Curve Ball (Eastgate BBW Romance Series Book 4)

CURVE
BALL

Elle Gordon

EASTGATE BBW ROMANCE SERIES

Book 4

~

Other books in this series

Wild Nights
Kick to the Curves
Curves and the Quarterback

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.

Text copyright © 2014 Elle Gordon

All Rights Reserved.

www.twitter.com/ellegordonbooks

For Patricia, who found the love of her life after being nearly twenty years apart. I couldn’t be happier for you.

-elle

Table of Contents

High School Sweethearts

Twenty Years Later

The One That Got Away

The Craftsman

Library Confessions

Chemistry

I was just seventeen when I met Alec. He and I both attended Eastgate High but had never met until that year. We met in our senior year chemistry class, and let’s just say, we lit up on each other hotter than the lab’s Bunsen burners. In school, we also learned that opposites attract. Alec was tall, and I was short. He was also fantastic at nearly every sport. I, on the other hand, looked as though I was missing bones in my arm when I would throw a ball. Alec was also a very serious mannered guy, which I adored. However, because we were so opposite, I was always trying to make him laugh.

“Carly,” he’d say, calling me by the nickname only he used. “You’re the only one who could ever make me laugh this hard.”

I loved staying up late at night with Alec, talking on the phone until my father would burst in through my door.

“Carla, it’s one in the morning!” he would scold. “You better not be talking with that Alec.”

Then he would threaten to have been grounded, unable to speak to Alec for a week if I did it again. Despite his threats, I always got away with it. The truth was, both of my parents loved Alec. Our families even became close after we met. Every Friday night, his parents would come over to our house for dinner and cocktails. Alec and I would sit in my backyard and swing on the hammock together. We didn’t need booze to make us let loose. Together, we were eternally happy.

“I love you so much, Carly,” he whispered in my ear late one night. It was the first time that he had said that to me. His arms were wrapped around my body as I lay against him on the hammock. I loved the way that Alec’s body felt against mine. It was warm and comforting. We fit together like two pieces from the same puzzle. Everything that felt perfect when I was with him.

“I love you, too,” I replied. Then he leaned over, and we kissed. A smile fire ignited inside of me. I didn’t think that anything would change. Little did I know that everything was about to change for us in the most drastic way.

~

“How excited are you for Alec?” my mother asked as she peeked into my room the next morning. She sounded excited, but I didn’t understand why.

“What do you mean?” I asked her as I sat up from my bed.

“About Alec’s scholarship,” my mother smiled at me as if I knew this. When she realized, her face quickly flat-lined. “Oh, honey, I thought that he would have told you last night.”

“What do you mean, scholarship? To where?”

“Alec received a baseball scholarship out of the city.” My world suddenly turned upside down. I wanted to know why Alec didn’t tell me.

              I was driving my SUV back home from my eldest son Quinn’s soccer practice when my kids started to fight in the back seat.

“Mom!” screamed my four-year-old son, Payton. “He’s hitting me!”

              “Quinn!” I scream back. “Stop hitting your brother!”

              Twenty years after high school, this is what my life had become. Don’t get me wrong; I loved my kids and would do anything for them. Still, things just didn’t turn out the way that I planned when I was seventeen.

              The budding romance of high school was just a distant memory, cut short by the shears of adulthood. We tried to make our long distance relationship work, but over a phone call we decided to cut ties. The idea was that we would get back together after college. However, after not seeing Alec for a year, I met Paul. He was an engineer at my college, and he seemed to like me very much. Paul was a goofy kind of a guy, much different than Alec. I loved Paul, even though his idea of a good time was an ultracompetitive night of bowling and McDonald’s french fries.

Still, I didn’t feel that it was fair to compare our relationship to what Alec and I had. After all, I was just a girl when I first fell in love. I was beginning to believe that love was watching a singing competition together on the couch.

After five years of dating, Paul asked me to marry him. I agreed and we had a modest wedding in a church that his parents picked. A couple of years later we had our first son, Quinn. Two years after that, we welcomed Payton.

The kids made my life better than it had ever been. However, carrying two kids nearly back-to-back put stress on my body. My thin girlish frame was now full with curves. I still got attention from other men, likely due to my now large breasts and full butt. Paul, on the other hand, did not seem as excited. After the birth of our second son, he stopped wanting to have sex.  A year later, I discovered that he was having an affair with a female engineer in his office. She wasn’t much to look at, but she was also thin as a rail. I guess that was what Paul liked.

After all of these years, the one person I couldn’t get out of my mind was Alec. He was eventually drafted into the major leagues for baseball. Playing on the Holdsburg Incredibles, he was never the star player, but I always recognized him in the outfield. Watching him on television brought tingles to my stomach. During my failing marriage, I made a pact to never watch another game with Alec in it again. It was just too much to handle when my life was going down the tube. Alec always felt like the one that got away. That’s why I felt so overwhelmed when twenty years after high school, Alec called me on the phone.

              “Hi, Carla,” Alec said on the receiver. He didn’t even have to say his name. After all of these years, he still had the same warm sounding voice. Just hearing it brought me back to us swinging on the hammock in the backyard.

              “Are you really calling me?” I asked in wonder.

              “Yes,” he replied with a little bit of a laugh. There was a moment of silence between us.  It was finally hitting me over how much time had truly passed. At this moment, I wondered what our relationship truly was. Past lovers? High school sweethearts? Long lost friends? I didn’t know the answer.

              “How have you been?” I asked.

              “Well, a lot has gone on,” he started. “I’m retired now.”

              “You’re done with baseball?”

              “It’s one of those jobs that really takes a toll on a man.”

“I understand,” I said. “Where are you living these days?”

              “I bought a house here, in Eastgate.” I froze. Out of all of the things that I thought Alec would tell me, this was not one of them. To have him this close to me was an overwhelming feeling.

              “You moved back home?” I said in a forced calm-sounding manner. My heart was racing.

              “I just missed it here,” he explained. There was another pause. Then he spoke again. “Do you want to catch up sometime? I have this gigantic kitchen and no one to cook for. What are you doing tomorrow night?”

              “Oh,” I replied. I didn’t know what to say. Of course, I wanted to see him again. On the other hand, I looked so much different now. I was worried what Alec might think. “I’ve got two little kids now and there’s so much going on.”

              “Bring them along!” he said. He must not have any kids himself, I thought.

              “You know what,” I replied. “I’ll find a babysitter and I’ll be there.”

              “Great!” I could almost hear that he was smiling. “I’ll message you the address. How does seven sound?”

              “That sounds perfect,” I replied.

              “It’ll be a great time catching up, Carly,” he said. It was strange to hear him call me that. I hadn’t been called by that nickname in years.

              “It will be,” I agreed. Ten years ago, I would have been ready to meet him full-force. However, after two kids and a messy divorce, I felt anything but prepared.

              After telling my mother about my talk with Alec, she volunteered to babysit the boys. It took me about three hours to get ready. Every dress I tried on from my closet didn’t seem to fit me the way that I wanted to. I looked for something that would bring us back to our days in high school.

Digging deeper into my tiny closet, I pulled out a purple dress. I bought it a couple of years earlier but never wore it. In fact, the tags were still attached. I always knew that I bought it because it reminded me of my high school prom dress in color. However, it was much more casual and could be worn any day of the week. I knew that the real reason I didn’t wear it was because it reminded me of Alec.

Putting on the dress, I examined myself in the mirror. It fit perfectly. The swerves of my hips jutted out, and my breasts looked full, but not massive. It really was the perfect choice. Still, my stomach was in knots.

Before heading out the door, I ripped off the tags of the dress, and I applied some natural tone makeup. A light amount of lipstick and a balanced amount of eyeliner finished the ensemble. Finally, I stepped out the door and drove to Alec’s.

~

              Alec’s home was a craftsman style two-story house. It was in a new neighborhood along the forested hills of the city. The house was large enough to feel impressive but small enough that no one would assume a baseball player lived there.

              “Hey, stranger,” Alec was beaming as he answered the door. His boyish features were still there inside of his scruffy, masculine face. He was wearing jeans and a three-quarter-length soft cotton shirt. Standing next to him, I remembered his height. I also recalled how much I loved being inside of his large embrace. “Come in!”

              I stepped inside of the house that smelled fresh and new. We looked at each other for a moment, as if both of us didn’t know what to say or do.

              “You look great,” I said to him.

              “Thanks,” he replied. “You look amazing yourself.”

              “I look like the big creature that ate the girl you once knew,” I scoffed. I knew that is was not very flattering to point out my insecurities, but I also felt that I couldn’t take compliments at that moment.

              “You’ve always been good at the self-deprecating thing,” Alec smiled. “To me, you look all grown up.”

              I couldn’t tell if what he said was a good thing. I guessed that it was a naïve notion to believe that a major league baseball player would still have feelings for the girl he met back in high school.

              “It’s been so long,” I said in disbelief.

              “I know,” he added. “I hope you don’t mind but your mother gave me your number when I called.”

              “Oh, she’s such a loud mouth,” I joked. “No, this is perfectly fine.”

              “Okay, good,” Alec feigned the sound of being relieved by my answer. I could smell the warm scent of a freshly prepared meal.

              “What’s that amazing smell?” I asked.

              “Oh!” he began to sound excited. “It’s the dinner I made us.”

              “Alec cooks?” I joked.

              “Can you believe it?” he laughed. His smile was contagious. My guard dropped the moment I saw it.

              I followed him into the kitchen where he showed me a three-course meal he had prepared. The first was a candied walnut salad with goat cheese. The second were hand rolled short pasta stuffed with cream and lobster. Just when I thought that I had enough, Alec pulls out the main dish, which was a cut of the best steak that I had ever tasted. He even made a paired sauce from scratch.

              “I’m going to be honest here,” I said through a sip of red wine. “You being able to cook like this is such a turn on.”

              “After all of these years I can still turn you on?” Alec grinned. “I guess my old age hasn’t caught up to my looks yet.”

              I looked at for a moment. There we were, two adults in our mid thirties, joking around like we did back in high school. Still, I felt like I didn’t know enough about him after all of the years I spend avoiding his image.

              “How have you been?” I decided to ask the simplest question in hopes that I could get the most answers.

              “I’ve been great. I’m glad to be done with baseball, it was really taking a lot out of me.”

              “You don’t think that you’ll miss it ever?”

              “Maybe if I do, I just coach little league, ” he laughed. “Maybe your little guys can join my league.”

              “That would be great!” I agreed.

              “So how’s being a mom?”

              “Challenging,” I started. “Quinn and Payton are adorable little handfuls, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

              “What do they do?”

              “Other than do everything wrong and then make me clean it up?” I scoffed. Alec started laughing.

              “You always could make me smile,” he said.

              “You, too,” I said while starting to feel the wine get to my head.

              “I would have loved to have kids,” he said.

              “I have two of them if you want to take one?” I joked.

              “Oh, I couldn’t put you out,” Alec joked back. “Though I did always want a boy.”

              “Why didn’t you?” I asked. “Don’t all baseball players end up with skinny little blondes with heads too big for their bodies?”

              “Something like that,” Alec laughed. “But I guess that it’s not for all of us. I had relationships, just none of them ended up being with the right person.”

              “I completely understand,” I said raising my glass. “My ex-husband wasn’t the right choice, but I still chose him. He left me for someone else, moved to a different part of the world, and rarely pays child support so I live in a tiny two-bedroom apartment. I love my kids, though, so that makes things worth it in a way.”

I looked over at Alec, who didn’t seem to know how to respond to my gushing. “So, are you going to give me a tour?”

              “I would love to,” Alec said standing up from the table. I stood up after him and felt my head spin a little. After all of the wine that I had, I set myself up for an interesting rest of the evening.