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“The brewery has a team. Tonight’s our first game of the season. Do you want to come watch me kickball some ass?”
“Did you just say ‘kickball some ass’?”
“What? It’s the lingo.”
“Okay, I’m going to go ahead and say yes before you scare me away. But what about your brothers?”
Crap, she hadn’t even thought about her brothers, which was ridiculous. They were a quarter of the team. “Well, Eric has agreed to stand down, though I’m not sure he’ll ask you to join the team. As for Jamie…hopefully he’ll be okay as long as we don’t dry hump in the outfield.”
“Um. Yeah. I think I can manage to avoid that.”
“Deal. I’ll see you there. It’s at six-thirty. The baseball field two blocks past the brewery.”
WHEN LUKE GOT to the baseball field he realized his mistake. He shouldn’t have promised not to dry hump her in the field before seeing her outfit. Tessa looked like his junior high wet dream.
She wore tube socks that ended just below her knees, then it was a long stretch of smooth, golden thigh right up to her nylon gym shorts. Above that, she wore a tight T-shirt with the brewery logo emblazoned across her chest in eye-catching red. Or maybe the color wasn’t eye-catching, but the canvas beneath it. Of course, she’d topped it all off with a high ponytail that glinted gold and bronze in the late-afternoon sunlight.
Luke’s chest ached every time his heart beat, and he sat down quickly in the bleachers before her brothers could see how he was ogling her. What the hell were they thinking letting her wear something like that, anyway? He glanced around at the other people in the stands, expecting to see men taking pictures on their phones and posting them to the internet. But the vast majority of the spectators were women. Which made sense, he supposed. There was only one other girl on the team. He recognized her as a server from the fingerprinting they’d done. Otherwise, the rest of the team seemed to be Jamie, Eric, Wallace and the young dishwasher. Eric looked unhappy to be there, but Jamie seemed to be having a good time chatting up two gorgeous women who jiggled a lot when they got excited. But Luke’s eyes barely skimmed over them. Tessa was stretching her hamstrings, after all. He had to memorize this for later playback.
When she looked up and saw him, her face caught the sun and her mouth broke into a smile that hit him in the gut. He was starting to get used to it, or at least he accepted the wave of panic that swept over him. Ignoring the daggers Eric’s eyes were throwing his way, Luke beamed back at her, then watched every single bounce of her body when she turned and jogged toward the outfield.
The game was on. Luke had no idea what happened as the innings progressed. All he knew was that Tessa jogged closer, and then jogged far away again. Sometimes she jumped up and down at home base a few times. Sometimes she kicked the ball. Luke watched, not thinking about any of his open cases even once. He simply felt the warm sun and the cool breeze and watched Tessa have a great time in her indecently wholesome out
fit. It was the best time he’d had in years.
Scratch that. It was the best time he’d had in public in years. Of course, the private times were now covered by Tessa, too. And Christ, he couldn’t wait to get her someplace private tonight. He prayed to God everybody wasn’t going out for drinks and pizza afterward. Luke would go mad if he had to sit next to her thighs at a table with her family.
“Stop staring at my sister that way,” a voice said from right beside him.
Luke jumped and reached a hand toward the spot where his gun normally lay. “Jesus,” he cursed as he spun toward Eric. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“I’m up last,” Eric said, gesturing toward the line at home plate.
Luke hadn’t registered anything except the fact that Tessa was only fifteen feet away and she was at the back of the line, providing a fantastic view. “Sorry,” he muttered, not even bothering to deny his ogling.
“You’d better not be lying to her.”
“I’m not.”
“If you are, cop or not, I’ll find a way to make you miserable.”
“Understood.” Luke wasn’t going to argue with the man. Eric had every right to worry about Tessa. She looked vulnerable as a fucking lamb out there. “I promise that what you’ve heard about me isn’t true. None of it.”
Eric surprised him by saying, “All right. I’ll accept that. Until I have a reason not to. I don’t want her hiding things from me, so let’s call a truce.”
Though he nearly choked on his tongue at Eric’s words, Luke reached out and shook his hand. Tessa, not hiding things? That’d be the day.
Eric bounded down the bleachers to rejoin his team, and Jamie glared at both his brother and Luke. Strange to think his old friend could still be so pissed, but maybe it made sense. Luke hadn’t been an angel in college, and Jamie knew that.
As Tessa moved up to base and waited for the kickball pitch, Luke’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, keeping his eye on the play. “Asher,” he said.
“Asher, it’s Ben Jackson down in Denver. You in the middle of something?”
Tessa connected with the ball and raced for first, but she was tagged out before she got there. “Nope,” Luke said as he stepped down to the ground and circled behind the bleachers. “What’s up?”
“I’m pulling a slow weekend shift, so I checked into the records for you. It’s strange. Those interviews are definitely missing. I called the investigating detective—he’s over in violent crimes now. I figured the case was still fresh, but he claims not to remember anything about the interviews. Says they must have been nothing, since it didn’t lead to anything else.”
“You sound doubtful.”
