Baseball and Other Lessons (Devil's Ranch Book 2) Read online

  Down, girl.

  Matt Roberts, Rookie of the Year runner up, was so not for her.

  “You want to join us over at our table? That is, unless you have other plans.”

  “Sure, just let me order a drink.”

  “Prickly pear margarita?”

  How’d he know that?

  As if he read her thoughts, he said, “It’s what you’ve ordered every time you’ve been here since you’ve been legal.”

  True. For the past few years, Jenn, Chase, and Matt had met up in San Antonio a handful of times during the off season, and when Jenn had turned twenty-one just over a year ago she’d started ordering them.

  “Fine. You know me better than I thought you did.”

  He winked at her and signaled for the bartender, who almost ran over to them. Jenn sighed. Apparently being semi-famous had its perks. Matt ordered her drink, along with a bottle of Shiner for himself. They stood in companionable silence for the very short amount of time it took the bartender to bring them their drinks.

  Matt handed the bartender a twenty and said, “Keep the change” before grabbing their drinks in one big hand and placing his other on the small of her back. Jenn’s skin only tingled more at the slight touch. What in the world is going on?

  Despite the fact that she and Matt had known each other practically all their lives, he’d never really touched her, unless it was to pull her hair, pinch her or tickle her. There had been a few hugs here and there, a peck on the cheek when she and Chase had graduated from high school, but that was about it.

  Maybe he’s just being nice.

  Or maybe he’s already drunk.

  But he didn’t look drunk. In fact, he appeared to be stone cold sober.

  The pressure on her lower back increased as they reached a table in the far corner of the hotel’s bar. She could see why he and some of the other players had chosen it—the space was slightly blocked off by potted palm trees that were as tall as she was, offering a modicum of privacy from the rest of the bar.

  “Hey, guys, look who I found. My old friend, Jenn.”

  Jenn raised an eyebrow but didn’t contradict him, curious to see what kind of game Matt was playing at tonight. She recognized the men at the table, and tried her best not to act like a baseball groupie despite the fact that her inner fan girl was practically squeeing with glee.

  The three other men at the table introduced themselves as Matt pulled out a chair for her before sitting down beside her. “It’s nice to meet y’all. Great game tonight.”

  Despite the fact that they’d beat the Astros 11-1, the four men all laughed before the shortstop, Andrew Holt, said in his thick Georgia drawl, “Honey that was a spring training beat down. It was like playing in little league.”

  She snorted, and the catcher, Miguel Rodrigo, elbowed Andrew in the ribs. “Dude, you’re not supposed to talk about it like that; it takes away the magic.”

  Andrew tipped back his Lone Star and smiled around the long neck of his beer bottle, “Might be rude, but it’s true.”

  Miguel rolled his eyes.

  “So, Jenn, how do you and Pooh Bear here know each other?” Rick Graves, one of the bullpen guys, asked.

  She glanced at Matt. “Pooh Bear?”

  Matt snorted but didn’t answer.

  “Sure, Pooh Bear. It never fails, wherever we are the women just flock to him. Like Winnie the Pooh to his pot of honey.”

  Jenn opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again and said, “That might be the worst analogy ever.”

  “Oh, come on, it’s not that bad,” Rick said.

  She shook her head. “No, it’s pretty bad. If you were one of my students I would tell you to try harder and give you a B for effort.”

  Matt laughed. “I forgot to mention that Jenn’s a teacher. Seventh grade, right?”

  She nodded, surprised Matt knew what she did, much less which grade she taught.

  “School teacher, huh?” Rick’s gaze flicked over to Matt. “That’s a little far off of your usual type, Pooh Bear.”

  “Oh, it’s not like that. We’re just friends. Matt’s practically like a big brother to me.”

  Rick raised an eyebrow and scratched at his beard. “Well, if that’s the case, Miss Jenn, why don’t you come sit over here by me and I can show you how a real man treats a lady?”

  Matt tensed slightly beside her and she briefly wondered why before laughing and saying, “Rick, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m really you’re type.”

  The young pitcher sighed. “I guess you win some, you lose some.”

  Jenn rubbed her nose. “Absolutely.”

  Rick brightened again and asked, “Any chance you have a sister?”

  Jenn laughed before taking a sip of her margarita. “I do, but I think she might be a little too young for you.”

  “How young is too young?” Rick asked.

  “Five.”

  Rick cringed. “Ouch, yeah, way too young.”

  #

  Why Jenn was throwing off Rick’s obvious advances? Even if the guy was a bit of a tool sometimes—Pooh Bear? Really?—women usually flocked to him like chickens on a bunch of June bugs. Whatever, though, he was weirdly glad Jenn wasn’t falling for Rick’s charm.

  Between the fronds of the potted trees that sectioned off their table, he could see a group of women looking around the bar. There were five of them, all dressed in sky high heels and skintight clothes with big hair, pouty lips and breasts that defied gravity. He sighed, recognizing their ring leader, Heather Smith (if that was really her last name), immediately.

  Heather had been a thorn in his side ever since he got called up. She showed up to every game, always seemed to know which hotel the team was staying in, and somehow had figured out a few times which room was his.

  She was like a dog with a fucking bone, and he was thisclose to getting a restraining order. Enough was enough.

  He knew the moment she found their partially hidden table, because her eyes lit up with a predatory gleam as she licked her lips before tossing her hair over her shoulder and heading their way. Matt leaned in to the table and quietly warned, “Incoming” before sliding his arm around the back of Jenn’s chair.

  She stiffened beside him slightly before relaxing again, and an idea quickly formed in his mind. He had only a few seconds to spell it out to Jenn, and he prayed she would go along with it.

  He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “There’s a group of five jersey chasers heading our way. Their ring-leader—Heather Smith——has been stalking me for a year. Can you follow my lead so that maybe we can get them to go away?”

  Jenn hesitated and he asked, “Please? For a friend?”

  She turned her head towards him and nodded. “Sure. What’s a jersey chaser?”

  “You’ll figure it out once you see them.”

  The group of women reached their corner, and Heather propped her hip on the edge of the table in a pose he figured she thought was seductive. To him, it just seemed desperate. Completely clueless, the blonde stalker leaned over and ran an index finger up and down his chest before purring, “Hey, Matt. Great game tonight.”

  He swatted her hand away. “I didn’t pitch.”

  She leaned in further, giving him a clear view down her shirt, and most likely giving Rick a clear view up her very short denim skirt if the young man’s facial expression indicated what he thought it did.

  Matt tightened his arm around Jenn’s shoulders, turned his head into her and kissed her neck. “Please, just follow my lead,” he whispered so that only she could hear him.

  She tilted her head to the side, offering him easier access, and Matt breathed a sigh of relief before saying, “Go away, Heather. I’m with my girlfriend and my friends, and we would like some privacy.”

  Heather snorted, and her voice was laced with scorn when she said, “Girlfriend? Please, Matt. We all know you can do better than her.”

  Jenn stiffened and he fought the urge to turn around. Instead, he nipped
at Jenn’s earlobe before placing another kiss on her neck—which was really a nice neck, now that he thought about it. Long and graceful and smooth, with soft skin that was perfect for kissing and touching. Or maybe he just hadn’t gotten laid recently enough, because thinking about Jenn’s neck was simultaneously weirding him out and turning him on. “I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t insult my girlfriend, who by the way has more intelligence, class and sex appeal in her pinky finger than you do in your entire surgically enhanced body.”

  Jenn’s breath caught and he flicked a gaze up to her face, saw she was trying to keep from laughing, and smiled.

  “Oh, please. We all know that boobs win any day of the week.”

  Matt didn’t have to look down to know what Heather was inferring. Jenn had never been well-endowed, but at least what she had was real.

  Andrew piped up. “Heather, seriously, you’re being a bitch.”

  “Just being honest, darlin’,” she said, mimicking Andrew’s drawl.

  Matt rolled his eyes. Turning towards Heather, he idly twirled a lock of Jenn’s curly red hair around his finger. “Heather, go away before we call security.”

  She rolled her eyes and flounced off, taking her entourage with her. They didn’t go far, though—just to the bar—where Matt could see her flirting with the bartender and giving the rest of the room a view that stopped just short of her ass cheeks.

  Heather glanced back over at their table, her mouth in a full-on pout, and Matt sighed. It was going to be a long night.

  #

  After Heather and her merry band of skanks left their table, the conversation dimmed a little bit. The guys weren’t quite as boisterous, Matt was broody, and Jenn was decidedly uncomfortable.

  She got what Matt had been doing. She understood it and didn’t blame him for thinking of it. Hell, if she was being honest with herself she had to admit that on the surface it had been a pretty good spur-of-the-moment plan.

  Except for the part where her body forgot that it was Matt—Matt!—kissing her neck and nipping her earlobe.

  Yeah, that whole part had pretty much sucked.

  Well, not the being turned on part. That part was nice. It was more the fact that she was turned on by Matt. In all the years they’d known each other—close to twenty——she’d been mostly immune to his looks and charm.

  Probably because he’d never directed that charm at you.

  True enough, she conceded.

  Logically, she knew Matt was attractive. Okay, the man was hot. No two ways about it. Despite being aware of that fact, though, she’d never really felt a smidgen of attraction towards him. Probably because she remembered him as the boy who yanked her pigtails and once put a frog down the back of her bathing suit.

  Asshole.

  Never mind the fact that he’d been like ten years old at the time.

  It had totally been an asshole move.

  Well, okay, so looking back it was actually kind of funny. But at the time she’d been really mad at him.

  They were a long ways away from childhood antics, though, and Jenn was brought back to the here and now by the light press of his hand on her shoulder.

  Oh, who was she kidding? She’d jumped on the Matt Roberts Is a Hot Piece of Eye Candy train back in high school, before he was a semi-famous pitcher and had filled out a once-lanky body with impressive muscles.

  She’d once heard a baseball announcer say that pitchers weren’t the most athletic guys on the team. Apparently that announcer had never seen Matt shirtless. Because, whoa.

  Feeling heat flame across her cheeks, Jenn picked up her margarita and gulped.

  But just because she could concede that Matt was hot with a capital H-A-W-T did not mean she was attracted to him. Not really. Mostly because being attracted to Matt would be kind of weird and awkward since for at least part of her childhood he had been like a big brother to her. At some point—okay, in high school when she’d really started to develop an interest in boys—that had changed. For a few weeks her freshman year, she’d allowed herself to daydream about Matt and him being her first kiss.

  Until she’d walked in on him kissing Kirsten Marshall in his kitchen one afternoon before his parents had gotten home. Kirsten was everything Jenn wasn’t—petite and curvy with perfectly straight blonde hair, big blue eyes and bigger boobs. If Kirsten wasn’t so freaking sweet—genuinely so—Jenn might have hated her.

  Instead, she’d just walked on through the kitchen to the backyard, searching for Chase while wishing she looked like Kirsten rather than, well, herself. Jenn couldn’t compete with a girl like that, not with her wildly curly red hair, green eyes and flat chest, not to mention the fact that she was taller than some of the boys in her class, and was still a year away from getting her braces removed.

  Knowing all of that, though, hadn’t made Matt any less attractive—it had just made him impossible to attain.

  Jenn sighed and sipped at the remnants of her margarita. Matt’s arm was still curved around the back of her chair, and one of his fingers was tracing a pattern on her arm just where skin met sleeve. She suppressed a shiver and pulled her phone out of her purse to check the time and saw she had a text message from Chase.

  Chase: Having fun? Sorry I couldn’t make it. This job’s going to drive me to drinking.

  Jenn: Yeah. It was a great game. Ran into Matt in the hotel bar. Don’t drink too much—or by yourself!

  Chase: I won’t. You still with him?

  Jenn debated how much to disclose.

  Jenn: Yes. Him and a few of the guys from the team. They’re trying to avoid some skank named Heather.

  Chase didn’t need to know about her and Matt’s method of avoidance, because Jenn had a feeling if Chase did find out he would lay into his big brother.

  Chase: Heather’s worse than a skank. She’s been stalking him for a year or so. Don’t get yourself pulled into that one—that chick does not play around.

  Jenn: I’m not. Matt managed to shoo her off.

  Chase: Good. Have fun. Don’t drink too much—those guys can party hard. See you tomorrow?

  Jenn: Yup. I’ll bring liquor.

  Jenn stuffed her phone back in her purse, yawned and said, “Sorry, guys, but it’s been a long day and I’m exhausted. I think I’m going to head on up to my room and get some sleep.”

  “Awww, come on, Miss Jenn. You can hang out with us a little longer.” Rick winked at her.

  Jenn smiled. “Sorry, sweetie, but I really am tired, and I have to drive up to Austin tomorrow.”

  Rick grumbled in protest, but Andrew and Miguel smiled and tipped their heads towards her.

  “It was great meeting y’all, though.” She flicked a glance towards Heather and the other women at the bar. “Hopefully you’ll get to enjoy the rest of your evening in peace.”

  Rick snorted. “Oh, once Pooh Bear leaves all of their interest in us will be long gone.”

  Matt sighed. “Only because you’re still too young to know how to please a lady.”

  Jenn’s stomach dipped at the thought of Matt knowing how to please a lady. She licked her lips and said, “Except I’m pretty sure ‘‘lady’ is not the correct term for Heather.”

  “Right you are,” Matt said as he stood. “Let me walk you up to your room.”

  Nerves suddenly danced in her belly. This was not typical Matt behavior—at least not in her world. “You don’t have to do that, Matt. Stay here with your friends.”

  He pinned her with that hazel gaze, and the nerves in her belly blossomed from caterpillars into butterflies. “I want to make sure Heather doesn’t harass you.”

  “I can take care of myself, Matt.” She stood and put her purse on her shoulder.

  “I’m sure you can. But as your friend I want to make sure she doesn’t follow you up and give you a hard time. Besides, if I let that happen, Chase would kill me.”

  His words calmed the butterflies slightly. This was Matt, simply being a friend. Nothing more. Nothing less.


  “Fine,” she conceded before turning to the other three men and smiling. “’Night, guys. It was great meeting y’all.”

  Chapter Three

  Present Day, Del Rio, Texas

  Jenn glared at Matt from across the bar and shook her head.

  No. Absolutely not. She was not going to come to his rescue again.

  Not after what had happened the last (and only) time.

  He mouthed, “help me” again from across the pool table and Jenn rolled her eyes before spinning on her heel and walking back out into the main bar area. She found an empty table in a corner, sat down and gazed at her margarita glass.

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket, checked her email and Facebook. She supposed she could just go home, except she wasn’t sure if Owen had driven or ridden with Chase, whereas Matt. She couldn’t just leave them here.

  No matter how tempting it was to leave Matt alone with the jersey chasers.

  Instead of getting up and going out to her car, though, she opened her Pinterest app and clicked on “humor.” Sure, she had a wedding board just like every other single woman between the ages of 18 and 58, but she had a definite soft spot for funny, snarky ecards and internet memes.

  And tonight, she needed snarky.

  She was giggling over a picture of a lizard wearing Barbie boots when she felt someone staring at her. Jenn looked up and squinted, her eyes adjusting from the bright screen of her phone to the dim lights of the bar.

  Matt had somehow managed to extricate himself from the clutches of the Three Whores of the Apocalypse, and was now standing on the other side of her table, muscular arms crossed over his chest and glaring at her. She returned her attention to Pinterest—lizards wearing Barbie boots were much better than an apparently pissed off Matt Roberts.

  Instead of taking the hint and going away, he sat in the chair next to her, scooted a little too close for her peace of mind, and plucked the phone out of her hands.

  “Hey!”

  “What the hell are you doing sitting in a corner of a bar all by yourself and looking at,” he looked down at the screen of her phone, “is that a lizard wearing Barbie boots?”