Take Me (13 page)

They stayed like that for a moment, not saying anything, Jay’s blue eyes intent on hers. And then, as if he were sensing her desire and had decided he wanted to drive her crazy, he started to make little circles on her lip with his thumb. She closed her eyes to try to get control of her senses, and when she opened them, he was leaning against the wall across from her, his fingers still on her lips, his eyes still locked on hers.

She froze, and his fingers moved down, over her lips, down her neck, and onto her collarbone. One fingertip dipped below the top of her sweater, and slowly and lazily grazed the top of her breasts. She swallowed, hard, her whole body on fire.

She wanted to move toward him, to put her lips on his, to feel him pull her against his body. But the way he was looking at her told her she needed to stay put, that if she moved toward him, he’d stop her. He wanted to tease her, he was
enjoying
teasing her, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. But God, she wanted him.

He grinned at her, his fingers still moving lazily around her breasts. And then, finally, he took a step toward her. His tongue licked his top lip, and Alyssa closed her eyes and waited for the kiss.

She felt his chest against hers, and one of his hands was on the back of her neck, the other still making a drowsy pattern over her cleavage. She could feel his breath on her skin, and his mouth started moving up, closer to her ear. God she wanted to turn her head, she wanted his lips on hers, she needed to kiss him, she needed to –

“They’re gone,” he whispered, and then pulled away from her.

She opened her eyes, feeling as if she’d been slapped. They’re
gone?
What the
hell?
She took a deep breath, and white-hot rage boiled up inside of her. First at him, and then at herself. But, as with so many things that had happened tonight, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“Thank God,” she said easily, hoping he didn’t notice the way her voice broke, and that he wasn’t close enough to hear how fast her heart was beating. She forced herself to smile. “We should probably get back to Brooklyn. Last thing we want is another run-in with crazy fans.” She walked out from between the buildings and waited for him to unlock the car.

~Chapter Four~

Jay woke up at six o’clock the next morning to the sound of knocking on his apartment door. Jay had an apartment in Brooklyn, where he stayed during the season.

And although not as nice as his downtown Manhattan loft, or the home he had in the Bahamas, it did have a doorman who didn’t let people up unannounced or make a habit of pounding on his door. Those kinds of things didn’t tend to happen at a twelve million dollar penthouse, even if it was Brooklyn.

Which meant it could only be one person. Chad.

“Go away!” Jay yelled. But then he heard the front door opening.

“Hey,” Chad said, walking into his bedroom. “Are you awake?”

“Obviously not,” Jay said, turning to look at his friend. “How did you get in here?”

“You gave me a key, remember? So I could feed the fish when you were in Mexico last year.”

Jay sighed, cursed himself for thinking that installing a full-wall aquarium would be a good idea, and then rolled over. He buried his head in his pillow and wished for Chad to go away.

There was a thunking sound, and Jay opened one eye to see Chad setting a coffee down on the nightstand next to him. Well. At least that was something. He reached out and grabbed it, downing a big gulp, then sat up in bed.

“What are you doing here?” Jay asked. Not that Chad needed a reason. Chad was a notorious early riser, which didn’t make much sense, since he was a bigger partier than Jay. But it didn’t matter what time Chad stumbled home from the clubs at night, he was always awake by six am.

“Came to hang out before practice.” Chad took a sip of his own coffee. “And to talk to you about Alyssa Cotler.” He grinned. “Some number you did on her yesterday.”

At the thought of Alyssa, Jay was suddenly awake. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?”

“What she wrote about you.”

“Chad, it’s six o’clock in the morning, and you’re here, obviously waking me up, so why would I have any idea what she’s written about me?” He was already reaching for his laptop.

“I don’t know,” Chad said. “But if you were intent on pissing off Billingsley, wow, did you do a bang up job.”

Jay typed in the web address for The Juice, wondering what Alyssa had written.

He knew he’d fucked it all up with that little maneuver he’d pulled behind the bookstore.

The problem was, he hadn’t been able to help himself. Something about that girl had him all confused. He didn’t like her, or at least, he thought he didn’t. Which wasn’t even a deal breaker – he’d been with a lot of women that he didn’t really like. Most of them, actually. But Alyssa wasn’t even his type physically. She was curvy and dark-haired, and he usually went for the lithe, blonde model types.

But her body had been so close, and her curves had been pushed up next to him, and he’d loved the look on her face when he’d been running his fingers over her skin.

He’d loved teasing her, wanted to tease her all night, but he only if there was going to be some sort of payoff. And there hadn’t been. At the end of the night, she’d hopped out of his car and gone up to her hotel room alone, even though he’d offered to walk her up.

When he’d gotten home, he’d lain awake for at least an hour, thinking about how bad he wanted her and trying to ignore his erection.

He shook his head now and tried to clear his thoughts.

“So are you going to read it?” Chad was asking.

“I don’t want to,” Jay said. But his curiosity got the best of him, and before he could stop himself, he was clicking through to Alyssa’s column. Bad publicity didn’t usually bother him, and so he tried to keep his expression blank while he read it, so that Chad wouldn’t know that anything was up.

It was worse than he’d thought. She’d torn him apart. She hadn’t mentioned their little moment behind the bookstore, thank God, but she’d talked about his car, his sunglasses, the way he’d ordered caviar in an effort to impress her, and how she’d gotten the feeling he was hoping she wouldn’t eat it.

It was all true of course, but he felt himself starting to get angry. How dare she?

He’d been nothing but nice to her, taking her out to dinner, showing her around the city, taking her to the bookstore. Granted, it had been so that he could get on her good side, but she didn’t know that.

Although, Jay thought, he supposed she might have figured it out. But still. That moment behind the bookstore hadn’t been all him. He’d seen it on her face. She’d wanted him just as much as he wanted her. Hadn’t she? Suddenly, he wasn’t sure. And he didn’t like the way it made him feel.

“Fucking Alyssa Cotler,” he muttered under his breath.

“Yup,” Chad said agreeably. He’d produced a bag of trail mix from somewhere, and was munching on it.

“So how pissed is Billingsley?” Jay asked.

“Pissed,” Chad said. “I talked to Kylie this morning, and she said he came in huffing and puffing. There’s going to be a meeting after batting practice.”

“Fuck him,” Jay decided. And fuck Alyssa Cotler. He was sick of being Mr.

Nice Guy. All it did was bring him grief, obviously. It was better when everyone thought he was an asshole.

***

Alyssa made sure she was awake early, even though she’d had a hard time falling asleep the night before. Once she’d gotten out of Jay Havens’s car, she couldn’t calm down. It was like her whole body had been charged with electricity. She’d written her column, sent it to Isobel, and then she’d lain awake, flipping through the channels on the TV and watching infomercials until after two in the morning. When she’d finally fallen asleep, she’d been so nervous that she was going to miss her seven o’clock wake up call that she’d kept startling awake, looking at the clock.

Finally at six forty-five she decided to give up, and reached over and grabbed her Blackberry. She had an email from Isobel, which said the column had required few edits, was fabulous, and was now live.

Alyssa swallowed, suddenly nervous. When she’d written it, she’d been angry, pissed off that Jay Havens thought he could have her in some back alley and tease her like that. But now, with the early morning light streaming in through the crack between the curtains, and the prospect of having to face Jay and the rest of the Heat at their practice this morning, she just felt anxious.

She took a deep breath and stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom. She cranked the shower as hot as it could go, and stood under the warm stream, letting the hot water soothe her tense muscles. After about twenty minutes, she was feeling better, and wrapped herself in a warm towel.

She opened her suitcase and surveyed what she’d brought. She’d been instructed to dress comfortably, so she settled on a pair of nice jeans and a dark green wrap sweater.

There was a knock on the door, and for a second, for some reason, Alyssa thought it might be Jay. She thought of him again, last night, the way his tongue had licked his lips, the way he’d been looking at her, like he was daring her to stay away from him.

Screw you,
Alyssa thought and opened the door.

“Alyssa Cotler?” the man at the door asked. He was wearing a bellman’s uniform, had shaggy dark hair, and was holding what looked like a shirt box.

“Yes?”

“Sign here please.” He held out a clipboard, and Alyssa signed obediently. She tipped the man, then brought the box into her room and set it down on the bed. The return address was stamped with the Brooklyn Heat logo, a bullet sliding through a circle with a tail of red fire trailing behind it. Probably some kind of welcome package.

When she opened it, a Heat uniform fell out, along with a note. She picked it up.

Dear Alyssa,

We are so excited to have you with us for the next week. Please wear this
complimentary uniform for our first day together. We’d love to have you post pictures on
your website!

So looking forward to meeting you.

Sincerely,

Dax Reynolds, Captain, Brooklyn Heat

Alyssa unfurled the uniform, her heart sinking. A baseball uniform? They wanted her to wear a baseball uniform on her first day with the team? Not only that, but the uniform was pink. Well, not completely pink. It was mostly white. But where the normal uniforms had streaks of blue, Alyssa’s was pink. Cotler was written on the back in pink letters, and the number 17. Alyssa wondered why they picked that number.

She sighed and looked at the uniform. Fine, she decided, if she was going to wear the uniform, she was going all out.

***

Forty minutes later, she was back at the Heat Complex, only today, it was abuzz with activity. Men in suits swarmed around the marble floor and wove through the gold columns, and Kylie the secretary was busy answering the phones, which seemed to be constantly ringing.

“Hey!” A man popped up in front of her, an easy grin on his face. He had a Southern accent and sandy blond hair, and for some reason, Alyssa immediately felt comfortable with him.

“Hi,” she said.

“I’m Dax.” He held his hand out. “Team captain. I see you got the uniform.”

“Yup,” Alyssa said. She caught Kylie’s eye, and saw the look of surprise that crossed her face as she took in Alyssa’s look.

Alyssa was wearing the pink uniform, but had put a white t-shirt on underneath it and left the jersey unbuttoned. She’d put her hair in two pigtails, and had smeared black eyeliner under her eyes. She wasn’t sure what the stuff was called that baseball players usually used, but obviously she didn’t have any of that, so she’d used eyeliner. She wondered if she’d gone a little too far, but then decided she didn’t care if she’d had. Let them think she was just some hick reporter from upstate New York, that she didn’t know what she was talking about, that she was going to go easy on them.

Of course, they’d probably already read what she’d written about Jay, and if they hadn’t, they’d find out about it soon enough. But it wasn’t that big of a deal. She could always play it off as having to do with Jay, and not being a reflection on the team as a whole. They Heat would blame it on him, as seemed to be their habit. Served him right.

“We had a schedule change this morning,” Dax said. “Practice started early, because we have a meeting afterwards. So I came to get you and bring you to the field.”

He led her down a hallway to a bank of elevators. Alyssa followed him into one of the cars, and watched as Dax pushed the button to take them down to the park. When they got off the elevator, they walked through a tunnel and were immediately on the baseball field. Alyssa gaped, taking it all in.

“Pretty amazing, huh?” Dax said from behind her. “No matter how many times I’m out here, I’m still blown away every time.”

The stadium was huge, and it looked even bigger with no one in the stand. The fact that she was here, out on the field, was amazing. Players and coaches huddled in groups on the field, talking. A few of them were using batting cages, and a few others were in the dugout.

The sun was up, and the air was warm. It was a perfect day for any kind of sport, and an especially perfect day for baseball. Alyssa felt a flutter of nervousness in her stomach. Calm down, she told herself, you have nothing to worry about. You’re good at your job, Isobel is happy with what you’ve done so far, and that’s all the matters. Who cared if they were professional, famous baseball players? They were just people.

“This is awesome,” Alyssa said.

“Let’s go down to the dugout,” Dax said. “I’ll get you set up, and then you can pull out your laptop or whatever you use, and get settled. You probably won’t be able to wander around too much, since we don’t want you to get hurt, but you should feel free to ask questions to whoever you want. Just introduce yourself, everyone’s usually pretty friendly.”