Pitch Perfect: Boys of Summer, Book 1 (23 page)

Tucker, who wasn’t pitching that day, finished his session with her when Alex arrived. Alex was—as Emmy predicted—late, but not by the lengths she’d anticipated. Tucker and Alex swapped spots on the table, and a knowing glance passed between the three of them.

Of course Alex would know she’d gone home with Tucker. He’d been responsible for getting the pitcher to show up at the bar in the first place. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hug him for being a brilliant wingman, or smack him for being presumptuous.

At least he hadn’t taken advantage of her himself. There might be something noble about Alex after all.

“How you feeling this fine morning?” he asked, keeping his voice almost level, but a hint of teasing snuck in.

“Just fine.”

“
Just
fine?”

Tucker, still only five feet away, sipped his water and watched the two of them with passive interest. He didn’t seem like he intended to come to her rescue with Alex, leaving her to her own devices, which had served her fine thus far in her life.

“I don’t think I’ll be signing up to be your drinking buddy any time soon, but I’ll survive.”

“Smart girl.”

“
Hola
, Lloyd.” Ramon snapped his fingers at Tucker from the doorway. “I said do you want to run some drills with me? I need a good arm.”

“Sure,” Tucker said, only hesitating slightly. It wasn’t as if he could spend all morning in the training suite with Emmy. He might not be playing, but she still had a job to do, and it would look highly suspect if he was in there with her for hours on end, regardless of the fact they wouldn’t be alone.

Ramon and Tucker left for the changing room, the first baseman nattering about something in Spanglish, which Tucker either understood or had learned to play along with because it didn’t slow their conversation down in the slightest.

Emmy returned her attention to Alex, getting him to lie back on the table while she extended each leg and guided him through a series of stretches.

“You’re a good person, right?” he asked out of the blue. They’d spent a solid ten minutes in complete silence apart from her brusque commands.

“I think so,” she answered uncertainly.

“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

Emmy stopped what she was doing, still holding Alex’s knee and half lying on him as she stretched out his thighs. It was an awkward position to be in when a man started asking questions about her intentions.

“I don’t plan to.”

“Good. Because I want you to know he’s not like the other guys here. He’s not the kind of guy who has let money and fame and all that shit go to his head. He
tried
dating a model once.”

Emmy felt a pang, now concerned there was no way she could match up physically to whatever Victoria Secret pinup Tucker had dated previously. Those girls were perfection. She was only Emmy.

“Oh.”

“And she was plum fucking nuts. She was greedy, and stupid and just awful. She was a terrible person, and she did such a wringer on him. Convinced him to buy her stuff, take her places, and in the end she fucked off and left him heartbroken.”

Suddenly Emmy wasn’t worried about looking like a model anymore. She was too busy wondering how anyone in their right mind could want to do something to destroy Tucker. She didn’t need Alex to tell her Tucker was a good man. He was one of the kindest, most genuinely nice people she’d ever met.

Any woman who could walk all over a man like that in order to get money and a vacation? A woman like that deserved to have a five-inch stiletto planted directly up her bony ass.

“I would never do that to him.”

“I hope not.”

“And what if he hurts me?” Emmy asked, extending Alex’s leg straight and digging her fingers into the tissue of his knee. He winced.

“Emmy…I’m not sure anyone could hurt you.”

Her tension eased, and she bent his knee back towards his chest, tilting it to the side so it was flush with his opposite thigh.

“Alex, you’re a good-looking kid, but you’re probably the stupidest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”

The catcher laughed. “I can’t believe it took you this long to figure it out.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ominous black clouds hung over the outfield like an angry ghost, and the grounds crew waited with rain slickers, arms crossed on the sidelines waiting to see if the storm would settle in or disperse. The fans had their jackets zipped up to their necks and hats pulled low, but the diehards weren’t going anywhere, a few preemptively wearing clear ponchos.

“What do you think?” Emmy asked, readjusting her ponytail against the building wind.

Miles paced in front of the fence, chewing his lip and staring at the building tempest. “Dunno.”

Chuck sat on the bench, a wad of Big League Chew crammed into the pouch of his cheek. His response was even less involved than Miles’s had been. Instead of saying anything, he grunted and scratched his inner thigh beneath his balls.

The air temperature dropped with each passing moment, making Emmy wish she’d worn a thicker sweater under her training jacket. It still surprised her how cold San Francisco could get in the middle of summer. Back in Chicago she’d have expected this temperature from later September, not August.

She tossed her med bag under the bench and rifled through the snacks on the back ledge of the dugout, stuffing a handful of seasoned sunflower seeds into her pocket. Swirling her fingers in the small nest of kernels, she withdrew two and popped them in her mouth, sucking the seasoning off as she moved to the fence.

Several of the players leaned with their arms flopped over the railing, watching the empty field with the same wary interest as the grounds crew. Diagonally across the home plate the Cleveland Indians were similarly posed, chewing gum or cracking seeds while watching the empty field.

The air crackled with electricity, making the fine hairs on the back of Emmy’s neck stand at attention. Since the game couldn’t start until they got the all clear from the front office telling them it was safe to go forward, they would wait.

And wait.

The longest Emmy had waited out a rain delay was two and a half hours in the height of Chicago’s summer heat. She was hoping the clouds would shift towards Oakland and leave them to the game, but it didn’t look promising.

No matter how menacing it appeared, the decision couldn’t be made until the rain started to fall. And even then they had to wait to see if it would blow over or settle.

She cracked a seed open with her teeth, spitting the shell onto the dugout floor. In a line beside her the boys spit their own shells in unison. And as a team, they
all
waited.

Tucker sidled up beside her, his jumble of long, lean limbs newly fascinating to her. She watched his hands out of the corner of her eye while he played with a ball, tossing it back and forth and looking at the field the same way everyone else was.

His nimble, wonderful fingers.

Emmy’s mouth watered, and she sucked hard on the seed between her teeth to distract herself.

“Gonna give me some?”

Emmy choked on the seed. “What?”

“Seeds,” he said, a rich laugh bubbling in his throat. “Do you have any extra for me?”

“Oh.” She dug through her pocket, and as she fumbled for the sunflower seeds, Tucker’s lips brushed her ear. She couldn’t believe how many times he tricked her with his cheeky word choices.

“If you want to give me something else, though, I might have a few ideas.”

Emmy went rigid, unable to move or speak. Her breathing shallowed, and she stared straight forward. Her skin erupted in goose bumps, and she nodded in a barely perceptible way, as if to say
go on
.

Tucker’s breath moved over her skin like a hot counterbalance to the chilly air, setting her nerve ends on fire. It was like he was touching her without ever lifting a finger, and just the suggestion of him wanting her made her more aware of all the things he could do to her.

Everything he
had
done to her.

“Do you know what I want to do to you?” he asked.

“No,” she whispered.

“I want them to call this game. I want to take you back to my place, take off all those clothes, and I want to lick every inch of you. I like the way you squirm when I touch you. I want to hear you say my name while you’re sitting on my—”

“Fucking weather,” Ramon said, coming up on Tucker’s other side.

Emmy made a small
erp
noise, halfway between a hiccup and a squeak. Tucker straightened and gave Emmy a knowing smile, and she had to look away before she blushed so ferociously she passed out.

“What do you think?” Tucker asked.

“I think the weather stinks,” Ramon replied.

“No, I want to know what Emmy thinks of the suggestion I was making before you came.”

Emmy garbled a cough and played it cool since Ramon was watching them. “I think it’s an excellent idea,” she answered, careful not to say too much.

“What is?” Ramon asked.

“I’m feeling a little stiff,” Tucker said matter-of-factly, not showing for a second there was a euphemistic meaning to his words. “Emmy was going to help me stretch some more if the game gets canceled.”

“Canceled?” Ramon looked appalled at the very idea. “No offense, friend, but fuck your arm. I want to
play
. We don’t get paid to watch games.”

“We
do
get paid to watch games,” Tucker countered.

“Maybe
you
, Mister One-Game-in-Five. But some of us like the idea of actually getting out there every day.”

Emmy was just relieved Ramon had missed the point of Tucker’s comments because he was so aghast at the idea of not getting to show off on first base. Tucker, apparently also aware Ramon had missed his less-than-subtle announcement, was smirking in a satisfied way and throwing the ball up. If Emmy wasn’t mistaken, Tucker was trying very hard not to laugh.

A flash of lightning lit the skyline, and a fraction of a second later the crash of thunder echoed through the stadium, booming off the concrete steps. Throughout the seats people rose and started moving towards the exits, those unwilling to wait out the rain giving up and heading home before the heavens opened.

Emmy had never wanted it to rain so badly in her whole life.

Off to the sides of the field, the grounds crew was getting restless, moving into position behind the large tarps they would have to roll out over the infield.

Tucker lifted the hood of his warm-up hoodie—the same one he’d worn that morning—and waggled his brows at Emmy.

“Looks like rain.”

Two tense hours later the game was called. Tucker had kept his distance from Emmy after making his initial suggestion. He didn’t want to crowd her, but more importantly he couldn’t stay close without letting his desire get the best of him.

Still, he prowled like a caged animal, watching Emmy and the sky in equal turns. The part of him that loved his team—and it was the biggest part of him—wanted the bad weather to literally blow over so they could get out and win the game.

But the part of him that knew this game wouldn’t decide his future was the same part that’d been inside Emmy earlier in the day and wanted very badly to be back there again.

As soon as humanly possible.

Once it was clear the tarps would not be removed and the game wasn’t going to happen, the last of the fans filed out and the teams headed back to their clubhouses. Most of the less-keen players had gone in much earlier, but still Tucker maintained a gap between himself and Emmy, staying at the far end of the dugout while she packed up her supplies.

After the last of the players and coaching staff had gone inside and the relief pitchers had come in from the bullpen, Tucker finally moved closer.

“Jawbreaker?” he asked, offering her a plastic bin of candy.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she countered, then winked.

“I think I might need some special assistance.”

“I won’t disagree.” She hefted the large bag on her shoulder and waited for him next to the clubhouse steps. “Is it something I can help with?” Her tone was coy.

“I got all warmed up…”

“We need to take care of that. It’s bad to go to bed…all warmed up.”

“Have any ideas?” he asked, meeting her near the entrance to the clubhouse.

“I might. But we need to get out of here before I tell you.”

Tucker didn’t drive to the park on game days. It was part of the contract with the Felons that none of their key staff drive to games, regardless of how close they lived. Something to do with the insurance risks if the player was injured on the team’s time.

Since Tucker only lived a handful of blocks from the ballpark, he typically walked to the park and declined the car service. Driving in San Francisco traffic near the waterfront was an exhausting task and tended to take forever, even midday. Walking was often faster than driving.

But Emmy had farther to travel, and nothing in her contract blocked her from driving. So following the basic post-no-game stretches Emmy, Jasper and her crew had to do—especially for the poor starting pitcher who hadn’t pitched—she offered to drive back to Tucker’s condo.