Stopping Short: A Hot Baseball Romance by Mindy Klasky Page B

want to be like Bobby” just sounded stupid.
    But if all Jessica had were letters from school counselors, then Drew’s real secret was safe. There were no medical records, no police records, nothing official anywhere. He turned to her computer, just to make sure. He scrolled through all the documents open on the screen, glancing at Jessica’s careful highlights. She knew something was suspicious, but she hadn’t put all the pieces together. She couldn’t. No one could.
    There were a lot of files she hadn’t gotten to yet, and he clicked on them like he was drugged. He didn’t want to read them, didn’t want to see his past splashed all over the computer screen. But he had to. The words were as hypnotic as a fastball spinning toward the plate. He opened another document, some sort of bank account, a bunch of numbers and columns and a name: Robert Trueblood.
    Fuck .
    Trueblood had been Bobby’s idea of a joke—true blood, get it? Drew had gotten it. He’d gotten it from the day he signed his first contract, when he’d sent Bobby a stack of cash and told him to stay the hell away from Susan.
    He knew Bobby broke the law with the money. Bobby was a bookie, took bets on anything with odds. He had to cover baseball games, no reason not to take money on the Rockets.
    But Drew hadn’t talked to Bobby in six years. He just sent the money on a regular basis, no note, no communication. It was dangerous. He’d be massacred if the league ever found out, if anyone knew he associated with someone who made his living betting on ball games. But it was a hell of a lot better than finding out Susan’d been killed.
    Because as much as he never wanted to be like Bobby, he didn’t want to be like Susan either, staying silent, doing nothing.
    Now, he wiped his palms against his jeans. His heart thudded in his chest, like it was happening all over again. He could hear Bobby hollering. He could smell the stink of his own sweat, the fear that soaked his pits and pooled in the small of his back. He could taste the snot at the back of his throat after he started crying, because Bobby never stopped until he saw tears.
    But Drew wasn’t in some fleabag apartment. Bobby wasn’t towering over him. Susan wasn’t crouched in the corner.
    He was in Coral Crest. He was in a luxury hotel room, with a view of rain-slashed palm trees out the window. He realized the shower had stopped in the bathroom. Jessica would be out here any moment.
    Heart pounding so hard he couldn’t draw a full breath, he dragged Robert Trueblood’s bank record into the tiny electronic trashcan on the computer screen. He heard the corny sound, the crumple of paper, the destruction of the evidence. Adrenaline ripped through his muscles; he wanted to slam the computer screen down. He wanted to rip something apart. He wanted to do anything he could to tear out his past. His present. All the mistakes he’d ever made about Bobby.
    The bathroom door opened and Jessica took three steps into the room, stopping dead when she saw him. She was wrapped in a skimpy white towel, the terry just long enough to skim the top of her thighs. Her skin was flushed pink from the shower, and even from across the room he could smell her soap.
    Her gaze darted from the papers on the desk to him, over to the computer, and back again to his eyes. Her right hand curled around the uncertain knot of her towel, but her voice was steady when she said, “You’re supposed to be at the ballpark.”
    “The game got rained out.” Of course, any person who believed in running the base path backward wouldn’t have a clue about baseball games being canceled for rain. But he wasn’t feeling very generous with explanations right now, not with the jangling energy still pumping from seeing Bobby’s name, from seeing the bank document that could have destroyed him. “What the hell is all this stuff?” His voice was rougher than he’d thought it would be. His palms were sweating.
    “I told you. I’m