Page 12 of Break Away
He swallowed, wiping goat cheese from his lipwith his thumb. “Hmm, good. What are these again?”
“Crostini. A simple and tasty appetizer.” Shewatched as he demolished another topped with creamy Brie andjellied cranberries. She found herself staring at his long,squared-off fingers. He’d pushed up the sleeves of his casualshirt, revealing forearms corded with muscles that went with thelong and lean build. The whole package was too uncomfortablyappealing, and noticing all that wasn’t a good start to moving pasther teenage crush.
“What? You’re staring.”
She wasnotgoing to tell him whereher mind had wandered. “I’m surprised, that’s all. I wasn’t sure ifyou ate anything that didn’t come wrapped in plastic.”
He gave her a wolfish grin. “There’s a lotyou don’t know about me.” Those bold blue eyes locked on hers andher stomach did a slow somersault. When he spoke, his voice was alow growl. “I’d like to talk to you when you have a minute.Alone.”
“Ah, sure.” She wouldnotreadanything into that request. “You can hang around when the othersleave, if you like.”
She wasn’t fooling herself that he wanted totalk with her about anything personal. He was a cop who had beenassigned the hit-and-run investigation. Zoey caught Eva’sspeculative gaze and gave her friend a quick headshake. She’d haveto find a way to discourage Eva from thinking what that look saidshe was thinking.
With the appetizers consumed and the pizzacooling between them, Zoey leaned back against the cushion, thesweater she’d pulled on keeping the evening chill at bay. This wasone of the nicest evenings she’d had since her move back toHangman’s Loss a year ago. She loved the relaxed casualness ofgetting together with the friends she’d made, the easy talk andlaughter. Maybe she liked that Levi had joined them a little toomuch, but she’d cut herself some slack. She couldn’t fault herteenage self for knowing a good thing when she’d seen it.
“Levi, word is you joined the Loss policedepartment,” Diego said around a bite of pizza. “Small-town cop jobis going to be a hell of a lot different than big-city copjob.”
“I’m hoping it will be a good difference.Today was my first day.”
“How was it?” Diego asked.
Levi shrugged. “Good. Drove around a lot toget reacquainted with the area. There’s been development on theother side of the lake I hadn’t seen before.”
“Ooh,” Eva exclaimed. “Levi is a really goodbaseball player. We know what that means.”
“What does it mean?” Levi’s longneck bottledangled loosely between those all-too-appealing fingers.
“These guys,” Eva pointed at the other twomen, “have been bragging about how they are going to crush the Gunsthis year.”
“Crush the guns?” Levi looked confused.
“How good is good?” Justin interrupted.
“The Guns are the police department’ssoftball team, and the fire department’s team are the Hoses,” Evaexplained. “Diego, Justin, and the other firefighters have beenpracticing for months. The Guns and Hoses play in an annual charitysoftball game with proceeds going to local kids’ programs.”
“How good?” Justin asked moreinsistently.
“Levi is awesome.” Eva batted her eyes at hercousin. “He played first base in high school and college. He’s gota great bat and is awesome on the field. He was even scouted by thebig leagues.”
“Really?” Zoey asked him. “What happened withthat?”
Levi shrugged. “I was good enough to play inthe minors, but probably not good enough to go farther than that. Ididn’t want to spend year after year chasing a break into themajors that might never come.”
“The Guns also have Jack Morgan,” Eva added.“The guy can hit home runs like he’s swatting flies.”
“Hey, who’s side are you on? Besides, we’vegot Tank,” Diego interjected. He glanced around the group. “He’sTank because he’s built like a tank. He’s our power hitter.”
“True, we do have Tank,” Justin muttered.“Dude,” he motioned to Levi while talking to Diego, “they’re goingto draft you to play in the Guns and Hoses game. There’s no waythey won’t. We won last year, but barely.” He pointed at Diego.“We’ve got to start practicing every night.”
“When is the game?” Levi asked Eva.
“A couple of weeks.”
“Would you play if asked?” Zoey sat forwardand started stacking plates.
“Hell yeah.”
“Damn,” Justin muttered.
