Perfect Catch

by Sierra Dean

  “That’s okay. I have something for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Well, for both of you.” He directed them towards the dugout, where all the equipment he had bribed from the manager was neatly arranged, including Olivia’s new gear. Alex made a mental note to buy Tim, the equipment manager, a steak dinner. Not only was everything there, but Tim had added Felons player name tags along the wall, with Alex, Alice and Olivia all marked. They were stuck along the back wall of the dugout, with batting helmets and other bits neatly arranged.

  The clever bastard had even wrangled up a Felons bat-boy jersey and hung it over Olivia’s bat.

  Forget a steak dinner, Alex owed Tim a nice vacation for this.

  “Whoa.” Olivia didn’t even wait for Alice’s permission before she ran down the dugout stairs and started assessing her new goodies. To be fair to the kid, her name was on them.

  “Alex, this is… This might be too much.” Alice paused at the top of the steps, leaning against the chain-link fence and watching her daughter put the jersey on. The youth size was still a bit big on her, hanging almost down to her knees.

  “How does it look?” Olivia asked, putting her hands on her hips in a nine-year-old approximation of a fashion-model pose.

  “You look great. Very athletic.” Alice was visibly chewing the inside of her cheek, he could tell by the way her skin hollowed. There was something in her eyes he couldn’t quite read. Pain. A terrible sadness lingered behind her pale lashes, and she was trying her best to mask it with a smile.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he assured her.

  “Sure it is.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say, so he took a step towards the dugout, but Alice’s hand shot out, grasping his wrist. Alex glanced back at her, and this time the smile had succeeded in blotting out the sadness.

  “Thank you.”

  He wanted to tell her again it was no biggie, but he had a feeling she was saying something much bigger than just thank you, only he had no idea what it was.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alice carried her sleeping daughter from the ballpark to the car. Olivia’s new jersey had splashes of red pasta sauce on the front, something Alice knew she’d have to get out, otherwise the child would be heartbroken.

  The evening had been a huge success, beyond anything she’d anticipated Alex might dream up. She figured he might take them to a movie, or a kid-friendly restaurant, but this, this had blown her mind. She had to give him credit for coming up with something totally original.

  She just wasn’t sure what kind of credit he was hoping for.

  Wrangling Olivia into the front seat, she managed to get the child buckled in without waking her. Alex hovered a few feet away, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets, watching her with the uneasy expectation of a teenager after a first date.

  It was funny, seeing him nervous about the prospect of an end-of-date kiss, considering two nights earlier he’d had his dick in her. His uneasiness endeared him to her. Who was this guy? He certainly didn’t conform to any expectations she had, not only of ballplayers, but of men in general. Maybe that was all the proof she needed to prove her notions of men were totally screwed up.

  Or maybe Alex was special.

  Duh, a voice in the back of her mind scolded.

  Yet she still didn’t know how to handle herself with him. The fact was, he wasn’t here to stay, and he could throw geography in her face all he wanted, but some things couldn’t be changed. Relationships were hard, and when distance was thrown into the mix, things got exponentially harder. She didn’t have the luxury of fantasizing about weekend getaways to the City by the Bay. There was no way she could leave Liv for long stretches of time, not without knowing something equally valuable was being nurtured between herself and Alex. It was bad enough she had to work two jobs, she couldn’t add vacation time too.

  Vacation. What a laugh. Alice hadn’t had a vacation since Liv was three and Alice’s mother, Misty, had taken the toddler for a weekend so Alice could go to a friend’s wedding in Orlando. Liv had ended up fretting herself into a fever, and Alice had left the reception before the first dance had begun, driving herself home the same day.

  Since then, in spite of her mother occasionally offering to take weekend duty, Alice was hesitant to accept. Besides, what would she do with a weekend off?

  Go visit Alex, the voice suggested.

  She was divided on the subject of the catcher, torn between logic and desire, and neither side seemed willing to give an inch. Her body said yes, her heart said protect yourself and her brain wasn’t helping one bit, because it was thrown into such a tizzy it didn’t know who to listen to.

  After shutting the door with a muffled click, she took a few steps towards him. “Thank you. This was incredible.”

  “It wasn’t too much?”

  “You might have spoiled her, with the equipment and stuff. Can I maybe pay you for some—?”

  Alex held up a hand, cutting her off. “Don’t. Please. I wanted to do it, and let’s face it, it’s not like I’m hurting for money.”

  She knew he didn’t mean anything by the comment, but it still stung, reminding her that while his bank account and hers both contained a lot of zeroes, his were in a beneficial place. It was also a harsh slap in the face knowing Alex—who owed Olivia nothing—had been willing to shower her in gifts, but Liv’s own father hadn’t bothered to call yet.

  Spring training was almost half finished, so she knew Matt was somewhere in the state, but he hadn’t seen fit to make arrangements to see Liv. At this rate Alice wasn’t holding her breath, but she hadn’t figured out a way to break the hard truth to Liv. There was no easy way to tell a kid her dad wouldn’t be showing up.

  How do you break someone’s heart?

  Maybe she should call Matt and ask for tips—he was the real pro. And while she was at it she could remind him it had been his choice to participate in Liv’s life in the first place. He didn’t have the luxury of being a wishy-washy father.

  In or out. Not both.

  What scared her about issuing that kind of ultimatum was the fact he’d likely choose to be out, and Alice would be the one responsible for kicking Matt out of Liv’s life.

  She wasn’t ready to do that yet, even if it was the right thing.

  Thinking about Matt only served to make her angry, and she could feel her face pinching in an unattractive way, surely confusing the hell out of Alex.

  “It was really sweet of you to include her, not treat her like a kid. I know she’s not good with expressing gratitude, but it meant a lot to her.”

  “And what about you?”

  “Me?”

  “What did it mean to you?” He took a step in, so she could feel the heat of his body.

  She hadn’t realized how chilly the night air had gotten until she was drawn into the warm aura of him. She wanted to close the gap and wrap herself up in his arms. It felt so good to be trapped in his orbit, she could get lost in that nearness. Falling like a comet, burned up in the atmosphere, she knew if she let herself, she could be consumed by him.

  But she’d promised never to be that helplessly in love again, no matter how good she thought it might feel.

  And this wasn’t love, this was lust plain and simple.

  Alice braced her palm on his chest to halt his advance, only she balled her fingers in his shirt rather than push him away. “You’re going to be bad for me.”

  “I could be so good for you if you give me half a chance, Darling.” His lips quirked, proud of himself for using her own name as a weapon against her will to resist him. Bastard.

  Clever, sexy, evil, irresistible bastard.

  She raised up on her tiptoes and kissed him gently. It wasn’t a ravenous, sex-starved kiss, just a sweet brush of the lips. Something appropriate for a first date. The kind of embrace that suggested nothing further, but held the promise of much more. Alex didn’t cross the invisible line she set. He
held her face in his hands and let her pull away when she was done.

  Alice rested her forehead against his and breathed in the crisp, invigorating Alex smell. She pressed soft kisses on each of his cheeks, then one last quick peck on the lips before lowering herself back to the ground.

  Patting his chest, she smiled, more to herself than to him. “I should get the kid home. Thank you, again. For everything.”

  Climbing into her car, she stared at him through the passenger window before starting the engine. What the hell was she doing with this guy?

  And what was he doing to her?

  Olivia slept the whole way home, meaning Alice had to carry her into the house, lugging the child’s weight up the front steps and wrestling with the locked front door using only one hand. In the hall she caught a glimpse into the living room, and her heart sank. She didn’t give herself time to absorb the mess, hoping she could ignore it into nonexistence.

  Taking Liv to her bedroom, Alice undressed the girl and tucked her in, bringing the soiled jersey with her so she could put a stain treatment on it. In the laundry room she steeled herself while applying the blue gel to the sauce marks. All her happy feelings from the night started to leach away as the stain faded.

  Leave it to Kevin.

  After placing the jersey in the washer, she returned to the living room and braced herself on the doorframe. At least Liv hadn’t been awake this time. It was getting harder and harder to laugh off Uncle Kevin’s lapses so Liv wouldn’t worry.

  Seven empty beer bottles crowded each other for space on the small coffee table, and one of Kevin’s old high school yearbooks had fallen from his hand onto the floor. He wore only his boxers and had passed out facedown on the couch, his cheek smushed into the fabric, looking like a little boy, not a grown man.

  Alice collected the bottles quietly, finding one of his prescriptions in the mix. She emptied the small white pills into her hand and did a mental count. No, nothing to worry about. She dumped them back, but her heart was still tripping with the fear from seeing his pills in among all the booze.

  That’s how he’d do it.

  Shut the fuck up, she shouted at the stupid, know-it-all part of her brain. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do that to her. She’d made him promise after the last time that he wasn’t going to try again. That had been high school, and he’d been true to his word for a decade. Since she’d gotten pregnant with Liv.

  Capping the prescription bottle, she returned it to its place in the bathroom, lining it up with several others all bearing the name Kevin Darling. She touched each one lightly, thinking about what the medicine did for her beloved brother. One to soothe the depression, one to make that pill less aggressive and keep suicidal thoughts at bay, another to help him sleep if those two pills got his brain running too much, and one more for his heart because all the goddamn meds were a lot for his body to handle.

  Everything was too much for Kevin to handle.

  She closed the medicine cabinet and returned to the living room, picking up the clothing he’d discarded in some fit of rage or frustration, taking it to the laundry room and putting it in with Liv’s jersey.

  Sometimes it felt like having another child instead of a bonus adult. She loved having him around on the days he was his old self, the funny, relaxed, easygoing Kevin she’d grown up with. But the more time she spent with this new, anguished Kevin, the more she realized this part of him had been with them all along, only now it was winning.

  Back in the living room, she sat on the floor beside the couch and stared at him, her face inches from his. She smoothed back his tawny hair like she used to do with Olivia when she’d gotten sick as a baby, only this wasn’t a sickness she could cure with ginger ale and soda crackers.

  His eyes fluttered, and he let out a small groan. “What time is it?”

  “Close to ten.”

  He looked past her to the coffee table, a sudden guilty expression on his face. Alice understood it. He’d meant to have the evidence gone by the time she got home.

  “Al…” It was his I can explain voice. But there was nothing he could say she hadn’t heard before.

  “You know what Dr. Wright said about mixing your meds with booze. You know they don’t work as well.”

  Kevin grimaced, an expression somewhere in the middle of indignant and guilt. Alice hated how much she sounded like a mother when she said things like that, but since their mother had stopped looking after Kevin a long time ago, someone had to take on the role. As was often the case, the unpopular job fell to her.

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is a big deal.”

  “Jesus, Alice, lay off. I’m fine.”

  His defensiveness stung her, and she wanted to slap him for being such a prick. “How about you don’t pass out in your fucking underwear on my couch, and stop being an ungrateful dick.” She felt horrible for saying it, but loving him didn’t mean she had unlimited patience, and sometimes he wore her down so much she lost her buffer.

  “Sorry,” he said, suddenly sheepish.

  “Did you take your meds tonight, or did you just bring them out to have a staring contest with them?”

  “I took them.”

  “Fine.” She got up off the floor and went to her own bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

  Whatever happiness had followed her home was long gone now, leaving only an empty, ugly hole for her to fill.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alex crammed the last of his things into the big duffel bag on the floor, too hurried to care if there was any rhyme or reason to his packing job. Other guys were folding their clothes and systematically finding places for batting gloves and other items they planned to take with them. Everything else would be boxed up by the equipment manager and shipped home on the semis.

  Since he didn’t have any photos or memorabilia hanging up, all Alex had to do was chuck his jock, some clean T-shirts and his custom Nike sneakers into his bag, lest he be without them during the few days between training and the start of the regular season.

  A few other players were already gone, having left right after their last training game to head home for two days of R and R before they were expected to report to San Francisco for Monday’s season opener. His sisters were anticipating his arrival home later that evening, and there was no getting around it.

  It was a six-hour drive from Lakeland to Macon, where he’d stop at Jane’s for the night. The annual Alex-goes-back-to-baseball party she hosted would be in full swing by the time he showed up, and once it was over he’d be too drunk to make the final hour drive back to his home in Atlanta.

  He knew Jane hosted the party mostly to show him off to her neighbors, but all his sisters came, and his parents usually made the trip from Athens, depending on how his dad was feeling. The elder Alexander Ross had suffered a stroke four years earlier, and though he had recovered most of his mobility, he now needed a cane. Sometimes long car rides were hard for him, and no one wanted to force the old man to be unhappy just so he could participate.

  Typically Alex looked forward to the event as the highlight of his preseason, but today he only felt bitterness. During the final two weeks of training, he’d managed to spend a mere six evenings with Alice, and none of them had provided any alone time for the two. She hadn’t yet given him a firm answer on where she saw things going, and it made him nervous because he had to hit the road in an hour and still had no clue where things stood between them.

  As far as he was concerned and had been all along, he wanted to make a go of things. He was thirty now, old enough he didn’t want to pick up girls at the bar anymore. His sisters had all been married or engaged before they turned the big three-oh, and he was throwing off their average by still being single. He didn’t know if men had a biological clock, but something in his head was telling him it was time to think about settling down.

  It didn’t help that most of the guys on the team were single. Stories of wild dates with easy cocktail waitresses bounced aroun
d the changing room on a daily basis, making Alex feel like the odd one out for not having a new conquest to share every day. What’s more, he felt weird for not wanting a new conquest.

  Thank God Tucker had met Emmy. Having one reasonable, non-Casanova friend around made Alex feel sane. Even if the other guys teased Tucker for having a ball and chain once he’d proposed to Emmy, Alex saw how much happier his friend was for having someone like her in his life. And that’s what Alex wanted. Stability, love and a sense of family. The stuff he missed when he was away from his own clan for most of the year.

  Being raised as one of six children made him crave a family unit. The guys on the team had served as a great approximation of one for a long time, but now he wanted more. He wanted a real family.

  He didn’t know if Alice was the person for the task, didn’t know if she even wanted to be considered. All Alex understood was that being around her had made him want those things. What he needed to know was what she wanted.

  If she didn’t want him, that was fine. It would suck, and he’d mope about it for a while, but at least he’d know.

  If she did want him though, a whole new series of questions would come up. How would they deal with the distance? Was he prepared to have an instant family? He liked Olivia a lot, but he’d always assumed when he was ready for kids, they’d be his kids. With Alice, he’d be getting a two-for-one deal, and one half of that deal would be a teenager before he knew it.

  Terrifying.

  He needed to see her before he left, before he let his sisters get his brain all tied in knots. They’d all have something to tell him, advice he was never sure he wanted. Emily would be all for it—she was the dewy-hearted romantic of the Ross family. Jane and Carla would think he was out of his mind, surely. Ricki would tell him she was friends with a dozen other women she could set him up with and would proceed to pull their Facebook profiles up on her phone—she’d done this several times over the past years. It was Violet he wanted to hear from the most though. Quiet Violet, the youngest of the Ross sisters, and the one he cherished most. He loved all his sisters, but he liked Vi best.