THREE MONTHS and Luke still couldn’t walk through his own house without memories of Katie punching him in the gut. Right when he thought he’d recovered, it would happen again. Like now. Luke poured a cup of coffee and turned toward the kitchen table, and the memory sped at him like a bullet. Katie naked on top of that counter, legs wide, him between them. The kisses. The passion. The moans.
“Damn it,” he cursed, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Why did he keep doing this? He wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t a loser. Not even without his pitching arm. Katie had left without so much as a goodbye, deserted him in his hour of need. And proved she wasn’t what he thought she was. Her “I love you, Luke” in that ambulance had either been a hallucination from his head injury or a bunch of crap. So why couldn’t he get her out of his head? Why did he feel as if he was missing something he shouldn’t be missing?
The doorbell rang and he let Maria answer it. He was in a foul mood this morning. Again. The again being Maria’s opinion. That wasn’t true. He was now in a fine mood after his morning coffee. It was simply a new routine. Wake up and be foul like the rest of the world. Drink coffee and perk up. He kind of liked it, too. And as much as he missed pitching, the morning coffee and no-pressure-to-perform thing wouldn’t be so bad if he had the slightest clue about what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
He sat down at the kitchen table, away from the television and freaking SportsCenter. He didn’t want to hear about baseball. Or football. Or even flipping volleyball. Whatever he did was not going to have anything to do with sports. Everyone expected him to be involved with sports. Open a bar. Hang all kinds of sports crap on the walls. No. Bar.
“Luke.” It was Ron. “How’s it going?”
“Thinking about opening a bar. You know. Sticking sports crap on the walls. Build-it-and-they-will-come kind of thing.” He lifted his out-of-date newspaper with the crossword puzzle he’d been doing for well over a week. “And I’m looking for a four-letter word for ass. Any ideas. And don’t say Luke.”
Ron stared at him and then said, “I’d say mule. But then again, I hear Rick is dating Libby again.”
Luke snorted and grabbed his pencil. “Rick, it is.” He tossed his pencil down and leaned back in his chair to study Ron over his coffee cup. “What’s on your mind?”
“A coaching job,” he said.
“And here I thought management was your forte,” Luke quipped. “We’ve had this conversation. I don’t want to be stuck in a tie commentating sporting events on some news channel. And I don’t want to coach the sport I wish I was playing.” He irritably tapped his fingers on his mug.
“Not even if you’d be coaching in New York?”
Luke felt the tension spiral down his spine. “Why would I want to go to New York?”
“Because I sent her away, Luke. I told her she would distract you. I told her you couldn’t fight your injury and would worry about pleasing her. I pushed her to leave and I pushed her hard.”
Luke set his coffee mug down, liquid slopping over the sides. “When?”
“While you were having your tests,” he replied. “At the hospital. It was the right thing to do, Luke. I am your manager, and—”
“Were,” Luke said, standing up. “Were my manager.”
Ron reached in his pocket and slid a card onto the table. “If you want the job, I believe it can be yours. They want you bad.”
***
IT WAS Saturday and Katie blinked awake to the rumbling of thunder, rain splattering on the windows of her New York apartment. She tugged her white down comforter to her chin as the memory of another storm assailed her. She’d been in Luke’s kitchen when he’d come home from practice, a storm rolling in that had set the mood for the stormy encounter they’d shared, the passion that had followed.
She snuggled down in the blankets and covered her head with her pillow. She was definitely going back to sleep. And waking up when it was nice and sunny. “Rain, rain, go away,” she murmured.
Rolling to her side, she tucked the pillow under her head and pounded it. Promised herself she’d stop thinking about Luke. He hated her, she was sure. And with good reason. She should never have listened to Ron and left Luke. And now he wasn’t playing ball. He’d lost baseball, and she hadn’t been there to help him get through it. But she’d made her decision. She had to live with it.
“Grr,” she muttered into the pillow. She wasn’t going to be able to sleep. She tossed aside the covers, shoved her feet to the floor. She was up but she wasn’t getting dressed. Boxers, a tank top, coffee and a book. That would be her new thunderstorm memory. A nice, relaxing, peaceful day.
She started the coffeepot, and then washed her face and brushed her teeth. Scanning her bookshelf, she chose a thriller, a scary story to fit the weather.
A glimpse in her full-length vanity mirror drew a grimace. Donna was right. She was skinny. She hadn’t been eating. For a moment, she contemplated stepping on the scale, but then decided against it. She didn’t want to know. She’d eat. Lunch. Later.
With coffee and book in hand, she headed back to bed and the expensive, snuggly, down comforter she’d bought on a whim and never regretted. She had managed to get through page one of her book when her cell phone jangled on the nightstand. She considered ignoring it. Her sister was fine, even dating a nice, respectable doctor. A real change from her ex.
She snatched up the phone and noted the caller ID—Donna, of course. She answered. “Hello.”
“Turn on ESPN,” Donna ordered.
“Are you going to say hello?” Katie asked, rolling her eyes.
“Do it!” Donna demanded.
Katie sighed and grabbed the remote, also on the nightstand, and did as she’d been told. “Cable’s out,” she said. “What can possibly be so urgent on ESPN? Because if you want me to ogle some guy’s backside, I have to tell you, I prefer the novel I just started.”
“Oh, you want to ogle this backside, honey,” Donna said. “Guess who just took a coaching job with the New York Comets?”
Katie sat up, tossed her book aside. “Luke?”
“That’s right, sweetheart, and he’s in town,” she said. “ESPN interviewed him live here this morning.”
Her doorbell rang. “Someone’s at my door. I… You think? No. No. It can’t be.” It rang again. “I have to go.” She hung up and tossed the phone onto the bed. “It can’t be him.”
Katie started for the door, but stopped. She wasn’t dressed. Robe. She needed a robe. She grabbed the one at the back of the bathroom door, and made the mistake of looking in the mirror. Cringing, she reasoned, “It’s not him anyway.”
Whoever had been ringing the doorbell was now knocking. She pressed her hands to the door and forced herself to calm down. “Who is it?”
Silence. “Katie, it’s Luke.”
She couldn’t seem to find her voice. And she tried. She tried so damn hard. She gave up and yanked the door open. “I… Luke.” He was as gorgeous as ever, maybe thinner by a few pounds. His hair a little longer than she remembered, curled a bit over his brow. “You look good.” She thought of that image of herself in the mirror. “I was in bed.” He smiled.
“I mean. Reading. I was reading in…”
He arched a brow. “Bed?”
What was she supposed to say? Care to join me? Of course he wouldn’t. Not after all that had happened between them. She stepped back to allow him entry. “Come in.”
He stepped into the room, inspecting her little apartment, which was about the size of his kitchen and den and nothing more. He still had that sexy Texas saunter that made his nice, tight backside oh, so drool worthy. She shut the door and leaned against it. “I have coffee. You want coffee?”
“Coffee sounds great,” he said.
She rushed to her sparkling, all-white kitchen and grabbed a coffee cup. When she was done, she set his mug on the counter. He took a sip. “You remember how I like it.”
She remembered a lot of things. Couldn’t forget, no matter how hard she tried. They stood there at her kitchen counter and stared at each other, and Katie was melting. Melting and she didn’t know what to do about it.
“I just heard congratulations are in order. You’re coaching. That’s wonderful, Luke. Really wonderful.” She studied him. “Is it wonderful to you, Luke? Are you happy about it?”
“I think it has the potential to be wonderful,” he said after a short pause.
“Good. That’s good.”
“I’ve missed you, Katie.”
Her heart squeezed. “I’ve missed you, too, Luke.” She wanted to explain about leaving, but she didn’t know how, and wasn’t sure she should.
“Ron told me why you left,” he said.
She swallowed hard. “He did?”
He nodded. “Now you tell me.”
“Because I didn’t want to distract you. Because I didn’t want you to lose baseball. Because…” Emotion welled in her chest. “Because I was an idiot to ever listen to that man. You lost baseball anyway, and I wasn’t there to help you get through it. But you did. I’m glad you did.”
He didn’t move, didn’t immediately respond. “I’m not through it, Katie. Some days, I’m hanging by a string. But I’m trying. I’m getting there.” Thunder rumbled again, shaking the windows. “The rain makes me think of that day—”
“In your kitchen,” she said softly, awareness fluttering in her stomach, sexy images of them making love teasing her mind. “I woke up thinking about it this morning.”
His eyes warmed. “What if I told you I could have coached in Los Angeles, but I came here for you? So you could be close to your sister and I could be close to you.”
Her heart tripped and then raced. “How close, Luke?” she asked. “How close do you want to be?”
He stepped forward, stopping just short of touching her. “In the same bed,” he said, his voice low, sensual, full of the erotic promise of the past. “Reading a book by your side—for the rest of my life, Katie.” Finally, he reached for her, the touch charging through her senses, pure bliss, like coming home when she’d been lost.
“I love you, too, Luke,” she said, slipping into his arms. “I love you so much. It destroyed me to leave you.”
“I’m here now,” he promised. “And I’m here to stay.”
“Kiss me,” she ordered, hungry for a taste of him. “Kiss me and then let’s go to bed and sleep all day.”
“Sleep?” he challenged.
She cast him a mischievous smile. “That’s code for pass the whipped cream, please.”
THE END
What’s recent and coming up from me? I just launched my SAVAGE TRILOGY (Savage Hunger and Savage Burn are available now) and DIRTY RICH BETRAYAL: LOVE ME FOREVER (Grayson & Mia’s wedding book) is coming soon!
https://lisareneejonescomingsoon.weebly.com/
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