Out of Her League

by Lori Handeland

  “You look like you’re going to have a stroke,” Evie observed as soon as the screen door banged behind Toni. “You want to sit down?”

  “Grrr,” he returned.

  “I’ll take that as a no, though you really need to relax. A big guy like you, out in the heat, veins bulging in your forehead… One of these days you’re just gonna go splat. I’ve seen it happen.” She made a tsking sound as she shook her head.

  Joe’s blood pressure went up a notch. His mother had always done that to him when she’d caught him in an embarrassing situation—cataloguing what he’d done and how he’d looked. But he wasn’t the one who should be embarrassed here. Coach Mom of the Year was the one who should be embarrassed. The fact that she wasn’t—at all—made him see red.

  “My blood pressure is fine and none of your business.”

  “You’re right. But if you grit your teeth like that, it’s hard to understand you.”

  “Grr.”

  Incredibly, she laughed, right in his face, and Joe stood there with his teeth no longer grinding because his mouth hung open. People did not laugh when Iceman Scalotta growled. They choked; they swallowed; they went white; they ran the other way. They did not laugh.

  “I’m sorry.” She rubbed her hand across her mouth as if to make her smile disappear. It did, but her eyes still danced. “That growling—it works for you?”

  “Up till now.”

  “I’m sure it’s frightening when you’re all padded up and ready to ram the ball down the quarterback’s throat. But here—” she shrugged and waved her hand to indicate the empty yard “—when you’re wearing sandals, and I know you’re not going to tackle me…” She tilted her head. “You aren’t going to tackle me, are you?”

  “Hardly. I’d send you into the next dimension.”

  “Hmm, maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “My father was a cop. I know some tricks.”

  She winked, and Joe’s blood pressure continued to rise, though not from anger any longer. She had very nice eyes. They changed color depending on her mood or what she wore. Right now her washed-out purple shirt made them more green than hazel. He’d always been partial to green.

  “There aren’t enough tricks in the world to stop me, sweetheart.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Does that ‘sweetheart’ thing work for you, too?”

  “In what way?”

  “Do women like it? Or do they knock your teeth down your throat?”

  Now it was his turn to smile. “See any teeth missing?”

  “Grr,” she said.

  *

  Chapter Five

  “You’re not doing it right,” Joe said. “When you growl you have to make the sound come from your gut. Like you really mean it. As if you’re going to tear someone’s head off if he rubs you the wrong way.”

  “You have, and I plan to.”

  He laughed. “You and whose army?”

  Joe let his gaze wander from the top of her dark head to the tip of her bare feet. Soaking wet, like now, she might weigh 110 pounds. His eyes were drawn irresistibly up those shining legs. Great legs, he observed—long despite her height, muscles in all the right places. Curves, too. He’d always been fascinated with the way a loose shirt became a tight shirt when you added water to the mix. How on earth had he ever thought she was a high school student, with curves like those?

  “The bigger they are, the harder they fall, buster. “

  The annoyance in her voice made Joe realize what he was doing—ogling his daughter’s coach, teacher and counselor as though she were the prime attraction at a wet T-shirt contest. He yanked his eyes back to where they belonged—her face.

  A single raised eyebrow made Joe wonder if she knew exactly what he’d been thinking, feeling. Then her words penetrated the sudden and surprising haze of sexual attraction that had clouded his mind.

  “The bigger they are…?” he repeated.

  Evie crossed her arms over her chest, and Joe’s cheeks grew warm. She knew. How mortifying. He felt like the high school kid now.

  “A big guy will go down harder than a little guy if you take him out the right way.”

  “True.”

  She shifted, dropped her arms and turned around. Joe’s traitorous gaze admired how her cutoff jeans had worn thin across the seat. No one cut off old jeans for shorts anymore—and it was a damn shame.

  She spun about, and Joe pulled his eyes back to her face, trying to look innocent. Her long-suffering sigh that of a teacher with an unruly student, showed she wasn’t buying his act.

  Joe shrugged. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Me, too.”

  “For what?”

  “You’ve proven your point, Mr. Scalotta. It won’t happen again.”

  “I have? It won’t?” He had no idea what she was talking about. His thoughts had been mush since he’d stepped into the backyard.

  “I live in a house full of Y chromosomes, and they don’t look at me as anything other than head cook and bottle washer.”

  “Yeah?” He still wasn’t following her.

  “I’m not used to girls. Having Toni here today…” She shrugged. “I didn’t realize until you illustrated your point.”

  “My point being?”

  “Toni’s a young woman amid a team of boys. And those boys don’t look at her the way my houseful looks at me. I never thought something as harmless as letting them have their first water fight of the summer would be such a mistake. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, they might have ogled her as rudely as you ogled me. I’ll make sure nothing like this happens again.”

  Joe let out a sigh of relief. She thought he’d been staring at her to prove a point—and a good point it was. He wished he’d thought of it. Now that he was thinking of it, his blood pressure rose again at the image of those boys looking at his daughter the way he’d looked at Evie.

  His face heated. Things appeared a whole lot different when you were responsible for a little girl—who wasn’t a little girl anymore.

  “Maybe baseball isn’t the best of ideas,” he said. “But she wanted it so bad, I didn’t have the heart to say no.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Evie soothed. “Toni held her own in the water fight. Acted like one of the guys and not girlie-girl. If she pitches as well as I think she’s going to, none of the boys will want to offend her. They want to win.”

  “Enough to put up with a girl on the team.”

  “They’ve got a girl for a coach.”

  “Good point. Do any of the parents object to that?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “To what?”

  “Having a woman coach a boys’ team.”

  “It’s not a boys’ team.”

  “Anymore.”

  “Girls have always been welcome. They just don’t choose to play at this age.”

  “So no one objects?”

  “They did the first year I coached.”

  “And?”

  “I told them if they could find another coach, or coach themselves, they were welcome to. I got no takers. After the first year, no one objected.”

  “And why was that?”

  “Because I’m a good coach, and we won a lot.”

  Joe frowned as another thought occurred to him. “Is Toni in for teasing because she’s chosen to play on the boys’ team?”

  “It’s not a boys’ team!”

  He sighed. “You know what I mean.”

  She nodded, silently conceding his point. “She might get teased. But if she wants something she’ll have to stick up for herself. That won’t hurt her. And it won’t hurt her to have the kids on this team for friends when school starts. I think Adam will keep an eye out for her.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he muttered.

  “She could do a lot worse than claiming Adam as a friend.”

  “Friend? He looked a bit too friendly when I got here.”

  “I know.” Evie glanced toward the house, then back at Joe. Her eyes held the
same concern that lived in Joe’s heart. “I think we’ve got a raging case of puppy love fueled by hormones coming our way.”

  “Great.”

  “Yeah.”

  For a long moment they stood in silent commiseration. Finally Joe gave a rueful smile. “I don’t want any of those boys near her.”

  She returned his smile. “Spoken like a true daddy.”

  Evie seemed so sure of herself, that Joe had a sudden urge to confess—which he held back for all of a minute. “Toni’s a mystery to me. I want to do the right thing, but I don’t know what the right thing is.”

  “Does anyone?”

  “You sound pretty certain.”

  “How I sound and how I feel are two different things. I’ve been around a lot of teenagers and I can give advice pretty well. But to be honest, Mr. Scalotta, I don’t know what’s right any more than the next guy.”

  “Joe,” he said.

  This time, instead of refusing to use his first name, she dipped her head in agreement.

  Just then the objects of their discussion came out of the house together. Joe scowled. Toni was supposed to be on the ground floor, and that kid in the basement. Yet they’d obviously met up inside. At least Toni had changed from her wet shirt into something dry and presentable of Evie’s.

  Toni sat on the porch rail and looked up into the kid’s face. The late-afternoon sun hit her hair, painting the strands every shade of gold. Joe swallowed a sudden thickness at the back of his throat when he saw the expression on her face as she smiled at Adam Vaughn. If that kid hurt her, Joe was going to… A growl burst from his throat.

  “We’re back to that again?”

  He glanced at Evie and found her gaze on their children. He hoped she was hatching various and devious ways for them to put a stop to this new problem. When she remained quiet and contemplative, Joe decided she couldn’t share without being asked.

  “What are we going to do about this?” he said.

  “Nothing. “

  “Nothing? That’s your professional advice?”

  “Yep. My mommy advice is to watch them like hawks.” She kept staring at the kids, and her face went all dreamy. “Do you remember what it was like, Joe?”

  He was distracted for a minute. It had been so long since anyone had actually called him by his first name in that way. He’d heard Iceman, and Wildman and Scalotta, and Joe instead of Dad. Even his parents called him Joseph. But just Joe? Not lately. He really, really liked how she said it.

  “Joe?”

  “Hmm?”

  She looked at him and not the lovebirds. “Do you recall the first time you fell in love?”

  He thought about that one. Love? He recalled the back seat of a Chevy Nova and Janine Petrowski—

  Joe glanced at Evie. She watched the kids again, and from the sappy look on her face, he’d lay bets she didn’t mean what he’d done with Janine when she talked about love.

  After Janine there’d been college. Football. Studying. Parties.

  Girls? Yes. Love? No.

  Then there’d been pro football. Another round of parties. Girls. Karen. No love there.

  “Not really,” he said before she could quiz him further.

  “No?”

  Evie tore her gaze from the kids, who now sat hip to hip on the porch rail. Too close for Joe’s comfort, but Adam wasn’t actually touching Toni. Yet.

  “Watching those two, I remember like it was yesterday,” she said. “The first time you love someone there’s never anything like that again. I don’t know if it’s because you’re young and love is so new, and so wonderful and terrible at the same time. Or if what you feel is stronger when you’re in the middle of all those confusing changes and there’s one person in the world who makes those changes make sense.”

  Not only was her face dreamy now, but her eyes were, too. Her mouth had gone all soft and full, as if she’d been kissing someone at a drive-in movie. Did they even have drive-in movies anymore?

  Joe shot a glance at Adam and Toni. If they did, those two certainly weren’t going there.

  “You remember a first love for the rest of your life,” Evie continued in a quiet voice. “Even when he becomes a man you don’t know, you still remember forever the boy who took your heart that first time.”

  Joe had no idea what she was talking about with that young love, first-love, forever stuff, but it sounded really dangerous. Too hot for kids to handle.

  He looked past Evie’s dreamy face and caught the same expression on his daughter’s.

  “Toni!” Her name burst in a panic from his lips. “Time to go.” When she hesitated, he ordered, “Right now, young lady.”

  All the way to the car Joe heard the echo of his father’s voice coming out of his mouth—and he decided, maybe that wasn’t so bad.

  Their first real game came the next week. Evie worried for days that Joe would call and pull Toni from the league. Joe was trying too hard to be a father to a girl who’d never had one. Too much, too late, was not the way to go. But Evie doubted Joe desired her advice on raising his daughter.

  She couldn’t blame him for wanting to protect his little girl. She wanted to protect her little boy. But sometimes Mother Nature was too strong to stop. From the look on Adam’s face as he’d watched Toni leave with her father, now was one of those times.

  When should she have “the talk” with him? Damn Ray Vaughn for dying and leaving her with three boys. The point of having boys was that the dad took them to the men’s room at the mall, and the dad told them about women, sex and responsibility.

  Evie gave a silent snort of derision. There hadn’t been a responsible bone in Ray’s body. He would have been as worthless at “the talk” as he had been walking the walk of a husband and father.

  Adam drove again. Some days Evie wondered if she’d ever get her car keys back. He had on his uniform—team shirt, white baseball pants and the hat he usually pulled low over his brow, now turned bill backward for driving safety. When had he grown up on her?

  A low-level argument began between the twins, which Evie chose to ignore. No one was crying or bleeding yet—round one. After the game they would have a talk about the continued abuse of rule number four. Evie returned her attention to her eldest son.

  Adam glanced her way, then back at the road. “What?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You keep staring at me.”

  “Sorry.” She stopped.

  However, Adam wasn’t going to let “Sorry” be enough. “Staring, staring, staring. Last night, this morning, now. What gives?”

  She wasn’t about to tell him, before a game and in front of the twins, that she was terrified he was going to fall in love and screw up his life.

  Would she have listened if her parents had told her the same thing eighteen years ago? Come to think of it—they had, and she hadn’t.

  “Mom?”

  “It’s nothing. You just look so grown-up.”

  “I am grown-up.”

  “I know.” Her eyes burned. She blinked hard and fast before the burn turned into tears.

  Adam had seen her cry a lot of times after Ray died, but not at all since they’d moved to Oak Grove. Evie planned to keep it that way. Their lives were on track now, and she wasn’t going back to how things had been. Her son had grown up too fast. Though she’d never asked him to, she still felt guilty whenever he acted like the man of the house. He was just that kind of kid. Responsible.

  “There’s Joe!” Danny cried.

  Evie’s heart started to thump in a new sort of rhythm, and she turned her attention to the ball field as Adam pulled into the parking lot. Tonight Joe wore a jade-green T-shirt tucked into white jeans. Very few men could carry off white jeans. Joe Scalotta was one of them.

  Before the car even stopped, the release of twin seat belts pinged from the back seat. “Freeze!” she ordered. “Please stay seated until the aircraft comes to a complete stop at the gate.”

  “Huh?”

  “How many tim
es do I have to tell you not to unbuckle until the car has stopped? For all you know, Adam could hit a brick wall, or someone could smash into us from behind.”

  “It’s happened,” Adam grumbled. “And then you have chaos.”

  Evie shot him a glare. He wasn’t happy the door that had replaced the one Joe hit was a different color from the rest of the car. His friends had started referring to the car as “Patch,” an embarrassment to a seventeen-year-old. For Evie, not so much. She needed a door—pronto—and a red door was the only one in stock.

  She turned back to the twins. “Just keep the belts on until the car stops. Don’t get out of the car until it stops.”

  “And don’t run in the street unless there’s traffic.”

  “Adam!”

  He shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Evie acknowledged it wasn’t easy to have seven-year-old twin brothers. One little brother was a royal pain—but two? Still … sometimes she was amazed at how mean brothers could be. Evie would never understand this complicated relationship that was love-hate all the time.

  “Just leave traffic out of it,” she admonished. But Adam didn’t hear her, since he was already out of the car and jogging across the grass to where Toni waited alongside her very attractive father.

  “Grr,” Evie mumbled, dragging herself out of the passenger seat.

  “What was that, Mom?” Benji appeared at her side.

  “Nothing. Go chase balls in the outfield, okay?”“

  ‘Kay.”

  He trotted off in pursuit of Danny, who had already hugged Joe’s knees, leaving ten dusty fingerprints on the pristine-white denim. Evie winced, but Joe didn’t seem to care. He patted Danny on the head, waved to Benji and didn’t even bother to swipe at the mess on his pants. Impressive.

  The scowl he sent at Adam’s and Toni’s backs as they walked toward the diamond was also impressive. His wide shoulders lifted and lowered with a deep sigh before he raised a hand to greet Evie. She nodded, trying not to admire the way the jade-green cotton molded the muscles of his chest. What was it about this man in a T-shirt? She was definitely losing what was left of her mind.

  Being attracted to Joe was a very bad idea. How many times did she need to get hit by the same truck to know better than to stand in the road?