His fans were starting to swarm. The kids carrying clean white baseballs for autographs had returned, and more of the seats nearby were filling up. The ushers in charge of section 22 were starting to have their hands full keeping other ticket holders out of the area.
“Will I get another chance to go back to your place?” She wanted to rewrite the night before. To show him how much a second chance meant.
“Depends.” He tugged her down a few rows toward the rail he would have to hop to get back on the field. “You might have to do the umbrella trick to get past the media after the big splash your video made.”
She fished in her handbag and pulled out her brand-new Scrapers purse-size model still in the shrink-wrap. “I’ve got just the thing.”
“Then it’s a date.” He kissed her then, his mouth settling over hers with warm possession, a kiss that brought out every camera phone in the area and made Jamie’s thoughts scramble.
“I’m crazy about you, too,” she whispered, keeping the embrace PG out of respect for all the children’s charities his foundation helped. She’d studied up on him online and she’d been more than a little impressed. “Swing for the fences, big guy.”
His grin wrinkled the corners of his eyes and he backed away to take his place on the field.
“Always.”
TALKING SMACK
1
“DON’T STOP.”
Javier Velasquez panted the command over a wave of feel-good endorphins as the woman above him sank her fingernails into his inner thigh. He wanted to praise her, to parcel out some kind word to encourage her. But he couldn’t even remember her name right now when his body throbbed under her touch.
Sweat rolled down his forehead, a testament to how hard he’d worked himself during the first half of their hour together. But this bliss he felt was more than reward enough. He wanted to kiss his nameless female companion senseless for what she was doing with her strong, silky hands…
“Mr. Velasquez,” she said sharply. “Are you resisting?”
The woman was all business when he wanted to revel in the moment. What was it about women that demanded they talk at these times?
“Baby, I can’t resist another minute.” Opening his eyes, he grinned at her and sat up on the physical therapy table. “Let’s ditch this place and go somewhere more private to finish what we’ve started.”
His new athletic trainer straightened from where she’d been working on his groin muscles. The fury in her flushed face couldn’t be mistaken and he knew a moment’s regret for teasing her. It wasn’t her fault his nagging manager had demanded the extra daily sessions with her to prevent another injury this year. He knew these sessions were as much for babysitting purposes as they were for his muscles. If he was in the clubhouse training facility everyday, he couldn’t be out raising hell and having fun.
And that’s what the Chicago Flames coaching staff objected to about him most of all. They couldn’t stand it that their All-Star slugger knew how to have a good time off the field.
“You’d better get your head out of your ass and a muzzle on your mouth, Velasquez.” The woman leveled an accusatory finger at his chest as her eyes narrowed. “If you think you can send me running out of here crying sexual harassment because of a few sorry lines I’ve heard a hundred times, you’re sadly mistaken. Now roll over, champ, and take it like a man.”
She moved to the sink nearby and washed her hands with brisk, efficient movements, pausing midway to change the radio station from some dentist office Muzak to hard rock. She cranked the volume as if she could tune him out totally, then pumped out massage oil from a dispenser bottle she kept strapped to her waist.
Javier studied her, vaguely disappointed he couldn’t coerce her into taking the sweaty session somewhere private. He’d only been half joking about that. The trainer was hot. Even with no makeup and her hair wrenched back in an unforgiving ponytail, she was seriously attractive. The hair swinging against her back was Bond-girl platinum, her figure something any SI swimsuit model would be proud to flaunt. She wasn’t some overinflated product of Miracle Bras or surgery. She was just perfectly proportioned.
“Well?” She’d turned on him while he was fantasizing about her, and her blue eyes glittered with icy challenge. “Are you going to turn over, Mr. Velasquez, or shall I retrieve the cattle prod?”
“Could you at least call me by my first name if you’re going to insult me?” He lay prone as she’d requested, hating the self-indulgent hour spent on his body everyday as if he was some kind of pampered movie star who required a bunch of metrosexual B.S. treatments to appear in public.
Javier had scared off his last athletic trainer by running his mouth and being all-around annoying. In the process, he’d earned himself a week’s vacation from the sessions. But his manager had moved quickly to find someone new.
Enter the Bond girl and her almond-scented massage oil that almost drowned out the scent of sweat in the room. She seemed a hell of a lot more immune to talking smack.
“I would do that, but I don’t think I can use your first name when you can’t be bothered to even remember mine after our third session together.” She went to work on his hamstrings and he willed away the natural pleasure that touch brought.
He’d had female trainers and physical therapists before, so he knew the drill to keep his thoughts platonic. But today, he didn’t feel so inclined to shut down that part of himself. Something about this woman—the facade that said she wasn’t backing down—had awakened his interest.
He swore under his breath that they’d gotten off to such a rough start. “If you tell me one more time, I won’t forget again, I promise.”
If his sleazy pick-up lines hadn’t rattled her, he wasn’t going down that road again. No sense alienating her totally—especially when her hands kneaded him two inches below the family jewels.
And whoa. Had he thought he could keep his thoughts platonic? Her touch was like a freaking lightning strike to his johnson.
“It’s Lisa Whatley.” Her dispassionate words reminded him she wasn’t feeling him the way he was feeling her.
For that matter, relationships between players and team trainers were strictly off-limits in the Chicago Flames organization, so it was probably just as well that she had discipline. God knew, Javier didn’t need to court any more trouble with management or he’d be kissing a fat contract goodbye. He’d pushed his luck with his risk-taking ways this season.
But he’d perfected the art of squeezing every ounce of fun out of life and he wasn’t about to stop now. He’d learned to go for the jugular when his older brother—a father figure to Javier—had died young without ever having experienced a fraction of the joys life had to offer. Manuel’s self-sacrificing ways had put Javier through school while Manuel had a heart attack at twenty-nine without ever getting to follow his own dreams. Javier had made a mission out of living enough dreams for both of them.
“Right. Lisa.” He filed that away in his memory banks and knew he wouldn’t forget again. As of today, the trainer had made an impression on him. “If I can’t send you running, maybe I can convince you to knock off early once in a while? You know, make both our jobs a little easier?”
The rule against fraternizing with team staffers didn’t matter so much if no one knew, right? He debated his chances of spiriting Lisa away from the Flames’ headquarters for an afternoon of fun.
She never paused her methodic strokes up his hamstring, the gentle kneading interspersed with light pummeling now that the hard stretches were complete.