Center Stage: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 8) by Mindy Klasky Read Free Book Online

harm could it really do? No one was going to be hurt by a little toilet paper. By a little shaving cream. She walked down the farmhouse steps with new determination in her stride.
    When she got to her car, she looked up at Ryan. “Are you coming?”
    He shook his head. “Not in that car.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with my car!”
    “Except I’m willing to bet Will Templeton can recognize it from a mile away.”
    “And a red Ferrari is going to be more anonymous?”
    “It’s a better get-away car,” he said. “Zero to sixty in three point four.”
    Well, she couldn’t argue with that. “Okay,” she said. “You drive. But I’m buying the goods.”
    He only paused long enough to peel off his suit jacket and to strip away his tie. He tossed both behind the driver’s seat, and then they hit the road. They had almost reached the all-night grocery store in Miller’s Corner when her phone rang, sending a cheery little marimba melody through the close confines of the car. “804,” she read, and she recited the strange number on the screen.
    “That’s me,” Ryan said, darting a glance toward her hand.
    “What?”
    “It’s Zach,” he corrected himself. “He’s got my phone.”
    She thought about letting it go to voicemail. That’s what a bad girl would do—duck the calls she didn’t want to take and not waste a second worrying about who might be frantic on the other end of the line.
    But Zach didn’t deserve that. Zach hadn’t done anything wrong. “Hello?” she answered, pretending she was puzzled by the strange number.
    Zach’s familiar baritone was loud against her ear. “I just wanted to make sure you got to the farm okay.”
    “I’m fine,” she said.
    And the crazy thing was, she was fine. She should tell Zach she was with Ryan. She should tell him his teammate had followed her home, had made sure she arrived safely. She should probably even tell him she was planning on TPing a house, Will’s house, for the first time in her entire life.
    But telling Zach all that would only make him crazy. And she couldn’t purposely drive her brother nuts; she wasn’t like Beth. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
    “I’m fine,” she repeated. “And I’m hanging up now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Zach. Or the next day. Don’t worry about me.”
    “I always worry about you.”
    She smiled, because he only spoke the truth. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that. Good night, big brother.”
    To his credit, he only paused for a heartbeat. “Good night, little sister.”
    She suspected the conversation would have lasted a lot longer if he’d known exactly where she was, exactly what she was doing. And exactly who she was doing it with.
    Ryan waited in the car while she went in to buy her contraband. She picked up a twelve-pack of toilet paper and four cans of shaving cream. Those things looked suspicious in the shopping cart, so she cruised up and down the aisles, tossing in camouflage. Potato chips. A six-pack of Diet Coke. A package of Oreo cookies.
    “What the hell is all that?” he asked, when she wrestled the supplies into the car.
    “Ammunition. And dinner. I’m starving. I never got anything to eat tonight.” As she said the words, she knew they should hurt. They should trigger something in her belly, that queasy twist, that exhausted sorrow. The memory of the emotion was there, clean and fresh. But she didn’t feel the pangs directly. Instead, her loss was veiled in a wash of adrenaline.
    “Knock yourself out,” he said. “Now how do we get to his house?”
    She gave him directions around a mouthful of chips. She knew the way to Will’s as well as she knew the way to her own home. It wasn’t until they were a mile away that she realized she was supposed to be sleeping in that house tonight, celebrating her first night of wedded bliss. She almost gagged on the trite phrase.
    At least they hadn’t paid for a honeymoon. They’d been waiting until the fall. Until