“You’re a really good hustler,” he retorted, looking back at the skee-ball machine as if he could figure out my secrets by staring at it.

“Well, it better be a really good suitcase.” I stepped back, putting some much-needed distance between us. I would also have welcomed a cold bucket of water at that moment. Everything about him was making me hot.

He, on the other hand, seemed completely calm. “Of course.”

I thought about the email I had gotten that morning from my editor with the request to send a first draft of an interview I still hadn’t done. That put a damper on my desires. Nothing like the fear of failing your first big assignment to keep your hormones in check.

“Besides,” I said. “You’re the one who claimed that everything’s fair in bets and skee-ball.”

He groaned. “I knew I was going to regret that.”

“Not my problem,” I told him, looking around the crowded arcade for a place we could talk. “And now,” I pointed to the food court which seemed to be the least populated area and was half-outdoors. “Now, I think it’s time for our interview.”

Chapter Fifteen

We sat down with our plastic trays piled high with arcade pizza, nachos, chili fries and beverages. A soda for me, a beer for him.

“Sure you don’t want your own?” Nathan asked, offering me the beer. The scent of it was enough to remind me of last night’s debacle and this morning’s pain and I quickly shook my head as a wave of nausea swept through me.

“No thanks.” I dug through my purse looking for my phone. When I found it, I placed it on the table with the recording app ready.

“Probably a good idea.” He was eyeing the phone like it was a spider. “I was barely able to defend myself last night.”

“Defend yourself? Against Nick?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Against you.”

“Me?” I sputtered, trying to think of big, broad Nathan Ryder needing to defend himself against anyone, let alone me. Though, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing him try. I imagined the two of us tangled together in a way that was anything but defensive.

“That’s right,” he said seriously. “I was scared for my life.”

I rolled my eyes. “Men.”

He put a hand on his chest as if I had wounded him. “You are a powerful force, Ms. Hall,” he told me. “Your little friend practically curled into a ball on the ground the moment you left.”

Shit. I had totally forgotten that I had left Nick and Nathan alone together after I had stalked off. I could only imagine what they had found to talk about.

As if he could tell what I was thinking, Nathan grinned.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We didn’t get into any male bonding after you left. He pretty much slunk back to the bar and I went home. Though I did feel like you let him off a little too easy.”

“Too easy?” I had been yelling at Nick about our crappy sex life in the middle of a sidewalk in Austin. I couldn’t imagine how I could have been more terrifying to a guy who, once he was off the stage, was usually startled by his own shadow.

“Any guy that leaves his girlfriend unsatisfied deserves a far worse punishment than you gave him,” Nathan said seriously.

My blush came on fast and intense. I wanted to put my head down on the table and just disappear. The last thing I wanted to do at this moment was discuss the sex I had, or more accurately hadn’t been having with my stupid ex-boyfriend. Then the rest of my drunken rant came back to me and I realized I hadn’t just been telling Nick how bad sex had been with him, but I had also screeched something about how I wish I had been having sex with Nathan. I think I had also said something about his cute butt.

Fuck me.

No. That was what kept getting me into trouble in the first place. Fuck no one, I corrected myself. Fuck no one, especially not me and especially not Nathan.

When I finally managed to compose myself, my cheeks still tingling from embarrassment, I glanced up to find Nathan looking at me with an expression of complete satisfaction. Jerk, I thought, but without any anger.

I cleared my throat and reached for my phone, but before I could start the recording app, Nathan’s hand closed over mine. His fingers were warm and soft.

“Good boyfriends don’t treat their girlfriends the way he treated you,” he said. “You deserve better.”

You deserve me, was what his expression seem to say, but those words went unspoken. I was grateful because I felt a strange rush of sadness. I hadn’t allowed myself to grieve the end of my relationship. Despite its flaws and its short length, there had been good things, and now I realized that I was on my own again. That I would be going back to Houston to a bed that I no longer shared. And that made me sad.

But this was not the time.

I cleared my throat and pushed away the embarrassing tickle of tears. Pulling my hand and phone out of Nathan’s grasp, I pasted a smile on my face.

“So, Nathan Ryder,” I said, pointing the speaker at him. “Tell me what you love about baseball.”

***

After an hour I started to worry. Nathan was funny and kind and a great person to talk to, but any time he started talking about anything personal, whether it was about his family and friends, he flashed me a smile and said: “But this is all off record.”

Off record I had a great human-interest piece. A story about Nathan and his three older sisters, a lawyer, a doctor, and fancy New York editor—how they put on family talent shows where Nathan did juggling tricks. Or a story about Nathan’s parents—both teachers who met when they were in high school. Or a story about Nathan’s first coach, who had noticed his natural talent and encouraged him to join a local team. Nathan was a good student, a good kid, and a good ballplayer. Only he didn’t want anyone to know about it. He didn’t want me to write anything that wasn’t already in the millions of profiles that had been written about him. I couldn’t say anything new. Even the poetry thing—which was adorable—was off the record.

I had been trying to construct an article around him for the past half hour but had barely come up with anything more than “Nathan Ryder was a stand-up kind of guy but I can’t really tell you why, just trust me.” It would be the kind of article that people would skim for some sort of big reveal or interesting tidbit and would come away disappointed when they found neither.

I leaned back in my wobbly plastic arcade chair, trying not to feel so depressed.

Even when I tried to ask questions that weren’t even about personal details, just preferences, he still managed to dodge them. I was starting to get really, really annoyed. Like he had sprayed me in the face with water again, if that had been an accident.

“Favorite dessert?” I thought that maybe if I tried working through a few innocuous questions, I could wiggle a few more personal ones past him, but he just raised his eyebrow at me, as if he could tell exactly what I was trying to do.

“Well, off the record,” he began, and I bit back a frustrated groan. There was a possibility I would dump my soda on him if he kept this up. “I love ice cream. The more chocolate, the better. And I usually don’t share.” He winked at me. “Unless someone asks very nicely.”

“Favorite holiday?”

“Off the record, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s cheesy, but I really enjoy spending time with my family. And stuffing. I really like stuffing.”

“It certainly doesn’t show,” I muttered. Nothing about his body said that this was a guy who enjoyed eating as much as he claimed to.

“Baseball is good exercise,” he said. “It’s all about control and strength. There’s nothing like being able to take a baseball and with the aid of a piece of wood, knock it up into the sky with everyone around you cheering. It’s kind of an amazing feeling.”