by KB Winters
Chelsea stirred and rolled away from my fingertips. The sheet tugged down as she moved and revealed miles of soft skin. The back of her neck, down her spine, and right to the curve at the top of her ass. Damn, she was perfect. And to think, I normally went for blondes. I snorted quietly at the notion and moved to get up. I hated to pull away but nature was calling.
I crept into the adjoined bathroom, softly shut the door, and took care of my business. When I opened the door again, Chelsea was up, standing at the side of the bed, and tucking herself back into the robe that I’d all but torn off of her really early this morning in her office. I grinned at the memory and let my eyes linger on her legs, wishing they were wrapped around me again.
“Morning, gorgeous girl,” I called, striding buck naked back into the room.
Chelsea spun around and blushed when her eyes zeroed right on the morning wood I was sporting. No shame in my game, mama. She quickly reverted her eyes to mine and smiled softly. “Looks like you are having a good morning.”
“Hoping for one. Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“Coffee.”
“Aha.” It did sound good. I could always get her back up to bed. “What time is it anyway?”
Chelsea glanced over her shoulder at the bedside clock. It was analog and I couldn’t make out the hands from across the room. “Ten thirty.”
“Shit!” I scrambled across the room and dove to grab my pants and shirt from the floor.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, the alarm audible in her voice.
“I have to be at the practice facility in thirty fuckin’ minutes.” I shucked on my pants, not caring to dig around for wherever my shorts had gotten too. “Damn it!”
“I’m sorry. I sleep late so I don’t set an alarm…”
I held up a hand before pulling on my shirt. “Don’t worry about it. Not your fault. But I gotta jet, baby girl!”
She nodded, and I pressed a kiss to her lips, wishing to hell I could linger on her sweet pout, and then flew out of the room. Chelsea followed me down the stairs and to the entry way of her townhome.
I stopped short, my hand resting on the door handle. I craned back to glance at Chelsea. “Hey! Do you wanna come to the game tonight?”
She smiled. “Sure!”
Something about the way she was staring at me, smiling at me, hit me hard in the gut. “All right, baby girl. I’ll set aside a couple of tickets at Will Call.”
“Paris can get me in. Don’t worry about it. Just scoot!”
I winked at her and then bolted out of the house and down to my truck before I said fuck it and hauled her over my shoulder and back up the stairs to her bed.
* * * *
“Wright! Focus!” Coach Robinson bellowed at me from the dugout. I snapped to attention. “Get your ass to the mound!” He waved his hands like an air traffic control tech on speed.
Damn it. My imagination needed guard rails today. All I could do was think about Chelsea.
I jogged out to the mound, careful to keep my temper in check. I’d already been flying on Coach’s radar since I arrived ten minutes late to practice. My shoulder was feeling the drills he’d already put me through and I was about to remind him that if he wanted a superstar performance tonight, he needed to let me rest a little.
Mike, the catcher, got into position and I wound up. Pitch after pitch after pitch. Each one picture fuckin’ perfect, landing in Mike’s glove with a satisfying punch. Mike rose up to his feet after I’d made it through ten pitches. I turned to check Coach’s reaction. He didn’t even crack a smile. “Again!”
“Mother fuck—”
“Hey, take it as a compliment. He’s only riding your ass ‘cause he likes you,” Mike called over to me before I could go full ape-shit.
I glared across the field. “Well tonight when my arm feels like a noodle and I can’t get the pitch to the plate, I’ll hold onto that little soft and fuzzy sentiment.”
“Damn, dude. Just trying to help…” he growled to himself. He gathered up the balls and brought them over to me. “Here you go, Your Highness.”
I grimaced. “Listen, man, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m just fuckin’ wiped out.”
“Well that’s not an option on this team. We’re not a pack of princesses skating by this season. We’re out here fighting for our lives—our reputations.”
The intensity of his words hit me hard and I nodded, suddenly ashamed for losing my temper with my teammate. “You’re right. I’ll quit bitchin’.”
Mike grinned. “Good, cause look who just got here…”
I turned to follow his stare. “Son of a bitch.”
Summer Pratt and a posse of what looked like reporters, were coming onto the field. I couldn’t catch a break from this girl.
“Smile for the camera, Wright.”
“Afternoon gents,” Summer cooed, taking careful steps. Who fucking wears stilettos onto the ball field? It’s a sacrilege.
I turned up my lip and locked my stare on her. “What do you want, Ms. Pratt?”
Her bright eyes clouded with a stormy look. A silent warning. Then her smile popped back into place and she revealed her perfect, movie star white teeth. “These folks are here to talk to you and do a story after your recent streak of success.” She waved at the four people behind her. They all glanced up from their set up process and met my eyes in turn, offering polite smiles.
“Does Coach know about this? We’re in the middle of practice and we have a—”
“Coach knows the chain of command,” Summer said, cutting me off with another wide smile. She was acting like we were old friends, not ex-lovers. It was unnerving. “This will only take a few minutes. You might want to floss though…looks like a little spinach or something.”
She flashed another smile as I worked my tongue over my teeth. She let out a trill of a laugh and strut off the field.
“Sweet mother, she’s bangin’” Mike breathed beside me, his voice low so the reporters wouldn’t hear him.
I snorted. “You ever heard of Medusa?”
“The lady with the snakes in her hair?”
“Uh-huh. Look it up sometime and you’ll see my point.” I turned toward the reporters and flashed a—hopefully spinach free—smile. Time to turn on the charm. If I couldn’t perform for the cameras and act the part of a big time baseball star, then my name wasn’t Cody fuckin’ Wright.
“Let’s get this party started!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Chelsea
After Cody left for practice, I resigned myself to working all morning, in order to give myself permission to take yet another night off. By two o’clock, I stopped to shove a couple of eggs and a piece of toast down my throat and then called Paris.
“Hey girl!” she answered, her voice bright and sunny, signaling that her recent trouble in paradise had passed.
Thank God for that.
“Hey! Are you going to the game tonight?”
“Sheesh. How are you Paris? Well, I’m just fan-fucking-tastic, Miss Chels, thank you ever-so-much for asking!”
I giggled at her put out tone. “I’m sorry. Hey, Paris. How are you?”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” she said, giggling along. “What’s got you all fired up this afternoon? Tell me you didn’t get that shot in the dark drink again…you remember what happens to you…”
I laughed and shook my head. The shot in the dark was a crazy strong espresso drink at the little shop by my house. Two shots of espresso in a large coffee. After a particularly late night, I tried it for the first time and was still buzzing like a hummingbird hours later when I met Paris for lunch. It was a memory she wouldn’t let me forget. “No, nothing like that. I was actually calling to see if you were going to the game tonight.”
“Oh really?” Paris purred and I could imagine the grin on her face. “Someone has the baseball bug? Or, maybe you have a Cody Wright bug.”
I laughed. “I told Cody I would be there tonight.”
>
“Oooh! Honey, we need to catch up!”
“Drinks before the game?” I suggested, glancing at the clock. If I met her in two hours, I could still finish up my work load for the day and shower off the remnants of my wild night with Cody.
“You bring the gossip and I’ll bring Robby’s black AmEx! Let’s hit up Tachos. I’m in a Mexico state of mind.”
“Mmmm. Chips and salsa. Sold! See you at four?”
“Works for me.”
We hung up and I went back to the office and finished up. By three, I was hitting the shower and getting ready to see Cody. I chose my outfit with care, knowing he’d be watching me from the field. I knew he liked me in red, which worked out well since it was the team color. I slipped into a red tank top with silver embellishments on the side where it ruched in to give a cinched appearance to my waist. It was also low enough in the front that Cody would have plenty to see. Then I slipped into my sexiest pair of jeans. The pair that lifted my ass and squeezed in my thighs.
I applied a smoky eye, teased my hair, and slipped a pair of silver earrings in the shape of feathers into my earlobes. A pair of black booties and I was good to go.
“Ow! Ow! Damn, girlie!” Paris greeted, hollering across the cantina style bar when I walked in an hour later. “You’re gonna make Cody lose his breath when he sees you like that. The team should keep you out of the stadium if they want him to be able to pitch properly.”
I laughed and slid onto the bar stool beside her. Paris was just as decked out and glittery. But, then again, that was just Paris. She was always put together. I swore sometimes she must sleep in full makeup and her favorite pair of pumps. It was just how she was raised. Her mom was a former Miss America candidate and instilled the importance of fashion, makeup, and styled hair in Paris from a very young age, hoping to raise the next generation winner. Paris had other ideas. Preferring chasing boys to competing for tiaras.
“Can I get another one and a strawberry, blended, sugared rim for my friend?”
The bartender snapped into action and minutes later, set two fresh drinks down on the bar in front of us. “Thanks, sugar,” Paris drawled over at the young man. He grinned but was apparently struck mute by her beauty because he scampered off without saying a word.
I snorted. “New admirer?”
“It would appear that way…remind me to leave him a good tip. He’s sweet.” She spun on her stool, away from the young bartender, and faced me. Her fingers wrapped around the stem of her fresh margarita and a wide grin spread across her face. “All right. Dish!”
I flushed and Paris cackled. “Oh this is gonna be good!”
“I just don’t know where to start…”
“Start with after we last saw each other. How did you go from saying you weren’t interested to wearing sex kitten glow?”
“Sex kitten glow?” My cheeks warmed further. “How did you know?”
Paris laughed. “Honey, we’ve been friends for a while now. I just know. So how’d it go down? How’d he get you to change your mind? Besides his gorgeous smile and huge package? Or was that all it took?” She laughed again and then took a big sip from her drink.
I blushed at her remarks. He did have a huge package—I just didn’t realize she noticed it too. “He just showed up!”
“At your place?”
“Yeah.” I tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear and took a sip from my own drink. “Mmmm. Keep flirting with that bartender. This is fantastic!”
Paris smiled, satisfied with herself. “Okay, so you’re home and there’s a knock or whatever…” she prompted, rolling her fingers in a small circle to get me going.
I sucked in a deep breath. “Right. I worked all day and when I wrapped everything up, I ordered pizza, but when the bell rang it was Cody. Not the pizza guy.”
“Shit! What were you wearing?”
I laughed. “I was decent.”
“Damn. It would have been a better story if you were topless or something.”
“Oh my gosh, Paris! Who answers the door for the pizza guy topless? This is real life, not the beginning of a nineties porn flick.”
She roared with laughter at my disgruntled comment. “All right, fair enough. Not topless. But you know, free boobin’ it, tank top or long t-shirt or something.”
“That still reeks of cheesy porn…” I commented, plowing through a few chips, liberally dunked through the salsa.
She shrugged. “Okay…so…you’re dressed, answer the door…”
“Right. Okay, so it’s Cody. I don’t know why. But I let him in and we got to talking. Had dinner. And we got into this conversation about his so-called persona and why he acts the way he does,” I paused, wondering how much I should really say about that part of the evening. It wasn’t some kind of shocking revelation or secret, but it felt off to tell Paris what he’d said in detail. “Anyway, it was really good, and we ended up in the Jacuzzi tub with a bottle of wine.”
Paris laughed and clapped her hands together, the sound ricocheting around the small bar space. “Oh you hussy! I love it!”
I joined in with her easy laughter. “It was amazing, Paris. He brings out this whole new wild side of me. I have absolutely no inhibitions and all I can think about is how much I want him.” I leaned in, dropping my voice even lower. “It’s like being completely out of control and free. Like an animal!”
“That’s how it’s supposed to be! Why do you think Robby and I can’t keep our shit together for two minutes without trying to get it on?”
I rolled my eyes. I doubted that Cody and I would ever be that bold, but maybe a hot hook up in a bathroom…I shook my head, surprised by my own dirty little thought. “That’s more a sickness, I figure.”
Paris shoved me playfully. “Don’t be jelly!”
“With you two, I figure its more make-up sex. If you’re not fighting like cats and dogs, then you’re…”
“Fucking like them?” she supplied, raising one of her perfect brows.
I grinned. “Something like that. You two all sorted out now?”
She nodded happily. “Yup. He got home from his trip and we sorted that shit out. He just wanted to get at me. So he agreed to meet with a wedding planner next month.”
I popped a fully loaded chip into my mouth. “Wow. Congrats.”
“Thank you.” She sighed and leaned into the bar. “Man, it’s all coming together, huh? Maybe by next summer Cody and Robby will be best friends and he can be his man of honor or whatever it’s called and you can be my maid of honor.”
“Man of Honor?” I repeated, unable to keep a laugh from bubbling forth. For a woman who was on a mission to get to the alter, she certainly didn’t have the terminology to back it up.
“Whatever. It’d be cute in the pictures so just roll with it, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am!” I mocked a salute. “But I wouldn’t hold your breath. Cody and I are just keeping things casual.”
Paris stared at me. “What does that even mean? Like he’s seeing other people?”
My stomach flipped abruptly at the thought, threatening to toss the chips and salsa I’d chomped down. “No…I mean…I don’t think he is.”
Paris shrugged and pushed up from the bar. She tossed back the last foamy gulp from her glass and pushed it away. Her suitor—aka the barely legal bartender—raced to offer her another. She turned it down. “No, thank you. We have a ball game to catch.”
“The Warriors?” he asked.
“That’s right, darling. You a fan?”
He nodded emphatically. “Big time! I make sure to change the station over as soon as they come on.”
“Awesome. I’ll try to remember to bring you some swag next time I come by. My fiancé plays on the team. Robby Brown.”
She grinned at the same time the smile slid from the bartender’s face. She’d crushed the fantasy land he’d built inside of his mind. It was funny but tragic all at once.
“Can I get a lemon water and a menu? I’m feeling like nachos mi
ght be a good idea…”
I laughed to myself as he wandered off to fill her request, his shoulders slumped, and his face pulled into a frown. “Aww. I think you broke his heart,” I told her.
She glanced over her shoulder. “He’ll be fine. Plenty of girls for him to chase around here, I’m sure. This place is probably cougar central!”
I laughed but it faded quickly as I thought back to what Paris had said minutes before. Did Cody want to keep things casual with me so he wouldn’t feel bad about seeing other women at the same time? When he first said it, I assumed it was for my benefit. Something to get me to relax and stop taking the whole thing so damn seriously. But now, a seed of doubt had been planted and the whole conversation had a darker tone.
I was about to ask Paris for her advice, when a blast from the past walked in the front door and my mouth fell to the ground. Our bartender returned and I ripped the menu from his hands and held it open to shield me from the view of my old high school nemesis—Summer Pratt.
Damn her. She looked like she just left high school. Her hair glossy and slick like something from a shampoo commercial. Natural makeup that made her look young and fresh. Her fashion sense appeared to have changed. She used to strut around school in tiny shorts that barely passed the dress code and t-shirts so tight you could see the outline of her nipples. Now, she was wearing a conservative black and white polka dot wrap dress that fit her like a glove but was flirty, not overly sexy.
She flounced across the room with two girlfriends and took a corner booth. The bartender, having been rejected by Paris, flew over to see if he could get any bites.
“Wow, got over that fast, didn’t he?” Paris said, smirking at me. I peeked over the top, my eyes wide and panicked. She wrinkled her nose. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you hiding behind your menu?”
“I know that girl over there. The blonde. We went to high school together.”
“No shit!” Paris said, craning around to get a glimpse. I ducked for cover behind my menu. “You two weren’t friends, I’m guessing from your shady as shit behavior right now. Stop hiding.” She took a swipe for my menu but I kept it tight in a death grip.