The Curve Ball (Indianapolis Lightning Book 2)

by Samantha Lind

  “That good, huh?” I ask, hoping that the gruffness of my voice isn’t as evident to her as it is to my ears.

  “Seriously, the best!” she exclaims as she readies another bite. I pick up my fork and knife and cut a bite to try for myself. As soon as the food hits my tongue, I’m done for. She wasn’t joking when she said it was terrific.

  “Damn, this is incredible. What else can you cook that is this amazing?” I ask, only half-joking. If she’s this good of a cook, I’m going to be in trouble.

  “I love to cook and experiment, and I can follow a recipe like it's my job.”

  We finish up our meal, mostly in silence. I try not to stare at Riley like a creeper. “I’ll clean up since you cooked,” I state as Riley gets up and takes her dirty dishes to the sink.

  “You’re sure?” she questions. “I don’t mind loading my things into the dishwasher.”

  “I’ve got it, I insist.”

  “Okay, thanks,” she says, setting the dishes down. “If you think you’ll be good alone with Evie for the next hour or so, I think I’ll run out to my place and pack a bag.”

  “We should be fine around here,” I assure her.

  “Sounds good. Text, or call me if anything changes. It shouldn’t be too long. I can always go back another time and grab more things.”

  Six

  Riley

  I quickly grab my wallet, keys, and phone from the diaper bag and head for my car. The last twenty or so hours are catching up to me. I can’t believe all that has transpired since Derek called me last night, and if someone had told me yesterday morning that I’d have a full-time nanny job as of today, I’d never have believed them.

  I drive to the condo I’ve been living in since moving here a few weeks ago. I was so thankful when my brother and sister-in-law let me move here to be closer to them. I’m even more grateful they had this condo and have been allowing me to stay here until I could get back on my feet.

  As soon as I walk in, I head for the bedroom and pull out my suitcase that hasn’t been empty for all that long. Between moving here and then turning around and going out to Arizona with Jillian and the girls for part of the pre-season, I haven’t had much time to get settled. I waited until a few days before we returned to start sending out applications to places, hoping to have some interviews lined up. Now that won’t be necessary, or I can only hope it works out for me to be Evie’s full-time nanny. I’ve only been around here for less than a day, and I’m already in love with her. She’s such a great baby, which will make my life easy most days. Who wouldn’t want to get paid to hang out with one of the cutest babies?

  Once my suitcase is filled with all my clothes, I head for the bathroom and pack all the essentials from there. Since I’ll probably still stay at Justin’s house on my nights off, it makes the most sense to take as much of my stuff as I can. I can always pack an overnight bag to bring with me if I come back here for a random night. The more I think of it, he might want me gone on nights that I’m off. I know he’s got the reputation of being a player, and I don’t want to have to hear those interactions, nor do I want to encounter his conquests. Talk about an awkward situation. I shudder at the thought.

  With my clothes and bathroom things all packed, I look around the bedroom then the living room to verify I don’t forget anything important. I pack up my laptop and iPad, making sure I’ve got all the appropriate charging cords for all my devices. With everything ready to go, I load up my hands and can make it out in one trip. I place my bags into the trunk of my car and head back to JJ’s.

  Just as I pull out onto the main road, my phone starts ringing so I hit the accept button, allowing the call to come over the car’s Bluetooth.

  “Hey, honey, how’s it going?” My mom’s voice fills the car. “Are you getting settled in okay?”

  “Hi, Mom. Everything is going great. I got a full-time nanny job effective immediately.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful, Ry. How old of a child or children?”

  “One little girl. She’s three months old and the cutest little thing ever,” I gush to my mom.

  “You’ll have to send me a picture!” Mom says, and I can hear the excitement in her voice. “How’d you find the family?”

  “That’s an interesting story,” I start to tell her, and go on to fill her in on the last day.

  “Wow. That’s crazy. Is JJ holding up with all of it?”

  “He seems to be doing okay. I think that he’s still in shock about it.”

  “I can only imagine,” Mom muses. “So, you said that you’re going to be living there full-time?”

  “Yep, or at least for now. We’re going to do a one-month trial run and see how things go. With his crazy schedule, he’ll need someone that can be around all the time during the season. We’re going to sit down tonight, hopefully, and if not, then tomorrow and write out a calendar with all of his games and road trips and then figure out my time off around that. But with needing to be on call, especially when he’s out of town so often, I think it will be easiest to be living there.”

  “And Derek is okay with that arrangement?” she questions.

  “I haven’t told him about it. JJ and I just came up with it tonight, but he did tell JJ that he should take me up on my offer to help out. Plus, I’m a big girl, Mom. Derek doesn’t get to have a say in where I work. He can try and play the overprotective big brother card all he wants, but it won’t make me change my mind about the job or helping JJ.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine with it then,” Mom assures me.

  I pull into the parking lot of Starbucks, stopping in the drive-through. “Hold on, Mom, I need to order,” I tell her once it’s my turn. I order quickly and then return to our conversation.

  “I can let you go, I just wanted to check-in and see how things were going,” she says while I’m waiting to approach the pick-up window.

  “Okay, maybe I can FaceTime with you tomorrow so you can meet Evie. She’s just the cutest!” I gush once again.

  “Yes! Please do. I’d love to see her.”

  “Okay, talk then,” I tell her before we disconnect our call.

  I get my order and head back to JJ’s house. I grab one of my bags and quietly enter the house. I can hear Evelyn crying and JJ’s voice as he attempts to calm her down. I set my things down and go searching for them. I find him in the bathroom and can’t stop from bursting out a laugh.

  “What happened?” I ask between fits of laughter.

  “She had a poop explosion,” he says, looking more than a little overwhelmed with the situation. He’s leaning over the tub, a screaming Evie in some water. He’s got his shirt stripped off and on the floor next to him. It’s soaking wet, so I can only assume that bathing her isn’t going all that well.

  “I think, at this point, the easiest way to get the both of you cleaned off is for you to just shower with her,” I tell him, and if the shocked look on his face is telling me anything, it’s that my suggestion is a crazy idea in his mind.

  “I don’t think so,” he states matter-of-factly.

  “No, seriously. Babies are easy to shower with. If it makes you feel any better, I can sit right outside the door and come in and rescue you if anything goes wrong. But both of you are covered in baby shit and need showers. The warm water will be calming to her, as well as being close to you. Babies feed off of your stress, so if you calm down, that will help Evie to calm down.”

  He gives me another suspicious look before he pulls her from the small amount of bathwater he’d run in the tub. “Can you hold her for a minute?” he asks, holding her up for me to take. I grab one of the towels hanging from the bar and wrap Evie in it once he hands her over. I lightly bounce her in my arms as I calmly talk to her, helping her calm down.

  “How do we do this?” he asks, standing there a little dumbfounded.

  “Leave your boxers on and get in. I’ll hand her over, and you can wash her up. Once she’s done, then I can grab her from you, and then you can finish your
shower,” I suggest.

  “Okay,” he says as he reaches in and turns on the shower. He checks the temperature of the water before stripping off his athletic shorts, leaving him in tight black boxer briefs. They don’t leave much to the imagination, and I have to force myself to look away. What I wouldn’t do to see him completely naked. The lines on either side of his waist that point down to his cock have me salivating and wishing he’d just drop the boxers. Once he steps into the shower, I rub my thighs together to try and dispel the ache that I’m feeling there. The one that I wish he could make go away. “I’m ready for her,” he tells me, and I step closer, handing over a now calm Evie. He cradles her to his chest, allowing the warm water to hit her back. She relaxes into him just as I figured she’d do. Between the warmth of the water and the sound of his heart beating, she’s a happy girl right about now.

  I step away from the shower, keeping myself busy by pulling out clean towels since the two that were out, now have shit all over them. I hang a clean one for JJ on the towel bar and hold on to the one for Evie. It only takes another couple of minutes and he’s got her all washed off and ready for me. I quickly wrap her up in the fluffy towel and take her into what will become the nursery, once JJ gets some permanent furniture for her in here. I get a fresh diaper on her and then pull out a clean sleeper to keep her cozy for the night. “You sure did give your daddy a run for his money tonight, Evie girl. Way to break him in,” I tell her as I zip up the sleeper. I snuggle her into my arms and head for the kitchen to make her a bottle. With that established, we hunker down on the couch. I flip the TV on, finding a rerun of Friends to watch while she works on her bottle.

  “That was the grossest thing I’ve ever encountered, and I’m in a locker room with twenty-four other guys daily,” JJ tells me as he plops down on the couch next to Evie and me.

  I laugh after seeing the disgusted look on his face. “Just wait, I’m sure something will outdo this event. But be proud, it’s a rite of passage for parents to get peed, pooped, or puked on.”

  “I would have been just fine without ever experiencing that,” he deadpans.

  “At least you survived,” I tell him, holding back my laughter.

  “Hardly. If you wouldn’t have come back when you did, we’d probably still be in that bathroom, but both of us would be crying by now,” he says, reaching out and sliding the pad of his finger down Evie’s cheek. She’s lazily suckling on the bottle now, obviously not as hungry anymore as she starts to drift off to sleep. I take the bottle from her, shifting her to lie against my chest so I can burp her and allow her to fall into a deeper sleep. I snuggle her close, dropping some small kisses to the top of her little head. I breathe in her clean baby smell and just let it fill my senses. Not much smells better than a clean baby.

  “I’ll be right back, I’m going to go lay her down,” I tell JJ as I stand and take Evie into my room and place her in the pack-n-play that I put in here for the time being.

  “Do we need to worry about her poop-explosion?” JJ asks as I sit back down on the couch next to him.

  “I don’t think so; she doesn’t show any other symptoms of being sick that I’ve noticed. Sometimes babies just have a blowout. She might even be trying to cut her first tooth, and that can cause babies to have explosions,” I tell him, and his eyes go wide once again.

  “I’ve got so much to learn.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll learn as you go.”

  “What if I don’t? What if I screw things up so bad for her?” he asks, and I can see the worry in his eyes.

  “I’m sure every parent feels the same way. You’ll get through this. I’m sure if you called up your parents, they’d tell you they were scared shitless when they first had you. No babies come with a manual, we just have to figure things out as we go and do the best we can to shape them into productive members of society.”

  He runs his hands through his still damp hair as he leans forward, placing his elbows on his knees as his face falls into the palms of his hands. “I’ve only had her in my life for twenty-four hours, and I already feel like a failure,” he finally says.

  “Justin,” I say his name, closing the space between us as I place my palm against his back between his shoulder blades. “You’re not a failure. You’ve given Evie everything she needs in the last day. A safe place to be, food, and most of all, love. Not only from you, but from everyone around you that’s come into contact with her so far. That little girl is lucky to have you, and you’re lucky to have her. She might completely turn your world as you know it upside down, but give it a few weeks or months, and you won’t remember a time without her in your life and wonder how you made it this far in life without her.”

  He turns his head, still resting in the palms of his hands, and looks at me. I can tell by the look in his eyes that he wants to believe me, that he wants that picture I just painted for him. All he has to do is reach out and take it and make this the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

  “I hope you’re right,” he says as he leans until his back is against the couch. He grabs my hand with his own, dwarfing my hand in the process. “I can’t thank you enough for stepping in so quickly last night to help me out. I don’t know what I’d be doing if it wasn’t for you, Derek, and Jillian right about now.”

  “We’re here for you; learn to accept the help when you need it. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it will all be easy. I’m sure you can just ask Derek how hard it is to be a parent, but the good usually outweighs the bad moments, so I’ve been told.”

  “Thanks, Riley,” he says, squeezing my hand in his before letting go.

  “Anytime,” I say in a whisper. Being this close to him, touching him like this as he looks at me with such puppy-dog eyes, has my insides shaking. My stomach feels like it’s filled with butterflies as he stares at me. I watch him intently and his eyes drop ever so slowly to my lips, lingering there for a second. The tip of my tongue sneaks out and wets my lips. I can see his Adam's apple bob as he swallows hard. His eyes flick back up to mine, and the usually bright blue has darkened. I drop my eyes to his lap and can see the bulge in his sleep pants. Now I’m the one audibly gulping as I swallow. I jump up from the couch, grabbing for my phone before it clatters to the floor. “I’m going to go to bed. Get some sleep before Evie wakes up to eat again,” I quickly tell him as I rush for my room.

  Once inside, I close the door and lean against it, sliding down until my butt hits the floor. I don’t know what’s come over me today, but I can’t stop thinking about Justin kissing me. What it’d be like for him to fuck me, not that I have any experience with that, seeing as I’m still a virgin. What a fucking cliché I am, the virgin nanny falling for the single dad. Not to add in the fact that he’s my brother’s best friend. Derek would flip his shit if JJ and I ever did anything, but what my brother doesn’t know won’t kill him, either.

  I finally pull myself up off the floor and head into the bathroom to get ready for bed. I slip into some sleep shorts and a tank top once my teeth are brushed and my face has been washed. I pull my long locks into a messy bun before flipping the light in the bathroom off. I use the light from my phone's screen to light the way through the room, trying to keep as quiet as I can so as not to wake up a sleeping Evie. I check on her, finding her sleeping soundly right where I laid her down earlier. I slip between the sheets and pull out my Kindle, getting lost in the pages of Kaylee Ryan’s newest release.

  Seven

  Justin

  I wake up the next morning, my balls still blue from last night, and that’s even after I rubbed one out before falling asleep. The way Riley looked at me after she caught me watching her lips had my dick so fucking hard. I could have taken her on the couch so fast, but she jumped and ran. I chastised myself the entire time I thought of her while I was stroking my cock in the shower. I can’t think of her like that. She’s not here for me to lust over. She’s not here for me to touch. She’s definitely not here for me to fuck. She’s one thou
sand percent off-limits. She’s here to take care of Evie, and I need to remember that. The last thing I need to happen is for Derek to get wind that I’ve been lusting over his sister and kick my ass, and for me to lose my best friend in the process. He’s already warned me to stay away from her. He’s privy to my playing ways. Women have always been a dime a dozen, lined up and ready to suck my cock when I need it. I don’t do the settle down, flowers, and relationship game. I have a feeling that with a baby in tow, my life is about to change.

  I look down and find my cock standing at attention, tenting the sheet that covers my lower half. I guess thinking of Riley is all that it is going to take to get me hard. Fucking great.

  I ignore my cock, slipping out of bed and heading for the bathroom. I pull on a clean pair of briefs and then some athletic shorts over them before I quietly head for the kitchen. I need some coffee this morning. As soon as I round the corner, I stop dead in my tracks. Riley is standing at the sink with Evie’s head peeking over her shoulder. She’s got her back to me, and I don’t think she has heard me enter. She is standing there in a tank top and the smallest fucking pair of shorts known to man. They show off her ass in the most perfect way possible, and my fucking hard-on is back. Fuck me.

  I shake my head, trying to get the visions of peeling that tank top up and off of Riley, dropping those tiny shorts to the floor and sliding inside her out of my mind. I clear my throat and move forward toward the coffee pot. “Morning,” I quietly say as not to startle either of them.