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  No excuses, she had to absorb his anger, tolerate the pain. She was the cause of it. If a samurai had run her through with a steel sword, it would have been a mere tickle compared to the butchery in his eyes.

  “Rowdy, I—” Anxious dread moved through her, numbing her limbs, tingling her hands, and toes.

  He held up a silencing hand. “I’ve got to give it to you. You’re good. Coming up here, looking for a job, but then refusin’ to take it, playin’ coy, and when you had your hooks in me, I was easy pickings. And here I thought Laila was cruel. She ain’t got nothin’ on you, sweetheart.”

  “No,” she whispered. “No. That’s not—” She bit off the words. It didn’t matter what she’d intended. Her carelessness had caused this.

  “You were playing me all along.” Bruises filled his laughter, wet and hurt, like fleshy summer peaches picked too late and shipped too far.

  “No.” She barely breathed.

  His nostrils flared, bellows feeding his anger. “Using your virginity as a tool to get me to lower my guard.”

  “You don’t believe that.” She made her voice small, hoping it hid the wall of tears threatening to fall. “If you believe that, then nothing we shared this weekend was real.”

  His chin quivered, and he jammed his hands in his pockets. “All I know is that I trusted you. I opened up to you. I let you in and you kicked me in the teeth. No wait. You’re a stickler for the right words, aren’t you? Let’s use them. It feels like you kicked my testicles into my groin.”

  She promised herself she wouldn’t try to defend her mistakes, but she couldn’t have him believing that she’s done this intentionally. She pressed her palms together. Please, please let him believe her.

  “It wasn’t me, Rowdy. I didn’t leak the story. It was my roommate, Stephanie. I thought I lost the recorder, but obviously she stole it. It’s the only explanation.”

  “You were responsible for safekeeping my information. You should have told me you lost the recorder, so I could at least have been prepared for this. Instead, I get blindsided because I was dumb enough to trust you.”

  She infused her eyes with apology and regret, hoping he could see how truly sorry she was that her incompetence had caused his private secrets to get splashed all over the media. “Rowdy, I am—”

  “No.” He punched the air with an index finger in front of her face. “You don’t get to pull the big-eyed, helpless waif card.”

  Helpless waif? It was either that or calculating bitch. Her remorse shifted into bone-deep hurt, but she didn’t own the luxury of self-pity.

  “You promised me that the story was off the record.” His voice was so cold it could have field-frozen peas, and his eyes, those laughing blue eyes, looked dead.

  Burned to the marrow of her bones by his dry-ice emptiness, Breeanne shivered. “I turned off the recorder, but somehow it must have gotten turned back on when we were kissing. I never would have intentionally put you in this position.”

  “It doesn’t matter what your roommate did. Your carelessness caused this.”

  His words were true, every one of them. His life was in shambles because of her. His reputation shot, his brother’s career in jeopardy. She deserved everything he was pitching out and more.

  “Both my agent and my publisher warned me not to go with an unproven writer, but I didn’t listen. I had to have things my way. Prove I was still in control when everything else in my life was falling apart.” His eyes were so bleak.

  “I am so very sorry.” Anguish squeezed her heart to pulp.

  “I thought we had something here. For a time, I believed it was possible to find someone I could build a life with.” He ran a hand over his nose, blinked hard. “How stupid was that?”

  His suffering cut Breeanne to her soul. She had caused his pain. She was the instrument of his wound. She reached out a hand, whispered his name. “Rowdy . . .”

  He turned away, turned his back. “You should go.”

  On stilted legs, she moved in jerky, mechanical steps. Her eyes watered, burned. Her shoulders curled inward, pulled together. The tears were running down her cheeks now, streams, buckets. She couldn’t stop them no matter how hard she tried.

  She knew when she went into this relationship that she was going to end up with a broken heart. What she never guessed was that she would be the cause of it.

  CHAPTER 28

  Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel

  as if the world is not going to blow up.

  —SHARON OLDS

  When Breeanne returned to the house, Stephanie was there, directing two lunkhead bodybuilder types on how to load her things into a U-Haul.

  “You’re back.” Stephanie gave her a Miss Georgia Peach smile. “I—”

  Breeanne marched right up to her. “You thought you’d move out while I wasn’t home.”

  “Well, clearly our arrangement wasn’t working out, and—”

  “Oh don’t pretend.” Breeanne surprised herself by getting right up into the woman’s face. She bundled up all the anger, pain, and disappointment she felt at herself and directed it at the smug redhead. “You intentionally played me for a sucker. You convinced me to move in with you. You snooped through my things. You were planning all along on scooping Rowdy’s autobiography out from under me.”

  “I never—”

  “Zip it,” Breeanne commanded. “When you found my recorder, you stole it, and when you listened to it, realized what you had. You could sell to tabloid TV and make a tidy sum.”

  “Yeah.” Stephanie jerked a haughty shoulder forward. “So what? You can’t do anything about it.”

  “I’m going to press charges. Theft is theft. I know you’ll find a way to wiggle out of it. People like you always do. But it will inconvenience you for a while and cost you money.”

  “I . . . I didn’t steal it.” Stephanie shoved her nose in the air, shook her head, and sent her a lofty glance. “I borrowed it.”

  “If you borrowed the recorder, then where is it?”

  Stephanie snapped her jaw closed, glared. “GOZIP has it.”

  “Hmm, I know you have a degree in journalism from the University of North Texas and I don’t, but let’s review the definition of theft. Theft is the taking of another’s property without that person’s permission or consent.”

  “We said share and share alike, remember?”

  “No, you said it. I never agreed.”

  Stephanie pushed her lips out in a pout, folded her arms over her chest. “If I get it back, will you not press charges?”

  “If you get it back. Either way, when I write Rowdy’s story, your little stunt will be in. Everyone will know exactly what kind of person you are.” She wasn’t about to tell Stephanie that she wouldn’t be finishing Rowdy’s autobiography. Let her sweat it out.

  “You . . . you . . .” The color drained from her face, and her brow pleated. “You can’t do that.”

  “Watch me.”

  “I’ll sue you for libel.”

  “You can’t sue me,” she said. “Not when it’s true.”

  “Well.” Stephanie twisted off, nose in the air, made a twirling motion with her index finger. “Let’s get out of here, boys.”

  A scattering of applause broke out.

  Startled, Breeanne looked up to see her family standing there, all of them—Mom, Dad, Kasha, Jodi, Suki. She knew without asking that they’d heard what happened, and had showed up to give her moral support.

  “Now that was an amazing dressing-down,” Kasha said.

  Breeanne’s face flushed. She was proud to have stood up to Stephanie and glad that her family had been here to see her personal growth, but she was far too upset about the pain she’d caused Rowdy to take any pleasure from her accomplishment.

  “Honey,” her mother said, wrapping her in her arms. “You were magnificent, but are you ready to move back home?”

  “No Mom.” She met her mother’s eyes, and then shifted her gaze to her father. “Dad. It is time for
me to have my own place.”

  Her mother’s forehead pleated in concern. “Will you come back to work at the bookstore?”

  “For a while,” she said. “Until my writing career gets going.”

  Every member of her family gave her a hug and told her it would be all right.

  Yes, eventually she would get past this. She would train herself not to think about Rowdy every time she heard the crack of a baseball bat, or the “Star-Spangled Banner.” And in, oh, forty or fifty years, she probably wouldn’t remember which of her lovers it was that made the best spaghetti carbonara in the world. And who knew? One day, she might even eat dipped cones again without bawling her eyes out.

  Her family went ahead of her. Breeanne took three faltering steps, blood rushed into her ears, her head spun, her knees collapsed, and she fell to the ground crying, utterly broken.

  Her family rushed back to comfort her, fearful she was physically hurt, but when they saw the damage was entirely emotional and she waved them away, they respectfully left her to her grief.

  Rowdy drove to Dallas to confront Potts, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how harsh he’d been on Breeanne. She happened to walk into the house at exactly the wrong moment. His fury and frustration with Potts spiked at an all-time high. His worry over Zach eating an ulcer into his stomach, his own touchy humiliation that the world knew he’d taken steroids in high school. The most shameful thing an athlete could be accused of, and now, thanks to Potts, Zach was traveling the same road.

  He kept seeing Breeanne’s green eyes shadowed, her body shaking, her skin pale. She’d flinched as if he’d struck her, hunching over, drawing in, the light draining from her face.

  Turn around. Go back. Tell her you forgive her. Beg her to forgive you.

  The next exit ramp loomed. He headed toward it. His cell phone rang. It was Price.

  He took the ramp, pulled onto the shoulder of the road. Price had heard about what happened. He wanted to come forward and tell about his experiences with Potts. In fact, he also informed Rowdy that he’d already called a lot of the other guys on the team and told them what had happened.

  In the middle of the conversation another call came through. It was a player Potts had blackmailed. He wanted to come clean about his past and expose Potts.

  By the time he got to Dallas, he’d gotten a dozen calls. People were tired of the bully, tired of keeping secrets. They were ready to talk.

  Caught up in the biggest scandal in baseball in recent history, Rowdy was stuck in Dallas for several days, doing damage control for Zach’s reputation and helping clean up social media sites, meeting with the other players to come up with a game plan for exposing Potts. Leading the charge to talk to the baseball commissioner, the media, lawyers. Barry flew in. Heath Rankin. Everyone wanted to talk to him.

  But through it all, he couldn’t stop thinking about the shabby way he’d treated Breeanne and he couldn’t wait to get back to Stardust, so he could apologize.

  The best thing about being back at the bookstore, besides the books and the customers, was having Callie around every day. Breeanne had sorely missed her cat.

  Potts and the Gunslingers scandal was all the media could talk about. Rowdy came out of it the poster boy for doing the right thing. Every time she saw him on TV, her heart stumbled.

  A week had passed, and the bulk of her grief had ebbed, but the pain of losing him didn’t hurt any less today than it had the day before. When was it supposed to get better?

  On Friday, when she was moving a bookshelf, she found the hope chest her mother had put away. She took one look at the thing, and fresh tears sprang to her eyes.

  She sank to the floor beside it, traced her finger over the words.

  Be careful where wishes are cast, for reckless dreams dared dreamed in the heat of passion will surely come to pass.

  Breeanne dropped her head to her knees, and let the sobs come. Tiptoeing footsteps surrounded her. She looked up to see her sisters hovering.

  “Want me to make a voodoo doll of Rowdy so you can stick pins in it?” Suki asked.

  Kasha bumped Suki with her hip. “Shh.”

  “I mean it,” Suki said. “I’ll do it. Anyone messes with one Carlyle woman, they mess with us all.”

  Her three sisters nodded in solidarity.

  Breeanne accepted the tissue Jodi handed her, dabbed her eyes and blew her nose, got to her feet. “You don’t get it, Suki. I don’t want to hurt him. I love him. I don’t ever want to see him in pain.”

  “But he hurt you. I wanna punch him in his handsome face for that.” Suki knotted a fist.

  “She doesn’t get it,” Jodi whispered, squeezed Breeanne’s hand. “She’s never been in love.”

  Breeanne closed her eyes. “I’m okay, you guys. Really. I’ll be all right. Things are as they should be. The universe has realigned. I’m back at the bookstore. Life will rock on as it did before. No harm, no foul balls.”

  Except everything had changed. Including her, and she no longer knew where she fit in the world.

  On Saturday afternoon, she sat at the counter reading when she heard the stairs creak. She didn’t look up. Bookstore customers browsed leisurely. If they were looking for something special, they would come ask for it.

  The footsteps grew closer.

  She turned the page of the book she was reading, a book that had nothing whatsoever to do with either baseball or happy endings. She was done with both of those, at least until her heart mended.

  And it would mend. This wasn’t the first time her heart had been ripped apart and stitched back together. Except it was the first time it had been ripped apart by love.

  A man cleared his throat. “I need a book.”

  At the sound of Rowdy’s voice, Breeanne froze, her eyes glued to the page. “A book about what?” she whispered.

  “Do you have any books on how to apologize? A smart woman once told me there’s a book for everything. I came to see if that was true.”

  She bit her bottom lip as joy filled her sagging heart, and floated it right up to her throat. She lifted her head, peeked over the rims of her glasses.

  He stood before her, holding a bouquet of red roses in one hand, her cheetah scarf in the other. “I’ve never unbroken up with a woman before. I’m not sure how this goes. Are the flowers too obvious?”

  “They are a cliché. But pretty.”

  “You left this at my house.” He held up the scarf. “I brought this with me in case you told me to get bent, and told me that you never wanted to see me again and threw the flowers in my face.”

  “I would never treat such lovely flowers so thoughtlessly.”

  A look crossed his face as if he’d been kicked in the gut. “Of course you wouldn’t treat flowers the way I treated you because you’re too kind.”

  Callie lay on the bookcase just above his head, her tail switching back and forth.

  Uh-oh, she recognized the signs. The calico was about to pounce.

  “Um, Rowdy—”

  “Yes, Breezy?” A hopeful smile edged the corners of his mouth upward.

  Callie’s tail went swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.

  Uh-oh. She stood up. “You better leave.”

  His smile fell to the floor like a heavy boxer had knocked it there. “I know. I’m sorry. I deserve that. I—”

  “I mean it, go now, before—”

  But it was too late.

  Callie dropped from the bookcase like a Serengeti lion falling on an unsuspecting wildebeest. “Rrrowww!”

  “Yow!” Rowdy grabbed for his head. The roses, and the scarf, tumbled to the ground. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  Lightning-quick, Callie sprinted down his back, ran across the store, and scaled the bookcase behind the counter.

  Rowdy was swatting at his head as if the cat was still perched there. The calico sat up prettily, wrapped her tail around herself, and gazed at him with regal disdain, as if to say, Take that for pulverizing my mistress’s heart,
you big dope.

  He straightened, looked around warily, trying to figure out what had happened.

  Breeanne tried not to laugh. Being the victim of one of Callie’s sneak attacks was disconcerting, but she couldn’t help herself. Seeing Mr. Macho Ballplayer brought to his knees, humbled by one cool cat, well . . . it was kind of funny.

  “Rowdy,” she said with a flourish of her hand. “Meet Callie. She’s a Hurricane Sandy survivor with PTSD flashbacks and has a tendency to go on the offensive.”

  He rubbed his head, eyed Callie.

  The calico lifted her nose in the air, looked away from him.

  “I think she hates me.”

  “Jumping on you doesn’t mean Callie dislikes you. She’s an equal opportunity attack cat. If she’s in a mood, anyone is fair game. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Like you were,” he said, bending over to pick up the roses and her scarf. “When I found out the story had been leaked. You were there, and I was angry—”

  “Your anger was justified. I let you down.”

  “I could never stay mad at you, Breezy. I was never mad at you in the first place. I was hurt, and for a minute I believed you’d set me up. But I know you would never intentionally hurt someone you love.”

  “You were perfectly within your right to say what you did. I was in the wrong. I was responsible for keeping your secret safe, and I didn’t do my job.”

  “Your roommate took advantage of you to make a profit. She was the one I should have called on the carpet.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I handled that.”

  “Did you?”

  “You should have seen her,” Suki called from downstairs. “She kicked ass.”

  Breeanne went to the balcony railing. “Mind your own business, Suki.”

  “Oh yeah, now that Mr. Handsome’s back, you don’t need my shoulder to cry on.”

  “Buzz off.”

  “Later.” Suki raised a hand and scooted out of the back of the store.