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Elizabeth sat forward in her seat. She was concentrating so hard her focus had narrowed to a place where all that existed was the pitcher on the screen. His slow, careful windup. His arm stretched back, his leg in the air.
He fired the pitch like a rocket, with a skill that seemed superhuman. In a blur, the slugger swung hard and missed. The ball smacked inside the catcher’s mitt.
“Game over!” the announcer cried.
Elizabeth jumped up from her chair and squealed. She’d had no idea baseball was this exciting.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you, Lizzy,” Jon’s quiet voice said from behind her.
She gasped. She’d been so absorbed in the game, she’d completely forgotten about Jon.
Now he was awake. He had a faint smile and a twinkle in his eye. He wasn’t even watching the television screen, the commotion of celebration and the jostling of reporters crowding onto the field.
He grinned at her. “You were rooting for the pitcher.”
“I was not!”
He grinned harder. “Sure you were.”
She glanced to her grocery bag on the kitchen counter. She needed to get Jon out of here and on his way. “I brought you a pizza from the ovens at Whole Foods. You can take it home with you and eat it there.”
He cocked his head at her. “Why can’t you admit that you were enjoying watching the baseball game?”
“I wasn’t enjoying anything. It was strictly intellectual curiosity.”
“So you admit that you find baseball intelligent,” he said quietly. “Good. Because it is.”
“Whatever you say,” she snapped.
That seemed to deflate him. Touched a sore spot with him, maybe.
She felt angry at herself. Confused...and she was a woman who was rarely confused. But her actions made no sense. She should not be interested in Jon, or his sport—she had her own, critical business to attend to.
Stalking to the kitchen, she headed for the counter. “Here’s your pizza.” She pulled the warm, delicious-smelling box out of the bag.
Jon followed her. “Thanks.” But his face looked pale, and he seemed to be...wincing.
He put his hand on the tabletop to steady himself. “I’m...sorry I didn’t help you carry the bag upstairs,” he murmured.
She stared at his bandaged finger and saw the red stain. “Are your sutures bleeding?” she demanded.
His ice-blue eyes considered her. “I’m okay, Liz.”
“You are not okay. You’ve been through surgery and you need to take care of yourself.”
He winced again, and she remembered that he’d said he hadn’t taken painkillers. She opened a cabinet and grabbed some over-the-counter acetaminophen and wound-dressing supplies.
She hadn’t bandaged a patient since her rotation in emergency medicine, but she owed him that, at least. “Let me change your bandage as a thank-you. Then you should go home and rest. Surgery is difficult on the body.” She handed him a glass of water and shook out two tablets. “Take these. You’ll still be able to drive.”
He took them from her outstretched palm. His hands were...overly large for his frame. Long fingers, the nails groomed short.
“Do you ever watch baseball, Liz?” His voice was so low and warm it made her shiver.
But she shook the thoughts of him out of her head. Those pheromones were wreaking havoc again. “Never,” she said firmly, turning to the sink to soap up her hands, then she smeared them with Purell almost to her elbows, by force of habit. “I already told you that.”
He said nothing. Sat still, at her kitchen table. She bent over his splinted finger, and squinted into the light.
She could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing, she was so close to him, their heads almost touching. She was horrified to find that she was matching her inhales and exhales to his.
Stop it, she told herself. Switching into professional mode, she removed the bandages the surgical nurse had placed around Jon’s finger. The stitches beneath were small and even: expert. Typically, the residents stitched up the incision after the surgeon cut, but in Jon’s case, he had wanted to do everything himself, carefully and by the book; he’d even forbidden the team from playing music in the operating room.
“Do you have any idea how much money this guy’s hands are worth?” Dr. Morgan had remarked to Elizabeth. At the time, she’d had no clue. Now, after watching that clip on television, she had a better idea.
She kept her gaze on Jon’s finger, and on the sterile gauze and tube of antibiotic ointment she was opening. Jon said nothing, and that was worse than his teasing earlier in the night had been.
He wasn’t throwing roadblocks in her way now. So why was she delaying sending him home?
She drew in her breath. “Thank you for watching Brandon for me,” she said crisply, “but I see no reason for our continued acquaintance beyond tonight.” Her heart rate was elevated again, but she forced herself to continue. “I understand that Brandon and you may have formed an attachment, and I think that’s wonderful, but tomorrow Brandon goes home, and tomorrow you can take up the matter with my sister if you wish.”
“I’m not interested in your sister,” he said quietly.
“Don’t say that until you’ve met her,” she said beneath her breath.
His ice-blue eyes seemed to bore into her. Seeing too much beneath the surface, more so than she was comfortable sharing with anybody.
She made as much noise as possible, tearing at the packaging for the sterile gauze. Anything to distract herself from his presence.
“Does she suck up all the attention, Liz?” Jon asked quietly.
“What? No!” She jerked her gaze to him. “Stop questioning me. You have the wrong opinion of us.”
“What’s wrong about it?”
“You would like my sister. Everybody does.”
“I’m not everybody.”
He did not understand. “You in particular would like her, I mean.” Elizabeth slapped the bandage onto his hand. Or, she wanted to slap it on, but years of training betrayed her. Be gentle with the patients. “I’m saying that because right now she is helpless and in need of assistance, and you seem to be drawn to helpless women, one of which I am not.”
He frowned, pulling back his hand. “You think you’re helpless with Brandon, don’t you?”
“Did I say that?” she demanded. “Don’t put words in my mouth!”
“You’re prickly.” He smiled. “I touched a nerve, didn’t I?”
She really did not like him sitting so close to her, seeing too much inside her life. And yet, she had finished bandaging him and he wasn’t pulling away, despite what he saw of her. She leaned the tiniest bit closer, into his space again. It had to be the pheromones.
She shook it off. Remembered why she was pushing him away. “You stayed here, Jon, and you took right over from me because you like being in situations where people are helpless. It allows you to be the hero. I can see it, and I don’t want that in my life. It goes against everything I’ve set up for myself.”
He stared at her. “You are so wrong about me,” he blurted.
Yes, she thought, that’s good. Get mad at me and then leave.
But at the same time she felt sadness. She didn’t know why. Maybe she’d hoped he saw beyond the prickliness of her delivery into the truth of what she’d observed.
She fought her own inner resistance. Pushed back from the table—from him—and grabbed the pizza box she’d bought him, which was quickly getting cold. She shoved it forward, against his chest. “Thank you for your assistance. Tomorrow I go back to my normal life and Brandon goes home to his. Please be careful driving home, and follow all the instructions on your postsurgical papers this time.”
“I didn’t come here intending to help you with Brandon,” Jon said, standing to his full height and towering over her.
“Maybe not,” she replied, looking up into his face, “but that’s the instinct that took over, isn’t it? Maybe subconsciously, that’s how you’re used to handling difficult situations.”
Real anger flashed in his eyes.
A textbook reaction—and she knew, because she’d completed a psychology rotation. Jon seemed to be experiencing classic denial symptoms.
“Excuse me?” he said. “You don’t know me at all.”
Perhaps, but she knew a textbook case. Psychology fascinated her. And why not answer his question? It’s not as if she would ever see him again after tonight.
“You’re a pitcher, Jon, right? You play in the major leagues. That took years of training to attain—I’m assuming it was as long and as grueling as it was for me to become a doctor. I’m also assuming that in order for you to make the major leagues, and stay there, you have to love your sport the same way that I love my job. So if that had been me tonight in your shoes, I would have been watching that game very closely, and not at all caring about somebody else’s reaction to it. And yet, you weren’t even interested in watching that guy—Martinez, the ace pitcher—seeing how he did it. You were just staring at me.”
“I’m friggin’ tired,” Jon said as he shoved the pizza box back at her, which was the first instance of hostility she’d seen from him. Maybe it was for the best. That meant he didn’t like her, either. That meant she had nothing to fear from him.
“I had surgery and I was pumped full of chemicals today,” he continued. “Your chemicals.”
She nodded vigorously, walking him toward the door. “And yet you came here to see us—to see Brandon. To help Brandon. As I said, you have a white-knight complex.”
Those ice-blue eyes bored into hers. “Lady, you have no idea who I am.”
Bull’s-eye, she thought. And it gave her no comfort to be right. That wasn’t why she was pushing him. Being prickly.
“Why are you always so prickly?” Ashley often asked her.
Because I want to be back on my own track away from everybody else, she silently answered.
Jon Farell was...not good for that. He threatened her autonomy.
She opened the door and stood beside it. She felt sad all of a sudden—lousy. Being prickly and irritable was not what she’d wanted. She was not a cruel person. But Jon was in her lair, and she wanted to be—needed to be—alone. She was yearning for it, in fact.
“You’re right,” she said firmly to him. “I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. You were simply a patient to me. Please go and help somebody else.”
He walked out and didn’t look back.
Inside, she closed the door and leaned against it, her back to the cold, hard surface. Her hands were shaking as they curled around the edges of the now-cold pizza box. Her heart rate was elevated, and she appeared to be having palpitations.
It was crazy, but a part of her still wanted him here with her.
And she had blown that from ever happening again.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE WAS DEAD wrong about him.
His pulse throbbing in his neck, Jon yanked open his SUV door and fumbled with his key in the darkness in an attempt to start his engine. He had the key lined up, but damn it, he couldn’t turn it in the ignition easily with his right finger in a splint.
White-knight complex? Give me a break. At the moment, he couldn’t even help himself out of a paper bag.
Jon laid his head against the seat back and let the motor quietly run. Condensation covered the windows. It was a cool night after a warm day. Lizzy could probably explain the scientific reasoning behind the fog that blocked him from seeing where the hell he was. In so many ways—education-wise, her doctor status, her aloofness to sports teams—she was out of his league. Made him feel inadequate. Tossed him around like nobody else did.
He blew out a breath. He wasn’t an idiot. He was a self-aware person, smart enough to know that he’d been thrown for a loop over his cancer scare. That, and then the euphoria over learning he was cancer-free had sent him spinning, all in the course of a few hours.
He’d wanted somebody to share his excitement and relief with, somebody genuine, a person who didn’t have any skin in the game with his career, and somebody who understood what he’d been going through. He’d thought that person had been her.
Wrong. Lizzy wanted nothing to do with him, and she’d told him so from the moment he’d rung her doorbell. Maybe, for a brief time, he’d managed to change her mind. When Martinez had thrown his ninety-eight-mile-per-hour four-fingered fastball, low and in the corner, and had psyched out Bates into swinging too late, she had been hooked, and Jon had felt hope.
But then...somehow her prejudices against him had kicked in, and the moment had gone to hell. He hadn’t managed the situation right at all. He’d blown it; he’d been the one to walk out in anger.
No highs, no lows. The best fielding coach Jon had ever known had taught him that, early on during his rookie year in the minor leagues. Don’t get too far emotionally up, and don’t get too far emotionally down, the mantra meant, or you’ll ruin the game plan. If you wanted to win—at baseball and at life—then it was necessary to take everything as it came, with an even temper.
He knew what he had to do. He felt calmer now. The windows were getting clearer.
His stomach growled. He should have taken the pizza when he had the chance. Pride be damned, he was starving. Still, it wasn’t wise to go back up to Lizzy’s apartment to have her psychoanalyze him again, even if—in her defense—she was probably terrified over having him and Brandon inside her normally ordered, doctor world, and was making up theories in order to push him away.
He was not drawn to helpless women. He never had been, and everyone knew it.
He dug his phone from his pocket and scrolled the contact list to call up the number for Brooke. He would stay cool. His plan of action was clear: get your baseball life back on track.
“Patch me through to Max,” Jon said to Brooke when she answered the phone. “I want a three-way call with all of us on board.”
“What’s going on?” Max asked, his voice faint. “You’ve left me a few messages this evening.”
“Yes, I have.” Jon’s SUV windows were clear now, so he pulled the Expedition out of the lot. “I need my contract signed for next season, and I need to get going on that as soon as possible.”
“That’s...good. Brooke is sitting with me.” Max did sound weak. Why was that? “She was just about to send you a text message. Are you listening to radio sports talk?”
“Ah...no. I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”
“Jon...turn on the radio...and listen...”
“Now,” Brooke said insistently. Jon could hear the radio playing in the background. “Turn it to SPK FM.”
“Call us back in a few minutes.” Max disconnected the call.
This was not good. But Max had never steered him wrong. Jon eased up on the accelerator and slowed for a traffic light.
While the light was red, Jon took a swig of water from the bottle in his cup holder and then fumbled with the radio dial to find SPK. He would subject himself to the negativity for just one minute, and then he’d turn it off.
“...he’s a local guy. What are you ragging on the local guy for, the only pitcher who won his last two games?”
