Page 6 of Sweet Spot

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t double trouble at my bar,” Mark chuckled, pulling a beer for Everett. “Am I going to have to walk you two home when I close up?”

“Naw, we’re having fun, not getting stupid.” Everett grinned. “Somebody has to look pretty for the cameras tomorrow and my brother does not recover from a night of booze like he used to.”

Everett started in on the old man jokes when my first grey hairs came in two weeks after signing my contract. The stress of baseball did what almost ten years of solo parenting could not.

Everett rubbed his hands together. “We’re celebrating tonight, Mark. We will need your finest wings, a bucket of shrimp, Tourist Trap Oysters, and a Lost Tourist Burger with everything on it.”

Mark nodded along. “Hush puppies?”

Everett balked in mock horror. “You would let us live without them? Of course we need hush puppies! Also a basket of bread and Sunburnt Onion Straws.”

My brother had been on a steady diet of chicken, rice, and veggies during training. “You sure about all this?”

He looked me dead in the eye. “It’s cheat day and when I cheat, I cheat.”

“Maybe we should move to a table?” There wasn’t enough room on the bar for that much food.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mark said with a wave. “I got you. I’ll get the garlic bread and onion straws out first.”

“Thank you, my good man!” Everett tugged on his enormous beard. He normally kept it trimmed to perfection, but he let it go over the last month and now he had a wild mountain man beard to go with the wild curls on the top of his head. Tomorrow, like me, he’d transform into a new man. The curls would be trimmed and shaped, the beard sculpted and conditioned. You’d never know we looked almost identical under our scruff and hair. His hazel eyes were almost the exact same shade as mine, we had the same jaw and nose, even our bodies had a similar build. When we were young, way before puberty hit, we would pretend we were twins.

“You going to shave that thing off?”

He blinked. “It’s my signature. Fans know me by my beard!” Everett was extra full of it tonight.

“Well don’t go getting recognized tonight. I need this last night of freedom even if you don’t.”

“Do your eyes work?” He spread his hands below the beard. “This thing looks nothing like my signature beard. Everyone in here probably thinks I’m a beach bum washed up from a shipwreck.”

We probably both looked that way to a stranger.

The song pumping through the speakers stopped and there was a pause before the next began. The sounds of dozens of customers all talking at once filled the void. One, in particular, drew my attention like a fastball straight down the middle. The hair on the back of my neck rose up and the skin of my arm sizzled a little. The voice was smooth as silk and I liked it very, very much. It was the kind of voice I wanted to hear strain as it said my name.

Which was not a thought I needed right now.

But I couldn’t help myself. I turned to find the source. The woman speaking was even more beautiful than the voice. Full lips, dark brows and eyes, effortlessly beautiful. She looked like she was dressed for a night out but tried to cover it up with a sweater.

Then she turned as if she knew I was staring at her and locked eyes with me. It sent a jolt straight through me and my mouth went dry as a bone. Fucking hell, if she could do this to me from across a room there was definitely no way I was going anywhere near her.

No women. That was the rule.

I turned back to find Mark grinning at me. “You like athletes?”

“Huh?”

He nodded toward the woman. “That table. Athletes.”

I still didn’t understand him. “I don’t get it.”

Mark laughed and shook his head. “If you’re going to manage a professional sports team in Tampa Bay, you might want to get familiar with the starting rosters of the rest of the Tampa Bay teams.”

Hot, sexy, and an athlete? I couldn’t keep my own schedule, let alone that of another athlete. Three strikes and you’re out in baseball and in life. Strike one: she was female and I swore them off. Strike two: way too sexy for me. Strike three: an athlete.

I wasn’t dating anyone this year, and definitely not an athlete. Not now, not ever. Not even a year from now if I still had a job.

And that was a pretty big if. I might be a good manager or I might be a terrible one. No one knew. This time next year I could be a laughingstock that got passed down in the annals of baseball lore. The rookie who quit, came back, and bombed.

“You’re thinking about failing again, aren’t you?” Everett asked.

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