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A hearty laugh escaped before he could stop it. “Buff ‘n’ Fluff? What kind of business is that?”
She shrugged, as though she’d heard the question a million times before. “Auto body repair is Buff—a common term for a metal rough out. And Fluff is a beauty salon.” She feathered her own hair with two fingers, some auburn locks fluttering over her shoulder. “Fluff, like blow dry. It’s a cosmetology term. That was Katie’s end of the business.”
“She was a hairstylist,” he noted, an image of a woman slowly taking shape in his brain. An image he didn’t want to have.
“She was a cosmetologist,” Jo corrected. “Hair, face, nails. Anything related to beauty—that was her specialty.”
Cam tried to erase the vague sense of a female version of his dark-haired younger brothers, but he couldn’t. The vision had taken hold. Damn. He’d really rather not dwell on a person he’d never meet.
“So I take it you’ve never been to a professional baseball game before.”
She turned her head toward him at the sudden topic shift. “Our business sponsored the Sierra Springs Little League last year. Does that count?”
He laughed again. “No wonder you thought it was dull as dirt.” The comment still smarted. How could anyone not see the poetry in baseball? He supposed someone who banged fenders for a living might overlook the elegance of a well-turned double play. “This is a little different. This is Yankee Stadium. It’s the Mecca of all baseball.”
“If you say so,” she agreed slowly, her little bit of a Western twang delighting his ear. “Seems like a lot doesn’t happen for nine innings, then all of a sudden hell breaks loose and ten runs come in and it’s over. Then someone’s crying.”
He chuckled again, her description of a Little League game bringing back a whole bunch of memories. “Haven’t you ever heard? There’s no crying in baseball.”
“Whoever said that never saw an eight-year-old get his front end walloped with a hard ball,” she said, looking out the window again. After a second, she turned back to him, a questioning expression on her face. “Would you like to know about your mother?” she asked quietly.
He regarded her for a long time, vaguely aware that there just wasn’t enough air in the closed-in cab. Her gaze was demanding, her lips slightly parted as she waited for his response.
He leaned in enough to almost feel her warm breath near his mouth. She didn’t move.
“No.” With one finger, he tapped the shadow of a cleft in her chin. “Would you like to know where our seats are?”
She raised that gorgeously arched eyebrow again but didn’t move. “No. I’ll just be surprised.”
“Pleasantly,” he promised, backing away to give her a little breathing space. He’d made his point.
“Did you bring that envelope?” she asked.
He patted the pocket of his suit jacket. “Yep.”
“Good. I need to get to the airport in time to make my flight. And I expect to have it with me.”
And she’d made her point, as well.
This could be a very close game tonight.
When the cabbie dropped them off at a busy street corner, they stood in the shadow of a massive structure. The streets around them teemed with people and hummed with energy.
How the blazes did this happen, Jo thought with a flash of panic? Yankee Stadium wasn’t in her plan.
Ever since Mother Earth had caused a seismic shift in Jo’s priorities, her plan was to adopt the child she already loved. She’d assumed it would be simple. Callie’s father had long before relinquished parental rights, wanting to hide from the fact that he was a married weasel who made promises to Katie he’d never keep.
And for a while, everything progressed smoothly. She’d waded through a sea of endless paperwork, passed the prodding interviews, charmed the Child Services bureaucrats, restructured her shop, her home, her very life. Until Jo’s mother sat her down and broke the story of Aunt Chris’s secret life before she’d come to Sierra Springs.
Stunned and saddened, but undeterred, Jo had spent hours quite literally digging through the debris that was Christine McGrath’s life. And more hours slogging through the Internet for information on her sons, then wrestling with what was the appropriate, safest, right course of action.
In the end she was sure she knew what that was. Katie was gone, and so was the woman Jo grew up calling “Aunt” Chris. But somehow, for some reason, an infant had survived nature’s rumbling fury, and Jo was willing to do absolutely anything to be sure Callie was safe and protected and loved.
Even make a side trip to Yankee Stadium.
She stole a look at the man who’d brought her to said stadium. His preoccupation with baseball in the midst of a family crisis confirmed that Cameron McGrath was as unfeeling and uncaring as his father, who had forced his pregnant wife out of the house. A man who would be repelled by the idea of being saddled with someone else’s mistake. That’s why she picked this brother to approach with the papers. Amid news reports of his business success, she’d seen a pattern of brief romances with socialites, increasing her expectations that Cameron would be most like the man who’d cast out Christine. True, the fact that he was a lawyer unnerved her. But more important, he was the unattached McGrath brother, so he’d be the least likely to want a baby. And as the oldest, she hoped his signature would carry the most legal weight.
So far he’d done a fine imitation of unfeeling. Refusing to discuss his mother. Changing the subject. Not even asking how Callie had survived the earthquake. Dragging Jo through New York. Even flirting with her. But she sensed something under his smooth, polished surface. Something so powerful that it qualified as the polar opposite of unfeeling.
Until she knew what feelings he hid, it wouldn’t kill her to pretend to like baseball.
“This…” he interrupted her thoughts with a grand gesture toward the mountain of concrete stadium in front of them, “is the House that Ruth Built.”
Next to where they stood was a three-story-high replica of a baseball bat. She set her hat back to get a good look at it and nodded. “Mecca.”
He grinned and guided her toward one of the gates. “Don’t get me started on statistics and history. I’ll bore you to death.”
She doubted Cameron McGrath could bore her. He could probably infuriate her, he most certainly could fascinate her, and, Lord, he could surely arouse her if she gave him the chance. The man was a walking powder keg of masculine, seductive energy.
He led her toward a small crowd at one of the gates. The sensation of his hand on the small of her back sent a pool of warmth through her.
He greeted the ticket-taker, and guided her through a turnstile into the stadium. The sounds and smells of early summer evaporated as they entered what felt like the interior of a giant cement whale, replaced by a medley of foreign scents and noises. The entire place echoed with the din of raised voices and the clatter of feet on concrete. Without thinking, she took Cameron’s hand as he bounded through the labyrinth of horizontal ramps, his confident steps energized by an air of familiarity and a sense of urgency.
He paused long enough to listen to the muffled words of an announcer. “We’re up. Bottom of the first. Let’s go.”
He tugged at her hand and she had to stretch her stride to keep up with him, ignoring the vendors’ pleas for them to buy hot dogs, nachos or peanuts. She tucked her hat under her arm so it didn’t sail off in their wake, and inhaled the overpowering scent of grilled meat and onions. She hadn’t eaten all day, and the aroma made her mouth water.
But her overloaded senses obliterated the hunger. Sudden bursts of cheers and applause, flashes of blinding light and green grass through tunnels that led to the field, and the unnervingly comforting sensation of holding his hand all managed to make her a little dizzy.
Dizzy? What the heck was that all about? She hammered steel into submission for a living. She hiked mile-high mountains for fun. She was the original tough chick. How could one foray into Yankee Stadium on the arm of some maniacal fan make her dizzy? It had to be the documents that he held in his jacket pocket, the importance of her mission.
Somehow she had to get through this game and get his signature. Then she’d tear off to the airport and fly home to Callie. With her mission accomplished.
“Pray there’s no score,” he said to her as they approached a uniformed security guard. “It’s bad enough to miss the first pitch, but missing a run could kill me.”
“Cam, we were worried about you!” The guard held out his hand like a fist and Cameron knuckled it with a similar gesture.
“Eddie, my man. What’s goin’ on?”
“Three up, three down in the top of the first, and let me tell you Mussina’s slider looks friggin’ magical.” Eddie’s nasal New York accent was so thick, Jo had to concentrate to understand him.
“Who’s up?” Cameron asked.
“A-Rod.”
“Already?” He sounded crushed.
Eddie let out a disgusted snort. “Yeah, they’re screwin’ with the lineup. Loftin grounded out, and Jeter went down swingin’.” His gaze shifted to her, sweeping her up and down with obvious interest. A broad grin blared his approval. “I knew you had to have one helluva good cause to be this late, Cam.”
“Eddie, this good cause is Jo Ellen Tremaine. First timer, from California.”
Eddie’s eyebrows shot up. “California, huh? A’s or Angels?”
Hazy angels? “Excuse me?”
Cameron chuckled and put that way too familiar arm around her again. “Oakland A’s—Athletics. Or the California Angels. Who do you root for?”
“Sorry.” She made an apologetic face. “I don’t really follow the sport.”
This earned a belly laugh from Eddie and he waved a finger of warning at her. “Well, you will, or,” he pointed to Cameron, “you’ll have to kiss your new boyfriend goodbye.”
No use trying to correct him. She just shrugged as though the loss of that boyfriend wouldn’t matter any more than the loss of a game.
“Let’s go, sweetheart.” Cameron urged her into a narrow opening toward the lights of the stadium.
She nodded to Eddie, who continued to grin and shake his head, then she turned to face the sea of green in front of her.
It looked like a vast, luxurious emerald carpet textured with symmetrical patterns, bordered in red-brown dirt and surrounded by thousands and thousands of people cheering, hollering, eating, drinking and laughing. She’d been in baseball parks before, but this place had a mix of playfulness, attitude and superiority. Sort of like the man who’d brought her here.
Still holding her hand, Cameron tugged her down a few steps, into a row of box seats not far from the Yankee dugout. First base was close enough that she could see specks of red clay covering the canvas bag. A shower of greetings came at them, and Cameron responded with a series of “Hey” and “How ya doin’?” that included high-fives and more knuckle tapping.
They settled into seats and he dropped a casual arm around her, leaning close to her ear. “You do know who A-Rod is, don’t you?”
“Yes.” The name sounded more like a tool than a person, but he didn’t need to know that.
Suddenly a hollow whack propelled the entire stadium to its feet, including her, as Cameron pulled her from her seat and she instinctively squinted up into the blinding lights.
Then everyone moaned and sat down. By the time Jo saw a player in the outfield throw in the ball, they were seated again, too. Cameron’s arm took up permanent residence around her shoulders, the distinctive, delicious scent of him overpowering the smell of popcorn and humanity around her.
“You want that beer?” he asked.
She leaned back enough to make sure he could see her warning look. “This isn’t a date.”
He grinned and threw a quick glance over his shoulder. “Fake it for me, okay? I got a reputation from one end of the Bronx to the other.”
“I bet you do.”
His gaze locked on hers, way too warm and friendly for the situation they were in. “A good reputation,” he assured her. “As a gentleman who would buy a lady anything she wants at the ballpark.”
What she wanted was the paper in his pocket. Signed. “I’ll have whatever you have.”
Another smack of the ball against the bat stole his attention and they were up again. This time the hit was a success, landing the player on second base. Maybe she should at least try to follow the game.
She sat back down, but Cameron remained standing and whistled at a vendor. Peanuts flew at them, followed by the arrival of two foaming plastic cups. More jokes and pronouncements were tossed around among the people who all seemed to know one another, and before Jo really knew what was happening, it was the fourth inning and she’d had half a beer and three-quarters of a bag of peanuts. And she finally understood what a balk was.
But she didn’t feel any closer to success.
Cameron talked about his team with a mesmerizing passion, his movements spare, his expressions intense. His whole body somehow managed to stay practically pressed to her side, the metal arm of the seat the only thing preventing her from feeling the steel of his muscles, the warmth of his substantial frame.
She couldn’t help sneaking glances at him while he watched the game. Nor could she help noticing that he did the same. Only there was nothing sneaky about his gazes. He looked at her—a lot, and with great interest— and every time he did, an unwanted response sparked through her whole body.
She tried to keep the conversation light and act as if she didn’t notice the undercurrent of tension and attraction between them. For whatever reason, he’d brought her with him. And she would play his game until she got what she wanted.
“How did you become such a Yankee fan?” she asked. “Don’t they have a baseball team in Pittsburgh?”
He froze middrink of beer, obviously surprised by the question. They hadn’t discussed where he’d grown up.
“NewYork is my home now,” he said simply, then took his sip. “I went to college and law school at Fordham about ten minutes from here, and I got my MBA at Columbia. I live, breathe, eat and root for NewYork City.”
“I know,” she said quietly, earning another surprised glance. But she didn’t know why he’d virtually abandoned the home of his youth.
“I’m at a distinct disadvantage,” he softly announced, so close to her ear that her stomach dipped at the vibrations his voice caused. “You seem to know a lot more about me than I know about you.”
He had a right to some information about her, she reminded herself. No harm in that. “I live and work in Sierra Springs. I’m thirty years old, own my own home and run a body shop in town.” How personal did he want to get?
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Very personal. “No.”
“Ever been married?”
She supposed it was a legitimate question, considering the pending adoption. “Briefly.”
“What happened?”
“He wanted to move to L.A.”
“And you couldn’t work that little detail out?” He looked dubious, and she swallowed before answering with the truth.
“He wanted to move to L.A. with another woman.”
“Oh.”
Yeah, oh. She shrugged. “Stuff happens.”
“Sure does. How long were you married?”
A collective cheer from the crowd threatened to drown out her response, but he actually stayed seated and waited to hear her answer.
“I was married for about a year,” she told him. “I was only twenty-two.” She really hadn’t expected to have to give him too much personal information, figuring he’d want to know about his sister and mother. And maybe Callie.
She was willing to give Cameron McGrath everything he wanted, any pictures, information—including the letters from his mother to his father—if he would sign the paper. She had documentation right there in her bag. That, and a toothbrush, comb and a change of underwear, was all she’d packed for her one-day round-trip to New York. She had no intention of staying one minute longer than she needed to. The next meeting with Child Services was the following week, and she planned to be prepared.
“No children?” he asked, still on the ancient history of her marriage.
“Just the one I plan on adopting.”
Oh Lord, what if her worst nightmare came true? What if he suddenly decided he should raise Callie? The thought seemed preposterous from a man who admitted he didn’t want the responsibility of a fish, but more preposterous things had happened in the past few months. The law would be on his side, even though his lifestyle didn’t exactly welcome a child. Unless he planned to bring a stroller into Yankee Stadium. How could she subtly remind him of that?
