by Lauren Layne
She also wasn’t Cole’s type. At all. He liked ’em blonde and leggy and seductive.
Still…that damn notebook.
“Cole Sharpe,” he said, sticking out a hand.
Her eyes widened just slightly, and for a second he thought maybe she’d recognized his name, but then she smiled, and it was pure friendly curiosity.
“Hi!” Her voice matched the rest of her. Girlish and guileless.
Cole found himself oddly enchanted. She was so…different.
“May I?” he asked, gesturing with his chin toward the seat beside her.
“Of course!”
Cole started to reach for her notebook under the guise of making room for himself, but she pulled it onto her lap before he could touch it.
Damn.
He sat and allowed himself to fully satisfy his curiosity, taking her in now that he could see her face-to-face.
The Yankees cap still shielded the top part of her face, but he could clearly make out a pointed chin, small nose, and those big, gorgeous brown eyes. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup, which allowed a light dusting of freckles to display loud and proud over her nose and the tops of her cheekbones.
Cute. Definitely cute.
And already, she was refocused on the game.
Cole’s eyes narrowed slightly as he realized that he’d been the only one doing any staring. Her attention had returned to the field, almost before he’d sat down.
What was this bullshit?
The lack of female appreciation was unusual enough—and uncomfortable enough—to make him slightly peevish. So instead of doing the decent thing and letting her watch the Yankees’ starter reclaim his spot on the mound, he talked to her.
At her, really. She still wasn’t looking his way. Not even to check him out.
“First game?” he asked.
Brown eyes flicked to him, barely. “What?”
“First baseball game?”
That got her attention. For the first time, she seemed to really look at him. Her eyes drifted over him slowly before returning to his gaze, her tone just slightly annoyed. “No. Not my first game.”
“Ah,” he said, already mentally maneuvering a backpedal. “Bad assumption by me. You were just so into the game…. ”
“So you figured I must be trying to figure out how it all worked?” she asked. “That I must be trying to understand why some of the field is green and some is brown, and whatever could those white squares on the dirt be, and why-oh-why are those men running toward the white squares, but only sometimes…”
“All right,” Cole said with a laugh. “I’m an ass. You know baseball.”
Her smile was quick and easy, and he was relieved to see that she wasn’t one of those snippy, hold-it-against-him-forever types. “I know baseball.”
Is that what’s in your notebook? Baseball stuff?
She took a huge bite of her hot dog, completely unabashedly, and Cole hid a smile, pretending instead to be fixated on the game.
Hell. When had he ever had to pretend to be fixated on the Yankees?
“You were partially right,” she admitted, after swallowing.
He glanced at her. “Oh yeah?”
She grinned. “This is my first Yankees game.”
“I knew it,” he said, matching her grin full-on. “I knew there was something virgin about you. But tell me, how can a baseball fan like you never have made it to Yankee Stadium until now?”
“Well…” she licked a spot of mustard off her finger, but not in the slow, deliberate way that most women he knew would have done it. “It’s a long way from Chicago…. ”
Cole tore his eyes away from the way her lips were closing around her thumb, sucking off that mustard. “You’re from Chicago?”
“From there, yes,” she said. “But let’s just say that as of two weeks ago, I’ll be spending a lot more time here than at Wrigley.”
“Ah. You’re new to New York.”
“Quite.”
“How do you like it?”
She hesitated. “It’s…intense.”
“Meaning…we New Yorkers are scary as hell?”
She smiled. “Well, it’s not as hostile as I’d been warned, but yeah. We Chicagoans are a bit more openly friendly than you New Yorkers.”
“I’m friendly,” he countered.
Tiny Brunette laughed. “No. You’re just incredibly charming. And a smidgen good-looking.”
He gave her his best bedroom look. “Am I?”
She smiled. “You know you are.”
Their eyes held for a moment, and Cole was startled to realize that this was the most relaxed—the most him—he’d felt around a woman in…hell…he didn’t know how long.
Mostly he was used to throwing out a couple of witty lines, a few slow smiles, and watching women counter with moves of their own.
There were no moves with this woman. She merely was.
Cole realized he didn’t even know her name.
“So tell me, as a Chicago baseball fan, are you Team Cubs fan or Team White Sox, Ms…. ”
“Pope,” she said. “Penelope Pope. And both.”
Cole’s subconscious realized that Penelope Pope was somehow exactly what this woman’s name should be. Perky and alliterative. His consciousness, however, latched on to another fact. “Both?”
It was not a typical answer. Most people had one baseball team, even if you were from a city with two teams, as Penelope was.
She shrugged. “Baseball’s not about who wins. It’s not even about who’s playing. It’s about the game. The consistent flow of it, the smack of the ball against the glove when you’re lucky enough to be sitting along one of the base lines, instead of stuck up here in this stuffy box—”
He stared at her. The words so closely echoed his own thoughts from just moments before that he wanted to kiss her.
She might just be his dream woman.
“That explains the hot dog,” he said.
“What?”
He nodded his chin at the last bite of hot dog, left mostly ignored in her left hand. “The hot dog. You’re in a luxury suite in Yankee Stadium with a whole buffet of gourmet foods, and yet you went and fetched the most basic hot dog you could find.”
She grinned. “Guilty.”
Cole turned his body all the way toward her now. “Tell me, Penelope Pope, what brings a Cubs and White Sox fan all the way to New York, where you’ll face a whole new dilemma of choosing between the Yankees and the Mets…”
Tiny Brunette never got to answer.
The shadow of someone coming up behind their seats caused them both to turn. It was Alex Cassidy, Oxford’s editor in chief, looking down at them with a semi-amused, semi-worried expression.
“Cassidy,” Cole said. He lifted an eyebrow and silently added, Nice of you to show up.
“Sorry I’m late,” Cassidy said, not really sounding sorry at all. “I got held up.”
Automatically, Cole’s eyes scanned the luxury suite until he found the pretty woman he knew was likely to be somewhere around here….
Yup, there she was.
Emma Sinclair, Cassidy’s long-ago runaway bride, whom with he’d recently reconciled, was surreptitiously wiping smudged lipstick from the corner of her mouth.
His eyes returned to his boss, this time looking closer….
“Third button, dude,” Cole said wearily.
The always-polished Cassidy glanced down and, without so much as wincing, fixed the misaligned buttons of his shirt.
Cole should have known. A naked Emma Sinclair was the only thing that could throw Alex Cassidy off his rigid timetable.
But Emma and Cassidy’s sex life was where the predictable part of the evening ended, because Cole was absolutely not prepared for Cassidy to reach out a hand to Tiny Brunette, a polite smile on his usually impassive face.
“Alex Cassidy. I’m so sorry I’m late, Ms. Pope.”
Cole glanced between the two of them. They knew each
other?
“Not a problem,” she said, turning an easy smile on Cassidy. It was the exact same friendly smile she’d given Cole, and it very much made Cole want to punch his friend in the mouth.
“It’s refreshing to see you two playing so nicely,” Cassidy said with a droll look at Cole.
He narrowed his eyes at his boss, not sure what he was missing but certain that he was missing something.
Cassidy answered Cole’s silent question with his usual professional businessman smile. “Cole, this is Penelope Pope.”
“We’ve met…. ” Cole said slowly.
“Excellent. So then you know that this is the late-stage applicant we had for the sports editor role at Oxford?
Very slowly, Cole turned toward Tiny Brunette and took in her friendly smile, even as he took in the Sorry-not-sorry glint in her eyes.
This was his competition. This was the person standing between Cole and the job he so desperately wanted.
“I should have been more thorough when I introduced myself,” she said sweetly. “Penelope Pope. Sports editor.”
Plus side? At least now Cole knew what was in her damn notebook.
The down side? Everything else.
Love stories you’ll never forget
By authors you’ll always remember
eOriginal Romance from Random House
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