Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (176 page)

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.”

“Thanks,” Alyssa said.
 

She followed Dax across the field and started down the stairs and
into the dugout.
 
But right before
she hit the bottom stair, her right sneaker caught on a nail sticking out of
the bottom step.
 
Her legs flew out
from under her, and before she knew what was happening, she was on the ground.

***

Jay was on the other side of the field when he saw Alyssa go
flying, head over teapot, into the dugout.
 
He wasn’t sure, but it seemed like she was wearing some kind of pink
uniform, and it looked like her hair was in pigtails.
 
But that couldn’t be right.
 
She didn’t seem like the kind of girl
who wore her hair in pigtails, and she was taking herself so seriously that he
couldn’t imagine she’d do that on her first day on an important job.

He saw her fall, and the instinct to protect her kicked in.
 
He started to jog over, but as he got
closer, he saw Dax Reynolds reach out and try to catch her.
 
Dax went to grab Alyssa around her
waist, but she fell anyway, her knee scraping against the rough surface of the
ground, her hands breaking her fall.

She cried out, and before Jay could stop himself, he was jumping
down into the dugout.
 
“Alyssa,” he
said, “Are you okay?”
 
For a second,
their eyes met, and she looked so vulnerable and adorable in her pink baseball
uniform with a tight t-shirt underneath (God, that chest!) and her hair in two
pigtails.
 
She’d smeared something
dark under her eyes, which was cute and endearing at the same time, and he
wanted to just pick her up and hold her and tell her she was going to be
okay.
 

But then, just like that, the moment was gone, and she was standing
up, brushing herself off.
 
“I’m
fine,” she grumbled.

“No, you’re not,” Dax said.
 
“You’re bleeding.”
 
All three
of them looked down at her uniform.
 
The knee was torn, and a spot of blood was starting to seep through the
fabric.

“Fuck,” Alyssa said, and for some reason, Jay was suddenly turned
on.
 
It was the combination of the
word coming out of her mouth, and the fact that she looked so vulnerable.
 
It was this weird, sexy combination that
was contradictory and hot all at the same time.

“Here,” Jay said, leaning down and trying to take her arm.
 
“Sit down.”
 
She glared at him, but let him lead her
over to the bench, where he sat down next to her.
 
He reached down and rolled up the bottom
of her pants, and she let him.
 
Her
legs were smooth and tan, and Jay remembered again what it had been like last
night, when he’d almost kissed her.
 
“It doesn’t look that bad.”

“Nope,” Dax said cheerfully.
 
“Just a scrape.
 
I’ll go and
grab the first aid kit.”
 
Jay glared
at him, but then he remembered that if Dax was going to get the first aid kit,
he could stay here with Alyssa.

“Thanks,” Alyssa said gratefully.
 
Dax picked her bag up from where it had
fallen on the floor, and pushed her cell phone, notebook, and wallet back into
it.
 
Fortunately her laptop bag had
stayed on her shoulder, and was now sitting safely next to her on the dugout
bench.

Once Dax had gone to find a band-aid, Alyssa made a big show of
pulling her bag out and grabbing her cell phone.
 
She began scrolling through her emails.

“Saw the piece you wrote this morning,” Jay said conversationally.

“Did you?”

“Yeah.
 
Nice job.
 
Very well-written.”

“Thanks.”

He turned to her.
 
“So
is that what you really think about me?
 
Or are you just trying to get website visitors?”

She put down her Blackberry and looked at him.
 
The bottoms of her pigtails brushed
against the tops of her breasts, and Jay had the urge to reach out and push her
hair back.
 
“You think I’d write
something like that just to get website visitors?”

“Isn’t that the point of the whole thing?” Jay asked.
 
“To get website visitors?
 
That is how websites make their money,
isn’t it?”

“It’s not about money,” Alyssa said.

“You don’t want to do a good job?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Doesn’t doing a good job mean that you have to get website
visitors?”

“I wouldn’t write something sensational just to get visitors,” she
said.
 
“And besides, what I wrote
wasn’t that bad.”

“I didn’t say it was that bad,” he said.
 
“I asked if that’s what you really
thought of me.”

“Yes,” she said.
 
But
her voice broke as she said it.
 
“You were trying to impress me last night.”

“I was?”

“Yes.
 
You took me out
for a caviar dinner, and then to a bookstore, which you claimed was your
favorite place in Manhattan.”

“That is my favorite place in Manhattan.”

 
She turned to him, her
eyes serious. “Name the last three books you bought from there.”

“Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King, Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger,
and a history of baseball book that I forget the name of because it’s out of
print.”

“The Catcher in the Rye?”

“It’s for my little sister.”

This seemed to have stumped her, and she leaned back against the
wooden slats of the dugout and closed her eyes.
 

“How’s your knee?” he asked.

“It’s okay,” she said.
 
But she bit her lip, and he could tell it hurt.
 

“Here we go!” Dax walked into the dugout, no
bounded
into the dugout, and Jay reached out and took the little
first aid kit he was holding out of his hand.
 
“Oh, yeah,” Dax said.
 
“You definitely need to get that cleaned
out and get a band-aid on it.
 
Obviously it doesn’t need a stitch, but we still don’t want it to get
infected.”

No shit, Jay thought, fighting down a wave of annoyance.
 
“Thanks, Dax,” he said cheerfully, the
tone in his voice conveying that Dax should get the hell out of there.
 
But Dax didn’t get the message.
 
He started to open up a band-aid.

“Dax,” Jay said.
 
“I got
it.”
 
Dax looked up at him,
surprised, and Jay gave him a look.
 
A look he usually reserved for when a runner was on second base and
looking like he might want to steal third.
 
Dax got the message, and scampered onto the field.

Jay pulled an antibacterial spray out of the box.
 
Alyssa reached for it.
 
“I can do it,” she said.
 

“Do what?”

“Put the spray on.”
 

He looked at her face, and grinned. “You’re scared,” he said.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”
 
He
grinned some more.
 
“It’s just some
Bactine, it’s not going to sting or anything.”

“I know that,” she said, but he didn’t think she really believed
it.
 

He took the cap off the bottle and she closed her eyes and bit her
lip.
 
God, she was adorable, Jay
thought.
 
It was too bad she was so
uptight and bitchy.
 
In fact, that’s
probably why he was having this reaction to her.
 
He probably wanted to break her
down.
 
Of course, the fact that it
had been way too long since he’d gotten laid definitely wasn’t helping.

He gently put the spray on her knee, and her body relaxed as she
realized it wasn’t going to sting.
 
He pulled a band-aid out and placed it on her scrape.