Summer Heat (The Storm Inside #5)

by Alexis Anne

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I shot a look over the chair at Coach. He was talking to one of the assistant coaches, not paying us any attention.

  Roman fiddled with the zipper on his jacket for a minute before replying. “I meant what I said to Coach. I don’t know you, June Daniels, and I refuse to hate someone simply because of their name.”

  I very carefully let out a breath and sucked in a fresh one. “Well then. That’s refreshing.”

  “Coach told me what you said. I appreciate that you’re also willing to give me a chance. I’m not like my father,” he added quickly. “I’m nothing like him.”

  I searched his warm eyes, getting a little lost in their depths. No, Roman was nothing like George. George was cold. Calculating. The couple of times I saw him I’d instantly felt fear. But not with Roman. Oh no. All I ever seemed to feel around him was warm, wonderful, and dizzy.

  The corner of his lip twitched and his eyes dropped to my lips. When he swallowed I could imagine what it would feel like to have his lips pressed against mine.

  It was a terrible, awful, hideous idea to work directly with Roman, and not because of the feud. Working together meant being close like this. Not a lot, but enough that these feelings I was having were going to be impossible to ignore.

  And yet . . . “Sure. I’ll talk to Coach.”

  He relaxed. “Thanks.”

  But I was absolutely not, under any circumstances, going to let him know he affected me. If anything, I’d pretend he repulsed me. It was the only sane thing to do. It was crazy enough that we were on the same team and even crazier that we were working this closely. It would be tempting fate and sanity to add anything else to the list.

  5

  Baseball season lasts six months. That’s 162 games (not counting spring training or the post season) in which any one of my players has the potential to get hurt. My job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. Female athletic trainers are still on the rare side in Major League Baseball and one under thirty is even rarer. But it was my niche, my passion, for keeping players healthy, and preventing injuries before they started, that moved me from the minor leagues into one of only three positions for the Rays. Some days it felt like a dream come true, other days I wandered around wondering how I’d gotten here.

  Of course it was a combination of knowing the right people (that’s what happens when two members of your immediate family also work for the same team) and concentrated effort. One does not simply fall into a career like athletic training and make it this far by accident. I worked hard, had talent, and enjoyed my work.

  But I wasn’t sure when I chose this as my career. One minute I was doing a phenomenal job of pissing my parents off by hopping majors at Yale, and the next, I’d transferred to The University of Florida so I could study physical therapy. A semester and an internship later I realized that I didn’t just want to help people recover from injuries, I wanted to prevent the injuries in the first place—specifically in athletes. One thing led to another and I’d found my home in baseball. Of course it was baseball. I’m not sure why I ever thought I’d wind up anywhere else.

  Both my sisters followed in my father’s footsteps and it was expected that I would always be like them. All that rebellion had led me right back where my family expected me to be. I was happy, but sometimes I was confused.

  “Am I in trouble?” Dr. Carrie Anne Walker asked as soon as the morning medical meeting ended. She was the team’s orthopedic physician and one of my best friends.

  “I don’t know. Why would you be in trouble?”

  Carrie and I were dressed as opposite as we could get. I was in navy blue track pants that matched my three-quarter zip Rays pullover. Carrie, on the other hand, was wearing a hot pink pencil skirt and flowing black silk top. Her heels were a mile high, which I always found amusing in someone who knew full well what high heels did to the feet.

  “Yesterday I did a thing and I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.” She chewed on her plump lower lip.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I really didn’t, but I was worried. Carrie was normally a confident and imposing presence but right now she was almost shaking with nerves.

  Weird.

  “I was just finishing up with Montero’s knee evaluation when a call came into the office . . . ”

  I froze. “Wait . . . you sent me to the locker room?”

  She cringed. “I’m in trouble.”

  “No,” I lied. “I’m just . . . surprised is all. Why?”

  She shrugged. “I knew Marie was a friend of yours and if she needed a favor I figured it would be okay. But then I heard it wasn’t Marie, it was actually someone who worked for Marie. And then I heard this someone was very handsome and I did a bad thing.” She rushed through the last sentence so fast I could barely understand what she was saying.

  “No, no. It was fine. I was shocked, but I was fine.” I pulled the chair I’d been sitting in back out and sprawled. “Roman and I are used to navigating around each other.”

  “Can I ask a question?” She waited for my nod. “Why is he working for Marie? Isn’t that, like, a betrayal?”

  For this I had no answer. “Your guess is as good as mine. I had no clue.”

  “So what happened? Was Wes okay . . . ?” The way she drew out that question and looked away struck me as odd.

  “He has a sprain. He’ll be fine.”

  “Oh good. And Roman?”

  She still looked funny but I let it go. “He was . . . Roman.” I shrugged. “We were polite we took care of Wes and we moved on.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I feel like you’re not telling me something.”

  “Ditto.”

  She blanched. “Wanna trade secrets?”

  Oh this was interesting. I looked around the glass windows and felt very exposed. “Let’s take a walk to lunch.”

  “It’s too early for lunch.”

  “Then we’ll call it brunch.”

  She grinned and followed me out of the room and to my cubicle, waiting while I grabbed my sunglasses and wallet. Five minutes later we’d walked to my favorite Cuban bodega across the street. We ordered café con leche and convinced Rocky to make us his special breakfast sandwich. He only cooked when, and I quote, “beautiful women are present.”

  “I have a feeling you won’t say squat until I do, so I’ll go first,” she kindly offered.

  “Please do. I’m dying to know what is putting that look on your face.”

  She blushed. “Wes and I ran into each other last week.” She paused to take a sip. “And he’s nice.”

  She probably didn’t know that I knew Wes, or that I’d been one of his trainers in college, or that I knew exactly how nice he was. “And?”

  “And if he happened to be single and in the same location I would probably flirt my ass off.”

  I laughed because she’d been funny but in all honesty? It was a terrible idea. I liked both of them, but neither one was the type to do well in a relationship. Wes was a serial first-dater “in love with love” as Roman had put it. He was sweet and charming and had a genuinely good heart buried underneath all his antics, but there was something else driving him. He never committed to a woman for more than a month. He was casual personified.

  While Carrie Anne, on the other hand, was always looking for a good time. She loved to party. I’d only ever known her to have one boyfriend and Jamal had only lasted three months. She preferred to keep things light.

  And two people who wanted light were bound to have a few really hot nights before exploding into a powder keg of bad ideas.

  “Flirt? Or . . . ?” I let the question hang in the air.

  She shrugged. “He’s hot. Have you seen his dimples?”

  “He is very hot. So you’re just hoping to have a night or two?”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “You know me. As long as it’s fun.”

  “Just be careful with Wes. You’ve seen his Instagram, right? The man loves atte
ntion and he can be very romantic.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  I paused while a young lady from the kitchen placed our sandwiches on the table. “No. I think it could be a great thing. I’m simply cautioning you to keep Wes’s intentions separate from the things he says.”

  “You got all this from his Instagram?”

  I pulled apart my sandwich and nibbled on some of the fresh bread. “So, here’s the thing.”

  She leaned forward when I dropped my voice to nearly a whisper. “Yes?”

  “I knew Wes and Roman in college.”

  She dropped her sandwich. “Say that again.”

  “I knew them at UF. When they played for the Gators.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “That’s where you interned, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “You? A Daniels worked on the same team as Roman St. James? How is that not headline news?”

  I waved her voice down. “We’re on the 2012 ESPN highlight reel.”

  Her eyes bugged out. “What?”

  “You know they do a recap on the feud at the end of every year.” If nothing else, we were still good for ratings. “The coach and team kept it all very hush-hush. Coach called me JD instead of June, and I wore a ball cap during the games. No one noticed the connection until Super Regionals. And then of course it was headline news. My parents didn’t even know I’d switched majors again or that I was interning with the team.” I shook my head remembering the chaos of that fallout. Roman’s dad screaming at poor Coach Williams, my dad threatening to take me home—who even does that?—and Roman and I stuck in the middle.

  I realize now that was the beginning of the end. The stress that landed on our shoulders crushed us under its weight.

  “Wow. That’s huge. So you know Wes?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I know Wes. I’ll be sure to properly introduce you two whenever the opportunity arises. Happy?”

  “Very. And Roman . . . ?” She let the question hang in the air.

  I batted my lashes.

  “You didn’t,” she gasped.

  “Have you heard nothing from my stories of rebellion?” Better to pass this off as part of my restless years than anything deeper.

  “That’s taking rebellion to a whole new level, Daniels. That’s sleeping with the enemy. It’s, it’s,” her eyes popped open as she found her next comparison, “it’s Romeo and Juliet without the dying.”

  “Or love,” I said with a mouthful of food. “Romeo and Juliet were madly in love. Roman and I were not.”

  She cocked a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “They were teenagers. They were probably just desperate and horny and thought it was love.”

  I swallowed my food before I choked. “No wonder you don’t have a romantic bone in your body. That’s how you read Romeo and Juliet?”

  “What? When I was in high school I wanted to date every man I came across, not just one.” She shuddered as if monogamy was disgusting.

  And I suppose to some, the confines probably were. But not me. I craved it and the only time that craving had settled was the six weeks I was with Roman.

  “Regardless, we are not Romeo and Juliet. We’re more like the Hatfields and McCoys.”

  She didn’t say anything to that. Instead she studied me very carefully while she ate her sandwich. Then, when she did speak it was about work. “Keep an eye on Templeton. His knee repair looks good but he has a tendency to push too hard. The man does not know when to rest.”

  “He’s at the top of my list.”

  “And I’m worried Reyes will need surgery by the end of the season if it he doesn’t strengthen his triceps.”

  I nodded and swallowed my last bite. “Agreed. I’ll introduce a new routine this week.”

  “And I’m pretty sure you’re lying.”

  I froze.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You are seriously telling me that you,” she leaned closer and lowered her voice, “banged that hottie and it meant nothing?”

  The hair on my arm shot up just thinking about banging that hottie. I must have flushed or something because Carrie pointed her finger at me and started making weird high pitched noises. “I knew it!”

  “What?”

  “You’re blushing!”

  I buried my face in my hands so she couldn’t see my face. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Bullshit. I’ve known you for three years. You have feelings for this man. And not just the angry feelings. There’s more to that look in your eyes.”

  I waved her away. “Please let it drop. Whatever it was it is not something that is. And don’t you have surgeries to perform?”

  “I do. I have an ACL repair at two.” She flicked her wrist so she could check the time on her watch. “But first I have to make an impression at the art gallery.”

  That explained the hot pink pencil skirt. Carrie and my mother were both on the board. “Are you coming to dinner?” Mom was stopping by Eve’s after she was done at the gallery.

  “No. But we’re still on for the celebration tomorrow night?”

  “I’ll meet you at Rusty’s.”

  She stood up and shouldered her purse. “I can’t wait until Vegas. We might be ‘working’ but at least we’ll have a couple of nights to relax.”

  We were both attending a sports medicine conference in a few weeks. It didn’t hurt that it was in Las Vegas. I was looking forward to a few days off, too.

  I said my goodbyes to Carrie in the parking lot before taking another spin up and down the street. It always helped me clear my head of stress to get some fresh air and vitamin D.

  It was weird that in the matter of twenty-four hours I’d not only seen Roman, but discussed him with my two closest friends. I’d gone from barely thinking of him at all to not being able to stop thinking about him.

  What was it going to be like living in the same city?

  Probably not that different. When would our paths cross? Really? We worked in parallel industries but how often would he be near me? The answer was most likely never. Not unless one of his clients was on my team and he was injured. That was the only time I ever interacted with agents professionally.

  Personally, that was a different matter. Personally I interacted with one agent in particular, all the time. One great big traitor named Marie Hamilton. Luckily I knew she wouldn’t miss a dinner with my mother. Tonight I was getting answers.

  6

  Five years earlier

  I t was hands-down the most elaborate drinking game (if we could even call it that) I’d ever seen. And that was saying a lot considering I’d attended both an Ivy League college where drinking was practically a profession, and a large state university well known for its party culture.

  “Hold!” Wes bellowed from his position standing on the dinner table. He was serving as game captain and presiding over the masses from his perch above us all, dressed in a pirate hat, wearing Gasparilla beads, and holding a sword.

  Outside a crowd stood around the wheelbarrow race. Girls I’d never seen before held the legs of baseball players. Inside, several members of the basketball team stood with cheerleaders ready to hold them up so they could pour full cups of beer down into the mouths of more basketball players. Between them was an elaborate obstacle course that ended in dominoes. The dominoes were carefully stacked up a series of books to the dining room table Wes stood on. Behind him were two kegs with two football linebackers ready to do keg stands with the help of more baseball players.

  It was the strangest mix of people and I still wasn’t entirely sure how I’d wound up there. After practice a bunch of cars pulled up and everyone jumped in. I was shoved into the backseat of one of the cars and told it was “party time.”

  That was two hours ago.

  “Hold!” Wes called again. The crowd practically vibrated with anticipation.

  “I’ve got to give it to him, Wes is a master game maker,” Roman whispered in my ear.

  A shiver raced over my shoulder
everywhere his breath touched. He stood just behind and to the side of me, the crowd crushing closer and forcing his body into mine. It was one thing to touch his arm in the locker room but quite another to have his tall, hard body pressed against mine. I was suddenly very aware of how much taller he was than me. How much stronger.

  I turned my head. “You’re not playing?” Our lips were only inches apart. I could feel the heat from his body, smell the beer he held in his hand. Hell, I could see every striation of gold in his brown eyes—eyes that were locked onto mine in a way that no mere acquaintance would ever lock and hold.

  “No,” he whispered, shaking his head slightly, almost as if he were afraid if he moved too much or spoke too loud it would break this connection. “I learned the hard way that it’s dangerous to participate in Wes’s games. It’s much safer to help with the planning and stand back to watch it unfold.” He bounced his eyebrows but didn’t look away.

  I kind of hoped he’d never look away. “Which part of this did you plan?” Maybe if I kept asking questions he’d keep talking and staring into my eyes like he wanted to kiss me.

  “The wheelbarrow race was my idea. So were the dominoes.” He shrugged.

  “Not the basketball players dunking with cheerleaders?”

  He closed one eye and cringed. “That was all Wes.”

  He was so adorable when he made funny faces. There was something so animated about the play between his sweet face and those eyes . . .

  I still couldn’t get over the eyes. They were the kind actors killed for because they could act an entire scene without saying a word. I swear Roman could express happiness, sadness, and frustration better than I could with a dictionary and a thesaurus—and all he needed were those damn brown eyes.

  “He’s very creative,” I murmured.

  Roman smiled and it was a beautiful thing. His entire face lit up and it was as if he was smiling with every single part of him. “He’s easily the most creative person I’ve ever met. And that is both a very good and very bad thing.”

  “Depends on the day?”

  “Depends on the hour,” he chuckled. The sound made my knees go a little weak.