The Grumpy Player Next Door: Copper Valley Fireballs #3

by Grant, Pippa

  “I don’t mind if you pop it in front of me,” Nana tells him. “Here, sweetie. Have a candy. Tillie Jean, fetch my purse and get that boy a peppermint.”

  “Rawk! Big dick growly bear! Rawk!”

  I fan myself. He certainly is a big-dicked growly bear, and I would very much like to look.

  Especially since Ray’s talking about his muscles.

  And he sold tickets.

  Max throwing a ball on the mound fully-dressed in his uniform is catnip for this Max Cole-obsessed kitty cat.

  Seeing how his muscles bunch and flex under his bare skin while he’s hurling a fastball?

  It’s an erotic dream.

  Stop it, Tillie Jean. He’s not into you.

  I shake my head again and frown at my grandmother. “Nana, that bird’s going to get arrested for his mouth.”

  She shoves her binoculars at me. “That man should get arrested for having a body that hot and hard. Your pop was a good-looking man in his day, but even he wasn’t that glorious. And he got a new tattoo.”

  “Pop?”

  “Max. Hoo, it’s a beaut.”

  I’m holding binoculars.

  I was basically naked in his kitchen three weeks ago while he ate me out like a beast, and I have zero doubt I would’ve gotten the full close-up view of a hard-on blessed by the gods if Grady’s freaking goat hadn’t broken in.

  He sold tickets. He’s okay with people looking. “Did he put a restriction on who could buy tickets?” I whisper.

  Aunt Bea whoops.

  “Hundred bucks, TJ,” Aunt Glory says. “Cooper kept selling tickets after Max left breakfast. You’re good.”

  Nana shoves a piece of paper at me. “Here. Add your signature to my copy of my waiver. We’ll deal with Cooper later.”

  I shouldn’t.

  I really shouldn’t.

  But I scribble my name beneath Nana’s on her waiver, and tell myself it’s only that I’m curious about his new tattoo.

  I’m not going to look at his ba-dingle-do.

  On purpose.

  But, oh, sexy Max.

  Sexy, chiseled, fully-in-control Max.

  He’s lifting his bare left knee to his chest as he holds the top of his glove to his chin, staring down the catcher. I can’t see the goods. Just the flex and release of his muscles as he pulls his right arm back, ball fisted tight in his fingers, then flings it forward with his left leg stepping down and his right leg lifting high in the air behind him as he releases.

  It’s a gorgeous pitch made even better by being able to see every last inch of his sun-kissed skin—he was totally sun-bathing nude on vacation—and the new sea turtle tattoo on his shoulder and the heavy weight of his package between his thighs.

  My thighs clench and everything inside me gets warm and tingly.

  I should stop watching.

  I should really stop—

  A police siren cuts through my thoughts, and I drop the binoculars with a shriek. They tumble down the side of the mountain.

  “Tillie Jean!” Nana gapes at me. “Those were my favorite pair.”

  Busted.

  I am so busted.

  My lips flap for a minute before I find words for Nana. “Sorry. Sorry sorry. I’ll buy you a new set.”

  “Ladies,” my cousin Chester says as he pulls himself out of the sheriff’s car. “Ray. What’re we doing up here?”

  “Bird-watching,” Nana says.

  “Rawk! Big dick growly bear! Rawk!”

  “I’m gonna shoot that parrot,” Dita mutters to me. “But isn’t he hot? I finished hot flashes two years ago and here I am, forcing them on myself again and about to get arrested. Worth it.”

  “Y’all ain’t standing here looking at a naked man down there having a photo shoot, are you?” Chester asks, eyeballing Ray’s crotch.

  “Go away, you turd,” Ray snaps. “We have permission to be here.”

  “Don’t be disrespecting the law, little brother.”

  Dita waves her waiver. “You are a turd, Chester, and we do have permission to be here. Plus, we’re keeping any other onlookers from watching if they don’t have tickets. But you know what you really need to do? You need to get over there.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder. “I saw a flash of light on that mountain. And you know if it’s over there, it’s those assholes from Sarcasm, and they definitely don’t have permission.”

  Chester hooks one thumb in his waistband and rocks on his heels. “It’s against state law to buy tickets for a peep show.”

  “Chester Rock, you’re not planning on taking your granny to the station in handcuffs, are you?” Nana asks. “If you are, I might have to call your grandfather. You know he loves it when I get cuffed.”

  Chester winces.

  The rest of us wince too.

  Some days I really wish I didn’t know Doc Adamson kept little blue pills in stock just for my grandparents.

  “I’m gonna have to cite all of you,” Chester tells us.

  Dita gasps. “What? We were just standing here looking at the pretty mountains.”

  Chester looks at me. “And using binoculars to spy on a private photo shoot.”

  I lift my hands. “I don’t have binoculars.”

  “Tillie Jean, I got a dash cam. Don’t go being cute. The rest of these fine ladies have an argument to be made, but you’re red-handed, cuz.”

  “And you haven’t actually paid for your ticket yet,” Aunt Glory side-whispers to me.

  I gasp. “I wasn’t—it’s not—but I—you know I’m good for it.”

  “Gonna have to ask the fine gentlemen down in the valley if they want to press charges.”

  Now he’s playing dirty. “Do not make me tell the story about you on your fourteenth birthday.”

  “Threatening an officer of the law…”

  “Chester, we all know this is about her chocolate cake taking top honors at the fair three years ago.” Nana clucks her tongue. “You need to let that go, sweetheart. It was a losing proposition to start with, and we told you so.”

  “Nana. She was staring down in the valley with her binoculars and I got it on my dash cam. Can’t help that. The law’s the law.”

  “You gonna call her parents too?” Ray scoffs. “Quit being a dick, Chester. We all know the dash cam can malfunction.”

  “It’s fine,” I tell Ray. “Let him cite me. Whatever. He’s the one with the birthday coming up.”

  “And the bachelor party,” Aunt Bea agrees.

  “And the wedding,” Nana muses.

  “What do you think his bride would say about him citing Tillie Jean for bird-watching?” Dita murmurs.

  Chester mutters something he probably shouldn’t say in uniform.

  I hold my hands out. “Go on. Arrest me. I can take it.”

  Some time in the slammer might cool my attraction to Max. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it?

  He’s scowling as he pulls out his citation pad and scribbles something on it. “I’m just doing my job.”

  And I’m totally busted.

  You don’t get a citation from Chester without the news of your indiscretion making it all over Shipwreck in three-point-two seconds. Aunt Bea already has her phone out.

  Probably texting my mom.

  “Tracy knows I’m just doing my job,” he tells me as he hands me the citation. “Now go on. All of you. Get out of here before I have to cite you all for loitering.”

  Ray grins at me as he heads for his car. “But it was worth it, right, TJ?”

  “Don’t worry, sugarplum,” Nana says. “We’ll get you drunk at The Grog and help work out your defense. It’ll all be okay. And I’m gonna pay for your ticket. The one to Cooper, I mean. And I’m gonna tell him I made you. You might be on your own with Chester though. Your grandfather wants me to quit baiting him.”

  It’s not the citation that bothers me.

  It’s knowing that Max will find out I was willing to pay to see him naked.

  Three weeks without a peep after
he went to town on my lady bits like he needed to teach me how a real man gives a woman the big O.

  After informing me he’s a one-night-stand kind of guy, and after I freaked and ran away because it was the best orgasm of my life, and I didn’t want to let myself get attached to a guy who doesn’t do attachment.

  Plus, Grady almost caught us, which would’ve meant Cooper found out, and then Max’s life would be hell.

  And now, I’m no longer the woman who flirts with him to annoy him.

  I’m officially a citation-holding stalker.

  And I need to get over Max Cole.

  Pronto.

  “The Grog sounds great,” I tell Nana. “It’s not too early to start now, is it?”

  “Don’t make me come back for a drunk and disorderly.” Chester’s face is pained like he knows Dad’s going to overcook his steaks and Mom will get his coffee order wrong and Grady will only serve him ugly baked goods already for the next forever just for citing me for using binoculars on an overlook, and he really doesn’t want to get on anyone else’s bad side.

  But I also know he wouldn’t have cited me at all if he wasn’t still holding a grudge about the chocolate cake incident at the fair.

  Still, I smile at him. “Start the day the way you intend to finish it, Chester. It’s a life rule.”

  I don’t look back over the valley at Max throwing naked down below as I head back to my own car, citation in hand.

  But I want to.

  I very, very much want to.

  And that’s the whole problem, isn’t it?

  23

  Max

  Being back in Shipwreck is weird.

  Wasn’t sure I wanted to come back after three weeks on the beach, but I miss working out with the guys, and if I’d rescheduled today’s photo shoot, it wouldn’t have happened at all.

  Do the Bare Naked feature for Arena Insider, Max, my agent said. You want the big endorsement deals, people need to know who you are.

  Strip down physically?

  Yeah. I can do that. Made almost two grand for charity selling tickets too.

  Can’t argue with that.

  It’s the mental shit that fucks with me though. Watching families. Lifelong friends. Wanting to fit in.

  Not trusting they’d still want me around if they knew all of me, but starting to want to try anyway.

  What’s the worst that happens?

  I sleep with Tillie Jean, Cooper finds out, and gets me traded so I don’t have to get closer to anyone here?

  Fine.

  Fine.

  I almost didn’t come back to Shipwreck because I want to sleep with Tillie Jean Rock, and once will not be enough, which became glaringly clear when I couldn’t look at another woman the entire time I was gone. All I could think of was TJ and her magic pussy and how much I want another chance to hear her scream my name.

  Happy now?

  Is that enough honesty for one day?

  Jesus.

  I have issues.

  I shrug off the thoughts as I pull into Cooper’s driveway. I can act normal. Laugh. Shoot the shit. Plan for spring training next month. Talk about doing today’s photo shoot and interview on school grounds with my junk hanging out like that’s not the creepiest possible thing a guy could do.

  While knowing a bunch of women were watching with binoculars from the ridge above.

  The guys get it. Our lives aren’t normal.

  There’s a bunch of cars here at his mountain mansion already, which doesn’t matter when my phone dings with a message from my agent.

  Good shoot today. Got a call already. They want a more in-depth interview. You said the A-word. Ready to strip all the way down and talk about your anxiety?

  I roll my shoulders back on the way to the front door.

  Am I?

  Do I want to put it all out there? Talk about the ghost haunting me twenty-four-seven? About growing up with a depressed father who self-medicated with vodka? Relying on virtual strangers to get me to baseball practice and buy my gear for me?

  Nope.

  Not really. As far I’m concerned, every athlete has some level of anxiety, and that’s that.

  I rap my fist on Cooper’s door and wait for him to open the door and let me in.

  Learned that lesson once. I don’t need to learn it again.

  He looks equal parts cross and amused when he yanks the door open. “Dude. You can just come in.”

  “Nope.”

  “She’s in massage chair number three, and she’s toasted. She’s not pulling shit on you today. And she swears she was only up there on the ridge to tell everyone else to give you your privacy and didn’t know we sold tickets. Whatever.” He pulls the door open wider. “You coming in? Trevor’s having a day too. Pulled something in his shoulder at the bowling alley last night. Pretty sure he’s done. Done-done, you know? Like, finally accepting that his contract isn’t getting renewed and he doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, and when he grows up is today.”

  Fuck.

  I angle into the house, walking through the foyer like a glitter bomb might jump out at me at any minute.

  And when we turn into the living room—high ceiling, plank walls, massive top-of-the-line television set-up on one side, stone fireplace on another—there’s Tillie Jean and Trevor, both of them in their own massage chairs, since Cooper has four in here.

  I’ve never asked why.

  Don’t want to know.

  “I was bird-watching, not looking at you naked,” Tillie Jean says directly to me. Her hair’s piled in a messy bun on top of her head, and she’s wearing paint-splattered jeans, an oversize Fireballs hoodie, and has bare feet.

  Fucking gorgeous, which is not what I need to be thinking about her.

  Trevor giggles. He has his arm wrapped in a sling, which means he probably shouldn’t be sitting in a massage chair. Rubbing injuries wrong can fuck them up. “Your nana wasn’t.”

  Tillie Jean almost drops the coffee mug she’s trying to grab out of the vibrating cup holder attached to the chair. “Don’t talk shit about my Nana!”

  “Not shit if it’s true.”

  “Cooper, he’s talking shit about Nana.”

  Cooper scrubs a hand over his face and shoots me a sideways glance, still cringing. “I can’t believe I actually regret using you to make money for charity.”

  “I broke Nana’s binolu—bidonkular—bi-whatevers,” Tillie Jean says.

  She giggles.

  Trevor giggles. “An’ you got arrested.”

  “Asshole cousin.”

  “To asshole cousins!”

  They clink glasses. Trevor flinches, hunching in on his slinged-up arm.

  No small part of me wants to hug the guy, and I’m not a hugger.

  Cooper sighs again, his face telling me he’s trying not to think about Trevor too as he looks at Tillie Jean. “She didn’t get arrested. She just got a citation, and she showed up here and shoved five hundred bucks at me to pay for her peep show ticket with late fees. I’ll get you your cut later.”

  I snort. “I don’t want her money.”

  He eyeballs his sister once more. “This was funnier a few years back when it was Chester citing her for indecent exposure. He didn’t like that her shirt said My cake kicks your cake’s ass. Especially the part where she fought it and demanded a court date to tell her side.”

  “Did it hold up?” I ask.

  His brows twist and flex the same way his whole body does when he’s diving for a line drive at second base. “Are you serious?”

  I shrug.

  Seeing her after spending the last three weeks trying to forget the sound of her screaming my name, the taste of her lingering in my mouth, the feel of her skin, and then jacking off to thoughts of her several times a day when I couldn’t forget—this should be awkward.

  It’s never awkward with other women I screw around with. I mostly don’t see them again, and when I do, I’m voluntarily a dick so they stay away.

&
nbsp; I’m used to being a dick, therefore, not awkward.

  But right now?

  I want to pull her onto my lap and ask what she thought of me pitching naked.

  If it turned her on.

  If she’ll get it if I tell her that I’m breaking my one-time-only rule just this once since I still want to feel my cock inside her. That last time was a half, and I want to cash in on the other half of our deal.

  Yep.

  I’m working on getting my ass traded. Because I very much want to fuck around with Cooper Rock’s little sister.

  And?

  Not awkward.

  Uncomfortable, yeah, but only physically.

  Emotionally?

  I don’t want to talk about how fucking good it is to see her mere feet away from me, and how thirty seconds here with the woman who only annoys me because I don’t want to want her is settling something deep in my soul.

  She brought me Thanksgiving leftovers.

  Old news.

  But it’s what keeps sticking with me.

  “Did it?” I repeat. “Did it hold up in court?”

  He finally cracks a grin. “Yeah. She got Judge Namasaki on her court date.”

  “He hard?”

  “His wife submits a peach cobbler to the county fair every year, and every year Tillie Jean’s apple strudels beat it, and Mrs. N swears TJ cheats by having Grady make them for her, except Grady was off at his fancy cooking school a lot of those years when TJ won, which also pissed them off. So the judge was inclined to take a stand against profanity on T-shirts too, especially when those T-shirts were smack-talking his wife. Just in case she was having Grady mail her apple strudels.”

  “That’s sixty-five levels of fucked-up.”

  “She had to do two hours of community service trying to teach Long Beak Silver not to cuss.”

  “And that mother-beaker taught me a few new cuss words,” Tillie Jean proclaims proudly.

  “To wuss curds!” Trevor cries.

  They clink again.

  He flinches again, I flinch for him again, Cooper winces again.

  This is the hard part of the game.

  Watching teammates face what we’ll all face eventually.

  And what will you do then? that voice whispers in my head.

  Three or four years might be all I have left. This contract I just signed? I know it’s my last.