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"Ohhh, ummm, just the baseball game." She dumped the soup in a sauce pan. The gas stove burners clicked then lit up.
"You’re still watching that shit?"
"Yeah, I actually, um, I got a job. With a baseball team. The Mavericks? I assumed you knew that."
"Oh, I’ve heard. Your mother and I both think it’s wildly inappropriate. Embarrassing. Probably fucking a baseball player now too."
Katie whipped around, forearms up to defend herself, but Kyle stayed where he was, lips smirking beneath dark eyes.
"I’m right aren’t I?" he said, eyebrows raising, spine straightening. "I see it on your face. You’re fucking one of the players."
Katie’s shot him a hurt look before dropping her eyes. "I am most certainly not doing anything of the sort. I was actually thinking of, of…you."
"What about me?"
"That I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe that you would actually find me and then fly all the way here."
"Drove," he corrected.
"I’m sorry?"
"I drove here." He waggled the gun to indicate why.
Her pulse kicked into overdrive, her eyes flashing to the television for her savior. Landon wasn’t on the screen.
"That’s outside, ball two for Johnson."
"Wow, Kyle, you, uh, really do care about us. You really did mean it when you said you’d never give up on us."
"Of course I did. You’re mine Katherine Marie and you’ll always be mine."
Shivers crawled across her skin just thinking about how far he might go to make sure that was true. She turned to the refrigerator and yanked it open, pulling out anything and everything in front of her.
"Then you definitely need that sandwich too. That’s a really, really long drive. Mustard, pickles, cheese, and tomatoes, no lettuce, right?"
"Yeah, you remember." The fight had gone out of his voice again.
"Of course, I remember. How could I forget?"
Her fingers fumbled through the packages, stalling long enough for tiny bubbles to form in the soup on the stove. Katie saw all kinds of possibilities in them.
"Johnson launches it high, high to center, but Davies is on it and that’s two."
She twisted the stove knob to off and pulled a bowl from the cabinet, wondering if he could actually hear the hum in her belly. That low purr of adrenaline that held her steady despite all her fight and flight impulses.Long game, she reminded herself,long game.
Katie shifted her stance as she ladled the soup so he wouldn’t notice how much splashed out of the quivering spoon. Her kitchen had a little table with two chairs and she set a spot for Kyle with the steaming bowl flanked by a napkin and spoon.
"Sit, sit," she insisted, pulling out the chair for him with her best Southern homemaker smile.
The three seconds he hesitated were some of the longest in Katie’s life. Finally, blissfully, he dropped into the seat, and the unobstructed pathway to freedom stood before her. Kyle hadn’t done the locks on the front door and she guesstimated how long it would take her to get there—two, three seconds, another second to fling it open.Long game, she reminded herself again, she had to pick her moment.
Kyle sucked in a spoonful of the soup, gave her the nod that it was edible, and she turned back to fidgeting with the sandwich fixings.
"So that's a really long drive from Georgia. Where did you stop along the way?" she asked.
"A really long drive. I don’t remember it too much to be honest."
His slurps filled the disturbing quiet that followed, along with the TV filtering in from the main room.
