Page 64 of Pipe Dreams
He was nearly the last player to leave the building. And, just as he donned his suit jacket, Lauren’s face peered into the dressing room. “Mike?”
“Yeah, baby?”
Her gaze dipped. “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice tentative.
“’Course I’m all right.” He patted his pocket to make sure he had keys, a wallet and a phone, then he approached the spot where she stood by the door.
She didn’t let him get close, though. She stepped out of the way and folded her arms in front of her chest, in a classic defensive posture. But he didn’t buy it.
His girl was worried about him. It had to mean something.
“You heading home?” he asked, following her down the long corridor toward the exit.
“Yes, I have a car waiting.”
“Think you could drop me off?” he asked. “I’m only two miles from here. I know it’s late, though...” He gave her an out.
“I suppose I could do that,” she said after a beat. “Sure.”
They went outside, where Lauren opened the door to a hired sedan and sat down on the backseat. “We’re going to make two stops,” she told the driver. “What’s your address?” she asked Mike.
“Uh, Willow Street and Pierrepont in the Heights,” he said, thinking back to the days when they were planning to move in together. He’d been full of anticipation for the time when they would have their own place. Now she didn’t even know his address.
“Then we’ll take the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan,” Lauren told the driver as Mike shut the door. “Unless the FDR is backed up.”
“Should be fine at this hour,” the driver said, tapping on his dash instruments to pull up his GPS.
The car slid away from the curb, and they rode in silencefor a minute. Then Mike found himself thinking about that pill bottle in her bag, and all the guilty feelings it had dredged up. He turned his aching neck to look at her in the semi-darkness. “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” she said, resting her briefcase on the seat between them. “Long day, though.” She yawned.
“No kidding.”
“I didn’t expect you to take swing at that jerk.”
He grinned, which wasn’t easy with a big old bandage on his face. “I wasn’t planning to do it. It just happened.”
“But will it make your life harder tomorrow?”
He shrugged. “It will or it won’t.”
She snorted.
“What?”
“That’s the goalie mentality. The past is the past. Time for the next play.”
He leaned back against the leather seat and smiled. Itwasthe goalie mentality. If you stood around worrying about the goal you just let in, there was no way you’d be ready to stop the next one. And Lauren had always had his number. Today was no different. “You got a better idea?”
“I guess not.”
She bit her lip, and he watched, wishing he could bite it, too. “Lo, can I ask you something?”
“I don’t know. Can you?”
“Miss Grammar, are you trying to get pregnant?”
Her head whipped around to look at him. “What?Jesus. Did you snoop in my papers?”
