“Like you.”
“I don’t know about that. But thanks.”
Something about the conversation snags something in my mind. “You said you didn’t give Mr. Parker Orchard, but he gave me some when I was fifteen. Did he steal it from you?”
Bobby gives me his stern tutor look. “That’s one of the things we can’t talk about.”
As far as I’m concerned, that’s a ‘yes.’ “Does he have more? Has he given it to anyone else?”
“Enough, JJ.”
“But you said I could ask questions!”
“And now I’m saying we should return to here and now.” He reaches beneath his seat and hands me something. A baseball. “Let’s go outside and play.”
I open my mouth to tell him I want to know about Mr. Parker and Orchard but then I see his smile. Bobby has a great smile. All the guys do, but his is exceptional, crinkled eyes and little boy dimples. He looks so cute, I want to squeeze him. “Okay…”
“Great. Wait here,” Bobby practically dashes out of the truck to open my door for me and as I emerge into the morning sun, I think about Mr. Parker’s tree safe. The one he mentioned on the phone when he thought I was just some naïve girl. I don’t know if he still has Orchard, but if he does, I bet it’s in there.
Chapter Ten
January Whitehall
The air outsideis clean and fresh with a hint of damp. It seems extra pure after the dark stories Bobby told me in the car. I watch as he lifts a baseball bat, a picnic rug, and a huge red cooler out of the back of the truck.
“Can I carry anything?” I ask.
“Sure.”
He tosses me a leather glove. It looks brand new and when I put it on my left hand it fits perfectly.
Bobby smiles. “Come on, beautiful. Let’s play.”
The stadium’s metal gate is unlocked, though there’s no one around. Has he rented out the whole field? Inside, Bobby puts the cooler down and leads me onto the diamond. “Have you ever played before?”
“I’ve watched ‘A League of Her Own’?”
“Close enough.” He picks up the bat and a huge white grapefruit of a ball. “Head to the home base and I’ll show you how to swing.”
I’m nervous as Bobby strips off my leather glove and arranges me over the plate with the bat. “Shouldn’t I wear a helmet?”
“It’s okay, I’ll pitch slow.”
Bobby’s a good teacher. He got me to understand math, kind of, and baseball’s even easier. I miss the first two times he throws the ball but on the third, I hit it with a satisfying ‘thwack!’
Bobby jogs after it and I notice how nice his butt looks in his jeans.
“You’ve got strong arms,” he tells me. “Let’s try it again but this time turn your hips more when you swing.”
He pitches to me again and again and soon I’m hitting every ball and they’re going all over the place. “I feel like I should be aiming more,” I tell him, breathing hard. “But it’s so fun!”
“Good.” Bobby tosses the ball in the air. He looks relaxed, sweat shining on his freckled brow. This is where he should have been. Playing baseball. Maybe professionally, maybe just for fun with his friends. If he’d gone to UCLA like he was supposed to, he’d now live in California, in a house with huge sunshiny windows and he’d hike and surf and never be interested in a girl like me.
My mind flashes back to Bobby’s proposal in the cage. He might say that he wants to share me with his brothers. But once upon a time, all he wanted was to marry me. Does he not see me as worthy of him the same way anymore?
“What’s on your mind?” Bobby asks.
I press the end of the baseball bat into the ground. “I don’t know, I guess I was just thinking about how different things could have been if Mr. Parker wasn’t around.”
