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As the door reopened, a woman with the same dark blond curls appeared. But these waves weren’t cute; on her, they were striking, especially with her enormous emerald-green eyes and pink lips, which were pursed at the little girl. She wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination the leggy, big-breasted type of woman that typically caught his attention, but something about her stole his breath. She was fresh-faced, completely unmade-up, a bit frazzled, but somehow sexy.
He stopped that train of thought in its tracks. He was here to do a job.
Another dog slipped out the door, to join the first one barking at his feet. The woman gestured him inside.
“Come in,” she said—to both Marc and the dogs—before turning her attention back to the little girl and lecturing her about stranger danger.
Inside, the place vaguely reminded him of some of his childhood friends’ houses. The floor was cluttered with toys and framed photos hung on all the walls, giving it a homey, lived-in feel. He would bet she put coloring-book pictures on her fridge—and maybe report cards, too, if those still existed.
“Only grownups open the door alone, Mandy, so wait for me.”
“I’m big, and he gonna savemycup.” Out of this tiny girl’s mouth, it sounded like an accusation.
The woman sighed and tapped Mandy lightly on the nose. “You might be big, but I’m the mommy, andIsay only grownups can open the front door to strangers. Sorry.”
When she bent down to speak calmly to Mandy, who was suddenly cranky, he caught an inch of skin peeking out between the woman’s orange shirt and the back of her jeans. He knew he should be professional and look away but his eyes to drifted out of pure reflex before he could stop himself.
Mandy glanced back up at him like she was asking his opinion.
“Your mom’s right.” Marc sent her a smile.
The little girl glared at them before stomping away, but the woman didn’t seem fazed. She simply said, “Thanks for coming. The dishwasher is this way,” and headed into the family room.
She stepped over piles of Mega Bloks and around the couch pillows piled in the shape of a play fort. She placed the little rat-looking dog on the floor and scooped a baby out of some contraption hanging in the doorway before grabbing a Nerf sword with her free hand, stopping a little boy from hitting another girl in the head.
“We only hit the couch and pillows, not our sister, remember?” The woman put the sword on the top of the fridge then took something out of another kid’s hands before he got it to his mouth. “No pops before lunch.”
“Aww, man,” the boy whined.
And all of this happened before Marc had taken two steps. She moved quickly through the open-concept family room and kitchen, stepping over the clutter without noticing it was a disaster zone and stopping problems as if she possessed the ability to predict the future. She seemed to see everything, everything but him. She didn’t bother to tell him her name or even seem to notice a professional baseball player was in her house and about to fix her dishwasher.
Does nothing faze this woman?
She placed the baby into a different contraption as another kid ran through the kitchen. Seeing the chaos made the need for the gated yard clear. People shouldn’t lose their children, and one person surely couldn’t keep track of this many, could they?
No one who knew him would call him a “kid person.” He’d never spent enough time around kids to have a real sense of how he felt about them. Most of the time, they just looked at him with stars in their eyes as they handed him a sticky baseball card or a ball, and he’d smile and sign it.
Clearly, his sister had purposely avoided saying anything about this circus-like chaos, although he didn’t blame her. If Glory had mentioned any of this, he probably wouldn’t have agreed to come look at the dishwasher, even if it meant further annoying his father.
No, that wasn’t true. If Marc were being honest, he would have come anyway, out of boredom or obligation. Or both the two blended. Ever since last summer’s car accident had crushed his shoulder and ended his pitching career, every day was the same mess.
For thirty-three years, baseball had been his life—hisentirelife. From March through October, he’d either stood on the mound pitching or worked to get back on the mound again.
Marc loved the challenge of the game, the fierce competition that came from attempting to be—and stay—the best. Every opponent was a new hill to conquer. It didn’t matter who came before or after. You could live in the moment of the contest between batter, pitcher, and catcher. The worst moment of his life had been when he’d opened his eyes after surgery the night of the crash, and the doctor had told him he’d never pitch again.
Now he spent most of his days either in a drunken haze or with a pounding hangover. The last twelve months had been a string of poor decisions, and for a while, he’d struggled to give a shit about anything.
However, as soon as he finished this favor for his dad, Marc was getting back into the game he loved. He knew he would never play, but he could still be part of it as a coach. He’d always been a teaching player, working with the young pitching talent. Marc possessed a sixth sense about who had the “stuff” and who didn’t. He wanted to do that again, which meant fixing his ruined reputation with the Major League teams.
He forced himself back to reality as the woman stood over the dishwasher playing with the buttons, talking a mile a minute. He listened until he’d heard enough, then let himself be distracted by the angle of her neck and her great skin… soft, smooth—like she could be in an ad for face lotion. He cleared his throat.
“So can you fix it?” she asked, turning her attention to him, but the baby screamed, and she moved to scoop her up.
“It’s all shut off, right?” he asked.
“I switched off the breaker, hoping it would unlock the thing, but it didn’t.”
“Then, let’s see.”
