Page 26 of Curveball (Tennessee Terrors #9)

Max

What did I just read?

Palmer jackknifes to a straight-backed position, her words nearly frantic with concern. “Max! What is it? Is everything okay?”

Everything is so far from okay I can’t even speak. I shove my phone in her face and wait for her reaction.

Mighty Max Murphy Cozy With Wife and Son of Convicted Swindler. Is She Out For His Money…Again?

Below the bold headline is a photo of the two of us, obviously taken after last night’s game, when we were hunched together at the side of the dugout, foreheads together, fingertips nearly touching, and the effect is damning .

But it’s the smaller picture inset in the bottom right that explodes my world and threatens my sense of security.

It’s Dylan standing on a pitching mound with a ball in his hand, wearing shorts and a Terrors tee, hat turned backward . . . and me standing beside him, giving him tips.

In my own back yard.

“The fuck are you playing at?” I roar.

My eyes haven’t left Palmer, waiting for an honest reaction from her, yet knowing she’ll deny whatever she’s being accused of. The waterworks will commence. The sobbing. The begging. The lying.

But then her eyes go hot , and obsidian, and her face contorts with obvious fury.

She snatches the phone from my hand and springs forward from her chair.

“Why won’t he ever leave us alone?”

Her words seep through my red-hot wrath and her message registers. Girl is pissed , maybe as much as I am. It’s the one single reaction I don’t expect from her. If this is an act, she deserves an Oscar. I wrench my phone from her fist.

“You’re going to want to explain this”—I shake the screen and the damning words in her face—“All of this! And I need you to start, right fucking now!”

She jerks her face upward to look at me, then bolts from her chair.

“Dammit, Max. I don’t even . . . I can’t believe . . . God damn fucking shit!”

She whips off her sunglasses and launches them into the water.

It hits me like a freight train that I’ve witnessed sunshiny Palmer Sloan this angry only once before. It was the time she unleashed on me when she thought my call was coming from someone else. Not from her husband—er, her ex-husband —but his family.

I toss my phone aside because the story’s obviously libelous bullshit. Fake news. Clickbait. I’ll send it off to Flynn and he’ll have my lawyer handle that shit ASAP. But the rest of it— this assault on my family’s privacy? This, I’ll deal with right the fuck now.

“The hell are they doing, Palmer? And why involve me?”

She’s striding back and forth as if she can’t stand still, almost in a trance, yet muttering to herself, tugging on her hair till the blonde strands are loose of its casual braid and wild around her face. She looks up at me, her expression pleading. “Look, I can?—”

“Bullshit! The fuck are they doing? And who the hell are they ?”

“Max, leave it! This is my problem. I’ll?—”

“The fuck it is! They just made it my problem when they invaded my home—my family—and you will let me help you! Now, who is this? Is it him ? His brother? I’ll have someone?—”

I’m pacing with her, so it’s both of us now, back and forth and around in circles—too much raw energy and emotion to sit in one place or walk a straight line. Palmer halts, drops her chin to her chest as if she’s battled so long and so hard and is finally defeated.

“His dad. It’s his father.”

This news doesn’t shock me. She’s given away tiny clues, probably without intention. I drop to a lounger and pull her down beside me. She struggles, tries to stand, and I tug her back down.

“Tell me about your ex, and what his father wants,” I say, because I need to hear it from her.

And Palmer fucking unloads .

“Do you remember the year the Comets won the championship and played Boston in the Fall Classic?”

“Palmer,” I say in a warning tone. I’m done with games.

“Please. You know when I’m talking about?”

“Stretching my memory, but sure.”

Facing straight ahead as though she can’t force herself to look me in the eye, she nods, one curt, satisfied bob of her head.

“Right about that time, there was a court case in California—securities fraud, money laundering, a host of lesser accusations.”

“I remember that. The press called the guy Baby Bernie. It was huge.”

“Yeah, it was huge. The guy’s name was Alejandro Lopez, Junior. Alex. He was my husband.”

Of all the situations she could have revealed, this is the comebacker. The line drive hit directly toward me—only, this time, I am distracted and unable to dodge it or stick out my glove. This ball lands in my gut and nearly knocks the air from my lungs.

I slide a foot or so away from her and take a moment—to breathe, to think. I’m going to need a lot more space and a lot more time, but that will have to wait. When my lungs are no longer on fire, I take a deep gulp and prompt her to continue the story.

“And where is he now. Alex. Is he?—”

“In prison. He’s been there since Dylan was five. He barely remembers him.”

“And this mess”—I wave my hand vaguely, to indicate the entire fucking thing—the article in my phone, my practice yard that may never feel safe again—“This is his father?”

She nods, her eyes closed, her head tilted back. “He wants Dylan.”

Whatever air I’ve managed to recapture leaves my lungs in a whoosh . I pinch the bridge of my nose, because why the fuck not? I can’t breathe anyway.

“It’s something like a custody battle with my father-in-law, except . . . it’s more. It’s harassment. It’s threats, and extortion.”

She lifts one shoulder in a weak measure of something like defeat. This woman who argues and fights and cares for her son and those she holds dear, and she’s at the end of her rope. There’s got to be a knot she can hold on to.

“But you contacted the authorities? The police, the fucking feds? Can they help? Will they ?”

There’s no teasing in her bleak French roast-colored eyes when she finally faces me.

“He lost everything to Alex, but now he has money again. His business is doing well so he has some clout, and he has influential friends. He won’t let up.

“He says I’m a terrible mother. I can’t give my son the life we had in California, and he’ll never stop bothering me because he’s certain I must be waiting for Alex.

In his mind, I want our old life again—the big house and garage full of cars we had when we were married—and to be a family with him. ”

I lean forward, prop my forearms on my knees, and stare at the flagstone between my feet. I don’t want to see her face when she answers.

“Do you?”

“No!”

She shouts her answer, and the word is swift and certain, full of fire and conviction. I can’t doubt her.

“No,” she says again, and the relief flowing through me is overwhelming.

“What if you ghost him? Can you simply not take his calls, send him to voicemail and use those as evidence with the authorities? Hell, I don’t know, but you have to have some kind of recourse.”

I’m frantic, grasping at straws. She’s been dealing with this prick for years and I’m only hearing all this now. What the hell do I know?

“There’s more.”

Oh fuck . “What else can?—”

“He’s been contacting Dylan directly.”

My heart stops.

“He’s doing what? ”

She squeezes her eyes shut, as though that will make the words and the image evaporate from her mind. I drop down beside her and wrap an arm around her shoulders. By now, I need the comfort as much as she does.

“That text Dylan got last night while we were in the parking lot?”

“That was him?”

“Yes, it was him, because he’s too self-absorbed to even consider a difference in time zones.”

I can’t sit still. I pull my arm away and I’m up again. Pacing again. Marching from one end of the deck to the other. I want to personally rip every one of his limbs from his body.

“What’ll it take for him to let up?”

I want to make sure his worthless son never sees parole. To rake him over the coals; to bankrupt every one of his business dealings. I want to take away the thing that means the most to him, but I don’t even know what that is. Is it his son? His grandson? His money? No telling with men like him.

From her seat on the cushioned lounge chair, she gives a derisive snort. “Nothing. There isn’t a damn thing, or don’t you think I’d have done it years ago? He never had an interest in Dylan until Alex went away, and now, it’s like he’s trying to replace his son with a surrogate.”

I resume my seat beside her on the cushion and lean forward. “There has to be something you can do to make him give up this fight.”

“Whatever it is, he’d have to know he could never win. There could be no doubt at all. Otherwise, he has hope.”

She lifts both hands in the air. In uncertainty, or supplication, or hopelessness—but those she can recover from.

I take her hands and hold them in mine, a bundle clenched on my thigh.

I don’t want her to ever again feel defeated.

She looks sideways at me, her dark eyes clear in the dim light of the dusk.

“I should have remarried long ago. He’d be pissed, but what could he do about it, after the fact? Not that there ever was anyone I was serious about, let alone want to be a wife to, but if I’d known his actions would lead to this . . .”

And right there, in her very own words, I find her a knot. I tip my head to hold her gaze and tighten my grip, and when she pinches her brow and yanks to tug her hands away, I hold on tight.

“Marry me.”