“It’s your dinner,” she noted, amused. “Order one.”

“Clearly you’ve never been the groom-to-be. And you’ve certainly never had to stand up to a bride.” He looked over at Meg, sitting at a table surrounded by other women, positively glowing, and he smiled dopily. “God, she’s amazing.”

“Which is why you’re willing to eat food you don’t even like.”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “I let her have her way, and she . . .” His grin widened. “Well, let’s just say it works to my favor.”

She laughed. “A marriage made in heaven. You’ll make a good family together.”

“Thank you.” He studied her a moment. “You know, I’ve never said this to one of Wade’s girlfriends before, but I’m going to say it now. I hope you stick.”

“Oh. Well—”

“If anyone could use more good family around, it’s Wade. I mean he has me, of course, but we don’t get to see each other much these days. There’s his dad, but he doesn’t really count. And he has his teammates, but a guy could use more, you know?”

Sam was stuck on the dad comment. She’d written the bio for every player on the team, Wade’s included, so she’d always figured she knew most everything there was to know about them. “His dad is alive?”

A funny looked crossed Mark’s face, and he set his drink down. “Wow, Meg was right. I should have quit two drinks ago.” He paused. “Look, he’s a bit touchy about his past, which is silly given how much money he sends home, but still, he’d hate that I brought it up.” Mark caught Meg waving at him and stood up. “Gotta go pretend I love the seafood. Tell Wade he’s a lucky bastard.”

“Oh, I will.” As Mark walked away, Sam looked around for Wade. It’d been ten minutes since he’d vanished on her.

She waited five more, then left the table and made her way down to the lobby, thinking about Wade’s father. Wade had always been open about growing up poor as dirt, about the fact that it’d been just his father and him in a single-wide in the woods in some tiny town in Oregon, and that it was just Wade now.

But it wasn’t just Wade, not if his father was still alive. Was the man still in Oregon? Or here in California, maybe even in Santa Barbara somewhere? But if that was the case, why had she never heard about him? Or seen him at a game?

She checked the restaurant and bar, then stepped out of the resort’s front double doors, onto a huge grassy area, lined with wild flowers in every conceivable color. And there, sitting on the grass in that beautiful suit was her multimillion dollar MLB catcher, eating a Big Mac.

Chapter 6

Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.

—Greg, age 8

Sitting on the perfectly manicured lawn, Wade slurped down his soda and tried not to think about the message he’d just retrieved from his voice mail. It’d been someone from the senior center reporting that if his father didn’t stop handing out contraband—alcohol and cigars—to the other residents, he’d be kicked out.

And then his father’s message, the softly slurred, “Yo, when are you going to get it? I don’t want to be here, I want to be with you.”

There’d been a long pause, and Wade had thought maybe his father had hung up.

He hadn’t.

Because there was more—his dad’s voice lowered, hoarse and thick, but even so, still filled with the despair that had coated most of Wade’s childhood: “Need you, Wade. Not your money. You.”

Uh-huh. He’d heard that before. Shrugging it off, Wade tilted the carton of fries up to his mouth, soaking up the last of the sun as it sank into the horizon. French fries and sunsets were God’s gift, he decided.

“I should have known.”

He looked up.

And up.

And up the best set of legs he’d ever had the pleasure of having wrapped around him. Which made him amend his thought. French fries were definitely God’s gift. But so were a woman’s legs.

And what those legs led to . . .

“You look like you just had really great sex,” Sam murmured, her eyes on his.

“You should know.”

She shook her head. “Why do you always circle back to that one bad decision? It was a long time ago, it meant nothing, and it’s never going to happen again.”

“Come down here and say that.”

She didn’t, reminding him that she possessed an unusually strong survivor’s instinct.

“How did you get to McDonald’s?” she asked.

“One of the guys lent me his car.” Leaning back, he dug into the bag for another carton of fries.

“How many of those have you had?”

“This is my second super-sized helping.”

“Maybe we should get your cholesterol checked.”

He laughed. “Are you worried about my weight?”

She slid her gaze down his body, and he could tell by the way she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and how her eyes dilated that she liked what she saw.

“You know damn well you don’t have a weight problem,” she finally said. “You don’t have an ounce of fat on you, you lucky bastard. Your body couldn’t get more perfect.”

It’s an illusion, he nearly said. Instead, he popped more fries in his mouth and moaned out loud. “Good Christ, these are amazing. Every single time.” He offered up the carton. “How do you suppose they do it?”

“It’s the salt.” She sighed and stared at the fries, clearly wrestling with herself. After a moment, she grabbed the carton and dug in, and then let out a hum of pleasure that rocked through him.

He grinned. “Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.” She licked her fingers. “Almost as good as an orgasm.”

He stared at her mouth. “Baby, nothing’s as good as an orgasm.”

“French fries are,” she said firmly. “Well, mostly.” She sighed. “Honestly, it’s been so long I can’t remember. French fries might actually be better.”

“Aw, now you’re just daring me to remind you how good it was in that Atlanta elevator.”

She slid him an assessing gaze. “You’re fishing.”

He smiled. “Guilty.”

“Are you that insecure about your manhood?”

“Yeah. Reassure me.”

She just shook her head.

With a grin, he patted the grass next to him, wanting her to sit with him, to just relax. Be.

Make him laugh some more.

Her black suit was dressier than her earlier one, the skirt shorter, the heels higher and strappy and pretty much blowing his mind as she shook her head and gestured to her hem. “I can’t get down there without flashing everybody.”

Probably true. He eyed the few people wandering around, then got to his feet, took off his jacket, and held it around her.

She hesitated. “We should go back inside.”

“Is there still fish in there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then not yet. Come on, sit.”

“You have another phone number written on your hand.”

“The server at McDonald’s. You weren’t there to protect me.”

She rolled her eyes, then let him guide her down to the grass, cocking her head to look into his eyes. “Red meat agrees with you.”

“I know it. Other things agree with me. Want to guess what any of them are?”

“Ha,” she said. “And no. I don’t need to guess. I already know.”

“Well then?” he asked hopefully.

With a low laugh, she put her finger on a corner of his mouth.

The touch was like a bolt of lightning straight through his gut. As she lightly rubbed the pad of her finger over his lip, he had to make a correction. The bolt hadn’t gone to his gut, but parts south.

“Ketchup,” she murmured, then let out a throaty gasp when he sucked the tip of her finger into his mouth.

She closed her eyes as he lightly raked his teeth over the pad of her finger. “I’m not going to have sex with you, Wade,” she said, her voice husky. “Not out here on the grass. Not inside. Not anywhere.”

“Sam I am,” he whispered, but he couldn’t help it. He was feeling odd. Uneasy. Restless.

Aroused.

Slowly he pulled her in using the lapels of his jacket. She resisted but was little match for his strength, going into a controlled freefall against his chest.

“Don’t make this into something it’s not,” she said very softly as she fit against him like she was made for him. “It’s just a moment. A weird sort of chemical attraction moment that can’t really be explained.”

“All chemistry can be explained. You plus me equals combustion.”

She flashed a quick, tight smile. “Dangerous combustion, don’t you think?”

“I’m not afraid of you.” He lowered his head to see into her eyes. “Is that it, Sam? Are you afraid of me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

But she didn’t look sure, and he took mercy on the both of them and dropped the subject.

“I’m surprised at how long you’ve stayed out here,” she said after a moment. “You’re missing all kinds of photo ops at the rehearsal dinner.”

“Can’t have that.”

“No.”

She was practically in his lap, her hand on his chest, whether to keep him at bay or to hold on, he wasn’t yet sure.

“Wade.”

“Right here.” He dipped his head, his lips a fraction from hers.

“There’s no one around,” she said shakily, gripping his bicep with one hand, his chest with the other, like he was her only anchor in a churning sea. “No paps, nothing.”

“Then this one will have to be just for us.” Leaning even closer, he stopped only a millimeter away from her lips when she tightened her fingers on his chest, getting a few chest hairs in the mix. “What now?”

“I didn’t know your father was alive.”

Like a cold bucket of water. With a sigh, he set her away from him. “Where did this come from?”

“Mark mentioned it.”

“Mark has a big mouth.”

“What’s the secret?”

“There is no secret.” There really wasn’t. Wade had been born in a trailer and had nearly died that same day. Would have, if John O’Riley hadn’t gathered his son in a towel and brought him to the closest doctor at an Urgent Care nearly an hour away. Wade had been cleaned up and fixed up and handed back over two days later to his father, who’d gone home and found his woman gone.

This had left the mild-tempered, easygoing John in a bit of a quandary. He’d been a small-bit character actor who’d traveled from tiny town theater to tiny town theater, not easy to do with a baby and no woman. So he’d adapted, as all O’Rileys were apt to do, and switched professions from acting to gambling, aka conning.

And had become a professional drunk while he was at it. He hadn’t been a mean drunk, or even a particularly difficult one. Just quiet and sad and utterly clueless about everything, including raising a kid.

“Where does he live?” Sam asked.

“Oregon.”

“Do you ever go back?”

Wade had few memories from his childhood worth revisiting, so no, he never went back. Not for sentimental reasons, and not for his father, who’d done far better with Wade a thousand miles away making enough money for the both of them. Wade had lost track of the number of times he’d tried to get his father to rehab, and in fact, no longer cared. Things had been fine, just fine, until recently when John’d had a medical problem. A weakened liver. Shock. His doctor had told him he could quit drinking or die. So suddenly John was looking his mortality right in the face, and fretting about his lack of a relationship with his son. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Wade gathered his trash and stood up, offering her a hand, watching from hooded eyes as she struggled not to flash him her goodies beneath that short skirt.

She wasn’t entirely successful; he caught a quick glimpse of something black and lacy. “Pretty.”

“You are such a guy.”

“Guilty.”

She stood before him, looking into his face for answers.

Answers he wasn’t ready to give. “I’m going back to Mickey D’s for a hot fudge sundae,” he decided, pulling the borrowed keys out of his pocket. “Quiet people are welcome to come.”

“Meaning no more questions, I suppose.”

“Pretty and smart,” he murmured. He was only partially surprised when she walked along at his side. He knew enough about her to know she’d do just about anything for ice cream.

“Won’t the bride be upset that a member of the wedding party just up and left to eat somewhere else?”

“If it’d been anyone else but me, probably. Me, she likes.” He had them at the McDonald’s drive-thru in less than five minutes, and they were halfway back when he caught the red and blue lights flashing in his rearview mirror. “Shit.”

Sam didn’t slow down in her consumption of her hot fudge sundae, scooping a huge dollop into her mouth, licking her lips in a way that nearly made him forget to pull over. “Probably you shouldn’t have been speeding,” she said as he turned off his engine.

He slid her a look as the officer came to the window, one hand on his gun, the other wielding a flashlight.

“License and registration, please,” he said. “Sir, do you know how fast you were going?”