“Good thing no one wants your signature.” He grinned at Rob, but there was tension in his shoulders. He was talking a good game, but he was worried. I could see it in the way he tossed the ball back to Rob. His arm movement wasn’t as fluid as when he was in the zone. And then, there was the constant crackle in his knees every time he adjusted his position.
Ouch. I winced every time I heard it.
Wham.
I hadn’t been expecting the pitch just yet. I’d been too busy studying the corded power in Rob’s legs. But the baseball went blistering past me, landing clean and clear in Connor’s glove. In the normal way. Not behind his back. Still, the crowd cheered.
I rushed forward to hand Connor a pen. It was a simple gesture, and I had to step across the chalk line to get to him. But when he looked up at me from his crouch, the sun flashed brilliantly in his mysterious gray eyes.
I got distracted—damn it—and his hand grabbed mine. He was going for the pen, but I’d been looking at his eyes and overreached. Warmed calloused fingers caught mine, and his palm completely engulfed my hand. There was strength in his grip and a rough caress, though I’m sure he didn’t mean it.
Heat exploded in my body, and I know my face turned three shades of scarlet. It was stupid and embarrassing, but I couldn’t stop it. Something about the rough texture of his hand on the back of mine set my hormones racing. Or maybe it was because I’d almost gotten lost in those dark eyes of his…
Good God, I was acting like a lovestruck teen.
“Gia?” he said, confusion tightening his features. It was enough to jolt me back to reality and send another flash fire of embarrassment across my face.
“Um, yeah. I, uh, was just bringing you the, um, pen.” Oh. My. God. What was wrong with me?
“You have to let go of it.”
What? Oh shit. Right. I jerked my hand open, and the pen started to fall. He caught it, thank God, but now I was standing there with cameras from every network catching my stammering awkwardness.
Connor watched me, his expression blank as he signed the baseball without looking. And then he tossed it over his shoulder into the waiting crowd. There were cries of delight from whoever caught it, as well as a few grumbles from those who’d missed. But I just stood there watching him, mesmerized by his dark eyes. They were like magician’s smoke on a sunlit day.
“Gia?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re standing in the way.”
What? Oh! Right. I swallowed and hustled behind the chalked line, but there were camera people crowding close, and I teetered on my heels. I felt his hand on my thigh, helping to stabilize me. And the heat from that touch made my knees go weak.
This was getting worse and worse.
It took me a second to steady myself. And even longer to walk back down the chalk line enough to find space to slip outside it. All the while, my brain kept screaming at me to shut it down. Shut. It. Down.
No more blushing. No tingles. No waves of heat.
No memory of his blisteringly hot kiss. No impression of his hand large and strong on my thighs. And absolutely, positively, no imagining what it would be to feel that hand nudging my legs apart…
No! No! No!
“Quit flirting,” Rob called from the other end of the chalk mark. “Nobody wants your old man ass.”
“That true, ladies?” Sophia called out from her place on the opposite side. The feminine response was nearly deafening. They wanted him. We all wanted him, myself included.
“You can see him up close and personal, here.” She held up the calendar to the swimsuit shot. I was intimately familiar with that one, having purchased the calendar within seconds of finding it online.
Meanwhile, Rob was winding up. “Okay, old-timer,” he called. “Here comes the real heat.”
And it was hot. The baseball whipped past me at what had to be nearly 100 mph.
Whap.
Dead center, Connor’s glove. Of course. But he’d still caught it in the normal way.
He picked up the pen from where he’d dropped it a minute ago and quickly signed the ball before tossing it over his other shoulder.
