Chapter 5

I speak fluent baseball.

-T-shirt

Sway

Screamer hit deep, Wang Hurt

I blinked at the headline.

“They did not write that in the paper,” I mumbled to myself, staring at the paper like something off of Punk’d.

“What are you mumbling about?” Ember asked from the seat beside me.

I tossed the paper into her lap, and she looked down.

It took her about fifteen seconds before she burst out laughing.

“Wang really is hurt,” I informed her. “He pulled a hamstring, and I expect him to be out for about five games.”

Ember looked over at me, a huge smile on her face.

“So, tell me more about Parts,” she ordered. “You told me that he was nice. Is that true?”

I thought about that for a moment. He was nice—to me.

He wasn’t nice to anyone else, though.

Not even other women.

“He’s nice to me,” I gave her. “But I’m not sure if that’s because he wants to get into my pants, or because he actually likes me.”

Ember grinned.

“He’s one of my favorites,” she smiled. “Did you know his brother, his twin, is a military contractor? That he used to be in the Air Force?”

My brows went up.

“No, I did not. How did you figure that out?” I asked suspiciously.

I knew everything there was to know about Hancock.

He was my favorite player in the league and I read every single article about him that came out. Surely, if his brother was in the military, that would be something flagged front and center in the news.

“His brother is friends with my husband,” she smiled. “He’s proud of Hancock.”

Now that didn’t surprise me. I was proud of Hancock, too. He’d come a long way in the six years he’d been playing professional baseball.

When he’d first entered the major leagues from the minors, it had been with a Texas-sized chip on his shoulder and something to prove.

It’d taken him three games to prove it, and he’d gone from the backup catcher to the starting catcher in that short amount of time.

Unfortunately, it was his inability to control his temper when it came to trash-talking the opposing team’s players that made it difficult for him to hang on to the position.

Until suddenly, one day, he wasn’t acting on his temper anymore.

That wasn’t to say that he still didn’t get into fights every once in a while. But that was completely normal for any player.

Then there was Crouse, the catcher for the Las Vegas Vikings.

He was the one man who could get under Hancock’s skin every single time they played, and this game was just the beginning of the series.

“I’m sure Hancock is pretty proud of his brother,” I offered.

“I am.”

My belly flipped, and I turned to look over my left shoulder.

“Uhhh,” I hesitated, finding Hancock standing there in jeans and a white t-shirt.

Hancock grinned. “I don’t mind that you know about my brother, but I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself. We try to keep the fact that I’m hot shit private so the bad guys don’t think to use him for ransom in case he gets captured or something.”

My mouth dropped open.

“You’re serious?” I asked in alarm.

He nodded his head.

Then a thought occurred to me.

“Is that why you don’t take pictures?” I whispered.

Except the whisper came out just as loud as my normal voice, causing Hancock, as well as Ember, to start laughing at me.

“No,” he shook his head. “I don’t like pictures because I don’t like pictures.”

“Oh,” I leaned back in my chair, then suddenly jumped up. “Are you okay?”

He held up his hand.

“Sit back down,” he ordered me.

I narrowed my eyes.

“I’m not hurt. Nor do I need your services.”

Ember snickered at my side, and I shot a glare in her direction.

She held her hands up in acquiescence. “Sorry, sorry.”

Hancock’s eyes went to her.

“And you are?” he drawled.

I was just about to retake my seat when I jumped back up, grabbing a hold of Hancock’s hand and dragging him to stand in front of Ember.

“Ember,” I dropped his hand. “This is Hancock Peters. Hancock, this is my good friend, Ember. She and I attended college together.”

Hancock offered his hand, and I had the irrational urge to slap Ember’s hand away, even though she was married to a very sexy exotic-looking man named Gabe. Happily married with two kids.

Get control of yourself, Sway!

Ember took his hand for only the barest of seconds, and then looked back at me.

“I’ve heard a lot about you over the last couple of weeks,” she smiled. “You know you’re Sway’s fav…”

I interrupted my good friend before she could decide to spill the beans. It wouldn’t do to give the man a bigger head than he already had.

“Then why are you in my office, Hancock?” I blurted.

He looked from me to Ember, and then back to me, before he smiled and shook his head.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “Just wanted to see if you’d go to breakfast with me.”

“I’m leaving!” Ember exclaimed quickly.

Too quickly.

It was more than obvious that she hadn’t originally planned on leaving.

In fact, she’d stopped to get donuts to bring with her.

Donuts that I was trying really, really hard not to shove into my mouth.

Hancock’s gaze went to the untouched donuts on my desk, then moved to Ember. He grinned widely.

“You said your husband knows my brother?” he asked.

She nodded emphatically.

“He does.”

If I didn’t know better, I would say that Ember was a little starstruck.

“I’d love to meet him some time. Does he come to games?” he asked.

Ember’s eyes widened. “Every once in a while.”

He smiled. “I’ll drop two tickets at the gate for you. I’d love to meet him.”

Ember started to nod somewhat frantically.

“I think he’d like that,” she gushed.

I rolled my eyes, and nearly laughed when she rushed to gather her things.

“I’ll see you tonight for the party?” Ember asked hopefully.

I looked over at Hancock, then back to Ember.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll be there once the game is over.”

Ember was backing out of the room when she suddenly stopped.

“If you’d like to bring Hancock, that’d be super,” she whispered to me just before she left the room completely. “Good luck tonight!”

***

Once we arrived at Waffle House of all places, Hancock went back to the interrogation.

“Your brother’s a baseball player, right?” Hancock asked, his eyebrows lifting with his question.

I nodded my head.

“He is,” I confirmed, wondering where he was going with this. “For the Sparks.”

“Then him being in the Major Leagues has to mean that he didn’t just start being a baseball player last week,” he continued.

I shook my head.

“No, he’s been playing since he was six and I was five,” I explained. “Why?”

His mouth kicked up at one corner.

“You reading Baseball for Dummies?” he hinted. “You’ve seen your brother play.”

I promptly blushed.

“My best friend, Rainie, was responsible for that,” I muttered, lifting my coffee cup to my mouth and taking a sip. “She thought she’d be funny and give it to me on my first big day right before the game. I opened it in the dugout.”

“Ahhh,” he nodded his head. “The blonde?”

I grinned.

“You saw her?” I guessed.

“It’s kind of hard not to see her,” he admitted.

I started to laugh.

“Rainie is an all-in kind of girl. She doesn’t do anything halfway if she can manage all the way,” I told him.

Explaining anything about Rainie was difficult to do at the best of times. Explaining her to a man like Hancock seemed rather impossible.

Hancock’s lips twitched as he tried to keep himself from laughing.

“What does your Rainie do?” he asked, leaning back so his legs could stretch out in front of him.

The movement put his legs directly against mine, and I struggled with not yanking my legs back as far as I could make them go.

Surely, it would be okay to allow his legs to touch mine…right?

“Rainie is a free spirit,” I told him, fondness for my best friend leeching into my voice. “She’s had eight jobs in the last two months, and she’s lived in three different apartments.”

“How does she manage to do that?” he asked curiously.

I took another sip of my coffee before answering.

“Her daddy is a bad ass lawyer who funds all of Rainie’s crazy whims,” I disclosed. “He pays her rent. Pays for her car. Pays for anything and everything. Pretty much allows Rainie to do whatever the hell she wants to do.”

Hancock lost his fight with his smile.

“Must be nice,” he muttered, taking his own sip of coffee.

My brows rose at that.

“Last I heard, you had a multi-million-dollar contract under way with the Lumberjacks,” I murmured. “Seems to me like you’re not hurting for money.”

Hancock nodded.

“I’m not,” he agreed. “Anymore,” he added. “But when I was younger…” he shook his head. “We survived on Ramen noodles, Beanie Weenies and peanut butter. And those were our good days.”

“Hmm,” I murmured. “We didn’t eat anything we didn’t grow or kill ourselves,” I informed him. “I think I was a senior in high school before we ate out for the first time.”

Hancock’s foot twitched, and I had to hold my breath when his bare foot touched mine.

We were both in flip-flops due to the excessive Texas heat, and that meant that we were skin on skin when he touched me underneath the table.

He watched me squirm with a gleam in his eyes, and I was just about to pull away when he stopped, his foot next to mine, and asked me his next question.

“What have you been doing since you graduated?” he asked. “Was this always a place you wanted to work for?”

I nodded my head.

“I wanted to work for the Sparks, actually, but then my brother got signed there, and I decided that I couldn’t handle seeing him every day. So, I applied here,” I grinned. “I’d been interning for Bob for a while when I was free, so it was nice to step right in as head athletic trainer when he decided to retire due to his heart attack.”

“Baseball season is long,” he agreed. “And Bob was old as fuck. It doesn’t surprise me that he signed on the dotted line.”

“So, in short, I really do know my shit when it comes to baseball,” I smiled. “I was head athletic trainer at UT Tyler for a couple of years before I got this job. A job I didn’t think I’d get,” I pointed out.

He set his empty coffee cup on the table in front of us and looked at me with those intriguing gray eyes.

Was it normal for eyes to be such an intense shade of gray?

And, oh my God. He had powdered sugar in his beard from his French toast.

Jesus Christ, I wanted to lick it off.

That would be inappropriate, though…wouldn’t it?

“You have powdered sugar…” I gestured at my own face where it was on his, and he lifted his hand to swipe at his beard.

“I was saving it for later,” he chuckled.

A grin stretched my mouth wide.

“That’s acceptable, I guess,” I said. “But I would hate for you to have pictures taken of you with food in your beard.”

I gestured at the table behind us full of women who were talking about Hancock. They were whispering quietly, of course, but I’d heard them ask four or five times already if they thought it’d be okay to ask for a picture.

He glanced at the girls, then leaned over and tugged his wallet free from his pocket.

After fishing out two twenties, he tossed them on the table and held his hand out for me.

“Let’s go,” he ordered.

Instead of taking his hand, I hastily sucked down what was left of my coffee—because hello! You don’t waste coffee! —and followed behind him as he rushed out the door.

He hadn’t waited for me, so I had to rush to catch up, and I didn’t miss the ‘she’s really fat for him’ comment I heard as I passed by one table in particular.

And, apparently, Hancock hadn’t missed it, either.

He stopped, turned, and headed back to the table that’d said the offending comment.

“What was that?” he asked the man who’d been unlucky enough to open his mouth.

I bit my lip, wondering if I should say it was okay or not.

But I chose to keep my mouth shut, because it sure as hell wasn’t okay. Not even a little bit.

What if he’d said that to someone who wasn’t like me? Who didn’t let stupid comments like that go because they knew whomever had said it was just talking out of his ass?

Although I was confident in my body, I was also sensitive about it.

Had we been in a different situation and someone had said that about me, I’d have flipped out on their ass.

With Hancock here, though, I hadn’t wanted to draw attention to the stupid man’s comment.

Hancock, obviously, didn’t have that same problem as me.

He lit into the guy with both barrels.

“I’m sorry,” Hancock stopped at the table. “Did I mishear what you had to say?”

The man’s mouth tightened.

“Because, if I’m not mistaken, I heard you call her a fat ass,” he indicated me with a thumb. “I must’ve misheard, because surely you wouldn’t call a woman as beautiful as she is fat.”

My face heated.

“Fat is a relative term,” the man said. “What’s fat to me isn’t going to be fat to you, obviously.”

Hancock’s brows rose.

“Is that right?” he asked. “And what makes you special? Why do you think it’s okay to talk badly about women who you don’t know?”

He was being incredibly calm about it, and I couldn’t figure out why.

I could tell he was angry by the way he was holding his body. He was stiff and immobile. But if you were listening to his words and tone, you would think he was just having a conversation about everyday random things.

“I…” the man started, but Hancock held his hand up.

“All I want out of you is an apology, not an explanation,” he grunted. “You may say it now.”

The man glared but his eyes turned to me.

As insincerely as possible, he spat the words. “I’m sorry for calling you fat.”

I nodded without saying thank you, because it was more than obvious that wasn’t an apology.

Hancock realized that as well.

“This your daughter?” Hancock asked the man, indicating the little girl who was watching the discussion between the two men with avid, fascinated eyes.

“Niece,” he murmured through pinched lips.

“And do you want someone saying that about your niece?” he challenged. “What would you do if some little boy came up to her and called her fat?”

“That’s not very nice, Uncle Hammond,” the little girl added her two cents.

Hancock’s eyes filled with laughter as he looked at the little girl.

“No, Ma’am. It’s not, is it?” he asked. “Have a good day, young lady. Stay out of trouble.”

Those last two words I wasn’t sure who they were focused on, but I assumed it was for the man and not the little girl.

Without another glance at the man, he turned on his heel and left the restaurant, leaving me once again to catch up.

“If you’d slow down, I wouldn’t have to jog to keep up with you. Oh, and people wouldn’t see things bouncing that shouldn’t be bouncing!” I called to his back.

He slowed and turned, surveying my bouncing bits as he waited for me to catch up to him.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I hate taking photos.”

“I noticed,” I said. “You ready to go?”

He nodded.

“Yep,” he sighed. “Have to be back for the game in an hour, and I need to drop you off and go back and get my stuff from my house.”

“I’m not against riding with you if you want to run by there,” I offered almost shyly.

He shot a small smile at me, and I had to take a deep breath as the full force of it hit me.

“It’ll take half an hour to get there from here,” he added as if he was making sure it was okay.

I nodded my head. “It’s okay.”

The second time I got into his big blue truck went better than it had the first time, on the way to breakfast.

He held the door for me while I placed one foot on the step. With one small jump, I heaved myself up into his truck, and wondered why on earth he had one so big.

He growled at one point, and I turned to survey him.

“Did you say something?” I questioned him.

His eyes went from where my ass had just been, to my face, and he shook his head.

“No,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t.”

He slammed the door closed, and my brows furrowed as I watched him walk around the hood of the truck, and easily heft himself inside.

He didn’t even need the handle like I did.

“I like your truck and all,” I mused as he pulled into traffic and started heading in the opposite direction of town. “But it’s impractical.”

The corner of his mouth twitched as he chuckled softly.

“No,” he smiled. “Not impractical. I’ll show you why when we get to my place.”

“Okay,” I replied. “Why do you have to be at the stadium so early when the other players don’t have to get there until one?”

He let his eyes flick to mine before returning them to the road.

“I don’t, technically, have to be there until then, but I like to get there earlier,” he hesitated. “It’s a superstition.”

“Mmmm,” I murmured. “I know all about those superstitions.”

“You do?” he asked in surprise.

“I do,” I confirmed. “My brother is the king of superstitions. Although I don’t see the point of them myself, I know what the thinking behind them is.”

Hancock smiled as he pulled the wheel slightly to the left, taking the exit that would either lead to nothing, or Caddo Lake.

My guess was the lake, but he could surprise me and live in the middle of nowhere. Like a serial killer.

How much did I know about him?

Well, if I was being honest, I knew quite a bit. I knew his stats. His grade point average in high school. Oh, and I now knew he had a brother. But did that mean I knew him as a person? No.

I did trust him, though.

Even though he still made butterflies take flight in my belly every time he looked at me.

It was bad enough sitting in a confined space with him.

Adding in the fact that he smelled good had my hormones going haywire.

“What are some of your brother’s superstitions?” he asked, startling me out of my reverie of his cologne.

“Uhhh,” I cocked my head to the side and flicked up one finger. “He has to have on one specific pair of underwear, even if it’s unwashed and stinky from the last game.” I flicked up a second finger. “He has to drink a full bottle of red Gatorade, followed by only half a bottle of blue Gatorade.”

He started to chuckle.

“He drinks the second half of the blue Gatorade only after he’s won. If he didn’t win, he throws the Gatorade away.” I flicked up a third finger. “He shaves his head before each and every game.”

“That’s kind of the opposite of me,” he fondled his beard. “After the first game, I don’t shave anymore.”

I noticed.

Everyone noticed.

By the end of the season, he was looking more like a homeless man than a baseball player.

He worked it, though.

“I think I noticed,” I teased, turning in my seat to face him. “You won ‘Baseball’s Best Beard’ last year on ESPN.”

He rolled his eyes, his mouth quirking as he thought about what I’d just said.

“You’ve seen some of mine,” he continued. “Have to sit in the same spot every game.” He smiled but didn’t look over at me. “I pull my pants up after my first at bat.”

Yep, noticed that, too. Everyone did.

“You know that you have your own superstition Facebook page, don’t you?” I inquired.

He chuckled as he made another turn, and my eyes went to the road we’d just taken.

“You live on the lake?” I asked.

“I do,” he confirmed. “And Conner lives one house down from mine.”

“Why do you live out here?” I asked.

“Because it’s peaceful,” he muttered. “And because I like to fish.”

The loud sound of pipes had me looking at the road instead of him, and my eyes widened when I saw all the motorcycles parked outside one of the houses we were passing.

“What’s going on there?” I whispered. “That doesn’t seem very peaceful.”

He grunted.

“It can get loud, but they’re never rude about it. If it gets to be after nine in the evening during the season and I’m home, they’ll walk their bikes in so they don’t wake me,” he winked. “I think they like me.”

“Are they a club?” I probed, waving at the men.

Their eyes took me in, in the front seat of Hancock’s truck, and all they did was nod.

Not one of them waved back.

Guess that wasn’t a really biker thing to do.

“They’re a club.” He turned into his driveway, and my breath left me. “I’m not sure if they’re good or bad, though. They like to have parties. I’ve gone to one or two since I’ve moved in, and nothing too illegal or too out of hand goes on at them.”

“Hmm,” I murmured. “Your house isn’t on the lake…it’s on the lake!”

He chuckled and opened his door, and I followed suit.

He rounded the truck just as I jumped down.

His hands on my hips startled me, and I looked up into his eyes with surprise.

“What…”

He slammed his mouth down onto mine, and I gasped, stealing his breath as I did.

His tongue took advantage of my opened mouth and plunged inside.

My hands went to his biceps, my tongue found his.

He growled as he pushed me back against the truck, and it took everything I had to stay upright as he took my mouth.

The moment he disengaged, I opened my stupid mouth.

“What was that?” I gasped.

He grinned.

“That…well, that’s something I’ve been wanting to do for three freakin’ days.”

Hancock went on to have the best hitting game of his life…and guess what became his newest superstition?