“I have to put you down,” he said and as he did, more yelling ensued. This time, they called his name and told him to get his ass on the bus. “Wait, take my sweater.” He pulled it off and then over my head, and it reached past my knees and well over my hands when I got the sleeves situated. He kissed me again and walked backward toward his teammates, waving to me and laughing, and I stood there smiling and waving, too. Then I got very embarrassed about the spectacle and I turned and ran toward my building. I actually might have flown there, because it didn’t feel totally like my feet were touching the ground.
“Cate,” a voice called as I went inside, so I stepped into the security office. “What are you wearing?” Victoria asked as she eyed me. “Maybe you and I could go shopping.”
“I would like to, but you also don’t have to worry because this isn’t my sweater. I have clothes that fit,” I explained. “Were you waiting at the door so you could run into someone?”
She flushed. “I’m not doing that anymore,” she stated. “I’m not speaking to him.”
I had passed along Mr. Gowan’s request to talk with her, but I had failed again as an intermediary. She’d said no, no way, and I’d had to pass that message back to him. “We were just in a meeting that included the Woodsmen CEO,” I said. “They’re really happy with Beau right now.”
“Really? He did something good?”
“They’re pleased with how the Junior Woodsmen projects are progressing,” I explained. “And he announced to everyone that he’s going to be a father.”
Her hand went to her stomach, covering it. “What? He did?”
I nodded. “I had thought he was keeping it a secret but obviously not anymore.” He had been talking to me about infant eating habits and sleep patterns. I’d also been learning about those things and more from Ronan, because he had been doing research, too. He was interested in his new nephew.
“If Beau told people with the team, then his wife will find out. For sure,” Victoria stated.
“Maybe he thinks that your baby is more important than the alimony he might have gotten.” I knew he’d been in communication with his attorney. I’d had to help him log into his personal email on his Woodsmen desktop so that he could look at a document that wouldn’t load correctly on his phone, so something was going on.
She peered past me, into the hallway. “Is he here?”
“I think he was having lunch with one of the people from the CEO’s office,” I said, but then we both heard the elevator, and we both saw Mr. Gowan emerge from it. They stared at each other.
“I’m going out to the Woodsmen practice facility,” I announced. “I’ll grab my keys from my desk.” I got my purse, too, and one of my coats, and they were already walking into Special Projects together as I did. They shut the door to his office behind themselves and I looked at it for a moment and hoped that everything would work between them, if not as a couple, at least as cooperating parents. Then I got in my car to go tell Ed some of the news—not that I’d been faking through the repairs, but that the C-suite of the Woodsmen was now becoming interested in the development league team. And oddly, on my way there, I got a call from the C-suite that lasted most of the ride to that big orange building.
I celebrated with Eddie that afternoon and also saw him again the next day when he came over to Ronan’s house (my house) to watch the game. “So, you’re living here now,” he said. He looked very pleased with himself. “I thought it would work out.”
“Why did you decide that he and I should be together? Which we aren’t,” I added. I wasn’t exactly sure of what was going to happen when Ronan got back.
“Last spring, I saw the two of you up on that table, scared out of your minds by the thought of the big mice,” he answered. “And I just thought, okey dokey, that’s perfect. I could tell that it was meant to be.”
“Because we had the same reaction to rodents?”
“It was meant to be,” he repeated with satisfaction. “This is all working out even better than I planned. And what’s your plan? What’s his agent saying?”
“About what?”
“Other teams can’t make official offers until the season ends. They’re not supposed to communicate at all, but they do fish around with agents to see which way the wind is blowing,” he explained.
“You mean, Ronan will leave the Woodsmen. No, I haven’t heard anything about that.”
He looked at me and pursed his lips. “You turn red right here,” he noted, and wiped his two index fingers under his eyes. “Is that you getting upset?”
“Yes. It’s the only way that I really show my emotions.”
“I don’t know about that. I remember hearing you yell when you were up on the table in the epicenter,” he said. “Are you worried about him going off without you?”
I thought about the woman at Morgan Hurley’s party, the one who had been concerned about her boyfriend signing somewhere else because they were “unofficial”—not married. Ronan and I were only roommates.Housemates, Kiya’s voice reminded me in my head. “I am worried about that,” I said. “I want to be with him all the time. He’s the best person in the world…no offense.”
“That’s all right.” He seemed even happier. “You never know what will happen with the team next year. You never know about anything.”
I nodded. That was a bit of an issue, though: I wanted to know.
“I had been telling him to try out for the Woodsmen since the day he showed up here in Michigan, but he wouldn’t listen to me. It’s hard to take a step like that and risk it,” Ed explained. “You’re worried about failure, of course, but you could also worry about success. A tryout could become the real thing so you have to be ready to adapt. Not everybody wants to change and they might not even be able to, which I get. But if you don’t try, then you can miss out on a lot of rewards.”
“I don’t want him to miss anything,” I said. I didn’t want to miss it myself, either.
