“I only purge when I find out she’s bat-shit crazy.” He rolled his eyes when she shot him a questioning look. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“Oh, but I do.” When she finished with her phone she dropped it back in her purse and leaned in. “Tell me, what’s a girl got to do to get deleted from your contacts?”
“Most pro athletes will tell you the same,” he said, shrugging. “Women get crazy-obsessed in no time. They think they know you because they see you on TV. They want you because of what you do, not who you are.”
She’d seen her brother go through that over the years. Probably explained why he married his first love, the girl who knew and loved him before he got famous.
“For the record, I could care less about what you do for a living or how much money you make.”
“I know.” He seemed serious when he said, “That’s what drew me to you in the first place. You treated me like a real person, not like a ball player.”
“You have to remember I grew up around ball players, Loran. Yet I’d never wanted to date one before.”
He leaned back, resting his arm on the back of the bench. “I know for a fact more than a few of our teammates have had their eye on you. Ethan’s teammates must have been asking you out all the time while you guys were growing up. Why no interest?”
“Because of the fact they were ballplayers.” She was ashamed to admit the truth, but he deserved to hear it. “I knew they had women chasing them everywhere they went. I just didn’t want to deal with that.”
“But you’re willing to make an exception for me?”
“Not like I have a choice.”
She looked around and noticed several women staring at him. Two sitting together at a corner table and one waiting in line to order. They undoubtedly recognized him and were contemplating a selfie or an autograph, but didn’t want to intrude.
“Why do you say that?” he asked, looking amused. “That you don’t have a choice? You always have a choice.”
“You’re kind of like my favorite Belgian chocolate. It’s probably not as good for me as say, an apple, but I’ll chose the chocolate over the apple every time.”
He laughed. “So I’m chocolate and your buddy Jeff was the apple?”
“Something like that.” She loved spending time with him like this, just hanging out, talking. Getting to know him better. In fact, in the last few weeks she’d invested more time in Loran than any man since…
“What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, trying to shake off the bad memories. “Just thinking about things I had no business thinking about. Sorry.”
“Bella, if this is going to work, you’re going to have to let me in sometime.”
Which meant sharing her thoughts and feelings with him. Point taken. “I was thinking about my college boyfriend.”
His expression darkened. “The one who hurt you?”
He was the one and only man she’d had a real relationship with in college. Or since. Until Loran. “Yeah.”
“You want to talk about it?”
She loved that he was asking, instead of demanding to know more. “He was a nice guy… at first.” That’s what made it so hard to accept. She’d been duped. “We got along really well. Had a lot of the same friends. Seemed to have common goals, but I was young and didn’t want to be tied down. I still had a lot of years of school ahead of me, because I planned to get a Masters.”
“How did I not know you had a Masters?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” She licked her lips as she gave him a suggestive once-over. “But don’t worry. We have plenty of time for pillow talk.”
He groaned as he adjusted his jeans. “You’re killing me here.”
She grinned. “That was kind of my intent.”
“You wouldn’t be trying to change the subject, would you?”
“Maybe a little.” When the disappointment flashed across his face she sighed and said, “Fine. I’ll tell you more. He told me he was in love with me after we’d been dating a few months.”
