Designated Hitter (Reedsville Roosters Book 4) (4 page)

“You get around, huh?”

He drew in a long breath and jammed his hands into the pockets of his khakis. “Don’t have a choice. Gotta work. Got bills to pay.”

“Shouldn’t you—” She clamped her lips on the question and stepped out of the cramped room. His financial situation was none of her business. “Do you want lunch? It sounds like everyone has taken a break for it. You might as well, too.”

“I want to finish this. I hate leaving projects undone when they could be finished in a few hours.”

She turned her back to him and stared at the hallway wall so she didn’t have to keep trying so hard to keep the looks of surprise off her face. Either the guy wasn’t the lazy layabout she’d thought he was, or he was doing a damned good job of pulling the wool over her eyes. She really hoped the latter wasn’t the case. If he turned out to be a dud, she’d probably put off her plans of hiring the project manager she needed. It was so hard to trust people after her ex Zach’s childish antics.

Don’t think about him.
Thoughts of him were just going to get her flustered and angry, and she didn’t want to lash out at people about past transgressions they had nothing to do with.

“You’ve got to get supplies, don’t you?” she asked, and turned to face him again.

“I’ll go get them now and run back.”

“I’ve got an account at the building supply store, but eat first. Come on.” She canted her head toward the hallway.

It seemed she was inviting him along. That hadn’t been her intention when she went looking for him, but the idea didn’t bother her so much. She spent so much time eating alone it had become her normal, and she’d come to prefer being in her own company than with someone else who hit all the right talking points but all the wrong buttons. Quinn hit the right buttons, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted to hear him talk.

He squeezed past the washer and dryer.

She gestured toward the back door. “Drinks are in the cooler out there. We could share a sub.”

He chuckled.

“That funny?”

“Sorry. My mind just went to a very salacious place.”

“Do tell.”

“Nah. Wouldn’t want to scandalize you.”

She rolled her eyes and shouldered open yet another sticking door. She needed to add those doors to her list of things to have the carpenter look at…or rather for Quinn to have the carpenter look at. “You’d be surprised at how hard to stun I am.” Kneeling in front of the cooler of drinks, she rooted out an ice-cold bottle of water, handed it to Quinn, and then plucked out another. From beside the cooler, she grabbed the canvas sack of deli food she’d deposited upon return. “We can sit in the gazebo. No paint smell there, and there’s a little shade.”

He folded his arms over his chest and grinned in that frustrating way that made her belly flutter. “You gonna sit and have lunch with me?”

“Only if you tell me what the joke was.”

“You really want to know?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t have wasted my breath speaking if I didn’t.”

“All right, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You said we could share a sub, and I started thinking about how it takes a special kind of person to be shared like that.”

His meaning settled into her brain in pieces. He meant sub as in
submissive
. Even with her gutter-dwelling mind, she hadn’t picked up the double-entendre.

She swallowed and resisted the urge to drag the cool water bottle across her warm brow. “I take it you’re not the kind of man who’d like to be shared.”

He grunted and took the bag from her. He started walking, and she followed, somehow managing to keep her gaze above the waist. “Nah. I can only have one person bossing me around at a time.”

“And do you prefer that? Being bossed around, I mean.”

He stepped up into the elevated gazebo and set the bag on the bench. The gaze he fixed on her was both intense and wary—like he was choosing his words carefully because he
had
to speak, had to put that information out there for her to consume, but didn’t want it to bite him in the ass.

Tell me, Quinn.

The fact he’d filtered himself at all was a good thing. It meant that he learned, and was mindful of how his words would affect the people he said them to. Another thing she hadn’t thought him capable of.

“Most of the time I prefer it,” he said finally. “Sometimes, though, I like to have a say. Some folks don’t like that. They like you to be one way or the other. Not both.”

“You’re a switch?”

The shock that registered on his face was fleeting.

She suspected that he was practiced in keeping his expressions neutral, but he didn’t always bother. He didn’t speak, just sipped.

She watched. She wasn’t going to direct the conversation yet because she wanted him to say as much or as little as he needed to without her leading him. Curious as she was, she wouldn’t ask any probing questions. Generally, she reserved those for partners she wanted to keep. She didn’t want to keep Quinn…or at least, she didn’t think she did. She was becoming less certain.

He twisted the cap back on and raised a querying gaze to her. “I think it depends on who I’m with and what I need from them. I guess I’m a switch with stronger compulsions one way over the other.”

Which way?
She wanted to ask, but she couldn’t really ask that without dropping a few hints about her own preferences. It was a topic wholly unsuitable for a professional environment.

She reached into the bag and pulled out containers that held her favorite salads. One, she gave to Quinn along with a plastic fork. She reserved the other for herself and then reached into the bag for the foot-long sandwich.

“You were going to eat that whole thing yourself?” he asked.

“Maybe I have a big appetite.”

He bobbed his brows. “I know I sure do, when I’m in the mood.” His crooked grin and heated gaze hinted that perhaps he wasn’t referencing food.

They should have never taken the conversation to that place, but since they had, she
had
to ask some questions. The curiosity was going to drive her to distraction for the rest of the afternoon, and she had too much to do. She pulled her stare away from him and unwrapped the sandwich. “This conversation has taken on a decidedly unprofessional bent, but I’m going to ask this question anyway.”

“Let me have it. I’m sufficiently braced.”

“Good. How’d you come to learn about your…appetites?” She risked a look up at him and watched him working the cap of his water between his fingers.

For a minute, he watched her watch him, but then leaned back against the bench and shrugged. “Trial and error like everyone else.”

“Lots of trials?”
Lots of fleeting girlfriends. Lots of playmates at The Den, probably.
He didn’t have a reputation for monogamy. But then again, neither did she lately.

Nice application of double standard.

He didn’t answer. He peeled the lid off the macaroni salad and tipped the container toward her.

She gave her head a slight shake. “Eat what you want. We’ll swap when you’ve had enough. The other one is German potato salad. I couldn’t decide what I wanted today.”

He extended his long legs toward the center of the gazebo, and then crossed them at the ankles. “You don’t strike me as the indecisive type.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He took the sandwich half she offered and peeled back the wax paper. “So, where are you going when you’re done with this project? You’re staying to the end, right? Not gonna leave me here up to my own devices?”

“I don’t know. Are you saying I shouldn’t trust you to make good choices?”

He scoffed and took a big bite of the sandwich. It was an obvious stalling tactic, but she was patient when she had to be, and she needed the silence, anyway. She was using those little pockets of time to unpack his words and actions. To
understand
him.

“Most folks don’t trust me,” he said.

“I get the distinct impression that you don’t give most folks a good reason to trust you.”

“I figure I’ll save them the trouble of trying.”

“That’s a hell of a way to go through life, Quinn.”

He took another bite. “It is what it is.”

“How’d you get to be that way?”

“Maybe I’ve always been like that.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Why not?”

It was her turn to shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to find some reason to trust you. Maybe I
want
to trust you.”

“So you can leave me here while you do other stuff.”

She flinched. “Well, a girl’s gotta make money.”

“You’ve got plenty of that already, don’t ya?” he asked dryly.

She put her spine against the seat back and stabbed her fork, perhaps a bit too aggressively, into the potato salad. “Had to go there, huh?” A couple of little starchy cubes went flying over the railing.

“Shit, Marina, I didn’t mean to piss you off,” he said quietly. “I figured it was a well-known fact. Maybe it was tacky of me to state it, though.”

“I don’t appreciate the implication that having money means I don’t do work or don’t know how to make my money work for me. I’d love to be at the beach right now or on my boat”—he raised an eyebrow, and she poked his shoulder hard—“that I paid for with money
I
earned. If you’re hostile to me that I got a leg up in life, I get it. I do. If I could turn back the hands of time, I wouldn’t
choose
not to be wealthy. That’s silly. But having money to spare doesn’t mean I’m not productive or that I don’t try to redistribute some of my wealth.”

He dragged his free hand along the scruff on his chin and eyed her for a moment. There was no heat to his gaze this time. It was more pensive and assessing.

She wondered what he saw when he looked at her like that, and whether or not he liked it.

“I don’t like talking about religion or politics or money,” he said, “but hopefully won’t be too out of line if I ask what you do with it all. I just can’t imagine being that rich.”

Probably no more than she could imagine having a blue-collar upbringing. She tried to humble herself as much as she could, but she knew better than anyone that her privilege blinded her to some things. Although she strived to be sensitive, often, she lacked empathy. She didn’t have the right experiences to draw on.

She let out a ragged breath and plucked a bit of errant banana pepper off her sandwich half. “I don’t go around buying baseball teams, I can tell you that much.”

He laughed. An honest-to-goodness
you amuse me
laugh that made his smile broad and eyes bright. “Nobody in her right mind would want that kind of frustration.”

“So you assholes
know
you’re frustrating, then.”

“Hey. You can’t really count me in that lot anymore since I no longer have a place on the team.”

“And how do you feel about that?” His tone had been so level and resigned that she couldn’t get a reading off him about it.

Maybe he didn’t care anymore, but she cared a little. He was a good player. It was a shame he hadn’t been able to get major league attention, because he had all the right stuff. He was fast, limber, had a phenomenally good arm, and could hit a ball like a demon. He also had a face that cameras loved. While that certainly wasn’t a requirement of playing major league ball, it sure as hell didn’t hurt.

“Baseball was important to me for a long time. It still is, I guess, but some things you just have to let go of.”

“I’m not so sure it’s time. You could always play in the Caribbean like Boswell did a couple of years ago,” she said. “Might get some attention from other teams.”

He grimaced. “I dunno. I think I’d be better off hustling here.”

“Being a manservant, you mean?”

“And other things.” He took another bite of sandwich.

She let her knee bob and stared at him until he was done chewing. “Is it all about money for you?”

“Money makes my world go ’round, let’s put it that way.”

“What do you do with it?”

“What do you do with
yours
, if not buying baseball teams?” He cast her a narrow-eyed glare that hinted that she’d touched a sore spot, but she wasn’t going to back off. She felt like she was finally getting somewhere with the man—learning what made him tick.

He gnawed on one of his cuticles, eying her with suspicion.

He didn’t trust her, and she didn’t like that feeling one bit. She was the one who was usually so reticent to trust.

“Fine,” she said softly. She set down the potato salad container, brushed some sandwich crumbs off the bodice of her dress, and waited for him to meet her gaze. “There’s a website that lets people with cash to spare seed fresh starts for ladies who need them. Sometimes, those ladies just need a place to stay because they’re running from an abusive partner. Maybe they’ve got an obscene amount of medical debt because they were treated for some hard-to-cure illness. Maybe their banks are threatening to foreclose on their houses because they had to take out new mortgages to help their kids pay for college or bail them out of jail. Or maybe they’ve just got a damn good idea for a business and absolutely no capital and no credit.”

“You…
help
them?”

“Sometimes anonymously, sometimes not. When we’re talking big money, I want to meet them and make sure they’re not running a scam. I haven’t been burned yet, but I’m sure it’ll happen one day. I try not to let that deter me.”

“Noble of you.”

She turned her hands over. “I don’t see it as noble, but rather something I simply have to do. My father inherited most of his wealth from my grandmother. When she was alive, he used to criticize her for giving away so much of her money, but she figured, ‘I can’t take it with me when I go,’ and she wanted to have a say in where it went. Sure, she put some aside for her children, but the vast majority of her wealth went to charities. Her sister’s convent, for one. It had always done good aid work. Disaster relief. That sort of thing.”

“Where’d she get all that money?”

“Being descended from royalty has its perks, I guess.”

Quinn stopped fondling his sandwich, and groaned. “God, does that make you some kind of princess?”