Hands running down her arms, causing goose bumps to crop up in their rough-skinned wake, he leaned back, putting a few inches of space between them. “Don’t apologize,” he said authoritatively, “relocate.” And grasping her wrists, he pulled them around his sides.
She slid them up his back, and, holding her shoulders in a light grip, he gave her an approving nod. “There you go. Look, Ma, no wounds to worry about.”
Then the smile faded, and he stared at her, bringing a hand up to brush a curl away from her eyes. “God, you’re pretty,” he said, and lowered his head.
This time the kiss was an ode to gentleness, his lips slow and firm as they rubbed hers apart, his tongue a benediction as it stroked hers. Harper found herself rising onto her toes to feel as much of his hard body against hers as she possibly could.
And just like that, the kiss leaped out of control again. Max pulled her in tighter, bending his knees until his hard sex nudged the soft, rapidly dampening notch between her legs. For a second they both froze, hissing in simultaneous breaths. Harper had a second to wonder if he was as aware as she that the thin layers of their clothing were all that separated them. Then Max’s mouth grew rougher, more demanding, all teeth and tongue and I’m-in-charge sexuality. Never having experienced anything remotely comparable, Harper found herself on the verge of stimulation overload.
His hands framing her face, he lifted his head for a moment to come at her from a different angle. She responded mindlessly when his lips closed over hers again with firm suction, and a gritty rumble of satisfaction sounded deep in his throat. He palmed her left breast and oscillated his hips.
Oh, God. It was so good, so hot, and wanting, needing, a connection that was even closer—preferably horizontal and naked—Harper anchored her fingernails in his back and stropped her inner thigh up the outside of Max’s, giving herself a great deal of pleasure when the movement caused his rigid sex to drag against her sweet spot.
Then abruptly all that pleasure went away as his hands gripped her arms and held her in place while he took a large step away from her. “God,” he panted. “We’ve gotta slow down here.”
“What—?” Her skin rapidly cooled as she blinked up at him. “Why?”
“Because...” He looked baffled for a moment, as though he didn’t know himself. Then his firm jaw squared. “Because jumping your bones the first time I kiss you is way too high school. And I respect you too much to act like a seventeen-year-old.”
“Oh, don’t,” she said urgently. “I respect myself enough for both of us.” Okay, that wasn’t exactly PC. But she wanted him to jump her bones. More than she’d ever desired anything, she wanted that. “Besides,” she added, “I never had that particular high school experience, so I’m probably owed it, don’t you think?”
“You never made out in high school?” he asked incredulously. “No hot kisses under the bleachers, no backseat petting?”
She shook her head. “I moved around too much and mostly went to all-girls schools.”
“Yeah?” He gazed down at her with those intense dark eyes. “Did you wear a uniform?”
“Yes.”
“Hot.” He looked her over as if visualizing it. “You want the high school experience?”
“Oh, absolutely.” She nodded emphatically. “Let’s have sex.”
“Man, I’d love to.” The fervency in his voice sounded genuine. Then he shook his head. “But...no. I’m saving myself for marriage.”
He was putting too much effort into appearing virtuous, and Harper smacked his arm. “You are not. You’re a guy—everyone knows guys think about sex, like, every twenty-five seconds.”
“Sounds about right,” he said. “But on the twenty-sixth—or, okay, maybe the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth—I shove those thoughts down. I have standards.” He wrapped one of her curls around the forefinger of his free hand. “And if you want to work your way up to maybe making me relax them and have premarital sex with you, you’ll have to play by my rules.”
It sounded pretty one-sided, but she’d never seen Max playful. And she wanted more.
A lot more. So she nodded. “Fine, we’ll play by your rules. Because I like you like this and I want to see if you can sustain it or revert back to Brooding Bradshaw.”
Then she leveled a stern look on him. “For now, that is. I wouldn’t get too used to it, though, if I were you. I’m nobody’s pushover.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I pretty much know that already.”
“Good. Then know this, too. I’ll be coming up with a few rules of my own.”
CHAPTER TEN
MAX SPOTTED HARPER passing through the archway to the Cedar Village paths as he parked his SUV. He shut down the engine and swung open his door. “Hey, Harper! Hold up!”
She glanced over her shoulder, and he gave her a c’mere wave. “Can you give me a hand?” He’d already been feeling pretty damn good over his big score. Knowing she was here to see it just made the day seem that much brighter. Okay, he knew wanting to show off his find was Mikey Middle School. He just didn’t give a rip.
She strolled over, looking fresh in a pair of sky-blue capris and a white T-shirt with matching blue baseball-type sleeves. Although his expression didn’t outwardly change, he smiled inside. Because, really: appropriate, those.
“I have to ask myself what big, strong Deputy Bradshaw can’t handle on his own.”
“Come see.” He reached out to give one of the curls exploding from her high, short ponytail a tug, then went around to the back of his SUV and opened the hatch.
Having followed, she leaned around him to peer in—then gave him a delighted smile. “Where did you get all this?”
“Isn’t it great?” He grinned at her and leaned into the cargo hold to pull out the stack of three bases and a home plate, which he handed to her. “Little League’s not using the baseball gear today, so I talked them into lending it to me, then hit up the parks department for the bases and all these mitts, which apparently they’ve collected in their Lost and Found over the years. They said we could keep those, since not one of them’s been claimed in the past year. The rest we have to have back by four-thirty, but I called ahead to let Mary-Margaret know, and she said she’d gather up all the kids who aren’t currently in trouble over an infraction. Let’s haul this out to the field.”
“If we had another duffel, we could do this in one trip,” she said, eying the one stuffed full of bats and balls, then the bazillion and one mitts scattered all over the back of the cargo hatch. Her good-natured tone, however, said she didn’t really care how many trips it took.
“Not an issue as it turns out.” He glanced past her. “Looks like help’s on the way.” Two counselors and four teens were striding up the path. The instant they made eye contact, the boys broke into a run, whooping loudly.
Within minutes all the equipment was on its way to the big mown field behind the cottages—where every teenage resident appeared to be waiting.
It took the kids no time at all to set up. Then, without their usual wrangling, they chose Malcolm and Jeremy as team captains and Mary-Margaret as ump. Malcolm won the coin toss for first pick.
He immediately crooked a finger at Harper.
Laughing, she joined the young man. “You should’ve chosen Max,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve heard he was quite good back in the day, while I’ve never even been to a baseball game, let alone played in one.”
“We’ll grab him in the next draft,” Malcolm said, but it was obvious to the object of their conversation that the youth was happy merely having Harper on his team. And Max doubted that it was strictly due to her pretty femininity or the fact that she, like Malcolm, was of mixed race. No, he was confident it was her charm, humor and the ease with which she interacted with the boys that was rapidly turning her into a Village favorite.
A good thing, since Jeremy chose Max as his first pick. Observing the cheer with which the kids quickly filled out the rest of their teams, it quickly became evident that
they just wanted to play ball. And as had been the case with Harper, they seemed to select more with an eye toward the counselors and other boys they liked than toward any athletic ability.
It must be the nature of nonleague baseball, a sentiment Mary-Margaret bore out when he eased over to her as the kids hammered out some final details before the bat toss to determine whose team would be first up. “Is it my imagination,” he murmured to her, “or is every kid in the Village here? Aren’t any of the usual Anger Management kids on hiatus from group activities until they complete their course?”
“You know perfectly well that Nathan and Harry should be,” she said with a shrug. “But it’s baseball. I warned them this is a one-off furlough and if they screwed it up I’d cancel it so fast Wile E. Coyote’s Roadrunner would look like a sloth by comparison.” Once again her shoulders hitched. But then her naturally downturned lips curled up. “But as I said, Max, it’s baseball. Every boy oughtta be given the chance to play.”
“Amen to that, my sistah.”
They smiled at each other in perfect understanding.
Jeremy won the toss, and Max met up with his team at the dugout while Malcolm’s took the field. To his amazement, they put Harper at second base. He’d thought for sure she’d be relegated to left field.
Then Jeremy started laying down some of the plays he had in mind, and Max pulled his attention back to the matter at hand. He had to consciously relax his brows when they threatened to meet over his nose. Most of Jeremy’s plays were crazy ambitious, but manfully Max kept his opinions to himself. It’s about playing, not so much the winning—isn’t that what you were just thinking? Let it go, dude.
But being a guy who’d been a serious competitor back in the day, as Harper had termed it, he had to keep silently replaying the let-it-go mantra in his head. Then the first inning began, and Max got sucked in by the same simple joy of the game that was infecting the boys.
Their first batter hit a ground ball right to Harper. She squatted, gingerly scooped it up in her mitt, then rose to her feet. “What do I do with it?” she called to the batter. “Brandon, what do I do with it?”
The boys thought that was hilarious. “Put it in your pocket,” Owen, on Max’s team, called out, while Brandon yelled, “Throw it to Edward, Harper!”
Wisely taking her teammate’s advice, she tossed it toward the boy covering first base. She threw like a girl, however, and the ball landed in the grass a good yard shy of its goal. The batter had already attained first base by this point anyhow, and he divided a speculative glance between the ball and Harper, clearly tempted to go for second. She gave him the stink-eye, and, grinning, he settled with his heel against the edge of the base and the rest of him stretched out and prepared to run as the first baseman picked up the ball and winged it to Brandon.
Next up was Nathan, and he, too, deliberately hit toward Harper. But Harry, her team’s shortstop, had clearly anticipated it, for he raced over, whipped up the ball and gently lobbed it to her. “Step on the base, Ms. Summerville,” he directed when she caught it.
She did so, forcing out the man on first, and when Harry explained the way that worked, she whooped and did a little victory dance. “All riiiight!” she crowed. “That’s what I’m talking about.” She located the teen returning to the dugout and called, “That’s karma, baby. I might be the weakest link, but Harry and I put you out!” She raced over to give the shortstop a quick, fierce hug, then stepped back. “Okay, it was mostly you, but still!”
He laughed at her exuberance, and they exchanged high fives.
Max was up to bat next, and he glanced at Harper as Brandon wound up on the makeshift mound. She was wearing sunglasses, so he wasn’t a hundred percent certain she was looking at him as well, but as he watched, she leaned forward intently and wet her lips with her tongue.
Brandon’s first pitch whizzed right past him.
He narrowed his eyes at her—which, okay, she likely couldn’t see since he was wearing his own shades. Then he made himself ignore her as he choked up on the bat. Keeping his eye firmly on the ball, he was paying attention this time when the teen let fly with a decent fastball.
It came screaming over the plate, and the crack of leather against hickory and the zing in his wrists as his bat connected was a bullet train back to a few of the perfect moments in a childhood not particularly riddled with them. He knew without following his ball that he’d hit it out of the park, and, vaguely aware of the kids on his team screaming like maniacs, he saw Nathan take off for second base as he slung the bat aside and took off for his victory lap around the bases.
Edward, on first, was bent double laughing so hard he gasped for breath as Max nudged the base with his toe. Likely feeling his shadow, the boy raised his head to look up at him and lifted the hand he’d had braced against his knee to point down the baseline. And howled.
Following his gaze, Max felt his own mouth jerk up in an idiot grin.
Crouching and leaping, dodging from side to side, Harper danced between Nathan and second base, waving her arms like Michael Jordan preventing Magic Johnson from taking a shot at the hoop.
The sight made Max relinquish any remaining princess vibes he may have been hanging on to regarding her. Laughing out loud, he jogged over, circled his teammate and waded in. Snatching her up in his arms, he was conscious of the heat of the side of her breast against his pec and her clean, soapy scent as he jerked his chin at Nathan, who’d been gaping at her antics in stunned bafflement, to get him moving again.
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” the youth muttered. “Or make her hurt herself.”
“I know,” he agreed. “But go run your bases now. You earned it.”
“Hey!” Leaning back, Harper slid her sunglasses down her nose to glare up at him. She blew a loosened curl out of one of those olive-green eyes. “Hands, buddy, hands! Ump!” she called. “This can’t be legal.”
“It isn’t, precisely,” Mary-Margaret agreed, walking up to them. “But neither is guarding à la basketball in a baseball game.”
“Oh.”
Mary-Margaret laughed. “I’m afraid I have to rule for the deputy on this one.”
“Sure.” Harper nodded her understanding as Max set her down next to second base, and bent to straighten the hem of her T-shirt, which had ridden up, and gently push her shades back up her nose. “I get that. He has the power to write you a ticket and I don’t.”
Mary-Margaret shrugged. “There is that. But don’t underestimate your own powers. Max doesn’t have anything approaching your fund-raising skills.”
Harper’s lush mouth curved up. “That’s true. Shall we play some more ball?”
“I believe we should,” the director concurred. She looked at Max. “That was an obvious home run, but I’m penalizing you two bases for unauthorized handling.”
Max nodded. He didn’t mind being on Harper’s base—although he could have lived without all the razzing from Malcolm’s team.
“Nathan’s run stands,” Mary-Margaret added decisively, and Max acknowledged something he’d understood in high school but had clearly forgotten as an adult. Catcalling wasn’t nearly as obnoxious when it was your own team dishing it out.
Then Mary-Margaret gave a loud clap. “All right, people!” she called out so everyone could hear. “Let’s play ball!”
And the game resumed.
* * *
THE KIDS WERE beside themselves after the game. They relived it play by play, and Harper’s lack of baseball knowledge was a favorite topic. Call it adrenaline or call it endorphins, they were buzzing with an overload of it. Max knew it could turn to flat-out wired in an instant—and would if he and Harper didn’t do something to bring down the over-the-top energy level in the activity room where most of the teens had congregated. So he scrounged up graph paper and pencils and set the boys to drawing small-scale race cars based on the stack of pictures he’d set out, with the promise of actually building their designs another day.
Several of
the kids were enthralled simply with the dreaming/drawing aspect, but more weren’t, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before they became disruptive. Harper got up and left the room.
“Seriously?” he muttered. The going gets a little rough after the fun afternoon, and she just walks away?
But the thought had scarcely crossed his mind when she strolled back in carrying a copy of The Hunger Games. She flopped down in an easy chair, opened the book, and began to read aloud.
“Really?” Owen demanded. “Kiddie hour in the reading room—that’s what we’re down to?”
“Shut up, dude.” Harry crossed over to sit in a chair near Harper. “I love this series.”
A couple of the other boys scoffed along with Owen, but Max took note as one by one, they were drawn in by the story and soon formed a ragged semicircle around her. He didn’t know if it was the power of the words or Harper’s posh voice reading to them that was the biggest draw. Hell, probably both.
Even Trevor, who had ADHD, joined them. He was a poor listener, however, and was soon sidetracked by a long string poking through the seam of Nathan’s shorts. He reached out to tug on it.
Nathan knocked his hand away. “Hands off, ’tard!”
The almost primal hum of awareness that raced through teenage boys when a fight was in the offing pulled more of the kids’ attention away from Harper’s story.
But Trevor diffused it when he rose to his feet with no apparent knowledge that he was expected to fight. “I’m not a ’tard,” he muttered and ambled over to the foosball table where he spun a pole and watched the three strikers attached to it go ’round and around.
Harper hadn’t paused in her reading, and with the potential brawl off the table, the kids settled back into listening.
Moments later, Edward, the Malcolm team’s first basemen, stuck his head into the room. He started to withdraw, then slowly stepped inside. “Is that The Hunger Games? I’ve never heard it read out loud.” He walked over and collapsed on the floor.
Some Like It Hot Page 11
