Blurred Lines (22 page)

by Lauren Layne

Available from Loveswept

Cole had been watching the brunette for the better part of three innings.

Which was just
wrong
on a couple levels.

For starters, it was a rare woman that could come between Cole Sharpe and baseball. Or between Cole and
any
sport, for that matter.

And at Yankee Stadium in particular, the game came first.
Especially
a game in which the Yankees and Blue Jays were tied 1–1 in a rivalry for the top spot in the American League East division.

Cole’s eyes should have been glued to the field. Not only because the Yankees were
his
team—he’d been a die-hard fan since his Little League days—but because Cole was a sportswriter. Come tomorrow morning, Cole would be expected to know the details of every single at-bat.

And yet…

His eyes shifted once more to the narrow figure of the brunette as he took another sip of beer.

There was something about her and yet nothing about her? She was utterly, completely, unremarkable.

And that was the
other
reason Cole’s fascination with the woman made no sense.

Cole loved women almost as much as he loved sports, but
this
woman?

Nothing about her demanded a second look. Cole liked ’em curvy, but this one was slim to the point of being skinny. There was no noticeable definition of her waist through her Jeter jersey. No womanly flare of her hips.

Plus, Cole preferred blondes, and this one’s messy ponytail was just a couple shades lighter than black.

As for her face? Well, he hadn’t seen it yet. Not fully. But she’d turned her head only once in the third inning, giving Cole a quick glance at her profile. The upturned nose was cute enough, but the rest of her features were hardly so arresting as to explain why he continued to stare at her.

It took Cole another half inning to realize what it was that had captivated him: For the first time in his life, he was seeing a woman who was more absorbed in a baseball game than he was.

Tiny Brunette, as he’d started thinking of her, hadn’t lost interest in the game once. Even between innings, when the rest of the stadium was refilling on beer and peanuts, she merely scribbled like crazy in a little notebook she kept in her lap.

It was like clockwork. The third out would signal the swap of the players on the field, and Tiny Brunette’s attention would dip toward the damn notebook.

Her left hand would sneak around to twirl her ponytail around a finger while her right hand busily wrote…

What?

What
did she write in that notebook? And just why did he want to know so badly?

Normally Cole would just ask. The seat beside Tiny Brunette was free. Everyone else in the suite was there more for the networking and the free food and booze than the game. It would have been so easy just to plop down beside her, strike up a conversation. Flirt.

But for some reason he was hesitant.

Cole told himself it was because he didn’t want to interrupt whatever it was she was so diligently working on, but there was an unfamiliar fear too. The fear of rejection.

Because
nothing
about this woman signaled that she’d be interested in having a conversation with him.

And that would be a first.

But before Cole could make the call on whether or not to die curious about that damn notebook, or risk rejection by Tiny Brunette, his best friend and co-worker was holding a fresh beer in front of his face.

“You look like you need it,” Lincoln Mathis said, sipping the foam off his own beer.

“How would you know?” Cole said. “You’ve been chatting up Jonas Leroy’s wife for the better part of four innings.”

“Had to,” Lincoln said with a little shrug. “She was bored. Her husband’s completely preoccupied with whatever’s going on with that baseball down there.”

“As he should be at a
baseball game,
” Cole said pointedly.

Cole didn’t know why he bothered. His friend was already back on his cellphone, not the least bit interested in the game.

Lincoln Mathis
looked
like the type of man that would enjoy sports. Tall, athletic, well-muscled from early morning gym sessions. Carelessly styled black hair and friendly blue eyes that screamed
guy’s guy
just as loudly as they did
lady’s man.

But much to Cole’s dismay, he’d never been able to get his friend to invest more than a passing interest in sports—
any
sport. Lincoln was always happy to tag along to a game when booze and women were involved, but ask him who he thought this year’s MVP would be and he’d say Babe Ruth without the smallest hint of irony.

Still, tonight Cole couldn’t exactly lecture Lincoln for not paying attention, when he himself was having a hell of a time keeping track of the score.

Once more, his eyes found Tiny Brunette, who was…yep. Writing in her notebook.

“Hey, Sharpe. Do you know where they keep a fire extinguisher in here?” Lincoln asked, looking around the luxury suite of Yankee Stadium.

Cole tore his gaze away from the woman and her damn notebook. “What for?”

“If you stare at that girl any harder, she’s going to burst into flames,” Lincoln said, jerking his chin at Tiny Brunette.

“I wasn’t staring.”

“Don’t insult our bromance,” Lincoln said cheerfully.

“Keep running your mouth and we won’t have a bromance.” Cole forced himself not to look at the woman again.

“Hey, if you’ve got a crush on the wee lass, you can tell me,” Lincoln said, taking another sip of beer.

“I don’t have a crush. And wee lass? Really? You’re Scottish now?”

“Sometimes. Chicks dig the brogue. You should try it on your girl over there.”

“She’s not my girl. She’s just…”
Interesting,
Cole finished silently.

“Good,” Lincoln said, clapping him on the shoulder. “So you won’t mind that she left.”

Cole’s eyes flew to the seat where the woman had been sitting, annoyed to see that his friend was right. She was gone.

“It’s just as well,” Lincoln said. “We have bigger things to focus on. Say, like how we’re going to annihilate the bastard who’s out for your job.”

“It’s not my job,” Cole said, carefully keeping the tinge of bitterness out of his tone.

“Not yet,” Lincoln said. “But it will be. Taking your competition out of the picture is the only reason I’m at this barbarian event.”

“Remind me never to take you to a hockey match,” Cole muttered.

Still, he appreciated his friend’s loyalty. And Lincoln was right. Tonight wasn’t about petite female baseball fans and their damn notebooks.

Tonight was about Cole’s professional future.

The key to that future?
Oxford
magazine.

Oxford
was the country’s top-selling men’s magazine, where Lincoln—and most of Cole’s other closest friends—worked.

But more important, it was also where
Cole
worked.

Well, sort of.

He would work there. Just as soon as he found the asshole who was after his job.

Cole wasn’t going to pretend that he didn’t have a competitive streak. It was a prerequisite for someone whose bread and butter came from knowing the nuances of professional sports.

But it was rare that Cole felt a personal investment in a competition. But tonight? Tonight, it was definitely personal. Cole was the competitor.

The prize?

The title of senior sports editor at
Oxford.

The magazine was finally getting a real sports section. Their token two-page spread on fantasy football squeezed in between cologne reviews and the proper way to wear a tie clip was being expanded to a multipage, multitopic sports section.

A section that needed an editor.

Cole was the right man for the job. The
only
man for the job. Not only had he been writing for
Oxford
as a freelancer for years, but the editor in chief, Alex Cassidy, was one of his closest friends.

When Cassidy had come to Cole and explained that he wanted to make
Oxford
a serious contender for the
Sports Illustrated
readers, Cole had been damn sure that Cassidy was offering him the job.

Hell, Cassidy had been begging him for months to join the team, and Cole was finally ready—ready for a steady paycheck.

Ready to belong to something.

Because although Cole wasn’t exactly dying to buy a house in the ’burbs and settle down with a nice girl, it wasn’t just about Cole.

It was about Bobby, and the fact that Bobby’s care was getting more and more expensive. His brother needed more than Cole’s occasional freelance checks could provide.

Cole wasn’t just ready for this job. He
needed
it.

And that’s when Alex Cassidy had dropped his bomb: The job wasn’t Cole’s for the taking.

So goodbye to Easygoing Cole. Hello, Gladiator Cole.

Because, really, what the
fuck
?

Cole hadn’t minded that they’d had to publicly post the position. He understood there were HR boxes that had to be checked. But never had Cole thought there’d
actually
be competition. Not only were the
Oxford
guys practically his family, but Cole was the best damn sportswriter in the city.

His application should have been a formality. Their request that he update his résumé and submit a portfolio should have just been a matter of documentation.

The position was his, damn it. Cole
was
the
Oxford
sports section.

Except he wasn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Cassidy had called him yesterday to inform Cole that he was a finalist.

A fucking
finalist.

Pissing Cole off even further, Cassidy wouldn’t tell him who his competition was. Cole had named every worthwhile sportswriter in the city, but Cassidy wouldn’t so much as grunt in confirmation.

Damn Cassidy and his unshakable professionalism.

His friend hadn’t completely left him in the lurch, though.

Cassidy had pointedly mentioned to Lincoln that the other candidate had been invited to the Berkin’s Hospitality Group’s reserved suite at tonight’s Yankees game.

Lincoln had, of course, told Cole.

So here they were, trying to sniff out the competition.

It was the only reason Cole would be caught dead in the luxury suite. Cole
hated
the luxury suites.

This wasn’t what baseball—or any game—was about. Baseball was about the peanuts, the rowdy crowds, the overpriced beer. It was about the sound of a fastball smacking against the catcher’s glove, the satisfying crack of a wooden bat when a rookie pinch-hitter really got a hold of one.

For Cole, watching baseball was about sitting with his brother in the stands, watching Bobby’s face go positively ecstatic every time they did the wave, and the way his brother never, ever got tired of the seventh-inning stretch.

That
was baseball.

And Cole wanted nothing more than to be an anonymous part of the rowdy crowd, preferably on the third-base line, watching the Yankees, hopefully, trounce the Blue Jays.

Instead, he was stuck here with a bunch of fools who wouldn’t recognize a baseball if it line-drived them in the ass.

Adding insult to injury, it was all for nothing. There was no sign of his competition. Cole knew every decent sportswriter in the city, and none were here tonight.

It was possible, he supposed, that Cassidy was considering some out-of-town jock for the position, but a quick scan of the room showed only familiar faces, all corporate bigwigs.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cole said to Lincoln, downing the rest of his beer in three gulps.

“You don’t want to at least wait for Cassidy?”

“Nah, I’ll catch him tomorrow.”

Before Cole turned to leave, he couldn’t resist one last look at the seat where his Tiny Brunette had been sitting.

He paused when he saw that she’d returned, and, incredibly, the woman had just gotten more appealing to Cole.

Her face was turned to the side just slightly, her notebook now on the open seat to her right instead of on her lap, and she wrote furiously with her right hand, while her left hand held…

A hot dog.

Be still my heart.

Apparently, Miss Glued-to-the-Game had managed to tear herself away long enough to get a good old-fashioned hot dog. Mustard only, from the looks of it. Personally, he’d have added some ketchup, but still…a woman who’d so unabashedly eat a hot dog?

He had to talk to this woman, risk of rejection be damned.

Cole was beside her before he’d even fully committed to the decision to move, ignoring Lincoln’s snicker behind him.

Up close, she was even smaller than he expected. Narrow shoulders, no chest to speak of, skinny little arms.

He had yet to see her face full on, thanks to the cap pulled low on her forehead, and suddenly he wasn’t sure what he was more desperate to see—her face or her notebook.

He cleared his throat. “Hey.”

Not exactly his best opener, but it sufficed to get her attention.

Tiny Brunette’s pen stopped its furious scribbling, and her jaw paused in its steady chewing of the hot dog.

Slowly her face lifted to his, and Cole had the strangest sensation of the breath catching in his chest as he waited to finally meet this woman’s eyes.

And,
wow.
What a pair of eyes they were.

If the rest of her was tiny, her eyes were enormous by comparison. Huge and dark brown and friendly.

Damn, she was cute.

Not gorgeous. Not beautiful. But she had the girl-next-door,
Wanna-grab-a-pitcher?
kind of appeal.

She also wasn’t Cole’s type. At all. He liked ’em blonde and leggy and seductive.

Still…that damn notebook.

“Cole Sharpe,” he said, sticking out a hand.

Her eyes widened just slightly, and for a second he thought maybe she’d recognized his name, but then she smiled, and it was pure friendly curiosity.

“Hi!” Her voice matched the rest of her. Girlish and guileless.

Cole found himself oddly enchanted. She was so…different.