From Left Field: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 7) (17 page)

Hart followed Ryan’s gaze, but he shook his head in disgust. “Never f—” He seemed to remember he was standing in the back of a church, because he caught himself and started over again. “Never pick up a girl at a wedding. They put out easy enough, but they want a ring on their finger in the morning.”

Ryan shook his head. “Spoken like a real poet, man.”

“Hey, I call ’em like I see ’em. It’s a social disease, this getting married thing. Look around the clubhouse tomorrow night, buddy. You know I’m right. Guys are dropping like flies.”

Hart had a point. Half the guys on the team had proposed to their girlfriends before the end of last season.
 

Hart went on. “We
shower
with those guys, man. If it’s contagious, you
know
we’re coming down with it. And I, for one, have no plans on settling down any time soon.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Keep talking about women like they’re served up on some sort of buffet, and you won’t be settling down ever.”

Hart looked real serious. “What do you think that would be like?” he asked. “Getting one of those debutantes in the middle of a buffet table? Play my cards right, I could have a beer in one hand, a roast beef sandwich in the other, and dessert spread out in front of me, ready and willing.” He flicked his tongue like a lizard, just in case Ryan didn’t get the joke.

“You’re disgusting.” Ryan said, but he was laughing.

“Come on,” Hart said. “We single guys have to say it, because those whipped dudes sure won’t.”

Ryan mockingly bumped fists with the pitcher. “Long live the single man,” he intoned. “
Someone’s
got to do what’s right—treat weddings like the excuse they are for warm beer, bad food, and good men lost forever.”

Hart winced before the words were out of Ryan’s mouth. Without turning around, Ryan knew someone was standing behind him. And from the way Hart was shaking his head, it wasn’t just any old teammate.
 

Taking a deep breath to steel himself, Ryan pasted on a smile and turned around. “Zach,” he said, holding out a hand, like he hadn’t just taken first place in the competition for Asshole of the Week.

Zach Ormond was the Rockets’ former catcher. More to the point in this little church where the air-conditioner was obviously on the fritz and the temperature was nudging eighty-five degrees, Ormond was the brother of the bride-to-be, Lindsey. He’d been Ryan’s closest friend on the team for years.
 

That had all changed, though, last season, when a string of craziness led to Zach’s resigning
and
his getting engaged—to none other than the granddaughter of the Rockets’ owner. Zach had left playing the sport he loved, taking up a job in the Rockets’ front office. The whole time that crap was happening, Ormond had kept to himself, never once confiding in Ryan. The gulf between the men had carried through the rest of the season, but Ryan had thought—had
hoped—
that the wedding invitation had been a sign that he and Zach were past their differences.

Fat chance of that, with Ryan cracking stupid jokes.
 

“You got a problem with weddings?” Zach’s question was deceptively mild.

“None,” Ryan said, forcing himself to meet his friend’s eyes. “Not for the right guy.”

Shit. Why did Ormond have to catch him being a jackass? And here, Ryan had been fooling himself that Lindsey’s wedding would be a perfect chance to talk to his old friend about some front office business. He’d thought the whole thing through as he knotted his tie that afternoon. Show up at the wedding. Shake hands with the groom, kiss the bride in the receiving line. Wait until the reception, after the toasts. Then, when Zach was looking for a break from champagne and photographs and everyone telling him his sister made a beautiful bride, Ryan could talk to him, man to man.

There’d never be a
perfect
time to ask Zach Ormond for the biggest favor of Ryan’s professional career. But the wedding should have put Zach in a decent mood, and Ryan couldn’t wait much longer. Not when he’d promised his mother he’d take care of Dad. Not when his father was getting crazier every day, spending more and more time in front of his television, watching reruns of reality shows after the baseball games ended each night, watching infomercials when the reality shows ran out. Truth be told, Dad was halfway to batshit crazy in the little house he’d lived in for thirty-five years, lost like a little kid now that Mom was gone.
 

Ryan could drive down to Chester Beach during the offseason. He could call the old man every couple of days. But Dad needed a hell of a lot more than that—he needed a
job
. A reason to get up in the morning. And for an old baseball guy like Dad, the best possible job would be working for the Satellites, the Rockets’ farm team based right there in Chester Beach.

But that was never going to happen if Ormond thought Ryan was crapping all over his sister’s wedding—old friendship or no old friendship. As the guests’ murmuring rose another notch, Ryan cleared his throat and pretended he was innocent. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

“What’s up,” Zach spat, “is that the groom must be caught in traffic, the A/C in this place died yesterday, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to have people collapsing from heatstroke in the next five minutes.”

Hart, the coward, shrank away. But Ryan said, “Dinner’s set up downstairs, right?”
 

Ormond nodded. “The caterers have been ready for a while. We’re supposed to be eating by now.”

“No problem, then. They have to have water.” Ryan said, and he jutted his chin toward the pitcher. “Come on, Hart. Let’s do something useful.” He headed toward the vestibule and stairs that had to lead down to the reception hall.

Ormond barked out an order. “Hold up, Green.” Ryan turned back. “I don’t want you going up and down those stairs. Not with that bad hammie.”

“My leg’s fine.” It felt strange for Ryan to hear commands coming out of Zach’s mouth. They were buddies. Teammates. Friends.

Nevertheless, Ormond shook his head. “Hart can get it.”

The pitcher shrugged and hit the stairs while Ryan stood there, feeling like an invalid. He was tempted to say something to Ormond, to explain that he hadn’t meant to say anything bad about
all
weddings, that he obviously hadn’t been talking about
this
wedding, that…

Yeah. He’d already stepped in it. No reason to smear the shit around.
 

Before Ryan could think of something else to say, Ormond took out his phone, but he scowled at the screen instead of placing a call.
 

“No signal?” Ryan asked.

“No battery. I’ve been trying to reach Will for the last three hours.”

Three hours. That sounded like more than crappy Raleigh traffic on a Monday evening. Ryan dug out his own phone and passed it over. “Go ahead,” he said. “It’s got a full charge.”

Ormond thanked him and stalked over to the church’s front doors. Ryan waited until some of the caterers came upstairs with cases of water, and then he ducked back into the church to help distribute the bottles. As he stared at the sweaty, bored, impatient guests, he asked himself again why
anyone
would ever want to get married.

~~~

Lindsey Ormond watched bleakly as her brother managed the disaster. “Thank you, Brother Mike,” Zach said as the kindly man headed toward the door of the claustrophobic coatroom. “We’re just fine.” Once the preacher was gone, Zach turned back to her. “Come on, Linds. Drink some of that water.”

But Lindsey didn’t want to drink any water. She was pretty sure she’d be on her knees in front of the toilet in the tiny bathroom off the vestibule if she drank any water. If she drank any water, or if she ate one of the tiny sandwiches Grace had brought her, or if she took a single step away from the folding chair where she sat with her arms folded tight around her belly.

“Come on, Sweetie,” Grace said. “Zach’s right. Everything’s fine, but you need to drink something.” And Lindsey could read the lies on her sister’s face; she could hear them as loudly as if her matron of honor was shouting from the church’s steeple.

Swallowing thick acid at the back of her throat, Lindsey reminded herself that she was a trained actress. She could pretend to be anything from Alice in Wonderland to the Velveteen Rabbit. She made a career out of acting every night of her life and twice on weekends, and she wasn’t about to let all that practice go to waste. “You know what, Grace?” she said, finding the perfect tone of surprised wonder. “I would
kill
for a Popsicle right now.”

Grace laughed, but then she asked, “You’re serious?”

Lindsey nodded, letting the idea grow with the confidence she layered into her voice. “I know the caterers won’t have any. But there’s a 7-11 just down Martin Street…”

Grace looked down at her pink dress, at her matching peau de soie shoes and her wristlet of sweetheart roses. “I
guess
I could go.”

Lindsey made herself laugh, bright and easy, just like she was reciting lines from the very back of the stage. “Tell them it’s for Bridezilla. Maybe you can get Rachel to drive you? Or Libby?” She didn’t care which of her sisters drove. She just wanted all of them out of the church, away from her, away from the disaster that was unfolding in horrifying slow motion.

Zach smiled his thanks to Grace as he fished in his pocket for his wallet and handed over a twenty-dollar bill. Lindsey barely waited until her sister was out of the room before she dropped the character of Brave Bride, opting instead for Doomed Lindsey. “It’s happening again,” she said, every syllable trembling.

At least Zach didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “It’s a Monday night. Traffic is terrible. There’s a reason most people get married on weekends.”

Lindsey shook her head, biting her lip to keep from screaming. When the bride was an actress and the brother who was supposed to give her away played professional baseball, Monday night was the logical choice for a wedding. Only when she was certain her words could come out sounding remotely sane did she try to respond. “Give me some credit here, Zach. If I had to get jilted two years ago, at least I learned
something
from the experience. I can tell when it’s happening again. Will Braden Templeton isn’t coming to this church tonight.”

Zach protested automatically. “Don’t say that, honey. Jilted makes it sound like it was your fault.”

“It’s the truth!” Lindsey shouted. From the look on Zach’s face, he was every bit as surprised as she was by her volume. She hurried on, though, before he could offer her more pat words, more false comfort. “It’s the truth,” she repeated. “Doug jilted me. He let me stand there in my wedding dress, with two hundred of our family’s closest friends in the Claibourne ballroom, with a sit-down dinner and a band and a wedding cake waiting in the next room!” She was appalled by the words spilling out of her mouth, by the flood of ugly memories. But she couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t keep from saying, “He did all that because he was too afraid to tell me about his affairs, about three other women who I only found out about online, after the fact, after the most embarrassing night of my life.”

“Lindsey—”

“Don’t
Lindsey
me!” She felt terrible, cutting him off. She knew she was being rude, acting like a spoiled brat. But she had to finish. She had to say what she was thinking. She had to get all the words out, all the disgusting confessions, all the admissions she never thought she’d have the guts to say out loud.
 

Because she’d worked hard at doing things right, every single day after Doug left her at the altar. She’d been a good girl, followed the rules, done everything she was supposed to do, whenever she was supposed to do it. She was the oldest of the Ormond girls. With her the ripe old age of thirty, her younger sisters—her
married
sisters—looked up to her. Even her brothers, Zach and Dane both, expected her to be perfect.

So she told the truth now.
 

“Even when I was standing there waiting for Doug, and you were making all your phone calls, and his best man was texting, and everyone was asking, and waiting, and confused…” She met Zach’s eyes. “I
knew
. I knew, in the pit of my stomach. I knew in that part of my brain, you know the one I mean. The one that tells the truth when you’re about to fall asleep, when you’re floating right on the edge of a dream. The one that wakes you up in the middle of the night, reminding you about phone calls and text messages and changes of plan that you never connected at the time, that you never realized had one thing in common. I knew the truth about Doug. I knew it even before I could say it out loud.”

Zach looked miserable. She knew how much that first disastrous wedding had cost him, and she wasn’t talking about money. The oldest of the Ormond siblings, Zach wanted to protect her. He wanted her life to perfect, as perfect as he could make, now that Momma and Daddy were both gone.

Zach was there for her. He might be seven years older than she was. He might have resisted stepping into the strange role of not-quite-parent, all those years back. But for all of Lindsey’s life, she’d been certain Zach could pick up the pieces.
 

He was the one who’d found her hiding in the snack bar at the public pool when she was seven years old, crying because she was afraid to jump off the high board—and he’d taught her how to make the jump, and how to dive as well. He was the one who’d taught her how to drive stick when she was fifteen, letting her grate the gears on his old truck until she’d finally mastered the clutch. He was the one who’d told her she should look to her career, instead of marriage, when Doug proposed to her, and he was the one who’d walked into the hotel ballroom that horrible night and told all the guests that the wedding was off.

For all those reasons, and a thousand more, she turned to her oldest brother now and said, “It’s the same thing with Will.” But even as she said the words she shook her head, vehemently enough that her careful up-do started to tumble loose. “No,” she corrected herself. “It’s not the
same
. He’s not screwing around with other women.”