Game Face (Small Town Bachelor Romance Book 3)

by Abby Knox

  “And one other thing. I am falling for you, Remy Dawson. And I’m going to work my ass off to show you what that means.”

  25

  Remy

  Over the next few weeks, their alone time was sporadic due to their respective work schedules and baseball season ramping up. Their time together consisted mostly of canoodling after Elliot was asleep, or impromptu office picnics at his school during his lunch period. And more phone sex than you could shake a stick at.

  Remy was beyond ready to feel Troy between her legs and all the way inside her, but for some reason, he was drawing it out.

  She liked it, on one hand. It was a delicious yearning she felt. The need was in her head and had her entire body buzzing almost 24 hours a day. On the other hand, she was having trouble focusing on her work. On the other-other hand, it felt nice to be wanted as a person and not just for her body. On the other-other-other hand, she was really fucking frustrated and horny.

  She knew what he was doing. He was wooing her. Every day he was doing really kind things for her.

  The morning after their skinny-dipping date, she noticed her car had been washed, waxed and detailed.

  The rest of the week had brought single white daisies on her doorstep every morning and a fresh flavored coffee from Hawk’s Diner, which made the best coffee in town. Her lopsided mailbox was mysteriously fixed, a broken railing on the stairs on her front stoop was repaired. Their grass was getting cut weekly. She knew better than to give credit to her landlord for finally getting shit done. No, Remy and Elliot apparently had a big ol’ elf visiting in the wee hours.

  The morning of Elliot’s final playoff game, there arrived a large basket full of all the carbohydrates known to man, delivered by Hawk himself. “If you want my advice, don’t marry him.”

  That was not the advice she was expecting, although who expects advice from a delivery guy, or the guy sponsoring your kid’s youth league team? “Why not?” she asked, more curious than put off.

  “Because I would love it if he kept this up a while longer. He’s keeping me in business all spring and half the summer. After you get married, that’s it. No more croissants from him. I guarantee it.”

  “No more croissants?” She took the basket and smelled the most heavenly scent of bread ever.

  “Mark my words,” he said with a smirk, refusing her tip.

  Over a breakfast of carbs slathered in all the other goodies from the basket—homemade pepper jellies and goat cheeses from the Clays’ Morning Glory Farms—Remy could feel her son watching her closely.

  Finally, she asked him why.

  “I like him and I think he really likes you. You should date him.”

  “Elliot, honey, I kind of am.”

  He nodded casual approval.

  “You’re not mad?”

  “What do you want me to say, you want me to be all after school special and upset and embarrassed? I’m just happy you seem happy.”

  She laughed. “How do you know about after school specials? It’s not even a thing that gets made anymore.”

  He rolled his eyes. “1980s nostalgia on YouTube, Mother. Learn it. Live it. Love it.”

  “It wasn’t even a thing when I was in high school. The things you enjoy watching truly worries me sometimes.”

  “I have more time on my hands, thanks to you canceling lessons with the douche.”

  “Sweetie, I never canceled with Rodney. I honestly completely forgot about lessons as soon as I started dating Troy. He kind of makes me forget about a lot of things.”

  As she munched on a bagel, she stared at Elliot. She swore he’d grown an inch over the season. Elliot stared back at her.

  “Mom, I don’t know what’s going on with you. But I like it.”

  Maybe Troy mellowing on the whole subject of Elliot and his pitching arm had made Remy mellow as well.

  Well, she’d take that as a gift, along with everything else he’d been doing for her. Elliot was complaining less, and he was going to be pitching in the playoffs. That was hands-down the best part.

  But later at the game, Remy was tense all over again. She thought she’d been transformed into the chilled-out mom. But the truth was she was downright anxious while watching a game with this much at stake. Tiger Mom was back.

  In fact, Tiger Mom completely took over when the referee called a runner trying to steal third safe when he was clearly out. Elliot had been perfecting his base throwing, thanks to Coach Troy, and he’d whipped it over to the third baseman just in time, it seemed to her. But not actually in time, according to the referee.

  A couple of the other team parents next to her in the stands booed. They saw it. Before she could stop herself, she was out of the bleachers and standing up against the chain-link fence, shouting.

  “No way, ref! That kid was out! Did you even see that? He was definitely out!”

  Elliot looked chagrined at her, all the players and spectators were staring at her, but she was firing on all cylinders and kept going.

  The referee called time out and walked over to face her across the fence, along with Troy.

  “You can’t do that here. This is youth league. You can’t talk to the ref, you know that, Mrs. Dawson.” He called her Mrs. Dawson like they had not made out in the dugout twelve times on this very field.

  She ignored Troy. “Come on, ref, that was a ridiculous call.”

  Troy persisted. “It’s not your concern. I’m doing my job, let the ref do his job. Go sit down or you can leave.”

  “You can’t kick me out, Troy.”

  “No? Watch me.”

  And Remy was indeed removed from the game. In front of everyone. By her supposed boyfriend.

  As he physically escorted her away from the field toward the parking lot, she yanked her arm away from his grip. “I had you pegged from the beginning. You don’t care about winning, and now I know why. Because you’re scared of the pressure. You’re afraid you’re going to choke. The same reason you gave up playing ball. Yes, I heard the whole story from you the other night.”

  She regretted all of it the second it was out of her mouth.

  Troy said nothing. Just walked away.

  Devastated, Remy watching the rest of the winning game from her car.

  This might be a good time for a cigarette, but she didn’t smoke. But that’s not what she needed at all. The shame started to sink in. She had let her emotions take over again and embarrassed herself and her son, and possibly Troy. What have you done?

  She needed something to calm her nerves, but the one thing that did seem to calm her nerves at the moment was busy coaching her son, and oh yeah, kicking her out of the stands.

  And now her son was headed to the league’s World Series, so she couldn’t just hide under a rock for the rest of the summer out of embarrassment.

  Dammit. You need to fix this.

  26

  Troy

  The silence from Remy that whole following week after the game was deafening.

  She didn’t call. Didn’t answer his texts. Did not come to school to sneak a kiss during his free period.

  On the other hand, she had not broken it off with him, either.

  So Troy kept on keeping on. Every night, he drove to her house after they were asleep. To fix something. To clean something. To do things a man does for his girl. Once, he planted violets in her side yard. Another night, he pulled weeds. Yet another night, fresh mulch for the shrubs.

  And of course the breakfast baskets from Hawk’s just kept coming. Troy couldn’t stop taking care of them. He just couldn’t.

  As he planted the flowers that one night, he replayed how he had tossed her from the game. He could have just let the referee handle it. Maybe he jumped the gun. But she would have gotten herself booted either way. She was in the wrong. Definitely. Yep. He just did what needed to be done before it got any more out of hand.

  If that had made her furious at him, which it obviously had, there was nothing he could do about that. She would get ove
r it and they would get through this. This would end up a trivial matter in the long term.

  He had not expected the silent treatment. Especially from a woman who knew how to use her words to skewer a guy into oblivion. Yet, every night at practice that week, she dropped Elliot off and didn’t bother getting out of the car. It was starting to drive him nuts. Why couldn’t they just talk about it? Argue? Shout? Scream? Anything would suffice.

  That coming weekend, there was a break in the league schedule until the World Series started. So Troy came up with a plan.

  When he was done planting, he called up his friend in Chicago.

  “Hey Rizz, It’s Mattis. I’m good, how are things? Yeah, I watched all seven games, hot shot, and that ring is making quite a racket on your phone. Hey listen, I’m taking my girl to the game Sunday and I need a favor…I know Wrigley doesn’t officially allow this kind of thing anymore, but I need you to pull some strings…”

  27

  Remy

  “We need to talk.”

  This was it. She took a long drink from her water bottle.

  She had come close to texting him back over the last week. But she had work to do on herself, and she didn’t want to fall into the same pattern. And, she felt ashamed.

  Troy looked worn out and ready to go home after a long, steamy Friday night practice in July. He leaned against the door of his pickup, arms crossed in front of him.

  Elliot had gone home with Brandt for the night to try out some skateboard moves, so Remy finally had mustered the courage to say what she needed to say. She had spent all week thinking about it. She even went to see a therapist she could barely afford. She had deliberately kept her distance, afraid that connecting with Troy before she was ready would only lead to kissing, and kissing would only lead to hands ripping clothes off and forgetting what it was they needed to talk about.

  He shook his head. “I’ve been trying to talk to you. I can’t believe you would have that kind of an outburst in front of the kids and then refuse to talk to me about it.”

  She wanted to point out it was a rotten call. But she stopped herself from shifting blame, as her therapist put it. She took a step closer and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Troy did not melt immediately. “You need to understand what your sorry about. The ref’s call is the call. And that’s it. You undermined the ref, you used your status as my girlfriend to try to bend the rules. This is the same damn problem you and I have been going around and around about since before we even met.”

  “I understand,” she said, meeting his eyes, which were still angry. It was killing her to see that look on his face. “But I also need you to know that it felt to me like you enjoyed kicking me out. You were pretty quick to do it,” she said.

  Troy was no longer leaning against his truck but standing up straight, ready for a face-off. “I had to! I can’t have parents acting like lunatics. And if you think I enjoyed that, you don’t know me at all.”

  She was tethering her temper with a frayed string at this point. “I do know you, you don’t care about winning at all, and I do. But I just started talking to someone about my issues, and I have learned that I need to look past that.”

  Troy turned away, opening the driver door. “I don’t even know how to talk to you right now. You think I don’t care about winning? It’s universally understood that everybody fucking cares about winning. The point I’m trying to make is we need to let these kids enjoy the game! I don’t know how else to say it, woman. I’m not always going to do things you like, sometimes you will hate me. But when you love someone, you talk it out. You don’t freeze the other person out. And you don’t fucking use my past against me. That was really below the belt, maybe even worse than throwing a fit in front of the kids.”

  Remy finally fell silent. She knew he loved her. She knew from the last two weeks, all the unsolicited help around the house, the little gifts, the way he looked at her. She knew. And she’d treated him like garbage. And now, he just looked hollow, tired and angry.

  She looked down at her feet and recalled all the ways Elliot had responded after last week’s game when he’d witnessed her antics. He looked at her differently, as if he was waiting for her silence to turn into something else. The fun mom he thought he had gained from having Troy around was suddenly turning back into an intense and uptight pushy mom again.

  A great boulder of shame felt like it might hammer her whole body right into the ground. “I’m sorry, Troy. You’re right. I’m sorry I made you do that.”

  She looked up as she fought back tears. He was halfway in the driver seat, shaking his head. “And I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. I shouldn’t have humiliated you in front of everyone like that.”

  Remy sighed. “So now what?”

  “Get in the truck.”

  “No.”

  “Get your ass into my truck now,” Troy insisted. “I have something to show you.”

  “And I’m asking you, what woman in her right mind would get in the truck of a man who is angry with her and won’t tell her where he is taking her?”

  “Because we’re gonna go park behind the Office Quest and bone the shit out of each other now.”

  Remy thought about it for a moment.

  It was a very quick moment.

  “Let’s go.”

  28

  Troy

  Remy furiously unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his Levis. Troy lowered the seats in the cab.

  “Shit, man, why do you insist on these retro button flies…”

  “Because they make you crazy.”

  She told him to shut up as he inched himself into the back seat so his long legs could spread out across the lowered front seats. She knelt on the floor in front of him and set her water bottle within reach.

  “Does my crazy make you hard, baby?”

  “You know it, darlin’.”

  “Does it make you feel good to tell me what to do? To throw me out of the game when I’m a bad girl?”

  He laughed. “Bad girl talk. I like it. Yeah, every time I get angry at you I get so fucking hard, it’s embarrassing. And then I get angrier and it just snowballs.”

  “You mean blueballs?”

  “Good one.”

  Then she confessed: “It gets me hot when you boss me around, Coach. Tell me what you want.”

  “Take me out to the ballgame, mama.”

  There was still enough light coming in through the truck windows to see her face. She looked hungry and dangerous.

  Remy tugged at his belt loops. He lifted his hips off the seat so she could slide his jeans and briefs down at the same time. Not an easy feat in the humidity. He watched her watching his manhood spring free. She licked her lips as she smoothed her hands up his thighs.

  She touched the tip of his cock with her tongue, glided it down the shaft and used her hands to gently massage his balls.

  “A little rougher, babe. Don’t be scared.”

  Her eyes flashed up at him in the twilight.

  She squeezed and massaged with a bit more pressure, then devoured him with her mouth. She grew braver the more he moaned with pleasure, adding more pressure with her hands and her tongue each time he made a noise. She was exquisite and electrifying. Watching her work so hard to please him, doing everything he told her to do, knowing it was all for him. Her touch and her kisses told him everything he wanted to know.

  As her mouth worked them both into a sweat on the leather seats, he grew dangerously close to orgasm. Troy gazed at her as she vigorously feasted on him, and his words came out ragged. “Remy. I’m getting close.”

  “Hold on, Coach,” she murmured. His cock was slick from her mouth and she smiled up at him for a moment. God, he hoped she wasn’t thinking of taking a break, because he might have to finish himself off and he did not want to do that. He needed more of her mouth, and he was going to get it.

  “What are you doing to me, Remy?”

  An evil grin spread across her face. Then she
took a swig from her water bottle. A long one. The ice-cold sensation when she slowly licked his cock just about blew his mind. There were fucking ice cubes in her mouth.

  “Oh, Remy, baby, you gotta keep going.”

  “Do I?” She crunched and swallowed some of the ice thoughtfully. Then she licked him cold again and closed her eyes, as if she was tasting chocolate for the first time. “Mmmm. Coach, you taste so good, did you know that?”

  “Remy, please stop talking. Finish.”

  Remy then took another swig from her water bottle as Troy moaned for her, then finally plunged his shaft back into her mouth. If this were an Olympic event, she would win gold. She would win all the gold and everyone else in the Olympic Village would go home crying because there would be no point in trying anymore.

  He managed to form the words to tell her he was coming.

  She slid him out of her mouth and furiously pulled her white tank top over her head. There was no time to remove her bra. With a swift movement, she was on top of him, his shaft sinking into her cleavage, just in time.

  Troy tried not to close his eyes in ecstasy as he came all over her. Watching her bite her lip as she let him ride it out between her tits, with the slightest grin, made it ten times as hot. Watching her intense brown eyes gaze up at him made him surge onto her more than he thought possible.

  “Oh, Remy,” he said, out of breath, sweat pouring off his face. “You are the queen.”

  She waited there with his shaft between her breasts until he had completely finished on her. Then she rose up so Troy could see her massage his seed all over her chest like it was coconut oil or something.

  “Remy, let me finish you.”

  “No way, babe. That was my apology to you for ignoring you for the past week. Just let it be.”

  Troy pulled her up onto the seat with him and nestled her in his arms.