Brooklyn Heat (17 page)

He was already reaching for his laptop.

“I don’t know,” Chad said. “But if you were intent on pissing off Billingsley, wow, did you do a bang up job.”

Jay typed in the web address for The Juice, wondering what Alyssa had written. He knew he’d fucked it all up with that little maneuver he’d pulled behind the bookstore. The problem was, he hadn’t been able to help himself. Something about that girl had him all confused. He didn’t like her, or at least, he thought he didn’t. Which wasn’t even a deal breaker – he’d been with a lot of women that he didn’t really like. Most of them, actually.

But Alyssa wasn’t even his type physically. She was curvy and dark-haired, and he usually went for the lithe, blonde model types.

But her body had been so close, and her curves had been pushed up next to him, and he’d loved the look on her face when he’d been running his fingers over her skin. He’d loved teasing her, wanted to tease her all night, but he only if there was going to be some sort of payoff. And there hadn’t been. At the end of the night, she’d hopped out of his car and gone up to her hotel room alone, even though he’d offered to walk her up. When he’d gotten home, he’d lain awake for at least an hour, thinking about how bad he wanted her and trying to ignore his erection.

He shook his head now and tried to clear his thoughts.

“So are you going to read it?” Chad was asking.

“I don’t want to,” Jay said. But his curiosity got the best of him, and before he could stop himself, he was clicking through to Alyssa’s column.

Bad publicity didn’t usually bother him, and so he tried to keep his expression blank while he read it, so that Chad wouldn’t know that anything was up.

It was worse than he’d thought. She’d torn him apart. She hadn’t mentioned their little moment behind the bookstore, thank God, but she’d talked about his car, his sunglasses, the way he’d ordered caviar in an effort to impress her, and how she’d gotten the feeling he was hoping she wouldn’t eat it.

It was all true of course, but he felt himself starting to get angry. How dare she? He’d been nothing but nice to her, taking her out to dinner, showing her around the city, taking her to the bookstore. Granted, it had been so that he could get on her good side, but she didn’t know that.

Although, Jay thought, he supposed she might have figured it out.

But still. That moment behind the bookstore hadn’t been all him. He’d seen it on her face. She’d wanted him just as much as he wanted her. Hadn’t she? Suddenly, he wasn’t sure. And he didn’t like the way it made him feel.

“Fucking Alyssa Cotler,” he muttered under his breath.

“Yup,” Chad said agreeably. He’d produced a bag of trail mix from somewhere, and was munching on it.

“So how pissed is Billingsley?” Jay asked.

“Pissed,” Chad said. “I talked to Kylie this morning, and she said he came in huffing and puffing. There’s going to be a meeting after batting practice.”

“Fuck him,” Jay decided. And fuck Alyssa Cotler. He was sick of being Mr. Nice Guy. All it did was bring him grief, obviously. It was better when everyone thought he was an asshole.

***

Alyssa made sure she was awake early, even though she’d had a hard time falling asleep the night before. Once she’d gotten out of Jay Havens’s car, she couldn’t calm down. It was like her whole body had been charged with electricity. She’d written her column, sent it to Isobel, and then she’d lain awake, flipping through the channels on the TV and watching infomercials until after two in the morning. When she’d finally fallen asleep, she’d been so nervous that she was going to miss her seven o’clock wake up call that she’d kept startling awake, looking at the clock.

Finally at six forty-five she decided to give up, and reached over and grabbed her Blackberry. She had an email from Isobel, which said the column had required few edits, was fabulous, and was now live.

Alyssa swallowed, suddenly nervous. When she’d written it, she’d been angry, pissed off that Jay Havens thought he could have her in some back alley and tease her like that. But now, with the early morning light streaming in through the crack between the curtains, and the prospect of having to face Jay and the rest of the Heat at their practice this morning, she just felt anxious.

She took a deep breath and stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom. She cranked the shower as hot as it could go, and stood under the warm stream, letting the hot water soothe her tense muscles. After about twenty minutes, she was feeling better, and wrapped herself in a warm towel.

She opened her suitcase and surveyed what she’d brought. She’d been instructed to dress comfortably, so she settled on a pair of nice jeans and a dark green wrap sweater.

There was a knock on the door, and for a second, for some reason, Alyssa thought it might be Jay. She thought of him again, last night, the way his tongue had licked his lips, the way he’d been looking at her, like he was daring her to stay away from him.

Screw you,
Alyssa thought and opened the door.

“Alyssa Cotler?” the man at the door asked. He was wearing a bellman’s uniform, had shaggy dark hair, and was holding what looked like a shirt box.

“Yes?”

“Sign here please.” He held out a clipboard, and Alyssa signed obediently. She tipped the man, then brought the box into her room and set it down on the bed. The return address was stamped with the Brooklyn Heat logo, a bullet sliding through a circle with a tail of red fire trailing behind it.

Probably some kind of welcome package.

When she opened it, a Heat uniform fell out, along with a note. She picked it up.

Dear Alyssa,

We are so excited to have you with us for the next week. Please
wear this complimentary uniform for our first day together. We’d love to
have you post pictures on your website!

So looking forward to meeting you.

Sincerely,

Dax Reynolds, Captain, Brooklyn Heat

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.”