Page 127 of Lucky In Love

“They’re good! Thank you for letting me have the game on tonight. Eli is coming later.” Eli was her brother, another owner.

“Liam is a sponsor of our team,” she said, as he turned and started talking with another man who was sitting on a bar stool. They were laughing together.

“He’s cute,” it came out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying. Liam had shoulder-brushing salt and pepper hair and scruff.

“He is cute.” She grinned at me. “Should I introduce you?”

“Not yet.” It was always my answer when people asked if I wanted to meet someone. “I’m still not ready.”

I’d ended things with my ex-boyfriend about three months ago. He kept putting me off about moving in together and getting engaged until after I’d purchased what I thought would be our condo. We’d been together for a year.

Mandy’s hand covered mine. “You did the right thing.” She said, as she’d done over the past months, as I wondered if I should have given Chad more time.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have given him an ultimatum.” But talking to her about this didn’t have the sting it did even a month ago. I realized that I didn’t even want to talk to him about my new account. It never occurred to me. Maybe I was finally moving on.

Suddenly, Mandy stiffened. “Listen,” she said. “We need to leave. Now.”

Chapter One

Liam

“Are we really putting money into a new minor league team?” My best friend Donovan asked from a stool at my sports bar.

“I know. It’s a lot of money, but we’ll have three other owners. The Cruisers are already on track to a profitable first year.”

“They had a grant for their stadium.”

“We’d be refurbishing the one from the old Kinsaw College.” A suburban college went bankrupt after COVID in our town of Lombard, Illinois, and while it was a smallish stadium, it would do the job.

Donovan nodded. “I looked at the specs. It will be smaller than the Cruiser’s stadium, but will we draw numbers? They’re only about an hour away, and then there’s the Lake County team, and that other one south of the city.”

“I think it will. It will be within walking distance of the train to the city, and those new condos are nearby. The League is going to take on some costs.”

He nodded. “I’m still not sure about this.”

“Hey, the bar paid off, didn’t it?” I’d opened this bar in my family’s building. It used to be a dance studio and a breakfast restaurant that had closed. Finally, I tried to open my own business with this bar.

He smiled. “And yet, you’re here often working.”

That was more loneliness than anything else. I thought it would be good to have a business after I tired of coaching a few years back. I’d had a brief battle with skin cancer on my arm, not surprising after years of playing ball in the sun, but it required several treatments.

Running the bar was mostly fun for me. We also had a room for rentals and hosted popular trivia, bingo, and karaoke nights. No-one had beaten Donovan and me yet on the sports trivia in the lightning round, but I always gave the runners-up a prize.

“I don’t see you dating now, either.”

Baseball players do not make great boyfriends, at least six months of the year. We’d both dated and hadn’t found any relationship that was able to withstand one of our seasons.

“That’s Steve and Aaron’s woman?” Donovan swiveled to see our buddies’ fiancé as she cheered for something from the Cruisers.

“Yes.”

“Think sharing a woman works?”

“We can do it. We’ve been friends since our first baseball job. I’ve known several groups now that make it work.” I was looking at Mandy’s friend. She was really lovely, with dark brown hair and a green top that slid off one shoulder. I had an urge to kiss her light brown skin there on her smooth shoulder.

“Really think we could do that?” Donovan was looking at her, too.

It wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned that, especially as we’d heard about our friends’ arrangement. But it was the first time I thought maybe it could work.

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