she’d laughed at him. Actually laughed at him. Head back, full-on hysterical laughter.
“Seriously?” she’d said. “Are you kidding me? What are you trying to prove? That you’re some badass who can have any woman he wants? From what I’ve seen so far you’re sullen and brooding. Barely civil to your teammates. Hate to break it to you, Roy, but that doesn’t make you badass and mysterious. It makes you sad and alone. I wonder if you know what love is. Even if I wasn’t engaged, someone like you wouldn’t get to have someone like me.”
In a sort of crazy twist, in that moment when she’d been telling him how pathetic he was, he’d come to admire her. He could see how right she was—someone like him would never be worthy of someone as open and giving as her. He’d spent every day since then trying to establish...what?
He didn’t know if it was a friendship between them. He didn’t know if she took their small connection that seriously. And it was a small connection. A couple of words exchanged outside the locker room when she waited for Danny after a game. A hot dog or two at some out-of-the-way place he tracked down because he knew she loved them. Some mocking banter where she would call him out for being an ass.
That connection, of course, was fueled by the fact that he needed her. Desperately.
Lane Baker Worth was a miracle worker when it came to physical therapy. She called her specialty kinesiology, but Roy called it woo-woo medicine. Some magic she was able to perform with her hands and her fingers by applying pressure to certain spots of his body that allowed for greater blood flow and a decrease in inflammation.
It wasn’t traditional, but it worked. Any athlete who wanted to avoid the drugs and sometimes even surgery sought out her services. She was the hardest appointment to get in DC. Athletes from all over the country would fly to see her for a couple of hours of work.
Danny Worthless had that gift every night if he wanted it. Danny Worthless had her. Her spirit, her smile, her love of the game.
It wasn’t right. And Roy had finally decided it couldn’t continue.
The doorbell rang and, despite the loud music, he heard it as if it was a special sound sent out over a frequency meant only for him.
Danny was on his way. Roy had gone so far as to text him that he had some girls here who really wanted to meet the Founders’ shortstop. Danny texted back that he already had some company and would be there soon.
All Roy needed was the second actor in this play.
He opened the door and Lane smiled at him. Half sincere, half suspicious. It was always like that with her. As if she was afraid there was some prank he had set up that she’d step into or some joke he would make her the butt of.
Probably very smart of her.
“You came.” Which made him irrationally happy. Crazy, considering what he planned for that night.
“You said I had to,” she reminded him. “Or I would be, quote, ‘the biggest loser who ever lived.’”
Roy smiled. “Clearly you have self-esteem issues if you thought you had to prove me wrong.”
Of course she didn’t. No one in the world knew who she was as well as Lanie did. That’s what made her so damn compelling. She didn’t play games. She didn’t manipulate or strategize to get what she wanted. She was always simply who she was.
Unlike Roy, who frequently didn’t have a clue about himself outside of being someone who could throw a ball.
No, Lane definitely hadn’t hunted down Danny as trophy-husband material the way so many of the other wives had. She hadn’t pursued him like he was some prize to be won. Like baseball players were nothing beyond their gloves and hats and bats. And money. No, Danny had had to win Lane.
It’s what made her different from the women currently in Roy’s penthouse, drinking his liquor and shaking their well-toned, surgically enhanced bodies. Doing everything they could to attract attention. Hoping some player would notice them and set them up for life.
Roy saw nobody but Lane. Every damn time she was in the room.
“Well, Danny’s not getting back in until tomorrow. Decided he needed one last golf game in Florida before the season starts next week. So I thought, what the hell.”
A lie. Danny had been in town for two days. He was just spending his nights somewhere else. With someone else if his text was to be believed.
That should be enough, Roy thought. Enough to end it.
All Lane had to do was stay until Danny walked through the door with whomever on his arm. That alone should be enough to end their marriage. Lane wasn’t a person to tolerate disloyalty.
Roy had no idea who the woman in question would be. Danny went through groupies like toilet paper. An easy thing to do when you were on the road for eighty-one nights of the season. It wasn’t as if he even tried to hide his behavior from anyone. As if he expected everyone to understand that when they were home, Lane drove him to every game, watched every play of every inning and then took him home when it was over.
When Danny was on the road those tasks were done by some other woman.
Of course the guys didn’t say anything. The locker-room bond was tight. It had to be to win championships. And this was a championship-caliber team, having already won two World Series and coming close again last year.
So no one talked. None of the players talked to their wives. Or if they did, none of the wives talked to Lane. They all sat back and observed. As if it was entertainment to watch a dumb-ass twenty-six-year-old kid, who happened to have been gifted with athletic talent, shit on the princess of baseball. Night in and night out.
Roy was done with it. When Lane had worked on his neck and shoulder recently he thought he could sense something in her. A sense that she wasn’t happy, and rather...lonely.
Not that she would ever confide in Roy about her marriage. He was the man who didn’t know what love was. How hard would it be for someone so proud to admit she was wrong about it, too?
Which is why he decided he had to help her. Save her, really. She didn’t want to admit she’d picked the wrong guy. Understandable. No one wanted to admit their mistakes. Fine. He’d simply force her hand.
In front of the whole damn team.
“Uh, you going to invite me in?”
Roy realized she was still standing in the corridor. He thought of some of the women he’d invited. Thought of the other nonwives who had come with some of the married players.
Hell, he thought of the women he’d paid to be here. Backups to zero in on Danny if he didn’t show up with someone else.
Lane would see it all. Instantly.
No. Suddenly, he didn’t want to invite her in.
This is stupid. A mistake. She doesn’t deserve this.
“Look, you can’t change your mind now. I’m here, I’m thirsty and, if I have enough drinks, I might even dance.”
Not
