The Grumpy Player Next Door: Copper Valley Fireballs #3

by Grant, Pippa

For a guy who’s always aloof and also too hot, the man likes to snuggle.

  One more little facet to him that I wouldn’t have guessed but that I am completely smitten with.

  “Max,” I whisper.

  “Shh,” he whispers back.

  He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but then he doesn’t.

  “Are you pretending you’re going to answer me so that I quit talking?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You realize I know your tickle spot too?”

  His body tenses.

  And I suddenly feel like an ass. “Not that I’m going to use it,” I add quickly. “But I can’t flip a switch and not be myself just because you took me to the top of Mount Max a few dozen times.”

  “You’re going to talk to me until I leave, aren’t you?”

  “I haven’t spent four years annoying you without getting very, very good at it.”

  He goes still again.

  And suddenly I fear I’ve misread everything, or maybe I assumed too much, or maybe he was just humoring me tonight because he really is a sex god and his pride wouldn’t let him not leave me satisfied, or maybe this is why I don’t do relationships.

  Because I freak men out, or I really am that annoying. “Oh. This was that one time only thing, wasn’t it?” I whisper.

  Shit.

  Shit shit shit.

  Okay.

  This is fine. This is okay. This is not the end of the world, and I have a lot of great memories, and—

  “No,” he says into the darkness, the word sounding almost pained.

  “Max. Oh my god. You do not have to worry about protecting my feelings or anything if you don’t want to do this friends-with-benefits things, and—”

  “Trouble Jean, would you please give a guy a minute to figure out how to say something he’s never said to a woman before?”

  I open my mouth to agree, then clamp it shut and nod instead.

  My pulse is off like a horse out of the gate at the Kentucky Derby, and given where his hand is resting, he can probably feel it, but I can’t squirm away without making it even more obvious that I’m not the cool cucumber I usually am.

  Or try to be.

  He sighs and turns his head into my shoulder, and I do my best to keep all of my cringing inside.

  “I don’t want to leave,” he mumbles.

  “Oh.” My racing heart is suddenly swelling thick and warm. “I—oh.”

  “But if you want me to—”

  “No! No, I don’t want you to go. I just think it’ll be easier for everyone else who thinks we’re his business if he doesn’t have to stress about this too. And by everyone—”

  “I know who you mean.” He presses his lips to my shoulder. My hand shakes like I’ve had three too many lattes as I stroke his hair.

  “I’m not good at this,” he says quietly. “I don’t know how. And I—I’m a little fucked up in a lot of ways.”

  “Do you eat babies for breakfast?”

  “Tillie Jean.”

  “Life doesn’t come with a rule book. The only this in my world is do your best, don’t hurt people on purpose, and find what makes you happy.” I frown. “Do I make you happy?”

  He doesn’t answer right away, but I’m realizing it’s not that he’s hiding some terrible truth.

  It’s that he needs to think it through.

  Find the right words.

  And really, it’s not terrible to snuggle in bed with Max Cole while he’s thinking.

  “I’ve spent four years actively fighting being attracted to you,” he finally says.

  “I have no idea what that’s like.”

  He lifts his head, and I swear he’s giving me a growly bear glare, which makes me crack up even more than the easy sarcasm that just rolled off my tongue.

  And then my face is being smothered with a pillow, which makes me laugh harder.

  “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about.” He’s not sleepy and snuggly anymore.

  Nope.

  He’s straddling my legs and holding a pillow over my face.

  “Uncle,” I call as I move my hands to his knees.

  Totally his tickle spot.

  I’m not tickling him, for the record.

  But we both know I can.

  The pillow disappears, and then Max is right there, nose to nose with me. “I used to hate the way you never took anything seriously.”

  “Used to?”

  “I didn’t hate that you never took anything seriously though. I hated that you had that luxury and I didn’t.”

  If Cooper said that to me, I’d point out that he’s a multi-millionaire athlete who’s never had to play for a winning team to live a very comfortable life.

  But Max didn’t have the family and community that Cooper has.

  I get it.

  “I tried Thai food for the first time because of you,” I tell him.

  I swear he grins, but he’s settling in next to me again, his head resting in the crook of my neck, his lips moving just right against my skin so I can’t tell if he’s trying to kiss me or just tease me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh my god, you do.”

  “Reason number four hundred twenty-six that I hated Tillie Jean Rock—she acted worldly and sophisticated but had never tried Thai food until I mocked her for never having tried Thai food.”

  “You have a list of reasons you hate me?”

  “A guy’s gotta do something with all that pent-up energy.”

  “Most guys would’ve just rubbed it out.”

  “Doesn’t always work like it’s supposed to.”

  I squirm out from under him and roll to face him. “Just how many reasons did you have to hate me?”

  “As many as I needed.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Why I hate you is not first date material.”

  “We aren’t first date material. Why else? What else is on your list?”

  “And look at that. Aunt Bea’s gonna be up any minute now. I better get going.”

  “Max.”

  He kisses my forehead, then pushes himself up to sit at the edge of the bed. “Tell me you don’t have a list of ten thousand things I hate about Max Cole.”

  “Not really.” I push myself up too, watching while he leans over and snags his clothes off the floor. “It mostly all boiled down to you being easy to annoy after all the stuff with you know who, and then it became habit.”

  On goes his shirt.

  Dammit.

  “You brought the whole team low-sugar cranberry almond cookies the second time I saw you. And then you planted singing things in Cooper’s locker, and it was easier to say you were distracting us with cookies for your true nefarious plans than it was to acknowledge that he probably deserved it, and that everyone else on the team respected the hell out of you for pulling it off, and also that it was really nice of you to bring sweets that fit into our normal diets.”

  “You know it’s hot when you use big words like nefarious?”

  He sends me a look over his shoulder.

  Definitely growly bear.

  So I climb to my knees and crawl across the bed and loop my arms around him from behind, pressing a kiss to his neck. “We’re all a little complicated.”

  “You cried when Joey Ortiz got traded.”

  “His wife was even sweeter than Henri, which shouldn’t be possible, but I swear it’s true, and I got to babysit their oldest when the youngest was born. We still text from time to time.”

  “You got to babysit. I would never count that as a bonus, but you do.” He leans back against me. “I’m tired of telling myself that you can do stuff like that because you’re spoiled, when the truth is, I’ve spent four years afraid if I let you in, I’d find out I don’t deserve all the things you do for your friends.” He grunts. “And your brother really is one of the best friends I’ve ever had, even if he wouldn’t say the same about me. You’re right. He really wouldn’t want to
know what we did here tonight. Don’t blame him either.”

  “You know that you don’t have to grow up with a good family to understand what makes a family, right?”

  “I know how to play baseball and be on a team. Everything else—no. I really don’t. But I want to.” He sighs. “Sorry. I get too honest when I haven’t had enough sleep.”

  “Honest is good. Honest is always good.”

  He’s quiet again.

  I like quiet Max. And naked Max. And growly Max.

  Basically, all of the Maxes. I like them all.

  “You free after ten tonight?” he asks.

  “Max Cole, are you asking me over for a booty call?”

  “Yep.”

  “I think I can clear my schedule.”

  He shifts to turn and kiss me—soft, thorough, and handsy—and then he’s gone, slipping through my house and out the back door, back to his own place, where we’ll pretend all day long that last night didn’t happen.

  Until we can do it again.

  And that nagging little voice at the back of my head, telling me I’m playing with fire by risking interfering with the Fireballs’ team dynamics—that little voice is wrong.

  Everything will be just fine.

  And that’s the lie that helps me fall back asleep before I need to be up in a few hours for senior aerobics.

  29

  Max

  I always thought sex with the same woman night after night would get boring.

  That it would get old.

  But a few weeks into this thing with Tillie Jean, the only thing getting old is sneaking around. The grumpiness that used to come easily around her takes effort. I don’t want to be grumpy.

  I want to be the guy who keeps smiling after I leave my house in the morning. I want to be the guy who laughs when she cracks a good joke on the days when I have lunch at Crusty Nut with the guys. I want to say yes to heading up to Cooper’s place for game night when I know she’ll be there.

  I want to hold her hand in public.

  I want to sneak behind the bar at Crusty Nut and replace the latte in her coffee mug with doctored lemongrass tea to get her back for slipping me flat Diet Coke instead of unsweet tea three days ago.

  But mostly, I want to have the courage to ask her why this has to end when I get on a plane bound for Florida and spring training in mid-February.

  Instead, I spend one January weekend in the tropics at Torres’s wedding, as planned, with most of the team but without Tillie Jean, since her parents are on their annual getaway and she’s running Crusty Nut solo, and get back to Shipwreck to a massive snowfall that requires extra planning so I don’t leave footprints between my house and her house, which means it’s three more nights before I can sneak in her window again.

  Neither of us gets any sleep for the next two nights after that.

  I’ve never laughed so much with a woman I’m sleeping with.

  I’ve also never talked so much with a woman I’m sleeping with.

  Not about real things.

  And every night with Tillie Jean is one more night that makes me feel like maybe—just maybe—I can have more in this lifetime than I ever trusted myself with before.

  At the end of January, I head back into Copper Valley for Fireballs Con, a Thursday through Saturday event that management puts on for the fans. Last year, they unveiled the mascot finalists during Fireballs Con.

  This year, there aren’t any big surprises.

  Just fun.

  The kind of fun that comes without Tillie Jean again, since we’re still ducking Cooper’s suspicions and there’s no way that I can be in the same city as her without wanting her in my bed when she’d usually stay with her brother.

  This fun?

  It’s a normal kind of fun.

  An old normal kind of fun.

  A real normal kind of fun.

  My teammates and I sit on panels answering fan questions and showing our egos when people ask if we’re going all the way this season.

  We have a dance contest.

  We karaoke with fans.

  We play trivia.

  And I’m weirdly back in my element and completely out of it all at the same time. My condo is exactly how I left it, but I’m not exactly how I left me.

  So when I catch myself pacing and counting by fours while checking my phone for texts from TJ every three seconds Friday night, I head out.

  Not to catch up with the single guys at a club, but instead, to drop by unannounced on a teammate in what could be a very bad decision.

  The little house Luca’s renovating is in a solidly middle-class neighborhood, and the lights are still on when I pull up to his curb. I could’ve called, but I wasn’t sure I was planning on stopping until I got here.

  Now that I am here, I pull out my phone and check it for messages from Tillie Jean again.

  You know.

  In case my top-of-the-line Bluetooth-enabled stereo system failed to notify me that I had a text from her.

  But, there’s nothing under the contact labeled Jenny Smith.

  It’s her code name in my phone.

  I’m Bob the Backup Plumber in her phone.

  And yeah, that was my idea.

  I’m still in my SUV, debating if I want to text her and what I want to say—I know she’s having a girls’ night with Sloane and Georgia and Annika, so I really don’t expect her to text me back at all tonight—when movement in my peripheral vision makes me lift my head and look at Luca’s house.

  Henri’s leaning out the front door, squinting at me, her hair tucked back under a bandana and her body wrapped up in sweatpants and a hoodie, which might be her normal work clothes, or it could be her pajamas.

  Not much difference with Henri, and yeah, she’ll show up at parties dressed like that too.

  Talk about owning who you are.

  I roll down the passenger window and flip on my interior lights. “Hey, Henri.”

  “Max? I thought that was you. What are you doing? Wanna come in? We’re watching this show that Tillie Jean’s friend Sloane told us about. Again. Not that I’m obsessed with it or anything, but I’m kinda obsessed with it. We can start over from the beginning. Luca won’t mind.”

  “Luca will too mind,” Luca calls from inside.

  “Hush. No, you won’t. The first scene will start, and you’ll get giddy with excitement at getting to experience it all over again, then you’ll tell Max all about how when you retire, you want to go coach a British football team too, since he’s a new audience for watching you watch Ted Lasso and hasn’t heard it a dozen times already.” She turns her smile back at me. “I have popcorn.”

  “So long as you have popcorn,” I call back.

  I roll the window back up, shut my car off, climb out, and head inside, glancing at the freshly painted walls and the new furniture and pristine wood floor. There’s a shelf showcasing all of the books Henri’s written as Nora Dawn, plants in the corner, and the massive TV on the wall by the stairs is paused on a scene of a dude with a mustache grinning a goofy grin.

  Luca holds out a fist.

  I bump. “Nice progress.”

  “You should see the kitchen,” Henri says. “We have a working oven now.”

  “I thought you had a working oven before the season was over.”

  “Oh, right. We did. It’s the bathroom upstairs that wasn’t done yet. But now it is. And it’s gorgeous. And you can’t see it because I don’t remember what I left in there. Sit. I’ll go make popcorn. Dogzilla, scoot over. Make room for Max.”

  Henri’s cat is in a soccer uniform—yes, for real, she puts her cat in clothes and costumes—and it doesn’t move an inch at her suggestion.

  It does open one eye enough to glare at me and silently promise to eat my face off if I dare remove it from the easy chair it’s sleeping in.

  “Here.” Luca reaches over and grabs the cat, setting the furball in his lap. “Her eyeball is worse than her bite. She’s too lazy to bite, and her only real objec
tion to you sitting on the chair is that she already put the effort in to hopping up there.”

  Three months ago, I would’ve called him whipped.

  Tonight, I’m wondering why Tillie Jean doesn’t have a cat that she likes to dress up in costumes.

  Or why she doesn’t have a dog. Or even a fish.

  She’d be a great fish mom. That fish would have more fish castles than any fish to come before it.

  Fuck.

  I should be cranky about not getting laid tonight, and instead, I’m cranky that I’m not in a pet store helping Tillie Jean pick out a fish castle.

  I drop into the chair and shove my fingers through my hair.

  “You need me to send Henri out to pick up six different kinds of dessert from six different places?” Luca asks.

  “I’d do it,” she calls from the kitchen, “except he’d probably rather you go do the running, sweetie. We all know I’m a better listener.”

  “Good point. Ice cream? Cheesecake? Cookies? Baked chicken?”

  “I have Luca’s Nonna’s ziti recipe, but we’re out of the right kinds of cheese,” Henri says. “Not that you want the ziti. It’s cursed ziti, but I don’t think it’s a bad curse. Also, if you want both of us, Max, we can DoorDash something in.”

  This whole situation is so ridiculously domestic that I should be breaking out in hives.

  Instead, I wish Tillie Jean was here with me, and that the four of us were hanging out to watch TV and shoot the shit and maybe play a card game or two.

  I shift my head so I can see Luca between my arms, hands still fisted in my hair, then jerk my head toward the kitchen. “How the fuck do you trust yourself to do it?”

  He pauses with one hand over the cat, shifts a glance at the kitchen too, then looks back at me, clearly getting exactly what I’m asking.

  How do you grow up with shitty role models and decide to take a chance in a relationship anyway?

  “Lots and lots of brutal honesty,” he finally says.

  “With yourself, or with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck.”

  He glances at the kitchen again, then slides a look at me and drops his voice. “Does Cooper know?”

  “Shut. The fuck. Up.”

  “Not gonna say a word. And it’s not like it’s a surprise.”