Imaginary Lines (New York Leopards 3)

He shook his head, as though the question overwhelmed him. “I don’t know.”

When I’d been thirteen years old, our parents had taken us up to Point Reyes for a long weekend during the summer. We’d stopped at Stinson Beach, which Abe had delighted in telling me was a Great White breeding ground, and the two of us had splashed around in the water with Charlie, who was soaking wet and the happiest puppy I had ever seen.

That had been the first time I’d ever seen Abe stare at the moon, and I’d asked him if he wanted to be an astronaut. He’d also said I don’t know back then, but he’d sounded contemplative. “You know when we were kids, I asked you if you wanted to go to the moon.”

He looked at me now in surprise. “You did? What did I say?”

“That you weren’t sure, but maybe. And then you asked me right back, and I said that would never happen, because I was scared of heights.” I smiled at the memory. “That was the first time I ever admitted I was afraid, you know. And you just looked at me with utter certainty and said I could do it.”

“You could. Do heights still bother you?”

I shook my head. “Not the point. The point is, I have that same belief. You can be scared or nervous or uncertain, but it won’t stop you. You’re not the kind of person who can be stopped.”

He regarded me for a long minute with a strange expression on his face, and then nodded briefly, like he’d come to a sudden decision. “What are you doing this Friday?”

“Nothing, I guess. Why?”

He caught my hand, his thumb resting in the center of my palm. Energy jolted through me. “Come to dinner with me.”

I stared at him. “Abe, you’re confusing me.”

He ruffled his hair with his free hand. “You’re confusing me.”

And how was I doing that? I slowly drew my hand away, but he wouldn’t relinquish my gaze. “All right. Friday. I’ll go with you.”

He grinned, and it lit his whole face, and my spirit with it. “Great. You’ll have a ton of fun.” He reached out and enveloped me in a hug, and banked desire rushed through me. For the briefest instant, I allowed myself to relax into the contact, and then I forced myself back.

“I’ll pick you up at work.”

Even as my heart jumped, I tried to calm it down. “You don’t need to do that. I can meet you there.”

He frowned, and his dark eyes probed mine. “Why do you keep telling me I don’t have to do things? I want to.”

I tilted my head. “You want to pick me up at the Sports Today offices?”

“I’ll be there at six.”

Chapter Ten

On Thursday night, I baked hermit cookies to take to Ryan Carter’s (words I’d never thought I’d utter). They were my grandma’s recipe, packed with cinnamon and cloves and allspice. I left out the raisins and nuts in place of extra chocolate chips, and then formed them in a log and sliced it diagonally.

I was in such a good mood that I whipped up a quadruple batch—enough for the party, my roommates and my coworkers.

At work, the guys fell upon them even though it wasn’t yet nine in the morning. “They have spices,” Carlos reasoned. “Spices are plants. Therefore, this is healthy.”

Sounded logical to me.

That afternoon, I worked on a story on the performance of the new quarterback, Jensen Clay. He’d apparently decided it was a good idea to go out drinking and driving, and had crashed a Lamborghini into a tree. While no one was hurt—not even the dumbass driver—it didn’t make the newest member of the Leopards look like a great addition. The networks and blogs were in a frenzy over his behavior, ousting even news of helmets.

Well, that wasn’t so much of a surprise. The young QB was barely twenty-one, pretty as a boy-band member and with a record of pulling crazy stunts. Made him something of the press’s darling. A blip compared to Carter, sure, but Carter had settled after he started dating someone seriously a few years back, and no longer provided off-field stories.

I wrapped the story, complete with links to a few of the other articles we’d run on him and included some appropriately pithy quotes, and then moved on to my next article. But I couldn’t help glancing at my phone every five seconds, waiting for Abe.

I still started when it dinged.

You ready?

Yeah—you almost here?