Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (179 page)

Jay didn’t know who Jessa was, and he didn’t care.
 
Chad had a different woman every single
night, which wasn’t really of note when you were a major league baseball player.
 
Hell, even some of the married players
were known to mess around once in a while.
 
Their wives either turned the other cheek, or had an arrangement worked
out.
 
That kind of arrangement
wasn’t for Jay – that’s why he never got involved.
 
He had his fun, but honestly, who wanted
the kind of responsibility that a relationship entailed?

“Yup,” Chad said.
 
“Spent the night with Jessa all right.”

“Who’s Jessa?” Jay asked, only because he knew if he didn’t, Chad
would end up bugging him for the rest of their workout.

“Alyssa’s friend.”

At the sound of her name, Jay’s head jerked up.
 
He hopped on the treadmill next to Chad.
 
“You were at the club with Alyssa last
night?”

“Restaurant,” Chad corrected.
 
“Yeah.
 
And her friend Jessa
was ready for it.”

“So you saw her with Dax then?”

Chad frowned.
 
“Jessa
wasn’t with Dax.”
 
He said it like
that very thought was completely ridiculous.
 
“I just told you she was with me.”

“Not Jessica,” Jay said.

“Jessa,” Chad corrected.

“Whatever,” Jay said, knowing that her name didn’t matter, since
she’d be forgotten about by tomorrow.
 
“I meant Alyssa.”

“Oh, yeah, Alyssa was with Dax,” Chad said.
 
“They were dancing, I think.
 
I don’t know, it was a little fuzzy
after the tequila.”

Jay sighed, not believing that this was the source he had for what
really went on last night.
 
He’d
read the New York Post article – studied every single detail.
 
It had claimed that Dax and Alyssa had
been canoodling all night, that there might even be a blossoming romance
between the two.
 
But he knew more
than anyone that the Post could get things completely wrong.
 
They could claim someone was breaking up
when they were about to get married, they could claim you were having sex when
you were having a business meeting.
 

“Did she seem like she liked it?” Jay asked.
 
“Dancing with Dax like that?”

“Of course she liked it,” Chad said.
 
“The Heat is on the move!”
 
He grunted a little bit, and then held
his hand up to give Jay the opportunity to give him a high five.
 
Jay looked at him in disgust, then pushed
the speed on his treadmill up from four miles an hour to seven.

He started to run, letting his muscles warm up, letting the morning
flow out of him.
 
He pushed the
speed up to eight miles an hour, and started to lose himself in the run.

After a few minutes, Chad said, “So you like her.”

“What?”

“You’re interested in her.
 
In Alyssa.”

“No, I’m not,” Jay scoffed.

“Jay,” Chad said, “the last time you acted like this was over
Marti.”

“Acted like what?”

“Like you want to rip the head off any guy who even looks at her.”

“First,” Jay said,
 
“don’t ever mention Marti’s name again.
 
And second, I’m not interested Alyssa
Cotler.”
 
He reached down and put
the ear buds of his iPod into his ears, and then turned the treadmill up even
more, letting the music echo and pound through his ears.

Chad didn’t know what he was talking about.
 
Alyssa was nothing like Marti.
 
Marti had been ruthless.
 
Jay and Marti dated all through college
in Texas, and right before he was about to be signed to his first major league
deal, he’d proposed to her.
 
But
Marti had turned him down.
 
She
didn’t want to be a baseball player’s wife.
 
She didn’t want to have to travel all
the time, from city to city.
 
Marti
wanted to settle down, to have kids.
 
Which she’d done, about a year after they’d broken up, with some
insurance salesman named Hal.

Jay had vowed to never get involved with a girl like Marti
again.
 
Those kind of girls would
never be into the kind of lifestyle his job necessitated, so why would he set
himself up for heartbreak?
 
So instead
he went for the party girls, the girls who were into him for his fame and his
money, the ones that didn’t put pressure on him, that knew enough to take it
for what it was – a couple nights, or weeks, or months of fun, no
commitments, no strings attached.

It had been working out perfectly.
 
Well, not perfectly, Jay thought, as he
pounded his legs to the music.
 
There was the girl who he married in Vegas, and all the partying.
 
And of course it was a pretty empty
existence.
 
But every time he
started to feel lonely, Jay reminded himself of the fact that having ties and
loyalties to a woman only led to problems.
 
Bad problems.

By the time his session at the gym was over, Jay felt better.
 
Obviously he wanted what he couldn’t
have – and since Alyssa Cotler was off-limits, that was all this
was.
 
He needed to stay away from
her, or else he was going to be in big trouble.

***

Alyssa sat in the dugout later that night, her notebook open in
front of her, her pen poised to take notes.
 
But all she could concentrate on was Jay
Havens.

He was at bat, his arms crooked perfectly.
 
She admired the way his hands gripped
the bat, the way his uniform hugged his body.
 
She thought about what they’d done in
her hotel room earlier, how he’d kissed her and how she’d wanted him to throw
her down on the bed and do whatever he wanted.
 
A rush of electricity and heat pulsed in
between her legs, and she quickly looked back down at her notebook.

The page was blank.
 
She
was supposed to be taking notes on the game, about what was going on in the
dugout, but it wasn’t going so well.
 
First, the guys seemed like they were on their best behavior, not
wanting to swear or spit or whatever it was that baseball players were supposed
to do.
 
Second, she kept getting
distracted thinking about Jay Havens.
 
And third, Jessa kept texting her, asking her if Chad had mentioned her,
or when Jessa could come by to “guarantee he would ask her out.”

Alyssa didn’t want to have to be the one to break the news to her
that if you had to come by so that a guy would want to ask you out after he
slept with you, your romance probably wasn’t on the best ground.
 
Also Chad had been flirting with a
reporter from ESPN for the past hour.
 
He was over to the side, trying to hide it from Alyssa, but at one point
she’d seen the poor girl pull down the top of her shirt and show Chad the small
heart tattoo she had on the top of her breast.

Alyssa looked down at her paper and wrote,
 
“Chad got ESPN reporter to show him her
tattoo.”
 
Something told her Isobel
wasn’t going to be too pleased with that. She needed something more.

The crack of the bat sounded across the field, and Alyssa looked up
to see Jay start to run the bases.
 
He ran fast and hard, his arms pumping and his face showing total
concentration.
 
He slid into second
base seconds before the throw, and the crowd went wild.
 

Jay pulled off his batting gloves, and Alyssa thought about the way
his hands had felt on her earlier.
 
She swallowed.
 
Hard.
 
There was heat pulsing in between her
thighs, and she turned away from him, trying to calm herself down.
 
Why was it they always said to think
about baseball when you were getting worked up?
 
Baseball was about the sexiest thing
that Alyssa could think of right now.

Her phone rang, and she rummaged around for it in her bag, then
moved out of the dugout so as not to disturb the players.
 
Not that they really cared.
 
After she’d eviscerated Jay in her first
blog, no one would dare say anything to her.
 
It was kind of funny, all of these big
baseball players being afraid of what she might write about them.

“Hello?” she said, standing in the short tunnel that led down to
the dugout.
 
She leaned against the
wall.

“Alyssa!” Isobel yelled.
 
“Your column’s getting a great response.
 
From the readers, and the board.”

The board was the board of editors.
 
Alyssa had never had contact with them
directly, but from what she could tell, Isobel was terrified of them.

“Thanks,” Alyssa said.
 
She’d kept this morning’s column light, talking about how the picture in
the New York Post had been taken out of context, and how she was getting a
taste of what it was like to live in the public eye.
 
She’s thrown in some bullshit, too,
about how she’d hurt her knee and how all the players had been super nice to
her.
 

“But I have to warn you, they weren’t pleased about seeing that
picture,” Isobel said.
 
“If you
hadn’t written such a great post, I’m not sure what they would have done.”

The threat was implicit – Alyssa would have lost her
job.
 
Isobel was always implying
that Alyssa was going to lose her job.
 
Alyssa didn’t know if it was because she actually could lose her job
that easily, or if it was just a scare tactic.
 
She didn’t care to find out.