Passing behind her on the way back to the table, he stopped to give her a quick squeeze of affection. Go, Mom. He didn’t want the job, but he was thrilled to see his mother showing some spirit. “I’m not convinced that I’d be a good coach. Besides, some people in Atlanta pulled strings to help get me into a really good job after my shoulder gave out. It seems wrong to just walk away from that.”

“So you’ll stay in a situation you know deep down isn’t right for you because you feel obligated?” Her voice cracked.

“Mom.” Instead of taking his seat, he returned to her. “You okay?”

“No. I’m an old woman looking back on her life.”

He hugged her to his chest. “You’re not old.”

“I feel it,” she muttered into his shirt. “I’ve felt old for years. And now I…now I…”

Oh, damn. She was crying, and Dylan didn’t have the first clue what to do. Irrationally he wished Chloe were here. Next to his mother, Chloe was currently the central female in his life, and this seemed like an occasion requiring a feminine touch. She’d been sensitive and insightful at his apartment. So what would Chloe do in this situation? Probably lie through her teeth. Not helpful.

“I’m getting your shirt all wet,” Barb sobbed.

“I have plenty of shirts, but only one mother.” He led her to the table and she sat down. “I want to help.”

“Such a good boy. And after you were handed such a poor lot in life.”

He squirmed guiltily-he’d endured his difficult adolescent years surrounded by friends and admiring peers, had gone on to follow his dream and had been able to pursue it further than most men ever did. “It’s not so bad. I played major league ball for a few seasons. Even now I have decent gig. I also have people here who love me, like you and Coach.”

“I know it was hard on you,” she insisted. “The struggles at school. Before you found baseball, I was always scared to death you’d drop out before you graduated. I wanted more for you than I ever accomplished. I got married so young I never even considered college. And you have a diploma and a degree!”

She wasn’t this upset about his dyslexia, and they both knew it. It wasn’t just school that had been an ordeal. The fact of the matter was, sometimes being there had been a nice respite from being home.

He shoved a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“I don’t blame you. Looking at the man you’ve become, I wonder if I did the right thing staying here all these years or if I should have…I don’t know what I would have done without your father, but maybe it was only cowardice that kept me from finding out, not love.” Her eyes filled again. “Is it wrong to look at this as a fresh start? There was a time I loved him, there must have been.”

She looked unconvinced, but Dylan was the wrong man to plead his father’s case.

Dashing away a few tears, she added in a stronger tone, “I do want you to know he loved you. In his own way, he loved you very much. I don’t know if he ever told you this, but his mother had a learning disability. Not that it was diagnosed well or that school curricula back then were developed to handle that. I think your father had a misplaced sense of anger, that maybe you’d inherited something through him.”

“Mom, I know you have the best of intentions, but I do not want to talk about it.” To lessen the sting of his vehement words, he knelt by her chair. “We should look at this as a fresh start, with each other. Please don’t beat yourself up over what-ifs. You can second-guess your plays all you want, but it still won’t change the score after the game’s finished. The truth is, I wasn’t an ideal son, either. But we can work on that, right?”

“Right.” She gave him a watery smile, emboldened. “And we could work on it even more if you took a coaching job in Mistletoe.”

AFTER LUNCH, Dylan attempted to distract himself from everything his mom had said by calling Chloe to let her know he’d reached town, but her cell phone rolled immediately to voice mail. You’ve reached C. W. Designs, she chirped. Leave a message, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can! The cynical part of him wondered if that had always been her outgoing recording, or if she’d altered it and removed her name since giving him her number. Having struck out getting in touch with her, he tried Nick Zeth instead.

Nick laughed as soon as Dylan identified himself. “Dude, when I offered to buy you dinner next time you were in town, it’s because I figured you wouldn’t be back for at least a decade. What happened, you get back to Atlanta and decide you missed us?”

The picture of Chloe’s smile swam in his memory. “Something like that. But don’t worry, I’m not looking for a free meal. Maybe just some company at batting practice?” He had sworn to his mentor to at least consider the idea of coaching. Now, with Barb adding her own pressure, Dylan felt that, at a minimum, he should swing by the high school to watch the team for a few minutes this afternoon.

Showing up might make him look more interested in the job than he really was, though. He planned to use Nick as a human shield, just two former players motivated by recent nostalgia to check out the old stomping grounds and see the new team in action.

“I can get away for a little while,” Nick agreed. “I’m not active today, just on call. I’ll bring the pager with me.”

Once they were off the phone, Dylan called the school to verify that practice time hadn’t changed and to make sure Coach Asbury didn’t mind the audience.

“Hell, no. You boys feel free to come down on the field and give pointers. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to autograph baseballs for the kids?”

Dylan winced. “Maybe next time. I think we’ll keep it low-key and incognito today.”

He arrived in the bleachers wearing shades and a scruffy cap pulled down over his forehead.

Nick smirked at him. “No one told me we were wearing spy gear. I would have brought my trench coat and fake mustache.”

“I wanted to observe without being blatant about it,” Dylan admitted. The boys down on the field had just begun their warm-up exercises.

“Does this have anything to do with Coach B. informing anyone who will listen that you’re his natural successor?”

“Tell me he’s not,” Dylan implored.

“Only if you don’t mind me lying to your face.”

“No thanks, I’ve had quite enough of that lately,” he grumbled. Witnessing Nick’s transparent curiosity, Dylan engaged in a brief mental debate and decided he might as well get someone else’s take on the situation. After all, Chloe had a confidant. Turnabout is fair play. “You remember my asking about Chloe Malcolm?”

“Yeah, she caught your eye at the reunion.”

“More than caught my eye. We talked for a while. I may have even kissed her.”

“You’re not sure?” Nick drawled.

“I was trying to give you the pertinent information but still be a gentleman about it.”

“Sorry, just having fun. Continue.”

“During the course of our conversation, she lied to me about who she was. I had to resort to skimming through reunion literature just to figure out who the hell I’d had up in my hotel room!”

“Hotel room?” Nick gave a fierce shake of his head. “You can’t be talking about Chloe Malcolm. None of this sounds like her.”

“She called herself C.J. and told me she was an interior decorator. Unless she has an identical twin you forgot to mention?”

“No, she’s an only child.”

“Yeah, that’s what her friend Natalie said, too.” Dylan glared out at the baseball diamond, but barely processed what he was watching. “They’re both in on it.”

“‘In on it’?” Nick echoed. “Chloe and Natalie Young? You make it sound like they deliberately set you up.”

No. In retrospect Dylan caught the small hesitations that he’d overlooked the night of the reunion. “I don’t think it was premeditated. I’m the one who mistook Chloe for Candy Beemis. She went along with it and then some, embellishing along the way.” When he thought of her standing in the kitchen listing the five elements of feng shui as if she were the expert she claimed to be, he wanted to shake her.

Or at least kiss her senseless.

“You thought she was Candy Beemis?” Nick’s jaw dropped. “How the hell could you confuse a sweet kid-Chloe-for that she-wolf?”

Sweet kid? “She’s the same age we are,” Dylan pointed out. “And not to disillusion you, but-”

“Did you actually call her Candy?” Nick clarified. “That had to sting. I know I temporarily lost my wits and dated Candy-I mean, come on, have you seen her? I was young and at the mercy of my hormones-but the girl has a vicious streak. Chloe always brought out the worst in her. It’s not the reason she gave publicly, but I think Candy dumped me because I had the gall to suggest she lay off the jokes at Chloe’s expense.”

So Dylan had come along at the high school reunion, where Chloe might have been feeling vulnerable over the way people had treated her in the past, and immediately mistaken her for someone who’d made her teen years a living hell? Awkward. But she should have just corrected me like a normal person! His blunder didn’t excuse her inventing a persona and perpetrating an elaborate hoax.

“What on earth did Chloe say when you asked her about all this?” Nick demanded.

Dylan’s mouth twisted. “It’s more complicated than that. When I asked if she went by Candy or Candace, she told me it was C.J. now and she led me to believe she was an interior decorator. So…I hired her.”

“I’ve never heard that she does any decorating on the side,” Nick argued, looking confused. “She works with computers.”

“I know! But she doesn’t know that I know.”

“Dude, you’re making my head hurt.”

Welcome to my world. “Maybe she’s bipolar. Maybe she’s using me to live out some kind of fantasy.” Although it wasn’t the kind of fantasy he would have hoped. “All I can tell you is that she’s gone to great lengths to pull one over on me. I don’t want to just tell her the jig is up. I want her to admit what she’s done and apologize.” Soon, he fervently hoped.