Regretting the loss of her touch, he thumbed the on button after recognizing his agent’s number.
His surprise at seeing Scofield’s number didn’t begin to compare with the shock he felt at the sight of Lisa walking toward the shower. Now that the beginnings of dawn light permeated the curtains, he could see a spider web of intricate markings on her hip, the scars of an old injury he hadn’t felt during the night. Scars he hadn’t seen that day at the beach since her bathing suit would have covered most of them.
“Javier?” his agent’s voice called him out of his brooding thoughts.
“Yeah, I’m kind of busy right now.” He planned to confront Lisa with all haste to find out what those scars were. Were they from her old thrill-seeking days?
“Have you seen the morning news?”
Javier checked the bedside clock.
“It’s not even seven.”
“Somebody dug up the dirt on your trainer girlfriend.” Scofield didn’t sound pleased and Javier tensed, wondering what beef anyone could have with Lisa. “And I don’t think the Flames are going to appreciate you dating someone who is as much of a head case as you.”
LISA WARBLED HER WAY through an old show tune as she rinsed the last of the hotel conditioner from her hair. She was in the process of enjoying the sting of hot water on her back for an extra decadent moment when the stream stopped short. Blinking fast, she discovered Javier in the shower beside her, his arm bracing the curtain open while he cut off her spray.
“I hope you’re going to make that up to me—” Her words halted as she spied the expression on his face. At once blank and forbidding, he stared at her with the dispassionate regard of a stranger. “What’s wrong?”
“Apparently we made the morning news.” He handed her a towel even though his gaze never slipped south of her eyes for a second. “Someone snagged a photo of us at the beach last week and I can only guess they sat on it so they could do a little investigative reporting to maximize the value of the picture.”
Lisa’s skin chilled. Her heart hitched for a moment at the disappointment—anger—in his eyes.
She wrapped the towel around her and sidestepped him in the steamy bathroom.
“And?” She could only imagine what an investigation into her past would bring.
“And you nearly died in a plane wreck eight years ago.” He placed his hand on her hip, clearly having seen the scars on her leg from that very same accident. “While I don’t give a damn what my manager has to say about me having a relationship with a woman who lives on the edge as much as me, I definitely give a damn that it never occurred to you to tell me—”
“You knew I had a similar past.” Feeling defensive, she reached for a second towel for her hair. Had she lost any chance they might have had at a relationship by not confiding in him?
“But I didn’t know it had almost killed you.”
His words burned a hole in her heart, making her wonder why she’d withheld that piece of her past even after he’d opened up to her about his brother. They had found something special together, but if they weren’t careful, they could hurt each other in the end.
She might have already hurt his career irrevocably, in fact. She’d taken her job with the Flames to try and help him past that need to take risks, but instead, she’d allowed herself to be caught up in the irrepressible hunger for life she saw in his eyes. Now, the chances the Flames management would send him packing had increased ten-fold because of her.
“It made me stronger in the end.” She pulled away, worried their time together might be drawing to a close and unable to think how to salvage a relationship without hurting each other more. “I shattered my hip and had to relearn how to walk. But it made me appreciate every second. I learned to appreciate my own worth.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He studied her as if he’d never seen her before and she realized maybe he hadn’t. Javier had been so forthright about who he was and what he wanted from life, but she’d grown more guarded than that. She wasn’t used to baring her secrets. Exposing herself and her fears.
“I have a hard time—” She cleared her throat and wondered how she would walk away from someone who truly understood her and cared about her. His tender concern made her eyes burn for what they might have shared. But how could she allow him to sacrifice his place on the Flames for her sake? “Listen, maybe it would be best if I go.”
He did a double take that was so overt it would have been cartoonishly funny if it hadn’t been a heart-wrenchingly awful moment.
“Leave? You want to leave after what we shared?”
Guilt pinched her, but not as much as the guilt she knew she would feel if he got booted off the team because of her.
“Do you really want to lose out on your baseball career after all your brother’s sacrifices?”
He shook his head. “My God, Lisa. You can’t seriously hold that over my head.”
The tears behind her eyes built until they threatened to spill over at the slightest movement.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t imagine that you’d be happy without the career that’s meant so much to you. It’s one thing to walk away from the risk taking, but it’s another to walk away from baseball.” Just saying the words aloud reassured her it was the right thing to do to leave. “You’re too talented for that, Javier. You deserve a place in the stat books and a long, lucrative career that will entertain fans for years to come. I would never want to give your team a reason to release you after how hard you’ve worked to get here.”
He watched her for a long moment before he shook his head. The stark look in his eyes cut her to the quick.
“When we met, it was me who was trying to send you running and now that I’ve succeeded, it’s the last thing I want.”
“I never meant for this to happen,” she assured him, swallowing past the lump in her throat. She reached for her clothes near the bathroom door. “Goodbye, Javier.”
Closing the door between them, she dressed quietly and left the room, knowing she’d never seek him out again.
5
LISA DIDN’T TAKE ANY satisfaction from the hitting slump Javier fell into after she left him that day.
His slugging percentage took a nosedive over the next five games, a fact that was front page news in the Tribune’s sports section after their last home game. Not that she was obsessed with the man who got away or anything. Javier’s stats were just common public knowledge since Chitown loved its sports heroes.
A love she was afraid she might share.
In the last week, her heart had experienced a worse pain than that prop plane crash eight years ago. She had renewed understanding for what it felt like to be broken and vulnerable, except these hurts were all on the inside, too deep for any therapy she knew.
She entered the Flames’ training facility on an off-day, knowing the team was traveling for a road game the next afternoon. She’d been putting off the chore of cleaning out a small locker at the center, not wanting to run into Javier after the way things had ended between them.
Thankfully, interest in her had died down when the media failed to snag any other photos of the two of them together. The Flames had come out in support of Javier despite the earlier insinuations in the press that Lisa was a daredevil who wanted to lead him even further astray. The flap had ended after a few days and she’d wondered if she’d been overcautious to take the allegations so seriously.