Out of Her League

by Lori Handeland

  Joe especially liked the grocery store. All that stuff to pick from, so many choices, so many possibilities. He puttered through the place at least twice a week.

  “Hey, Joe!” called the produce manager. “Need anything special today?”

  “Got any portobello mushrooms, Frank?”

  “You Italians, you always want the best for the sauce, eh?”

  “Only the best makes the best,” Joe agreed amiably. Frank had become the closest thing Joe had to a friend around here. The others all seemed to have their circle of friends from childhood and no one seemed eager to add Joe to the mix. Probably because they figured he’d be gone soon enough. He doubted his reputation helped, either.

  Joe contemplated the mushrooms, then the tomatoes. He had his hands full of zucchini, when someone smashed into his cart.

  “Oops, sorry. Oh, Joe.”

  He looked up to find Evie staring at him in shock. He smiled, truly pleased to see her, which was a bad thing, he knew, but right now he felt so lonely that he needed one little ray of sunshine—even if it was the forbidden woman of his dreams.

  “You shop?” she asked, her face and voice filled with amazement.

  “Sure. I find it…” He searched for a word to describe his enjoyment of the process.

  “Irritating? Horrifying? Time-consuming? Pointless?”

  It was Joe’s turn to look amazed. “I was going to say soothing. Enjoyable. A barrel of fun.”

  “Ha! You’re joking right?”

  “No. I really like it.”

  “What is there to like? You spend a ton of money, then you come home and everyone says, ‘There’s no food around here.’ Or, ‘You bought the wrong thing.’ Or they complain there’s not enough of one thing, or not the right things to make anything. Then in less than a week you have to do it all over again. I loathe grocery shopping. I never figured you’d be doing it.”

  “If not me, then who?”

  She frowned. “Don’t you eat out a lot?”

  He could tell by her expression that she recalled the last time they’d seen each other when not at a ball game. Bertolusi’s. The scene of his first, but not his last, disastrous date. Since he didn’t want to discuss that, Joe ignored the implication.

  “Eating out all the time wouldn’t be good for Toni, even though she eats at your house more than mine.”

  “The more the merrier. Toni helps me out.”

  “She does?”

  “Sure. The twins love her. She keeps them out of my hair. And Adam’s.”

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying her.” Joe immediately wished he could take back the comment; he sounded cranky. But what was said was said. He shrugged and placed the zucchini he most admired in his cart.

  Evie tilted her head. “I suppose you’d like her back once in a while. I apologize for monopolizing her. She’s a great kid.”

  “So you don’t want to keep her away from your baby boy anymore?”

  “I doubt anything I say or do would change that. They seem pretty stuck on each other.” She looked about as happy about it as Joe was. “Right now, I prefer the devil I know over the devil I don’t. Besides, if they’re in my living room, I can keep tabs on where they are and what they’re up to.”

  “Devious.”

  “A mother’s middle name.”

  They smiled at each other—companionably, like friends. Joe enjoyed it.

  Evie glanced into his cart and her face reflected confusion. “You cook?”

  “Once again, someone has to.”

  “I figured you for a TV dinner kind of guy.” She held up her hand. “I know—not good for Toni. But where did you learn to cook?”

  “From a book.”

  “You can do that?”

  “What? Read?”

  There must have been enough lingering anger in his voice to reach her, because she appeared embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I know. It’s just…”

  “Everyone thinks you’re stupid because you’re a football player?” He nodded. “Frustrating, isn’t it?”

  “What would you know about it?”

  “Just because I’m a girl, everyone wants to put me in a slot I don’t want to be in.”

  “Like?”

  “Teach home ec rather than phys ed. Or coach the girls’ softball team, not the boys’ baseball team. What’s the difference?”

  “Girls aren’t boys.”

  “Really? I wish I’d known that before I raised three sons.”

  “Touché,” Joe said.

  “Joe Scalotta speaks French? Stop the presses.”

  “Please, don’t. I’ve had enough press for one lifetime.”

  “Me, too.” She indicated with a toss of her head that they should continue on. “If I have one more microphone shoved in my face, I’m going to scream into it.”

  Joe smiled at the image as he grabbed a loaf of Italian bread. Evie grabbed three loaves of generic wheat bread.

  “Our teams are tied,” he observed.

  She shot him a glance. “So I hear,” she said dryly.

  Not surprisingly, that was all anyone talked about—at the drugstore, in the barbershop, on the news. He wished someone would grow a duck-shaped potato or something and get him off the lead at nine.

  “Mrs. Larson looks ten years younger,” Evie went on. “This is a coup such as she never dreamed of. I played right into her hands, losing my temper like that and making the bet.”

  “So did I. They weren’t going to go for it until I opened my big mouth.”

  “So back out.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to ‘give’ you the job?”

  “Quitting isn’t the same as giving.”

  “I can’t quit.”

  “Sure you can.”

  He sighed. “Not anymore. My boss at OGCC thinks all this publicity will be good for the school. I didn’t know it when I came here, but if I can’t turn the football program around, there won’t be one. I want that job. I trained for it. I’ve wanted to be a teacher and a coach since I was a kid.”

  “Me, too.”

  Joe glanced at Evie. She stared at him with a serious, contemplative expression on her face—almost as if she’d never seen him before this moment.

  “I’ll be good at that job,” he told her.

  She nodded. “And I’ll be a good varsity coach. Much better than you.”

  Her attitude made Joe’s teeth grind. He didn’t want her job. But the way she kept on insisting he couldn’t handle it made him see red. “Do you really think it’s in your children’s best interests for you to take another job?”

  She had been holding a can of ravioli. When she threw it into the cart with more speed than necessary, he flinched. “It’s none of your business what’s in my children’s best interests, Wildman.”

  With that she pushed her cart down the aisle as if she were driving a bumper car and disappeared around the corner. A smash and a curse had him shaking his head.

  Temper, temper. She certainly had one. Why did he suddenly find that so appealing?

  Evie drove directly from the grocery store to the house, and while Adam and the twins dragged the bags inside, Evie and Toni threw the perishables into the fridge and freezer, then left the canned goods on the counter to be attended to later.

  She only lost one gallon of milk when Benji and Danny decided to make an assembly line and toss things from one to the other between the car and the kitchen door. It was absolutely amazing how far a gallon of milk could splatter when it hit the pavement. NASA should do a study on the physics involved.

  Getting mad was counterproductive, given the amount of time she had left to transport them all to the game. So she docked each twin a dollar and a quarter, and corralled all four kids into the car.

  Why did her life always run on fast-forward?

  The twins squabbled in the back, even though Toni sat between them. With an admirable calm, considering the teenager couldn’t be used to such commotion and arguing, To
ni ignored them both, even when they climbed all over her.

  “Guys?” Evie settled into the passenger seat, and Adam started the car. “What ever happened to rule number four?”

  “He’s not my em-eny,” said Danny, throwing an arm around Benji’s neck and yanking him as close as the seat belt and Toni’s body would allow. “He’s my brother.”

  Evie’s eyes met Toni’s, and they smiled at Danny’s persistent mangling of enemy. They really were cute—sometimes even when they were awake.

  Evie hadn’t lied to Joe when she’d said she was fond of Toni. The girl fit into the Vaughn household as if she belonged there. Evie was used to having most of the kids in the neighborhood at her house in the summer. She was one of the few parents on the block at home all day, and it didn’t bother her to have kids there, as long as they behaved. But the extras were usually boys.

  Having a girl around, especially one who so obviously needed a woman’s attention, gave Evie a warm feeling that she hadn’t had since the last time one of the boys had sat on her lap and cuddled. However, Joe’s sad face when he talked about Toni not being around had struck a chord in Evie. He loved his daughter—and in Evie’s book, the depth of that love in such a rough, gruff man made up for a lot of annoyances.

  She focused on the twins, who were now giving each other noogies. “If he’s not your enemy, then why are you fighting?”

  “We aren’t fighting.” Benji sat up, which at least put him back on his own side of Toni. He appeared genuinely puzzled at her question. “Besides, Mom, we’ve been trying to keep to the rules, but you haven’t even noticed how we’ve been drying our Hot Wheels off instead of throwing them into the sink. What good is trying if you don’t even notice?”

  Evie had noticed, mainly because the two of them had used her last pair of un-run pantyhose to do their drying. She deserved it for hanging those hose to dry in the bathroom, then putting the twins into the tub.

  “Give it up, Mom,” Adam said. “You lose.”

  Evie sighed and faced forward. Sometimes she felt as if there were a great big L on her forehead. Loser. She couldn’t seem to win. Her life spun out of control. Never enough time to do what had to be done. Never enough money to do what she dreamed of doing. Never enough Mommy to go around.

  Then Scalotta had the guts to say she might not be doing what was best for her kids. How could that man haunt her dreams, when most of the time she wanted nothing more than to kick him in the shins? Or make him disappear—Poof!—never to bother her again.

  The way he’d been dating nearly every unattached woman in Oak Grove above the age of consent and below Social Security was the talk of the town, right below “the bet.” Though his relationship with Unruly Julie hadn’t lasted more than a single date, still, Evie harbored a secret fear that one of his honeys would convince him that anywhere was better than here, and he would indeed be gone—Poof!—and Toni, too. Evie wasn’t ready to lose the girl yet, even if it meant putting up with Scalotta at twenty paces.

  They pulled into the parking lot, to find Joe sitting alone at the top of the home-team bleachers. He looked so lonely there, the setting summer sun blazing on his hunched shoulders and shading his silver-blond hair white.

  Evie glanced at Toni and caught her frown. Something was going on with those two—and it was really none of Evie’s business. But the tension between them troubled her.

  The twins tumbled out of the car, shrieking, “Joe!”—then raced straight for him. No matter how many times she admonished them to call him “Mr. Scalotta,” they still called him “Joe.” He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he really got along well with them, having a lot more patience with their antics and chatter than Evie did.

  They swarmed up the bleachers and sat, one on either side. His smile was warm, and Evie heard his laugh rumble across the heated air, then dance down her spine. What was it about this man that set her teeth on edge and shifted her body into overdrive?

  Toni and Adam pulled the equipment out of the back. “We’ve got it all, Mom,” Adam said. “Go on.”

  She smiled her thanks and meandered toward the field, watching Joe with her two sons. They talked to him the way they talked to everyone they met. But they also leaned into him, put their hands on his arm or his knee, completely trusting of this huge man who had so recently been a stranger.

  Joe’s face lit up as if he’d discovered a secret, and he reached over and playfully turned Benji’s baseball cap around. His eyes met hers over the boy’s head, and there passed between them one of those moments she often remembered in the darkest part of the night. Though she’d made mistakes of epic proportion in her life, she wanted, right now, to make another. She wanted to kiss Joe Scalotta again. She wanted to kiss him, and she didn’t want to stop there.

  With the double-vision granted to all mothers in childbirth, Evie held Joe’s gaze and was still able to observe the twins grin, giggle; then Benji pulled his hat forward, and Danny slid his backward. They bounded down the bleachers and raced after Adam and Toni.

  Evie stopped at the foot of the stands. “You do realize they’re onto you.”

  Confusion dropped over Joe’s features like a storm cloud over a sunny afternoon. “Who?”

  “The twins. It’s their favorite game.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “I told you they’d switch on you. They think it’s a riot when you call them by the wrong name.”

  He grinned, the expression lighting his eyes, and she had to smile back, even though she was still annoyed with him for questioning her parenting, and for being so darn attractive. He couldn’t help it, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

  “But I’ve figured out how to tell them apart.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her voice reflected her skepticism.

  “No, really. I talk to them until one of them lets slip who’s who. Then I turn back their caps, or turn up their sleeves.”

  “And as soon as you look away, they switch.”

  “What?”

  She laughed at the shock on his face. “They just did it with their hats. They might be seven, but they’re not stupid.”

  Joe shook his head and gave a wry chuckle. “I thought I was so clever.”

  “Cleverer minds than yours have been foiled by those two. They have an uncanny ability to know when someone can tell them apart on sight.”

  “And how many people possess this mystical ability?”

  “Me and Adam.”

  “What about their teachers?”

  “They’re in separate classes. It’s better for them not to be together all the time. So each poor teacher knows which one is in his or her class from day one.”

  “And have they switched on their teachers?”

  Evie smiled. “Only once.”

  He nodded. “I see. You caught them.”

  “Yep.”

  “And then?”

  “It wasn’t pretty.”

  “So what should I do?”

  “Keep going as you have been. But as soon as you make your mark, assume they’ve switched. After you’ve identified them a few times correctly, they’ll think you’ve acquired the gift and quit yanking your chain.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “I’m great with plans.”

  His gaze sharpened on her face, as if she’d said something fascinating, though Evie couldn’t think what that might be. Before she could ask, Adam called to her, and Evie became caught in the whirl of pregame warm-ups.

  The increase in the size of the crowds for these games had so far been an annoyance more than a problem. Little League, in all forms and sizes, carried a written rule of good sportsmanship—for the coaches, players and parents.

  No one was allowed to taunt an umpire or a player. The umpires, being older players themselves, made mistakes. They were learning, just like the players, and to argue a call was not permitted. Not only did it encourage everyone to argue everything, but arguing with authority figures set a bad example for players. If somethi
ng needed to be discussed, the coach and the umpire spoke quietly, away from the scene of the action.

  It was the coach’s responsibility to keep the team and the crowd in line. Evie always nipped trouble in the bud, just as her father had taught her, and had therefore never had a serious crowd problem before. But there was an exception to every rule.

  The culprits materialized as a gaggle of sixteen-year-old girls who had their sights on Adam. Since he never noticed anything that wasn’t wearing a baseball uniform, they had taken extreme measures, fashioning themselves into the Adam Vaughn personal cheerleading section.

  The entire thing, though embarrassing to Adam, was not cause for ejection from the game. Tonight, however, their cheers for Adam turned to catcalls for Toni, when Evie’s closing pitcher walked in a run. The fact that Adam had taken notice of a girl in a uniform had turned his crowd of admirers into antagonists.

  “…Pull her out!”

  “…We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher!”

  “…Pitcher can’t pitch.”

  “…She throws like a girl.”

  “…But she can’t be a girl. Look at her.”

  Shrill laughter followed each taunt. Evie glanced at Toni, who had flushed red and seemed to shrink in upon herself. Her next pitch hit the batter in the back, and the away crowd hissed.

  Evie stood up. Time to get rid of the problem. The girls saw her coming and blanched.

  Evie didn’t plan to make an issue; she just planned to make them go. “You know the rules, girls. Home.”

  Several started to shuffle away, but one—there was always one—took a belligerent stance and stepped forward. “It’s a free country, Mrs. Vaughn.”

  Evie lowered her voice so only Laura could hear her. She knew better than to embarrass a teenager in public, no matter how much it might be deserved. “You’re mistaken, Laura. You’re standing in my little country, and it certainly isn’t free. Not if free means taking potshots at someone who’s doing her best in a tough spot. Now, you can leave, quietly, since you’ve embarrassed yourself enough. Or I can call your daddy and tell him what you’ve been up to.”

  Since Laura’s daddy was also a coach, and a stickler for the rules, Laura resorted to dagger glares and slunk off after of her friends.