Scout's Honor

Four years and she was the first thing he thought about. Which was why he’d turned down the job offer. Until Duff had called and asked him personally to come back. Then Jayson had had no choice. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done for Duff. Nothing.

Including seeing Scout again.

He’d hoped seeing her again would be the thing to cure him. To make her less of a memory and more of a reality. That he’d built their connection up in his head and put it on a pedestal it didn’t really deserve.

That initial encounter with her had been brutal. He’d taken one look at her and known to the soles of his feet that he still wasn’t over her.

He’d asked her about Duff and she’d gotten defensive and then he’d found himself mad all over again. Mad because she’d chosen to stay in Minotaur Falls instead of leaving with him. She had told him she couldn’t leave her father. That he needed her. Which was probably true, but Jayson had always known there was something else holding her back.

It wasn’t just her life here and her father that held her back. It was fear.

She hadn’t been willing to take that risk on him. On them. To reach for something and try to see if it could be as special as Jayson knew it could be. That lack of faith had crushed him. Almost as much as not being the one she chose above all. It should have also crushed his feelings for her but it hadn’t. Because he knew Scout was just scared.

Hard to hate someone who was so scared.

“You’re Jayson LeBec?”

Jayson turned toward the person calling his name. His real name, so not a baseball person obviously.

He’d never been introduced to Alice Sullivan, but he didn’t need anyone to tell him that this was Scout’s mother. Same honey-wheat hair, same green eyes. It probably irked Scout to know how much she looked exactly like her mother.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m told you broke my daughter’s heart.”

Jayson laughed. He had often wondered where Scout got her bluntness. Duff had been corny phrases and subtle innuendo. Not Scout. She was in your face with what she thought. He loved that about her. He always knew where he stood.

“Forgive me for being so blunt, ma’am, but so did you.”

“I know.” Alice sighed. “That’s why I was hoping maybe we could be friends. We both know what it’s like to be on the opposite side of team Duff and Scout.”

“I’m not sure Scout would like that too much.” In fact, Jayson was nervous just talking with the woman. If Scout saw them together it would layer on the pain, and he wanted to ease her hurt, not add to it.

“Probably not, but I think we both know she needs someone right now. I’m going to try to fight through her stubbornness and see if that person can be me. I was curious if you thought it could be you. Samantha said you wouldn’t leave her side at the end.”

“I couldn’t,” Jayson said and felt the grief overcome him. Standing there by Duff’s bedside watching him drift away. Feeling his pain, her pain. Watching the separation between them grow.

But he’d made a promise.

“I’ll...I’ll do what I can. But it’s not like I can be... I mean I can’t be anything more than a friend to her. If she even wants that. She’s let me hang around the house these last few months, but I think that’s mostly because she couldn’t spare the energy to tell me to leave.”

“Hmm,” Alice said, looking at him, clearly assessing him. He reminded her of Scout when she was checking out a new prospect. As if she could figure out if a kid could hit a curveball just by seeing how he stood. “I see.”

“See what exactly, ma’am?”

“You didn’t break her heart like Duff said. She broke yours.”

Jayson nodded. “She’s still breaking it.”

“I know how that feels, son.” Alice patted him on the arm. “I truly do. The thing about my daughter...when things get difficult, she likes to hide. With something like this I’m afraid she’ll hide so deep no one will ever find her again. I know she’s hurt you, but I think, Jayson, you might be her only hope. She’s going to need someone who knows her tricks, someone who knows them and still loves her for them, if she has a chance of coming out of this. I know that’s an awful thing to ask. But I’m her mother so I’m asking it anyway.”

“You don’t have to, ma’am. Duff already did.”

Alice smiled. “Of course he did. Of course he did. Well, I imagine I’ll be seeing you around then, Jayson.”

“You’re not heading back home after this is over?” Jayson asked. That was probably news Scout didn’t know.

“Depends which home you mean. My current home, no. The home I used to have...yes. Whether she likes it or not.”

Jayson whistled under his breath.

“You might think my daughter is stubborn,” Alice said with a slightly evil smile. “But I’m worse.”

As she turned and walked away, Jayson thought these next few weeks were probably going to get very interesting.

CHAPTER TWO

Two weeks later...

“I’M READY TO WORK.”

Jayson looked up from his desk and shook his head. Scout hadn’t even bothered to knock. Just opened his door and walked right in with her announcement.

Like this was still Duff’s office and not his.

This transition for her was not going to be fun, he thought, but he knew if they were going to live in the same town, going forward there were going to have to be boundaries.

He needed boundaries.

The season was now officially over and he was just putting his last player evaluation forms together. Not that he would take the next few months off. Even in the off-season Jayson liked to stay involved with the stadium and its activities. He found that it connected him more solidly with the team.

Jerry, the team’s general manager, and his staff would work pretty much year-round until the start of the new season. Making concession stand changes, planning different local events and, most important, trying to figure out new and creative ways to fill the seats.

But for the players’ manager there wasn’t a whole lot to do other than study scouting prospects and give feedback on the upcoming draft next June. To that end Jayson had set up a tryout camp, which would start in the next few weeks. They were usually long shots, but he liked being proactive.

“Did you hear me?”

“You mean what you said after you barged into my office without knocking?”

She had the sense to look sheepish. “Sorry about that.”

Jayson decided boundaries were really the least of his concerns. She was his priority.

“Scout, I don’t think you are ready to work.”

She was standing in front of him in a pair of ripped jeans and a stained T-shirt. Her hair looked as if it hadn’t seen a brush in days, and the bags under her eyes were nearly black. He didn’t need to guess that she hadn’t eaten or slept in days. It was all there on her face, but he could see she’d sworn off the drugs. Her green eyes were clear and focused.

Knowing Scout, she wouldn’t have wanted to take anything that might have diluted her pain. No doubt she would have thought she was being disloyal to Duff by not grieving him hard enough.

It made him ache, but he knew deep inside he had to hold himself back a little. For example, he couldn’t get up and walk around his desk and hold her. He couldn’t try to help shoulder the burden of her grief for her.

He would look after her, make sure she was still upright. Because he’d promised to do that. But it was as far as he could go.

Or it would happen again, like it did the first time. He’d fall for her. Hard. Jayson was fairly certain he’d never survive a second round.

“No, I can do it. We’ve got the tryout camp coming up in a few weeks and I should be there. Not to mention high school fall ball is starting. The Rebels are going to want me out at games.”

“I talked to Greg and Reuben. They were at Duff’s service, of course. Reuben said to give you all the time you needed.”

Jayson didn’t want to think about the underlying tone of that conversation. Scout didn’t need anything else to worry about in her current state.

Scout’s jaw dropped. “Wait a minute. You talked to Greg? My new boss? What right did you have to do that?”

Jayson just looked at her and she immediately backed down.

“Okay, I appreciate you covering for me for these last two weeks, but I’m telling you I’m ready to get out there and start working. Even if I’m not ready, I still need to get out there and start working.”

He leaned back in his chair. Scout moved forward to put her hands on his desk.

“Jayson, my mother isn’t leaving. She’s staying in my house. She’s unpacked suitcases, filled up dresser drawers. I don’t think she has any plans to go home. Neither does Samantha, for that matter. She just keeps waving her phone in my face and telling me she can work from anywhere. Do you know what this is doing to me?”

“They’re trying to help you,” he reminded her. “They are your family and they love you despite all the drama of the past. If you would stop being so stubborn, you might see that. You might realize that we’re all of us here for you, Scout.”

She grimaced and crossed her arms over her chest. Typical Scout defense mode.

“I don’t need their help. There is nothing anyone can do. He’s gone. There is no bringing him back. What are they going to do? Wave some magic wand and fix me? They can’t. I’m broken and that’s all there is. But I’ve still got two eyes and two ears and I’ll know if a sixteen-year-old hitter has the stuff.”

Jayson did stand then and walk around his desk. He tried not to feel hurt when she took a deliberate step back. Sometimes when he was around her he felt like his skin was laced with some kind of poison, that the merest touch might kill her.

“Scout, you’re not eating, you don’t sleep. You’re not...strong enough to be out on the road day in and day out. I won’t let you do it.”

That apparently was not the correct thing to say. For a man walking a tightrope, mistakes like that could be fatal.

“You won’t let me?” she screeched.

And there it was. It was one of Scout’s least attractive traits. When she was angry, truly angry, her voice would rise five octaves until she sounded, as her sister Lane so accurately described it, like a howler monkey.

“Let. Me,” she screeched again.

“Scout, calm down.”

“You don’t get to let me do anything. Am I or am I not a member of the New England Rebels scouting team?”

She was. The decision had been made by the Rebels prior to Duff’s death. Scout was to take a sabbatical to care for her dying father, but when she was ready to return she would go back to her old job of scouting, reporting directly to Greg.

He really couldn’t stop her from working if that was what she wanted.

“I’m broken and that’s all there is.”

Finally, she’d said it, Jayson thought. As if she was never not going to be broken.

That’s why I brought you here, son. You’ve got to fix her.

Jayson shook his head. He hated when that happened. When his subconscious called up these sentences, which sounded in his head as if Duff were talking directly to him. Which of course was ridiculous because he was dead.

Jayson’s very Catholic mother would have said it was Duff talking to him from heaven.

Either way it mostly scared the crap out of him.

“Answer me!”

Yep. Full-on howler monkey.

“You are.”

“Then I get to determine when I go back to work, and I say I’m ready to go back now. I’m going to call Greg and let him know myself.”

“Fine. Then why did you even come down here? You obviously weren’t asking for my opinion.”

“Because...”

He took some satisfaction in that. She’d come down to tell him because she did want his blessing. Maybe his support, too. She couldn’t help herself.

In the months leading up to Duff’s death, he and Scout had basically called a time-out on their own personal drama. Neither really had the energy to deal with what they’d once meant to each other and the anger that was still there on both sides four years later. He’d been this quiet presence in her life and she’d let him be there.

In the past two weeks, though, it seemed like that temporary freeze was beginning to thaw. Scout was getting pricklier and more defensive. For his part, that tightrope was getting harder and harder to walk.

They gravitated toward each other. They couldn’t seem to help it. He went to her house, she came to his. Sometimes to cry, sometimes to talk.

Never to touch. Touching was clearly forbidden.

Jayson knew why she’d really come to the stadium. She couldn’t help herself and it made him feel he wasn’t alone in his suffering.

Gravity. It was a hell of thing.

“I didn’t think about it... I just figured I would let you know,” she said softly as if realizing there was no legitimate reason to tell him about her decision to return to work. “I’ll call Greg.”

Again Jayson felt this heavy throb of pain. He couldn’t let her do this, but he wasn’t going to be able to stop her, either.

“Hey, can I tag along with you on your first few outings? I’ll make sure you’re doing the necessary things like eating and sleeping and at the same time I can keep myself busy. You know I hate this period.”

She smiled. “Some people look forward to a little downtime in the off-season.”

“I’m not one of them.”

She paused for a second, as if considering her options, but then she nodded. “It might be good to have company. I get a little crazy in my head when I’m by myself. Probably the only reason I haven’t kicked out Mom and Bob. Bob! Can you believe it? Him staying in Duff’s house of all places.”

“He’s not a bad guy,” Jayson told her. “Did you know he was with your mom before she met Duff? He was actually a navy SEAL. He was being sent off to some hotspot for an undisclosed duration. He didn’t want your mom to wait so he decided to break up with her before he left.”

Scout just stared at him. “Who told you that?”

She probably wasn’t going to like this either, but it was time Jayson stopped hiding that he disagreed with Scout’s decision to shun her mother. Family was family and she needed all of hers. That Alice had managed to get her foot in the door at Scout’s house and keep it there meant maybe Scout somehow was aware of it, too.

“I was talking to him after the funeral. Your mom, too, for that matter. You two are a lot alike.”

“We are not! She’s a cheater and I can’t believe you would take their side.”

“There are no sides here, Scout.”

“Yes, there are. Theirs and mine. You get that better than anyone and now you are choosing their side. Great, just great!”

He could see the tears in her eyes and the hysteria building. In two steps he was in front of her, his hands around her upper arms, shaking her a little and forcing her to look at him.

“Scout, I’m here for you. For you. And I’m not going anywhere. Got it?”

She looked right into his eyes in a way that always made his insides tighten. As if she was seeing straight through him.

“Until you leave me again. Yeah,” she said pulling away from him. “I got it.”

There it was. The final second of their time-out just ticked on the clock.

The past was back.

Which meant so was the pain.

Five years ago...

SCOUT WAS STILL trying to process the fact that Jayson LeBec’s tongue was in her mouth. Man, he tasted good. Like sparkling water that bubbled as she drank it and made her whole body want to squirm.

The wedding of the owner of the Minotaurs, Jocelyn Taft, and the town’s head sports writer—only sports writer, really—Pete Wright, was still going strong, but Scout and Jayson had decided there were other things they would rather be doing.

This night had been perfect, Scout thought. Executed one hundred percent according to plan. She’d had a crush on Jayson since the day he showed up in Minotaur Falls after her father asked him to come join the team.

Maybe before that...when she saw him as a player run smack-dab into a brick wall just to catch a fly ball. That act had captured Duff’s attention certainly. He believed that someone who loved baseball so much, even if his playing career was over, should still be part of the game.

Scout was tasked with teaching Jayson everything she knew, starting with assessing the talent. The two began doing some scouting for the Rebels, and Scout knew from the moment they’d shared a three-hour car ride talking easily the whole way that Jayson was going to be someone special.

Scout had never been able to talk to boys when she was a young girl. She couldn’t really talk to men now that she was a woman.

But Jayson was different.

Which was why this wedding had been the perfect opportunity to ask him out without really asking him out. If he didn’t like her, she could say she had asked him as a friend. If he did like her...

Well, then the world would be a perfect place.

In traditional Scout fashion she hadn’t been subtle about her interest. The nerves of being with him while he was looking so handsome, when she’d done everything she could to look as good as she could, finally caught up with her.

“So what’s the deal? Do you like me or not?”

Incredibly, the answer had been yes. Incredibly, if she hadn’t asked him to the wedding, then apparently he would have asked her. Incredibly, he’d been liking her the whole time she’d been liking him.

That never happened to her!

Except it had with Jayson and now they were back in his hotel room. They had each gotten rooms at the hotel next to the venue so that they could drink and enjoy the night without worrying about driving home. Now it looked as if they were only going to need one room.

A thought that immediately took Scout out of her body and put her back firmly in her head.

“Hold on,” she huffed. Things were spiraling out of her control so fast she actually felt dizzy.

Jayson took a step back and smiled. “I know, right? This is crazy. I’ve never felt this...needy. Wait, that was wrong. I don’t want you to think... I mean we don’t have to do this, Scout. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

“No! I want to do this. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. With you.”

Jayson stepped toward her again, and Scout was both excited and scared. So scared she took a step back.

Jayson tilted his head in that way he did, as if she was amusing him. After all, she’d just told him she wanted to have sex with him and then she’d moved away from him. Who did that?

“Are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?”

He said that to her anytime they were on the road and she would start to get ornery about when and where they were going to eat. He liked steak places, she preferred fried food. When it came time to actually decide on a place he would always ask her, “Are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?”

Her answer was always the hard way because that would make him groan and that would make her smile.

Given the circumstances she didn’t think that was a very good answer.

Sex and hard. No, she wasn’t really ready for that. She should probably tell him this would be her first time, but instinctively she knew that if she did that would freak him out. After all she was twenty-four soon to be twenty-five. Who stayed a virgin that long? Then they would have to talk about it, and he would be self-conscious about it and it would ruin the whole night.

It made more sense to just do it. She adored Jayson. She was hot for Jayson. His kiss alone had aroused her more than anything she could remember in her life, and apparently she wasn’t the only one affected.

“Let’s do this...the best way.” She took a step toward him and rested a hand over his heart. She could feel how fast it was beating and that made her smile. She had done that to him.

Then he was kissing her again and once more she left her head and felt only her body. Her whole body when he pressed against her, her nipples when he lifted a hand to hold her breast, her belly when his erection pressed into her.

It was perfect.

Until it all went wrong.

Present

SCOUT WALKED IN through the kitchen and stopped when she saw Bob sitting at the table, drinking a cup of what she imagined was coffee and reading the paper. Her paper.

“Hey, Scout,” he said casually without looking up from said paper.

“Hello, Bob,” she said stiffly.

“I just made a pot of coffee if you want some.”

She did want some. She was exhausted. What Jayson had said about not sleeping was true. She was determined to stay away from the sleeping pills, though. For that first week it had been too easy to take them and wonder if she would never have to wake up again. Duff would have been furious if he knew she’d even entertained such thoughts.

Which of course she didn’t. Not really.

So she skipped the pills and dealt with all the stuff that was in her head keeping her up at night. Which meant at three in the afternoon she was about ready to collapse. A cup of coffee would go a long way toward getting her through the rest of the day.

It was the idea of taking anything from Bob that stopped her.

Although technically she had bought the coffee. So really it wasn’t as if she was taking anything from him.

“Thanks,” she said in the same tone that she always used with him. She’d met Bob when she was fourteen. Had lived with him and her mother for nine months until they all realized it just wasn’t going to work out. So she knew to be polite and respectful because that’s how she had been raised.

But hello, goodbye and thanks pretty much made up the bulk of any conversations between them.

Except today she’d learned something about him. Something she’d never known. He’d served in the military. Not only served but actually made it to the level of a navy SEAL. She supposed it fit. Even for an older guy he was in super shape. Still, it never would have occurred to her to ask him any personal questions, so it’s not like the topic would ever come up on its own.

Scout actively did not listen any time her mother even mentioned his name. He’d always just been Bob, the man her traitorous bitch of a mother left Duff for. Because of this man, her mother had hurt her father. It was probably odd that Scout didn’t blame Bob more. How did she know he didn’t seduce her mother? That her mother wasn’t some helpless victim in the face of Bob’s charm and physical appeal?

She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about their relationship. Only that there was one while Alice had still been married to Duff. Which was wrong. Except now she knew that Alice and Bob had known each other even longer than Scout realized.

“Were you ever married before, Bob?”

To say that his expression was stunned would’ve been an understatement. It might have been the first full sentence he’d ever heard out of Scout.

“I mean before my mother...”

“I know what you mean,” he said slowly. He folded the paper he’d been reading carefully as if he were afraid any sudden movements would send Scout running like a frightened rabbit.

Scout was interested enough in the answer to sit at the table with him, her hands wrapped around her cup of coffee.

“No, I never married before your mother.”

“How come? I mean you’re a decent-looking guy now, so you were probably good-looking back in the day.”

He smiled and when he did she could see that she was right. Bob had blue eyes and dark black hair peppered with silver. He practically wore the map of Ireland on his face. With his face and body he would have been a total babe.

“I’ll take the compliment and say that this is a very strange day. You want the truth? The real story? Because you’re probably not going to like it much.”

Scout shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but she did want the truth.