“Don’t pretend you didn’t teach her everything she knows about being sneaky,” Heather murmured, which made Zach laugh before he kissed her as if they weren’t sitting in the middle of a sold-out baseball stadium.

“They do that all the time,” Lori said with an eye roll that had Vicki laughing again.

Zach’s girlfriend was very pretty in an un-flashy way, and utterly down to earth. Who would have thought lady-killer Zach, who had been a year ahead of her and Ryan in school, would settle down with such a lovely, unpretentious woman? One who seemed to give it back to him as good as he dished it out.

Lori interrupted her musings by telling Smith, “Vicki’s art is beautiful and smart and super sexy.”

“I’m not surprised to hear that,” Smith said in his deep, billion-dollar voice.

Vicki felt herself flush all the way down to her chest at the implication that he thought she was sexy, and Lori threw a Jelly Belly at him.

“Take some time off the clock, Smith.” She made a face at Vicki. “Just ignore him. He can’t stand it when a woman doesn’t throw herself at him. Zach used to be like that,” she said with a jerk of her thumb over her shoulder, “until he found true love.”

Lori said the words a little sarcastically, even though it was clear that Zach and Heather were wildly, and truly, in love with one other.

“You were married for a while, right, Vicki?”

“I was.”

“Do you miss it?”

She was surprised by Lori’s question. “Being married or being with my ex?”

“I’m assuming you divorced your ex because he was an ass.” Lori replied.

A laugh bubbled out of Vicki’s mouth. “I didn’t realize you knew him,” she joked.

Lori grinned back before clarifying, “I mean the living with a person part. Knowing you’ll wake up and see the same person every morning. Having someone who’s always the first person you call with good and bad news. Knowing that when you fall asleep in front of the TV with him at the end of the day instead of having hot monkey sex, it doesn’t mean you don’t love him.”

“My ex was also a sculptor and he—” Vicki paused. “—he embraced the artist lifestyle, if that makes any sense. There wasn’t a lot of rhyme or reason to our hours.”

Or any kind of accountability. It was what she’d thought was so exciting about him at first. The only thing he’d done traditionally was to marry her. But he’d had his reasons for that, most of them having to do with who held the power in the relationship, from the very first day she’d met him as the starry-eyed young sculptor.

Vicki was stunned to realize that the only person with whom she had ever done any of the things Lori had listed was Ryan.

Fortunately, just then the inning started and she could let the conversation drop away to train her gaze on the field where Ryan was throwing his first pitch of the game. He was magnificent. All that raw talent from when he was a kid had matured into athletic stardom.

In a matter of minutes, he’d struck out each of the batters. The crowd chanted his name and she was surprised when he grinned up at her again.

And then, suddenly, the chants turned into cheers.

“Oh my God. I can’t believe neither of you said anything.” Lori gave a happy little sound and threw her arms around Vicki. “Congratulations!”

Over Lori’s shoulder, Vicki finally learned the reason for everyone’s cheers.

CONGRATULATIONS RYAN SULLIVAN AND VICKI BENNETT ON YOUR ENGAGEMENT!

A picture of Ryan was on one half of the huge screen, a still shot of Vicki laughing at something Lori had said just a few minutes before beside it, with a dozen red and pink hearts layered between their pictures.

Couldn’t James be happy with pulling Anthony back into her life? Did he have to go to the press about her relationship with Ryan, and then make it doubly worse by upping the ante and telling the press they were engaged, rather than just dating?

When she looked back toward the field, Ryan was still standing on the mound looking up at her. She knew she needed to pull herself together, but how could she when her big fat lie had spiraled off in ways she’d never planned?

She felt like everything was happening in slow motion as Ryan put his hand to his lips and blew her a kiss.

The crowd cheered again, so loud this time that her ears actually started ringing. Smith put his arm around her, leaned over and said, “Smile if you can, Vicki.” His voice was calm. Soothing. “Look at Ryan and pretend it’s just the two of you here. One smile. That’s all you need to give him, and then you’ll be off the hook for now.”

Somehow, Vicki managed to follow Smith’s step-by-step, all the while trying to convince herself that they’d probably look back and die laughing about this one day. Somehow, she managed not only to smile back at Ryan, but also to blow a kiss back.

A total showman after all his years as a star athlete, Ryan reached into the air with his glove and caught her “kiss” as it blew by.

“Well done,” Smith murmured, and she was beyond glad the big movie star been there to coach her through the most horrific moments of her life.

“As soon as the game is over, I need to know everything,” Lori said. “Absolutely everything.”

The temporary glow that had moved through her when she and Ryan had been smiling at each other immediately drained away. Vicki absolutely, positively hated lying to Ryan’s family. But she needed to talk to him first to figure out their plan together before she confessed everything to his siblings.

Chapter Eleven

It was the longest baseball game of Ryan’s life.

He’d never missed a pro game, barring being injured or sick enough for the team doctors to bench him, but he’d been on the verge of bailing on it to go out and hunt for Vicki. After he’d called the number for the art studio nonstop for a half hour, someone had finally picked up and told him she wasn’t there but they were pretty sure she’d been working all afternoon.

But then when she hadn’t been sitting with his siblings at the start of the game, that elemental panic came back. For fifteen years he’d barely seen her and now he was flipping out if he didn’t hear back from her in a matter of minutes. He knew he was acting crazy, but he couldn’t help it. Not when he was now worried both about James getting hold of her and what a massive screwup it would be if she found out what he’d done before he had a chance to explain it to her.