by Lauren Layne
“Only you would think you’re due a thank-you for breaking and entering.”
“I’ll confess to the entering, but I didn’t break a damn thing. Your door was unlocked.”
“Because the other day, when I didn’t leave it unlocked, you rattled the door for ten minutes.”
“Because you were ignoring me,” she said pragmatically.
“Because I was on the bike, with headphones, and didn’t hear you.”
“Which is exactly why you should leave your door unlocked,” Olive pointed out.
Carter inhaled, then let it out slowly. “You exhaust me.”
She held up the coffee mug as she stepped backward. “I pair nicely with caffeine. I’m going to go refill this, pour you a cup of your own, and then we can get to discussing how you can repay me for my nursing duties,” she said, pointing at the discarded sling.
“Here’s a counteroffer,” he said. “Pour me a cup of my own without the milk, complete said nursing duties by helping me put the sling on correctly, and you can explain what was so urgent that you had to break into my house.”
“Fair enough,” she agreed; then her eyes widened with panic when he picked up the sling and held it out to her. “Not here. Bring it downstairs after you’re dressed.”
His smile was slow and gloating. “I knew it.”
“You know nothing.” Then she looked at him suspiciously. “Out of curiosity, what do you think you know?”
He leaned forward, closing the distance between them once more. “That you’re very aware of what’s under this towel.”
Olive refused to let her gaze drift downward, but oh, how she wanted it to. “What’s that? More misplaced ego?”
His smile grew. “Nothing misplaced about it.”
“Calm yourself,” she said, boldly stepping toward him and giving him a deliberately disinterested pat on the cheek. “Because I know something, too.”
“What do you think you know?” he said, echoing her question as she turned away.
Olive turned back and flashed a confident smile over her shoulder as she paused in the doorway. “That whatever’s under that towel is very aware of me, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
Thursday, August 20
Carter let out a reluctant laugh as Olive charged out of the bathroom to go help herself to more of his coffee. Just when he thought he had a fighting chance of getting the upper hand with the woman, she rose to the challenge and knocked his ego right back down to size.
Though she hadn’t been wrong. The mental and emotional aspect of his manhood might be kept firmly in check when Olive was around. The physical proof, though . . .
He glanced down.
No doubt about it. Physically, he’d been fully, uncomfortably aware of Olive Dunn.
He dragged a hand over his face, trying to sort through just what he thought about that. It’s not as though her nearness had been sexually motivated. Her touch hadn’t been meant to seduce. She’d merely been helping out an invalid who embarrassingly still hadn’t gotten the hang of the damn sling.
But it hadn’t mattered. He’d been sexually aware and seduced all the same.
Hell. He’d probably have kissed her had she not moved away when she had. He’d have sunk his fingers into that thick hair and kissed all that tart sass right off her lips until he tasted the sweetness that he was increasingly certain might be lurking beneath the good-ol’-Olive routine. Had the sense that it would take only the tug for her to collide against him, send that friend-zone wall they’d built tumbling to the ground, and the results would be . . .
Explosive.
Carter blew out a breath and shook his head, wondering if he needed a cold shower before heading downstairs. Instead, he settled for splashing cold water on his face.
Going into the bedroom, he tugged on jeans, then pulled a white button-down shirt out of the closet. He’d have preferred a T-shirt, but he’d learned the hard way that those were obnoxious to get on and off given his injury. He shoved his casted arm through one of the sleeves, slid on the other, and left the buttons undone. Not to see if Olive would check out his chest again, but because buttoning the damn things with the fingers of his left hand largely immobilized was a pain.
But yeah, okay. A little to see if Olive would check out his pecs again.
He was disappointed.
When he walked into the kitchen, she barely looked up from the newspaper she’d helped herself to.
“You get the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times?” she asked, taking a sip of her coffee as she turned the page of the WSJ. “Fancy. Do you actually read them?”
“I like the pictures.”
“Aha!” she said, hearing his true meaning beneath the sarcasm as she did every time. “So you do read them. It can’t be easy with as much as you travel and train.”
“It’s not,” he acknowledged, accepting the coffee she slid across the counter with a nod of thanks. “But it’s actually because I’m busy that I started the habit a few years ago. Life of a pro can be . . . isolating. You’re surrounded largely by people in your sport, and even when you have time away from your teammates, coaches, agent, whatever, you can’t go anywhere without being surrounded by a swarm of fans. If you’re not careful, you’ll forget there’s a whole world outside of baseball.”
Olive heaved out a huge sigh.
He frowned. “What?”
“It’s so annoying,” she said, folding the newspaper closed.
“What is?” Carter took a sip of coffee. It was excellent.
“All your hidden depths.”
“Starting to fall for me now, are you?”
“Let’s not get crazy.”
“And yet, you’re here in my home, checking me out naked in my bathroom,” he reminded her. “Still waiting on an explanation for that, by the way.”
“First things first,” she said, leaning across the counter and grabbing the sling he’d brought downstairs with him. She palmed it. “This one’s dry.”
“I’ve got a few spare straitjackets.”
“Get tangled in them often?” she asked, coming around the counter.
“More often than I’d like.”
“You have like a billion dollars. You could hire some cute little nurse to hang around the house and help you,” she pointed out.
I’d rather have you.
He bit the insane thought back before it slipped out, though the notion seemed even more plausible with the competent way she looped the strap around his neck. Gently, but firmly, she positioned his arm at a right angle in the sling and then clipped it into place.
“There we go,” she murmured, straightening out a part of the strap at his collarbone that had folded under. Her tone and touch were almost tender, and his heart skipped a little at seeing this new side of her. He wanted more of it. More of her.
“Olive.” Before he could think better of it, his hand lifted, closing over hers.
She froze, her eyes, wide with panic, flying to his before she jerked her hand away and stepped back. “I have a favor.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, forcing his brain to shift gears from disappointment to hearing her out.
“But first, do you have that time machine for real?”
“Why?” Carter asked warily.
“Because hypothetically, if I could undo that . . .” She jerked her thumb toward his broken window.
“Your aim really is impossibly bad,” he said, smiling a little to show he was joking.
“It isn’t that bad.”
“You threw the ball behind you instead of toward me. I barely knew that was possible.”
“You see!” she wailed. “That’s why I’m here. I need your help!”
“I’m not sure even my skills are up to that.”
“Don’t lose your cocky edge now. The teacher softball game is on Saturday, and I need to not be horrible.”
“You’re planning on going now? I thought you were going to claim you had distemper. Which, by the
way, I googled, and it’s a dog disease.”
“Exactly. Nobody will have heard of it, so they’ll assume it’s very real, very serious, and they won’t mind that I’m not playing. But that’s old news. Now I need to not only play, I need to be exceptional.”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“Oh, come on,” she pleaded. “If anyone can turn me into a superstar in forty-eight hours, it’s you.”
“Flattery is a weird look on you. What changed?”
“I found out what Principal Mullins’s bribe is.”
“If it’s a new kitchen window, I wanna play,” Carter said.
“Don’t be a baby, it’s summer. The plastic works fine.”
“A bee got in here this morning.”
Olive’s eyes went wide. “Not a bee! I hope it doesn’t come next door, I haven’t built my bomb shelter yet.”
“How do you know I’m not allergic?” Carter pointed out.
“Because we went to grade school together, and the faculty always used to make a point of Jill Wheeler being allergic to bee stings. Carter Ramsey? Not so much.”
“Your memory creeps me out,” Carter muttered. “Okay, so what’s your boss’s bribe that’s so compelling?”
“Whoever he names MVP at the game on Saturday gets to go to this super fancy teacher conference. Not the bad kind with watery coffee in an off-the-freeway hotel that smells like weird cheese, but in a nice hotel in the city with cappuccino machines and fancy croissants, and the entire lobby smells like patchouli.”
Carter rubbed his temple. The woman really could be exhausting.
“So?” she said impatiently.
“A teacher conference? Really? That’s what I’m risking my windows for?”
“Please.” Her plea was undercut by the stomping of her foot, but was cute all the same. “It’s in the city, and I never get to go to Manhattan, much less expenses paid!”
Carter had been about to pour more coffee, but his attention snapped to her. “You’re coming to Manhattan?”
“If I’m MVP, yes,” she said, still impatient.
Carter grinned. “I live in New York City. Will I see you? When’s the conference?”
She blinked, looking so genuinely stunned by the question that his chest felt tight for a moment. “October. Do you want to see me?”
Very much.
The strength of the longing was startling, and discomfiting. As was the fact that he wanted desperately to ask if she wanted to see him again after he left Haven in a few weeks.
Carter shoved away the urge and took a large, bracing swallow of coffee. At no point had he planned not to help her. But now he had some skin in the game, too—the chance to see Olive again after their time here together was over.
“All right,” he said. “If we’ve only got two days to turn you into a ballplayer, we’d better get started.”
Olive lit up in a way that made him light up. “Right now?”
“Let me make a few phone calls,” Carter replied. “See if I can find us a space to keep you away from all things breakable.”
“You get me. You so get me,” she said, topping off both their coffee mugs.
He did get Olive. More than he’d ever gotten anyone. Just like she got him. Now, if only he knew what to do about it.
Chapter Sixteen
Thursday, August 20
“I’m really terrible,” Olive said, panting a little as she pushed the helmet back and blinked up at him, her cheeks shiny with sweat. “Worse than I thought.”
Carter lifted his cap and used his forearm to wipe his own damp forehead from the ninety-degree August heat. It had taken him longer than expected to figure out their practice situation, and by the time they’d gotten to the field, the day was already in peak heat.
Her shoulders slumped at his silence, and he gently pounded a fist against the top of her helmet. “Hey. You’re not that bad.”
She was that bad. Olive didn’t just miss every ball she swung at; she missed it by a solid foot. And they hadn’t gotten to fielding yet, but judging from the way she missed him by a mile every time she tossed the ball back to the pitcher’s mound, he didn’t have high hopes for that, either.
So yes, she was truly terrible at baseball. But Carter was truly excellent at it. And he had no intention of letting his protégé get anywhere near the field on Saturday until she at least had a shot of making contact with the ball.
“We’ve only been at it for an hour or so,” he said gently. “Now get some water, fix your ponytail, and get back in there.”
“What’s wrong with my ponytail?” she said as she retrieved her water bottle and took several healthy gulps.
“Well, for starters, it quit being a ponytail,” he said, picking up her hair band from the dirt.
“Oh.” She took another gulp of water, then took the hair band from him and pulled off her helmet, shoving it at his chest. “Do I seriously have to wear that thing?”
“The helmet? Yes. Safety first, Dunn. As a teacher, you should know that.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this isn’t a classroom full of sixteen-year-olds with scalpels and dead frogs, nor is it Yankee Stadium. And your throws are going nowhere near my head.”
“True. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say whoever’s pitching on Saturday won’t be as good as me.”
“You’re a pitcher?” she asked, flipping her hair over, Cousin It style, and pulling it into a high knot atop her head.
He gaped at her, too distracted by how little she knew about his career to even be allured by the way her hair curled at the nape of her neck, or even by the thought of how if he kissed that spot right now, it’d probably be just slightly salty, and he’d have to go in for another . . .
He shook his head in disbelief. “You don’t even know what position I play?”
She flipped her head back up and gave him a huge grin. Gotcha.
“Aren’t you just so amusing,” he said, replacing his cap and backing toward the mound. “As punishment, break time is over.”
Olive groaned, but put the helmet back on her head, giving it a smack with her palm to flatten it over the knot of her hair. Even without the long blonde hair peeking from beneath the blue helmet he’d borrowed from the JV baseball coach, there was zero chance of her being mistaken for a boy. The long tan legs in short jean shorts were undeniably feminine, and the way she filled out her plain white tee was definitely all woman.
Distracted, his next pitch went well wide of the plate, but she swung at it anyway and missed by a mile. She ran to retrieve the ball and tossed it back to him. This time he only had to lean off the mound rather than leave it altogether to catch the ball. Progress.
“How was I supposed to hit that?” she asked, resuming her place behind the plate.
“You weren’t. Remember that whole ball-versus-strike thing I explained? That was a ball.”
“I’m beginning to think all career accolades you’ve racked up over the years are a scam,” she said, waggling her bat over her shoulder with far more confidence than was warranted, but then this was Olive.
But Carter was no stranger to confidence himself. His next pitch was overhand, a fastball that she had no hope of hitting.
“Couldn’t you have just flexed your muscles?” she grumbled, chasing after the ball.
His point made, Carter’s next pitch was a slow underhand, also right over the plate, and for the first time, she made contact.
Olive let out a delighted noise. “I hit it!”
“You sure as hell did,” he said, not having the heart to explain that it had barely glanced her bat and would have been a foul ball. From his place on the mound, he gave her an air high five and laughed in surprise when she did the exact same thing, at the exact same time.
Thank God his teammates couldn’t see him, laughing on the same field of his high school days, playing with a woman who closed her eyes eight out of ten times she swung at the ball. And having the time of his life.
“You kno
w what you did differently that time?” Carter called as he dived to his left to catch her errant toss.
She heaved out a sigh and adjusted her helmet. “You’re not going to tell me something inane like ‘I kept my eye on the ball,’ are you?”
Carter stuck his tongue in his cheek as he walked toward home plate, because that had been exactly what he was going to say. “Okay, let’s try something new,” he said.
She planted a hand on her hip and gave him a mutinous look. “If you think I’m going to fall for that ploy where the guy teaches the girl how to play sports by pressing up against her back in a doggy-style position, I’ll warn you now—I won’t.”
With a defeated laugh, he dropped his head forward, burying his face in his hand, trying to decide if he was amused, horrified, or aroused.
When Carter lifted his head, Olive was still giving him a suspicious look.
“That is not what I was going to suggest,” he assured her, though he couldn’t help but think the idea held increasing appeal when she cocked her hip to the side like that, calling attention to the impressive curves of her lower body.
He had no doubt if he ever got his hands on her, she’d be an intoxicating combination of slim and full, firm and soft . . .
Carter cleared his throat. “Your swing is fine. That isn’t your problem.”
“Fine. High praise, Coach.”
“Be quiet. Get back in position.”
She gave him a mocking salute, but did as he said.
“Okay, this time when I toss the ball,” he explained, “don’t worry about hitting it. You can swing, or not swing, but your only mission is to watch the ball the entire time it comes over the plate, okay? Don’t worry about anything else other than staring at the ball the entire time it crosses the plate. Pretend the ball is someone who just told you that science is stupid, and then burn it with the heat of your death gaze.”
“So this is a keep your eye on the ball thing.”
“Well, aren’t you just sharp as a tack. Now shut up and do what I say.”
She shrugged and got in position. Carter underhanded the ball, extra careful to make sure this one sailed right down the center of the plate, where she . . . hit it.