Stef Ann Holm, Lucy Back [paper ebook reader .TXT] 📗

“Well, Caroline and I got things settled.”

“I know. She told me. She told me to give you a chance.”

“I’m glad she said that.”

“I wish I’d never come—” she reached for a ball, took a swing, but missed “—out here. It was a bad idea. If Brad hadn’t two-timed me, I would have spent the summer in Florida with Aunt Lynette.”

There were a few implications here: an unfaithful boyfriend. So did that mean Mackenzie had had sex with him and then he’d gone out and had sex with someone else? The scenario paralyzed Drew. He couldn’t think about his daughter making that choice, and he hoped Caroline would have talked to her about responsibilities. He’d bet his Cy Young Award she had. Something else struck him—her being here didn’t have anything to do with him, but rather she’d used him as an escape.

That reality stung. But he had to own part of it. He’d done her wrong, and she owed him nothing. Even so, he recognized the hurt that nicked his heart.

“Who’s Brad?” he asked, tempering the father-instinct in his voice. If the kid had even laid a hand on her…

“Nobody.”

“How come you ran away from nobody?”

Mackenzie abruptly stepped out of the batter’s box and a missed ball slapped the wire of the cage, falling to the ground.

Hand on her slight hip, she glared at him with hazel eyes. “He was my boyfriend and I never did that with him since I know that’s what you’re thinking. Maybe if I had, he wouldn’t have done it with Misty Connors, but I’m over him so I don’t care anymore.” Blowing the hair off her forehead, she wiped her damp skin with the back of her hand. “I shouldn’t have told ya’ll why I came. Momma said bad manners are no excuse to give bad manners in return. I didn’t mean to tell you that’s why I changed my mind, but now that it’s out, you know.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Of course not.”

Ball after ball methodically hit the chain link. Drew opened the gate, went inside and turned the machine off. Facing her, he tried to form the right words. “Mackenzie, I have to ask you something.”

Her chin rose, defiant and on guard.

“I know I wasn’t around when you were growing up. I’m sure when you found out who I was, it was a shock to you.”

She released the bat and it made a sharp noise hitting the ground. Her breathing seemed to catch in her throat. “When I saw your name on my birth certificate, I flipped. I knew exactly who ya’ll were—I’d been looking at your picture on the Wheaties box that morning when I was eating my breakfast!”

Unsnapping the strap, she removed the helmet and set it down. Her hands shook as she smoothed her hair from her face. “I don’t know if you know this, but my momma always encouraged me to love baseball, and she even told me she had known some baseball players when she worked at the motel. She especially pointed you out when Dodgers games came on the TV. She did that so when the day came and she had to explain you were my real father, I’d have good thoughts about you—like it would almost feel as if we’d been friends.” Her hair was flicked over her shoulder with a terse move. “When I was twelve and I saw you walking up our steps, it was like that Wheaties box come to life.”

A long span of time stretched between them. He wasn’t sure what to say, how to say what he had to. The tension between them was thicker than the August air.

“I should have come sooner,” he finally said, then explained, “Your mother brought you to Vero Beach when you were seven.”

“I know.” Ah know. The Southern vowels were punctuated by her distress.

“She wasn’t how I remembered. She’d developed into a fine-looking woman, not that girl I’d met so long ago. She’d grown up, gotten rid of some of her shyness. She came right up to me in the locker room and she said, ‘I have your baby daughter sitting in the bleachers and I want you to meet her.’”

“Why didn’t you come out?”

“I couldn’t.” Drew’s response was spoken fast. His mind raced, trying to organize thoughts to clarity. “Meeting you would have been more than meeting a seven-year-old little girl. You would have expected me to be your dad. I couldn’t deal with it.”

“And how do you think that makes me feel?”

“Mackenzie, I’m so sorry. Back then, I was a full-blown alcoholic. I didn’t know the upside to a bottle from looking at it down the neck. Every night I got trashed, and every day I played baseball better than the day before. It took years before it caught up with me, but at that time in my life, I wasn’t any good to myself, so I sure as hell wouldn’t have been any good to you.”

Her full lips almost formed an obvious pout, a stubborn streak with a defiant downturn of the corners. “So you never did those drugs like the newspapers said?”

“No, Mackenzie. Never.”

She digested that news. “What made you come see me when I was twelve? Were you still drinking?”

“I’d been sober for two years, but that didn’t mean I thought with a sober conscience. The behavior of an alcoholic is still there even though they’re not drinking. It’s taken me some time to heal. Your mother kept sending me pictures of you throughout the years, and it was when you were twelve that I saw something that scared me. I knew you were mine—the photo of you standing by the rosebush with your hair on your shoulders and that expression on your face, the look in your eyes. But I needed scientific proof, so I asked her for that paternity test.”

“She told you to go to hell and get off our porch.”

“So I didn’t come back for two years.”

When Mackenzie had been fourteen, he’d returned to Kissimmee and