by Cari Quinn
“What do you know about my career?” Again that same sharpness re-entered his voice. He couldn’t help it. There were sensitive subjects, then there were conversational landmines. His current free agent status resided firmly in the latter territory.
The way her lips pinched at the corners stirred something low in his gut, right beneath the snug band of his belt. “Plenty,” she murmured, and the heaviness between his legs increased tenfold. “The only thing higher than the amount of women you’ve supposedly nailed is your win percentage.” She didn’t mention his slump again, thank God. Nor his injury. He hoped she’d put both out of her pretty little head. “So how the hell are you still a free agent? I was sure the Cords would grab you—”
“Easy enough not to be picked up when you’re a bigger liability than you are an asset.” He didn’t add anything else.
Like how he’d started drinking more to contend with the unrelenting pain and weakness he couldn’t stretch his way through. Better to be known as a fuckup than to risk his trainers finding out that not only was he almost thirty-two, his body was already starting that inevitable downward slide to obsolescence.
She shocked the hell out of him by shrugging as she slid the bacon onto their plates. “So you drink and have fun. What young guy doesn’t? It doesn’t hurt anyone. You get the job done and anyone who doesn’t want you is an idiot.”
The vehemence in her tone made him slide a finger under her chin to tilt her face up to his. Big mistake. Their mouths were too close—relatively speaking, despite their sizable height difference—and her eyes were too big, the pupils drowning the blue until just a rim of color remained. The shade reminded him of the hottest point of a flame. “Slugger’s the right name for you.” Somehow he kept his voice level even as his cock lurched against his zipper in its latest bid for freedom. “And I can’t say I mind having you swinging in my corner.”
She turned into him, setting down the frying pan with a barely noticeable metallic clink. “I know value when I see it.”
The finger he’d left under her chin twitched. He wanted to run it along the curved line of her jaw up to her delicate earlobe. She wore tiny gold hoops in her single piercings, the look as innocent as the thin chain bearing a small cross that circled her throat. Symbols of the purity she fought to disavow every time she opened her pink-glossed mouth.
“And I know when something will cost too much,” he returned, shifting back to pick up a piece of bacon from his plate. She’d fried it to the perfect crispness and the flavor burst on his tongue, a pathetic substitute for what he really wanted to taste. “Let’s eat and get you to church.”
Summer was on her knees beside Chase Dixon. A dream come true. But in her fantasies, she hadn’t been clutching a hymnal.
She also hadn’t been wearing one of his long-sleeved T-shirts under her zipped-to-the-neck jacket. She’d had no choice, since the shirt he’d picked out for her to borrow said “Going Long, Pitching Deep”. It was also about sixteen sizes too big and smelled of his mint-and-spice cologne, not to mention his lemony detergent.
Yeah, perfect church attire with her sheer skirt. Thanks, Chase. She only called him Deuce because he said he didn’t want her to. In her head, he would always be Chase, the guy she’d crushed on way too long for absolutely no reason. It was clear he’d placed her in a mental jail called “off-limits virgin” and refused to allow himself conjugal visits.
Ha, she hadn’t been a virgin for years. She was even semi-skilled at oral sex. So there.
To his credit, he didn’t seem bored throughout the service. He remembered all the prayers and followed along without trouble, which made her wonder if he’d visited the house of the Lord more recently than he’d indicated.
In their close-knit Irish and Italian neighborhood in Yardley, it had seemed like every other family attended the same church. Chase, Cass and their mom and dad were no exception.
Well, at least until Chase and Cass’s parents had split. Their mom remarried and started a new family across the country in Colorado, and so had Chase’s dad, minus the new family part. Dale Dixon’s trophy wife had only stuck around a few years. Since then the rumor mill claimed he’d cuddled up to the same liquid lover his son liked to bed down with. Whether Dale’s latest stint in rehab would stick was anyone’s guess.
It also remained to be seen whether Chase would be successful in AA. She hadn’t realized his drinking had become that serious, but she’d known he liked to live hard and party harder. It had been pure chance running into him at The Platinum Club. Since he’d gone pro after college, he made rare appearances at home. One of the last times she’d seen him had been at the ill-fated party last summer when she’d made a grab for both The Platinum Club’s business card and his lips. Both missions had ended up as dismal failures.
Now Chase knelt at her side in his Sunday-best gray slacks and black collarless shirt, and she’d gotten so sidetracked by her thoughts that she’d missed the beginning of “Amazing Grace”. She closed her eyes and let her voice lift with the others around her, allowing the swelling music to take her away from real life as it usually did.
She’d always found sanctuary in the sounds, sights and smells of church. The familiar sting of burning incense, the gleaming wood pews and the bright sunlight refracting through the jewel-toned stained glass all calmed her mind. There was unity here, and a quiet sort of peace that seemed to take root only when she sang with the people in her midst. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know them or vice versa. For this moment they shared a common spirituality that went way beyond the teachings of their religion.
Or at least she told herself that whenever the memories of a past when she hadn’t been as accepted tried to wedge their way into her mind.
Not here. Not today. Not when Chase stood beside her, his pervasive heat and broad frame somehow infusing her consciousness though her eyes were shut.
When the song ended and prayers resumed, she realized Chase was staring at her. “How did I not know you could do that?” he whispered, his lips barely moving.
She frowned, not understanding what he meant. Once she realized he was referring to her singing, she smiled, warmth spreading through her chest and continuing right on downward. Her body didn’t seem to care that she was in a sacred space, if the melting thing going on between her legs and the sudden tightness in her nipples were any indication. This wasn’t the place to be thinking about such things, but God understood that she could only stand so much temptation before she broke like a twice-baked cookie.
And Chase’s giant hands gripping the back of the pew in front of them definitely qualified as tempting. Those long, blunt fingers and wide wrists were prime fantasy fodder.
The rest of him wasn’t bad either. Especially his bitable butt, nicely emphasized by his snug, impure-thought-provoking pants.
On the way out after the service, a couple of nice elderly ladies in lovely pastel dresses stopped her and Chase and inquired if they were new to the area. Before Chase could explain Summer didn’t live with him, one of the women asked how long they had been married.
Demonstrating their utter maturity, she and Chase leaped as far apart as the narrow aisle allowed. Their subsequent uneasy silence virtually assured they had no choice but to join the ladies at the potluck lunch being held in the elementary school cafeteria to make up for their unintentional rudeness.
But there was baked ziti buried in enough cheese to frighten a cow, so hey, it wasn’t all bad.
As if trying to make small talk with a table of chatty octogenarians wasn’t amusing enough, once the ladies realized Chase was the famous Deuce Dixon, they wouldn’t let him out of their sight. How so many of them were so well-versed in baseball, Summer had no clue. After making Chase show off a few of his tattoos, along with engaging in some serious bicep-petting that made Chase blush and Summer giggle, the women then convinced their new friends to sit through a spirited game of bingo.
Make that five spirited games. The bright side? Summer won
sixty-three bucks, split with two other women.
“This’ll buy my ice cream for the night.” Summer folded the bills into her wallet while she and Chase finally made their way to his Escalade. After tucking her wallet into her purse, she dug out her cell phone and breathed a sigh of relief that Kyle hadn’t called again. Her banjo-slash-guitar-slash-keyboard player had been certain she’d been abducted last night, though that hadn’t stopped him from returning home to the suburbs of Yardley and leaving her in the city. “This is perfect timing,” she added, ignoring Chase’s usual silence. “We have enough time to get back upstate before my shift at Triple Scoop tonight.”
“It’s fucking November.” Chase took care of her door for her, then rounded the hood and got in on the driver’s side. He shook his head as he started the engine. “Will you try harder to convince my crazy sister that no self-respecting New Yorker wants to eat ice cream in the freaking winter? Every other place closes in October except Cass’s.”
“Cass is a savvy entrepreneur,” Summer said primly, snapping her belt into place. Suppressing a shiver, she reached over to turn up the heater. Chase beat her to it.
“See my point?” He jutted his chin at her before backing out of the lot. “You’re freezing. Would you really want to eat ice cream right now?”
She couldn’t stop her laughter as she cast him a sideways glance. “I would if I could have one of Cass’s new special creations.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Cass and I brainstormed some ways to keep traffic coming into the shop even when it’s cold outside. We decided one way is to keep people…coming.”
For a long moment there was nothing but silence in the swiftly warming cabin of Chase’s truck. Then he exploded. “What?”
“Easy. It’s not as bad as it sounds. We’re selling some fun new erotic blends of heated sauce to go with the ice cream. You know Cass is a wizard in the kitchen, and she’s touting these herbal enhancements she’s added to her toppings. And oh my God, the raspberry-mocha-white-chocolate fudge? Spontaneous orgasm in a cup, I swear.” She noted Chase’s suddenly constricted expression and flashed a wide grin. “Oops, sorry. Are we little women not supposed to admit we think about sex as much as guys?”
“You just left church,” he said under his breath.
“What does that have to do with my vagina?”
He reached up to scratch his face, drawing her attention to the sharp right angle of his jaw and that soft-looking scruff that made her want to rub her cheek against his skin. “Your vagina was never invited into this conversation. Please exit stage left.”
Laughing, she rested her forehead against the cool window to try to reduce the certain flush in her cheeks. She could toss around innuendoes—or straight out dirty talk—with the best of ’em, but that didn’t mean she could do it without blushing.
“Cass may be your sister, but she’s still an adult with an active sex life. Besides—” she paused to give him time to sputter through the breath he couldn’t seem to exhale, “—this isn’t about Cass’s sex life or mine. We’re trying different things to drum up business. And let me tell you, the Power Potions and Delectable Delights are working. On weekend nights, we sell those sauces by the vat. No joke.”
“Nipple clamps optional?” he muttered.
She tapped her chin, pretending to think. “You know, now that you mention it, maybe we could—”
“Your mother would be shocked.”
Summer’s good humor faded. “She has nothing to do with this.”
“Neither did your vagina, but you didn’t hesitate to throw that in here.”
She crossed her arms and stared out the windshield at the gloomy afternoon. The slate sky looked like it would start spitting snow at any moment. Crisscrossing lights from the oncoming traffic flashed over Chase’s face, highlighting the steely set to his mouth. Twilight came early to New York this time of year, and this one was being helped along by the forecast of flurries overnight.
And she was in sitting in Hottie McHotterson’s truck after a shockingly enjoyable day spent with him at church and bingo, arguing about erotic chocolate sauce, her vagina and her mother.
Beyond bizarre.
“People don’t just eat the sauce,” she added softly, not sure why she was enjoying goading him quite so much.
They’d never had an adversarial relationship before. Mostly he’d ignored her. When and if he’d taken notice of her existence, it was mainly as his kid sister’s mouthy little friend, the one who always got her gum stuck in her hair—she’d left her unfortunate bubble-popping habit behind in high school—and always had some random statistic to fling at him when he was washing his car during that completely un-fateful summer they were neighbors.
He’d been a boy on the verge of manhood and quite eager to demonstrate it by losing his shirt, and she’d been an awkward eleven-year-old wearing a maxi pad the size of the morning newspaper and trying to figure out why he caused such weird fluttering sensations in the pit of her stomach.
Surprisingly, early menstrual periods did not bring with them any bursts of knowledge on the opposite sex or clues what to do with the sudden influx of hormones that had swarmed her body seemingly overnight. She’d gone to bed one evening thinking of Chase just as Cass’s older brother. She’d woken up wondering if she’d really caught him with his hand down his cargo shorts when she’d spotted him lying in a lawn chair beside his parents’ pool.
And if so, had he been enjoying himself? And could she watch?
“Did you masturbate when you were lying next to your parents’ pool?” she asked, biting her lip when he wrenched off the radio.
“Excuse me?”
She tucked her hair behind her ears and blew out a breath. Open mouth, insert both feet. “The summer after I moved in next door…I saw you lying out one morning. No one was up yet but me. And you. I didn’t realize it was you in the chair and not Cass until I was in your yard.”
“Yeah, we look an awful lot alike.” Sarcasm laced his words as he hung one of his super-sized wrists over the wheel. “Her long red hair was so similar to my short blond.”
“You had a ball cap on,” Summer protested. “I couldn’t tell for sure from behind, not until I—”
“What?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t get that close.” Despite their privacy in the truck, she found herself lowering her voice. The memory was too vivid and intimate. “But I swear I saw your hand slip inside your shorts. It didn’t come back out for a while. I couldn’t see your face, but your hand was moving.” She adjusted her skirt and hoped he couldn’t hear her unsteady breathing. “I figured you had an itch.” His bark of laughter made her whip her head in his direction. “Hey, I was eleven. I’d never seen that before.”
“Sounds like you didn’t even see it then, since you weren’t paying close enough attention.”
“You were my elder,” she said faintly, then felt like a complete dumbass when he turned piercing dark eyes her way and pinned her in place with the force of his stare. It was like being hit with a virtual baseball bat right to the forehead.
“Remember that, slugger.”
He didn’t speak again until they were at the Yardley city limits. They’d stopped for a quick dinner of roast beef sandwiches, fries and coke floats, which she slurped loudly every few moments. Each time he glanced at her, obviously amused, and said nothing.
It was really sort of creepy.
When he did decide to talk, she couldn’t say she appreciated his choice of topic. “How long have you been performing in the city?”
She gripped her plastic cup tighter. “A while.”
“Months? Years?”
Why did she feel as if she’d been caught, well, watching him touch himself? Singing for money wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. So far it hadn’t been much money, and she certainly didn’t have oodles of fans, but things were improving. Like any business, building an audience took time.
“It
’s been under a year since I had my first show in a coffeehouse in Queens. But I did some gigs up north first. Way up north.”
“Lake Placid? Plattsburg? Buffalo?”
“Canada.” Lowering her head, she sucked hard on her straw to avoid his death glare. “It’s really not that far away in the scheme of things.”
“Maybe not, but it is a foreign country.”
“Well, yes, technically.”
He cursed colorfully under his breath. “You said Cass didn’t know you were singing. Have you told anyone?”
“No.” She bit her straw. “Not yet.”
His swearing rose half a decibel. “Let me get this straight. You’ve been doing shows in strange places—and other countries—with no personal security and without even telling people where you are?”
Silently, she nodded, still not looking at him.
“Dammit, you know better. You’re not stupid. Your mom raised you so well all those years, making sure you were protected, and the minute she’s gone you run off half-cocked to—”
“To live?” she shouted back, slamming her empty cup in the holder. “She shoved me under a glass lid, then she decided she needed to experience the world and what the hell was I supposed to do? I didn’t know how to be free. I’d been in a box all those years, and when she left, I couldn’t figure out how to deal. So I did what I always do when I can’t handle life. I sing.”
God, didn’t that sound pathetically quaint. Meek little church girl, needing to lose herself in lyrics she had no right to be singing. What did she know about love? She’d never experienced it. Sex, yes, that she knew, in limited, disinteresting quantities. She’d had boyfriends, done the whole looking for love in all the guess-they’re-good-enough places. But that was a poor substitute for a lasting relationship built on something real. Assuming such a thing existed.
“I get that,” he said quietly, sending her train of thought headfirst into a wall. He flipped on his turn signal and coasted through the center of their small town—her small town, since apparently he didn’t live in Yardley anymore. The severity of his expression seemed even more poignant when illuminated by the watery flicker of streetlights. “That’s why I play ball. To get out of my head. It makes me more than I am. And less, if that makes sense.”
