Center Stage: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 8) Read Online Free PDF

opened. A dark shape stood out against those blinding headlights, a lean body, black as a panther in the silhouette. He stopped at her trunk, like he was waiting for her to get out of the car. When she didn’t oblige, he took a few steps closer, bringing himself even with her back door, where he stopped again.
    That wasn’t the behavior she expected. It wasn’t the predatory approach she’d braced for. She squinted into her side mirror, trying to anticipate what he would do next. She could just make out the lines of his dark suit, a snow-white dress shirt. She pried her left hand from her steering wheel, turning her palm sideways to block the glare of his headlights in her side mirror.
    “Lindsey?”
    What the hell?
    Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have recognized the voice, but she’d just been talking to the guy, half an hour earlier. She slammed her car into park and threw her car door open. “Ryan Green, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
    He leaped back a full step, throwing up his right arm like he was warding off a demon.
    She closed the distance between them. “I thought you were trying to kidnap me!” She let some of her adrenaline flow down her arms, stiffening the fingers she jabbed into his chest, forcing him to take another step back.
    “Hey,” he shouted. “I thought your car broke down.”
    “Sure! Right! And you just happened to be driving along behind me, the friendly local automobile association.” Her voice climbed half an octave, even as her fingertips started to tingle in relief. She forced herself to take three deep breaths, to push back the billowy black curtains that threatened to blow her to her knees.
    “I didn’t ‘just happen—’”
    “God save me, Zach put you up to this, didn’t he?”
    “No, he—”
    “He just couldn’t bear the thought of me making a decision for myself!”
    “Your brother didn’t—”
    “He just couldn’t trust me to drive out to the farmhouse by myself, one freaking time!”
    “Hey!” he barked again, and this time his voice was sharp enough that she had to stop her tirade. Her pulse pounded in her ears, the only sound she could hear, even though she knew there had to be crickets and her engine running and dozens of other night-time noises. Ryan pitched his voice low, like he was talking to some frightened animal, a mouse or a rabbit or something. “Your brother didn’t send me out here. I followed you because I was worried. I saw you miss the stop sign at the church parking lot.”
    “I didn’t miss the stop sign,” she said.
    He ignored her. “I didn’t think you should come all the way out here alone.”
    “I am perfectly capable of driving myself to my family’s farmhouse. I grew up out here, for God’s sake. I learned to drive on this road.”
    Even in the darkness, she could see his embarrassed shrug. She could hear the unease in his voice when he said, “You’ve had a crappy day. A long one. I just wanted to make sure you got out here in one piece.”
    His kindness brought her tears all the way up to the surface. Terrified that she was going to start blubbering like a baby, she straightened her spine and drew on her chilliest acting voice. “Do you have any idea what I thought you were going to do to me?”
    He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “Yeah. I mean, I can guess. I’m sorry.”
    He looked so sheepish, she had to unlock a little of her backbone. He really hadn’t meant to terrify her. He’d been trying to do something nice. And she had missed that stop sign, not that she’d ever admit it to another living soul. “Okay,” she said at last. “Well, um, thanks.”
    “No problem.” His eyes were still serious as he stood there in the dark, his hands jammed in his pockets, his head dipped down like some sort of bashful boy at his first school dance.
    She swallowed hard. She was not about to start thinking about any boy at any dance. She was never thinking about another guy, ever again. “So, I’m