Baseball and Other Lessons (Devil's Ranch Book 2) (7 page)

Matt didn’t look at Jenn, just got up and stormed inside. Hopefully his mom wouldn’t take it upon herself to go through his texts—he was a grown man, after all, and expected at least a modicum of privacy—and find out that his life was all kinds of sideways.

Stupid fucking line drive.

Stupid reckless incredibly hot night of sex.

Frustrated, he walked to the living room and flopped onto the couch, the ballgame barely registering in his mind. He rubbed his hands over his face, the faint stubble on his cheeks scraping his palms. It felt weirdly good, a reminder that he was at least alive.

But what good was being alive when everything you’d ever worked for and wanted was up in the air?

The back door opened and Jo walked in. He didn’t acknowledge her. But then she walked into the living room, holding out a can of Dr. Pepper like it was some sort of peace offering—or maybe an offering to the baseball gods to give him back his career.

“These still your favorite?”

Matt looked up at her, took the can and mumbled, “Thanks.”

It wasn’t Jo’s fault that his life was falling apart and he desperately wanted the one woman he really shouldn’t have ever had to begin with. He just couldn’t seem to rein the surliness in.

“No problem.” She hesitated.

“Jo, whatever it is you want to say, just say it.”

She took a breath, studied the can still in her hand, before saying, “I know I have no point of reference for what you’re dealing with right now, Matt, but if you need an ear I’m a pretty damned good listener.”

“Thanks, Jo, but I’m fine.” He didn’t need help. He didn’t need an ear. He just needed to get back on the mound and back to his life.

Away from the temptation of an auburn-haired temptress disguised as a human hedge hog.

“Fair enough. The offer stands, though, Matt. And if not me, try to find someone to talk to.”

“I’m not a fucking woman, Jo. I don’t spend time sitting around talking about my goddamned feelings.” Maybe that was a little harsh, but he just wanted to be left alone for a few minutes.

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. By the way, when the hell are you going to get your hair fixed? You look like you should be coming out of a bar on Sixth Street.”

Matt snorted and purposely relaxed his posture. “I don’t know. I kinda like it.”

Not really, not anymore. But he kept hoping that maybe the crazy hair would keep the jersey chasers away whenever he happened to be in public. So far it hadn’t worked.

“Going for the sympathy fuck, hey?”

Matt finally laughed out loud at that. “Honestly? No. My sense of humor’s just fucked up enough that I find it funny.”

Well, that was kind of true.

“Oh, it’s definitely funny. Anyway. I’m going to go back out. Maybe you should join us and apologize to your mom for being a dick.”

He was kind of shocked by Jo’s language, but admired her ability to just cut to the chase. “When did you get such a potty mouth?”

“Oh, somewhere between my senior year of college and dealing with teenage boys on a daily basis.”

He shook his head. “You’re braver than I am. You couldn’t pay me to deal with teenagers all the time.”

“It’s definitely challenging. Anyway, I’m gonna go back outside. Enjoy your coke.”

Matt looked down at the still unopened Dr. Pepper in his hand, at the TV, up at Jo and then back to the cold can in his hand. “I’ll be back out in a few minutes. Just need to cool off a little bit.”

The look Jo shot him made worry flow through his body. It was a look that clearly said, “I know something’s going on, and I’m going to find out what it is.”

God help him if that particular cat ever got out of the bag.

Chapter Six

The Monday after the
Fourth of July party at Chase’s, Matt showed up at Jenn’s door with a bag with the Rudy’s logo on it in one hand and a gallon of sweet tea in the other. She looked over his shoulder, didn’t see Chase’s pickup or Owen’s Mustang, and briefly wondered how Matt had gotten to her house before noticing the shiny new JEEP sitting in her driveway.

“They’re letting you drive again?” she asked by way of greeting.

He gave her a devastating grin, and she realized he’d also cut his hair so that it was now even all over his head. The man really was too hot for his own good.

“I was cleared to drive this morning.”

Instead of letting herself get caught up by his smile and those hazel eyes, Jenn called on every ounce of bitch she had in her—which really wasn’t that much, truth be told—and asked, “What are you doing here, Matt?”

He lifted the bag and the gallon of sweet tea. “Bringing you dinner.”

“But I didn’t ask you to bring me dinner.”

He shrugged. “You have to eat. I have to eat. And Jo and Chase are too busy having wild monkey sex to eat, so I figured I would go someplace where I could watch baseball in peace without the game being interrupted by moaning and a thumping that I can only guess is a headboard hitting the wall.”

“What makes you think you can just come over here and take over my TV?”

He glanced behind her and grinned. “I do believe that’s a baseball game on your television.”

Well, crap. “So? Maybe I want to watch by myself.”

Matt’s smile began to fall just a little bit. Jenn steeled herself against it. She would not give in, dammit.

He closed his eyes, sighed, and appeared to be praying or maybe contemplating ways to murder her before opening his eyes and leveling her with a gaze that felt more real than anything she’d seen since that night ten years ago.

But no, she reminded herself, that look in his eyes ten years ago had been a lie, too.

“Listen, Jenn, I don’t exactly have a lot of places I can go in town and just chill out. If I’m at Chase’s, Jo’s there and I want to give them privacy. If I go to Mom and Dad’s, Mom will just fuss over me. If I go out somewhere people either look at me with pity on their faces, want something from me, or are yet another jersey chaser. This is the only safe place I could think of.”

She couldn’t help but snort at that. “You seriously think my house is a safe place for you?”

“Sure, as long as I make sure to hide all your knives.”

“Good thing you don’t know about the gun in the closet, then.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s really not the best place for a single woman to keep a personal defense weapon.”

She rolled her eyes. “I was messing with you, Matt.”

“Oh, okay.”

“It’s in my nightstand.”

Instead of looking scared, he just smiled at her. “I see Chase has taught you well.”

“Chase hasn’t taught me shit. I learned that on my own.” And, well, he didn’t need to know about her parents constantly urging her to build a safe room, bury guns and ammo in the backyard and invest in firearm concealment furniture. Nobody needed to know about
that
particular brand of crazy she dealt with on a daily basis.

“Noted. Now, can I come in before this food gets any colder?”

She sighed, and against her better judgment stepped aside so he could enter. “Since I have the feeling you won’t give up until you’ve gotten your way, fine.”

Jenn closed the door, wary as Matt made his way to the breakfast nook and set the food and tea on top of the small table she’d set up there. He walked into her kitchen, and she pushed away from the front door and followed him.

He was opening up cabinets, presumably looking for plates. She made her way around him and opened up a cabinet on the far end of her galley kitchen, pulled out two plates and handed them to him. Silently, he took them from her, and she opened a drawer right beside him, accidentally grazing his hip with her arm as she did so. She could feel the heat radiating off of him, remembered what all that body heat had felt like wrapped around her and inside of her, and ground her back teeth together.

Get your shit together, McDonnell.

She yanked a handful of silverware out of the drawer, not even noticing what she’d grabbed, and spun around him before hastily walking to the breakfast nook.

“It’s kinda hard to eat brisket with spoons, but I’m willing to give it a try.”

His breath tickled the back of her neck. Of course her traitorous body responded. This was so not going to work.

But she couldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled her
that
much just by simply standing in her kitchen. “Don’t you old, washed-up folks need to eat everything with a spoon?”

Okay, so that sounded kind of mean and a lot lame even to her ears.

She so sucked at this snappy comeback, insult thing.

He chuckled behind her, then she felt him move away seconds before hearing a drawer slide open and then closed behind her. She gripped the back of the chair in front of her so hard her knuckles turned white.

This was stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She shouldn’t have let him into her house.

But instead of kicking him out, she just stood there like an idiot, waiting for him to come back with what she presumed were forks.

“Here you go. Two forks to the rescue.”

“Thanks,” she ground out.

“No problem.”

He was far too jovial.

Silently, she began to pull cartons and wax paper-wrapped packages from the bag and set them on the table. Matt opened each one after she’d set them down, revealing tubs of barbeque sauce, sliced pickles, creamed corn and new potatoes. There were also a couple of cups of banana pudding, along with what looked like an entire loaf of bread, what had to be three pounds of brisket and a couple of sausage links.

“Good Lord, were you planning on feeding an army?”

She felt more than saw him shrug beside her. “I tend to eat a lot anyway, and the doctors have told me to eat as much protein as possible right now to help this stupid thing in my head to heal.”

“I’m not sure any amount of protein is going to help fix stupid, Matt.”

“Ouch.” He picked up a spoon and scooped up a large helping of cream corn, which he placed on one of the plates. “That one was much better than your last one, though, for what it’s worth.”

She snorted and pressed her lips together, fighting the smile that teased at her lips. “Every now and then I’m capable of witty repartee.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“I’m great at it. Two hours after the conversation’s ended and I’m rehashing everything that was and wasn’t said in my head.”

He chuckled. “Isn’t that the case for everyone, though? You think of the perfect insult two days later in the shower while singing along to Mumford and Sons?”

She paused in the middle of placing brisket on a piece of bread, turned to him and asked, “Did you just say you sing in the shower to Mumford and Sons?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes, sure. ‘Little Lion Man’ is pretty awesome.”

“I…I don’t know what to say.”

“What? Did you think I listened to a bunch of gangsta rap or heavy metal or something?”

“Well…yeah…kind of. I mean, you’re this big time, super macho alpha male athlete. Aren’t y’all supposed to listen to music about bitches and hos and forties and crazy trains and stuff?”

Matt finished spooning new potatoes onto the second plate before setting the Styrofoam container down, turning towards her and crossing his arms over his chest. “Sounds to me like someone’s stereotyping a little bit. If we’re gonna go there, where are all of your copies of
Romeo and Juliet
, the litter boxes and sixty-seven cats?”

She swallowed past the uncomfortable lump in her throat. Dammit, he was right. “Fair enough. I shouldn’t have stereotyped. I do have to say that I am a bit surprised at Mumford and Sons, though. You really
do
seem more like a heavy metal sort of guy, or hard rock at the very least.”

“Eh, I used to love that stuff back in my twenties when I first made it to the majors.” He turned back towards the table, grabbed some bread for himself and began to pile the slices high with brisket. “People change. Musical tastes change. When I first got called up, bands like Linkin Park, Chevelle, Velvet Revolver, those were all blowing up and it seemed like everyone had one of their songs as their walk-up music. It was also great party music. I was never much into rap back then, although I did like Eminem and honestly still do. These days I don’t party as hard, and I’ve gravitated towards stuff like the aforementioned Mumford and Sons, Matt Nathanson, The Lumineers. Artists like that, who really seem to have something to say and are great musicians on top of being great songwriters.”

Jenn stared down at the brisket sandwich in her hands, not wanting to see this side of Matt. The thoughtful, intelligent, great conversationalist side that she’d tried to tell herself for ten years had been a booze-filled mirage.

Except neither of them had really been drunk. Tipsy, maybe. But drunk? No. She couldn’t lie to herself like that, no matter how much she wanted to.

She cleared her throat and reached for unexpected common ground. “I stand corrected. So what’s your favorite Matt Nathanson song?”