Baseball and Other Lessons (Devil's Ranch Book 2) (20 page)

“I’m not that big of a ladies’ man.”

“Whatever. Don’t change the subject.”

He shrugged. “I don’t exactly have a lot of female friends. Make that any.”

“That’s kind of sad.”

“It’s just the truth. It’s hard to become friends with a woman when I never know if she actually wants to get to know me or just wants to get to know my dick, bank account, or both.”

“Not that that’s cynical or anything.”

“It is, but it’s also just a product of who I am. Hell, you’ve seen the jersey chasers.”

“Speaking of jersey chasers, whatever happened to our good friend Heather?”

Matt grimaced. “I finally filed a restraining order against her a few weeks after that night in San Antonio, when I caught her in my hotel room. Believe it or not, she’d managed to get a key card from the teenage clerk at the desk.”

Jenn could only guess at just how Heather had gotten that key card, and almost all of those guesses involved sexual favors. “Did she stay away?”

He shook his head. “Nope. She waited a few weeks then showed up at a game. Security tossed her out. Next thing I know she’s making a scene in the hotel lobby, crying and carrying on about how much she loved me and how she couldn’t believe I would leave her after finding out she was pregnant with my kid.”

Jenn sucked in a breath. “She didn’t!”

“She did. I called hotel security and the cops. They arrested her. Ends up she was trying to extort a couple of other ballplayers so she got to spend a little bit of time behind bars. Never bothered me after that.”

“What a…dumbass.”

“Okay, I have to know what you really wanted to call her.”

Jenn cheeks grew warm. “What makes you think I wanted to call her something else?”

“Please. You just stumbled over your words. Tell me what you wanted to call her. I promise I won’t tell.”

She rolled her eyes. “How are you still such a little kid at the ripe old age of thirty-five?”

“You’re not that far behind me. And if you don’t spill, I’m going to tickle you until you do.”

Jenn had a sudden flashback to when they were kids, still in elementary school, and Matt would hang out with her, Jo and Chase more often than not. Chase knew Jenn was extremely ticklish, and had let Matt in on that little secret. Matt being Matt, he’d waited to cash in on his knowledge and had waited until they’d been telling ghost stories under a sheet fort one summer night to quietly pounce and scare the bejeezus out of her.

He’d tickled her for forever, ‘til she was laughing so hard she’d thought she was going to pee her pants. Which would have been super embarrassing, all things considered.

The fact that he still remembered how ticklish she was filled her with a hot rush of pleasure.

Whoa, what’s going on here? Down, girl.

This was Matt. The same Matt who’d made—her brain skittered around the phrase—who’d had sex with her and then left without a word. The same Matt who’d avoided her and barely talked to her for the past ten years (okay, so maybe she’d been the one doing the avoiding, but he hadn’t exactly sought her out, either).

The same Matt who still lights up your body like it’s the freaking Fourth of July and who just held you while you totally lost your shit in front of him while telling him all about his stillborn baby and then watched
Pitch Perfect
with you and didn’t complain once.

Go away, voice of reason.

“I guess I’m going to have to tickle you, then.”

Matt’s voice jerked her out of her thoughts so quickly she didn’t even think, just blurted out the answer to his original question. “Cunt. I was going to call her a cunt. But I generally hate that word so I didn’t.”

“Y’know, with that dirty mouth you sometimes have you could fit in in a baseball clubhouse.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“All those hot baseball players barely clothed and really sweaty after a hard-won game? Nope, that wouldn’t be a good idea at all.”

He drew his eyebrows together. “What do you mean by ‘all’?”

“Just what it sounds like. All.”

“Well, there goes my ego.”

She laughed and nudged his chest with her shoulder. “As if. You’ve got enough ego for both of us.”

His expression turned serious. “You know I’m not actually some crazed egomaniac, right?”

The worry in his voice caused Jenn to reach up and smooth his brow. How her hand ended up running itself over his buzzed hair and cupping the back of his neck she had no idea. “I know you’re not a ‘crazed egomaniac,’ Matt. But I also know that it does take a certain amount of ego to be a team’s ace and to carry that kind of pressure and
like
it.”

“Ego or craziness, one or the other.”

Her fingers slipped under the edge of his t-shirt’s collar without her telling them it was okay to do so. “Probably a little bit of both, truth be told.” Her voice was low and husky, almost unrecognizable to her own ears.

Matt closed his eyes and inhaled a sharp breath. “What are you doing, Jenn?”

Her hand slipped further under the collar of his t-shirt. Her whispered response was shaky. “I don’t know.”

His hazel eyes darkened to that lovely green shade that told her he felt whatever this was, too, but he didn’t move. “You’re vulnerable right now, sweetheart, and your hand on my neck and those green eyes looking at me like that are making it really hard not to kiss you.”

She licked suddenly dry lips while her insides went all warm and gooey at being called “sweetheart.” Jesus, she was the easiest woman on earth right now, willing to drop her panties at the slightest endearment.

Yeah, keep fooling yourself there, sister.

Shut. Up.

“So then kiss me.”

“I don’t want you to regret this in the morning, and I don’t want us to go back to circling each other like wary cats, either.”

“Dammit, Matt!” She rose up while bringing his head down to hers at the same time. Fine. If he wasn’t going to make the move she sure as hell would.

She moved her lips against his, finesse flying out the window. All she knew was this sudden—okay, not so sudden—aching
want
that clawed at her gut and pulsed through her veins. He responded, capturing her mouth with his and she almost sighed in relief.

Instead of letting her continue to take the lead, though, Matt slowed the kiss way down. Jenn relaxed against the arm of the couch, her hand still inside the collar of his shirt. Their tongues caressed each other, a slow dance building to a slow burn. Sparks shimmered behind her eyelids. Why hadn’t she been kissing him all along?

Matt was a great kisser.

Sure, he’d been a pretty damned good kisser ten years ago, but like a barrel of whiskey he’d only gotten better with age and had gone from pretty damned good to phenomenal.

He curled his tongue around hers, stroking and gliding before pulling away and nibbling on her bottom lip. She chased, but he continued to pull away.

Jenn whimpered—actually whimpered—when he pulled away completely. A part of her brain realized she
was
emotionally vulnerable right now and simply needed to feel a connection with someone. The vast majority of her brain, however, was stuck on the look in his eyes, the heat of his neck under her hand and the fact that his bottom lip was slightly plumper than the top.

Oh, sweet baby Jesus, she had it bad.

Matt’s smile was rueful as he tucked a curl behind her ear. “I’m not going to take advantage of you, sweetheart, and if I let this go any further that’s what I’d be doing.”

“Is it taking advantage if it’s what I want, though?”

“In this case, yes, and you and I both know I don’t need to spell out all the reasons for you.”

Jenn’s hand under his collar drifted up to rub at the nape of his neck. Matt briefly closed his eyes and drew in a hard breath. “We both want this, though. You can’t lie to me and tell me you don’t.”

He shifted and his erection brushed against her hip. “If circumstances were different, I would have you naked right now and would be buried so deep inside of you you saw stars.”

Jenn squirmed as desire pooled low in her belly.

Insta-wet. Right there.

“But you’re hurting and vulnerable right now, and despite what you might have thought about me for the past ten years, I’m not that man. I want you, Jenn, but not like this, not when you might regret it in the morning and I would feel like a dick.”

His expression was so earnest, his gaze so determined, that she was helpless against the tumbling of her heart inside of her chest. “Why can’t you be the person I thought you were?”

“Who’s that?”

A corner of her mouth quirked up. “An asshole.”

Matt snorted more than laughed, but she was rewarded with a grin playing at his lips. “Well, to be fair, once upon a time I was an asshole, and if you ask certain American League batters, they’d probably tell you I’m still an asshole.” His expression grew serious again. “I really am sorry, Jenn. I’ve always regretted the way I left things back then.”

She looked away, unable to meet his gaze as her fingers continued to play at the nape of his neck. Apparently it was time to address the remaining elephant in the room.

Might as well just rip all the bandages off at once, right?

“I’m not going to say ‘it’s okay,’ because it’s obviously not okay.” She brought her gaze back to his. “I wasn’t looking for forever, wasn’t under some misguided assumption that you were, either. I wasn’t looking for fancy words or lies. But I had expected respect—not only for me, but for us and our history. I can’t say friendship, because I don’t know that we were really all that great of friends. We had known each other for forever, though, which kind of makes the whole one-night stand thing a bit awkward. And I knew it was one night, Matt.”

“I never meant to make you feel like I didn’t respect you—it was honestly the complete opposite. Still is.”

She chewed on the inside of her cheek, memories of emotions flooding through her mind. “The funny thing is, Matt, up until the point when I woke up and you were gone without a single word, I had felt respected. Even knowing it was a one-time thing, and even with the fact that I’d never had sex like that with anyone, I knew you respected me and that I wasn’t a faceless warm body. But then you left, and I felt so, so used. It’s not a fun feeling, believe me.”

His fingers brushed her cheek as he met her gaze—unflinching—and said, “I left without saying anything because you scared the shit out of me.”

Jenn raised an eyebrow. “Me? I scared the big, bad Matt Roberts?”

Yeah, right.

The corner of his mouth ticked up in a crooked grin. “Yes, you. That night was…special. It was crazy and unrestrained and I felt freer with you than I ever had with anyone else. I had no clue where the sudden attraction had come from. I knew you were smart and funny and could be a bit of a smartass, but I hadn’t known that you tasted like heaven or that there was so much passion inside that small body.”

Jenn’s cheeks warmed slightly at his words, and she had to fight the urge to look away. “I am not small.”

He shrugged. “You’re tall for a woman, sure.” He smiled again. “But compared to me, you’re small.”

And wasn’t that just the hell of it? In normal situations, she felt like a bit of a giant. With Matt, though, she did feel a bit like a dainty woman.

It was kind of nice.

“After you fell asleep, I lay there and watched you for what felt like hours. I didn’t want to leave, which was a first for me. A part of me wanted to wake you up and make love to you all over again, and another part wanted to wake you up and just talk. As much as I wanted to be inside of you again, I wanted to get to know you, too. That scared me. I was young, was just starting my second year in the majors, and falling in love was not in the plan for that time in my life. I’d had it all worked out in my head, ever since I was a teen—make it to the bigs by twenty-five, start the All-Star game by age twenty-seven, win my first Cy Young by twenty-eight. Love, marriage and babies didn’t come into the picture until I was in my late thirties, after I’d retired with a guaranteed spot in Cooperstown.”

“I…” she didn’t know where to begin. “But I wasn’t thinking love, marriage and babies. That wasn’t even on the table.”

“You weren’t, but I was.”

And suddenly, things made some sort of sense to her. His running out was still not the nicest thing he could have done, nor was it the most mature, but she understood it now. Hell, if he’d told her he was thinking love, marriage and babies she probably would have been the one to sneak out in the middle of the night.

Or run away screaming. Whichever.

Because at twenty-two? Yeah, she hadn’t been ready for forever. At all.

The fact that Matt had been, though, threw her for a freaking loop. The fact that Matt had been thinking about those things with her threw her right off the tracks.

The fact that she hadn’t been ready and he had and she’d accidentally gotten pregnant and then lost the baby? Yeah, her world hadn’t just been knocked off its axis, but had been grand-slammed outside of the Milky Way.