Page 41 of Killer on the Homestead
Two outsiders.
When the game was over, a close and tense win for Bent County High, what Duncan really wanted to do was disappear, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
Maybe he didn’t really know Sarabeth from any other kid around here. They weren’t kin, and as far as he knew his parents weren’t acquainted with the Thompsons. But he couldn’t forget who he’d been out there on the field, and if a major league player had come to one of his games?
Hell.
“Go on, Ace. Give ’em a thrill,” Rosalie said, giving him a nudge toward the dugout, where the coaches were talking to the kids, but all eyes were on him.
The excitement was palpable as he approached—from both kids and coaches alike. It was a different staff than when he’d played here, so he didn’t recognize any of the coaches. He introduced himself to the head coach, and then he was essentially engulfed.
He gave compliments. Signed balls, gloves, and bats. Answered a zillion questions. Politely declined a job assistant-coaching…three times. Then, in an attempt to escape, had to shake what felt like a million parent hands until his arm was throbbing.
Eventually the crowds began to dissipate alittle, but Duncan had officially had enough. He searched the area for Rosalie, found her underneath a tree, watching him with amusement.
Save me, he mouthed at her.
She grinned at him but pushed off the tree and sauntered over. Smooth as could be, she extracted him from a small group of overzealous adults without making either of them look like jerks.
“You’re a real pro,” he said. “I’d have hired you back in LA.”
She shook her head at that. “You’re too nice to those people.”
“Can’t really have it getting around town that LA changed me and I’m some snooty SOB now. My mother would have my neck.”
It got a good laugh out of her, and since they were back at his truck, in the shadow of it and a tree, and most of the parking lot had cleared out, he went ahead and followed the path of that laugh.
Because his life had been ruled by discipline for so long, there was something freeing and irresistible about following an impulse, a temptation.
So he pressed his mouth to hers, caging her subtly against his truck, the size of his frame no doubt obscuring her from any straggling crowd members.
He half expected her to push him away, but she didn’t. She melted into him like wax. When he wrapped his good arm around her back and pulled her tight against him, she raised her hands to clasp around the back of his neck.
Maybe it was the location, maybe it was Rosalie, but there was a kind of sweet nostalgia to it all. But underneath that sweetness, and the smell of baseball, and a crisp Wyoming night, was the sharpening edge of need.
The throb in his shoulder twinged with the drugging pulse of pleasure. A strange, potent mix of feelings wrapped up in the faint strawberry scent of her.
She didn’t push him away, but she did ease back. He could only barely make out her face in the dark. “We’re in a parking lot, Ace.”
But her breath came out on a little sigh, and her hand was still curled around his neck.
“Yeah, we are. Did you ever make out in this parking lot after hours back in your day?”
She looked around—the baseball diamond was dark now. The school behind them was dark. “A lady never tells.” Then her eyes narrowed. “What about you?”
He put a hand to his chest in mock outrage. “A gentleman never tells either.”
She snorted.
And because she did, and because she hadn’t taken her arms down from around him, he lowered his mouth again. This timewith a little more of that urgency he was starting to feel, and a nip against her bottom lip.
“Come home with me,” he murmured against her mouth. Not charming, he knew, but she pulled something out of him. A directness. A straightforward need. Like a bright new light, after quite a few months of existing and maybe even wallowing in the dark.
He could feel the inner battle going on inside of her. But he was getting the picture that her internal battles weren’t about him specifically. They were about stuff going on in her life.
Still, when the battle ended, and she said, “Maybe for a minute or two,” he considered it a win.
It didn’t meanshe was going to sleep with him.
