Second Thoughts: A Hot Baseball Romance by Mindy Klasky Page A

sighed. “Let me figure out the right way, Nick. I don’t want Olivia hurt.”
    When he nodded, the wave of relief was so strong she almost sank against the rack of towels. “All right,” he said. “But don’t take too much time. I’ve lost six years already. I’m not willing to lose much more.”
    She started to figure out an answer, but he was already walking out of the laundry room. She stayed behind, breathing deeply of the clean linen scent. She wanted to bury her face in the closest stack of towels. She wanted to climb into the pure white laundry, curl up in a soft nest, fall asleep and never have to worry about the crazy outside world again.
    But DJ Thomas was waiting. Robert, too. And Olivia, of course.
    Everyone looked up expectantly as she returned to the dugout. They thought she was fine when she picked up her camera. They accepted her smile, her instructions, her competent orders for the rest of the shoot.
    And not one person asked her where Nick Durban had gone. Not one person commented on the dramatic new path her life was taking. Jamie tried to forget it all, too, as she built a perfect photo spread for the Rockets.
    ~~~
    The next morning, Nick leaned against his kitchen counter, chugging down chocolate milk after his run. He’d gone five miles, the usual route, but every goddamn step had felt uphill. Usually, running made him feel better. He fell into a rhythm, broke away from whatever thoughts were nagging him—how he’d missed a throw home the night before, why he hadn’t turned a double play.
    But the thoughts hanging over him now were a hell of a lot more important than any double play of his career.
    He kept reliving yesterday’s conversation in the laundry room. The laundry room! Christ. He could at least have found a decent place to talk to Twelve. Ormond would have let him into one of the suites. They could have left the park altogether.
    But the location of their talk hadn’t been the real problem, and he knew it. The real problem was that he’d fathered a child, and he hadn’t had the first idea until yesterday afternoon.
    He couldn’t say he was surprised. “Surprised” was for relatively unimportant things like hitting a walk-off home run against Atlanta’s closer. Nick was astonished. Floored. Staggered.
    Great. He was a goddamn thesaurus.
    In the abstract, he understood Jamie’s position. Of course she knew he’d never hurt their daughter, not physically. He’d taken care of his nieces and nephews for years, and no one had ended up at the emergency room, not even once.
    But that record would never change the fact that Jamie didn’t trust him. Every word he’d said to her that last day in college, every sentence he’d repeated from Jeremy Epson’s script, had been designed to drive Jamie Martin away. When Nick did a job, he did it well. He’d left no room for doubt with Twelve. He’d cut as hard and as deep as he could, because they’d both needed to be free.
    That’s what his agent had told him to do. That’s what his lifelong dream had required. And if he called Epson now, if he read him the Riot Act, Ep would laugh that New York bray and say, “I did what you hired me to do. I gave you the advice you needed.” He’d say, “You’re playing with the Rockets now, so what are you really complaining about?”
    Nick took off his T-shirt and mopped his face dry. He shoved the milk carton back in the fridge and prowled to the living room.
    He should have gone over to the park instead of taking a run. He could have worked out in the weight room, focused on his lats, on that stubborn oblique strain that only the off season would let heal right.
    He didn’t give a damn about his obliques. He was just cooking up reasons to see Jamie again. To talk to her, about anything at all. To speed up her thinking about Olivia.
    Swearing, he collapsed on his couch and picked up his dog-eared copy of The Sun Also Rises . He forced himself to read a few pages of the familiar taut