“Can’t wait to see the look on his face when I knock it all the way out of the park.”
The four coaches share a look again, then Coach Addie throws down a card. “Kid fan. I’m protected. House rule—if I get back and only one of you is left, I win by default.” She rises to her feet while the other three groan, and she nods to me. “Your call, slugger. Let’s see how you’re swinging today to make sure you’ve got it in you.”
“I’ve got it in me.”
But do you?the doubt whispers.
I punch that fucker in the face and put it in timeout.
I’m a fucking professional baseball player.
I’m doing this.
And then, tomorrow night, I’m giving Waverly the fucking date of her life.
15
Waverly
The winding roadup to Cooper’s home in the Blue Ridge Mountains an hour outside of Copper Valley is quiet and dark. I spend most of the ride texting with Aspen about how her show went last night and with my producer about something that isn’t sitting right on a track I recorded last week, but between texts, I can’t stop looking behind us.
It’s not worry about the tabloids or gossips or Aunt Zinnia.
It’s more that I’m too excited about tonight, and I don’t want anything to ruin it. And no, I don’t want to talk about what beingtoo excitedmight mean for the state of my brain and my heart when I thank Cooper for a nice time and leave tomorrow with a handshake.
“Are you sure—”
“No one followed us,” Kiva says from beside me in the back of my SUV while Scott One guides the vehicle around a corner. Scott Two’s in the passenger seat.
“And Cooper’s house—”
“Is secure,” she confirms. She makes a noise that I’ve learned over the years means she’s vexed. “It’s nearly as secure as your houses.”
“That bothers you?”
“He’s sports-famous, and I realize this house is mostly empty during the baseball season, but he’s on a secluded mountainside outside a small town with a low crime rate, yet he has a security system to rival yours.”
“That makes sense to me, given some of the pranks he’s pulled. Remember the headlines about Max Cole showing up to spring training with glitter in his hair? And how he’s still glittering now? Once you launch the glitter bombs, you have to step up your security game if you want to avoid retaliation.”
Kiva gives me another look.
“He won’t prank me,” I assure her.
Her look getslookier.
I ignore it. “No one’s leaked this to Aunt Zinnia?” That’s the only thing threatening to upend my stomach tonight.
“I plugged the hole.”
“Thank you.”
I don’t ask who the hole was. My team feels like family, so I don’t want to know.
There were three departures from my staff in the past week, but I tell myself it was only one of them, and there’s no way for me to identify which one if I don’t ask.
My SUV turns onto a tree-lined driveway and follows it up a hill and around a bend to where Cooper himself is hanging out on the porch of a large, two-story mountain manor, sitting on the steps between stone pillars, hands dangling between his knees.
He shaved. His hair looks freshly trimmed. He’s wearing a button-down with the sleeves rolled up his tatted forearms, and every erogenous zone in my body jolts to immediate attention. I can’t tell if he’s in dark jeans or a pair of slacks, but those are definitely wingtips on his feet.
