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“Yes, sir. Sure.” Pleased to have been given the job, Connor walked toward the stands, holding the box as if the hot dogs were explosives and the soft drinks a lit match. “We’re way up at the top, ’cause Ms. Morningstar says you can see everything better from up high.”
And he could see her, Jared mused, as they approached the stands. She sat with her elbows on her knees, her chin cupped in her hands. And her eyes—though he had to imagine, as they were shielded with dark glasses—focused on the field.
He was wrong about that. She was watching him, walking beside the boy, flashing that killer smile or giving a quick salute whenever someone hailed him. And noticing several women—of varying ages—who put their shoulders back or patted at their hair as he passed.
That was what a man who looked like that did to a woman, Savannah supposed. Made her instinctively aware of herself on a purely physical level. It was like pheromones, she decided. The scent of sex.
Those long legs of his carried him up the stands behind the small boy. Now and again his hand touched a shoulder or shook a hand. Savannah picked up the jacket she’d set in Connor’s place and squeezed over toward the rail.
“Nice day for a ball game,” Jared said as he sat beside her. He took the box from Connor and, to make room for the boy, shifted closer to the woman. “Crowded.”
“It is now. Thanks, Con.”
“Mr. MacKade bought them,” Connor told her, and solemnly handed her back her money.
She started to tell him to keep it, but she understood pride. “Thanks, Mr. MacKade.”
“What’s the score?”
“We’re down one, bottom of the third.” She took a healthy bite of her hot dog. “But the top of our batting order’s coming up.”
“Bryan bats third.” Connor chewed and swallowed politely before he spoke. “He has the most RBIs.”
Jared watched the first boy come out in the bright orange uniform of the team sponsored by Ed’s Café. “Have you met Edwina Crump?” Jared murmured near Savannah’s ear.
“Not yet. She owns the diner where Cassandra works, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah. Be grateful your boy’s not wearing lipstick pink.”
Savannah started to comment, then let out an encouraging shout when the bat cracked. The crowd hollered with her when the batter raced to first.
“Tying run’s on, right, Con?”
“Yes’m. That’s J. D. Bristol. He’s a good runner.”
She devoured her hot dog, fueling her nerves, while the second batter struck out, swinging. Someone shouted abuse at the ump, and several hot debates erupted in the stands.
“Apparently these games are taken as seriously as ever,” Jared commented.
“Baseball’s a serious business,” Savannah muttered. Her stomach did a fast boogie as Bryan stepped toward the plate.
Now the crowd murmured.
“That’s the Morningstar kid,” someone announced. “Got a hot bat.”
“Way that pitcher’s hurling, he’s going to need a torch. Nobody’s getting a good piece of that ball today.”
Savannah lifted her chin, and bumped the man in front of her with her knee. “You just watch,” she told him when he glanced around. “He’ll get all of it.”
Jared grinned and leaned back on the iron rail. “Yeah, a serious business.”
She winced when Bryan took a hard swing and met air. “I’ve got a buck says he knocks the tying run in.”
“I don’t like to bet against your boy, or the home team,” Jared mused. “But MacKades are betting men. A buck it is.”
Savannah held her breath as Bryan went through his little batter’s routine. Out of the box, kicking at dirt with his left foot, then his right, adjusting his helmet, taking two practice swings.
“Eye on the ball, Bry,” she murmured when he stepped to the plate. “Keep your eye on the ball.”
He did—as it sailed past him and into the catcher’s mitt.
“Strike two.”
“What the hell kind of call is that?” she demanded. “That was low and outside. Anybody could see that was low and outside.”
The man in front of her turned around, nodded seriously. “It surely was. Bo Perkins’s got eyes like my grandma, and she needs glasses to see her own opinion.”
“Well, somebody ought to give Bo Perkins a kick in the…” She let the words trail off, remembering Connor who was watching her with huge eyes. “Strike zone,” she decided.
“Good save,” Jared said under his breath, and watched Bryan step to the plate again.
The pitcher wound up, delivered. And Bryan gave a mighty swing that caught the ball on the meat of the bat. It flew above the leaping gloves of the infield, and rose beautifully over the outfield grass.
“It’s gone!” Savannah shouted, leaping to her feet with the rest of the crowd. “That’s the way, Bry!” Her victory dance wiggled her hips in a way that distracted Jared from watching the running of the bases. She kept shouting, her hands cupped to carry the sound, while Bryan rounded the bases and stomped on home plate.
For the hell of it, she grabbed her new friend in front of her and kissed him full on his mouth. “He got a piece of it, didn’t he?”
The man, thirty years her senior, blushed like a schoolboy. “Yes, ma’am, he sure did.”
“Not exactly the shy, retiring type, are you?” Jared said when she dropped back onto her seat.
“Pay up.” She stuck out her hand, palm up.
Jared took out a bill, held it out. “It was worth it.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet, Lawyer MacKade.”
Jared thought about the promise of those agile, curvy hips and sincerely hoped not.
Chapter 3
It was probably a mistake, Savannah thought, to be sitting across a booth at Ed’s from Jared MacKade, eating ice cream. But he’d been very persuasive. And Bryan and Connor had been so excited when he offered to treat them to a victory sundae after the Antietam Cannons batted their way to a win.
And it did give her a chance to see him with Cassandra Dolin.
Connor’s mother was a frail little thing, Savannah mused. Blonde and pretty as a china doll, with eyes so haunted they could break your heart. Jared was very gentle with her, very sweet, coaxing smiles from her.
Evidently the shy, vulnerable type was right up his alley.
“Come on, Cassie, have some ice cream with us.”
“I can’t.” Cassie paused by their table long enough to brush a hand over her daughter’s hair as little Emma ate her hot fudge with tiny, serious bites. “We’re swamped. But I appreciate you treating the kids, Jared.”
She was thin enough to blow away in a spring breeze, Jared thought, and held up a spoonful of sundae. “Have a bite, anyway.”
She flushed, but opened her mouth as obediently as a child when he held the spoon to her lips. “It’s wonderful.”
“Hey, Cass, burgers up.”
“Right there.” Cassie hurried off to pick up the orders from the counter where Edwina Crump reigned supreme.
The owner of the diner sent Jared a lusty wink. The fact that she was twenty years his senior didn’t stop her from appreciating a fine-looking man. “Hey, big fellow, don’t see you in here often enough.” She patted her frizzed red bowling ball of a hairdo. “When you taking me dancing?”
“Whenever you say, Ed.”
She gave a chicken-cackle laugh, wiggled her bony body. “Got a hot band over at the Legion tonight. I’m ready and waiting,” she told him before she swung back into the kitchen.
Amused, Savannah propped her elbows on the table. “The Legion, huh? I bet it gets pretty wild.”
“You’d be surprised.” He cocked a brow. “Wanna go?”
“I’ll pass, thanks. Bry, do you think you can shovel any more into your mouth at one time?”
He scooped up a dripping spoon of ice cream, butterscotch and sprinkles. “It’s great,” he said around it. “What’s yours taste like, Con?” To see for himself, Bryan reached over the table to dip his spoon into Connor’s. “Strawberry’s okay,” he decided, “but butterscotch is the best.”
Willing to be wrong, he eyed Emma’s hot fudge avariciously.
“No,” Savannah said mildly, and watched with approval as the five-year-old Emma curled a hand protectively around her bowl. She might be a quiet one, Savannah mused, but the kid knew what was hers. “Pack it away, honey,” Savannah told her. “I bet you can eat these boys under the table.”
“I like ice cream,” Emma said, with one of her rare smiles.
“Me too.” With a grin, Savannah scooped up some of her own. “And hot fudge is the best, right?”
“Uh-huh, and the whipped cream. Miss Ed gives you lots of it.” She put her spoon down carefully beside her empty bowl and announced, “I can go to Regan’s now. My mama said.”
“What’s Regan’s?” Bryan wanted to know.
“She’s friends with my mom,” Connor told him. “She has a shop just down the street. It has lots of neat things to look at.”
“Let’s go see.”
Before he could dart from the booth, Savannah laid a hand on his arm. “Bryan.”
It took him a minute. “Oh, yeah, thanks. Mr. MacKade. The ice cream was great. Come on, Con.”
“Thanks, Mr. MacKade.” Since Emma already had his hand and was tugging on it, Connor slid from the booth. He looked down at his sister, wrinkled his brow.
“Thank you,” she said, keeping an iron grip on her brother’s hand.
“You’re welcome. Say hi to Regan.”
“We will. Mama,” Connor called out, “we’re going down to Regan’s.”
“Don’t touch anything,” Cassie told them, balancing two plates on one arm and serving another. “And come right back if she’s busy.”
“Yes’m.”
Bryan was already out of the door, and Connor followed, hampered by his sister’s sedate pace.
“I’d say you hit a home run,” Savannah commented, leaning back to drape an arm over the back of the booth.
“You hit one yourself. That’s one of the longest conversations I’ve ever heard out of Emma.”
“It must be hard, being shy. She looks like an angel. Like her mother.”
Angels who’d already been through hell, Jared thought. “Cassie’s doing a terrific job with them, on her own. You’d appreciate that.”
“Yes, I would.” Savannah glanced over to where Cassie was busy wiping down a booth. “You’re…close?”
“I’ve known her most of my life, but no, not the way you mean. She’s a friend.” Pleased she was interested enough to ask, he took out a cigar. “And a client. Anything beyond friendship wouldn’t be ethical, when I’m representing her.”
“And you’d be a very ethical man, wouldn’t you, Lawyer MacKade?”
“That’s right. You know, you’ve never mentioned what you do.”
“About what?”
“About making a living.”
“I’ve done all sorts of things.” With a sizzling look, she took the cigar from him.
“I’ll just bet you have,” he murmured.
“Right now I’m an illustrator. Kids’ books, mostly.” Laughing, she passed the cigar back to him. “Doesn’t quite fit the image, does it?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to see some of your illustrations.” He glanced up, and his lips curved. “Hey, Dev.”
Savannah shifted to see the man who had just come in. He had the same dark, go-to-hell looks as Jared, a body that was tall and tough and rangy. The eyes were green, as well, but they were different.
She recognized the way they swept the room, checked for details, looked for trouble. Instinctively her muscles tightened, her face went blank. She didn’t need the badge on his chest to tell her this was the sheriff. She could spot a cop at half a mile on a speeding horse. She could smell one at twenty paces.
“Saw your car.” After one quick scan of the room, one quick smile for Cassie, Devin dropped into the booth beside his brother.
“Savannah Morningstar, Devin MacKade.”
“Nice to meet you.” An eyeful was Devin’s first impression. Then he caught the chill, and wondered about it. “You bought the cabin? The doctor’s place.”
“That’s right. It’s my place now.”
