One in Waiting (Reedsville Roosters Book 2), page 2
“And you didn’t think to tell me about it? You made your family out to sound very dull and moral. Something’s not adding up.”
“Drop it, okay? It’s not—”
They passed a wooden sandwich board advertising the dining room that baseball reception had been held in, and Emilie had to stop and do a double take.
Reedsville Roosters Players and Sponsors Reception
She raked her gaze over the small photos of the team’s starting lineup and tried to convince her brain that her eyes weren’t really seeing what it thought she saw.
Ceria gave her a nudge and giggled. “Looking to score?”
“I already did.”
“What?”
Emilie bent to examine the name under one photo in particular, just to be sure. People changed a lot in seventeen years. The man in that picture could have been anyone, and not…
Fuck.
Leary.
It was him.
His hair was a little darker than it had been all those years ago, but the sultry brown eyes were the same.
The same as their daughter.
Her legs seemed to fall out beneath her, but Ceria grabbed her arm to—
No, Ceria wasn’t that strong. Ceria wouldn’t have the momentum or weight to stop Emilie from hitting he floor.
She found herself pulled against a man’s side. She looked up into gray eyes shadowed by a lovingly broken-in cowboy hat, narrowed in mirth.
“I’m countin’ it,” the stranger said.
“C-counting what?”
“You swooned. Us minor leaguers don’t get a helluva lot of swooning, but you so did. Which picture did it for ya? Was it mine?” He wriggled his eyebrows, and Emilie made a choked, snorting sound.
He was attractive enough. A little more than attractive, actually. Ruggedly handsome. Killer smile. And he looked at her with such heat and intensity she couldn’t imagine why any woman in his company wouldn’t swoon. His expression was full of “come to bed with me,” and her reserve was low enough at the moment that she actually considered it.
“Uh, Mr. Ardent? Is that it? Ardent?” Ceria peered at the sandwich board.
“Yep, that’s me.” He didn’t let go of Emilie. In fact, he rubbed the arm he’d grabbed during her near-topple as if to soothe it.
“Thank you for your quick reflexes. I think we’re all set now. Emilie probably just needs to get some sugar into her system.”
“Emilie.” He seemed to be trying the name on for size. “Emilie. That’s pretty. Almost as pretty as the lady the name belongs to.”
“I always thought that.”
Shit. That voice. Emilie turned very slowly in Mr. Ardent’s grip to find a very unsmiling Leary Marshall standing six feet away.
Fucking hell.
Obviously, God hadn’t heard her prayer for him to not be one of the four players in the building. She didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want to see him. After everything that had happened, she wasn’t even sure they should be in the same hotel together, much less the same room.
“I was going to see if she and her friend wanted to join us for dinner,” Mr. Ardent said. “She swooned. I think she’s a keeper.”
“I-I did not swoon.” And she was so not a keeper. She pulled away and hiked her bag up higher on her shoulder. “I just needed a moment. It’s been a long day.”
“Nothing cures a long day like a nice meal with good company, darlin’.”
Ceria made a soft guffaw and Emilie glowered at her. As always, her assistant was entirely unaffected by it. Of course she didn’t know the cause of Emilie’s distress. Emilie had never told her the name of Alison’s father. It hadn’t mattered. The only thing that had mattered was that he’d been eighteen, she’d been barely sixteen, and in Louisiana, that was called statutory rape—carnal knowledge of a juvenile her attorney halfsie Lucian might call it. She’d kept her mouth shut about who had knocked her up so that he would still have a future even if hers had looked to be in tatters.
And some future. He didn’t look like the past seventeen years had brought him down much at all. He looked good. He’d been adorable at eighteen with those dimples and that sweet grin, but he’d apparently grown out of that affliction in the best possible ways. If sex were to be embodied in a god, his name would be Leary. Even his sneer was sexy.
“We’re only staying until we can get a flight out in the morning,” Ceria said. “We’re not here for this…Den thing.”
“We weren’t either, but since we’re here…” Mr. Ardent shrugged.
Ceria’s left eye twitched—her harbinger of nuh-uh. “Might as well get you some, huh? I’m guessing that’s the end goal of all this debauchery.” She tipped her head ever so slightly toward the woman who strode by wearing not much more than a mask, a grass skirt, and a smile.
To their credit, neither man looked. Emilie knew this, because they were both staring at her. One with malice, the other with hunger of a probable carnal sort.
“Where are you from, honey?” Mr. Ardent asked Ceria.
“Texas. Why?”
He chuckled. “Because you sound like it.” He looked at Emilie. “You from Texas, too? Your accent’s not as prominent.”
Oh, it wouldn’t be. Even as a child, she didn’t have much of an accent to speak of. Her mother was big on pageantry and had Emilie walking those stages from the age of three up until…
Well. Up until Leary.
Mother said beauty queens should sound like every woman in America all at once, so Emilie’s accent had been tamped down and hidden away. She wasn’t surprised she didn’t sound like much of anything now. Sometimes, she spoke with the inflections of her adoptive family, but only when she was very nearly out of control. Ceria rarely let her get to that point.
“That’s all right,” Mr. Ardent said when she didn’t immediately answer. “You want to keep some mystique, huh? I dig it.”
“It’s not that. It’s just not easy to explain. I’m from here, but haven’t…” She swallowed hard and shifted her gaze to Leary. “I haven’t been home in a long time. I’ve…never felt welcome here.”
His features softened. He didn’t look outright hostile, but not exactly gracious, either. “No wonder you’re on the first plane out tomorrow morning, then. I’m certain you’ll fly out and not even look down at the city as you leave. Hardly worth your attention, is it?”
Mr. Ardent gave him a nudge. “What’s gotten into you? Chill out.”
“You ever see a ghost, Ren?”
“No. Why?”
“Because when I look at her, that’s what I see. I think my mind’s playing tricks on me and she’s not really here because she’s been gone so long that it can’t be possible she’s back.”
“You know her?”
“Oh, I know her, all right. Or rather, I once did. I imagine she didn’t swoon because she likes the look of the Roosters’ starting line-up. She’s appalled that she laid eyes on someone she’d hoped to never see again. Isn’t that right, Princess Emilie?”
“Fuck you, Leary.” She started for the stairs with Ceria on her heels.
Leary called after her, “You sure you want to? I don’t think last time turned out so well, princess. Or maybe I’m not remembering right. How many years has it been?”
“Enough for you to go fuck yourself. That’s how many.” She stomped up the stairs so hard she almost twisted her ankle, but her rage kept her going.
Of course she’d have to run into him. Of course. That was her life in a nutshell: inconvenience, blame, and regret.
So much regret.
CHAPTER THREE
Leary could hardly see through his anger. He’d watched her storm up those stairs in that tight black dress and those beat-up boots and felt that old surge of arousal come rushing back. As a teenager, he’d sprung to attention every damn time she entered a room, and it was a wonder he’d managed to keep his hands off her as long as he did.
She was so damned aloof. The boys at their private school had called her “Evil Emilie,” but she wasn’t. She was just…apart. And he’d figured out how to lure her in and make her feel safe around him. He was her friend for a year before they pushed that boundary. Before they made love.
And fuck, he’d loved her. How could he not? She was nice to look at, sure—remarkable with that dark-as-night hair and those piercing blue eyes that always seemed to know too much. Her lips, lush and generous, had inspired all sorts of imaginative fantasies. She’d haunted his dreams so many nights and caused him to wake only to learn he’d found his release in his sleep. When the real thing finally happened, she’d blown his mind again and again. Holding her made him feel like he was in some kind of fairy tale, so he’d called her princess. His princess had saved all her smiles for him, and told him everything—good and bad—about being a Beaudelaire.
And then the princess left, and in her place were papers and an ultimatum for him to sign them or else. He’d been scared, so he’d signed, but if he had to do it again…
Where was his baby now?
No, not a baby. He or she would be sixteen. Almost grown, and most days, he wasn’t quite sure if even he was a grown-up yet.
Ren waved a hand in front of Leary’s eyes. “Wanna tell me what’s going on? I’m feeling a bit blindsided right now. I saw a pretty lady, hoped maybe she wanted to play, and suddenly you appear and there’s a blowout.”
“We can talk, but not here.” Leary started up the stairs, already palming his key card.
Ren caught up to his side. “I’m gonna guess she’s why you have such a deep-seated aversion to brunettes.”
“You could say that.” Given most of the population had brown hair, that aversion had limited his options somewhat. Not that he could get it up for a woman half the time anymore, anyway. Hard to be aroused when he worried about being stabbed in the back by one of the treacherous nags.
“How long ago did you two hook up?”
They rounded the landing and continued up to the second floor. Leary didn’t answer until he had their door in sight. “I was eighteen.”
“Damn. She put it on you that bad that you two are still at each other’s throats now?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
The door closed behind them. Leary sat on the edge of the bed and nudged off his dress shoes. Ren tossed his hat onto the dresser, sat, and took off his dress boots. Polished to a shine, unlike Emilie’s.
Leary rolled his eyes. Emilie. When had she become a cowboy boot wearer, anyway?
The receptions and press events were tedious, but he liked playing baseball so he sucked it up. It was probably going to be his last season on the field, anyway. He was a licensed physical therapist when he wasn’t on the road with the Roosters, and he knew what his body was telling him. It’d already given him a one-year warning, and he wasn’t going to push it beyond that. There were men much older than thirty-five still out there playing ball, but Leary wasn’t about to be one of them.
“I never told you this because it’s embarrassing for me.”
“Lord have mercy. Do I want to hear this?” Ren leaned against the dresser’s edge and undid his belt buckle. Big-assed thing. Some of the guys on the team jokingly insinuated that his was compensating for something with that bull’s head buckle, but anyone who’d seen him in the locker room would have known better.
“You probably don’t want to hear it, but I’m going to tell you anyway since you seem intent on dating me in spite of my personality.”
Ren shrugged. “I started dating you for the dick. Everything else was secondary. I mean, it’s really good dick. You’ve got to do something pretty unsavory to make me give it up.”
Leary chuckled but put his face in his hands. Typical Ren. They’d been in an open relationship for about a year. Neither were fucking other men, but they’d occasionally take woman lovers on the side—never together. Their tastes didn’t overlap much when it came to women, so he was surprised Ren had taken such an interest in Emilie.
“Well, here’s the story. I’ve known Emilie Beaudelaire since she was fourteen. We went to the same high school.”
“She’s a Beaudelaire?”
Leary grunted. “She’s actually Henri’s little sister, if you want to be precise.”
“Damn. I’m going to take a wild-ass guess he doesn’t know you and his sister have been…involved, and I’m guessing intimately.”
“As far as I know, he doesn’t. The only people around here who know that are Emilie and the lawyer her parents had at the time.”
“What?”
“To put it mildly, it’s a complicated situation. When she was sixteen and I was eighteen, I got her pregnant.”
Ren’s mouth opened, but before he could spit out a question in response, Leary preempted him.
“I didn’t know she was pregnant. Her parents pulled her out of school and I found out later she’d moved away without a word to me or any of our mutual friends. I got served the paperwork to consent to the adoption, with a strongly worded letter from the lawyer saying if I knew what was best for me, I’d sign off.”
“Because she was a minor and you’d touched her.”
“Bingo. I waffled about it. I really did. I wondered what would be the worst that could happen if I said no. I figured my mom would take the baby if I ended up getting charged with something, but then I worried about having a criminal record. I was supposed to start college that fall, and it wasn’t going to happen with me being registered as some kind of sex offender. If what the lawyer said can be trusted, she never told her family who the father was.”
“I’m guessing she never came back.”
Leary shook his head. “Didn’t hear a peep from her. I didn’t really have the means to track her down, and I couldn’t exactly ask her family. I always wanted to, though, every time I ran into a Beaudelaire around town. I saw her stepmother a lot. She used to go into my mother’s art gallery in search of new paintings for her boudoir.” He rolled his eyes. Those had been Crystal’s exact words—her boudoir. “She and Emilie never got on so well, but anyway, that’s it in a nutshell.”
“You’re angry because she cut you off.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t you be?”
Ren shrugged. “Hard to say without being in your shoes. I mean, I did a lot of stupid shit when I was sixteen. For that matter, I still do a lot of stupid shit.”
“She could have sent me a note, man. That’s such a small, considerate thing. She could have told me what was happening and we would have figured it out. I would have done right by her.”
“Assuming you could get her parents off your back. I’m guessing that wouldn’t have been an easy thing, if I’m judging these richie-rich types adequately.”
Leary turned his hands over and stared at the creases and calluses. “Well, there you have it. I thought we had something meaningful, and she proved to me that wasn’t the case at all.”
Ren let out a breath, walked over, and draped his arms over Leary’s shoulders. He hooked his chin onto the top of Leary’s head and just rocked him a few beats.
“What are you thinking, Ren?”
“Oh, that it’s a little crazy. A little messed up. I understand why you’d be bitter about it.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“Naw. Why would I be mad?”
“I don’t know. I guess I kind of always saw her as the one who got away.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry.”
“’S’all right. You never promised me love and devotion. Just sex and the occasional back rub.”
“Stop. You know I love you.” And he did. Those weren’t words he tossed out lightly. It’d taken him a lot of years after Emilie to be able to say it to anyone else. Ren was one of a very few.
“Yeah, I know you do, but I’m a realist. If you had to choose between me and her, I know who’d win.”
Leary groaned. “That’ll never be a competition.”
“Because you’d never take her back?”
“I can’t see that ever happening.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Leary traced his hands down the front of Ren’s untucked shirt and down to his slacks’ button. He nudged it free and let down the zipper.
Ren straightened up. “Don’t go trying to distract me. I asked you a question.” He settled himself between Leary’s thighs and cupped the back of his head.
Distraction always worked with Ren. Leary teased Ren’s cock out of his briefs’ Y-front slot and leaned to take the flaccid thing into his mouth.
“Oh, you fucking asshole.” Ren thrust his hips forward and rolled them, clutching Leary’s hair tight in his fists.
Leary chuckled around the hardening dick and ran his tongue along the bottom.
“You don’t want to talk, so you’ll suck me off instead, huh?”
That was his plan, more or less.
He put his hands to Ren’s hips and guided his strokes, pulled and pushed, sucked and licked until he had no choice but to tip his chin to take him down his throat and open his mouth wider to accommodate his steely girth.
Ren widened his stance and put his head back. He let out a long, low growl when Leary palmed his nuts through his briefs and gave them a delicate tug. “I swear, if I had to choose between having an end-of-season bonus and a Leary Marshall blowjob, I’d take the head.”
Leary dragged the edges of his front teeth along the top and bottom of Ren’s cock and drew him back into his mouth fast.
“Fuck!” Ren shuddered. “One might do it for me for the entire season.”
Leary didn’t think so. Ren was practically insatiable. There was more than one reason he’d earned the “Energizer Bunny” nickname from the team. He was a tall, muscled ball of energy, and rarely stopped moving. He’d never be cut out for a nine-to-five job, so it was a good thing he was a cowboy in the off-season and not an accountant.
He spent a little more time sucking Ren’s swollen head and licked the welling moisture from the slit.
“Mmm, your tongue is magic, Leary.”
