Ladies' Man Read Online Free PDF

“and I went, and we mixed all this horrible looking stuff together in his kitchen, and his mom even helped us figure out what we had to add to vinegar to make the volcano bubble and foam, and we had a pretty good time. He was an okay guy for a nerd, you know? He really knew how to make me laugh.”
    It was no use. Ellen couldn’t keep from gazing at him, this time into his eyes. She found herself looking closer, trying to see if maybe he wore colored contact lenses. Nobody could have eyes that blue, could they?
    “After we finished up with the volcano,” he told her, “I sort of casually asked to see this incredible baseball that everyone knew he had. He took me up to his bedroom and took it out of its case and let me hold it. It was so cool. All those signatures. It was worth a lot of money—well, you know, not by grown-up standards, but to a kid…. I asked him where he got it, and he told me his dad gave it to him.
    “Now, when Toby said that, I knew he was full of crap, because everyone knew his dad died in Vietnam before he was born. But then he showed me this letter that his dad had written to him, telling him that his mom was going to hold this baseball for him until his tenth birthday. See, his dad knew he might not come back from ’Nam, so he wrote this letter for this kid that he would never meet.”
    Ellen forgot about the color of Sam’s eyes, totally engrossed in the story he was telling.
    Sam smiled at her ruefully. “And so I sat there, looking at all those signatures and the mark of the bat where Wayne Garrett had hit the ball into the stands for a home run. And I looked at the letter, and I looked at Toby, and I looked at the way he put that baseball back in its special case, and I
knew
that Angelo Giglione and Marty Keller were just going to have to beat the hell out of me, because there was no way I was going to take that baseball away from this kid. And there was no way I was going to let anyone else take it away, either. I told Toby everything, told him to lock that baseball up and not to trust anyone.”
    Ellen had to ask. “Did they? Those boys? Did they beat you up?”
    Sam leaned forward slightly, pointing to a spot on his face just above and off to the side of his right eyebrow. “See this scar? Seven stitches at City Hospital courtesy of Angelo Giglione.”
    Ellen had noticed that scar earlier. It wasn’t a very big scar, yet it managed to add character to his face. It added even more now that she knew where he’d gotten it.
    “T.S. only had to get five stitches that day.”
    “They beat him up too?”
    “He saw them corner me on the playground after school, and tried to even up the odds. We’ve been tight ever since.”
    She resisted the urge to reach out and lightly trace his scar with her finger. She sat back in her seat, putting some distance between them, suddenly aware that for several long moments his face had been mere inches from hers, his mouth well within kissing range.
    She wanted to kiss this man.
    It was such a strange sensation. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d allowed herself even to think such a thought.
    He was looking at her as if he could read her mind. God help her if he could.
    But instead of leaning toward her and covering her mouth with his, Sam turned and opened the little refrigerator that was built into the side of the car. “Hey. Look at this. There’re five bottles of champagne in here.”
    “Bob’s always ready for anything,” Ellen told him as he took one out and looked at the label. She tried to slow the pounding of her heart. “Emmy nominations. High ratings. Viewer’s choice awards. Academy Award—winning actresses who might need to be personally escorted back to their hotel after his show…Although, you know, he doesn’t drink himself.”
    “I’d heard, yeah.” He eyed the glasses and corkscrew that were secured in a nearby compartment. “Do you think he’d mind if we opened a bottle?”
    “What are we