Baseball and Other Lessons (Devil's Ranch Book 2) (3 page)

She tilted her head to the side, offering him easier access, and Matt breathed a sigh of relief before saying, “Go away, Heather. I’m with my girlfriend and my friends, and we would like some privacy.”

Heather snorted, and her voice was laced with scorn when she said, “Girlfriend? Please, Matt. We all know you can do better than
her
.”

Jenn stiffened and he fought the urge to turn around. Instead, he nipped at Jenn’s earlobe before placing another kiss on her neck—which was really a nice neck, now that he thought about it. Long and graceful and smooth, with soft skin that was perfect for kissing and touching. Or maybe he just hadn’t gotten laid recently enough, because thinking about Jenn’s neck was simultaneously weirding him out and turning him on. “I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t insult my girlfriend, who by the way has more intelligence, class and sex appeal in her pinky finger than you do in your entire surgically enhanced body.”

Jenn’s breath caught and he flicked a gaze up to her face, saw she was trying to keep from laughing, and smiled.

“Oh, please. We all know that boobs win any day of the week.”

Matt didn’t have to look down to know what Heather was inferring. Jenn had never been well-endowed, but at least what she had was real.

Andrew piped up. “Heather, seriously, you’re being a bitch.”

“Just being honest, darlin’,” she said, mimicking Andrew’s drawl.

Matt rolled his eyes. Turning towards Heather, he idly twirled a lock of Jenn’s curly red hair around his finger. “Heather, go away before we call security.”

She rolled her eyes and flounced off, taking her entourage with her. They didn’t go far, though—just to the bar—where Matt could see her flirting with the bartender and giving the rest of the room a view that stopped just short of her ass cheeks.

Heather glanced back over at their table, her mouth in a full-on pout, and Matt sighed. It was going to be a long night.

#

After Heather and her merry band of skanks left their table, the conversation dimmed a little bit. The guys weren’t quite as boisterous, Matt was broody, and Jenn was decidedly uncomfortable.

She got what Matt had been doing. She understood it and didn’t blame him for thinking of it. Hell, if she was being honest with herself she had to admit that on the surface it had been a pretty good spur-of-the-moment plan.

Except for the part where her body forgot that it was Matt—Matt!—kissing her neck and nipping her earlobe.

Yeah, that whole part had pretty much sucked.

Well, not the being turned on part. That part was nice. It was more the fact that she was turned on by
Matt
. In all the years they’d known each other—close to twenty——she’d been mostly immune to his looks and charm.

Probably because he’d never directed that charm at you.

True enough,
she conceded.

Logically, she knew Matt was attractive. Okay, the man was hot. No two ways about it. Despite being aware of that fact, though, she’d never really felt a smidgen of attraction towards him. Probably because she remembered him as the boy who yanked her pigtails and once put a frog down the back of her bathing suit.

Asshole.

Never mind the fact that he’d been like ten years old at the time.

It had totally been an asshole move.

Well, okay, so looking back it was actually kind of funny. But at the time she’d been really mad at him.

They were a long ways away from childhood antics, though, and Jenn was brought back to the here and now by the light press of his hand on her shoulder.

Oh, who was she kidding? She’d jumped on the Matt Roberts Is a Hot Piece of Eye Candy train back in high school, before he was a semi-famous pitcher and had filled out a once-lanky body with impressive muscles.

She’d once heard a baseball announcer say that pitchers weren’t the most athletic guys on the team. Apparently that announcer had never seen Matt shirtless. Because, whoa.

Feeling heat flame across her cheeks, Jenn picked up her margarita and gulped.

But just because she could concede that Matt was hot with a capital H-A-W-T did not mean she was attracted to him. Not really. Mostly because being attracted to Matt would be kind of weird and awkward since for at least part of her childhood he had been like a big brother to her. At some point—okay, in high school when she’d really started to develop an interest in boys—that had changed. For a few weeks her freshman year, she’d allowed herself to daydream about Matt and him being her first kiss.

Until she’d walked in on him kissing Kirsten Marshall in his kitchen one afternoon before his parents had gotten home. Kirsten was everything Jenn wasn’t—petite and curvy with perfectly straight blonde hair, big blue eyes and bigger boobs. If Kirsten wasn’t so freaking sweet—genuinely so—Jenn might have hated her.

Instead, she’d just walked on through the kitchen to the backyard, searching for Chase while wishing she looked like Kirsten rather than, well, herself. Jenn couldn’t compete with a girl like that, not with her wildly curly red hair, green eyes and flat chest, not to mention the fact that she was taller than some of the boys in her class, and was still a year away from getting her braces removed.

Knowing all of that, though, hadn’t made Matt any less attractive—it had just made him impossible to attain.

Jenn sighed and sipped at the remnants of her margarita. Matt’s arm was still curved around the back of her chair, and one of his fingers was tracing a pattern on her arm just where skin met sleeve. She suppressed a shiver and pulled her phone out of her purse to check the time and saw she had a text message from Chase.

Chase: Having fun? Sorry I couldn’t make it. This job’s going to drive me to drinking.

Jenn: Yeah. It was a great game. Ran into Matt in the hotel bar. Don’t drink too much—or by yourself!

Chase: I won’t. You still with him?

Jenn debated how much to disclose.

Jenn: Yes. Him and a few of the guys from the team. They’re trying to avoid some skank named Heather.

Chase didn’t need to know about her and Matt’s method of avoidance, because Jenn had a feeling if Chase did find out he would lay into his big brother.

Chase: Heather’s worse than a skank. She’s been stalking him for a year or so. Don’t get yourself pulled into that one—that chick does not play around.

Jenn: I’m not. Matt managed to shoo her off.

Chase: Good. Have fun. Don’t drink too much—those guys can party hard. See you tomorrow?

Jenn: Yup. I’ll bring liquor.

Jenn stuffed her phone back in her purse, yawned and said, “Sorry, guys, but it’s been a long day and I’m exhausted. I think I’m going to head on up to my room and get some sleep.”

“Awww, come on, Miss Jenn. You can hang out with us a little longer.” Rick winked at her.

Jenn smiled. “Sorry, sweetie, but I really am tired, and I have to drive up to Austin tomorrow.”

Rick grumbled in protest, but Andrew and Miguel smiled and tipped their heads towards her.

“It was great meeting y’all, though.” She flicked a glance towards Heather and the other women at the bar. “Hopefully you’ll get to enjoy the rest of your evening in peace.”

Rick snorted. “Oh, once Pooh Bear leaves all of their interest in us will be long gone.”

Matt sighed. “Only because you’re still too young to know how to please a lady.”

Jenn’s stomach dipped at the thought of Matt knowing how to please a lady. She licked her lips and said, “Except I’m pretty sure ‘‘lady’ is not the correct term for Heather.”

“Right you are,” Matt said as he stood. “Let me walk you up to your room.”

Nerves suddenly danced in her belly. This was not typical Matt behavior—at least not in her world. “You don’t have to do that, Matt. Stay here with your friends.”

He pinned her with that hazel gaze, and the nerves in her belly blossomed from caterpillars into butterflies. “I want to make sure Heather doesn’t harass you.”

“I can take care of myself, Matt.” She stood and put her purse on her shoulder.

“I’m sure you can. But as your friend I want to make sure she doesn’t follow you up and give you a hard time. Besides, if I let that happen, Chase would kill me.”

His words calmed the butterflies slightly. This was Matt, simply being a friend. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“Fine,” she conceded before turning to the other three men and smiling. “’Night, guys. It was great meeting y’all.”

Chapter Three

Present Day, Del Rio, Texas

Jenn glared at Matt
from across the bar and shook her head.

No. Absolutely not. She was not going to come to his rescue again.

Not after what had happened the last (and only) time.

He mouthed, “help me” again from across the pool table and Jenn rolled her eyes before spinning on her heel and walking back out into the main bar area. She found an empty table in a corner, sat down and gazed at her margarita glass.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket, checked her email and Facebook. She supposed she could just go home, except she wasn’t sure if Owen had driven or ridden with Chase, whereas Matt. She couldn’t just leave them here.

No matter how tempting it was to leave Matt alone with the jersey chasers.

Instead of getting up and going out to her car, though, she opened her Pinterest app and clicked on “humor.” Sure, she had a wedding board just like every other single woman between the ages of 18 and 58, but she had a definite soft spot for funny, snarky ecards and internet memes.

And tonight, she needed snarky.

She was giggling over a picture of a lizard wearing Barbie boots when she felt someone staring at her. Jenn looked up and squinted, her eyes adjusting from the bright screen of her phone to the dim lights of the bar.

Matt had somehow managed to extricate himself from the clutches of the Three Whores of the Apocalypse, and was now standing on the other side of her table, muscular arms crossed over his chest and glaring at her. She returned her attention to Pinterest—lizards wearing Barbie boots were
much
better than an apparently pissed off Matt Roberts.

Instead of taking the hint and going away, he sat in the chair next to her, scooted a little too close for her peace of mind, and plucked the phone out of her hands.

“Hey!”

“What the hell are you doing sitting in a corner of a bar all by yourself and looking at,” he looked down at the screen of her phone, “is that a lizard wearing Barbie boots?”

“Yes. Now give me back my phone.” She reached for it, and he switched it to his other hand and held it away from the other side of his body.

“You want it? Come and get it.”

No way was she crawling over him just to get her stupid phone. Hell, she’d buy another one if she had to, if that meant not touching him.

She sat back in her chair. “No. How about you act like a mature adult and just give it back to me?”

“What would be the fun in that?”

She rolled her eyes and glanced away from him. “So what happened to the Skank Brigade?”

“I told them I needed to go to the men’s room and that I would be right back.”

She turned back towards him and hit him on his shoulder. “You left them there with Owen?!”

Matt smiled, and damn her traitorous body, that smile did funny things to her insides. “Somehow I doubt Owen needs any help fending off those three.”

“They’re going to come looking for you, y’know.”

“I know, that’s why we need to get out of here. I’m assuming Jo and Chase left a while ago, correct?”

Jenn nodded. “How’d you know that?”

“I saw her talking to you. Considering she looked like a woman who’d just had the best orgasm of her life, and then she left, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together, even with the recent brain injury.”

“And what would you know what a woman looks like after having the best orgasm of her life?” Jenn retorted.

Matt leaned closer so that Jenn could feel his breath on her neck, and his voice was like a rough caress over her nerve endings when he said, “Oh, I think I know a thing or two.”

Jenn suppressed a shiver, stared straight ahead and worked to calm her beating heart and rapid breaths.

Damn him.

#

Matt watched, kind of fascinated, as Jenn tried to control her body’s reaction to him. He’d felt the little shiver that had passed through her body, noted the way her breath had hitched, and could barely make out her pulse rapidly beating at her neck.

It wasn’t fair to mess with her, and he had no intention of hurting her, but dammit if she wasn’t a little bit like a hedgehog—all sharp points on the outside, but kind of cute and soft underneath.

At the memory of how soft Jenn could be, his dick hardened in response.

Shit. That was inconvenient.

Not only could he not do anything about it—at least not with a partner—but he highly doubted that Jenn would be willing to go there even if he could. Logically, he knew sex with Jenn was filed under Very Bad Ideas. Illogically, his body responded to her like a thirteen-year-old looking at his first
Playboy
.