AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And I have a boyfriend,” she admitted, her gaze dropping to the floor, unable to look directly at him. “It’s… I… I’m really sorry.”
Tucker shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, trying to think about church sermons from his youth, or his grandmother’s ingrown toenails. Anything to distract him from the pink glow in her cheeks and the fullness of her lips from their kiss.
“Friends?” she suggested.
“Sure.” He offered her a halfhearted smile and was already backing away. Tomorrow he’d think about how humiliating her rejection was. Right now he needed to make a clean getaway and take matters into his own hands. “Friends.”
Tucker didn’t have a lot of female friends, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t wise to be buddies with a woman who could give him a raging hard-on from just a French kiss.
Yeah. They could totally be friends.
Chapter Eight
Home Opener, Chicago at San Francisco, Record 0-0
April in San Francisco was the optimal time to play baseball.
Unlike most of the country still shaking off the dregs of winter and fighting against early spring showers, San Fran was mild and dry, the perfect weather for outdoor baseball on the Bay.
Emmy had spent much of the week after spring training getting her office into shape and prepping her team for the upcoming season. There were several players with injuries to attend to before the season opening game, giving her little time to dwell on Tucker.
They’d been polite to each other at best. Talking to him had been unavoidable—half her job seemed to be babysitting his arm—but there hadn’t been any friendly chitchat or flirting. Definitely no flirting.
It hadn’t mattered much. Try as she might, Emmy couldn’t keep from feeling excited-schoolgirl tingles whenever she touched Tucker, and touching him was a necessary evil of her job. And those tingles turned to naughty-schoolgirl tingles when he touched her back.
The memory of their kiss haunted her during the weeks they’d spent in Florida, and it hadn’t stayed in the Sunshine State when they left. Everywhere she went in the Bay Area she was assaulted with Tucker Lloyd. Street vendors sold knockoff jerseys with his number 13, and his face smiled out at her from storefront windows.
The little bodega down the street from her apartment building had a full-sized Tucker Lloyd cardboard cutout next to their cashier’s counter. He smiled brightly at her whenever she bought Oreos and cheap wine.
Apparently she was going to have a long season of pretending she wasn’t dying to make out with Tucker Lloyd again. Part of her wanted to steal the cardboard cutout and keep it in her apartment.
Emmy left her staff in the locker room, grabbed her Felons windbreaker and jogged up the hall and out into the crisp open air of the dugout. The team had just taken the field for batting practice, and she wanted to make sure no one ran into any trouble before the game began. The sun was bright and cheery, no sign of the fog that typically blanketed the city.
Tying her hair back into a low ponytail, Emmy stopped in the dugout and leaned against the fence to watch the batters line up and take hits off the small-boned batting coach. Around the bleachers of the old art deco field, eager fans waited for fly balls to come their way. Some had arrived two hours early when the gates opened so they could see the guys warm up.
Orange T-shirts were like hunting vests, milling through the aisles and into the concession areas. People wore black-and-white-striped jumpsuits in honor of the Felons mascot, Al Catraz, a giant cat dressed in prison gear.
“I love opening day,” a voice cut in from behind her.
Hiding the leap in her pulse by not jumping out of her skin, Emmy peered over her shoulder and gave Tucker a half smile. “Nothing quite like it, is there?” she said.
“It’s all the hope, you know?” He came and stood next to her at the fence, dropping his long arms over the top and watching Alex smash a ball into shallow right field. “Opening day is the only time in the season you’re guaranteed to have a perfect record.”
Emmy grinned. “My dad used to say something like that. He said day one is the last time you’re sure to have a zero in the losses column.”
“Well, let’s hope we keep it a zero a little longer.” He gave her a wink, and a familiar warmth bloomed in her chest.
It should be illegal for a man to be that beautiful when he smiled. His one blue eye looked astonishingly bright in contrast to the chocolate brown of the other.
“How’s the arm feeling?” Keep it professional, Em.
Tucker rotated his shoulders loosely without moving his arms off the fence. “Feels good. Ready. Guess we’ll have to see, won’t we?”
Across the field in the bullpen, a collection of relief pitchers was tossing balls around with minimal focus, just getting their joints limber rather than worrying too much about accuracy.
“Are you excited?”
“I guess nerves counts as a form of excitement.”
