Reaching First (6 page)

“Did you have any questions about the menu?” Saved by Artie himself.

“I don’t think so,” Tyler said, annoyed that he sounded grateful for the interruption.

Artie turned to Emily. “What can I get you? The filet is
gorgeous
tonight.”

Emily shook her head, a tight little motion that Tyler was coming to realize meant she had her mind made up. “I’ll have a baked potato, with butter and sour cream, and a side order of asparagus.”

“And for your entree?” Artie pushed.

“Nothing, thank you. That’ll be good for me.”

“And for you, sir?”

“A rib-eye. Rare as you can make it. Loaded baked potato. And what do you have on tap?”

They negotiated a beer, and a glass of wine for Emily. It wasn’t until Artie left the table that Tyler said, “A potato and asparagus?”

She shrugged. “I’m a vegetarian.”

“Jesus!” And then he thought better of cursing in front of a missionary’s daughter. “I mean, damn. I mean, I should have asked. I didn’t even think—”

Of course he hadn’t thought. He’d been too worried about what would work for him. About how he could keep his secret, how he could impress Emily, without ever letting her know he was too stupid to read a menu.

* * *

“It’s all right,” she insisted. “Really. I’m used to piecing together dinner in all sorts of restaurants.”

She’d had years to become an expert. Ever since she’d seen that goat slaughtered in the first village where her parents had served. The locals had meant it to be a treat, but she’d refused to let one bite of the stewed meat pass her lips. Almost eighteen years later, her food choices were completely automatic.

Until she saw people get flustered like Tyler was right now. “Please,” she said. “If you make a big deal out of it, then I
will
feel bad.”
 

To make her point, she settled her palm on top of his hand. She meant it as a casual gesture, just a quick pat. But she felt him stiffen beneath her touch. His reaction closed a circuit, and she was jolted with the same energy, almost like he’d gripped her wrist at the instant he shoved a fork into an outlet.

“All right,” he said after what seemed like a century. “But you choose the next place we eat.”

“Fair enough,” she said, trying to laugh. She didn’t want to admit she was thrilled there’d
be
a next place. She pulled her hand back, settling it in her lap and trying not to flex her fingers in memory of the power she’d just felt. “So,” she said, determined to get them back to easy conversation. “Tell me about your family. No missionaries, I take it?”

He laughed. “Hardly. My people are from Central Texas. My father was a carpenter by trade. A plumber and an electrician on the side, pretty much whatever anyone needed to get their house up and running. He made me and my brothers come along whenever he needed another hand.”

“So you come by your community service naturally.” She tossed off the words, not meaning anything by them. But from the way he sucked air between his teeth, she knew she’d hit a raw nerve.

“Daddy died about three years ago. A heart attack. Just dropped dead in the middle of a job.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. She knew the words were meaningless, that they could never offer true comfort. They were a reflex, though, something she had to say.

He shrugged. “It was a bad time for all of us. I’m glad I hadn’t been traded yet. I got home often enough to make a difference.”

“I’m sure your father was very proud of you. Proud of your playing for Texas.”

Another cloud ghosted across Tyler’s face. There was something there. Some regret. Something he wished his father had said, or that he’d said to his father. Something he wished he’d done. But the sorrow was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared.

“Central Texas,” she said. “And five brothers. Sounds completely different from my life.”

And that was all it took. They were back to talking. He told her about his rough and tumble days as a kid. He and his brothers sounded more like puppies than human boys. Puppies that managed to get themselves in a lot of trouble—on railroad tracks as they challenged each other to cross trestles, in dry gulches as the season’s first rain swept through, in a hundred and one small ways that added up to heaven for some very bad boys.

In exchange, she told him about her own childhood. About living in the African villages where her mother and father worked. About coming home to North Carolina and scandalizing her aunt by eating with her fingers from would-be communal cooking pots, about walking barefoot through the neighborhood as if Minnie couldn’t afford to keep shoes on her feet.

Somewhere along the way, the restaurateur brought out heaping platters of food. Tyler’s steak was as rare as he’d ordered, and the accompanying baked potato looked like it was half the size of Idaho. Her own meal was good, the vegetables simple, but served with ample amounts of sweet butter. Someone had thoughtfully sliced a tomato beside her asparagus, adding a few simply carved rounds of cucumber and radish too.

But she could have been eating sawdust, for all she cared. The conversation was infinitely more interesting than the food. The conversation, and the surprising way her insides melted every time Tyler fixed her with his gaze.

It wasn’t just the frank sexual interest she saw there. She
knew
that reaction. She’d seen it plenty of times before, from the night she’d been christened Bluebell, to boys she’d dated in college, to the handful of men she’d seen since coming back to North Carolina.

No, Tyler looked at her like he
cared
, like he was listening to every word she said, like he was
memorizing
them. There was an intensity about him, a jagged energy that sparked through everything he did. Sitting beside him, she felt like she was standing on a flat plain just as a thunderstorm swirled over the horizon. The short hairs on her arms stood at attention. There was excitement hovering just beyond her grasp. Excitement and just a bit of danger, too.

The proprietor returned when their plates were empty, apologetic for the interruption. “Pie?” he asked.

Tyler quirked a question toward her with his eyebrows. She nodded and proposed, “Peach? To share?”

“Peach it is,” he said to the waiter.

“With ice cream!” she chimed in, too comfortable to worry about all the proper ways a girl was supposed to behave, all the limitations she was supposed to put on her own appetite.

“Is there any other way?” Artie asked, winking.

The slice of pie turned out to be large enough for the two of them plus half a dozen friends, if they chose to invite any. There weren’t any other diners to recruit, though. Somehow, the restaurant had emptied out while they sat there. With a shock, Emily realized it was well after ten o’clock.

Tyler laughed at her surprise. “That’s what happens when you don’t start dinner till nearly eight. Perils of being a ballplayer.”

“Tell me about that. What other ‘perils’ do you face?”

“Oh, the trauma,” he moaned, but he laughed. “Long plane trips. Lonely hotel rooms. Lousy restaurant food—not like this—and no one to share it with.”

“Sounds terrible,” she said wryly.

“But I get to play ball for a living so I won’t complain.”

She laughed. In fact, she realized she’d been laughing all evening. Her cheeks ached from smiling so much. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had amused her like that, had let her relax and just enjoy his company.

“We should let these people go home,” Tyler said, nodding toward the door to their now-private dining room. He was right. The staff must be waiting for them to clear out.

As if by magic, Artie reappeared, seeming to produce the bill from thin air. Emily reached for her purse, only to be stopped by Tyler’s amused smile. “Don’t even pretend you don’t understand an invitation when you hear one. I asked you to dinner. I certainly don’t expect you to pay.”

When a man asks you to dinner, he has one thing on his mind
.

That was Aunt Minnie’s voice. That was the rule Emily had heard from the first time she came home begging to go out on a date with a high-school classmate. Dinner, a movie, a trip to the mall… According to Minnie, men offered their wallets for one thing, and one thing only.

And watching the casual way that Tyler signed the credit card receipt, not even bothering to read the bill, to make sure it was correct, Emily had to say she wasn’t concerned about her aunt’s acerbic observation. Tyler might have one thing on his mind, but that thing was absolutely front and center in Emily’s mind as well.

Tyler held her chair as she rose from the table. He slipped easy fingertips under her elbow, gently guiding her through the restaurant, out the door, to his car, which sat alone in the parking lot. He stood closer than he needed to as he opened her door, and she felt the heat of his body as she eased past him to take her seat.

Her lips tingled in anticipation of the kiss he would give her when they arrived at her house. Her lips hadn’t tingled since… Ever.
 

And for the first time since meeting Tyler Brock, she imagined telling him her secret, telling him she was a virgin.
 

Oh, she wouldn’t do it. She knew that. She’d made the mistake of telling another man, a guy she’d trusted, her One False Love, as she’d taken to calling him in her most sardonic moments. One False Love was a guy she’d dated for almost six months. She knew she’d never
loved
him, but she’d begun to think she wasn’t ever going to love anyone. Not like that. She’d been ready to use her One False Love to just get past the whole virginity thing and join the not-so-secret society of women.
 

But when she told him, he freaked out. He remembered a business meeting, something he needed to be up for early the next morning. It was like he thought she was putting the weight of the world on one roll in the hay, like she was trying to sleep with him, marry him, and rope him into fathering a dozen children, all in one night.

He broke up with her by text the next day. One False Love. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Not ever.

The street was quiet when Tyler braked to a stop in front of Minnie’s mansion. Emily suspected crickets were chirping, but she couldn’t hear them over the pounding of her heart as she got out of the car. She
did
feel the breeze teasing at her dress, sparking little shivers down the inside of her legs.
 

Or maybe that wasn’t the breeze. Maybe it was the man beside her making the sparks fly as he walked her to the front door.

He stopped on the top step. If he’d had a cap, she was pretty sure he’d be crushing it in his hands, turning it over and over as he scuffed his toe against the porch. “Thank you,” he said. “I had a lovely evening.”

How formal. How sweet. How very
not
the image she had in her mind of the man in front of her. Because she definitely wasn’t thinking about
sweet
at the moment. She was thinking about how that stubble of beard would feel against her lips. She was thinking about how rough his hands would feel as he unbuttoned the top of her dress. She was thinking about how his erection would feel through his trousers as he leaned into her, as he pinned her against the door with the full weight of his body.

And then she wasn’t thinking at all.

Her hand found his, like it had a mind of its own. Her fingers laced between his and she flexed her wrist, pulling him toward her.

His lips were warmer than she’d imagined. Smoother. He tilted his mouth to a better angle, and she felt his free hand at the back of her head, cradling her, tangling in her hair to keep her exactly where he wanted her.

The velvet touch of his tongue made her tremble, and her fingers tightened around his. He laughed, amusement curving his lips even as she opened her mouth to his.

She’d been kissed before, countless times. But she’d never been kissed like this. She’d never been kissed by a man who seemed to be memorizing her, who seemed to be reading her every response, absorbing her, reflecting her back to herself.
 

This kiss was infinitely more than lips on lips, tongue against tongue. This kiss was a full-body experience. He pulled her against his chest; she felt his heart beating through his shirt. His hips rested against hers; he was obviously not ashamed of his full response to her, of the hardness that pressed against the cotton of her skirt. He’d moved deliberately, with full awareness of his body. Of hers.

She suspected Tyler Brock was a man who did everything for a reason.

And that realization sent her crashing out of the heady embrace, out of the magic of his kiss. Because if he did everything for a reason, then he’d gotten into that bar fight for a reason. He’d been responsible when he folded his hand into a fist and smashed it into the jaw of an innocent guy who was just having a couple of drinks with a friend.

He’d pleaded guilty. He’d been sentenced to community service. The community service that she was responsible for monitoring, that she had to certify to a court.

And that was why she had to force herself to take a step away.

She felt the door behind her. Solid. Strangely cold in the July night.

His palm was warm against her jaw. “What’s wrong, Em?” he asked, his fingers fluttering against the pulse point beneath her ear. His voice pulled the taffy of her insides.

She turned her head to the side. “This was a bad idea. My fault, but a bad idea. I need to fill out a report to the court. I need to testify when you’ve worked your hours.”

She saw him consider arguing, his face tightening in protest.

But he respected her more than that. He collected himself quickly. He stepped back and let the breeze slice between them. He ran a hand through his hair, looking like a chastised little boy, like the Texas youth who had scrambled from one wrongdoing to another.

She forced herself to think like a social worker. To think like someone with an obligation to a court of law. “What time will you get here tomorrow?”

He shook his head. “I’m flying out to Chicago in the morning. We have ten days on the road.”