“Look at these.” Thea thrust a collection of school-related tapes in his face. “The girls would love these.”
Gavin returned them to the shelf. She watched him with a confused expression “Why’d you do that?”
“We’re here for stuff for you, not the girls.” He reached over her and grabbed some others that looked like re-creations of Van Gogh paintings. “What about these?”
She plucked them from his fingers and threw them in the cart.
“Have you ever heard of Pinterest?” he asked a few minutes later.
Thea looked at him as if he asked if she’d ever heard of Elvis. “Seriously? I live on Pinterest.”
“You have an account on there?”
“Um, yeah. Why?”
“What do you use it for?”
Thea let out a shrugged breath. “God, what don’t I use it for? Recipes. Craft projects I want to try. Parenting tips. Cute dog pictures. Why?”
His cheeks got hot. “There are . . . pictures of me on that site.”
Thea snorted out a laugh. “I know.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“Did you just discover Pinterest or something?”
“Sort of.” He tilted his head. “So you’ve seen pictures of me on there?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. I have a board dedicated to the Legends, so the site’s algorithm automatically sends me related pins to consider, and that often includes you. Especially since . . .”
She let the sentence drop. Since the grand slam, she meant. She did not want to go there.
“So, you’ll just be sitting at your computer searching for pot roast recipes or whatever, and suddenly there’s a picture of your husband that some woman has posted?”
“Gavin, women have been posting pictures of you on every social media site since the day we met. Sometimes they even post pictures of us and photoshop me out of them. I’m used to it.”
“If there was a website where strange men posted thousands of pictures of you, yeah, I w-wouldn’t get used to it.”
“That’s different. I’m not famous like you are.”
“You’re the most important person in the w-w-world to me, so I beg to differ.”
Her lips parted, and a kaleidoscope of contrary emotions danced through her eyes. As if she didn’t believe him but desperately wanted to. Then, before he knew what was happening, she rose on tiptoe and placed the softest of kisses on his lips.
It was over so quickly that he almost didn’t believe it happened. She backed up with a small head shake. “Sorry, I don’t know why I did that.”
Gavin tried to ease the tension with a joke. “I should take you shopping for w-w-washi tape more often,” Gavin mused.
The joke worked. Thea relaxed. “Wait until you get me in the paintbrush aisle.”
“How fast can we get there?”
Thea playfully pushed at his chest.
Sadly, nothing happened in the paintbrush aisles. Nothing good, anyway. But after studying about twenty different brushes in various sizes between two different rows, Thea suddenly grabbed his arm and tugged him down so she could whisper.
“OK, you’re going to think I’m paranoid after that Pinterest conversation, but I think you might actually have a couple of crazy fans following you right now.”
The hair on the back of Gavin’s neck stood on end. “What are you talking about?”
“There are these two strange guys who keep showing up wherever we are in the store. They’re too obvious. I don’t know. Like they’re watching you but trying really hard to look like they’re not watching you.”
Gavin tried to keep his face neutral. “What do they look like?”
“I’ll point them out if we see them again. I’m probably just being paranoid.”
“Just stay close to me,” he said, tensing. This was the one thing he hated about being a ballplayer. His family was exposed. All joking about Pinterest aside, it sucked to know he couldn’t even go out with his wife without worrying that someone was going to stare enough to make her uncomfortable.
They checked out, and on the way out, he gave one last look back to see if the weird men she’d mentioned were still there. Seeing no one, he relaxed but kept his hand on her back as they walked. Gavin loaded the bags into the back of the car and then helped Thea into her seat again.
“So where to now?” she asked as he pulled onto the street.
He almost suggested a dark road and the back seat, but that was probably pushing his luck. “Dinner,” he said, turning left.
“Good. I’m starving.”
“Me too,” he said, looking pointedly at her. Her shy smile expanded his chest.
A quick drive on the freeway took them into the city. Even on a Tuesday, traffic sucked and crowds surged. Gavin inched through a stoplight and turned into a parking ramp near the restaurant. He pulled up to the valet stand as Thea reapplied lipstick and fluffed her hair in the mirror. His chest expanded again. She was so beautiful that it sometimes literally hurt to look at her. Like now.
After exchanging keys for a ticket with the valet attendant, Gavin once again put his hand on her back as they walked out to the street. They were a few blocks away from Broadway, the main tourist thoroughfare through downtown Nashville. But it was still crowded with both locals and out-of-towners who wanted something off the beaten path.
They walked mostly in silence for a block, stopping and going with the flow of tourists in search of bourbon and music. He kept her tucked protectively against his side, especially when the inevitable began.
“Dude, I think that was Gavin Scott,” a guy in cowboy boots said as they passed.
Thea looked up with a grin. “Dude,” she said with a snort.
“Just keep walking, and hopefully they’ll leave us alone.”
A few feet later, another man recognized him. “Hey, aren’t you—”
Gavin held up his free hand in a polite wave that said not now, please.
Since the grand slam, he got recognized more than he ever used to out in public. Which almost made him choose a different spot to bring her tonight, but the restaurant was a famous steak place that he knew Thea would love. It also featured live music and a dance floor, because there was no other kind of restaurant in Nashville. When Gavin made the reservation, he’d requested as private a table as possible. He didn’t use his own celebrity much, but he’d laid it on thick to ensure he got what he wanted. It paid off, because the hostess treated them like royalty when they arrived and led them to a private loft overlooking the dance floor.
The table was set for two with a candle in the center next to a vase full of daisies. The hostess said a waitress would be by soon to take their drink orders, and then she left them blissfully alone.
“Did you ask them to do that?” Thea asked, pointing to the daisies.
“I did.”
The gesture obviously made her uncomfortable. “I’m sorry I don’t remember that day, about the daisy.”
“I noticed you a long time before you noticed me, so I w-wouldn’t expect you to remember it.”
“Not a long time,” she argued.
“It was a pretty long time.”
“How long?”
“Two months.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s a lie.”
He laughed and held up his hands. “I swear.”
“You were coming to that coffeehouse for two months before I noticed you?”
“Yep. Broke my heart every day until you finally looked up one day and smiled at me.”
“But I noticed you before we smiled at each other.”
“Fine. How long?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. A few times.”
“Yeah, well, I hated coffee and only started going there hoping to see you again, so . . .”
Thea’s lips parted. “You did?”
“Yep.”
“How come you never told me that before?”
“Once I finally got up the nerve to talk to you, there was too much else I wanted to talk about, I guess.”
And because there were things they never talked about, like her parents. He’d tried several times, but Thea always shut down those conversations. He was dumb enough, apparently, to think that meant there was nothing worth talking about. But when he asked her if she wanted him to deal with her father, the wall went up like it always did. At least he now recognized the wall for what it was. At least he now knew that the wall needed to be knocked down.
The waitress interrupted quietly and asked if they wanted a bottle of wine. Gavin motioned for Thea to do the honors, because she was way better at that shit than he was. She quickly scanned the wine list and ordered a French-sounding chardonnay.
The waitress delivered the wine, poured two glasses, and then took their orders. Gavin moved his chair around to be closer to her and clinked his glass against hers.
Thea lifted an eyebrow. “Are we toasting?”
“Yes.”
“To what?
He considered saying something glib, like to washi tape. But he opted for something more mature and meaningful. “To our first date.”
Thea smiled into her wine, but then she glanced over his shoulder at the bar below and narrowed her eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“You remember those two guys I told you about at the store?”
His spine went rigid. “What about them?”
“They’re here.”
“Where?” He followed Thea’s point down to the bar. Two men quickly turned away. One wore a cowboy hat and sunglasses, the other a Detroit Red Wings jersey. He couldn’t see faces from this far up, but he’d know that cocky stance anywhere.
Braden-Fucking-Mack in a shit-assed disguise.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He was going to kill him. Trying to keep his voice neutral, Gavin asked, “You’re sure it’s the same guys?”
“Yeah. But it’s probably just coincidence, right?”