With neither of them at the away games, the Mustangs’ winning streak would most likely come to an end. A brutal but inescapable truth.
“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked, and the note of genuine concern in her voice unfolded all the emotion inside that he’d been trying to keep under wraps.
Silently, he kissed her shoulder, worried something inappropriate—like yes—would slip out if he tried to speak. The fact that she’d offered meant more to him than he could say.
Because she deserved an answer, he finally choked out, “No need.”
She rolled in his arms and glanced at him, her eyes warm and huge. “This is really bothering you, isn’t it?”
He shook his head. Why he’d denied it, when it was obvious she’d already figured that out, was a mystery to him. “I don’t know. Yeah. Maybe. I feel like I should have known or something.”
Of course doping went on. It was no different today than when he’d been pitching. Everyone knew who was doing it and who wasn’t. Logan had never touched the stuff. Fortunately, he’d been good enough that he’d never been pressured like some of the guys.
Maybe Johnson had felt some of that pressure. Had Logan inadvertently been one of those pressure points?
“You didn’t do this, darling. It’s not on you.”
“I’m the boss,” he said simply. “And I feel like I failed at keeping my team strong. My dad ran a billion-dollar company for years and years, and he never let anything like this happen to him.”
“You’re not your dad, Logan. And this is a totally different industry with different rules and strategies. You have to lead like you.” She fanned her fingers across his cheek, lightly caressing as she spoke the gospel according to Trinity. “You can’t compare yourself to someone who’s gone, either. You don’t know what might have happened if he’d lived. Maybe someone in his organization would have been brought up on insider trading. Would that have been his fault for hiring someone who made bad choices?”
No. Of course not.
“You’re not allowed to make me feel better with logic,” he grumbled.
But her point was not lost on him, and some of the weight lifted. Exactly what he’d hoped would happen when he’d gotten into his car to come over here. Somehow, she made life...brighter.
She laughed and kissed him sweetly. “What if I make you feel better a whole other way?”
Her legs tangled with his, and her wandering hands left no doubt how she intended to make good on that. Since he was pretty sure she could deliver, he let her.
But the whole time he was pondering some huge questions of his own—like, if he wasn’t his dad and it was okay to do things his own way, did that mean he could admit he didn’t want a nice, unassuming woman? And that maybe the reason he’d never met the right woman had to do with the fact that he hadn’t met Trinity yet?
But the most important question of all was, what would she say if he told her that despite all of his objections to the contrary, he was falling for her?
* * *
Logan left to go to New York, and Trinity spent a lot of time pretending she didn’t miss him.
Funny how she’d never watched sports in her life, would have claimed under oath she hated the concept of grown men throwing balls around in some macho contest. But for God knew what reason, she couldn’t go to sleep at night unless a baseball game was on in the background.
The Mustangs’ winning streak ended as Logan had predicted that night before he’d gone to the meetings. But they won the next one even though she wasn’t at the game to provide good luck, which was such a silly concept. Of course she’d never say that to Logan’s face, since he took his superstition so seriously.
He texted her occasionally with updates, but there was nothing in the messages that indicated his state of mind or whether he was thinking about her like she thought about him. Days stretched into a week, but neither of them approached the subject about when he was coming home or if they’d pick up where they left off when he did.
The Formula-47 marketing presentation had been rescheduled a couple of times due to everyone’s crazy travel schedules, but finally, Cass threw a dart at a day and told everyone they better attend or else.
That morning, Trinity had a nearly impossible time dragging herself out of bed. Despite having subscribed to her cable channel’s baseball package—which she would deny if anyone called her on it—there hadn’t been one game on the night before, and sleep had come fitfully.
While she was busy not sleeping, her mind kept turning over whether Logan was using this trip to New York as a break—from her. Fyra’s numbers were up. Logan’s ticket sales had gone through the roof. There was little reason to continue seeing each other. But she didn’t want to be done. Selfishly, she’d used their publicity campaign to pretend their relationship was real, and she’d liked it far more than she’d expected, especially given that it had been a very long time since she’d spent time with a man outside of bed.