Page 19 of Serving Bunt

The silver-haired inn owner might’ve been older than my father, but she had the energy of someone thirty years younger and a wardrobe similar to my nine-year-old niece. How many adult women could pull off a striped jumpsuit and glasses shaped like strawberries?

“I actually bid on you at the team's bachelor auction a few years ago," she said with a wink.

My eyebrows shot up. "Oh?"

"I was outbid by some twenty-year-old tart."

"Oh."

I still remembered the woman who’d "won" me, some influencer barely out of high school who’d wanted to use me as clickbait for her page—My Date with a Baseballer, or something like that. I’d smiled through our awkward dinner, counting down the minutes until it was over.

"Don't worry, you can make it up to me by signing my calendar when it arrives." She spun toward the woman at her side. "Bernie, honey, do you know who this is?"

“I do.”

Bernice stood a head taller than her wife, wearing a crisp white button-down and jeans that had clearly seen real work.

“Matthias is a two-time Golden Glove award nominee and the American League West’s Sexiest Player, and—”

“Christ, Lollipop. Do you know his shoe size, too?”

“Eleven-and-a-half,” Lolly said, grinning widely. She turned back toward me. “Right?”

“That’s right,” I told her, my Southern drawl slipping out the way it always did when I was nervous or, in this case, embarrassed. “I, uh, take it that you’re a baseball fan?”

Bernice scoffed. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“I’m the baseball fan,” Lolly explained. “Last year, we visited seven MLB stadiums. That’s twenty-four total for me and twenty for Bernie.”

“Twenty-one, dearest,” Bernice corrected.

“It’s twenty, my love. You were still doing the circuit the summer I visited Baltimore.”

I arched my brow. “The circuit?”

“Rodeo,” Bernice clarified.

“Bernie’s a three-time state rodeo champion.” Lolly leaned over the front desk and winked. “She knows her way around a rope, if you catch my drift.”

Well, shit.

Apparently, everyone was having hotter sex than I was.

Tires crunched on the gravel outside, making my stomach turn. It did a goddamn somersault when a familiar SUV pulled up in front of the front door.

Diaz climbed out looking unfairly good for someone who’d just spent the past four hours driving. Dark joggers, a simple, gray T-shirt that hugged his shoulders, sunglasses pushed up onto the top of his head, and that signature, devilish smile he wore like armor.

Lolly let out an actual squeal. “Goodness me, it’s a two-for-one special. Matty Miller and Peter Diaz.”

Bernice simply shook her head when her wife all but sprinted toward the door to help him with his bags. Mo took off behind her, making a beeline for Diaz.

He crouched without hesitation, scooping her up and nuzzling her scruff like she was the most important thing in the world.

That was Diaz’s superpower.

Charm.

From the crotchetiest of fans to sapphic innkeepers, it seemed there was nobody immune to Diaz’s magic. He had this way of making people feel seen. One warm smile, one lingering look, and people lit up like he’d handed them the sun.