I slowly move my hand out of her grasp and set it on the steering wheel. I immediately feel the loss of her hand in mine, but I fear that I may crush hers if I keep reacting every time the suggestion of her leaving my side gets brought up.
“Excuse me? With you?” Nick asks, most likely baffled by the change in plans. But if it hadn’t already sunk in that I’m the man driving her away from that doomed marriage, then he hasn’t really been paying attention to the lengths I’d go to for his sister.
“I’ve got a place we can go to.” I hesitate for a moment.
I never intended on telling people where I go in the offseason and where I spent a few years in hiding after I unexpectedly retired from the MLB. The quiet place I desperately neededwhen grief consumed me. But if it means I get to keep Daisy safe and sound, I’ll gladly hand over the information to her loved ones.
“It’s in the Adirondack Mountains. It’s about a five-hour drive. No one knows I have a home there. It doesn’t even have an official address. It’s just a large plot of land and a cabin. I’ve been able to keep a low profile when I go into town, so there’s no way the media will track Daisy up there. She’ll be safe.”
“Five hours? Are you insane? Take the jet. It’ll be faster and—”
“Flight plans are public and can be tracked. All it would take is a long-lensed camera snapping an image of her in a big white dress boarding your plane, and she would be followed. So how about we try not to kill the environment today and stick with my plan?”
“Seriously? You choosenowof all times to speak more than a few stunted words and grunts? Unbelievable. Daisy? It’s your call. What do you want to do?”
I chance a glance in her direction, and the sight still takes my breath away.
She’s beautiful.
And she’s sitting in my truck while we put miles between her and that damn wedding.
She’s not marrying him, my mind chants.
I have to remind myself to take deep breaths and focus on the road more times than I care to admit. Especially because with Daisy riding shotgun, I’m carrying precious cargo.
Over the past year, my irresponsible crush on Daisy Stonehaven has remained in a secret compartment in my brain. But during the days leading up to her impending nuptials, I fear I may have done a shit job of hiding my true feelings for her. Feelings I had no business having for my boss’s little sister, coworker, and, most of all, my closest friend.
Feelings that took me by surprise when she unexpectedly stirred my dead heart from a deep slumber and awoke protective instincts I never knew I possessed. Instincts so fierce that I found myself nearly growling over her anytime I felt her discomfort.
Feelings that she is clueless about.
I struggle with the selfish part of me that wants her to finally figure it out, then see how she reacts. To learn if those shared lunches at work meant as much to her as they did to me.
Or the time I drove her home after a girls’ night got too rowdy and let her pick the music. Luckily she was too tipsy to notice that I circled midtown twice so she could listen to a song she loved on repeat.
Or Nick’s wedding day, when she convinced me to spend the entire night dancing with her and didn’t pay any mind when my players were most likely recording us with their phones. Something I would never allow because I value my privacy over everything.
Well, almost everything.
But that secret compartment in my mind was shattered to smithereens the second I saw her losing her goddamn mind behind that church. When she told me she didn’t want to go through with the wedding.
She’s not marrying him.
I suppress a groan of frustration. No matter how badly my body is vibrating with the knowledge that Daisy is here, in my truck, and no longer betrothed to that pathetic excuse for a man, I need to keep my head on straight.
Daisy is rattled. She needs stability. A moment to catch her breath.
She doesn’t need an overly eager thirty-one-year-old man stepping up to bat for an opportunity with her when she’s at her most vulnerable.
Unfortunately, when I became protective of Daisy, I knew I would have to include myself in the list of dangers as well. Daisy deserves more than a man who hides in the woods when the world shatters around him. She needs time to discover who she is now that she is no longer under her ex-fiancé’s thumb. And I need to be the bystander who helps her get whatever it is she wants for her future. Even if that future doesn’t include me standing by her side.
I steal a glance in her direction when I realize she has yet to answer her brother. And my heart does that thing where it overrides my brain and any prior logical thought along with it when I catch her already looking my way.
Her big, expressive brown eyes are incapable of hiding her thoughts, and right now, she’s unsure.
Maybe that’s why my friendship with her has always been easy. Apart from the fact that she might be the kindest person I’ve ever met, Daisy is an open book. I can tell when she doesn’t enjoy something she’s eating, even though she’s too polite to say otherwise. Or when she’s trying to tamp down her excitement with the events she’s helped planned at Monarchs Stadium.
I can sit all day, staring at her, watching the way life blooms behind her irises as her attention shifts from person to person. As she offers everyone genuine smiles along with questions about their day.
