Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.
—Jackie Robinson
Liam woke up alone.
He could still feel her tucked up against him and he could still smell her sunshine scent on the sheets, but she was long gone. And that was twice in the last twenty-four hours she’d walked away from him without a kiss. That had to stop.
Tugging his clothes back on, he headed up to the lodge to shower and change before he went looking for her. She sure seemed happy about his offer last night, had hugged him tight and kept him up well into the night asking all sorts of questions, like if the A’s would let him keep his number 2 (yes) and if their medical staff was prepared to work with his rotator cuff (yes), because they hadn’t been around him, so he needed to make sure they were careful with him (he’d make sure) and that they didn’t make him overdo it (he wouldn’t).
She’d wanted to know if the O.co Coliseum was anything like Comerica Park, how often he’d get to pitch, and what would happen to his apartment in Detroit.
He’d answered everything as best he could, right up until she’d sighed sleepily, pressed a soft kiss against his chest, then smiled.
“It’s going to be so great,” she’d murmured. “You’re going to be so great.”
It was as if a fist had wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed until Liam was sure the whole thing had been crushed. She’d sounded so sure, so happy, and the only thing he was sure of was that no amount of time on any pitcher’s mound had ever felt as great as it did to just lie there with her.
But lying there with her wasn’t going to pay the bills.
Everyone else was already in the kitchen when he finally got up to the lodge.
“There he is!” Jessie threw herself into his arms the second he came through the door. “Can’t go wrong with California, am I right?”
Liam gave her a token one-armed hug, then set her down and tipped his gaze at Kate, who was smiling brightly.
“Shit, bro.” Finn beamed. “I heard you yakking to your agent, but I didn’t know it was a done deal—that’s awesome.”
“It’s not a done deal yet,” Liam said, trying not to dampen the mood too much but knowing he had to be honest about it. “They made the offer, but I have to go down there and meet with them to work out the details.”
“What do you mean it’s not a done deal?” Jessie squawked. “I perked coffee for the occasion and everything!”
Even Ronan was smiling.
“Looks like you’re off the hook here,” he said, offering Liam his hand. “I know you put your career at risk coming up here to deal with this, and I know I was kind of a prick about the whole thing—”
“You were?” Liam deadpanned as Finn and Jessie snickered. “I didn’t notice.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Ro laughed, then offered an apologetic grin. “I’m happy for you, man. Really.”
“Thanks.” Liam tipped him a sideways glance, but Ro was already turning away. “Are you—”
“No!” Ronan barked, even as he swiped the back of his hand over his eyes.
It was too late, though, they’d all seen him, and in unison Finn and Jessie instantly channeled their best Tom Hanks.
“There’s no crying in baseball!”
And in typical Ro style, he managed to tell them all to fuck off even as he laughed and used the hem of his shirt to wipe his eyes.
Liam watched his brother for another few seconds before stuffing his hands in his pockets.
“Look, I appreciate all the hoopla, but it’s not as easy as you’re all making it out to be. We still have to make that tax—”
“Tax shmax,” Jessie scoffed. “This morning we celebrate—hell, I’ll even make bacon and eggs for the occasion! So go have a shower and for God’s sake brush your teeth; you smell like last night’s Guinness. Come back when you smell better and we’ll work out the rest.”
The four of them stood there grinning at him as he shuffled backward toward the door.
“Don’t let Finn drink all the coffee.”
“I won’t,” Jessie answered, but she had already dismissed him and was busy digging things out of the fridge.
Kate followed him out into the lobby, slid her hand into his, and tugged him out of sight of the kitchen.
“They’re so proud of you,” she whispered. “So am I.”
“Yeah?” He lifted her hand up to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss against her knuckles. “Then why’d I wake up alone this morning?”
“Sorry, I, uh, I ran out of Advil. Cramps, you know.”
Just the mention of the word made Liam cringe.
“Don’t be such a sissy.” Laughing, she wrapped her index finger over the neckline of his T-shirt and pulled him in for a long, slow kiss.
“But I stink,” he mumbled, as she ran her tongue along his bottom lip.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling against his mouth. “You really do.”
“You could come shower with me.”
“Sorry, Sporto, you’re on your own today.” Still smiling, she let her hand slip out of his and returned to the kitchen.
Groaning, Liam watched her go, then stumbled his way downstairs for a shower and an extra couple of minutes with his toothbrush. Bacon and coffee—nothing else in the world smelled that good. Except Kate, but that was different.
When Liam was halfway up the stairs, Ro’s voice trailed off. Liam hadn’t heard what he was saying, but the second he stepped back into the kitchen, Jessie thrust a plate full of bacon, eggs, and pancakes at him and pointed toward a steaming cup of coffee on the table, so nothing else mattered.
And for the next little while, nothing else did matter, because the five of them were all together, laughing and talking as though everything was right with their world. It wasn’t, and all too soon Liam reminded them of that.
“We need to be smart about this,” he said, realizing too late he’d said the exact same thing two months earlier but for different reasons. “It sounds great that Oakland’s made an offer, but even if I sign tomorrow, I don’t know when the first payment’ll show up, so…”
“Doesn’t matter.” Ronan’s gaze flicked over to Kate for a second before he blinked at Liam and said, “I didn’t want to say anything before, in case it went shits up, but Mandy and I sold the house.”
“You what?” Liam croaked. “When? How? I thought she was dead set on keeping it.”
“Yeah, well, she changed her mind. The realtor emailed this morning to say it had all gone through and the buyers are keen to get an early closing date, so as soon as I get back on Monday, I’ll sign my part of the paperwork and then it’s just a matter of time before we’re back in the black.”
“No way.” Liam slumped in his chair, completely dumbfounded. For years Mandy had been resisting selling that damn house, and now, right when they needed the money most, she finally gave in. It almost made him regret every time he’d called her a bitch.
Almost.
“We’ve been sitting here for almost an hour,” he said. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“ ’Cause. I didn’t want to take away from your news.”
“Screw that,” Liam snorted. “This is the news we’ve been waiting for. D’you think it’ll all go through before July?”
Ro nodded behind his mug. “They, uh, they want to take possession by the last weekend in June, so yeah.”
This must have been what Ronan was saying when Liam came up the stairs, because no one else at the table seemed nearly as surprised as Liam.
“Holy shit, that’s—” He couldn’t even finish; all he could do was press his hands over his face and exhale long and loud. “Get me the phone. I want to thank her.”
“No!” Ro choked. “I said she agreed to it; I never said she was happy about it. Just let that sleeping dog lie for now, okay?”
Finn leaned his elbows on the table and nodded slowly. “What we need to be thinking about now is who’s going to run BoB while hotshot here’s working on his suntan. We need both boats in the water.”
“I will.” Ronan set his mug down and rubbed his thumb along the edge. “I’ve got five weeks’ worth of overtime banked, plus my usual three weeks’ holiday time. I’ll take it all at once.”
“Oh no,” Liam said. “If you take the overtime as time off instead of wages, you won’t have anything to pay Mandy’s tuition come September.”
“I can do whatever the hell I want. And if this place goes for shit and I don’t make that money back before September, well…that’s what credit cards are for, isn’t it?”
Liam couldn’t believe the rest of them just laughed and nodded.
“No way, Ro. That’s stupid. We’re not going to leave you on the hook to pay that kind of interest for this. We’ll figure something else out, and if it means I stay, then I stay.”
“Fuck that. You’re going if I have to strap your ass into the Helijet myself.” Ro pushed his mug into the center of the table and smirked. “Besides, I already told payroll, so you’re stuck with me now until the end of July.”
“What?” Jessie cried. “You’re staying? For real?”
“For real.”
Liam couldn’t help grinning, especially when Finn snorted.
“Figures. We do all the work and then he swoops in and plays the superhero.”
Ro leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Well, you know how it is—if the cape fits…”
And just like that, everything they’d been working for, everything they’d been stressing over, was taken care of. With a week and a half to go until their first guests arrived, they could finally relax a little.
The rest of them could anyway. Liam, on the other hand…Well, he laughed and put on a hell of a show, but everything inside him was one giant knot. What if he got to Oakland and they changed their minds? What if his arm couldn’t hold out?
If those were the only things knotting him up, he’d be doing okay, but they weren’t. Hell, neither one of those things even made the top loop of the first knot. What twisted him up the most had nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with Kate.
He didn’t doubt for a single second that she was genuinely happy for him. Nor did he doubt she was genuinely happy that the Buoys was going to stay with his family. But what happened now?
Foster wasn’t going to let her stay here if he wasn’t going to get the Buoys, and with Ronan staying on for the next couple of months, there was nothing stopping Liam from going to Oakland, so where did that leave them?
He didn’t have a chance to ask her, because Jessie was suddenly insisting that Liam, Finn, and Ro go out fishing together.
“When was the last time the three went out together?” she asked. “The three of you, no guests, no friends, just you?”
Not a single one of them could come up with an answer.
“Exactly. And who knows when you’ll get the chance to do it again? So go! It’s early yet; you’ve got the whole day, and there’s nothing here that Kate and I can’t handle, right, Kate?”
“Absolutely.” Kate’s smile was still as bright and cheery as ever. “I mean, come on, I’ve been here over a month and haven’t seen a single salmon hit that kitchen. Now, what the hell is up with that?”
“You heard the woman,” Ronan said. “Let’s have us a good old salmon bake tonight.”
In all his life, Liam had never hesitated when someone suggested they go fishing, especially if that fishing trip included one of his brothers. Why was he hesitating now? Why did it feel off?
“Go,” Jessie prodded. “Get your gear, and Kate and I’ll throw some snacks in the cooler.”
So before he knew it, Liam was standing on the stern of Fishin’ Impossible, watching the Buoys fade into the distance.
“Are you sure about this?” Jessie asked for what had to be the four hundredth time in the last hour.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“But he’s going to be so pissed when he gets back here.”
Kate nodded as she kept stuffing things into her suitcase. “Maybe, but we don’t have any other choice, do we?”
“I don’t know, because you didn’t give any of us time to think about it.”
“You’re right, I didn’t, because time is the one thing we don’t have, Jessie. Grab my makeup bag, will you please?”
Reluctantly, Jessie shuffled into the bathroom and came out with the little black bag.
“Thank you.” Kate shoved it in her suitcase next to her ridiculous heels, then looked down at it and chuckled softly. “Until I got here, I’d never gone more than a day or two without lipstick, and I sure as hell never left my apartment without a good thick coat of mascara and a layer of foundation.”
“Funny,” Jessie said. “I bought a tube of mascara a couple months after I moved from here to the West End, and I ended up tossing it a week later ’cause I kept poking myself in the eye.”
For some stupid reason, that moment with Jessie shattered a little piece of Kate’s heart, and she had to force herself to choke down the growing lump in her throat.
“Okay, I think that’s it.”
She wouldn’t look back; she wouldn’t give that cabin or that bed a second thought, at least not until she was on the mainland with the stamped paperwork in hand. For now she just needed to get out to the dock before the Helijet arrived.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay here by yourself?” she asked as Jessie led her in through the back door of the lodge. “I hate leaving you alone.”
“Then stay.”
“You know I can’t do that, but before I go, can I get you to do me a favor?”
“Yeah.”
Kate stopped inside the lobby and pulled Liam’s Verlander jersey out of the suitcase. “Would you give him this please? And this.”
She reached into her bag, pulled out her notebook, and scrawled a quick note that she stuffed inside the jersey.
“Kate, stop. Let’s sit down and talk this over.”
“No.”
And as if to support her decision, the whirring sound of the approaching Helijet made them both look up. They were still inside, so they were only looking at the ceiling, but at least it broke the tension a little and made them both laugh.
With her fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of her suitcase, Kate started for the door, then stopped, turned, and hugged Jessie as tight as she could.
“I’ll call you as soon as it’s done.”
Jessie didn’t answer, just nodded against Kate’s shoulder.
“Stick to the story and everything’ll be fine, okay?”
Another nod, shorter this time, and then Kate let her go and walked out the door. As with her cabin and that narrow bed she’d come to love so much, Kate would not let herself look back at the lodge.
In fact, once she had herself strapped into her seat, she sat perfectly straight until they were halfway to Vancouver. Then, and only then, did she let one—and only one—tear slip out. She was right to do what she was doing, she didn’t doubt that, but she wasn’t sure it was the right way to do it.
As soon as they landed, she hit the ground running, first to her apartment, then to the bank. It was ridiculous to think that in a city the size of Vancouver she’d be seen by Paul or someone else from work, especially on a Saturday, but that didn’t stop her from checking over her shoulder every couple of minutes.
According to her contract, if she got fired for any reason, she’d lose all her stock options with the Foster Group, and she was going to need those to pull the rest of this plan off. That was why she didn’t stop for a cinnamon dolce latte—even though she was almost ready to kill for one—and she didn’t pay any attention to the 75 percent–off sale at her favorite shoe store. She had enough shoes anyway; what she needed was a good pair of work boots.
The only stop she made was at the corner store, where she ducked in to grab a few bare necessities to get her through the next few days, then she locked herself in her apartment and waited. And waited.
She had shut her phone off but didn’t stop checking her email until finally, just after seven, the one she’d been waiting for, the one she’d been dreading, showed up:
From: Jessie Todd
To: Kate H
Subject: bad
I don’t even know what to think. Usually when one of them gets mad, they yell and carry on, and that’s what he was doing right up until I gave him the jersey. I don’t know what you wrote in that note, but as soon as he read it, he walked out and I haven’t seen him since. The boats are all still here, so it’s not like he’s gone far, but Ro and Finn have been out looking for him for a while now and none of them are answering the radio. I sure hope this works.
“So do I,” Kate muttered. If it didn’t, she’d just made the biggest and worse mistake of her entire life.
It was what kept her up long into the night, well after Jessie’s next email assured her that all three O’Donnells were back in the lodge; there’d been no bloodshed and no more yelling. Liam had simply walked in, picked up the phone, and scheduled a Helijet to pick him up in the morning.
Knowing he’d be on a flight the next morning brought some relief, but it wasn’t until Tuesday morning, when Robyn emailed from the bank to tell her the transaction had cleared and the funds had been deposited to the assigned account, that she felt she could really breathe. Half an hour later, Kate was standing in that same bank, with both the Buoys’s tax bill and the check she’d already filled out.
As she left the bank, Kate turned on her phone for the first time in days, and, grinning down at the screen, she fired off a one-word email to Jessie: Done.
It didn’t seem right to waste a second of such a gorgeous day sitting inside a cab, so Kate set out on foot, turning right off Georgia Street and heading up Burrard with her phone pressed against her ear. After clearing the myriad of security questions with Phyllis in the human-resources department, Kate was assured that her resignation had been logged into the system and all outstanding wages, bonuses, et cetera, et cetera, would be paid out by the end of the week.
Beautiful. And just in time, because twelve stories up from where she stood was her office—the nine-by-nine room she’d been working her ass off in for the last eight years. What a relief it was to know she’d never spend another day there, she’d never get stuck riding the slowest elevator in the Western world, and she’d never have to listen to that god-awful pan-flute music Paul had piped through the whole office.
“Hi, Lorraine,” she said, breezing up to the woman’s desk. “Is Paul in?”
“Kate! What are you doing here?” A twenty-plus-year employee of the Foster Group, Lorraine probably knew more about the internal workings of the company than Paul himself, and Kate knew for a fact that every time someone was hired or fired, that information was immediately sent to Lorraine for her records.
“I’m here to see Paul.” Unlike every other time she’d stood at Lorraine’s desk, Kate didn’t wait for permission; she headed straight for his door.
“He’s in a meeting!” Lorraine cried, tripping over the corner of her desk in her hurry to run blocker.
“That’s okay, this won’t take long.” And before Lorraine could get anywhere near her, Kate pushed open the door to Paul’s office and stepped inside. He was in a meeting, all right: with Josh. Big surprise.
“Kate.” The splash of surprise that washed over Paul’s face was but a tiny ripple compared to the one that hit Josh’s.
“Good, you’re both here.” She didn’t bother closing the door, and when Josh made to push out of his chair, she froze him with a pointed finger. “Sit down.”
“I was just about to have Lorraine call you,” Paul said. “There appears to have been some movement in our project.”
“Some movement?” Kate’s snort was neither ladylike nor polite. She wasn’t surprised he had someone watching the Buoys’s accounts, but she was surprised he had the information already. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“I hope you can explain it, because Josh was telling me about your conversation the other night where, unless I’m misunderstanding, you were pretty certain that they wouldn’t be able to meet their obligations.”
One more thing she wouldn’t miss: Paul’s business voice.
“That’s right,” she said. “That’s what I told him. Were you concerned about your good friend Jimmy’s family, Paul? Worried they’d all find themselves out on the street after you screwed them out of their home?”
Josh’s tanned face blanched even before Paul rolled a warning look at him.
“Kate,” Paul said, his calm, smooth voice dripping with condescension, “you’re letting your emotions control what you say right now, so, because I like you, I’m going to give you a minute to gather yourself before this conversation goes any further.”
“Thank you,” she said, blinking steadily at him. “But I’m as ‘gathered’ as I’m going to get. If anyone in this room needs to gather themselves, it’s Josh, because he’s the dipshit who forwarded your email to me.”
“That was—”
Kate didn’t even look at him. “Shut up, Josh.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Foster?” Lorraine tiptoed into the room behind Kate. Clutched in her hand was a single piece of paper, which Kate immediately snatched away. “That’s—”
“I know what it is,” Kate said. “And I’ll give it to him, so thank you, Lorraine, that’ll be all.”
Wide gray eyes stared at her, then shifted to Paul, whose brief nod sent Lorraine backing out of the office.
“Why’d you do it?” she asked. “You said Jimmy was your friend.”
“He was. But as I have repeatedly told you over the years, Kate, one can’t mix personal feelings with business. It doesn’t work that way.”
“That’s such bullshit,” she muttered. “But I guess it explains why you used me, doesn’t it? All this time I’ve believed that if I worked hard for you, it would pay off, that one day you’d appreciate it and I’d be rewarded. But that’s not what happened, is it? Instead, you went digging around in my past and used it against me.”
It took him a second but he finally sighed, leaned back in his big leather chair, and folded his hands over his stomach. It was over; he’d lost the property, so there was no reason to hide anything anymore.
“Come on, Kate, you know how this works. Before we agree to anything, we do background searches on everyone involved. Nothing out of the ordinary showed up on the initial check, but my guy wanted to do a little more digging because, let’s face it, pro athletes are no strangers to scandal and we needed something to help motivate the O’Donnells to sell.
“When it didn’t look like we were going to find anything, we were all set to go with our original plan. Josh was packed and ready to go and then”—he lifted his fingers in a “there you go” kind of way—“there it was. You were our ticket in, Kate. You’d never breathed a word about the ball player, so he was obviously something you wanted to keep secret.”
“Oh my God. You knew I wouldn’t say anything.”
“Of course I knew. You’d been wanting a chance to prove yourself for so long you could almost taste it; everyone here knew that. I admit I was surprised that you didn’t seem to know what the Buoys was, and I had no way of knowing how your ball player would react to having you there, but it seemed to be working out pretty well.”
He’d played her, plain and simple.
“And so what?” she asked. “What did you think would happen?”
“That’s what was so beautiful about this, Kate. I knew no matter what happened, it would be because you let your emotions get involved. Yes, I was rather hoping you’d get up there and turn into a crazy ex-wife, wreak some havoc, make their lives so miserable and cause so much damage that they’d never recover. But you didn’t, and while that surprised me a bit, it wasn’t a complete shock, because I know you, Kate. You went in there and worked because your heart was set on making it yours. From the second I called you about it, I knew you would do everything you could, whether it was because you wanted to make your ball player suffer or because you wanted to prove you could do it; either way it was a decision you made based on your emotions, and either way we were going to get that place.”
“All that work we did, the repairs, the rebuilding, it would have been for nothing.”
“Not at all,” he said, smiling at her as if she were six years old. “You know how long it takes for construction permits to come through, so while we waited for those, Josh would keep the place running and keep the clients coming back. You, Kate, made that possible for us.”
“Josh. You were going to give the Buoys to Josh to run.”
“Of course.”
“Because I’m too emotional with my decisions, is that right?”
“Exactly.” He might as well have been discussing how many times his coffee should be stirred for all the sentiment he showed.
“I see.” Despite what Paul said, Kate thought she was doing an amazing job of keeping her emotions in check as she stood there running her finger along the edge of the paper in her hand, the one that confirmed her resignation. “So what will you do now?”
“I’ll have someone look into the payment they made, to find out where they got the money. If there’s so much as a hint of anything untoward, we still might—”
“Untoward?” The word ripped from Kate’s throat on a harsh choking laugh. “God, you have no idea who you’re talking about. There’s nothing ‘untoward’ about any of them, Paul. They work hard, and all they want is to share their little piece of the world with others, to show the rest of us what life can be like if you stop to appreciate it once in a while.”
“Kate.”
“Don’t ‘Kate’ me, you condescending piece of shit.” Paul was right, she was letting her emotions rule her, and she didn’t care. “You want to know where they got that money from? Me! I gave it to them.”
“Oh my God,” Josh croaked. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Don’t,” she said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare speak to me right now, Josh, you slimy little snot.”
She kept her eyes fixed on Paul the whole time, watching as something new washed over his face: understanding. He’d underestimated Kate, and they both knew it.
“I would be very careful about what you say next, Kate.”
“Or what? You’ll fire me? Too late.” She slapped the paper down on his desk, pressing her fingers against it until her nails whitened. “I never thought I’d say this again, but you know what, Paul? You can take this job and shove it as far up your ass as you can reach—or, better yet, let Josh do it for you.”
She was already at the door when he called her name, and this time it wasn’t nearly as calm or condescending as before.
“Kate!” Pushing out of his chair, Paul lifted the paper off his desk and waved it between them. “If you think I’m going to let you walk out of here with anything other than your coffee mug, you are sadly mistaken. A couple keystrokes and this’ll show you as being fired, which you are.”
“Go ahead and try, but before you do, know this.” Holding her phone up, she waved the screen in front of him, showing the most recent email she’d received. “My friend Phyllis has already sent me a copy, and if that’s not enough, then you should probably know that I have several saved text messages, of the highly inappropriate kind, from a couple of your investors who had a difficult time taking my no as an answer over the years.”
A slightly grayish tinge covered Paul’s face.
“Exactly,” Kate continued. “And as both of these ‘gentlemen’ are, and I shudder to say it, well respected in their law firms, and both are married to women who’ll ruthlessly rip their hearts out, I’m fairly confident either one of them would be only too happy to represent me should I need to retain counsel for any reason—like wrongful dismissal or anything else we can come up with.”
The vein in the middle of Paul’s forehead began to throb, and his jaw clenched so tight he was no doubt going to damage some of his expensive veneers.
“Anger.” Kate gave him the most condescending smile she could muster. “It’s an emotion, too, Paul. Don’t let it cloud your decision-making.”
She started through the door, then stopped and looked back one more time. “I’ll expect everything I’m owed before the close of business on Friday.”
And by the time Friday afternoon hit, not only was her bank account well padded, but with the help of Jeanette and Laurel, both of whom were still in total shock, she packed up her apartment, put some of it in storage and donated the rest, gave her landlord notice, and took care of the seemingly endless accounts that needed to be changed or canceled.
By the time she finally made it inside one of the Helijets, she was almost twitching. She’d only been gone a week, yet it felt like half a lifetime. But as excited as she was to be going back, the cavern in her heart still ached.