I Belong to You (17 page)

“I guess we both have to accept that we’re adults, now, don’t we?” she asks. It’s clear that she’s referencing his club activities, but it’s framed as acceptance, not disdain. “And,” she adds, “if you won’t tell me the joke, Crystal will.” She looks at me. “Right?”

“Right,” I say, moving my chair so that it’s angled toward them both. “Here it goes.”

“Crystal,” Mark says, his eyes steely.

I grin, loving how I have him in suspense. “It is a
very
bad joke, Dana.”

She waves it off. “Please. Tell me already.”

“If you’re sure, then,” I say, “here goes. So . . . there’s a mama tomato, a papa tomato, and all their baby tomatoes. They all go out for a walk, and when the youngest tomato falls behind, the mother yells ‘catch up!’ ”

Mark shakes his head. “I did
not
tell that joke.”

Dana laughs and kisses his cheek, whispering something in his ear. His lashes lower and a smile lingers on his lips. “Yes,” he says, and he leans in and whispers something to her.

As I watch them nestled together, their closeness, their love, really get to me. Any question of why I’ve fallen for this man has faded. He’s sexier than ever, and I’m more emotionally invested than I thought possible. And I want to know what happened ten years ago that made him incapable of showing his love to Rebecca, while he gives and receives it freely from his family.

“That’s Joey Macom,” Dana says, settling back in her seat and pointing toward a player who’s about to pitch. “He’s your dad’s new recruit. He says he’s wild but powerful. I say anyone who’s wild should have worked that out before reaching this level.”

I turn my attention to Joey and watch him throw a few crazy pitches. “He slouches,” I say. “I’ve never seen a pitcher do that, and I’ve been to my share of Yankees games, thanks to my family’s baseball obsession.”

“One of his legs is stiff,” Mark says without looking at me. “It’s affecting his posture and his results, and I can’t believe my father can’t see that. He would have been all over me for that.”

“He’s distracted because of me,” Dana says. “I want him to go out on top. You have to shake him back into focus, son.”

Mark squeezes his mother’s hand, but he’s watching the pitcher. He shakes his head as Joey throws another crazy pitch. His leg starts bouncing, a sign of nervous energy and a fight for willpower. Mark’s dying to get up and tell his father what’s wrong, already completely absorbed in this world though he hasn’t been here in ten years. Now that he is, he can’t suppress what’s in his blood.

“Mark!” his father calls out, motioning him over.

I hold my breath, waiting for his reaction.

One second.

Two.

Three.

Mark stands up, but I don’t let out my breath until I see him walk toward his father.

Dana relaxes, too, apparently on eggshells like me. “Thank goodness. I was afraid he’d refuse.”

That’s a strong word. What the heck happened ten years ago?

Mark is halfway to his father when he stops, then he starts walking toward the door. “Oh no,” Dana murmurs. “I was afraid of this.”

I stand, intending to go after him, but he’s headed toward Jacob. They meet midway across the gym and exchange a few words before Mark heads back in our direction, a fast-food drink in his hand. “What is he up to?” Dana murmurs.

I have a feeling I know, but I wait, watching his long, graceful stride, the way he owns the space around him. The way I bet he owned the mound when he pitched.

He stops in front of us, his eyes meeting mine in a warm flicker of a moment before he crouches in front of his mother. “A milk shake,” he announces, handing her the drink. “I’m here, and we both know that’s what tonight was about. Now you drink the milk shake.” He pushes to his feet and shrugs out of his jacket, which he hands to me.

I accept it, our fingers brushing beneath it, his eyes telling me the touch is intentional. And at the moment, I don’t care that he’s winning our little game. I
want
him to win.

He turns away and jogs toward his father. Dana and I watch as he talks with the coaches, and I can’t help checking out his nice, tight backside, imagining him in baseball pants.

“Drink,” I order without looking at Dana.

“Yes, Ms. Smith,” she says, laughing.

I cut her a look. “Was that a Mark joke?”

“Of course not,” she replies glibly. Then smiles, elbowing me. “Of course it was.”

We laugh and I’m reminded of how much I love this woman. “It’s good to see you energetic again.”

“I’m tired, but I’m faking it.”

“You couldn’t have faked it a few days ago.”

“I guess a mother’s soul is always lighter when she has her child home.” She motions with her chin toward the practice area.

I return my attention to the center of the gym to see Mr. Compton’s sleeves rolled up, his tie loose, as he demonstrates a pitching stance to Joey, his knee high to his chest, posture perfect.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see that again, after his injury,” Dana murmurs.

“I didn’t know he was injured.” Somehow that doesn’t feel big enough for Mark’s reaction to coming here tonight.

“Well, it wasn’t really an injury. More . . . an event.”

“I kind of thought so.”

“He hasn’t told you?”

“No.”

“You aren’t going to ask me?”

“It’s his story to tell when he’s ready. If he ever is.”

Her eyes soften and she takes my hand. “That’s a perfect answer, and he’s getting there. Tonight shows that.”

“I hope so,” I say, my attention returning to Mark as he demonstrates the way Joey should set his leg.

“You love him,” Dana says softly, and my gaze jerks back to her.

“What?” I ask, trying to figure out what I’d done to bring on such an observation.

“You love him.”

“I . . . Dana, I—”

“It’s okay. I love him, too, and I haven’t seen him this relaxed in a long, long time. I wasn’t sure I ever would again. I believe you’re the reason.”

“No. No, it’s not me.”

“You’re just a coincidence?”

“It’s Rebecca. He loved her. He lost her. I’m here, and he needs me to get to the other side.”

“The other side is you, Crystal. You can’t see it, but I do.”

“I don’t know what I am, or what we are. But I don’t want to lose you if I lose him.”

“Well, my vote is for you keeping us both, but I won’t let you lose me if you don’t. Not because of Mark, and not because of damn cancer.”

I drape my arm over her narrow shoulders, her thin body downright frightening, and I nudge the shake to her mouth. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“I’ll drink. I’ll drink.” She draws on the straw. “I expect you and Mark to stop pretending you aren’t seeing each other now.”

“Happily. And I guess this is a good time to tell you he’s staying at my apartment.”

“Even better. Now I know where he is at night.” She takes my hand. “Oh, honey, please hold on to him.”

I’m not sure I could let go if I wanted to.

Seventeen

Mark . . .

I’m surprisingly removed from the past as I stand next to my father and watch Joey throw a few improved pitches. There seems to be a freedom in facing this that I didn’t expect, and I’m embracing it to the fullest.

I’m about to walk over to Joey and give him a pointer when Crystal stands and begins to sashay toward me across the gymnasium, looking like a blond bombshell in her red dress, with curves from here to Texas. I don’t miss how every male head in the room turns to watch her the way I am, the same way everyone had turned to look at Tabitha. The truth is that Crystal’s fiery, sexy, and defiant nature is very much like Tabitha’s had been, only ten years more mature.

My father nudges my arm. “She’s a looker, that one. Like your mother.”

“Yes, she is,” I say. “And so is Mom.”

“Have you told Crystal?”

I don’t have to ask to know he means the events of ten years before. “No.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

My answer comes with remarkable ease. “Yes.”

He claps a hand on my shoulder. “That’s a good choice.
She’s
a good choice.”

“Yes,” I say in agreement again. “She is.”

Crystal stops in front of me and hands me my main cell phone. “Your phone was ringing.”

“Who was it?” I ask, thankful I’d stuffed the disposable in my pants pocket.

“I respected your privacy and I didn’t look.”

“Your mother would have looked,” my father says, “even way back in our dating days.”

Crystal grins. “I find that so easy to believe.”

My father turns somber. “How is she?”

“Good,” Crystal says. “Tired, but the best I’ve seen her in weeks.”

“Did she drink the milk shake?” I ask, tabbing through my missed calls.

“With a little needling I was happy to provide,” Crystal responds.

“I’m sure that was difficult for you,” I reply dryly. “Because you’re so soft-spoken and hesitant about pushing people.”

Crystal’s blue eyes twinkle with good humor. “And here I thought you didn’t know me.”

My father yells something at the catcher and I take the opportunity to softly say, “I do know you—but not as well as I plan to.”

“That boy needs to pay attention,” my father mutters, settling back into our conversation.

“I need to step away and take a few phone calls,” I announce.

Crystal’s brow furrows. “Problems? Who called?” The urgent lift to her voice tells me it killed her not to look at my phone, but she’d still resisted.

“Blake, and my attorney, Tiger.”

“Crystal can stay here with me while you talk to them,” my father offers.

One of the players gives her a once-over that makes me want to go shake him, and I say to hell with discretion. I grab Crystal, pull her to me, and kiss her, making damn sure everyone knows whom she belongs to.

Afterward, she grins. “Good thing your mother already knew about us.”

“And now everyone else does, too.” I set her right next to my father. “Watch out for her,” I instruct him.

My father chuckles. “Gladly.”

Not giving Crystal a chance to tell me she doesn’t need watching, I waste no time striding away to the opposite side of the gymnasium. Punching my voice mail button, I listen to Blake’s message as I lean against a wall of folded bleachers.

“I’m here, and so is Detective Grant. I told him to contact Tiger, and I’m warning you that he wasn’t pleased. I’m headed to the hospital and I thought he’d join me, but he didn’t. I’ll call you if I find anything out. Otherwise I’ll see you in the morning. And don’t fucking keep my wife out too late. You have Jacob. I haven’t slept with her in two weeks.”

My phone beeps with a call from my attorney, and I answer to hear, “Fucking Detective Grant won’t take my calls.”

“I take it you got my message?”

“I got it and I’m headed to Long Island. I talked to Luke Walker and he’s still being shut out, but I set up a meeting with the Long Island PD for tomorrow morning. And I told them this is a bunch of bullshit. I’m as sick as you are, of you becoming everyone’s fall guy.”

“That’s the least of my worries with Ava on the loose.”

“Let me do my job. I’m here for a reason.”

Crystal starts walking toward me and I say, “Call me if anything changes.” I slide my phone into my pocket.

“Is everything okay?” Crystal asks as she steps to my side.

“Blake wants his wife home early since he hasn’t slept with her in two weeks, my attorney is meeting with the Long Island PD tomorrow, and the asshole detective who made my life hell over Rebecca is in town. But nothing significant has changed.”

She leans a shoulder on the wall, facing me, and I do the same. “Your mother’s doing better. That’s pretty significant.”

“Yes,” I say, reaching up to catch the long blond hair that’s managed to attach itself to her lips, lips that I want to kiss and feel on several places on my body. “And now we’re out of the closet with her, and pretty much everyone.”

“Yes, we are. What was that kiss all about?”

“The caveman in me felt the urge to stake my claim among the other wannabe cavemen.”

“Is that right?”

“I did it. I’ll own it.” We’re silent for a moment and there’s this level of understanding between us, a sense of knowing each other in ways beyond words, that I’d never thought I wanted in my life. But I want it now, with Crystal. “I’m sure you got an earful about me and baseball from my mother tonight.”

“No. She was excited to see you here, but I didn’t want her to tell me the details of why you’ve stayed away. I told her that was your place, if and when you wanted to tell me.”

Her respect for my personal demons reminds me again of her own. She’d once claimed we were too alike to be compatible, two bulls after the same red flag. I’d agreed then, but I’m beginning to think that what makes us alike, the scars beneath our need for control, are what pull us together.

She runs her fingers down my cheek and traces my lips, as if she’s absorbing who I am, what I am—when I’m still struggling with that myself.

I capture her hand in mine, feeling as if showing her my past is a window into the future. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

Leading her toward a door, we exit into a corridor that leads to a large reception area with offices with half-glass walls lining the hallway behind it. I lead Crystal to the office farthest in the back, flipping on the light and illuminating a basic desk, a small, round table that could be in a cafeteria as easily as here, and an array of pictures on the walls of sports heroes my father has met.

Crystal scans the room while I claim one of a cluster of weathered, hard chairs sitting around the desk. “Your father’s office,” she guesses.

“Yes.” I wave at the wall to my right, where my father still proudly displays several pictures of me pitching on the mound.

Crystal immediately moves in to get a closer look, studying them intently for some time before facing me. “You played for your father.”

“Another yes.” I lift my hand to her. “Come here.” As soon as she’s within reach, my hands settle on her hips and I maneuver her between my legs, her hands on my shoulders. “You’re not going to ask even one of the many questions I know you have?”

“No. You don’t need questions. I think . . . I think you need answers that only you can give. We find those answers in our own way that we can live with, or we don’t find them at all.”

There’s a flicker of something dark in my mind, a brief flashback that I shove aside before it takes hold of me. Yet another confirmation that the past absolutely owns me, and has for too long.

“Ten years ago I was pitching for NYU, under my father as a coach, and I had the attention of the right people. There were scouts circling as intently as the press is now. I was going pro. The only question was with whom. I was that good. And that’s not ego; it’s a fact. I was, and then I wasn’t, and then everything changed. And . . .” I hesitate, that dark spot in my mind again stirring memories that I’m not prepared to sort through in a public place, especially with my mother and father nearby. I stand up and say, “And that’s where the past ended and the present began.”

She reaches up, cupping my cheek, silently telling me that she gets it, and knows I’m already at my limit. I lean into her touch, cupping her hand with mine, my eyes seeking hers, the connection triggering an unfamiliar warmth in my chest that has nothing to do with desire. “God, woman, what are you doing to me?”

“Nothing you aren’t doing to me.”

I stare into her blue eyes and see the trust there, the understanding I’m not sure I deserve or ever will in this lifetime, but I want to. God, how I want to—and there are suddenly things I want to say to her, about us, about Rebecca, and about my past. But there isn’t time—or maybe this is simply the wrong time.

My forehead settles against hers; my hands go to her waist and caress upward, fingers curving the swell of her breasts, working their way to the hard covers over her nipples. Her breath hitches, the sound driving what I already feel. “I really need to be inside you right now.”

She jerks back and says, “Not in your father’s office,” as if she believes I might intend just that.

It’s tempting. So damn tempting. I lean in, brushing my lips over hers, still teasing the hard tips covering her nipples, intentionally creating a sweet friction in her body that I want to lick away.

She moans and the sound thickens my cock. I dip my tongue into her mouth again for one last sweet taste of her to hold me over until we’re finally alone. “Let’s go tell my parents good-bye and go home.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “Please.”

My lips curve. “Please. I like how that sounds. And ‘Please, Mr. Compton, lick my nipples’ would be even better.”

“Not going to happen.”

I press my cheek to hers and nip her ear, whispering, “Challenge accepted.”

*  *  *

We walk back to the gymnasium to find it all but deserted, and hurry toward my parents.

My father hands me my jacket, which I slip on. He’s quick to discover that we’ve been in his office, and he draws Crystal into conversation about the photos. I’m equally as quick to hug my mother. Holding my arms, she tilts her face up to study me. “How are you?”

“Far better than expected.”

“I know there’s a part of the past you don’t ever want to think about,” she says. “But I want you to have that special baseball bond with your father again while he’s still here. You both need that.” She softens her voice. “And you know the counselor said there are stages of healing, and you never let yourself go through them all.”

“I am now.”

“Because of Crystal,” she states.

“Because you and Rebecca made me realize life is short.”

She looks at me closely. “Don’t forget that with Crystal.”

“I don’t intend to.”

“That’s the most positive answer I’ve heard from you in ten years. Are you two coming by the house tomorrow?”

“Probably late. We have prep work for next week’s auctions, which reminds me: Crystal’s done very well. Today I reviewed the financials that you haven’t been able to look over. Riptide is kicking ass and the scandal has created buzz, not a mass exodus. Next week’s RSVPs for the auctions are up fifteen percent.”

Crystal comes to our side, and I wrap my arm around her shoulder. “I was telling my mother how well you’ve taken care of Riptide.”

“I knew you were a superstar, my dear,” my mother proclaims proudly. “And you’ve done this all on your own. Sounds like you need to do a little nose-rubbing to your father and brothers.”

“Oh, I intend to,” Crystal assures her. “I’ll be doing just that on Sunday night.”

“What’s Sunday night?” I ask.

“My birthday is next Saturday, during the auction, and Thursday and Friday will be crazy busy, so my family’s having a little birthday dinner for me at my father’s place Sunday night. Want to come along?”

Pleased at the invitation to meet her family and discover the foundation that made her the woman who has turned my world upside down, I am quick to accept. “Looking forward to it already.”

“Sounds like enough testosterone in one room to damage a woman’s ovaries,” my mother quips, sounding very much like her pre-cancer self. “And remember, my dear son,” she adds, “you’re not the pack leader there. Her father is. No matter how much you want to show your dominant tendencies, you respect his first.”

“Such love, Mother. I can barely stand it.”

My mother smirks. “I still love you, you arrogant ass.”

Crystal chokes on laughter and my father drapes an arm over my mother’s shoulder. “Handing out compliments again, I see.” He lifts his chin at Crystal. “Welcome to the love factory.”

Crystal takes the intended bait. “Love factory?”

I explain: “That’s what he called our house when I was growing up. Usually after my dear mother told me I needed to ‘suck it up and move on’ after a bad game.”

“Wallowing in negativity never works,” Dana says, “so yes. I told you to suck it up.” She leans into my father. “And I really need sleep.”

My father kisses her head. “The car is ready to go.” The two of them head to the door, toward Kara. Jacob holds up a hand, signaling for us to wait until my parents have departed for our turn.

My hands settle on Crystal’s waist. “While we wait,” I say, “what do you want for your birthday?”

Her hands settle on my arms, and I don’t get the playful reply I expect. “The same things you want, I suspect. Your mother to be well and Ava to be captured.”

“We’ll blow out some candles and make those wishes together.”

“I’d like that,” she says. “And how old will you be on your next birthday, Mr. Compton?”

“Thirty-five, Ms. Smith, and you’ll be twenty-nine.”

“You looked at my file.”

“Of course I looked at your file. You’re running Riptide.”

“We’re running Riptide.”

“I’m not responsible for the balance sheet I looked at today. That’s all you.”

She tilts her head and gives me a curious look. “For a man as arrogant as you, Mark Compton, you aren’t quick to steal someone else’s thunder.”

“Contrary to my mother’s belief, I’m not arrogant, I’m confident. True confidence means you’re prepared to work hard enough and smart enough to make your own thunder. You don’t need someone else’s.” Jacob motions us forward, and I wrap my arm around her. “Let’s get out of here.”