“I ate a box of Samoas, too.”
She laughed and allowed him to introduce her to gaming. It surprised her that it served as a fun distraction from all of her responsibilities. They played for hours, pausing only to eat a frozen pizza for dinner. She didn’t even realize how much time had passed until Cole declared that it was time for bed.
Though it was nearly two in the morning, they engaged in the hot sex she promised him. By the time they were both satisfied, Everly was ready to sleep for days.
But as she drifted off, she couldn’t help but think that there was still a disconnect between them.
And for the life of her, she didn’t know what it was.
Chapter 51
When she woke up the next morning, she was alone in the bed. That was odd. Cole usually slept later than she did. The gaming and lovemaking must have worn her out more than she thought.
Distant thunder rumbled, telling her the conditions outside were less than stellar. Thank goodness she didn’t have to work today. It would be nice to have a lazy day.
Still feeling groggy, she decided to shower. That was enough to chase away most of the cobwebs. Once she was more awake and dressed in a comfortable sweater and jeans, she headed out to the kitchen.
The sound of voices reached her as she walked through the hallway. It sounded like the commentators on SportsCenter. She figured Cole was probably catching up on events and checking his stocks.
She spotted him sitting at the kitchen island. Whatever he was reading had frown lines forming between his eyes.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” she said. “You’re up early.”
She was about to walk up to his side and give him a kiss when he looked up. She stopped dead in her tracks. The expression on his face hit her like a slap. Dread reached up to claw at her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Without speaking, he turned his iPad around and slid it across the island. She reached down and picked it up with shaking fingers. The tablet held an image from the AJC’s online newspaper.
Cole Parker Injured, the headline screamed in large, bold font. Star Pitcher Seeks out Secret Treatment to Save Career.
Everly stared down at the words for a full minute. Her brain couldn’t get past them. How had they found out?
Her gaze moved to the image sharing the ghastly headline. It was one of her and Cole posing before the ball. She realized then that everything was public. Everyone now knew that Cole had started working with her because of his injury.
When she began to read, her shock morphed into bewilderment and horror.
Providing Parker’s treatment is Everly Wallace, a student at Georgia State University pursuing her doctorate in physical therapy. Wallace posed as Parker’s love interest in an effort to maintain the secrecy surrounding his injury.
“His brother, Wyatt, introduced us,” Wallace said.
The would-be physical therapist works as a graduate assistant under the guidance of Dr. Wyatt Parker. Wallace indicated the connection was a ‘natural fit,’ and admitted to having met Cole Parker in November. The two have worked together since then…
Everly heard her pulse in her ears as she read on. Seeing words she’d spoken to Joan Shumaker taken out of context made her want to charge over to the journalist’s office and have it out with her. She couldn’t believe that the reporter had not only dragged her and Cole into the limelight, but Wyatt, as well.
How did she find out the truth?
Wallace is no stranger to baseball, she read on. The sister of former Georgia Tech pitching ace, Aiden Wallace, witnessed her brother’s slow decline eight years ago after he suffered a career-ending UCL injury. His suicide led to Everly Wallace’s hospitalization for psychiatric treatment—
She couldn’t read on.
Numbly, her eyes moved to the television when she heard Cole’s name. Apparently, the story had already been picked up by all of the major news sources.
Looking back at Cole, she struggled to come up with something to say. So many emotions pushed their way into her chest that she could hardly breathe. His eyes remained steady on her face. She couldn’t read a thing in them.
“I-I don’t understand,” she stammered. She set the iPad down before it fell from her unfeeling fingers. “How did this happen?”
“There’s more,” Cole said in a flat tone.
He got to his feet and tapped a few buttons on the iPad. Her father’s voice filled the room.
“‘Hey, I know the plan with Cole changed from what it was initially. It’s come between us, and it shouldn’t have. I take responsibility for that. I didn’t foresee you getting emotionally entangled.’”
The world felt like it was spinning out of control. Everly listened to her father’s words and paired them with the context of the article. She knew how damning they sounded.
Instinct had her turning to flee.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Cole said, stepping in front of her and grabbing her arms. “We’re having this conversation here and now.”
She stared at him with wide eyes, her breathing uneven as she battled her desire to fight him and get away. Her mind slowly absorbed the fact that he wasn’t yelling at her or accusing her of anything. All he was doing was holding her.
That allowed her to grasp onto the last bit of her control. Taking a deep breath, she nodded.
“Okay,” she said. If he could be calm about this, so could she. “That was a recording of a conversation my father had with me the day after the ball. He cornered me in the grocery store. How did you get it?”
“The recording was sent to me anonymously via e-mail the day after you’re saying the conversation took place.”
She met his gaze, thinking everything through. Though she didn’t know if she wanted to know the answer, she had to ask him.
“Cole, do you think I did this?”
“I heard you talking to Joan at the ball,” he said without inflection. “You were talking about my injury.”
“No, we weren’t.” Her body trembled over his response. “We were talking about an injury to a player on another team. She spoke to me in confidence because it’s someone she cares about. I don’t know how she got all of the information in that article, Cole. I would never have done this to you.”
He studied her in silence. As he did, she watched his gaze soften.
“What I know, Everly, is that someone who knows a lot of details about you and me leaked this story to Joan. That someone also sent me that recording in hopes that it would drive a wedge between us.” His grip tightened briefly on her upper arms. “I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it almost succeeded.”
She realized that the distancing she’d been noticing over the past week was due to that recording. It all made sense now.
Outrage over what the mysterious “someone” tried to do to her and Cole made the tendons in her neck ache. How dare that person try to take away the most important thing in her life?
“What they didn’t anticipate,” he said in a soft voice, “was my love for you.”
In an instant, the anger dissolved. When he released her arms and reached up to frame her face with his hands, her vision blurred with tears.
“I love you, Everly. I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted another person. And I know you didn’t leak this story.”
She couldn’t speak. He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. His arms moved around her and drew her against him, making her feel cherished. Safe.
Loved.
“I love you, too, Cole,” she said against his chest. “I’m so sorry this has happened. I’m sure my father did this because I refused to do what he wanted. I wondered what he was talking about when he confronted me that day, but I blew it off. He must have been taping himself. If I’ve ruined your career—”
“Hey,” he interrupted, lifting her chin so he could meet her gaze. “You’ve saved my career. We’ll get through this. I just needed to hear you tell me you didn’t do it.” He caressed her che
ek. “I’m so sorry that your past is being dredged back up. I wouldn’t have ever wished that on you.”
His career was on the line, but he was worried about her.
Love for him rushed through her.
“Thank you, Cole.” She stretched up and kissed him again. “You’re right. We’ll get through this together. And I know just where to start.”
* * *
A few days later, Everly sat on a bench in Freedom Park and watched her father approach. She’d allowed him to pick the meeting spot when they spoke on the phone earlier that day. She figured it wouldn’t hurt to give him the illusion of control.
“I was surprised to get your call,” he said as he sat beside her. His words whitened the cold air. “You made it pretty clear you wanted nothing to do with me.”
She looked down at her gloved hands folded in her lap. “Things have obviously changed since we last spoke.”
“Ah, yes.” He sat back with a self-satisfied smirk and put his arms over the back of the bench. “Cole’s getting examined today, right? Read about it in the paper. Seems the team wants to assess the extent of that shoulder injury.”
“They won’t find anything,” she said.
“Sure they won’t.” He shook his head and watched a jogger make his way along the path. “So why did you want to meet with me?”
“I wanted to find out why you did it.”
He gave her a bland look. “Did what?”
“Leaked the story.” She looked away from him to keep her temper under control. “I figured you’d at least approach Cole and attempt to convince him to give you money or a job first.”
Snorting, he said, “I didn’t leak that story.”
“According to what Joan Shumaker told me, that’s a flat-out lie.”
He stilled. “You’re grasping at straws. Journalists protect their sources.”
“You’re the king of assumption. You didn’t get any kind of agreement from Joan to do so, did you?” Now, she looked at him and allowed her anger to reach her gaze. “I met with her on the day the article was published. See, I’d met her the week before and we hit it off. We’d spoken in confidence about something that I didn’t share with anyone else. When I pointed that out, she returned the favor and confirmed my suspicions about you.”
His jaw worked. “So what? I told you that you’d regret not helping me, didn’t I?”
“Your temper has always been your greatest weakness. You make the worst decisions when you lose it. Most of the time, you direct it at me. But this time, you made the mistake of involving Cole. Because that article maligned Cole’s character and threatened his career, his attorneys opened an investigation. They found some interesting transactions in your bank account.”
“That’s bullshit. You can’t look at my bank account.”
“I can’t, you’re right. But you’d be amazed what well-paid attorneys and private investigators can accomplish in a short amount of time.”
He shifted on the bench, his throat moving in a hard swallow. She couldn’t deny the pleasure she got over his discomfort. For the first time she could remember while being alone with him, she wasn’t the one who was afraid.
“The transactions coincide with the attacks against me at Prix Fixe,” she said. “There were significant sums deposited into your account on the days after the two different incidents. Cole’s attorneys intend to pursue attempted murder for the attack with the bat.”
“Just a minute.” He got to his feet and held his hands in fists at his sides. “There’s no way you’re pinning this on me.”
Okay, so she wasn’t completely without fear. She met his furious gaze as calmly as she could.
“You should know that if you hit me, Cole will hunt you down himself. I’m doing this because of grandpa. If Cole had his way, you’d be in jail already.”
After a moment of staring at her, he stuffed his fists into his pockets.
“I didn’t do those things,” he snapped. His gaze shifted around the park. “This is bullshit.”
“When considering your history of violence against me and the money in your account, it seems pretty cut and dried. Cole’s attorneys are confident they have a solid case.”
“I can prove I didn’t do those things.”
She quirked an eyebrow, thinking of the recording he’d sent Cole. “Something tells me you can’t turn any evidence over to prove that without incriminating yourself in some way. You’ve heard of accessory to murder, haven’t you?”
He looked at her. Whatever he read in her gaze had his shoulders sagging.
“What do you want, Everly?”
“I want you to leave me and Cole alone. Go back to Venezuela if you want, but get out of my life. And don’t ever ask Pee Paw for money again. When you contact him, you treat him like a son should treat his father. Like you’d have wanted Aiden to treat you.”
The last words had him looking away. “Is that all?”
“No. I want you to turn over the evidence you have and document your version of events. I’m ready to move on with my life, and that means tying up all of the loose ends.”
After a long moment, he nodded. “I’ll have it to you by the end of the day.”
She got to her feet and studied his profile. He didn’t turn to meet her gaze.
Part of her mourned the fact that things hadn’t turned out differently between them. She couldn’t help but wonder what might have been.
As she walked away, she focused instead on Cole and what she had now.
Chapter 52
“Cole, I’m so glad that you called.”
Looking up from his menu, Cole met Abigail’s gaze as she paused next to the table. She looked confused when he didn’t rise to greet her. She smiled to cover her reaction and took the seat across from him.
He’d invited her to lunch at the restaurant where he’d first kissed Everly. The choice of venue had been deliberate. He hoped it would keep him in the right frame of mind for this conversation.
“Hello, Abigail.” He looked back down at his menu. “I appreciate you taking the time to come out here.”
“Of course,” she said, reaching over and taking his hand in hers. “You’re a dear friend. I’d do anything for you.”
He didn’t respond as the server approached the table and took her drink order, but he did extricate his hand from hers. She ordered a martini and lifted her menu.
“Marshall told me that you had your physical a couple of days ago,” she said in a low tone. “How did it go?”
“I passed with flying colors,” he said, raising his glass of ice water in a mocking toast and taking a drink.
He didn’t add that the doctors found only minimal inflammation in his shoulder. There was so little evidence of an injury that they redid several of the scans. In the end, nothing they saw supported the content of the article. Cole expected a retraction by Joan in the next day’s paper.
“I’m thrilled to hear it,” she said. “I’ve been so worried about you.”
The server returned with Abigail’s martini and took their orders. Once he left, Abigail studied Cole’s face with an assessing eye as she sipped her cocktail. Her lipstick left a blood-red half-moon along the rim of her glass.
“I know you’re upset about all of this, Cole. But it’ll blow over soon. That waitress got her fifteen minutes of fame. Now that you’ve passed your physical, everything will go back to the way it was.”
“And how is that, exactly?” he asked with a slight inclination of his head. “Me, all alone?”
She frowned. “I don’t know why you’re thinking of it that way. You know it won’t take you long to find someone else. Surely that’s better than being with the woman who shattered your trust.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Surely.”
Her hand fluttered up to fiddle with her necklace when he just stared at her. She took a longer sip of her drink.
“Speaking of finding someone else, I saw Rebecca a few days ago,” he said.
“Yes. She mentioned it. She said you apologized for the inconvenience caused by the investigation into the waitress’s supposed attacks.” She shrugged and brushed a stray hair back behind her ear. “I think it’s clear now that the incidents were engineered by the waitress to get your attention. If she lied to you about keeping your secret, she would have no compunction about slashing her own tires.”
“Her name is Everly.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I said, her name is Everly. Not ‘The Waitress.’”
“I…all right.” Her cheeks reddened and her eyes sparked with irritation. But she kept her face schooled into an accommodating expression. “Everly, then.”
“As I was saying, I saw Rebecca. It was, indeed, so I could apologize. I’d realized she wasn’t to blame for what happened to Everly. While we were chatting, she said something I found very interesting.”
“What was that?”
“She was surprised by the depth of my feelings for Everly. She said that you almost had her convinced that I would never love anything or anyone as much as baseball.”
“What?” She brought a hand to her chest. “Rebecca said that I said that?”
“Yep. Apparently, you implanted a few ideas in her head while the two of us were together.” He took another drink of water, his gaze never leaving hers. “The idea of breaking things off to make me jealous, for example.”
Abigail let out a brittle laugh. “Why would I advise that? It clearly didn’t work when I started dating Marshall after you lost interest in me.”
His brain clicked with an Aha!
“You started dating Marshall to make me jealous?”
Her mouth opened and then closed. She couldn’t seem to figure out how to set her expression. “You’re reading into things, Cole.”
“No. In a weird way, that makes perfect sense. You tried that tactic without success. When you saw that my relationship with Rebecca was progressing beyond where mine did with you, you gave her the bad advice. You never wanted us to be together.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. Her eyes were chips of blue ice. “I’m happily married, and Rebecca’s my friend.”