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Purposely, he now guessed. She’d brushed an unhappy past under the table without considering how much a baseball player lived in the public eye. Was that his fault for not wanting to talk about the career he’d feared was over? Or hers for hiding the truth about her past?
“Yes. She was furious that I wanted to quit the job. Things did not end well between us—”
Cal wanted to be understanding. Really, he did. But her choice to gloss over this glaring detail about her past was very likely going to cost him the slim shot he’d had of making a comeback, and the anguish of that was too damned much.
“Bottom line, you knew it was a possibility that she’d file a complaint, and you went out of state to take a job with my mother to avoid the fallout.” He was beginning to see the bigger picture now, and he didn’t like what he saw. “Is that about right?”
Lips pursed tight, she glared at him. But finally, she spoke, her words clipped. “I left hoping she would calm down once I was gone.”
“Quibbling. Either way, it’s true you’re being investigated, and that you hid the information from my mother and from me.” The bare facts of what she’d done burned past his anger and all the way down to the hurt in his chest. Still, there was only one solution that he could see. He had to protect his mother. And, selfishly, he wanted to safeguard whatever chance he had left of salvaging his career. Given how much he’d sacrificed for it, was that too damned much to ask? Regret closed over him in a dark cloud as he realized he only had one option left in this situation. “Considering the way you’ve lied by omission, I think you should go.”
He sure as hell hadn’t wanted to end things this way. Especially not after what they’d shared the night before.
Staring back at him, she held herself motionless for a long moment, then gave a small, jerky nod. Accepting.
“What about the dogs?” She cleared her throat and blinked fast. “The garden and bees?”
Memories of her reading the book on bees, helping his grandfather, lending her green thumb to the gardens all rolled through his head now. Losing that—losing her—hurt more than he expected, but she’d had plenty of opportunities to tell him about her past. About the possibility of bad press. Maybe if she’d given him some kind of warning, he could have taken precautions. Or not have been photographed at the game.
He couldn’t play the what-if game. She hadn’t told him. And now he had to do the right thing. A clean break would be easier for both of them.
“I will personally see to it that everything is cared for here until my mother returns from her mission trip.” He couldn’t afford to think about Josie and what she would do next, not when she’d put him in an untenable situation. He needed to phone his agent. Work on a plan for damage control before this turned into a bigger scandal.
Just in case there was any chance he could salvage a roster spot.
“And that’s it?” she asked him, still standing by the window.
Now, all the dogs had moved to sit by her feet, giving her their silent support even though her actions were clearly in the wrong. Indefensible. Even if he didn’t care about the legality of what she’d done, he couldn’t get beyond the fact that she’d never said a word about it. That she’d allowed him to be blindsided this way.
He looked at her—ached for her—and wanted to come up with a different answer. But he knew he had to let her go.
“I don’t think there’s anything left to say,” he informed her, his head spinning from how fast this day—their whole relationship—had fallen apart. “The sooner we cut ties, the better for us both.”
Even though it hurt like hell.
And, in spite of everything, it damned well did. But trust was hard enough for him after how his father had betrayed the family, making a lie out of all the values he’d impressed on his kids. Cal couldn’t live a lie any more than he could justify someone else’s. It just wasn’t who he wanted to be, even if the woman staring back at him was—he’d thought—the most incredible woman he’d ever met.
Apparently, the vision of her that he’d built in his head didn’t match up with the real one.
Josie didn’t say another word. She simply pivoted on her heel and headed for the stairs, a pack of worried animals following in her wake.
Kungfu stopped at the bottom of the steps to stare back at him. Waiting? Accusing?
But Cal didn’t budge. Josie had come through Last Stand like a wrecking ball to everything that mattered to him, and the sooner she left, the better.
*
Upstairs in thefarmhouse, Josie packed her bag slowly, her suitcase orderly—her heart a shattered mess. If she could have gotten her things together faster, she would have, since it was obvious how much Cal wanted her gone. But her body felt uncoordinated, her limbs awkward and heavy, as she tried to fold things and organize her small suitcase.
Cal wanted her gone. The reality of that hurt her from her toes to the roots of her hair. Especially after the night they’d shared together.
She realized she’d folded the same blouse three times now. Somehow it kept ending up in her hands. It was like her brain had checked out on her—or maybe her thoughts were just too busy going over and over what she’d done wrong. Clearly, it had been foolish of her to think she could hide her head in the sand here, hoping things would settle down back home with her mother. Josie knew now she should have followed up on her mother’s threats. Hiding out in a different state with a different phone number only made her look more guilty. She should have turned herself in and asked for a public defender to help her articulate her side.
Because, damn it, she felt like she’d done the best she could under impossible circumstances. She just hadn’t counted on Cal getting caught up in her drama. She hadn’t wanted his career to suffer because of her.
After grabbing her toiletries from the bathroom, she dried off her shampoo bottle and stuck it in her bag, uncertain what she should have done differently. Should she have turned in her own mother for poor management? For not upholding her obligations to her tenants? Probably. But, like Cal, she’d been performing to a parent’s expectations since well before she turned eighteen. So by the time she’d come of age, it had been hard to walk away from the things she’d always done to help tenants.
She’d felt needed. The people who lived in the building had appreciated her. And that had been…nice. What hadn’t been nice? Keeping her past a secret from Cal. She hadn’t realized how much he deserved to know about it until things unfolded in the kitchen. His career was on the line right now, and she’d risked that.
