Graft: the joining of two plants.
“THAT girl of yours is pretty special,” Abe said.
“She is at that.” Pierce smiled at his father, who was sitting at the kitchen table heartily enjoying his lunch. His color was good, his mind sharp, he was slowly getting back to his old self.
“If she hadn’t figured out those sweet taters was causin’ me to get sick, the doc said I might have been a goner. Funny, a plant gal figured out what a bunch of high-powered doctors couldn’t.”
“Lace is a doctor,” Pierce said, pride swelling his chest. “She has a PhD in plant biology.”
“She’s sumpthin’ else.”
Yes, she was.
“You should marry her.” Abe waved his fork.
“She broke up with me,” Pierce said, but secretly, he couldn’t help hoping that the chaparral earrings and the note he’d included would touch Lace’s heart. Sending messages instead of showing up in person was not his normal modus operandi, but with Lace, the same old, same old wasn’t going to cut it. Normally, if he wanted to get back together with a woman—which, granted, was rare in itself—he’d show up at her door, flash his patented smile and two tickets for her favorite event. It has been a never-fail scheme.
Lace was different. For one thing, she was sharp as barbwire and would see through that tactic in a nanosecond. For another thing, she wasn’t like any other woman. When it came to Lace Bettingfield, he had to throw away the rulebook. She was one in a billion.
“Still can’t believe the Cowboys dropped you.” Abe shook his head.
“Me either,” Pierce confessed. He’d been blindsided, but he shouldn’t have been. He’d allowed his ego to get out of control.
“Another team will pick you up.”
It was a long shot. Pierce understood that now. He would not have one last victory touchdown. His career had ended on a down note. It couldn’t be helped. That’s just the way things were. He was thirty, not young for a ballplayer, and weakened from his injury. Even if another team picked him up, the chances of him doing anything spectacular were tiny. His career was over. He needed to face that.
Just like his affair with Lace might be over. It had been more than twenty-four hours since he’d sent the earrings and he hadn’t heard from her. He had one last Hail Mary pass to throw in his effort to win her back. If that didn’t work, he would have lost everything.
No, not all. He still had his father and Malcolm and the ranch. That was a long sight more than many people had. He was a lucky man. Why then did he feel so shattered?
“I appreciate you being here for me, son,” Abe said. “I know I was real hard on you growing up, but I was just pushin’ you to be the best ballplayer you could be.”
“I know that, Dad.”
“I’m proud of you, but not just because you played football. You’re a good son.”
“That means a lot, but Malcolm’s a good son too. You need to tell him that once in a while.”
Abe nodded.
Pierce’s cell phone rang. He fished it from his pocket. Frankie Kowalsky. “What’s up, Frankie?”
“Hold on to your Stetson, Hollister. I’ve got some major news. The Detroit Lions want you.”
“OMIGOD!” SHASTA CAME running into Lace’s office in the botanical gardens, a copy of the Cupid greensheet in her hands. “Did you see this?”
“See what?” Lace glanced up from the budget that was balancing quite nicely with money from Pierce’s generous endowment. Just thinking about him had her reaching up to touch the earring nestled in her earlobe. She’d spent the last two days trying to figure out if she fit into Pierce’s life.
“Listen to this.” Shasta cleared her throat and read, “Dear Tongue-Tied.”
Tongue-Tied? The name she’d used in her embarrassing letter to Cupid about Pierce? Lace’s hand froze on the computer mouse. “What? Give me that.” She snatched the greensheet from Shasta’s hand.
Dear Tongue-Tied,
I apologize that it has taken me twelve years to answer your letter. You are most certainly not a nobody. Never forget that you are very special. There is no one else like you. You are unique. A woman who can love with such stark intensity is a woman to be treasured. Have you ever considered that Pierce Hollister is pining for you as much as you’re pining for him? Try telling him how you feel. You just might be surprised.
Yours in love,
Cupid
Lace’s heart hammered. The words blurred on the page. She got up and marched from the botanical gardens to City Hall. Inside, she blew past the secretary and stormed into Carol Ann’s office.
“Who wrote this?” she demanded, shoving the greensheet across the desk of her startled aunt.
“I don’t know.”
“Was it Zoey?”
“Honestly, Lace, I don’t know.”
“Mignon?”
“She didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“Was it you?”
“I might be a lot of things, Lace Bettingfield, but I am not a liar.”
“Who is meddling in my love life?”
Carol Ann held up both palms. “Truly, I don’t know anything about this. Do you think . . .”
“What?”
“Well, that Pierce could have written it?”
She had not considered that, but the minute she did, her heart pounded all the harder and she just knew that it had been he. On trembling legs, she went back to the gardens, got into her Corolla, and headed for the Triple H, all the while absentmindedly fingering the chaparral earrings.
Ten minutes later, she pulled into the driveway and got out, her knees no sturdier than water. She climbed the back porch steps, knocked on the screen door, and held her breath.
Pierce answered, opened the inner door, and peered at her through the screen.
The sight of him made her head swirl and she realized she wasn’t breathing. Take a deep breath. “May I come in?”
He held open the screen, stepped aside for her to enter.
She walked past him, stopped, turned. Her throat was dry. How did she start? How to admit she had overreacted about Shasta—it wasn’t his fault the girl had a crush on him—and the other groupies? If she wanted to be with him, she’d have to learn how to take his fame in stride.
“You have every right to be mad,” he said.
She met his gaze. He was apologizing?
“I was cocky. Even after life took me down a peg or two.” He rubbed his left leg. “I still put up that cock-of-the-walk strut pretending that’s who I really am. It wasn’t until I was back in Cupid, until I met you again that I started to realize how much the persona I’d perfected had hobbled me. But you . . .” He shook his head. “You saw past all the bullshit. You saw me for who I really was.”
“Humble and lovable?”
“I don’t blame you for being upset over the incident with Shasta. If a naked man jumped out of your closet, I’d be pretty damn steamed.”
That made her giggle. “There will never be a naked man jumping out of my closet.”
He wriggled his eyebrows. “You never know. But it’s because of you, and the change I’ve made because of you, that’s allowed me to walk away from football.”
“What do you mean? The Cowboys dropped you.”
“Yes, but the Detroit Lions picked me up.”
“And you’re not taking their offer?”
“No.”
That stunned her. “Why not?”
“Because there are other things that are more important to me now. Dad, Malcolm, the ranch . . . you.”
“Pierce,” she whispered.
“What did you come here to tell me?” He stepped closer to her, his eyes latched on to hers.
“I surrender,” she said.
“Surrender?”
“Wave the white flag.”
He canted his head. “Okay.”
“I give up. You win. You made me fall in love with you all over again—Lulu, the endowment to the gardens, the earrings, the note, the Cupid letter in the greensheet. Who can resist an onslaught like that? I fought it. I resisted. I lost. So here I am, bare and raw and aching for you. Just as crazy in love as when I was fourteen. What do you have to say about that?”
“I say it’s about damn time you realized it.” Pierce pulled her into his arms and said the words she’d waited twelve long years to hear. “Because I love you too, Lace Bettingfield. I love you too.”