Reaching First Read online

  The kettle whistled, and Emily brewed herself the strongest cup of tea she could imagine. The thought of sugar or milk turned her stomach, so she sipped it black, willing herself to accept the bitterness. It was what she deserved. A punishment for what she’d done the night before. For what she’d tried to do.

  The doorbell rang when she was only halfway through the mug. Somewhat grateful, she set the bitter brew on the counter and answered the door. “You really did get here fast—” she said, before she realized she wasn’t speaking to Will.

  Instead, she was speaking to a young man. A young man in torn jeans and a green-stained T-shirt. A young man half-hidden behind the largest bouquet of flowers Emily had ever seen. There had to be four dozen stems, all calla lilies. The blooms ranged in color from peach to burgundy, each the length of her ring finger. Together, they were breathtaking—a wild forest of color that whispered of sensuality.

  “Ms. Holt?” the man asked from behind the flowers.

  “Um, yes?”

  “Sign here, please.” They executed a complicated ballet, transferring the vase—lead crystal, she realized, from the weight of it. The delivery man offered her an electronic tablet, and she scrawled something that might have been her signature if she hadn’t been so overwhelmed. He hurried down the steps to his van before she could say anything more.

  Stunned, she carried the flowers into the kitchen. A card nestled in the heart of the arrangement, speared on a clear plastic fork. With trembling fingers, she slipped open the envelope.

  “Thanks for the warm welcome home,” it said, in the impersonal letters of a computer printout. And it was signed “T.”

  Warm welcome. Well, that was one way of looking at it. Even as she buried her face in the flowers, her memory flashed on the heat of Tyler’s mouth on her breast. On the feel of his belt against her throat, raw and sexy.

  She winced in reflex. But when she opened her eyes, the flowers made her realize that maybe she hadn’t managed to ruin everything between them. She carried the flowers to her office and placed them in the center of the credenza that faced her desk.

  She had to thank him. She had a decent idea of what such a bouquet must have cost. Sure, the guy was a millionaire baseball player, but this extravagance was overwhelming. Especially when she should be the one apologizing to him.

  She retrieved her phone from the kitchen. It should be enough to text him. Just a quick thank you. Maybe send a photo of the arrangement.

  But Aunt Minnie would haunt her forever if she took that coward’s route. She set her jaw and pressed the button to dial Tyler.

  * * *

  Tyler guided his new pick-up truck into a convenient parking spot in the garage of the Whitmore condo building. He’d just finished the paperwork on the vehicle an hour earlier, signing where the eager salesman told him to sign, initialing a dozen different forms. The guy assured him everything was much simpler because he wasn’t financing the truck, but he’d be damned if there’d been anything simple about it.

  Still, it felt good to have his own wheels. That rental car had been driving him nuts with its little lawnmower engine. Now, if he could just find time to meet with a real estate agent, to find a place to live, things would almost be back to normal. The team was generous, putting him up in this high-rise condo, but the place was boring. The carpet, the couch, the curtains—everything was a different shade of beige.

  Beige… Like the scraps of cloth Emily had worn last night.

  As if on cue, his phone buzzed. He looked down and picked out the first three numbers. Sure enough, it was Emily—like thinking about her, remembering her hot mouth around his cock, had made her call.

  He answered from the cab of the truck. He was pretty sure this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have in public. Not if anyone else was standing around the lobby, innocently picking up their mail.

  “Hey there,” he answered, smiling around the words.

  Silence.

  He pulled the phone away from his ear, confirming the call was still connected. The counter flashed its numbers, measuring out the seconds. “Emily?” he finally asked.

  She made a funny little sound, something between a cough and a laugh.

  And Tyler knew what he had to do. Talk to her. Keep on talking, until she was ready to answer back. It was like the time his youngest brother had scared Miss Fitz up the live oak tree in the back of the house. Everyone else had been shouting out ideas about how to rescue the cat—calling for a ladder, shouting for a can of tuna fish. He’d been the one to climb up there, to talk to the terrified animal until she finally dared to take a step closer to him on the branch, another, and another, until he could finally gather her up and carry her down to safety.

  “Now I can tell you didn’t take my advice,” he said. “If you’d drunk the water I left by your bed, you wouldn’t have that frog in your throat. They say you should have a full glass of water for every ounce of liquor. But that might keep you busy till sometime after midnight tonight. A few gallons of water, and maybe an entire bottle of Advil. I didn’t check how many you had left. If you run out, you can probably find some pharmacy to deliver. Or maybe one of those services that brings groceries to your door. Maybe—”

  “Thank you,” she interrupted, and he was relieved to hear a laugh behind the words. “The flowers are beautiful.”

  “Flowers?” he asked, as if he’d never heard of such a thing.

  “I’ve never had a guy do anything like that before,” she said.

  “Sounds like you haven’t been with the right guys.” He leaned back against the headrest, breathing deeply of the new-car smell. Her tension vibrated over the airwaves, and he could picture the uncertain frown twisting her lips.

  “Seriously,” she said. “I should be the one giving something to you.”

  “You gave me plenty, babe.” Even as he said the pet name, he felt her fingers digging into his hips. His cock twitched, ever hopeful against his button fly.

  “We both know that isn’t true,” she whispered.

  “I’m the man who got to see you open that door last night. I’m the guy you brought upstairs.” I’m the guy who got the best head of his life, he wanted to say, but the words sounded too crude, too much like something that would scare her off forever. “It’s not your fault I put the brakes on, beautiful.”

  “But it is,” she insisted. “If I hadn’t been sloppy drunk—”

  “If you’d been sloppy drunk, nothing would have happened last night. I would have known from the second I got there that you weren’t ready.”

  “But I was!” she wailed.

  “Mm-hmm,” he agreed. But he let the silence remind her that she was the one who’d poured herself all those drinks. She was the one nursing what had to be a killer hangover today.

  “Maybe…” she trailed off.

  He had to rescue her. “Maybe it was too far, too fast. We both know I’ve got a lot of my sentence left to serve.”

  “Yes!” she said, and he had the distinct feeling she was grabbing on to a lifeline.

  “Maybe when I’m no longer a threat to public safety, things will be different.”

  “You’re not a threat—”

  “No,” he agreed. “I’m not. But you’re not really going to believe that till my one hundred hours are done. And that makes me the world’s biggest idiot.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I waited on your front porch until Will got there this morning. I sent the guy away, because I thought you needed the sleep. I should have let him come in. We could have sanded the entire dining room. The living room, too. Maybe even the back rooms. We would have made a hell of a lot of noise, woken you up way before you were ready, but I’d be five hours closer to ending my sentence.”

  Her laugh made his own lips curl into a smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “The way my head was pounding, I might have forgotten to record the hours.”

  “That,” he said, “would be something I could never forg
ive.”

  That time, they laughed together. She caught her breath and said, “Hey.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for the flowers. Really. They mean a lot to me.”

  “So did your welcoming me home.” He held the phone loosely against his ear. He wasn’t surprised that she stayed silent. “Really, Em,” he said.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say you have to get back to work. Do whatever you’re doing to get Minerva House ready. And I’ll talk to you after tonight’s game.” He waited, but when she didn’t recite all that, he said, “Okay. That’s your signal to hang up.”

  “You hang up.”

  “Not this again. I’m not even on the road.”

  “I know,” she said, and he could tell she was smiling. “In fact, I’m going to the game tonight. I’ll be in the owner’s box with Anna.”

  His heart clenched tight in his chest. “Tonight?”

  “See you there.”

  Then, she did hang-up. And he was left feeling more nervous than he had since his first Little League game.

  * * *

  Emily nursed her Coca-Cola, grateful for the crushed ice that mostly filled her cup. It took a supreme effort, but she managed to ignore the smell of hot dogs and popcorn, the ballpark food that everyone around her was enjoying with abandon. Anna slipped into the seat next to her during the break between the top and the bottom of the second inning.

  “You’re not eating?” Anna asked.

  Emily shook her head and stole another sip of soda. “Not today.”

  Anna laughed. “I know that look! Or more precisely, I know that tone of voice. Let me guess. Chocolate martinis?”

  Emily groaned. “Vodka tonics. Extra lime.”

  “Who were you out with? And why didn’t you call me to come along?”

  “I couldn’t call you. You’re practically a married old lady.” But Emily couldn’t help but glance toward the dugout. Tyler was in the on-deck circle, swinging a weighted bat and looking like he was posing for his picture on a baseball card.

  Anna looked shocked. “Oh. My. God. You and Tyler?”

  “Hush!” Emily practically leaped out of her chair.

  “Don’t tell me to hush!” Anna leaned closer. “You’re not saying I’m wrong.”

  Emily found the hem of her T-shirt fascinating. She picked at the stitches as if she might discover a cure for cancer among the threads. “I don’t know what’s going on. I mean, I thought I knew, before he sent me the lilies—”

  “He sent you flowers?” That was loud enough for half the people in the box to turn around. Emily sank deeper into her seat, wishing she could disappear. Before she had to answer, though, the umpire settled into place behind the plate, gesturing impatiently for Tyler to step into the box.

  He took his time digging in, planting first his right foot, then his left. He dipped the bat toward second base three times in rapid succession. He pulled it back, holding it nearly upright, like a giant exclamation point over his right shoulder.

  Emily leaned forward. She’d never been a huge baseball fan, but she’d watched plenty of games with Anna. Her eye had gotten better; she could see the difference between balls and strikes, read the different pitches by the time they reached the plate.

  That fastball, for example. The one Tyler was just behind, for strike one. The ball that followed, intended to brush him back from the plate. Another fastball, one that Tyler just got a piece of, enough to send the ball flying into foul territory down the first base line. And that curveball, the one that didn’t break until the very last moment, leaving Tyler swinging like he was going for a grand slam, even though the bases were empty. Strike three. He stalked back to the dugout.

  Anna made a quick notation on her score sheet, tapping her purple pen against the paper as the next batter came up. Emily pretended there was nothing more fascinating than watching the left fielder strike out on three fastballs. Unless it was the second baseman, who worked his way to a full count before he struck out.

  By the time the inning was over, Anna was eyeing her with a look as sharp as the hash marks she’d made on her paper. Emily considered saying she needed to go to the bathroom, but she was pretty sure Anna would just follow her there. She was certain, in fact, when Anna said, “Spill. Tell me everything.”

  “There isn’t anything to tell!” Emily lowered her voice. “He came by after the team got back from Cincinnati. I was nervous about seeing him. I had a couple of drinks before he got there, on an empty stomach. In the end, nothing happened.”

  Anna looked skeptical.

  “Nothing!” Emily protested.

  A furrow of concern appeared between Anna’s eyebrows. “Seriously, Em. I’m surprised. He isn’t like any of the guys you’ve dated before.”

  “No. He isn’t.” Emily confirmed the words she’d already told herself a thousand times over.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea? I mean, with the community service and everything…”

  “No, I don’t think it’s a good idea!” Emily surprised herself by her vehemence. “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all! I’m pretty sure I drank half a bottle of Ketel One because I knew exactly how terrible an idea all of this is!”

  Anna sat back, obvious concern pulling her mouth into a frown.

  “You don’t have to do this, Emily. The team can find someplace else for Tyler to serve his sentence. It doesn’t have to be with you, if you really want to go ahead with this.”

  Someplace else. The words hovered there, like a gift. If Tyler served his sentence someplace else, then there wouldn’t be any ethical barrier to a relationship between them. If she didn’t need to track his hours, didn’t need to at least pretend to be an unbiased observer, then she’d be free to find out if there really was anything between them, if there ever could be.

  But Emily knew all of that was an elaborate lie. She’d already decided she didn’t care about the ethics of monitoring Tyler’s community service. She’d been willing to take the chance of messing that up. Her problem was something Anna couldn’t fix, even if she’d known the truth. Emily’s problem was figuring out what she wanted to do with her own body, when she was ready to let go of the Virgin Technicality.

  But the thought of losing Tyler dismayed her. If he weren’t required to show up at her house for community service, he’d find other ways to use his time. He’d find other women who were more willing to follow through on what they promised.

  She felt her cheeks heat. Her blush must have been visible, because Anna put a hand on her wrist. “Say the word, and I’ll set something else up immediately.”

  “No,” Emily said, too quickly.

  The Rockets were back in the field. Atlanta’s strongest batter dug in behind the plate. Anna seemed reluctant when she turned her attention back to the game. The batter swung at the first pitch, sending a screaming line drive to first. Tyler had to leap from the bag, stretch his arm directly overhead, but he came down with the ball in his glove.

  From the box, Emily could see his easy smile as he tossed the ball to the second baseman. She made out the victorious flash in his eyes as he settled back on the bag, ready for the next out. She saw the way he eased off, taking a few steps to his right to put himself in a better position to catch the next ball hit.

  And she saw his quick glance to the owner’s box, the tight nod as he found her in the front row. He touched a single finger to his baseball cap, and she knew he was as aware of her as she was of him.

  “No,” Emily said to Anna again. “Don’t change a thing.” She had the rest of his sentence to figure out what she wanted from Tyler. What she wanted from herself. It was time to ask herself the hard questions, and to listen to every answer.

  CHAPTER 6

  Emily stared at the spreadsheet, unable to believe the totals displayed on her computer screen. Eighty-three. Tyler had already put eighty-three hours into Minerva House.

  She shouldn’t be surprised. He’d helped Will r
efinish all of the hardwood on the ground floor—sanding and finishing and sealing all four public rooms, along with the hallway. He’d painted the newels on the staircase, taking care that no drips marred the uprights. He’d installed the new wiring for the overhead lighting, and he’d tested the new circuits.

  Of course, he’d also cajoled her into counting the hours he’d waited for the county inspector. And he’d ducked out of other things she’d asked him to do—organizing books on the shelves in the front room, sorting the brochures she’d picked up from the printer. He’d absolutely refused to go online when she asked him to double-check the website, saying he had to run errands before he hit the road.

  She’d been frustrated, but she’d gotten over it while he traveled, first to Miami, then Atlanta. They’d talked every night—sometimes until two or three in the morning. Yesterday had been a rare travel day. She’d thought about inviting him to stop by after he got back from the airport, but she’d decided not to. After their earlier fiasco, an invitation like that would come with too many strings attached.

  A week apart had been just the thing she needed to get over his stubborn refusal to complete the assignments she wanted him to do, the things that weren’t high on his personal to-do list. And Emily had to admit she was eager to see him. It certainly wasn’t the same, watching him on TV. He might have hit a game-winning home run in Florida, and a grand slam in Atlanta. He might be in the middle of a hot streak, with the cameras loving him every time he stepped to the plate.

  But Emily was interested in a lot more than his batting average when she opened the door on Tuesday morning.

  He leaned against the door jamb. “Hey, beautiful.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair and watched the motion kindle a hunger in his eyes. “Quit it,” she said. “Will’s right inside.”

  “Then maybe you should step out here, on the porch.”

  “Like that’s any more private.”

  “There’s plenty of room in the bed of my truck.”

  All she heard was bed. That was enough. She blushed, and he laughed.