Bottom of the Ninth: Seattle Skookums Baseball (Game On in Seattle Book 6)

by Jami Davenport

“Well, if they appear to be on surface, I guarantee you they’re getting it on the side.”

  Good-natured Manny narrowed his eyes menacingly at Sully. “Don’t you ever talk like that about my mama or my papa.”

  Sully rolled his eyes and dismissed Manny with a wave of his hand, turning his attention back to Zeke. “You’re getting married, Wolfe? Have you been smoking too much of the happy weed that’s now legal in the great state of Washington, or not smoking enough?”

  “I’m not smoking anything.” Zeke dug his fingers into his palms to keep from slugging the bastard.

  “Ah, that’s your problem.”

  Zeke shrugged and tried to ignore the parasite.

  “I saw her after a game. She is hot. Nice tits and ass.” Sully didn’t know when to stop.

  Zeke shot to his feet and spun around. He planted both hands on Sully’s chest and pushed. Staggering, Sully fell into the seat behind him. Zeke grabbed the collar of the asshole’s shirt and pulled him close. “Don’t you ever fucking talk about her like that again or you’ll be wearing your nose on your forehead and your dick crammed up your ass.”

  Sully blinked a few times, the smirk completely wiped from his face. He stared at Zeke as if he’d never seen him before.

  “Okay, I was just joking. Didn’t realize your sense of humor was as flat as your personality.”

  Zeke tightened his hold and growled in a low tone, “I know how to fight, dickhead. Don’t push me, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Sully swallowed and nodded, as if a hundred percent convinced of the truth behind his teammate’s words. Zeke stood up straight and brushed his hands on his pants as if to get the stench of Sully off them. He glanced around. Several guys peered at him cautiously over the back of their seats, while some leaned into the aisle, and still others stood and stared with open mouths.

  Zeke shot each of them a friendly smile as if the altercation had never happened. Judging by their expressions, his smile disconcerted them as much as his earlier readiness to fight.

  They probably thought he was suffering from split personality disorder or something.

  Satisfied, he sat down in his seat and went back to business. He texted Bella to make arrangements to meet up with her and buy a ring when the team got back.

  Chapter 14—Reached on Error

  “Can we keep them?” Sophie begged, holding up her precious cargo for Paisley to see. The little kitten’s brilliant green eyes regarded Paisley with interest. It reached out and batted a loose strand of her hair.

  “Where did you get it?” Paisley stroked the kitten’s chin. Her finger vibrated from its happy purring.

  “Them,” Sadie said, sounding more excited than Paisley had heard her since the kids’ mother had first disappeared. Sadie produced another kitten with the same green eyes and black and white body. It looked up at her and emitted a pitiful meow, then buried its head in Sadie’s hair.

  “Two of them?” She looked at Brayden. “Do you have one, too?”

  He nodded his head and grinned, petting the kitten Sadie held tightly as if it were her very best friend.

  “Can we keep them? Please, Aunt Paze? Please?” Sadie had just strung together more words than Paisley had heard from her in the past month.

  “Mr. Zeke won’t be too happy about this. He doesn’t seem to be an animal person.” She hedged, pretty certain Zeke would be anything but happy. He’d most likely be very unhappy. After all, he’d mentioned pets were not negotiable.

  “He won’t mind. Honest he won’t,” Sophie pleaded, and one big tear rolled down her cheek. Paisley had to give her kudos, the girl was good. God help the man who married her.

  “Where did you find them?”

  Brayden stepped forward, taking over his role as the man of the family. “They were homeless, Aunt Paze, like we were. Look how skinny they are. They crawled out of the bushes just down from our bus stop a week ago. We’ve been sneaking food to them. We were finally able to catch Bart today. He’s been really scared.”

  “Bart? I see. Are you sure he’s a boy?”

  “Yes.” Sadie nodded. “See his face? He has a mustache.” Sadie hugged Bart close. Her big eyes full of unshed tears. She’d dealt with a world of disappointments; why should this be any different? But Paisley wanted to make it different for her.

  “I see. And this one?” She pointed at the other kitten.

  “Her name is Purr because she purrs,” Sophie announced proudly.

  “And she’s a female because?”

  “She’s prettier than him. Females are always prettier.”

  Paisley didn’t argue that point, though in nature the males were usually the pretty ones. She heaved a big sigh. How could she say no? They’d sequester them downstairs. Zeke would never know.

  “They have to stay downstairs. The three of you are taking care of them. That includes cleaning poo and pee from the litter box.”

  Three heads nodded vigorously as they hurried down the stairs with their babies before she changed her mind. Paisley was a sucker for hard-luck cases. Now she had five hungry mouths to care for and feed.

  She followed the kids and made a grocery list of things they’d need. They left the kittens in the bathroom. What damage could two little kittens do in a bathroom? She loaded up the kids and headed for the nearest grocery store.

  Zeke would be okay with this. He had to be. She’d break it to him gently. She had a few days before he returned to outline her strategy. She might even have more days if she could keep the kittens downstairs and him upstairs.

  Her brother-in-law, Virgil, was still in jail. According to Marnie, he’d been denied bail on some technicality. For now, Paisley could relax. The justice system moved slowly, and Virgil could be locked up for quite a while. Paisley had found a website for the county jail that listed inmates and checked it every day, but there was a disclaimer stating it could be behind by twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Regardless, that he was still listed on the jail roster gave her a feeling of security, along with her friend’s vigilance and gossip connections.

  Right now, her biggest issues revolved around Zeke and his remodel, which had grown more extensive by the day. Al showed up that morning with a crew in tow from one of those home improvement shows discussing the possibility of featuring the remodel on one of their episodes.

  Paisley decided to stay out of that one. She had enough to keep her busy fending off the local press regarding their fake engagement, taking care of the kids, and figuring out what to do about Zeke.

  Especially what to do about Zeke, because her heart had moved from the bench to the batter’s box and was swinging hard for a home run. Paisley had never been a good hitter, so she feared she’d strike out in love and life.

  * * * *

  Zeke yawned, worn out and exhausted. It’d been one long-ass road trip, and he was ready for a good night’s sleep in his own bed.

  He was tired and cranky, and he just wanted to be left alone. He’d had a shitty game and struck out all three times. Isaac had called him a couple times and left voice mails. He suspected Bella had given him the phone number, which irritated the hell out of him.

  Opening the door from the garage, Zeke trudged down the hallway and toward the staircase, almost tripping over two balls of fluff jetting past him at the speed of light.

  “What the fuck?” Had his house been invaded by rats while he’d been gone?

  Frowning, he followed a trail of toilet paper down the hall to the powder room, kicking the TP off his foot as he walked. There was none left on the roll. Obviously it’d been spread all over his house, like some teenage prank taken to the extreme. Only he didn’t know any teenagers well enough for them to be in his house.

  Then he saw the perpetrators again. Two streaks of black and white and gray.

  Cats. Kittens. Felines. Didn’t matter what name he gave them, the results all boiled down to the same thing. He didn’t like cats. In fact, he didn’t really like pets much, either. The only dog he’d ever owned, his fa
ther had killed because it peed on the carpet. He’d made the boys watch as he drowned the struggling puppy in a wading pool and insisted they bury the body afterward. Zeke avoided pets after that, like he avoided personal entanglements beyond the superficial.

  Was that the real reason why he was avoiding his brothers? Because he didn’t want to dig deep and unearth all the sorrow, guilt, and pain they shared?

  His counselor had told him to avoid toxic relationships in favor of healthy ones. He opted to avoid all relationships. He lived his life within the confines of a baseball park and nowhere else.

  His solitary existence had worked for a while. He’d created a fictional life no one questioned because he lived clean and privately. He never gave the press a reason to go after him or question his squeaky reputation. He left that to the Sullys of the world. They kept the heat off guys like him who preferred to fly under the radar and just play baseball.

  Only, in Seattle, his plan wasn’t working so well. First, there was the new ownership. Second, his brothers living nearby for the first time in his life since they’d shared the same house. Lastly, there was Paisley. She’d upended his world and forced him out of his comfort zone. He did not like being outside his comfort zone.

  Now he had to contend with a counterfeit engagement, which placed them together even more, not just as a couple but as a family. Zeke had never particularly been a guy who loved kids. He was good with kids, and like most things, he faked his love of children quite well. Yet he actually liked these kids, which disturbed him as much as his fondness for Paisley.

  The two rebel balls of fur rolled past him, fighting over something. They were wrapped around each other, both refusing to give in with a stubbornness he grudgingly appreciated.

  He ran his hand through his hair and glanced toward the living room. A two-kitten wrecking crew had laid waste to every item that had been displayed on the mantel. Missing was the baseball his mentor Albert Pujols had signed and given to his sister. It had been one of her prized possessions.

  “What the fuck?” Zeke moved closer and gaped in horror. Their tiny little claws were fastened to his baseball. He bent down and tried to dislodge them. All four paws on both kittens were embedded in leather. One little shit buried its sharp teeth into Zeke’s palm. He yanked his hand away, swearing.

  He had to stop them before they did more damage. One of them was zealously pulling the stitching out of the baseball while the other gnawed on the leather covering.

  He didn’t have a fucking clue how to rescue his prized possession from becoming a kitten play toy.

  “Oh, no,” he heard Paisley say behind him. He turned to see her standing there in horror, her hands covering her mouth.

  “Stop them. Now,” he yelled, unable to keep his volume under control.

  Paisley bent down and managed to extract one kitten from the ball. She handed it to him. “Hold him.”

  Zeke took the kitten and stared at the tiny member of the kitten demolition team. He’d never held a kitten before, didn’t really know what to do. It stared up at him with the biggest green eyes, and he couldn’t be mad at it, even though he wanted to be. Was there such a thing as kitty time-out?

  The little shit licked his hand with an amazingly rough tongue. Paisley removed the other kitten from the ball and held it tight as it wriggled to get out of her arms.

  “Welcome home,” she said with a wide smile, handing him the bedraggled ball. “And meet Bart and Purr. Bart is the one with the mustache.”

  He glared at her incredulously, irritated she might possibly be a willing partner in this feline plot of mayhem and chaos. He’d been certain the urchins had found a way inside on their own, maybe through a door left open by a worker.

  The guilt in her gaze as she eyed his precious baseball said it all.

  Hadn’t he made it clear? No pets. One of his few hard-and-fast rules. He’d let her and the kids have the run of the yard and house without complaint. Well, not too many complaints.

  “I’d be more inclined to call them Bonnie and Clyde or House and Wrecker,” he growled with no humor in his voice.

  Paisley giggled nervously. Zeke glared down at the ball of fur struggling to be free of his hold.

  “How the fuck did these…these things get in here?”

  “I’m sorry. One of the kids must’ve left the door open downstairs, and they wandered upstairs.”

  “Wandered? Whose kittens are they?” He sincerely hoped she’d give him any reason other than the one he suspected.

  “The twins found them in the bushes. They’re homeless. Someone dropped them off.”

  “You. Aren’t. Keeping. Them.” He barely kept his fury under wraps.

  Paisley stood up straighter. “You tell that to the kids, because I’m not.”

  He shook his head. “I made it clear. No pets.”

  “But you should see how much Sadie has come out of her shell. She’s behaving like a normal little girl, laughing and playing—”

  “I don’t care. Get rid of them. You have twenty-four hours.”

  “But the kids—”

  “I don’t fucking care what the hell you or the kids want. This is my fucking house, not yours. I knew this would never work out. They’re underfoot all the time. I never have any privacy. I’m fucking tired of it.” He couldn’t hold back his anger so he let her have it, taking his frustrations out on her. He’d given them too much free rein over his house, and they’d taken advantage of his good nature from the first day he’d brought them home. No more.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize we were such a burden.” Paisley’s icy glare didn’t cut through his anger. Without a word, she took the kitten from his grasp and clutched both of them to her chest.

  “I told you no pets. I said that rule was nonnegotiable. I meant it. It’s fucking intolerable enough that there are fucking rubber ducks in my hot tub. Fucking toys all over my lawn. A fucking bicycle lying on its side in my driveway. I can’t have a moment’s peace without one of you interrupting me.” He was on a roll, and he couldn’t stop.

  “Watch your language. The kids can hear.”

  “I don’t fucking care. They’re not my fucking kids. You might want to play house and pretend we’re a family, but we both know it’s all bullshit concocted for the press.”

  “This has all been for the press?” Her eyes flashed fire.

  He nodded, even though he wasn’t sure it had been.

  “I didn’t see any media when we were going at it on the deck.”

  “Don’t go all coy on me. You wanted it as much as I did.” He smirked at her, knowing he was stoking the fire but doing it anyway.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “I’m a guy who’s sick and tired of having my privacy invaded and being taken advantage of.”

  “I thought you liked us.”

  “You thought wrong.” His voice rose a few more decibels as he lashed out, wanting to hurt her with his words, pushing her away because she’d gotten too close. “And why the hell did you give my brother my phone number? You know how I feel.” He glared right back, matching her anger.

  “For your information, I never gave your brother your number. I wouldn’t invade your precious privacy like that.” Pivoting on her heel, she stomped off, pausing at the door to the downstairs. She whipped around, fury turning those brown eyes a tumultuous black. “The fake engagement is off. I’m not a good enough actor to pretend I like you, let alone love you.”

  “Good. I don’t like you or those damn kids, either.”

  “You’re going to die a lonely old man, Zeke Wolfe, unless you get your priorities straight.” She tossed her hair and held her head high. Zeke watched her go, heard her sharp footsteps on the stairs, followed by the harsh slam of a door.

  He threw on his jogging clothes and went for a run. He ran until his lungs screamed and his legs wobbled. He ran until the anger drained from him like a broken bottle. He collapsed on a park bench, his chest heaving, his body shaking. Putting his head
in his hands, he closed his eyes and sighed wearily.

  She was right. He’d been lonely all his life, and he would die lonely. He couldn’t love, and he couldn’t forgive and move on from the past.

  He’d just been as big of an asshole as his father. He’d shouted like an abusive bastard and had to exercise to the point of exhaustion to keep from exploding and hurting someone like he had after his sister’s death. The violence lurked inside him. Dormant and threatening, it hid in the darkness and waited for the right moment to escape.

  * * * *

  Paisley slammed the door. Tears filled her eyes, and she shook as her anger evaporated into despair and guilt. She’d done this to herself. He’d said no pets, and she’d ignored him, just like she’d ignored too many things about him. She’d fallen for a man who wasn’t emotionally available. He’d never made any promises, but she’d thought she could change him. She couldn’t.

  She snapped the dead bolt on the door. Not that Zeke didn’t have a key, but locking him out made her feel better. From now on, he wouldn’t be getting her body or any other part of her, especially not her friendship, the one thing a loner like him desperately needed whether he’d admit it or not. She’d been his employee, and that would be all she’d be.

  From across the room, three pairs of eyes watched her.

  She sat the kittens on the floor as Sophie ran to her and hugged her. Sadie stood in the corner, retreating into herself for the first time since the appearance of the kittens. She chewed on a fingernail, which had barely started to grow out, and hugged a stuffed bear to her.

  “Why are you up?”

  “We heard you and Mr. Zeke yelling,” Brayden answered.

  “We weren’t yelling. We were discussing.”

  “You were yelling.” Sophie gazed up at her. “You were not talking nice to each other. He wants us to get rid of Purr and Bart.”

  A big sob was wrenched from Sadie, and tears ran down her face. She scooped up Bart and held him close. “I won’t get rid of him. I won’t.”

  Paisley swallowed. She couldn’t make them give up the kittens. “Mr. Zeke doesn’t like pets. We need to be very careful about keeping the kittens downstairs and out of his way, or we’ll have to move out.” And go where? She hadn’t a clue. She’d saved up a little money, but probably not enough for a deposit and first and last months’ rent at Seattle prices. Even if she could afford the costs, she couldn’t maintain the monthly expenses, especially the day care for three kids that working outside her home would require.