I got a little light-headed. And then I noticed Tim was heading towards the bathroom.
“I gotta use the john,” he said.
Immediately I lunged in front of the door. “What’s wrong with your room?”
“It’s on another floor,” he said, looking at me like I was a moron. “What’s wrong, Saucy? Got your sexy lingerie hanging from the shower curtain? I promise I won’t look. OK, naw, I can’t promise that.” He let out a big, stupid guffaw.
“It’s not that,” I said, my brain spinning a mile a minute. “It’s just that, I uh, I think I left my tampons out on the counter. That’s it.”
Bingo.
He backed away from the door as if it were made of fire.
“Jesus,” he said. “You just can’t keep anything private, can you?”
I shrugged. “Sorry.” I wasn’t sorry at all. “Look, can we talk about this tomorrow?” I gave a little cough, trying to look as pathetic as possible. There was no way someone like Tim would know that the symptoms of a cold and PMS were totally different. It was convenient that he was such a total moron, really. “I really just need to rest. Get my strength back, you know?”
He held his hands up as if he was afraid I would touch him again. Part of me wanted just to make him squirm, but then again, I would have had to get near him, so I just settled for swaying dangerously close.
“Tomorrow?” I asked again.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, now back towards the door. “Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He grabbed for the door handle in a way not unlike a cartoon character, only without the big plume of white smoke, he was gone. I shut the door behind him.
“All clear,” I called out.
Nathan came out of the bathroom looking as numb as I felt. I rushed over to him. The last thing I wanted was for him to think I was going to help Tim.
“You said you don’t have any deep, dark secrets.” I took his face in my hands, hoping he would look at me. He did, but he seemed a million miles away. “Please tell me he’s not going to find anything.”
A frown furrowed Nathan’s brows. He wouldn’t look at me, glancing everywhere but my face. My stomach dropped. Did he have something to hide?
“Don’t you trust me?” he asked.
“Of course I do,” I said, hoping he could see that I was telling the truth, that I was on his side. Because I was. That much I knew for sure. I wasn’t going to let Tim drag him through the mud, but I had to make sure he was as clean as he said he was. Because I couldn’t do anything if I didn’t have all the facts. “But you have to trust me. I can’t help you if you don’t.”
He finally looked at me. Met my eyes straight on.
“He’s not going to find anything,” he said. But I could see there was hesitation. Fear.
“I believe you,” I told him, swallowing my own apprehension.
Nathan’s face softened. He leaned down and gave me a gentle kiss.
“I should go,” he told me. “But I’ll call you tomorrow, OK?”
“OK,” I said, wishing he didn’t have to go.
He smiled, but it wasn’t one of his genuine smiles. There was nervousness there. He was hiding something and the thought made my stomach twist. What was Tim going to find?
“It’s going to be alright.” He kissed me on the forehead and left.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I tried not to think about the worried expression on Nathan’s face during breakfast the next morning, while Tim rambled on and on about the people we were going to meet that afternoon.
“No one is perfect,” he was saying, his mouth full of eggs and bacon. If I hadn’t already been having trouble eating, this would have been enough to ruin my appetite. I thought about reaching across the table and holding Tim’s mouth closed, but since that was out of the question, I just kept my eyes on my plate of equally unappetizing food. “This Nate guy has to have some skeletons in his closet. He really should have played ball with me. He’s gonna regret it come draft time.”
I didn’t want to think about it. The worst thing that could happen was that Tim would find something that would threaten or even end Nathan’s career. As much as I wanted to throw my hot plate of eggs in Tim’s face, I had to stay on his good side long enough to discover the angle he was going to work and do my best to diffuse it. Or warn Nathan.
Obviously there was something out there. Nathan wouldn’t have acted the way he did last night if there wasn’t. But he didn’t trust me with it so there was nothing I could do right now. I just had to wait and pray that once Tim discovered it, I could do something to make it go away.
Part of me knew that I was playing a dangerous game. That I was risking a lot for some guy I barely knew. The other part of me knew that this was the right thing to do. That even if it was someone else in the hot seat, Tim was a grade-A asshole who would ruin lives without a second glance. I wouldn’t let him do that to a stranger and I certainly wasn’t going to let him do it to someone I cared about.
Realizing exactly how much I cared about Nathan hit me like a bat to the gut. Fuck. This was not what I had signed up for when I came to Austin. Things weren’t supposed to get so complicated. I wasn’t supposed to have feelings for someone I had just met. Especially not ALL the feelings, which is exactly what I had. Too many damn feelings. A whole baseball stadium full of feelings.
My phone buzzed. Mandy.
“I have to go,” I told Tim, shoving aside my plate of half-eaten food.
“Where are you going?” he demanded, eggs sputtering from his mouth onto today’s ugly Hawaiian shirt. “We have to prep for the interviews.”
You mean I have to prep for the interviews while you get drunk and hang out by the pool, I thought. Except I wasn’t going to let him do that. I would do what I had to in order to get information, but I wasn’t going to do Tim’s grunt work while he enjoyed a relaxing vacation. Especially since I knew he was just planning on throwing me under the bus if this all went south. No, I was going to work on the article I wanted to write.
“I’ll be back for the interviews,” I told him. “I have to run some errands.”
“I thought you did all my dry cleaning and shopping yesterday?” he asked and I bit my tongue, annoyed that I had actually done all of that.
“These are my own errands,” I said, then leaned forward and lowered my voice. “Of a, um, personal and feminine nature.”
I really enjoyed the look of horror the sheer implication of menstruation gave him. Without another word, I grabbed my bag and headed outside to meet Mandy who was waiting in her car.
***
“Kids and kittens!” Mandy gasped, raising her camera and snapping away at the impossibly cute combination of things. I smiled as she rushed around the room, grabbing perfect shots of cats climbing over school children sounding out words in their picture books. Just arriving at the shelter had given me an immediate sense of calm. No wonder Nathan came here on a regular basis. It truly was an instant stress reliever.
Mandy, her camera around her neck, came over and slung her arm over my shoulders.
“So Nathan brought you here, huh?” she wanted to know.
“Did you know about this place?” I asked, wondering if this was a pick-up move well utilized by the baseball team. Not that I could blame them. It had certainly worked with me.
“The guys talk about it sometimes. Chris said he was going to take me after the season was over. Said it was a guaranteed smile-maker.”
I laughed. That sound exactly like something Chris would say.
“Yeah, it’s pretty great.” I leaned down to pet a kitten that was rubbing against my legs. It was a tiny little tabby thing. “If I hadn’t seen Nathan here, it would have been hard to imagine a bunch of baseball players hanging out here in their free time.”