Barefoot in the Rain

  “Love,” he reminded her.

  “Oh, so I did,” she said. “Well, I’ve never…” Oh, yes she had. “I haven’t been married, but you have.” Thank God for that question-flip technique she’d learned in training. “Why don’t you tell me about her?”

  “Does my marriage and divorce have to be part of the life-coaching interview?”

  “Understanding your marriage might help us get a better picture of your…” Heart. “Problems.”

  “Then my problems would be blonde, crazy, insecure, and camera-happy.” He angled his head and looked a little puzzled. “And that’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?”

  That his wife was blonde, crazy, insecure, and camera-happy? Zoe would eat that gossip with a spoon. “How so?”

  “That my ex was everything you’re not.”

  His ex had a name. Nina Martinez. And she might have been blonde and crazy, but she was also drop-dead gorgeous. “See?” she said with false brightness. “A breakthrough already. Life coaching works.”

  The waitress sidled up to the table with steaming platters, the delectable smoky tang of corned beef wafting along with her. As the woman set Jocelyn’s plate down, she glanced at her. And then did a double take.

  Instantly, Jocelyn cast down her eyes, staring at the plate, but the grill marks on the sandwich swam in front of her eyes. Shit. Shit.

  “Do I know you?” the waitress asked, forcing Jocelyn to look up and meet an unrelenting frown, the face of a woman digging through recent memory and about to come up with celebrity gossip.

  “We used to be regulars here,” Will said quickly. “And that’s all we need, thanks.”

  “Ohhh.” She drew out the word and looked from one to the other, but settled her attention on Jocelyn. “Well, I just started here, so, that’s not it.”

  “Thank you.” Jocelyn said sharply, picking up her fork and knife despite the fact that she wouldn’t use either one on this meal.

  The waitress got the message and left.

  “Eesh,” Jocelyn said on a sigh. “How long will I have to hide like this?”

  “Until you tell the truth.”

  Which would be never. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand you’re protecting a person who has no compunction about throwing you under a bus.”

  She set the silverware back down, lining it up perfectly, gathering a lot of possible responses and discarding most. “We all do what we feel is right regardless of what other people think.”

  “More life-coach bullshit,” he said, picking up his sandwich and making it look petite in his giant hands.

  “Is it?” she fired back. “I’m doing what I feel is right even though you don’t agree with it just like you’re doing what you think is right with my father even though I don’t agree with it. How are the two things so different?”

  He just shook his head and took a bite. After he swallowed, he said, “There was one other thing about my ex-wife that’s different from you.”

  Jealousy made a quick sting at her heart. “What’s that?”

  “She’d have never let the issue of another woman drop. Don’t you want to know more about my marriage?”

  She knew enough, actually. “Of course. How did you meet? How long were you married? Why did it end?”

  He looked up just before taking his next bite. “Not ‘Was she pretty’? That’s what most girls want to know.”

  Except this girl already knew his wife was on the cover of Fitness magazine once. “Last I looked, I was a woman, not a girl.”

  “Sorry.” He looked at her and smiled, slow and bad and good all at the same time. The kind of smile that made Jocelyn’s whole insides rise and flutter and sigh. “You are a woman. A beautiful one.”

  And flutter again.

  She picked up a fry and nibbled the end. “We were talking about your wife.”

  “Ex.”

  “Semantics.”

  “Incredibly important semantics.” He took a slow, careful bite, wiping his mouth with a napkin, drawing out the silence for a few seconds. “Well, let’s see. We met at the baseball field, we were married for three seasons, and it ended when it became painfully clear I wasn’t headed to the majors or a career in any kind of limelight, which was all that mattered to her.”

  She smiled. “Most people count their anniversaries in years, not seasons.”

  “She was my manager’s niece,” he said with a shrug, searching out his own fry. “It was definitely a baseball-centric marriage.”

  “She was Latina, right?”

  He whipped his head up at the question. “How do you know that?”

  Damn it all. Why had she revealed that? “I saw something in the paper.”

  “In Los Angeles?” Obviously, he didn’t believe her. “Sorry, but I didn’t make any papers outside of Florida.” He pointed a ketchupy fry at her, unable to hid the happiness that had just hit him. “You Googled me.”

  She felt her cheeks warm, ate instead of answering.

  But he laughed, a satisfied, bone-deep laugh. “You did. When? Recently? Yesterday? After you saw me last year?”

  “A couple of years ago. And, really, this is supposed to be your life-coaching session, not mine.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t know what you want to be when you grow up and I do.”

  “I meant why did you Google me?”

  She blinked, hovering between the truth and a lie. She slid in between. “I was curious how you’d been.”

  He nodded slowly, searching her face. “Never thought about calling, though, did you? Or an e-mail?”

  She shook her head just as the waitress walked by again, slowly, looking at Jocelyn, who lowered her head and let her hair cover her cheek. “I think I’ve been busted.”

  “I’ll say. Who knew you’d Google me?”

  “I meant by the waitress, Will.”

  He nodded. “I know.” She turned toward the wall as Will gave the woman a sharp look and she scooted away. He reached over the table and put his hand over Jocelyn’s.

  “It’s okay, Jossie.”

  Déjà vu rolled over her again, much stronger this time, a whole-body memory that didn’t just hint of the past but lifted her from today and dropped her right back into every feeling she ever had for Will.

  Respect. Appreciation. Admiration. And something so much more, so much deeper. “But if you want to leave, we can,” he said.

  “No, let’s work on your career. What exactly are you doing in order to get that coaching job?”

  “Waiting to hear from my agent.”

  “Then you mustn’t want it very much.”

  He shook his head vehemently. “That’s where you’re wrong. I want it very much.”

  “Then the first word you use for your ‘action’ wouldn’t be ‘waiting,’ ” she shot back. “You’d be calling, meeting, searching, networking, applying, fighting, clawing, interview—”

  He held up his hand. “I get the picture.”

  “Do you?” She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her knuckles. “Prove it.”

  “What’s to prove? When you finish in the minors, you get a coaching job in the minors.”

  “Are you passionate about coaching?”

  “I’m passionate about…” When he hesitated, her whole body tightened in anticipation. What was Will passionate about? She wanted it to be—

  “Baseball.”

  “Of course.”

  “Surely you didn’t forget that about me.”

  “I didn’t forget anything about you.” Lord, why had she told him that? Because he had that gift: He made her so comfortable she forgot to maintain control.

  The admission made him smile, not cockily like when he found out she’d Googled him, just—well, she couldn’t quite read those dozen different emotions flickering in his dark blue eyes. “Then we’re even. And you know that from the time I was five, I’ve lived, breathed, and slept the game. You know I love baseball. It??
?s all I know, all I’ve ever known.”

  “You know,” she said, “I have a choice right now.”

  Lifting his eyebrows in question, he waited for more explanation. “You do? I thought this was about my choices.”

  “It is. But I have to make a choice.” She sipped her drink and chose her words carefully. “When I am coaching a client and I believe they are self-delusional, I have two choices. I can either let them off easy because they don’t really want to face the truth and they’d rather write a check and believe they found their answers, or…”

  He didn’t respond, scratching his neck a little, as if he wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this. And might not like it when he was.

  “I can challenge them to face the truth head-on and deal with what that means.”

  “You think I’m self-delusional?”

  “I think you’re not that passionate about baseball.”

  “Are you nuts? If I’m not, what the hell have I been doing for the last, Jesus, thirty years since my dad bought the first tee and put a bat in my hand?”

  She just stared at him. “Precisely.”

  “Precisely what?”

  “Will, baseball has always been your father’s passion. Good God, I can remember him talking about you playing for his beloved L.A. Dodgers since the day you guys moved in.”

  “He always hated that I couldn’t get into that franchise,” Will admitted. “But we shared the passion, Joss. You can’t get as far as I did without it.”

  She wasn’t sure about that. “With your natural talent, you could get very, very far. And you did. But—”

  “But what?” He damn near growled the demand. “But if I had been more devoted, I could have gotten into the majors? I could have played for the fucking Dodgers?”

  She flinched and his hand shot across the table to take hers. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get mad like that.”

  “No problem,” she lied. “That’s exactly why I let some clients take easy street. It’s easier for me, too.” She slipped her hand out from under his. “And I’m not saying if you were more devoted your career would have gone differently because, frankly, the past doesn’t matter anymore, unless it helps you see your own patterns.”

  He nodded, but she could tell agreeing with anything she was saying wasn’t easy.

  “I’m suggesting,” she said, “and quite seriously, that if you were truly, madly, and deeply passionate and in love with the idea of doing something with your baseball career, you would be doing it and not ‘waiting for someone to call.’ ” She air-quoted the phrase.

  Picking up a fry, he swiped it through his ketchup and shook off the extra. “My name’s out there,” he said, working to keep the defensiveness out of his tone, and failing. “My agent has me in with every minor league team in the sport, and the first bullpen or base-coaching job available, I’ll be considered.”

  “Is that the kind of coaching job you want?”

  “That’s where you start.”

  She pushed a little harder. “I don’t know, it seems to me that you could manage a whole team if you wanted to. You’ve always been the captain, always the leader.”

  He took in a slow breath, obviously uncomfortable with the subject.

  “Hey, you volunteered to be my client,” she said. “It’s not always easy. But when you dig deep and force yourself to think about what puts a bounce in your step and joy in your soul, then you might adjust your career goals.”

  He didn’t answer right away, then said, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but my parents lived their entire lives and gave everything they have for my success. I still feel like I can’t let them down, you know?” He hesitated a minute, the wheels turning as he worked it out. “Maybe I don’t want to be a minor league coach, but that would somehow be a slap in the face to my dad, who did everything so that my career—my whole career—would go the right way. And, shit, my liking to be carpenter? That’s like my ignoring everything he ever told me. A carpenter was a failure to him, somehow. Blue-collar and… ordinary.”

  She nodded, truly understanding and recognizing his predicament. “But you can’t make lifelong decisions because of sacrifices your parents made when you were a kid, Will.”

  “I know that.” He smiled. “That’s why I’m waiting. And you want to know something else? I think your standard life-coach question is meaningless, completely rhetorical, and tells you nothing about the person.”

  “About what you’re prepared to die for?”

  “A stupid question, if you ask me.”

  She leaned forward, more interested than insulted. “But the answer tells me everything about a person. It tells me what matters to them.”

  “Nope, it tells you what they think should matter to them, not what really does. I’m more interested in what someone has sacrificed for in the past.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like for me, I sacrificed my life for baseball. College was a joke. I never went to a party, didn’t join a fraternity or a club or anything. I just practiced, played, traveled, and studied. I sacrificed everything for baseball, so I think you’re whole theory is bogus.”

  She shrugged but couldn’t help smiling. “I still think you had a breakthrough.”

  “You just want me to pay for lunch.” He grinned and put a hand on the check the waitress had left on her last trip by, one of at least five in the last ten minutes. “So what about you, Joss? What have you sacrificed?”

  She looked him right in the eye, so drawn to him, so certain of him, it slammed her right back into the past.

  “Ah, speaking of a breakthrough,” he said. “I can see it on your face.” He leaned so close she could see every lash now, every fleck of navy in his eyes, every hint of whisker stubble, even the tiniest bit of ketchup in the corner of his mouth.

  Her whole being ached to kiss it off. And she hated ketchup.

  “No breakthrough,” she said. “This was your life-coaching session.”

  “Answer my question. What have you sacrificed to achieve your passion?”

  She swallowed, but even that couldn’t keep down the truth. “I sacrificed everything for love.”

  His jaw loosened as the waitress zoomed over and scooped up the check and money. “Keep the change,” he said without taking his eyes from Jocelyn. “You did?”

  “Everything,” she assured him. Everything that mattered, given up one summer evening in a stairwell outside his bedroom.

  “I gotta tell you, Joss, whoever he is—or was—I hate his fucking guts.”

  He wouldn’t if he knew the truth. “Why?”

  “Because I’m jealous of someone you loved,” he said simply. “It should have been me.”

  The food thunked to the bottom of her stomach and she actually felt a little sick.

  It was you.

  “If you felt that way, why didn’t you call me when we went to college?” she asked.

  He closed his eyes. “I was waiting for you.”

  She tried to smile, but her mouth trembled a little. “I think I see a pattern here, Will Palmer.”

  He laughed, tipping her chin with his knuckle. “Damn, life coach, you’re good.”

  “Only if you break your pattern, Will.”

  “Yeah. Well, I intend to.” The low, sweet promise in his voice reached right into her chest and squeezed her heart.

  Chapter 13

  Guy slapped the jack of spades on the table and gave Zoe the dearest look she’d seen in—well, since she’d left her great-aunt in Flagstaff, Arizona.

  “You old coot,” she said, dropping her remaining card on the pile and shaking her head. “You beat the pants off me in Egyptian Rat Screws. That is not easy to do.”

  “I’m really good at cards,” he said, fighting a smug smile.

  She leaned on one elbow and pointed at him. “You like older women?”

  “I might be dumb but I’m not blind, Blondie. You’re not older than me.”

  “Not me.” She laughed, w
aving her hand. “My great-aunt. She’s pretty hot for eighty… ish. How old are you?”

  He angled his head, thinking. “I don’t have a clue.”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, he was so damn sweet. “Well, you’re not her age, I can assure you of that. I’ll go with sixty-five. Still, you’d like Pasha.”

  “Who’s Pasha?”

  “My hot great-aunt who is, I might add, almost as good as you at the game I just taught you an hour ago.” She marveled at that; for a man suffering from Alzheimer’s, there were still a few sharp cells at work up there.

  The doorbell rang and his eyes widened. “Who’s that?”

  She pushed up. “No way to know until I answer it. But I hope to hell it’s a reporter.”

  “Why?”

  She grinned. “So I can channel my inner Meryl Streep.” She peeked through the window in the door and smiled. “They’re back,” she called out. “Stay in the kitchen, Pops. I’ll handle this. Oh!” She turned to him. “What’s your real name? Is Guy short for something?”

  “Alexander.” Then he gasped. “Where the heck did that come from?”

  She laughed. “Your memory, smarty-pants. Now stay there.” She shook her hair and arms, took a deep breath, and opened the door. “Yes?”

  The little bald eagle stepped forward. “We’re looking for Mr. Bloom. For his daughter, actually.”

  “Daughter-in-law,” she said. “You found her.”

  He frowned. “His daughter, Jocelyn Bloom.”

  She let out a full-body put-upon sigh, leaning on the doorjamb and shaking her head. “When are you nitwits going to get it through your head? This is not the man you want, no Jocelyn Bloom lives here, and anything you’re reading in the paper is not true.”

  None of that was, technically, a lie.

  Baldie wasn’t buying. “We have proof that this is the childhood home of Jocelyn Bloom who lived here with her parents, Guy and Mary Jo.” He lifted up an official-looking paper, and Zoe curled her lip.

  “They did live here, like, eons ago. This is the home of Mr. Alexander.”

  Again, not a lie. But distrusting eyes narrowed at her; he was no doubt familiar with the runaround. “Where’s Jocelyn?”

  “Beats me, but you guys are barking up the wrong address.”