“Is that the kind of charm that gets you all the ladies? Because it’s no wonder you didn’t have a date for the scholarship thing.”
He let out a deep chuckle. “Reading my tabloid coverage now? Naughty girl.”
“I may have seen a headline,” she said, “when I was checking the weather on my phone.”
“A likely cover story. The weather seldom features gossip links. Anyway, I can have a date any night I want one. Instead, I find myself holding out for you.”
“Oh, are you a born-again virgin now?” she teased.
“Hardly, unless the restrictions are very lax. How long does one have to be celibate to qualify?”
“More than twenty-four hours, so I’m thinking that knocks you out of the running.”
“I wasn’t planning to audition for Mary in the nativity play,” he said wryly, “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“So what do you have planned?”
“We’ll just spend the afternoon together, see where the day takes us,” he hedged.
“I know you better than that. C’mon! You have plans. Spill. Tell me.”
“You can wear jeans. I understand they are your off-work uniform.”
“No. My pajamas are the off-work uniform. Jeans are special occasion weekend wear.”
“Then I’ll be honored to take you and your special-occasion denim out for the day.”
“Bye,” she said. He heard a bubble of happiness in her voice behind the put-on annoyance she’d affected. She was excited, buoyed up by the prospect of a surprise outing with him. He couldn’t wait.
He sent the car for her too early, then found himself waiting at the park for her to arrive. He’d worn jeans himself and a button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and sunglasses. Carefully tousled hair. He was slightly concerned that he looked like a J. Crew catalog, although the labels he wore were both more discreet and far more expensive. For a moment, he was seized by the notion that he should have brought her flowers. Even though this was the warm up date, not the romantic one.
When she stepped out of the car, teetering on a pair of stilettos with her jeans and a t-shirt that hugged her curves just right, he hurried toward her. No purposeful stride like the CEO he was, but a rush to reach her, to take her hand and lead her where he wanted to take her.
He took her to the west end of the park, past the green space and through a parking lot to the ballpark. Luke showed his season tickets for the minor league team’s home games and led her to his seats behind the dugout. He handed her a program and started to point out the players who were up today.
“This is not what I expected. I thought we’d be feeding swans or something. Like you’d have a servant tearing up pieces of bread from a fancy bakery and putting it in a basket for us to scatter. I imagined I’d have to wear a straw hat with long ribbons and you’d ride a horse.”
“That’s oddly specific and wrong,” he said.
“I think that may be the best description of me ever. I’m often both of those things,” she said lightly.
“I don’t get to come here as often as I’d like because of work, but I manage the odd Sunday game.”
“How on earth did someone like you, who went to, like, Exeter, get into minor league ball?”
“I had a friend in grammar school, a day school near here, who attended on scholarship. His uncle was on the team back then, was a terrific shortstop. He would’ve been in the majors if he hadn’t torn his rotator cuff. We used to go see him play most weekends. I loved it here. It was loose and free, and there were hot roasted peanuts and rootbeer. I have to tell you, I thought I was so tough and grown up, going to a minor’s game with ten bucks and no adult, drinking rootbeer out of a glass bottle,” he chuckled to himself. “I think I liked it better than Tim did, and it was his uncle.”
“What happened to Tim? Are you still in touch?”
“No. I haven’t heard from him in years.”
“You do know about Facebook, right? Or any social media. It’s how we catch up with old friends we knew at camp and stuff. Did you go to camp?”
“No. I went to a tennis clinic for four summers to be coached by pros who’d been in the Olympics, and there was a year I s
pent the summer in Provence learning to make wine.”
“I made lanyards and leaf collections at scout camp. Never did pass my swimming test because I had to swim underwater all the way out to the middle of the lake. Scared of getting water in my eyes—it was crazy,” she said.