Clutch Hit by Faith O'Shea (most popular ebook readers txt) 📗

“This can wait. Please get my mother here, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to make you comfortable with the situation.”

“Okay. Good luck on your test tomorrow.”

“Thank you. With Rique in Brazil and Seb busy, would you mind if I went back to Gloucester to visit your parents? I could play chess with your father, walk the beach.”

There was a long pause before she asked, “There’s nothing else for you to do? You couldn’t call someone else on the team, hang out?”

He could do that. He was feeling more himself every day that passed, and he was anxious to get to know his other teammates, but with her gone, he wanted the connection with her that only her parents could give him.

“Your father texted me, thanking me for the interview, and said I was welcome any time. He will be around for the weekend and I thought to take him up on it.”

“Why not. I’m beginning to think I’ll need to tell my parents about us. With your mother coming to live here, and with her knowing, I can’t expect it to stay secret. Can you wait to text Dad until I talk to them?”

“I will wait until after I pass my test. If I fail, it will not be possible anyway.”

“Thanks. Good night.”

“Good night, Allie. Until tomorrow.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Allie ended the call and sank down on the bed.

This was one fine kettle of fish she’d found herself in.

She stared at the phone, knowing what she had to do, wishing she could do it in person, but… she’d done this to herself. One decision had led to the next, each one leading her deeper and deeper into…

Fuck. Just get it over with.

She thumbed her contacts and hit the icon that would place the call. When her father picked up, she took a deep breath and began to tell him her story. He didn’t say a word until she was finished.

“And you think your mother and I have a strange marriage. Never thought you’d out-strange us.”

“Dad, I—”

“All kidding aside, I like him, Allie. I’ve met a lot of players in my life and he’s one of the most solid. He knows who he is, what he wants, is willing to help his teammates and doesn’t showboat. If he could just loosen up, he’d even be fun to be around.”

She had a feeling that was right around the corner, as soon as he grew comfortable in his new homeland.

“He wants to spend the day with you tomorrow. He’s taking his driver’s test, and if he passes, will drive himself down.”

“I assume I can tell your mother.”

“You’ll have to. I’m just not sure I want the world to know yet.”

“Steve was an asshole. You do know that. I never understood what you saw in him.”

She was surprised he’d connected the dots.

“He was a good time, Dad. It wasn’t really any more than that.”

That wasn’t an outright lie. She’d thought she was in love with him, sure, but that faded too quickly to have been true. It was the cheating that had blurred her thinking, screwed up her perspective. And Mateo hadn’t been wrong when he suggested she didn’t want to muddy the playing field by dating one of her charges.

“Then why the aversion to marriage?”

She found herself losing patience.

“I don’t have an aversion to marriage, I have a rule about not dating ballplayers.”

“Your rule is still in play if you skipped the dating part.”

She could hear the laugh in his voice. He was trying to be funny, but it was at her expense.

“It was a crazy thing to do. All right? I admit it. But it’s done. Now I have to find a way out of it.”

“Why?”

Cautiously, she asked, “You don’t expect me to stay in a loveless marriage, do you?”

“I’m not sure it’s as loveless as you want to believe. I know you, Allie. You never would have done this if you didn’t feel something for him. Not even for the team.”

With a pervading sense of doom, she said, “Dad, no one falls in love with one look.”

“Almost everyone does, my girl. Whether they believe it or not.”

She couldn’t deny there’d been something about Mateo that had drawn her in, a host of complex emotions. It wasn’t only the landscape of his features and body that were luring her into a trap, but a grudging respect for how he lived his life, admiration for his work ethic and determination, his willingness to help others, the spirit that thrived within. It was the steady stream of fear that was holding her back, holding her hostage to a past relationship gone sour.

She warned, “Don’t get too close.”

“Because I might get hurt? Been there, done that. Sometimes it’s worth the pain.”

Her eyes widened. He rarely made reference to her mother’s capriciousness. He’d just opened the door to a rash of unruly feelings that she refused to sort through. The one at her feet prompted her to ask, “Why did you stay so loyal?”

“Because I understand her, and I love her enough to allow for it.”

Loving that kind of tornado must have been hell.

“My life on the road was difficult for her, Allie. She is a woman who needs companionship and she was never fulfilled by being a stay-at-home mother. You won’t be fulfilled with that, either, when the time comes. Your work is your identity, your place in the world. If I had given up my job, we might have made it through, but I didn’t. Couldn’t, really. I’m just as much to blame as she is.”

How could he say that? He hadn’t gone off and left them… but then again, he did, for eight months every year.

“What makes you think she’s going to stay this time?”

“I don’t, but she always comes back, just like I do.”

Allie shook her head. She still didn’t understand, probably never would. He must have known that, because he added, “Marriage is different for everyone. There’s a reason people stay or leave, find joy or despair,