although I can see how living with him impacted your view of the world. What I really want to hear about is how your family life changed after your father’s diagnosis.”

The smiled dropped off his face. “You’re going to keep harping on this until I talk about it.”

She lifted a shoulder to show she didn’t mean to cause him pain, but that this was important for the book. “I’m trying to get under your skin. To see the world through your eyes so I can write authentically about you.”

“You want to understand me?” His eyes narrowed.

She notched her chin to staunch the wobble in her knees. “I
have
to understand you to write about you.”

“You can’t understand me.”

“Why is that, because you’re the poor little misunderstood rich playboy? Boo-hoo.” Okay so he’d pissed her off. Which was something new. She wasn’t accustomed to losing her temper, but he had a knack for pushing her buttons.

His blue eyes flashed like cold steel. He was upset with her.

It was hard to sit still under the heat of his glare. Instinctively, she wanted to apologize, backtrack, smooth things over, but she had nothing to apologize for. She waited a heartbeat, then two, three, waiting for the impulse to pass before she spoke.

“No,” he said. “You can’t understand me because I don’t understand myself.”

In that moment he sounded so completely vulnerable that her frustration evaporated. “What do you mean?”

“Can’t we find a way to tell my story without digging up the past?”

“No. Not really. The readers want to know who you are. In order to do that you’ve got to give them a glimpse into the events that made the man.”

He pushed his plate way, his meal half eaten.

“I don’t get it. If you didn’t want to talk about the past, why did you agree to write your autobiography?” she asked.

“I’m writing the book because I want to tell the world about the truth about Dugan Potts.”

“Which is?”

Rowdy’s jaw jutted out. He looked so different from the teasing, fun-loving, adventuresome man she’d come to know. How much of that persona was real? Chill bumps raced up her arms as she realized she really didn’t know him at all.

“You’re right,” he said. “This whole mess did start in my childhood.”

“What mess?”

He looked haunted. “My life.”

She gulped, not knowing what to say. She had not expected that interviewing him was going to be the most difficult part of the job.

“All right. You win,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll pack a picnic lunch and go on a field trip.”

“Where to?”

“The beginning. You want to know where I came from? You need to see it for yourself.”

CHAPTER
11

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown

divided into nine innings.

—
E
ARL
W
ILSON

At ten a.m. on Friday morning, they stood in front of a run-down house on the seediest block in the seamiest neighborhood of Stardust. Breeanne felt strangely exposed in a high-necked powder blue tank top, white Bermuda shorts, and sandals, and wished she’d worn something more substantial.

Like body armor.

A shiver sliced through her belly. No wonder Rowdy had been reluctant to talk about his childhood.

“There it is.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Home sweet home.”

Breeanne stared at the dilapidated shack, windows boarded, roof sagging, porch caved in. A large red ant mound was centered in a front yard bald of grass, and busy insects formed a streaming trail from their bed to a doughnut box lying open in the gutter. In the side yard, a tire cracked with age hung suspended from a dead mimosa by a frayed yellow rope. Had Rowdy once played on that tire swing?

She turned on the digital voice recorder clipped to her waistband. “This is where you grew up?”

“It didn’t look this bad back then.” He picked up a rock, spun it with an underhanded pitch. The stone skipped over the bare patch of ground, hopped four times, then hit the droopy chain link fence with a solid
ping.
“At least I don’t think it did.”

A locomotive approaching the train crossing just beyond the house, blasted its horn. Breeanne covered her ears. After a while, the engine stopped honking, but it remained impossible to hold a conversation above the sound of the boxcars clacking across the rails.

Rowdy lifted his mouth in a sad half smile that said both nothing and everything. The sound of the train had been his childhood lullaby.

She looked into his face and felt the same zap of recognition she’d felt the first day on Irene Henderson’s front lawn. As if a curtain had parted, and they could see straight into each other, deeper than anyone had ever looked at either of them before. He was not just a good-time Charlie jock. She was not just a mousy wallflower, bookseller, writer-wannabe. Labels. Those were simply labels that didn’t begin to describe who they were or what they felt.

In his eyes she saw the reflection of everything he’d suffered. But more than that, she saw her own reflection, and knew that he could see the empathy of her own suffering in her eyes as clearly as she could see his. They passed it back and forth, this shared knowledge of each other. This simple but powerful understanding of who they were at their core.

He made her think of soulful kisses and tangled sheets and her bare legs wrapped around his naked back, and everything seemed obvious. It was a funny thing, hot desire. If it was one-sided it was a handicap. If it was a two-way street, it was a connection. The connection was there, but she was leery of the inevitable ending. How many times had she shied from beginning because she was scared of the finale?

Then his smile changed, his mouth going down on one corner so it was only half of a smile—a sardonic, aren’t-you-sorry-you-asked smile.

But no, no, she wasn’t sorry. She felt privileged to be here.

Several minutes passed, marked by the exchange of glances and the long rumbling of the train. Finally, as the sound of the caboose raced away, she touched his forearm, and his smile brightened back to normal.

He winked.

The melancholy mood and their deeper bonding vanished as if she’d imagined it, his glib curtain dropping firmly back into place. The skin on this particular onion was not an easy peel, and if she wasn’t careful, he was going to make her cry.

“Wanna see where we used to play?” he asked.

Did she? Images of dirty syringes and used condoms and ugly graffiti popped into her head. The poverty of his childhood piloted twin beads of sweat down her sides in a long, slow slide. She ironed her hands over her tank top, blotting up the moisture.

“You wanted me to open up. Here it is. Me opening up.” He spread his arms wide. “You in?”

“Yes,” she said, bracing herself for dark things she’d seen only on TV, generally over the top of a pillow propped on cringing knees so she could quickly hide her eyes. “Show me.”

“Let’s stop by the SUV first, and get the picnic basket.”

“It’s not lunchtime.”

“It will be.”

“Are we staying that long?”

“Now that we’re here, yeah. Might as well make a day of it.”

She surveyed the dreary surroundings, and any appetite she might have had vanished. Ugh. Was he trying to get back at her for dragging him out here in the first place?

But his tone was mild, his face soft. No resentment. How had he come out of this environment without a boulder on his shoulder?

“Not the ideal picnic spot,” she said.

“Do you trust me?”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

He held out his palm. “Give up the recorder. All work and no play makes Breeanne a dull girl.”

“I have a deadline.”

“There’s plenty of time.”

“I might miss something.”

“Yes, you’ll miss the experience of being in the moment because you’ll be taking notes and thinking too much. You think too much, Breezy.”

He had a point. She did tend to overthink things.

“I’m your boss, right?” he said. “I declare you off the clock.”

“What if you say something riveting?” she asked, her fingers curling around the recorder, reluctant to turn loose of the advantage. Why was it so hard for her to put the recorder into his upturned palm?

“I promise I won’t.” There it was again. That camera-ready smile he whipped out at will and flashed like a newly minted police officer flashing his badge. She liked the half smile better. It was more honest.

“You might without knowing it.”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“How would I know?”

“Solid point.” Rowdy chuckled, the sound echoing strangely in the mirthless surroundings. When he lived here, he must have been the star of the neighborhood, brightening up the dreary blight.

“All right then.” She let go of the recorder.

The smile turned into a lopsided, you’re-a-good-sport grin that sent her lungs reeling, churning, stirring up air, but not really moving oxygen.

He sprinted to the Escalade on long, sexy legs wrapped in faded distressed Levi’s and she thought,
I want.

Simple as that.
I want.
Desired. Lusted. Craved
him.

He came back with the picnic basket and a thick Santa Fe print blanket.

“This way,” he said, surprising and delighting her by taking her hand and interlacing his fingers through hers. It felt nice.

Very
nice.

Too nice.

He guided her around the back of the vacant house and over tracks still warm from the heat of the train.

She wrinkled her nose against the scent of oil and tar. “What’s that odor?”

“Creosote.”

“What’s that?”

“A wood preservative railroad ties are soaked in.”

“Stinky.”

Rowdy inhaled deeply. “I like the smell.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I know it sounds strange, but growing up here we didn’t have air-conditioning.”

“In Texas? That must have been brutal in the summer.”

“Actually, you get kinda used to it. But one year it was over a hundred degrees for three weeks straight, even at night. We kids would lie awake sweating in our underwear, no covers on, windows and doors thrown open, ceiling fans running full tilt. The smell of creosote got into everything—our hair, our clothes, our skin, our food.”

“You’d think that would make you
hate
the smell.”

Still holding on to her hand, he paused and leaned his head back and took another deep breath. “Yep, smells like home.”

The man knew how to make lemonade from lemon seeds. She’d give him that. Breeanne squeezed his hand.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said. “This is just where I came from, not who I am.”

It was the most profound thing she’d ever heard him say. Sadness balled up in her throat and she wished like hell she could wave a magic wand and make his childhood pain disappear.

While you’re waving it, why not wave the wand for yourself too?
While she’d been well loved, her childhood hadn’t been a walk in the park.

He shook his head, laughed, and chucked her playfully under the chin. “Don’t look so serious, Breezy. I turned out okay.”

“It could have . . . You could . . . Things could have gone down such a different path,” she said.

“But they didn’t.” He led her over the last train track, the blanket-covered picnic basket swinging from his other arm. Ahead of them lay a pine forest lining the railway. As they approached, sunshine filtered through the branches, casting his face in dappled light.