Epilogue
Tempest
The afternoon of the auction . . .
So it’s a Saturday afternoon, I’m hanging at my brother’s Murray Hill pad, reviewing a column I’ve written on the best ways to avoid hidden fees in mutual funds, when a solar eclipse occurs.
The sun, moon, and earth align.
Metaphorically.
First, an email lands in my inbox from my lit agent, Viviana Grayson.
Tempest!
Guess who just earned a bonus for her German edition of The Girl’s Guide to Personal Finances? It’s also my favorite kind of bonus.
The big, huge kind with lots of zeroes.
They love you in Germany.
And Korea. Check coming from there.
And Hungary. Yet another check.
And Brazil. One more check.
I’ll be sending you royalty checks from all those territories this weekend. Click on the PDF to see the amounts.
Xoxo
Viv
Naturally, I click that PDF so fast my finger hits a new land speed record.
I blink.
Blink again.
Enlarge the PDF.
I mean, I do wear glasses. So I might be seeing it wrong.
But that is a hella lot of zeroes.
Like, five zeroes.
And I write back to Viviana with a series of fireworks GIFs because I’m not entirely sure what else to say.
Except Thanks for being the badass you are.
So I add that and hit send.
Then my brother jerks around, fiddling with his bow tie. “Temp, you don’t think Martinez is hot, do you?”
The last name rings a vague bell.
Just to get his goat, since his goat needs to be gotten, I furrow my brow. “Who’s that? An actor on Scrubs?”
He rolls his eyes. Something he does with me so frequently I sometimes worry they might get stuck in the back of his head.
“Scrubs has been off the air for years. Good job, Ms. Anti Pop Culture.”
I point out how well I know Broadway as he explains that Martinez is the guy he’s always referring to as Marty Boy, which is why I rarely hear his full name.
Then he says it.
Adrian Martinez.
And does that ever ring a bell.
That rings all the tingly bells indeed.
But it’s nice to mess with my brother.
With lightning speed, I turn to my best friend, Google, and look up “Adrian Martinez.” The Adrian Martinez with the dark blond hair that has such a delicious swoop to it. The one with those crystal blue eyes, and with that jawline—it’s statue-worthy.
He’s the guy.
I met him two days ago.
I’m not simply talking about walking past the Times Square billboard. Though he’s hard to look away from there in his briefs, plastered over ten stories of New York skyscraper.
I’d like to count my royalties over the grooves of his abs.
With my tongue.
“Why didn’t you tell me your Martinez was Adrian Alejandro Martinez from the Gigante underwear ad in Times Square?”
And from earlier in the week during an interview.
Only, I can’t let Ransom know. Not yet, at least. That would give my brother too much fodder and too much ire. He’s more protective than he needs to be, but this girl makes her own choices. I close my laptop, rearranging my face to be expressionless so he doesn’t see right through me.
I’m good at that—presenting a poker face to the world if I have to.
But still, I kind of can’t believe this is him.
A guy my brother knows. A guy my brother smack-talks with. A guy who’s going to the player’s auction tonight.
Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways.
Or perhaps intentional ones.
Because I know what I want, and I think I know how to get it.
Martinez
Earlier that week, a few days before the auction
When I come into the ninth inning of a game, whether the bases are loaded or empty, nothing distracts me.
I wear blinders because that’s my motherfucking job.
To drown out the noise of the crowd, the game, the day, the night.
Nothing else matters.
I take to the field, head to the mound, and enter the zone.
It’s a skill I’ve mastered, and I use it in other areas of my life too.
When I’m reading a book in the park, when I go to a museum, or when I have dinner with friends—I ignore everything else and am present in the moment.
That’s why it’s killing me when I sit down for an interview in a quiet coffee shop with a reporter from a lifestyle site who wants to do a feature on me.
“Devon Patrick.” The sandy-haired reporter interviewing me introduces himself, then gestures to a brunette with electric-blue glasses, pretty pink lips, and a gorgeous smile.
“Tempest,” she says, holding out a hand. “I’ll be here to sign for Devon.”
I’d been told by my publicist that an ASL interpreter would be here for the reporter. “Adrian Alejandro Martinez,” I say to both of them, then to her, I add, “Charmed.”
Because I am. She’s beguiling to look at.
Which means I need to apply the same focus to Devon that I would to a save situation.
The bases are loaded. There are no outs. The opposing team’s top slugger’s at the plate. I come in. Mow down the side.
The reporter begins with some standard questions, wanting to know when I moved to America, how many other languages I speak, if I go back to Europe often since I grew up in Spain, spent some time with family in Italy and visited grandparents frequently in France as a child.
I give him the answers that are widely known—when I was fourteen, Spanish, Italian, English and passable French thanks to my father’s mother, and . . . as often as I can.
Tempest signs all my answers for him then translates his questions for me.
Sure, I’m talking to him, but I can’t help but feel that I’m talking to her too. He says something to her with his hands, and then she translates for me. “Adrian, tell us about growing up mostly in Spain, since it isn’t widely known for baseball. Was that hard?”
“It came with its challenges, but I had great coaches and was determined to play in the Major Leagues,” I say.
She smiles then tells Devon what I said.
“And you’re close with your family?” he asks through her.
I nod, meeting his eyes as I answer, but I want to look at her, not only because I’m distracted by her soulful eyes and a smile I can’t seem to get enough of.
I tell myself she’s simply a woman I’m meeting as part of my job.
That I shouldn’t be so taken with her so soon.
And I’m not truly taken, I suppose.
Yet I want to keep talking to her. Or, really, through her.
“I see my mother and father every week if I can. They live just outside the city. I have them over for dinner when I’m able to and when I’m not playing.”
“What do you like to cook?” she blurts out, then she shakes her head, apologizes, and turns to Devon, signing quickly.
He chuckles, saying something to her silently with his hands.
She dips her head, then raises it, that smile curving her lips in an oops, did I really say that grin.
“I make a mean gazpacho. Paella, of course too. My father taught me how to make those. My mother is Italian and she loves classic Italian dishes. And, my grandmother in Paris made sure I knew how to make tarte normande. But I can’t have those too often,” I say, patting my belly and wiggling my eyebrows.
She grins. “It’s always good to make sure you can do the Gigante ads,” she says. Her fingers were flying as I spoke, and she signs her own comment as well, making the reporter chuckle again. I just get a kick out of the fact that she’s seen my ads.
“But I also like to bake pizza,” I add with a smile.
Devon grins, waiting for Tempest to translate. She does, and he replies through Tempest, “Pizza is life.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” I say, tapping my chest then pointing in the air, glancing skyward.
Devon signs something else, then Tempest looks at me, those brown eyes locking with mine and once more distracting me.
Get in the zone, man.
“What kind of pizza do you bake?”
“I make a mean artichoke, sausage, and tomato pizza,” I say wryly.
She licks her lips, mouths Yum, then repeats it to Devon.
“‘Sounds delish,’ he says,” she tells me.
“The cheese melts on your tongue. The dough is pillowy. The tastes are incredible. E come il paradiso nella boca,” I reply, dropping into Italian to say it’s like heaven in your mouth because I can’t help myself with this lovely woman who’s so unexpectedly captivating.
“Sounds like it must be,” she says and signs too.
Devon segues to other questions.
“Rumor has it you’re a cat person,” she relays. “I love cats,” she adds to both of us.
The reporter shakes his head then pants like a dog.
“Dog person?” I ask him with a grin.
“Yes, he’s a dog person,” Tempest tells me.
“Personally, I love the feline attitude,” I say, returning to the implied question about my pet preference.
“I appreciate that take-it-or-leave-it vibe. You don’t always know where you stand with a cat.
I love that you must work for it with them.
” My attention keeps sliding to Tempest as she interprets my answer, but hey, she’s the fellow cat lover. “Do you have cats?” I ask her.
After she signs the last thing, a smile takes over her face as if she’s pleased that I asked her a question.
Devon chuckles and says something in sign language to her that she answers before turning her smiling gaze my way and telling me, “I have one. A tomcat. His name is—wait for it—Tom.”
I laugh deeply. “I love the simplicity of that, Tempest.”
She looks to Devon again for his next question. He fires it off, and she puts it to me. “What do you like to do for fun?”
“I enjoy cooking, Scrabble, and candlelit dinners,” I say with a straight face.
She laughs, her hands whipping through my reply.
Devon arches a brow at me, mouthing Really? Then he says something to her.
“‘Is that a line?’ he wants to know,” she says to me, laughing again as she poses the question.
I act deeply affronted, bringing my hand over my heart. “It’s all true.”
When the interview ends, I thank Devon, then I turn to ask the interpreter for her full name.
“Tempest North.”
North.
It’s not an uncommon name.
But it’s not the most common either.
“I hope we will meet again,” I say, because I’m a gentleman, and it’s polite to establish one’s intentions before asking for a phone number. But before I can, her phone trills.