The Grumpy Player Next Door: Copper Valley Fireballs #3

by Grant, Pippa

  The Grumpy Player Next Door

  Copper Valley Fireballs #3

  Pippa Grant

  Copyright © 2021

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Editing by Jessica Snyder

  Cover Design by Lori Jackson Designs

  Cover Image copyright © Miguel Anxo

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Bonus Epilogue

  Sneak Peek of The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob

  Pippa Grant Book List

  About the Author

  Introduction

  The Grumpy Player Next Door

  An enemies-to-lovers / sports / grumpy-sunshine / neighbor romance

  I, Tillie Jean Rock, am not in love with my brother’s teammate. Sure, he might have those biceps and that “I am the grouchiest of grouchy bears” smolder, and he might shovel snow off his driveway next door wearing nothing but boxer shorts and rubber boots, and he might be running a side business feeding all the stray goats in town, but studliness is only skin-deep.

  And I might flirt with him every chance I get, but I swear it’s only to annoy my brother.

  And him.

  Because Max Cole?

  Under all of those glorious muscles and chiseled cheekbones and searing glares beats the heart of a heartless devil.

  I could no sooner fall in love with a guy who treats me like a kid, and judges me at every opportunity, and sets an army of garden gnomes loose on my yard, than I could fall in love with my grandfather’s pet parrot.

  But I can definitely annoy him. I can one hundred percent get on board with annoying him.

  That’s what you do when you don’t like your neighbor, right?

  But you know what they say about love and hate…

  It’s a very thin line.

  Especially when the real reason I’m not in love with Max Cole—that he’s incapable of love—might not be true at all.

  The Grumpy Player Next door is a fun-filled enemies-to-lovers romcom featuring a ray of sunshine on a mission, an athlete who’s only grouchy around her, and an epic prank gone wrong. It stands alone and comes complete with small-town shenanigans, a goat who’s not nearly as wise as his name suggests, and proof that sometimes, love is the best kind of vengeance.

  * * *

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  Copper Valley Fireballs Series

  Jock Blocked

  Real Fake Love

  The Grumpy Player Next Door

  1

  Tillie Jean Rock, aka a woman who should probably get her eyes checked

  There’s a fine art to revenge, and today, I am arting the hell out of it. I’m talking cackles of glee, evil cartoon overlord-style, rubbing my hands together while bouncing on my toes. Reminding myself to shut up because my brother will be home from his morning workout any minute now, and I don’t want to tip my hand when he doesn’t know I’m waiting for him here in his house up on the mountainside.

  You would think he would’ve learned to engage his security system more often by now.

  But he hasn’t, which means I’m here, armed and dangerous and ready, and I’m cackling with glee all over again.

  I know, I know. Is this really how you want to pay him back for having a box labeled “dildos” delivered to you at your parents’ house in the midst of all the pre-wedding activities for your other brother last week?

  Yes, actually.

  Yes, it is.

  It’s payback time.

  Also?

  I have zero doubt Cooper will have mad respect that I’m doing this.

  Sort of like while I was pissed when he replaced my coffee beans with roasted goat poop before he left for spring training nine months ago, I very much respected that he pulled it off, even if I wasn’t pleased at having to admit that that was the prank that took him over the top to win in our annual off-season prank war.

  But this winter?

  This winter, my brother Cooper “Stinky Booty” Rock is going down.

  The universe told me so. Why else would it have hand-delivered that video into my social media stream to inspire me right after I finished figuring out where to donate an unopened box of dildos?

  I cackle again.

  And then I slap my hand over my mouth.

  He’s home.

  There’s his dark head, bent toward the knob, beyond the tempered glass panel beside his front door. He’s dressed in Fireballs red, which is more orange than it is red, and he’s probably worn out from lifting at the gym.

  Yesterday was cardio day.

  I know, because he ran past Crusty Nut, our dad’s restaurant where I’m the manager five days a week, at least two dozen times without stopping in once to say hi.

  I haven’t seen him since the wedding several days ago, which either means he’s avoiding me and the revenge he knows I owe him, or he has a stick up his butt and has forgotten the little people.

  Or, possibly, he’s distracted, in which case, he needs this.

  I squat into position at the top of the stairs, as hidden as I can be while still seeing my target, Nerf blaster locked and loaded, waiting while he fumbles with his keys.

  For the record?

  It’s not easy to hide at the top of a curved staircase. I’m on my belly now, half-angled behind the wall of the hallway to his guest bedrooms, peering between the slats of the banister, hoping all my target practice pays off.

  Steady, TJ. This is what you trained for.

  The lock clicks.

  I flatten myself lower and take aim.

  The door swings open.

  Dark hair in the foyer. Go go go.

  I squeeze the trigger, sending a rapid blast of modified foam darts at the six balloons floating in the space above the door.

  The needle sticking out barely an eighth of an inch in the
tip of the first dart connects. One helium balloon pops. Then two more, followed by the fourth and fifth. The sixth shifts after getting hit, like it’s a tough guy balloon. It’s the ninja of balloons, and it doesn’t want to participate in my dastardly plans today, but that’s okay. The other balloons are bursting in a sparkly, shiny, beautiful pink glitter spray that’s splattering on the walls, exploding from its nylon shell and raining down like a spring shower, coating the walls, making the air sparkle, and dusting all that dark hair as Cooper’s lifting his head. “What the—”

  And in the span of a heartbeat, before he can finish that sentence, I realize my mistake.

  My terrible, horrible, very bad miscalculation.

  If I were a superhero, I’d be sucking all that glitter into my lungs and redirecting it into my brother’s bedroom, which is likely what I should’ve done in the first place—hindsight, right?—but I didn’t. This was so much more dramatic and didn’t risk me having to find out which local he’s screwing around with in his spare time, as she’d be coated in glitter too after rolling around in his sheets, except my prank has failed.

  It has failed spectacularly.

  “Oh my god,” I gasp.

  That’s not Cooper.

  That is so not Cooper.

  Yeah, Cooper has dark hair. But he also has an easy smile, blue eyes, a quick sense of humor, appreciation for a well-executed revenge plot, and a tall, lanky body.

  The man staring at me is tall. And dark-haired.

  But he’s also thickly muscled. Growling without making a noise. Aiming dark eyes at me. And I have no idea if he has any respect for pranks.

  Harmless pranks.

  The ones where no one gets hurt.

  Even if it means he’s gonna look like a pink vampire in the daylight for the next three weeks.

  Or, you know, forever. Because it’s glitter.

  I swallow hard while those brown eyes silently bore into me from a face that’s as chiseled and manly as they come, and which also looks like it was decorated at a birthday slumber party for a fourteen-year-old.

  What’s he even doing here? He’s not supposed to be here.

  This isn’t where he’s staying this winter.

  But he is here, and this isn’t good.

  This isn’t good at all.

  “Hi, Max.” I lift a hand and wave, realize I’m still holding the Nerf blaster, and toss it down the hallway.

  It hits the corner of the wall instead and clatters to the wood floor.

  Stupid thing doesn’t even have the decency to land quietly on the hall runner.

  Max Cole, right-handed starting pitcher for the Copper Valley Fireballs, is six feet, four inches, and two hundred twenty-five pounds of steely baseball perfection. He’s been with the team four full seasons, two of which were record-setting years.

  And not in the good way.

  Any guy who wasn’t begging his agent to be traded away from the Fireballs during their sucky years is okay in my book—professionally speaking, of course—and Max stuck around to help pull them from the worst team to ever exist in professional sports to the underdogs who took the playoffs by storm this past season, even if they didn’t make it all the way.

  Not that Max is ever willing to do anything beyond glare, twitch, and ignore me when I’m around him.

  Possibly spending four years incessantly flirting with him to annoy Cooper—and Max, if I’m being honest—wasn’t the best build-up to this moment.

  But possibly him ratting me out to Cooper after—you know what? I don’t want to talk about it.

  Let’s just say Max and I started our acquaintance on the wrong foot and haven’t ever recovered.

  He lifts a hand too, but instead of waving back, he swipes at the glitter coating his face.

  “That was supposed to be for Cooper. Obviously. I didn’t expect you. How could I have expected you here?” I’m not gulping.

  I’m not shrinking into myself.

  I’m not quivering in my belly.

  And also possibly my lady bits.

  Okay, fine.

  I’m borderline terrified of what this prank-gone-wrong might’ve just incited, and I am not immune to that many feet of muscled baseball perfection, despite the number of times he’s rolled his eyes or grimaced at me when I’ve flirted with him the past four years, and despite exactly how furious I was with him over what he did the day we met.

  And who’s furious now?

  Max.

  Max is currently furious.

  He’s a massive, glittering, growly bear of if this crap isn’t the kind that comes off easily, you better not be planning on sleeping again for the next three months, Matilda Jean Rock.

  Prank industry secret: There’s no glitter that comes off easily.

  I might’ve misread the universe’s instructions when it came to how to get Cooper back.

  “He shoved his dirty gym socks under the seat of my car when he was home on the all-star break and it took me three weeks to figure out what the smell was, and before he left for Florida last year, he hid rum cakes all over my house and Grady’s goat kept breaking in to find them and ended up staggering all over downtown wearing one of my bras on his head while bleating this weird monologue that sounded like a Garth Brooks song after pooping on my kitchen table. He taught Grady’s goat to poop on kitchen tables. I thought you were Cooper. This is Cooper’s house. You were supposed to be him. That glitter was meant for my butthead brother. I swear.”

  He still doesn’t say a word.

  I gulp and try a new tactic.

  At this point, it’s habit, so why not go with it?

  I smile and wink. “So how was morning workout? Did you flex all your studly muscles and show the rest of them how to do a squat?”

  He bends forward, runs a hand through his dark hair, shaking his head and making bright pink glitter rain down onto Cooper’s wide plank wood floor, and making me wonder if that’s how he rinses his hair in the shower.

  When he’s naked.

  And wet.

  It would be lovely if my body would cooperate and not get hot flashes when my brain goes rogue and pictures Max Cole in the buff.

  It would also be lovely if my brain wouldn’t go rogue every time I saw him.

  It would also have been lovely if Max wasn’t the guy on the team who’d end up renting the house next door to me for the entire off-season. And you’d think that seeing him in long baggy workout pants and T-shirts and light jackets wouldn’t inspire all the fantasies—it’s not like he’s walking around shirtless in November—but I cannot help the way I’m wired, and I’m wired to think that Max Cole is hotter than a bacon grease fire.

  Even despite the way we met.

  His personality sucks, brain. Stop fantasizing about him.

  Yeah, but have you ever seen him joke with his teammates, Tillie Jean? He’s a sexy, fun man-beast until you walk in the door, my brain replies.

  Stupid brain.

  The vacuum. I should get the vacuum and help clean the floor so he can—

  “Erp,” I croak as my cerebral functions scramble again.

  He’s still bent over, but now he’s pulling his warm-up jacket and everything underneath it over his head in one smooth motion, revealing bulging muscles and taut skin and that phoenix tattoo on his left shoulder, and my mouth is dry.

  Desert dry. Like, so dry I think my tongue just saw a mirage.

  He straightens, tosses his clothes on top of the glitter, and uses it as a stepping stone to reach the first stair.

  Max Cole is shirtless and stalking up the stairs to kill me.

  Move! Run! my feet yell.

  If we have to die, the scenery will be good while he’s choking us, my vagina replies.

  I’m still flat on the floor, which means by the time he’s halfway up the stairs, I’m having to lift my eyeballs to track his movements. When he hits the landing, my brain cramps because my eyes aren’t supposed to go this high.

  “Are you gonna kill me?” I whispe
r.

  He pauses and looks down at me, and when he speaks, his chocolate silk voice reminds me—again—of exactly how attractive Max Cole is no matter what he’s doing. “Oh, Tillie Jean. You have no idea.”

  2

  Max Cole, aka a guy who’s not really the glittering type. Or the painting type. Or the Tillie Jean Rock type. For the record.

  There are seven thousand things I hate about Tillie Jean Rock, and I’m not talking about the seven thousand bits of neon pink glitter that are still in my hair hours after my glitter shower and will likely still be in my hair on the day I die, even if I live to be a hundred and twenty.

  That’s just one reason I hate Tillie Jean Rock.

  Right behind flirts with me to annoy me.

  And joined the Lady Fireballs even though she’s not dating anyone on the team.

  And then there’s is always perfect, no matter what.

  Always. Fucking. Perfect.

  “Oh my gosh, Dita, look at her baby belly! She’s so adorable. Mom, seriously, you nailed the ears. LaShonda! For shame. You did not put lipstick on that baby dragon.” All the women in the bar’s back room break into titters and giggles while Tillie Jean, the object of my abhoration—no, not adoration, I really do mean abhoration, and if that word’s not in the dictionary, it should be—circles the party room that I’m trapped in, complimenting everyone’s paintings here at this god-awful paint the new mascot party while she sips from a glittery gold travel coffee mug that Luca Rossi’s girlfriend gave her for saving her life at a party a couple months back.