Back in the Game: A Stardust, Texas Novel (17 page)

“Easy does it,” he soothed. “It’s probably just a fish or pond weeds or tree branch.”

“Or a water moccasin?” Her voice cracked as it scaled three octaves.

“It’s not a water moccasin,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“It’s okay. My friends and I swam here hundreds of times. We never saw a water moccasin. Water snakes, sure, but not moccasins.”

“So there
are
snakes in here.” Her voice warbled.

“Not poisonous snakes.” At least not that he knew of, but he wasn’t going to add that part. She was freaked out enough.

“Omigod, omigod.”

“Don’t panic.” He pressed his palms downward. “It’s okay.”

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“You’re smiling.”

Hell, he was smiling to keep her calm. “I’m just trying to reassure you.”

“Well don’t.”

He scrubbed a palm over his mouth. “Smile gone.”

“I’m losing it.”

“It’s okay, it’s all right. Take a deep breath.”

Her shoulders hitched upward, but she couldn’t seem to suck in any air.

“Exhale first,” he coached. “Then inhale.”

She expelled a loud breath, and then inhaled deeply.

“Good girl.”

“I’m getting out of here. Please, turn around again.”

Even though he didn’t want to turn his back on her, he did it anyway. “Don’t run,” he cautioned. “You could—”

A yelp cut him off short, followed immediately by a loud splash.

Bile and dread spiked cleats up his throat. Rowdy spun toward her, but Breeanne was nowhere in sight.

She’d gone under.

The pond wasn’t deep, but she couldn’t swim, and in her panic she might forget that the water wasn’t over her head. And what caused her to cry out?

What if she
had
been bitten by a water moccasin? Or a sinkhole had formed since the last time he’d been in the pond and she’d fallen in? Or what if she’d gotten tangled in barbwire someone had thrown into the pond and it pulled her under, or—

Screw the worst-case scenarios.

He lunged, diving into the water where she’d been standing just a minute before. His leg crashed into hers. He grabbed her. She floundered, fighting him. Terrified. She was terrified. The poor kid.

Rowdy scooped her in his arms, hugging her naked body to his chest, and broke the surface of the water.

She was gasping for air, chest heaving, arms thrashing.

He tightened his grip on her, pressed his mouth against her ear. “Shh,” he whispered. “It’s all right. It’s okay. I’ve got you. Nothing bad can happen to you now.”

Her arms slid around his neck. She was trembling like a lost kitten.

Clutching her tightly against him, he carried her to shore. He laid her on the blanket. She curled her knees to her chest, shivering more from fright than cold. He bent to tuck the edges of the blanket around her and that’s when he saw the scars.

Looking at the angry lines of her ragged scars tore him to shreds. A hot, messy mixture of anger, fear, and pain flamed through his system.

Who had sliced her up like sushi?

A dozen possible scenarios popped into his head, each worse than the last.

Dammit no. Just no. No fair. This sweet woman did not deserve to have suffered like this. He wanted to lodge a formal complaint against the universe. Foul ball.

He didn’t want to stir up her old pain, but he couldn’t leave it alone. He had to have an answer.

“Breeanne,” he said, putting every ounce of empathy he could wring from his body into the question. “What in God’s name happened?”

Breeanne huddled
on the blanket, feeling like a fool. “Whatever was in the water brushed against my leg again, and when I tried to run, I slipped in the mud, and fell in. It completely freaked me out when my head went under water, and I thought I was going to drown.”

“I’m not talking about that,” he said, his voice rough and husky.

Oh. She blinked. Saw his gaze transfixed on her breastbone, and she swallowed past her shame.

He meant the scars.

She pulled the blanket he’d draped over her shoulders more tightly around her, pinching the edges together in front of her chest, and closed her eyes. She drew up her legs, ducked her head, and rested her forehead on her knees.

He was squatting, beside her. One palm pressed to the middle of her spine as he rubbed reassuring circles over her back. “Are you okay?” he murmured.

Nut bunnies. He felt sorry for her. She hated it when people felt sorry for her. She put steel in a don’t-you-dare-feel-sorry-for-me tone. “I’m fine.”

Using the edge of the blanket, he rubbed her hair with an efficient briskness like he was trying to kindle a fire. The effort told her that he didn’t know what else to say or do, so he was trying to make himself useful.

“Any warmer?” he asked when he finished, flopping the edges of the blanket over her head like a hoodie.

She raised her head. His wet dark hair was slicked back off his forehead, those devastating blue eyes hooked on her face that made him so insanely handsome. He was completely naked and she didn’t dare look down, but even so, she was acutely aware of his hard-muscled body.

“I’m sorry I flipped out on you.”

His casual smile said,
Hey, we all act like doobers once in a
while
. “Nothing to be sorry for. I forgot how scary it is to go naked into a pond your first time, and I never took into consideration that you didn’t know how to swim. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“It’s fine. I wanted to go in.”

He kept rubbing her head. It felt too intimate. Too darn good. She stiffened against his touch. Desperate to keep him from finding out how exquisitely awesome his touch made her feel.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Mmm, could you put on some clothes, please?” she said, doing her best to keep her eyes to herself.

“What? Oh yeah. Sorry.” He stopped rubbing—thank heavens for that—and stood up.

She felt him step away, heard him pick up his clothes, followed by a masculine grunt as he went about wrestling his wet body into dry jeans.

Unable to resist, she peeked over at him, and got a delicious eyeful of well-muscled male bum that made her fingers itch to touch it. Whew-wee.

Stop staring.

But how could she when that amazing butt was there on fleshy fabulous display?

He got his jeans shimmied up and she heard the
zzz
of his zipper hissing closed, and she barely managed to whip her head around before he returned to crouch beside her once more, a bottle of water in his hand.

“The color is coming back into your face.”

“I really am fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”

He didn’t touch her, but he just kept sitting there.

Ack! What did he want from her?

“Have some water,” he said, unscrewing the cap and passing the bottle to her.

Happy to have something to do besides stare at him, she reached a hand from the blanket, lifted the bottle to drink.

His eyes followed her movements, hung on her lips as she took a sip. The wetness sliding down her throat made her realize just how thirsty she was. She downed half of it, and passed the bottle to him. His big hand folded around it, and he tilted back his head.

She stared at him in the same way he’d stared at her, watching his lips close over the rim, right where her mouth had just been. Her hormones triggered, shooting urgent let’s-have-sex messages through every feminine cell in her body.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and falling as he swallowed. Transfixed, she watched him polish off the water and crush the plastic bottle in his hand, his lips glistening with moisture.

Rowdy studied her as she studied him, his pupils darkening erotically, his gaze dropping back to her chest, now securely covered by the blanket, but his vision seemed X-ray and X-rated. He knew what she looked like naked.

“You don’t have to tell me about the scars,” he said softly. “It’s none of my business.”

“It’s only fair,” she said. “I badgered you to talk about your childhood.”

He left his shoulders in a half shrug. “It’s what I hired you to do.”

“The scars aren’t a secret or anything,” she said. “Everyone knows.”

“You’ve had a lot of surgeries,” he guessed.

“I’ve had ten surgeries in all. For a congenital heart condition, but I’m finally done.” She smiled. “Got a clean bill of health. I’m off all my meds but one, and my doctor thinks I can soon wean off that one too.”

He sank down beside her, bent his legs, and dropped his hands to his knees. “You’ve been through a lot.”

She waved in the direction of the house he’d grown up in. “So have you.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It is.” She pushed back the corner of the blanket that he’d flopped over her head so that she could see him better from her peripheral vision. “Kind of. With your dad, you saw lingering illness firsthand. You know the toll it takes on a family.”

His face clouded with memories, but she’d already figured out he wasn’t the kind of guy who could hold on to that kind of pain for long. She saw it in the way he needed to keep moving whenever she brought up a tough topic, how he strived to be upbeat and focused on the best things in life rather than getting caught up in dwelling on the negative. He was an eternal optimist, and while she admired that trait it could translate into an inability to see life as it really was instead of what he wanted it to be.

Rowdy shook his head and grinned away whatever dark thought had momentarily intruded on his mind, but the smile was a little less genuine this time. “But you’re all better.”

“Yep.” She kept her voice as cheery as his. She was learning from him.

“How serious was your heart condition?”

“I almost died several times.”

“No kidding?” His face went slack.

“In fact,” she said, not sure why she was telling him this, “the last time was the week before I first met you.”

He looked confused. “You mean just before Irene’s estate sale?”

“No.” She laughed. “The very first time we met.”

“We met before?”

“We have. Thirteen years ago. I was twelve, and you came to the Dallas Children’s Hospital during your debut year with the Mariners.”

“Really?” His old smile was back, supercharged and so full of energy it liquefied her bones.

“I had the hugest crush on you,” she admitted. “I still have the autographed baseball you gave me.”

“Breezy, that’s um . . . wow.” He ran a hand through his damp hair, managing to look both boyish and sheepish despite his absurdly potent masculinity. “You had a crush on me, huh?”

“I thought you walked on water.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing more ridiculous than a preteen girl in the throes of her first celebrity crush.”

“Ah,” he said, his cheeks pinking. Was he blushing? Over her crushing on him? “I’m really flattered.”

“Hey, I was just a sickly little kid whose head was easily turned by a handsome face and an autographed baseball.” Even though she was fully covered by the blanket, she was acutely aware that she was still naked underneath it. And now here she’d gone and stripped her soul bare for him too. She might as well hand him a bow and arrow and tell him to sling away.

He still looked stunned by her confession. Nut bunnies. She’d gone and made things weird.

“Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m madly in love with you or anything,” she said. “I’m not that silly seventh grade kid anymore.”

“But you’re still a fan, right?” If any woman ever held him at gunpoint, he could disarm her just by looking at her like that.

“Seriously?” she said. “You’re Stardust’s hometown hero. I’ll always be an überfan.”

“Well, shucks, Miss Carlyle, you’ve embarrassed me.”

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t,” he assured her.

“This feels—”

“Fated,” he said.

“Fated?” What did he mean by that? She thought about the softness of the cheetah-print scarf, the odd saying on the box, Suki’s contention the quote was talking about soul mates. Knocked off guard, she struggled to mask her nervousness by watching butterflies flit among the flowers, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t escape the heat of his intent stare.

“Our working relationship,” he added quickly. “Like we were meant to work together on this project.”

Duh. Of course he meant their working relationship. How stupid of her to think he meant anything else.

Lord, he had such gorgeous lips, angular and darkly pink. She wanted to lick them, taste them, feeling them pressed hard against hers.

“Could you just turn around so I can get dressed? I’m feeling a little overexposed.”

“My apologies. I forgot you were undressed.” He retrieved her clothes and her glasses, and handed them to her.

“Thanks.” She slipped on her glasses and twirled a finger in the air. “You know the drill.”

He turned. She dressed.

“Okay,” she said. “All done. I’m starving. How about you?”

They ate sandwiches while sitting on the damp blanket in the soft grass. The sun warmed their skin. The taste of roasted portobello mushrooms sandwiches with sun-dried tomatoes, melted mozzarella, and olive tapenade on rustic Italian bread enlivened their taste buds.

“Thank you for telling me about your illness,” he murmured. “I better understand some things now.”

“Um . . . what things?”

“Why you’re such a late bloomer. Why you’ve never been skinny-dipping or played hooky or rode on a zipline. Why you’re—”

“Still a virgin.” Internally, she cringed. Had she really just said that?

“I was not going to say that. I was going to say why you’re one tough cookie, surviving all you’ve survived.”

A ribbon of yearning unfurled deep inside her, a big messy pile of it. Leaving her aching and lonely. Never mind that he was close enough to kiss. She wasn’t going to kiss him, and he wasn’t going to kiss her.

“What else was I going to do?” She shrugged like it was no big deal. “Die?”

He laughed. “Spunky to the core.”

Unnerved by his compliments and the look in his eyes, she lowered her chin to her knees again, smelled the musky odor of pond water, and stared at the ground.