Unable to resist, I turned my head and kissed his palm. “Thank you, but I’ll be okay. Promise. I should probably just join a yoga class and do some stress management instead.”
He was going to say something else, but the waitress interrupted, taking our order.
Shrugging my jacket off my shoulders, I turned to see Ace watching me again. I looked down to see my nipples still betraying me.
“You know you’re an evil little shit, right?” he asked. “And so damn sexy.”
“Whatever do you mean?” I batted my eyelashes in his direction, trying to force my body to obey my commands to settle down.
“I’m rock fuckin’ hard under this table, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart? That’s new.
“Sorry, babe. All I wanted was some pork. I don’t know why your mind went to the gutter.” I smirked and took a sip of my drink.
Dinner was delicious, but with Ace watching every bite of food that entered my mouth, the sexual tension between us was growing quickly. Why did this man weaken me so easily?
My phone vibrated on the table, Jack’s face glaring between us. There’s a quick mood killer.
“Go ahead, answer it,” Ace said, his jaw popping as he took another bite.
“I don’t really want to talk to him.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, do I smell trouble in paradise?”
“No, you smell smoked pork.”
His lips curled into the crooked smile I loved. It was both cocky and seductive. It was nice sitting with him, enjoying a meal, flirting a little. I missed that Ace.
The phone finally stopped, and Jack’s face faded away.
“It’s okay, Holly.” Ace’s voice was surprisingly sweet and gentle when he spoke.
He reached across the table and took my hand in his. It was sticky with sauce, so I took one of the pre-packaged baby wipes out and tore it open, and very slowly, wiped his fingers clean. When I looked up at him, his pupils were huge, his hunger for me evident.
“I want you to be happy,” he spoke softly.
Tears welled up in my eyes. Why was I so damn emotional?
“I want that for you too.”
He threaded his fingers through mine. “Don’t cry. Please.”
I wiped my eyes with the napkin from the table. Ace’s eyes danced, and an amused smile played on his lips.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, feeling unsure under his scrutiny.
He released my hand, pulled a clean napkin from the dispenser and reached across the table, gently wiping my cheek. I looked down at the napkin in my hand. It was smeared with my mascara. I wadded it up and tossed it at him. “I need to buy waterproof,” I said with a pout.
He was still smiling when he grabbed another napkin and reached over to wipe my mouth. I grabbed the napkin and noticed a glob of barbecue sauce this time. “Oh good lord,” I said, embarrassed. Opening another towelette, I scrubbed my entire face with it before looking at him. “Better?”
His smile made something inside my stomach twist. “Perfect.”
The atmosphere had changed between us, and it felt like most of the oxygen had been sucked from the room. “It really does mean the world to me that you’re here,” he said.
I stretched my hands across the table and worked them back into his. His flesh was warm, the callouses on his hands rough, like a man’s hands should be. The grip they provided was strong and secure, making me feel protected while they held me.
“It means the world to me to be here.”
It surprised me when Ace started talking about his family, sharing more about them. His mother had been the glue. She held everyone together, even with their differences, their resentments, and their competitions. She sounded like a lovely woman. The mother that everyone adored, trusted, and feared at the same time. I loved the look Ace got in his eyes when he spoke about the woman. It was evident that she meant a lot to him.
“I always wanted to make her proud,” he said.
“I’m sure you did.”
“The only thing she ever asked of me was to always take care of my family.”
I thought about the house we visited earlier, modest and outdated. Ace had earned millions of dollars while in the major leagues, but to look at his parents’ home, you’d never know it.
“Did you?” I asked gently.
“Did I what?” he asked.
“Take care of the family.”
He leaned back into his booth, pulling his hands from mine and staring down at his empty plate. “I tried, but I failed,” he admitted.
I felt the pain flowing through his veins, yet another reason he called himself a failure. He was a great baseball player. At that, he didn’t fear failing, it was just everything else that scared him. It was life that scared him. Getting older scared him. I knew he was close to ancient in baseball years, and I’m sure retirement loomed like death’s angel to a man like Ace.
“How’d you try?” I asked.
He sighed, gripped his beer bottle and took a long swig. “Well, I started by buying my parents a new house. Dad threw a fit, told me to shove my pussy house up my dick hole.” He laughed as he repeated the rantings of the now tired, dying old man.
“Why didn’t he want it?”
“He’s a proud man. He’s the provider. I think he wanted us kids to be great, that’s why he worked us so hard. When he saw I had talent, real talent, he pushed me even harder. The better I got, the more he seemed to resent me. Maybe he thought he could handle having successful kids, but when one did succeed, it just shone a light on his own failures.”
“That’s pretty damn insightful.” I leaned back in the booth and looked at the man across from me in an entirely different light.
He wasn’t just this wounded little bird, this object for sexual pleasure, a great baseball player. He was so much more than that. He had depth, soul, real character that I’d never recognized before.
“So what happened after the house?” I asked.
“I set up a college fund for Eve. The old man laughed, saying she didn’t need to go to school, that she was a pretty girl and would find a good husband. Brady, now he was a tough one. I didn’t know what to do for him. He didn’t like to work, and when he did, it was at jobs that required very little physically or intellectually from him.”
He paused and took another drink of his beer.
“I told Brady I wanted to sponsor a little league team in his name, make him a coach, and then buy him a house when he had a child of his own.”
“What was wrong with that?”
That smirk crept up on his face. “Brady told me he didn’t want his name on any baseball jersey, and that baseball was for losers. He did say he’d take the money I was gonna spend on the house to do what he wanted with. I laughed. I told him to kiss my loser ass.”
I laughed and watched Ace’s eyes light up as he talked about all the good things he’d tried to do for his family. “In the end, I just gave them both a lump check to do with as they wanted. I paid off my parents’ house then set up a bank account that automatically paid all the bills for Dad.”