Boys Of Summer: Sliding Home / Fever Pitch / The Sweet Spot. Leslie Kelly
he said, “what were you doing under there, anyway?” A disturbing thought made his mouth pull tight. “Please tell me you weren’t tracking down any more, uh, self-help books.”
A soft trill of laughter escaped her curved lips. When she laughed, dimples appeared in her cheeks and her eyes sparkled behind the glasses. Another sizzling flash of heat shot through him. It was accompanied by a further tightening of his jeans. Even the image of his grandfather’s frown wasn’t enough to relax the muscles in the southern half of his body.
“What if I were?” she asked, sounding flirtatious. “Are you looking for something like that to read?”
A sex manual? Uh, no. Considering the way he was feeling about this particular female, he probably could have written one himself. Stepping closer, he murmured, “Do you think I need one?”
He thought she’d step back, back down. She didn’t. Instead, her lips pursed, almost warning him that she was taking the challenge and upping the ante. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on whether you shined up that halo again today. Did you?”
He would have laughed if he could have forced the sound out of his tight throat. Halo? Man, the way he was reacting to her right now, he might as well have a pitchfork behind his back.
Cool it, a voice in his head said. She’s not your type. This time, he recognized the voice as his own, not Gramps’s.
Knowing he needed to stop this before he did something stupid like kiss the laughter right out of Janie’s pretty mouth, he glanced around for a distraction. The items he’d dropped when diving to cushion her fall were good enough. Bending over to pick them up, he gave himself a few seconds to get a grip.
“Thanks for, you know, trying to make sure I didn’t get hurt,” she said softly, obviously realizing he really had been trying to protect her a few minutes ago.
He shrugged, depositing the peanut container and other items on a table beside the bed. “No problem. So, you never answered my question. What were you looking for?”
“You’re probably not going to like hearing this,” she said, suddenly sounding amused, “but I’m looking for a pearl earring which might have been lost, uh…here.”
He stopped her, throwing one hand up, palm out. “That’s far enough. I don’t want to hear another word. What, do they serve raw oyster gruel in this place?”
One of her fine brows arched up over an eye. “Gruel? Reading Charles Dickens lately?”
“Sorry. I guess this is a bit upscale to be the workhouse.”
A wicked glint appeared in her eyes. “Nice to know you can read more than the sports page.”
He caught the insult and couldn’t help grinning. She did have a wicked streak. He liked it. A lot. “I think can even manage to count to a hundred.”
“Because that’s your batting average?”
Clutching his chest, he let out an exaggerated groan. “Now that hurt. My grandfather didn’t tell me that mouth of yours was a lethal weapon.”
“Locked and loaded.”
He’d like to see her mouth locked and loaded. Locked on his. Loaded with his tongue. Or other parts of his anatomy.
Her face grew pink, which was when Riley realized she’d had the same flash of mental imagery he’d had. She was blushing.
Damn it, that sweetly embarrassed look was such a turn-on when contrasted with the saucy, sexy comebacks this girl was capable of throwing around. It was also a double-edged sword. The color in her cheeks was attractive as hell, but also served as a reminder that this was no experienced groupie he was messing with. She was young and fresh, and Gramps’s second-favorite female. He needed to keep his horny thoughts—and hands—off her.
Which was why, as difficult as it was, he managed to say, “Well, it was nice to see you again. Thanks for everything.”
She opened her mouth, her lips quivering a bit, as if she had something to say. Something she wasn’t sure how to say.
Riley wasn’t ready to hear it. If she said one more even flirtatious thing, he was gonna be tempted to push her against the wall and taste that mouth, sample that sweet, sassy tongue.
“Bye, Just Janie,” he said, giving her the same friendly, flirtatious smile he gave every female fan from eight to eighty.
Then he strode out of the room. He only hoped she didn’t correctly interpret his quick footsteps down the corridor and realize he was practically running away.
Five weeks later, late May
“OKAY, MISSY, it was your idea to go after our fantasy men, so don’t you think it’s time to get down to business?”
Janie didn’t even turn around at the sound of Callie Andrews’s voice as her good friend invaded the stockroom of Round The Bases. Instead, she brushed the dust off a shoebox full of trading cards. An old woman had brought them in earlier, asking fifty dollars for the lot to get them out of her late husband’s closet. Judging by the dust, they’d been there a long time. Janie had no idea if she’d paid too much or too little, but she’d figured they had to be old and therefore worth something.
Besides, the woman had looked as if she needed the money, and, as her family always reminded her, Janie was a pushover. Hadn’t she been the one who’d taken every blanket in their house and given them to the needy during her junior year of high school? Her father had muttered under his breath all that winter about the cold he couldn’t shake, while also beaming over his daughter’s kindness.
And she’d never forget his expression the time she’d volunteered the whole family—and their turkey—to a homeless shelter the year before her parents had died. Somehow, the memory of their good-natured grumbles but secretly proud smiles made the memory of that last Thanksgiving even more special than all those that had preceded it.
“Did you hear me?” Callie asked, her smooth tone holding amusement, as if she knew Janie had been avoiding her.
“I heard you,” Janie said. She didn’t turn around, not wanting to see Callie’s disappointment that she hadn’t gone through with the plan to seduce someone connected with the Slammers.
Seduction—wild sex, heat and eroticism—had been filling her mind since the March day when Janie had first met Riley Kelleher. The man had filled her nighttime dreams and her daytime fantasies. She’d never been as instantly affected by a man, never. And his being a baseball star had absolutely nothing to do with it, Janie had no doubt of that. His smile, his laugh, his incredible eyes and amazing body—well, Riley could have worked selling peanuts at the stadium and she’d still have wanted him every bit as much.
“It’s been over two months since we sat in your stockroom and you came up with the idea to seduce our fantasy guys. To have one wild fling, even if we had to act like groupies to get it. You’ve done nothing about it,” Callie said, not giving up.
Janie hadn’t expected her to. Callie was nothing if not determined, probably one reason all their businesses—Callie’s four-star restaurant, this store and Babe Bannister’s ice-cream shop—were thriving. Callie was a great businesswoman and kept a steady stream of customers coming to this sports-themed complex, despite the lingering fears that the Slammers might leave town.
The team had been winning throughout the month of May, and the fans were standing by the Ross family, especially since opening day when team owner Donovan Ross had revealed the reason he’d used the Slammers as collateral on a risky loan. Still, there was that uncertainty, especially since the team had lost their last few games.
“Stop pretending you’re fascinated by that dusty old box of cards when I know you have no idea who any of the players on them are. Let’s make a plan