The Game of Love, Page 3

  Jade smiled ruefully, shaking her head. “Who is it?”

  Lynn didn’t get a chance to answer. Henry Babcock, one of the other parents, tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Jade! I just saw your car. What happened?”

  “Some jerk hit me this morning,” Jade told Henry.

  “The driving is getting worse and worse in this city, isn’t it?” Henry said. He was still in a suit. Henry was a lawyer with a practice so well established that he could always wrangle the time for baseball practice.

  “What a day for it,” Lynn noted. “Our new coach got into a tangle this morning, too. He said that a little twit made a left right in front of him.”

  Jade felt a tingle in her spine even as she told herself that it couldn’t be. Miami was a huge city with zillions of fender-benders occurring daily.

  But she knew that her fear had been realized when the season’s hero, the old pro, approached them.

  “Oh, Jade, here he is! Jeffrey Martin! Jeffrey, meet Jade McLane. Sean’s mom.”

  He was a little bit sweaty; he still carried the scent of subtle after-shave. He halted about two feet from Jade, and his startling blue eyes settled on her.

  “We’ve met,” he said.

  Jade felt as if her jaw had locked. He didn’t stretch out a hand to her; both fists remained on his hips.

  “You have? Where?” Lynn asked.

  Jade felt the heat of his gaze, saw the stubborn set of his jaw. They should have jailed him! she thought furiously.

  “This morning,” he replied lazily, his eyes never leaving Jade. “At a turn signal on Ponce.”

  “What—oh.” Lynn quickly figured out what he was referring to. For several seconds she was as silent as the hostile pair staring at each other. Then she laughed.

  “Okay, then. Twit, meet Jerk. Jerk, meet Twit. Now you can shake hands and come out fighting. But be subtle, please. We have a dozen young men here to whom we’re trying to teach sportsmanship.”

  Jade didn’t move, but her hand was suddenly in Jeffrey Martin’s. Her palm was engulfed briefly, but firmly, by long, powerful fingers that seemed to radiate heat and energy and tension.

  He smiled. Slowly. He had held just her hand, but her entire body grew warm at his touch.

  “Maybe you’ll let Ryan and me take you and Sean to dinner tonight, Jade. I’d still like to buy you that cup of tea.”

  He turned and started back toward the boys.

  Gritting her teeth, Jade called after him. “Thanks, but n—”

  “Jade!” Lynn interrupted her, catching her arm. “Don’t you dare be nasty to him! Only the luck of the draw put his son Ryan on Toby’s team. This is a dream come true for Toby! And the kids! If you care about any of us—”

  “Lynn! He creamed my car and walked away scot-free!”

  “What’s a car when—”

  “It’s my only transportation!”

  “When compared with the hearts of a dozen little boys. Not to mention that of my husband. Hey! He offered you dinner.” Lynn grinned. “If he buys you enough dinners it’ll pay for the damage to your car.”

  “He’s a macho egotist! You should have seen him this morning! The cop was falling all over him when he saw his name. I still don’t know who or what he supposedly is—”

  “Jade! He’s one of the greatest pitchers who ever lived. Oh!” Lynn groaned. “Don’t you ever read the sports pages? No, you don’t, do you? Jeffrey Martin is a candidate for the Hall of Fame! He’s got a record for perfect innings!”

  “Then what is he doing here?”

  “He cracked up his knee in a skiing accident. Sometimes you can see the limp. He was offered a very impressive sum to be a sportscaster down here, so he moved down from Chicago. Jade, come on! His being with us is the chance of a lifetime!”

  “Umm,” Jade murmured dryly, but her eyes hadn’t left Jeffrey Martin. Batting practice had begun, and a small boy with dark hair and wide eyes had just missed every ball that had come his way.

  “Good try, Ryan! Fine swing. We just have to get it going in the right direction!” Jeffrey Martin said encouragingly.

  The little boy tried to smile. Then he hurried away from the plate, and the next child took his place.

  Jeffrey Martin’s eyes followed his son with tender concern. But then he had to pitch to the next batter.

  Jade found herself watching the little boy. Jeffrey Martin’s son. The child was very slim and fragile for such a tall and muscled father. Ryan moved behind the fence, clenching his fingers around it as he watched the other boys. Sean was up next. With his customary finesse, he slammed the ball so hard that it sailed clear out of the field.

  Jade cheered for her son with the others, yet her mind wasn’t really on him. To her surprise, she discovered that she was walking toward the forlorn-looking child who stood behind the fence.

  He was small, so she stooped down when she reached his side.

  “Hi. You’re Ryan?”

  He gazed at her and nodded slowly. She saw that there were tears in his eyes.

  Jade smiled. “I’m Sean’s mom.”

  His eyes widened a bit. “Sean’s great,” he said. He stared at the field again. Kids and grown-ups were still chasing the ball that Sean had hit.

  “Sean should have been my dad’s kid,” he said quietly, then heaved a little sigh.

  Well, the father might be a jerk, but the son had captured her heart in those few seconds. If there was anything at all that she wanted to accomplish that season, Jade decided, it was to convince this beautiful little boy that the world was made of much more than macho sports figures.

  She forced a little laugh. “Oh, kids and parents don’t necessarily do the same things well, Ryan. For example, I like to decorate, but Sean couldn’t care less about anything artistic. I’ll bet there are things your dad can’t do that you’ll find you’re just great at. And—” she hesitated just briefly “—your dad will be proud of whatever it is that you do well.”

  Beautiful blue eyes stared into hers hopefully. “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Ryan smiled. Jade felt a tingle in her spine, as if she were being watched. She glanced up slowly.

  Ryan might not have inherited his father’s sports skills, but there was no doubt where he’d gotten the deep and fascinating blue of his eyes.

  Jeffrey Martin was staring down at her with a strange look on his face. The lazy smile was gone, and there was something enigmatic and a little dangerous about the intensity of his expression.

  The warning tingle shot down her spine again. His apparent nonchalance, she realized, the smile, the laughter, the indolence, was just a facade. There were many layers to this man. There was a ferocity about him, a mysteriousness. Only one thing seemed perfectly clear to her right then: he was a man who would ruthlessly pursue what he wanted.

  What was it, she wondered uneasily, that he wanted from her?

  CHAPTER 2

  Why in hell had he issued that dinner invitation? Jeff wondered. The woman was nothing short of a bitch.

  Didn’t matter, he told himself, she’d probably refuse to go, anyway.

  “Okay, guys!” he called. “Diamond positions! Let’s see if you can snag a few fly balls!”

  He idly began to bat balls into the air. The first three bounced on the ground as several boys collided in their efforts to field them. Behind Jeff, Toby began to laugh. Jeff turned around and grinned. Jeff had liked Toby and Lynn the moment he’d met them. Toby was tall and lean and lanky with a gaunt face, slightly crooked teeth and a smile for every kid in town. Lynn was tiny, curvaceous, soft-spoken, but determined. Jeff hadn’t intended to coach Little League at all until he’d met Toby, who had enthusiastically urged him to help out.

  “It’s always like this at the beginning of the season,” Toby said, still grinning. “But you watch—they’ll come together.”

  Jeff shrugged and tossed another ball in the air. “This is already more fun than I ever had in the major league
s,” he assured Toby as they both watched the ball arc through the air.

  This time, the ball was caught. Sean McLane held up his hand, and the ball seemed to slide right into his glove.

  “The kid is a natural,” Jeff said. He waved as Sean smiled a little shyly, a little proudly.

  “Yeah, he is,” Toby agree. “And it’s ironic.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Sean’s dad was killed by a baseball bat.”

  Jeff started. “Murdered?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.” Toby stepped forward to catch the ball Sean had thrown back. He tossed it into the air for Jeff, continuing to talk as Jeff whacked the ball.

  “It was a freak accident. Danny was a deejay. A couple of the stations were having a charity game. All of the guys were fooling around, Danny included. He walked in front of the batter and was hit right at his nape. He was dead in less than five minutes.”

  Jeff stopped tossing balls. “God, how awful. Was Sean there?”

  “Yeah, Sean and Jade.”

  “Hey! Coach!” one of the kids called.

  Jeff mechanically threw another ball into the air. He couldn’t stop thinking about Sean and Jade seeing the incident.

  “Sean still likes to play? And his mother lets him?”

  Toby grinned ruefully. “You can’t really stop a kid from playing, can you? Besides, Jade is fairly logical about it. She knows that what happened was a tragic fluke. She has an aversion to sports, but she’s been wonderful about helping out with Little League.” He shrugged again. “Maybe it’s the single-parent syndrome. She divides all her time between work and Sean.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s a real estate agent.” Toby paused as if he’d just thought of something brilliant. “Hey, if you’re looking for a house, she’d be perfect.”

  Perfect? Jeff didn’t know about that. He had one strike against him because of the accident. Two strikes, because he was a sports figure.

  Three strikes and you’re out, my friend….

  Out of what, he wondered with annoyance. He batted another ball, then found himself turning to watch her. She was pouring water from a cooler for one of the little boys—he didn’t know all their names yet. She smiled, tousled his hair and laughed at something that he said.

  He’d asked her out for coffee without ever planning the words. How had he known that she wasn’t married? He smiled sardonically. Because she would have been threatening him with her husband if she’d had one.

  And then he’d issued that dinner invitation. Why?

  Because she was an attractive woman. But there was more to it than that. She hadn’t Diana’s startling perfection of face and figure, but she had something different and perhaps even more exciting. She made him think of the outdoors, of the country. Her hair had the color of a cornfield beneath the sun; her eyes were a green as deep and endless as the velvet of rolling hills. She was of medium height, and a little thin. But not without padding, he reminded himself, and his grin widened as he realized that he was mentally stripping her, attempting to guess just how she would look nude.

  “Hey! Mr. Martin!”

  Jeff blinked and looked down. Sean McLane was standing in front of him with a ball.

  “Sir, you missed it.”

  Jeff’s mouth twitched with rueful self-reproach. Yes, son. I missed it, because I was thinking about unbuttoning your mother’s blouse.

  “Thanks, Sean. And hey, you all call Toby by his first name. I’m Jeff, okay?”

  Sean gave him a shy smile. It was a good smile, charming and disarming, with full, well-defined lips.

  Your mom’s smile, Sean, Jeff noted silently. It was her naturalness that attracted him, he decided. The rather wild waves of her thick tawny hair, her eyes, her smile. She was unpolished, but she didn’t need makeup or adornment. She moved with a certain sensuality, laughed with pure pleasure and made him think, quite frankly, of wild, spontaneous sex in a jungle setting, or on a beach with waves crashing nearby and the sun overhead.

  Hell, he would settle for a bed, a hotel, a motel, the back seat of a car…

  Oh, boy. Sorry, Sean, he apologized mentally.

  “You’re good, son. Really good. Did you know that?”

  Sean looked down and shuffled his feet in the red dirt of the diamond. “I, uh, like to play,” he said modestly, and Jeff smiled. Then Sean looked up at him. “Do you think I could ever make the Major Leagues?”

  “Well—” Out of the corner of his eye, Jeff saw Jade McLane again. All the boys were lined up by the cooler, and she was pouring water. What would her life be, he wondered, if she had to watch her son, week after week, on a baseball diamond?”

  She was already doing that, he reminded himself, and apparently doing it well.

  “It’s a long way off, Sean,” Jeff said. “You’ve got years to see what you really want.”

  Sean nodded. Jeff felt a tug at the hem of his jersey. He turned to see his son looking at him a little wearily. “Dad? Toby just said we’d call it quits for the day. Do you think we could go eat? I’m starving.”

  “Yeah, sure. Sean—”

  “Hey, Jeff.” Toby came up to him and clapped him on the back. “Lynn and I were thinking of taking Barry to the drugstore for supper. Want to come?”

  Barry was their nine-year-old son. He was a darned good little player. Not as good as Sean, but few kids had his magic touch.

  “I, uh, yeah, I guess. I’d asked Jade if she and Sean would like to join Ryan and me—”

  “Good, good, we’ll all go together. Hey, listen, stick with us. We’ll show you all the real gourmet places.”

  The drugstore had a fountain and a counter and freshly scrubbed tables and pretty windows. Chicken and meat loaf and various other down-home dishes were served with salads and vegetables and cornbread. The prices were very low, and the waitresses were as pleasant as they could be.

  The three boys sat at one table, and the grown-ups seated themselves right next to them. At the kids’ table, conversation switched from ball games to the latest in computer games.

  Jade McLane, Jeff assumed, had found herself caught between a rock and a hard place. She may have managed to refuse dinner with him, but not with Toby and Lynn. Nor would it have been tactful for her to slide into the seat beside Toby when his wife was present.

  She’d had little choice but to sit beside Jeff, and since the tables were small, they were touching. Each time one of them shifted on the seat their thighs brushed together; the slightest movement of a hand or elbow brought their arms in contact.

  He wondered if she was as acutely aware of him as he was of her.

  She was.

  She really couldn’t help it, Jade told herself defensively. He was wearing shorts, and they were so damned close that the hair on his calves tickled her flesh right through her stockings.

  Thank God it wasn’t really necessary for her to participate in the conversation. Toby was busy plotting the upcoming season with Jeff. To Lynn’s dismay, he was so engrossed in his plans that he created a diamond with his napkin and four peas.

  “Toby!,” she exclaimed. “The boys will see you. You just yelled at them for blowing the paper off their straws, and now you’re sitting there playing with your peas, for heaven’s sake!”

  Toby gave Jeff and Jade a long-suffering look, then turned to his wife. “Lynn, I’m not playing with the peas. I’m using them for a purpose. Now—” He turned his attention back to the napkin diamond. “We’ll put Chris Garcia on first when Sean is pitching, and vice versa. It will be D. J. or Tommy for second—we’ll have to see. And Ryan—”

  “Ryan will be outfield,” Jeff said. He gave Toby a crooked smile. “He knows he needs a lot of work on his catching.”

  On catching, on batting, on the whole game, Jade thought. Did Jeff Martin know that his son didn’t even like baseball? she wondered. How ironic it was. She, who had to steel her nerves every time the season started, had Sean for a son. And Jeff Martin, a star athlete,
had a child who would have been ten times happier in a music or art class than on the ball field. She started to accuse Jeffrey Martin of gross insensitivity, but even as the thought formed, she had to retract it. She had seen the way he looked at his son; she had heard his words of assurance and encouragement. In fact, she couldn’t fault Jeff for a single move he had made during the practice. He seemed to be an awful lot like Toby, trying to teach the boys that they should strive to do their best, but letting them know that they were out to have a good time, too.

  Toby always applauded Sean, but no more than he did the weakest player on the team for the slightest improvement.

  Jeff used the same approach today. When one of the boys missed a ball, he called out, “Almost!” He had promised Mark Craft, who hadn’t hit a ball in the three years Sean had been with the league, that his swing was a darned good one, and that once he did hit the ball, it would sail into space.

  Jade turned her eyes to the man at her left. Their shoulders were touching, because she had leaned over to catch one of Lynn’s comments and Jeff was reaching out to reposition one of Toby’s peas.

  His eyes were a light blue, like the summer sky, filled with good humor. His dark hair was tousled boyishly over his forehead. He was grinning, and she thought that it was a nice grin. It was very masculine, like the after-shave that clung to him, like the feel of his body, warm and strong against her. He was strikingly good-looking, but his appeal owed as much to his humor and easy manner as to his appearance.

  He was the type of man who made you wonder about him just because he looked at you. It was as if there were something hidden inside him, something she longed to explore.

  Jade closed her eyes for a minute, feeling a little dizzy. Then why are you so down on him? a voice within her mind demanded. She answered that question easily.

  He ran into me! And after he ran into me, he made a fool of me. He conned that stupid cop into letting him off the hook just because he used to throw baseballs around on television.