His dark brows raise. “You’re joking, right?”
I keep my shoulders straight, owning the statement, though I didn’t necessarily intend to be the first of us to be honest.
“You don’t get to be upset about that,” he decides.
“I can be upset about whatever I want.”
“Bullshit.” He stands from the bench seat, shirtless and angry and so goddamn delicious to look at. “I have no idea what would make you upset about that anyway, but whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. Not when you brought a fucking date to the game.”
A date?
“What are you talking about?”
He stalks toward me. “Matt or Mike or whatever the hell his name is. The guy you spent the whole game with, in your suite. Did you forget about him already? Kind of how you forgot about him real quick after your last date, huh?”
I have the boiling urge to tell him to fuck off, but I’m also so confused and need him to keep explaining himself.
Then I realize what and who he’s referring to. The date that I used as a way to try to forget abouthim.
“Michael?” I ask for clarification.
“Sure.”
He’s pissed because Michael was here?
I scoff a disbelieving laugh. “Okay, now you’re the one who’s kidding, right? You don’t get to be mad about Michael.”
The muscles under Emmett’s beard clench as he takes another step in my direction. “I know I don’t. Just like you don’t get to be mad about that reporter. Because we’re just coworkers, right, Reese?”
“You do know that Michael is Ed’s son, right? Ed, who is on the advisory board. Ed, who knows that I am not interested in his son. Ed, who watched the entire game from my suite. With his son. Just the two of them.”
I watch as a bit of realization dawns on Emmett’s face.
“I take it you didn’t look up there once today, did you?”
He doesn’t respond, but I already know the answer.
“So no, you don’t get to be pissed off that Michael was here,” I continue. “And especially not when you were busy giving one-on-one interviews inmydugout.”
He takes a few more calculated steps toward me, and I can sense the frustration thrumming though him as he watches me. “On game days, it’smydugout,” he says coolly. “Is that why you didn’t come see me before the first pitch? Because that reporter was there?”
“Is that why you were flirting with her? To get back at me because you thought I brought a date today?”
“Answer my question.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
He takes one final step, looming over me, big and pissed off. Sweat drips down his temples and continues to run over the dark splattering of chest hair. It takes everything in me not to reach out and run my fingers through it because fighting with him is kind of turning me on.
“Fine,” I answer. “Is that what you want to hear? That you made me into a jealous and petty woman for the first time in my life? Does that make you happy, Emmett?”
“Yes.”
I startle, head rearing back, but I have nowhere to go with the door behind me.
He bends, making himself eye level, and the attention is intoxicating. The way he smells. The palpable energy radiating off him. That possessive spark in his eye.
“I want you as irrational as you make me.” His tone is laced with frustration. “And I wasn’t flirting with her.”
