Boys Of Summer: Sliding Home / Fever Pitch / The Sweet Spot

Closing his mind against that image, he couldn’t help looking around, thinking of the pretty volunteer he’d met here a little more than a month ago. He had no idea why a petite, twentyish young woman would so occupy his thoughts, but she had. Every time he’d come to visit, he’d kept an eye out for her.

He’d never asked Gramps about her. As if Edgar knew Riley was interested, he’d been closemouthed about his young friend. Gramps had never completely abandoned the idea that Riley was an off-the-field playboy. He’d likely have panicked at the thought of his grandson targeting an innocent young volunteer.

Riley wasn’t targeting her. He just wouldn’t mind seeing her again, without the glasses. And in a much tighter pair of jeans.

Strange that he couldn’t stop thinking about Just Janie. He’d certainly seen more beautiful women. God, in his line of work, he had females throwing themselves at him all the time, and a piece of ass was never more than a wink away for any player who wanted one.

Riley had gone through a phase of being one of those players. Briefly. It’d been right after his very ugly, very public divorce, when he hadn’t given a shit about anyone or anything. Except his family, and the game.

Not anymore, though. He’d gotten it out of his system. Especially once he’d realized he’d turned into the kind of person his ex-wife had been. He, at least, had waited until after their divorce. She hadn’t waited much beyond their honeymoon.

From betrayed husband to playboy to…well, loner. That’s the way his life had gone. So maybe that was why the image of sweet, sassy Janie had popped into his head on more than one occasion in recent days. Maybe it was the smile, the laugh. The big heart. Hell, maybe it was even the blush. He couldn’t recall having met a woman who blushed since he’d gone pro.

“Annie and I are going to our poker game now,” Gramps said, smiling at his lady friend. “Can you take this to my room for me?”

Without waiting for an answer, Gramps shoved his Slammers pennant, noisemaker and a big plastic tub used for holding unshelled peanuts into Riley’s hands. The tub came with free refills. No matter how many times Riley offered to have a caterer bring a full spread into the skybox, his grandfather never wanted anything more than his peanuts and exactly two ice-cold beers. Riley paid the stadium staff to clean up the shells, since, after all, there was no point eating peanuts at a ballpark if you couldn’t toss the shells to the ground. Since they all knew and loved the old guy, nobody seemed to mind.

“Have fun you two,” he said. “Don’t fleece anyone.”

“What fun’s that?” his girlfriend asked with a wink.

Laughing, Riley watched them walk away, then headed to Gramps’s room. This upscale place offered its residents as much independence as they could manage, but had medical care at the push of a button if they needed it. The doors to the suites of rooms were usually kept unlocked for such care. So Riley didn’t even pause when he reached Gramps’s, he simply pushed on in.

And was greeted by the sight of a female, on all fours, sticking out from underneath his grandfather’s bed. Presenting him with a very nice—very familiar—view.

Oh, boy. He definitely recognized that feminine backside, and couldn’t prevent a low groan of appreciation. Yeah, definite appreciation. Which could mean trouble all around.

Knowing she hadn’t heard him enter, he murmured, “Hi.”

Janie, the very woman he’d been thinking of just moments before, jerked so hard that she struck her head on the underside of the bed. The thunk told him it had been hard. Her string of muttered curses told him it had hurt.

So much for the “sweet little thing” image. Somehow, he liked the idea that she had a naughty side. “You okay?”

She wriggled out from under the bed, backward—Lord, have mercy—then swung her head around to look at him over her shoulder. When she recognized him, she jerked again, lost her balance and started to tumble sideways onto the tile floor.

Riley dropped the items in his hand. Lunging forward, he instinctively slid in as if Mike Piazza were above him, reaching for the catch from the third baseman during a bases-loaded forced run. He was on the floor beside her before her hip, or any other body part, could painfully land on anything harder than his lap.

Which was exactly where she ended up.

“You,” she muttered, staring at him owlishly from behind those same thick glasses.

He grinned. “Me. You’re not real graceful, huh?”

Her brow pulled down. “And you’re not terribly polite.”

He shook his head. “Well, here I thought I just saved you from takin’ a painful tumble.”

She looked down, obviously just acknowledging the fact that he’d dived to the floor and she was now pretty much lying on him. Fitting very nicely against him, truth be told, with her soft hip and thigh cradled between his legs and her curvy little ass doing tantalizingly wicked things against his groin.

“I’m sorry. You did. I just meant, you startled me, bursting in like that,” she mumbled as she slid away.

Bursting? If she didn’t get off him, that could be what his jeans would soon be doing.

Shaking off his increasingly heated thoughts, he rose to his feet, knowing Gramps would never forgive him if he seduced—then drove off—one of his favorite new people. So hands off. He could almost hear the old man barking the order in his head.

He obeyed, though he did offer her one hand, to help her up. She was so slight, one pull brought her up with an oomph.

She appeared embarrassed as she glanced down and brushed away some dust from her loose clothes. A strand of her hair had worked its way out of her ponytail and it fell forward, curtaining her eyes. Riley couldn’t resist reaching out to brush it back. The moment his fingers touched her cheek, she gasped. But she didn’t move away. She simply stared at him, as if silently asking what the hell he was doing.

He didn’t know. Couldn’t have explained it if he tried. So he merely dropped his hand. “Speaking of being startled,” 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.