Getting Wound Up: A Sapphire Falls/ Love Between the Bases Novel-- PART THREE (4 page)

She picked up one of the shot glasses. Eli sure had been busy before he left for Kilby. Apparently he’d planted little reminders all over town. It was both incredibly sweet and a little torturous.

“What message?” Peyton looked as if she was about to burst from curiosity. “A message from Eli? What’s the story, Caitlyn?”

“I have a feeling it’s a private message.” Derek winked. “If you know what I mean.” Someone signaled him from the other end of the bar. He rapped the surface of the bar next to the other shot glass. “Drink up. I want Eli to know I took care of my end of the job.”

“I can’t believe he did this,” she told Peyton.

“Me neither. What was he thinking? He could have at least ordered something drinkable. Maybe a Sex on the Beach or a Bend Over Shirley.”

“A
what
?”

“A Shirley Temple with raspberry vodka. They’re pretty good, actually.”

Caitlyn touched her tongue to the Jäger. That night in Kansas City had changed her life. She’d never look at Jägermeister the same way again. But just because she’d always think of Eli when she had a shot of Jager didn’t mean she should avoid it forever, did it? If she was going to avoid everything that made her think of Eli, she’d have to stay away from baseball and blue eyes and her old yellow Ford and her own brother and…well, pink frosting and hotel beds.

Maybe all beds, just to be safe.

She’d never have a good night’s sleep again.

She downed the shot, then offered the other to Peyton, who wrinkled her nose in disgust.

So Caitlyn drank the second shot.

“Oh, so it’s going to be that kind of night, is it?” Peyton hugged an arm around her shoulders. “We’d better get a table. Come on.”

Luckily, Peyton was more than happy to keep pace with her. A few more Sapphire Falls women came and went, but the rest of the evening was a blur to Caitlyn. She did manage to send a few texts to Eli, however.

Okay, maybe more than a few. Now that she’d broken the ice and called him, it was impossible to keep her hands off her phone.

Jäger? R u kidding me?

Hahah. Got you.

You’re going to pay for this.

Already did. Did you drink them both?

She looked around the bar, as if he might be spying on her from the corner.
How can you tell?

I know you, Candy-girl. You’re Jäger-texting.

That’s idiculous. Ricidrus. Ricidulous. Damn autocorrect.

Don’t blame autocorrect for your two shots.

No, I blame you. For the thermomter too. Thertomet… Damn.

You aren’t driving, r u? Or biking?

Peyton’s here. So’s Derek. Million others. I know everyone here. It’s Sapphire Falls. Don’t worry.

A pause, then:
Derek?

Was Eli jealous? It was hard to tell in a text. He definitely had nothing to be jealous of. And it would be mean to make him jealous over something that didn’t exist. But the childish side of her kind of wanted to. After all, he was down there in Texas with all those tall, long-legged cowgirls. Girls loved baseball players. Especially handsome, blue-eyed tall ones with rock-hard abs and that little arrow of hair that pointed downtown, and big hands that knew just how to move across a girl’s skin, and…

She reached across the table and took a long swallow of melted ice from the dregs of Peyton’s drink. Peyton was chatting with a couple of people at the next table and didn’t notice that her drink had just been used to keep Caitlyn from overheating. Amazing what a few texts with Eli could do to her core temperature.

Where r u right now?
She changed the topic for her own sanity.

Bed.

Grrr. So much for sanity. Now she couldn’t get rid of the image of Eli’s long, strong body stretched out in a tangle of sheets. It was so hot down there in Texas. He probably wasn’t wearing anything to bed. He was probably lying there totally naked, all sexy and muscular and delectable.

She lowered her forehead to the table and banged it repeatedly against the laminate surface. Maybe she could knock her attraction to Eli right out of her. Or maybe this would give her a concussion. A concussion would be better than this constant pull toward Eli.

“Stop that, you’re freaking me out,” ordered Peyton. “See? This is what comes from drinking Jäger.”

“No. This is what comes from
not
drinking Jäger.”

Peyton looked at her blankly.

“It was a challenge. If we drank the shots, we’d stay at the bar, friends like always. If we didn’t drink the shots, we’d go back to the hotel and get naked. Did I do the wrong thing, P? Did I make the biggest mistake of my life?”

“I’m guessing you didn’t drink the shots?”

Caitlyn nodded miserably.

“Well, you know how I feel about Jägermeister. And I’ve seen Eli Anderson in baseball pants. You made the right call.” She winked. “In all respects.”

“But things are such a mess now. And he’s so perfect and I drove him away. Like, literally. I drove him to that tryout. Now he’s so far away and even though I’m really happy for him and I know it’s the best thing… I miss him so much.” She ended with a hiccup that jolted her entire body.

“Of course you do, sweetie. Come on, it’s going to be okay. You’ll move on.” Peyton wasn’t always the most comforting of friends, but her heart was in the right place.

“No, that’s the thing. I won’t. I know myself. I’ll never love anyone else the way I love Eli. I grew up with him. Even when I was in Denver and I dated other guys, he was always in the back of my mind. Then I came back and he was even more amazing than I remembered, and all of a sudden he was all I could think about. And then…” She sniffed.

“And then came the Jägermeister.”

“Yes. And then came Kilby, and it was the best time I’ve ever had. I don’t even mean the part between the sheets. I mean the talking, the driving around Kilby, being together, just him and me. I don’t think we could ever have been alone like that here in Sapphire Falls, you know? Everyone always knows what you’re up to here. It was like a honeymoon. It was perfect. Maybe that’s the problem. Nothing perfect ever lasts.”

She drained the last of Peyton’s vanilla vodka. Peyton eyed the glass with a disgruntled expression. “Well my drink sure didn’t, anyway.”

Caitlyn giggled, then covered her mouth as another hiccup hit her. Then they were both laughing so hard tears came to the corners of her eyes.

Girl-time
. Maybe it wasn’t sheer bliss the way her time with Eli had been, but sometimes it was exactly what you needed.

* * *

And sometimes you needed a giant bottle of aspirin to survive the next morning. Caitlyn groaned as she rolled away from the sunshine blasting through the blinds on her window. Her mother seemed to be yelling at her from the bottom of a well.

“Honey, how about if I take Bryan to his physical therapy appointment this morning?”

“Wha…?”

“You go back to sleep. I put some water and aspirin next to your bed. We’ll be back in two hours.”

“No.” She struggled to sit up, though her sheets dragged her back down like swamp grass. “My job. Why I’m here.”

“I know you’re here to help. But I’ve got it covered today. I’ll take Bryan for an ice cream cone afterwards, just like I used to do after Little League games. It’ll be like old times.”

Bryan was going to kill her. But her head was swimming and there was no way she could drive without a big dose of coffee. “Is the coffee on?”

“Sure is, sweetie.”

Her mother left, a whiff of baby powder wafting behind her.

Caitlyn closed her eyes and let her head sink back in her pillow. She could sleep in, why not? This was her day off from Scott’s. And apparently Bryan didn’t need her help today. She could just sleep a little longer, then get up and pour herself some coffee and maybe make a plan. A plan for the rest of her life. A plan for how to move on, the way Peyton had suggested. People moved on from heartbreak all the time. If other people could, so could she. All she needed was a little more sleep and a mug full of rich, aromatic, mouthwatering hazelnut coffee…mmmm, it smelled so real…clouds of heavenly French roast teasing her senses.

Wait a second…that coffee smelled too good to be a dream. She opened her eyes and caught a glimpse of white steam rising over the edge of her favorite cornflower-blue glazed mug. Someone was waving it under her nose, the aroma utterly intoxicating.

“Wake up, sleepyhead.” The warm, rumbling male voice had even more impact than the scent of coffee.

“
Eli?
” Wide awake now, she pushed herself into a sitting position. “What…when…why…”

He laughed, his eyes just as clear and blue as the mug he was still holding for her. “How about a few sips before we get into all that?”

Was her subconscious imagining this? Was she actually still asleep? She took the mug in both hands and took a long gulp, keeping her gaze fixed on him in case he turned out to be some hangover-induced hallucination. But he didn’t disappear.

She let out a long sigh as the caffeine hit her bloodstream. A dash of cream, tons of sugar, a good-looking man serving her in bed—perfection. “Am I dreaming? Because this is kind of too good to be true.”

He took the mug from her hand, set it on the bedside table, then offered her one arm, his hunter-green t-shirt stretching across his shoulders. “You’re welcome to touch if you need proof.”

She traced a finger along the ridge of muscle of his forearm. His skin was warm from the sun. She met his eyes, the pupils expanding at her touch. “What are you doing here? Oh my God. Did something bad happen? Did you get sent back home? I thought everything was going so well!”

“It is. It’s going great. Actually, I got called up.”

“Called up?” It took a moment for that to sink in.
“Called up?”
she screamed. “You’re going to be a Friar? Oh my god, Eli. That’s amazing. Does your father know? Bryan? Ty?”

He shook his head. “You’re the only one.”

The way he said it, as if he meant something much different by those words, made her breath catch. “So…what are you doing here? Wasn’t I just texting with you last night? You didn’t mention this. Did you? Was I that Jägermeistered?”

“So it’s a verb now. Good to know. And no, I didn’t mention it. I wanted to tell you in person.”

Something was off. This was all wrong. Or maybe she was still too hungover to take it in. She put her hand to her forehead and pushed a tangle of hair away from her eyes. Oh no…what she must look like right now! Her fingers brushed against something…was that a…pretzel bit? From when she’d banged her head on the table?

“Eli, this is not good. You were not supposed to show up here out of the blue when I haven’t even had a shower. Or…or…” She looked down at herself. What in the world was she wearing? In all her fantasies about seeing Eli again, she’d never imagined that she’d be dressed in a faded old sweatshirt from sixth grade band camp. She’d grabbed it out of her drawer last night without even looking. “Oh God,” she groaned, burying her face in her hands.

A gentle touch on her wrists made her peek through her fingers. Eli’s lips were twitching, as if he was fighting hard not to laugh. “Candy-girl, you’re beautiful to me. No matter what’s on your body. Or about to come off your body.”

He put his hands at the bottom of her shirt. She glanced at the door, which was shut tight.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “We’re alone in the house. All clear for at least another hour, according to Bryan.” Firmly, he tugged her shirt over her head. She raised her arms so the embarrassing garment could vanish from her life. When it was gone, she crossed her arms over her chest. “You can…uh…put that in the laundry. Or the trash. Out the window, whatever. An incinerator would come in handy.”

Laughing, Eli tossed it toward the hamper in the corner of her room. “You shouldn’t worry so much. You could be wearing a pizza box and you’d be gorgeous to me.”

“That’s because you’re a guy and you love pizza.”

“No, it’s because I love
you
.” He ran his hands down her bare arms, sending shivers cascading over her skin. When he reached the rounded flesh swelling over her crossed forearms, she drew in a gasp of pleasure. His finger slowly traced the dip of her cleavage, then found the edge of a nipple. Sensation jumped from the tip of her breast to a place deep inside.

“Eli,” she breathed, her eyes closing halfway. “Are you really here?”

“I’m really here.”

“I’m really glad.”

“Really?” The uncertainty in his voice made her eyes fly open. “Because I wasn’t completely sure, after—”

“That was wrong of me. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left like that. I just didn’t think there was any way—

“It’s okay, Caitlyn. I get it.”

“I’ll always be glad to see you, Eli. Even if it’s just on the ESPN highlight show.” She brushed her lips against his, the slightest, lightest movement that somehow made everything seem right again. “I’m really, really, really happy to see you, and I really, really need…”

He flicked his thumbs against her nipples.