The Grumpy Player Next Door: Copper Valley Fireballs #3

by Grant, Pippa

  Now?

  Now, I’m doing the same thing, without being in that off-again part of a relationship, which is the last time I was in anything resembling a relationship. Sometimes when I head into the city, I’ll use an app to find a hook-up, but that doesn’t always go well.

  Okay, that rarely goes well. The theory of random hook-ups is a lot better than the actuality of it for me. And other than Grady and a random cousin here or there, my friends are still single too.

  So why am I suddenly cranky at seeing my brother and his wife—who’s been his soulmate basically since they met in high school—happy and teasing each other?

  Because when you tease guys you like, they turn into growly bears, my brain helpfully reminds me.

  “I don’t like Max,” I announce, completely unnecessarily, which makes me want to snag the words back out of the air.

  Who randomly announces things like that?

  Liars. That’s who.

  “You flirt with guys to annoy them,” Grady points out.

  I gasp and pretend to be offended. “Are you saying I’m annoying?”

  “You flirt with our cousins.”

  “It’s practice in case someone single that we’re not related to ever moves to town. The universe will provide one day, and I need to be ready when it does. I also flirt with plenty of guys anytime I head into the city. Practice.”

  “You don’t flirt with Robinson or Trevor,” Annika says.

  “Robinson’s barely old enough to drink, and Trevor would probably think I meant it, but he’s got a lot of stuff to work through before he’d be real relationship material.”

  “Or maybe he’d like having someone to work through it with.”

  “Do you want to be around Cooper the day he discovers his body doesn’t want him to play baseball anymore?” Yes, I’m whispering.

  I like Trevor. He’s a good guy. A lot like one of my brothers, though older. Gives good hugs. And he’s struggling to accept what the rest of us can see.

  His best pitching years are behind him.

  Poor guy.

  “You don’t want to be the person warming him up at night to take his mind off it?” Grady wiggles his brows, making Annika laugh.

  I pull a no face. “You know I’ll be the first person taking him a cheesecake and a handle of Jack if he figures it out while he’s here, but he’s a friend. Period.”

  The sound of a distant car motor gets louder, and we all glance at the corner as it comes into view.

  It’s not Max’s Mercedes SUV, but it’s still a car I recognize. “Oh, yay!”

  More Fireballs. Though not Fireballs that I’ll be flirting with. Brooks Elliott is very much taken.

  It’s his wife I’m more excited to see, and that’s her unmistakable car.

  “Did he seriously ride out here from the city in the passenger seat of a Mini?” Grady mutters.

  Mackenzie Elliott parks the Fireball-mobile in front of my house, leaps out, and circles the small vehicle to tackle me in a hug. Where her car is custom-painted in an ode to the Fireballs and Fiery the Dragon, the team’s original mascot, she’s in jeans, hella awesome boots, and a fluffy black jacket over a vintage Fireballs T-shirt. The only thing different about her is that her smile is bigger than ever. “Tillie Jean! I missed you.”

  “Mackenzie! I missed you more. How was your honeymoon?”

  “Oh my god, we swung by the Baseball Hall of Fame and I got all tongue-tied, which someone found hilarious, but I got over it. How are you? Are you going to Marisol’s wedding? Are the guys behaving here? Do you have to work all the time, or can we hang out at your mom’s adorable coffee shop sometime this weekend? I need to hear all about this glitter bomb you exploded on Max. We’re staying up on the mountain and I miss you.”

  Mackenzie’s long-time BFF married Beck Ryder, the former boy band guy-slash-underwear model from Copper Valley who owns a house down the street from Cooper’s—that’s one of the rich weekender properties Cooper hasn’t snagged up—and she’s been visiting Shipwreck longer than Brooks has played for the team. I knew her back when she used to get too nervous to talk whenever Cooper was around.

  “Game room time?” I ask her. Beck’s basement man cave is legendary.

  She squeals and hugs me again, and I get a mouthful of blond hair. “You know it. I have to introduce Brooks to getting his ass spanked in ping pong.”

  “What’s with the gnomes?” Brooks asks. Mackenzie’s husband was a new acquisition this past year, and his bat is half the reason the Fireballs made it to the post-season. He’s a lot less cranky now than he was when he first arrived, and I think it has less to do with the dog he’s letting out of the car, and more to do with Mackenzie. “And are those—are they—those gnomes are giving someone the finger?”

  “What a coincidence. That’s what I’d like to do to Max for launching a garden gnome army and trying to take over my yard. Not that I had anything to do with this. I don’t touch gnomes. They freak me out.”

  Annika stifles another laugh behind a cough.

  Grady sighs.

  “What? I hate garden gnomes.”

  Brooks and Mackenzie share a look.

  “Max did this?” Mackenzie says.

  “Unless Cooper’s trying to make me think Max did it, and really, how likely is that?”

  Brooks winces. He knows Max’s reputation, and he knows Cooper’s reputation, and he also has a sister of his own that he’s overprotective of, just like Cooper and Grady are overprotective of me.

  Mackenzie’s nose wrinkles. “Max paid you back for the glitter bomb?”

  Either that, or he’s trying to demonstrate how horrified he was of kissing me and touching me and getting close to me by planting evil garden gnomes in my yard. “Looks like. So, I apparently need to up my prank game. Seems there are two fools in town who have no idea the beast they’ve unleashed.” I flex my muscles, grin, and then take another hit off my coffee backpack.

  “Tillie Jean.”

  I roll my eyes at Grady’s older-brother frown. “Would you rather I was pranking the assholes over in Sarcasm?”

  “I would, but my wife wouldn’t. Gotta keep the missus happy.”

  “Sue, eat Grady’s shoe,” Annika orders.

  The goat looks at both of them, then flops to the ground.

  Coco Puff, Brooks and Mackenzie’s not-quite-one-year-old, adorable, curly-brown-furred Cavapoo, barks, and his collar translates. “I love Ash the Baby Dragon best!”

  I lock eyes with Grady. “Long Beak Silver,” we say together.

  “Your grandpa’s parrot?” Mackenzie asks.

  “Where’d you get that collar?” I point to Coco Puff. “We need one for Pop’s parrot. He’s getting worse.”

  “Can it give an electric shock every time he cusses?” Grady adds. “Just until we’ve re-trained him to only say normal pirate things again.”

  “Seriously. He’s a nuisance. I won’t repeat what he said at lunch today, but no one wanted to eat after that. And we don’t want enough volts to fry him. I’m joking when I say I want to serve parrot burgers.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Whatever, Mr. Fondant Parrots for Therapy. I know you bite the parrot heads off first and smile while you’re doing it.”

  “Stop.” Annika’s waving both hands in front of her face like she’s overheating as she laughs. “Dammit. Tillie Jean, I need your bathroom.”

  I turn and make the it’s all yours gesture, and catch sight of a Mercedes SUV turning the corner as I do. “Oh, crap.”

  “Busted,” Grady mutters while Annika dashes for the house. She’s only a few months pregnant, not showing yet, but I know she’s drinking a ton of water and hormones are crazy things.

  “Is that Max?” Mackenzie claps her hands. “He’s not throwing too much, is he? He needs to rest that arm.”

  “He’s got this, Kenz. Not his first off-season.” Brooks grins at her, then waves as Max passes us and turns into the driveway next door.

&n
bsp; He climbs out of his SUV, his eyes flickering over the gnomes, landing on me for a split second before switching his attention to Brooks and Mackenzie.

  But that split second?

  That split-second glance had a big ol’ dollop of amusement sparkling in it.

  Not a single ounce of growly bear.

  Nope.

  It was all so you think you can rearrange the gnomes and that counts as winning, do you? Lame.

  It definitely wasn’t this is better than almost kissing you again.

  Nope.

  Wasn’t that.

  I refuse to admit there might’ve been any smolder in his sparkle.

  How could there be?

  They don’t go together at all.

  Mackenzie slips to my side, giving Coco Puff enough leash to say hi to Sue without losing control of the puppy. “Did Max just smile at you?” she whispers.

  “Nope. Had to be a trick of the light.”

  She is so not buying it. “Tillie Jean. I thought you two just liked to annoy each other. We really do have a lot of catching up to do, don’t we?”

  I sigh and angle closer to her, dropping my voice low. “Remember Chance Schwartz?”

  Mackenzie came out of the womb a die-hard Fireballs fan. I used to think Cooper was the ultimate Fireballs fan—his life goal from the time he could walk was basically to play for the Fireballs and lead them to World Series rings—but he has nothing on Mackenzie. Of course she knows who Chance Schwartz is.

  “He had potential, but that’s pretty much every player to play for the team for the last fifty years,” she murmurs back, clearly confused about where I’m going.

  “The reason I annoy Max at every opportunity is that he found out I was flinging with Chance and told Cooper, who had him traded, and so I’ve been trying for four years to get Cooper to get Max traded too.”

  She gasps.

  The men all turn and glance at us.

  And because she’s Mackenzie, and she’s come so far from the days when she couldn’t even blink in the presence of baseball players, she immediately dials up a grin. “I didn’t think it was true, but Max, your hair really does sparkle. And pink looks so good on you.”

  “Flip my wife off and die,” Brooks says before Max can react.

  But the weirdest thing happens.

  Max smiles.

  He smiles. An actual, full-faced, happy-eyed, no-questions-asked smile.

  It’s aimed at Mackenzie, but it’s still a smile. “Only the best sparkle.”

  And oh my god, is he sparkling.

  Growly Bear Max?

  Adorable in a resistible way.

  Smiling Max?

  I’m in so much trouble.

  The men huddle back up. Mackenzie grabs my hand and squeezes. “But now you don’t want him to get traded,” she whispers.

  “There is nothing going on here,” I whisper back. “Absolutely nothing. He’s only smiling to try to annoy me now.”

  “He’s the best pitcher we have. The team isn’t trading him, no matter what Cooper thinks about anything. I won’t let them. No matter what you do or don’t do with Max.”

  She’s dead serious.

  It should be funny. There’s no way anyone—even Mackenzie—can tell the Fireballs’ management what to do.

  Except if anyone could, it’s Mackenzie. She made quite the name for herself with her support for the team this past year. The national news covered some of her antics. She’s not a superfan. She’s the superfan.

  “This is nothing,” I repeat.

  It’s not. It’s a silly practical joke that I totally deserved—aside from the fact that he used garden gnomes—and I’ve paid him back, and that’s that.

  We’ll now go back to being a woman who flirts incessantly with a guy who hates it, and everything will be completely normal, and Max won’t smile at me again, and my ovaries won’t melt again, and the team will have nothing to worry about.

  I think.

  I hope.

  I gulp and look at Mackenzie. “But if it’s ever not nothing and I need help or I accidentally break his game, you’ll be my first call.”

  11

  Max

  “Dude, your balls do glow in the dark.” I grin at Cooper over the first hole at Scuttle Putt, Shipwreck’s miniature golf course, where we’ve broken in to play a round while Brooks is in town.

  Doesn’t hurt that we just came from The Grog. Between settling into the post-season routine, having more teammates in town for a few days, and deciding that I can adopt Tillie Jean as my sister two days ago, I’m feeling relaxed and steady and on top of the damn world for the first time since before the play-offs.

  “My balls don’t just glow.” Brooks pumps his hips. “They fucking sing.”

  I snicker.

  Cooper snickers.

  Brooks snickers.

  Robinson snickers.

  Trevor doesn’t snicker, because he’s an old man and he went home to sleep and isn’t here, so he doesn’t know about Cooper’s glowing balls and Brooks’s singing balls, which sucks for him.

  “Rawk! Keep your pants on! Rawk!”

  Brooks bends over and moons the bird, so we all follow suit.

  Jesus, this feels good.

  And it’s not the buzz coming off my first couple beers in months either. It’s being with the guys. Having fun. Not thinking about the season coming up.

  Fuck.

  No, no, no. Do not think about the season.

  “Thousand bucks says I can sink this in one shot,” Brooks announces.

  “Your dog can sink it in one shot,” Robinson replies.

  “Fuck yeah. My dog is awesome. My dog can eat your dog for breakfast.”

  “That’s because Robby’s dog is imaginary.” Cooper bends over and puts his glow-in-the-dark ball on the mat at the first hole. “Your dog can eat his dog for breakfast and both dogs can still exist.”

  I frown.

  Brooks and Robinson look at each other.

  “Whoa,” we all mutter.

  “That’s deep, man.” Brooks slaps Cooper on the shoulder as Cooper swings his club, making Cooper’s first shot bounce off the spinning pirate wheel blocking the entrance to the little pirate tavern that the ball needs to get through.

  Cooper shoves Brooks. “Foul!”

  “There’s no foul balls in golf.”

  “There’s foul balls in Scuttle Putt. House rules. You take three extra strokes.”

  “Three strokes is all he needs,” I mutter to Robinson, who cracks up.

  Brooks turns and stares me down. “For the record, I can last five.”

  Cooper trips over his own two feet.

  Brooks cracks up.

  And then Robinson and I both go down too.

  Fuck, I miss this. All of the guys. The whole team.

  “You remember when you all dragged me and Rossi into that curse-breaking ritual in spring training?” Brooks says.

  “What happens at the shack stays at the shack, dumbass. Don’t go talking shit and break the un-cursing.”

  “I’m glad it was with you guys.”

  “Is he getting sappy now that he’s getting laid on the regular?” Robinson whispers.

  “Happens, man. Look at Rossi too.”

  “Huh.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls a beer can out of an inner pocket. “I could go for a chick that would make me sappy like that.”

  “Are we golfing with our glow-in-the-dark balls, or are we sapping it up?” Cooper asks. “Not that I mind either way. I just wanna know before I pull out all my tricks to start my game over without interference.”

  “That’s your cue, rookie,” I mutter to Robinson. “Go blow in his ear next time he tries to take a shot.”

  “I heard that, Gnome Man,” Cooper says. “Elliott. You go next. And I got a grand on you taking at least five strokes to sink this one.”

  Brooks snorts with laughter. “You’re so on.”

  Brooks misses. Robinson misses. I miss. Cooper misses again.r />
  “Fuck this, man.” Robby picks up his ball. “Let’s play hole three. I like hole three. It has wenches.”

  “Oh, sweet, are we picking holes?” Brooks asks. “Dibs on the cannon hole.”

  I trip over the edge of another miniature golf hole’s green, and I go down with a snort. “What’s a cannon hole, man?”

  “They are seriously toasted, aren’t they?” a new voice says.

  It’s women.

  There are women on our golf course.

  “Off with you, wenches,” Cooper calls.

  “Yeah,” Brooks agrees. “We’re taken. Us and our glow-balls.”

  “Sweetie, I think you’re the only taken one in the bunch,” Mackenzie says. “Unless I missed something. Robinson? You dating someone? Max, who’s your special lady friend?”

  “No way,” Robinson says.

  “I only sleep around,” I call.

  “I’m single, Mackenzie,” Cooper says.

  “The entire country is aware, Stinky Booty,” another woman replies.

  My balls perk up—and I don’t mean the glow-in-the-dark balls—and I mentally slap myself with a raw steak before I remember that Tillie Jean is my sister now.

  “TJ! My sister-girl!”

  Eighty-four sets of eyeballs swivel in my direction.

  Or maybe just like six or seven. Plus the parrot.

  What was in that beer?

  “Sister-girl?” Tillie Jean repeats.

  Clearly I need to learn a little about being a brother. Like what to call the woman I’m now claiming as my sister. I step around Mackenzie to swing an arm around Tillie Jean’s shoulders. “Yep. Congratulations. You hung your picture on my shower curtain. That makes us related.”

  She did.

  It matches the picture of her on her towels.

  And I’m not talking to you about the heart attack I didn’t have when I walked into my bathroom a few hours ago.

  Or about how that’s what drove me to drink.

  Heh. Just kidding.

  I think.

  But now that I’m here, and happy, and with friends, and with my sister, life is fucking awesome.