“For Schmidt, it is.” He hauled himself off the floor and sat beside her on the couch.
“Don’t you see that’s precisely why I can’t marry you?”
Sam scrubbed a hand over his face. This wasn’t going according to his plan. “When you put it that way, I can see where you might be insulted.”
He did, too. And her misunderstanding was his fault. “I didn’t explain myself very well.”
He reached for her hand, and his heart leaped when she let him take it. This time, he’d get the words right—even if it killed him. And it might.
“Alex, what matters to me is you. Us. Whether Dan Schmidt wants us to be married or not is inconsequential. I want us to be married. I want to fall asleep beside you every night and wake up with you in the morning. I want to be there when you’re happy and when you’re sobbing uncontrollably. I want you to be the first girl I’ve introduced to my mother since high school.” He paused for a breath, but his eyes never left her face. “You’re my lucky charm, darlin’, my own personal mascot. You’re my everything. I love you.”
She blew out a shaky breath, and her lips tipped into a wobbly smile. “I love you, too, Sam. I didn’t think I would. Thought it was pure lust between us. But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with your brash attitude and your bigger-than-life persona.”
“Then we’re on the same page?”
She nodded, but shadows still lurked in her eyes. “Before you tie yourself to me forever, I have a confession.”
“Whatever your secrets are, we’ll handle it.”
“Why don’t you wait to say that until after you’ve seen what you’re in for?” Alex stood and tugged on his hand until he, too, rose from the couch.
He followed her up the narrow staircase. She paused in front of a closed door, hand on the knob, and turned back to face him. Her blue eyes were serious. “You’re sure?”
“Of course.” He wanted a lifetime with Alex. Period. Nothing she could have hidden behind this innocuous door would change his mind.
“Okay.” She turned the knob and pushed on the door. It swung into darkness.
Sam blinked and waited for his eyes to adjust. He was in the middle of a teenager’s bedroom. Black bedspread. Black curtains. Walls papered with posters of some of their generation’s most depressing bands. “What, exactly, am I supposed to see here?”
Alex chuckled and pulled a book off the bookshelf in the corner. She flipped it open. “My sophomore yearbook. I’m the one—”
“I know.” He zeroed in on her face right away, recognizing her despite the heavy eye makeup and dark lipstick. “You really were Mistress of the Dark.”
“That’s me.” She reached for another book. “And here I am senior year.”
Now here was the Alex he knew. Laughing eyes, a perpetual sly grin, as if she were privy to a joke she couldn’t wait to share with the world. “What changed?”
“Lots of therapy. A little Prozac.” She thumped the yearbooks onto her desk. “I still battle with depression, Sam. Your fun-loving attitude was one of the reasons I threw myself at you in the first place. With you around, I find it impossible to be in a bad mood.”
Whoa. “That’s some heavy shit, Alex.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to tell you. It won’t always be easy.”
“So? Nothing worth having is.” Now that the initial shock had worn off, he was beginning to reconcile this new, darker Alexa with the laughing goddess he knew. Somehow, the revelation rounded her out—made her more real. “Besides, this way we’re even.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How so?”
“You have the ability to make me feel like the big man on campus when, in reality, I spent most of my high school career playing chess and building robots with the nerdiest of the geeks.”
Full lips pouted. “No way.”
“Yes way. I grew into myself summer between junior and senior years—and that’s when the baseball team decided I might be good for something more than gathering jock straps and filling water bottles.”
She circled him slowly, mouth pursed in concentration as she studied him from every angle. Finally, she met his eyes and grinned. “Now would be a good time to pull out that ring again, Zippy.”
“Well, it’s downstairs, on the floor where I dropped it.”
She grabbed his hand, and together they ran back to the living room. Sam scooped the box up off the floor and plucked the ring out of its velvet bed. He slid it onto Alex’s finger and murmured in her ear. “I’ve thought and thought and still have no idea why the hell you keep calling me Zippy.”
Her soft laughter tickled his neck. “Your memory sucks, Zip.”
“What do you expect? I’ve killed off too many brain cells with the wild ways I adopted to make up for lost time.”
Alex’s eyes lingered on his crotch. “As soon as we leave my parents’ place, I’ll refresh your memory.”
The direction of her gaze jogged something loose in his euphoria-fogged brain.
“No need, Alex.” He nipped her earlobe. “Next time we’re sure we don’t have an audience, I’ll gladly show you something that needs its own ZIP code.”
She raked her fingers over his shoulders and melted against him. “I’m looking forward to it.”
THE END
Copyright © 2016 Arlene Hittle
Hittle, Arlene
Ogling the Outfielder
Media > Books > Fiction > Romance Novels
Category/Tags: romance, contemporary, baseball, Arizona
ISBN: 978-0-9911787-7-3
Release: March 2016
Editing by Gilly Wright
Cover Design by Covers by Rogenna, http://www.rogennabrewer.com
All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT ARLENE HITTLE
ABOUT ARLENE HITTLE
Arlene Hittle is a Midwestern transplant who now makes her home in northern Arizona. Arlene suffers from the well-documented Hittle family curse of being a Cubs fan, but will root for the Diamondbacks until they run up against the Cubs. Longtime friends are amazed she writes books with sports in them, since she’s about as coordinated as a newborn giraffe and used to say marching band required more exertion than golf. When she’s not writing or slurping down Starbucks drinks, she works as a copy editor/page designer for The Daily Courier. Find her at arlenehittle.com, on Twitter or on Facebook.
If you enjoyed Ogling the Outfielder, please consider telling others and writing a review.
“Every review is a gift and I’m so very grateful that readers take the time to talk about my books.”
— Susan Mallery
Or check out Arlene’s other titles:
Home for the Holidays— Women of Willow’s Grove No. 1/2
Just Right — And They Lived Happily Ever After No. 1
Blind Date Bride — Reality (TV) Bites No. 1
Diva in the Dugout — All’s Fair in Love & Baseball No. 1
Contempt of Love — A FREE Love & Baseball Short
Coming Soon
Sliding into Home — All’s Fair in Love & Baseball No. 3
Plus another still-to-be-titled Love & Baseball story
And Trouble in Paradise — Reality (TV) Bites No. 2
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Ogling the Outfielder (All's Fair in Love & Baseball Book 4) Page 9