Out of Bounds (Reedsville Roosters #5) (4 page)

As much as Gary liked the sight of round bottoms wriggling seductively at him, he wouldn’t dare say so to the owner of the one he was ogling at the moment. After all, her husband was right across from him at the Morstad kitchen table, sipping coffee and occasionally casting death glares in Gary’s direction.

The owner of the plump ass was on her knees in the pantry trying to retrieve Sidney’s ball from beneath a low shelf.

Gary moaned inwardly and forced his attention back to his bacon and eggs.

Olivia walked past and ruffled his hair. “How’d that allergy medication I gave you last night work out?”

He nibbled tentatively on the end of his bacon, trying to determine what manner of beast the protein had been sourced from, and upon deciding the animal had been of the porcine sort, he shoved the strip into his mouth. Too many times, he’d been fooled with turkey, or worse—
soy.
He really did need a new line of work. His manservant clients tended to be the sorts who got on odd health kicks and tried to drag him down with them.

He cleared his throat, took a sip of juice, and then fixed his gaze upon his comely hostess. “I don’t know what you gave me, but I’d not like to ingest that particular product again. Sure, my eyes stopped burning and my nose stopped dripping, but the dream I had…” He clucked his tongue and stared dead ahead at Dean. “Well. I didn’t realize my imagination was so good. Deliciously salacious.”

“Did you dream about the hula girl again?” Clint asked from behind the Sunday paper.

Gary took another sip of juice.

Dean narrowed his eyes.

“No. Not the hula girl,” Gary said. “But she did have a lovely accent, a phenomenal rack, and a bit of junk in the trunk.”

If Dean had owned fangs, he might have been baring them at the moment.

Gary grinned. He didn’t know why he was goading the man, except for the fact that he was jealous of his pretty little wife, and maybe that was reason enough. Or perhaps he was just being petty because when they’d crashed into his bedroom the night before, they hadn’t immediately stumbled away. Lo had seemed eager enough to put on a little show for Gary, and he would never lie and say he didn’t like the looks of Mr. Yeats.

Dean was one of those men who seemed more attractive the longer Gary looked at him. At first, he’d seemed bland and nondescript. Blond hair. Nothing particularly special about his dark gray eyes. But his beauty was in his movements—in the way his wide mouth tightened and then relaxed to free serviceable pink lips. In the way he squinted and blinked overlong, making him appear more like a child unaware of how his body responded than a man of nearly thirty. In the way he smoothed his hands over his chest when he was watching Lo and she wasn’t watching him back. Big hands. Rough and strong. A mechanic’s hands.

He may not have been traditionally handsome—strictly speaking—but he was sexy for sure. And that was likely why Lo had been drawn to him, even if the bastard had nothing of import to say.

The bastard looped a couple of his big fingers through the handle of his coffee mug and brought the cup to his mouth for a sip.

He stared at Gary over the rim, and Gary—being the asshole he was—stared back.

Whatcha have to say now, playa?

Dean narrowed his eyes.

“Found it!” Lo said, and immediately after
thump
, spat, “Shit!”

“Hit your head?” Olivia asked.

Lo sighed. “Yeah.”

Gary found himself standing in sync with Dean.

And when Gary remembered that she was
Dean
’s wife, he sat.

He watched Dean hurry over and then kneel in the doorway.

Dean rubbed the top of Lo’s head and pressed a kiss on it when she smiled.

“Aw, thank you, sweetie. But, listen, at least I didn’t bite my tongue at the same time I hit my head like I did when I was helping you change the oil in your truck.”

“I shouldn’t have let you help.”

“Oh, whatever.” She scrambled to her feet, holding the ball. “I needed something to do. I get lonely in that house.”

“I’d only been outside for twenty minutes.”

Lo’s cringe disappeared so quickly, that Gary was convinced he was the only one who’d seen it. Dean didn’t seem to. He’d moved to the counter where he was fetching the coffee pot.

What’s the cringe about?

Lo knocked the dust off the bright pink ball, and bowed low in front of Sidney in her booster chair. “For you, princess.”

Sidney grinned wide, showing off all eight of her little white teeth.

“Ugh. Why are you so cute? Just
why
?” Lo took the seat beside Dean’s vacated one and leaned back as he poured coffee into her long-neglected cup.

She peeked around Dean’s arm at Gary.

Gary wriggled his brows at her. He was trying so damned hard to behave himself, but he was becoming less certain that was a possible thing. She seemed to be pulling some trigger in him that made him show his true stripes even though he’d had years of therapy and should have been able to disguise them well enough when he had to.

“So, what are you allergic to?” she asked.

“Best I can tell, pine trees. I didn’t used to be allergic to them, but I’ve been around more palm trees than pine trees in the past couple of years. My body may have forgotten I don’t mind them.”

“Where are you originally from? I know Miami was just a layover for you.”

Gary rolled his eyes and affected his best nasal, blue blood voice. “New Hampshire, like so many other trust fund-holding Morstads.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’ll never see a penny of yours?”

“Because apparently you’re smart, in addition to being beautiful.”

She fluttered her eyelashes.

Dean sat heavily into the seat next to her, glowering at Gary until Lo shoved a bit of fruit under his nose.

“Honeydew,” she said. “Your favorite.”

He opened for the sweet melon and kept his hostile gaze locked on Gary as he sucked Lo’s fingers into his mouth.

Bastard.

“What do you have to do to get the money?” Lo asked.

“Oh, you know.” Gary rocked his chair onto its back legs and crossed his arms over his chest. “The usual shit. Prove that I’m a decent human being who’s at least superficially interested in continuing the Morstad line, and so on and so forth.”

“I think you’re glossing over some important details,” Clint said.

“Which part? The wife part or the work-for-the-family-business part?”

“I’d say both.” Clint set down his paper and neatly folded it. “I think about all that money sometimes and ponder do I really want the bank to keep earning interest on mine when I can’t even touch it.”

“Well, you’ve satisfied two of the requirements,” Ken said as he entered the room. “You had a kid. You got married.”

“To a man.”

“I read the requirements. They didn’t say you had to marry a woman, although I’m sure they would have explicitly spelled that out if they’d been more forward thinking. Regarding the other requirement, you
could
go work for the family business for a little while if you really wanted the cash.”

“We don’t need the cash,” Clint said. “We’re doing fine.”

“Better than fine,” Gary said with renewed pep. “You’ve got all that baseball money burning a hole in your collective pockets, plus money you earn from photography, and let’s not forget both Olivia and Ken are gainfully employed.”

“Eh.” Olivia brought her nails up to eye level and squinted at them. “Been thinking about quitting.”

“What?” Lo dropped the bit of fruit she’d been holding, and Dean growled.

He’d obviously wanted that honeydew, or else another taste of her fingers.

Gary knew which he would have preferred. He groaned.

“What do you mean, quitting?” Lo asked.

Olivia shrugged. “Like Clint said, we’re doing fine, and I’d like to spend more time at home with Sidney and do stuff before we have another kid and traveling gets harder.”

Lo narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean,
another kid
? I don’t like your tone, lady. You sound like you’re more than thinking about having one. You sound like you’ve already made one.”

Olivia cleared her throat and flattened her short hair on the sides. “There was a reason I let you have most of the wine last night.”

Lo’s mouth fell open.

“Being pregnant and on planes all the time kinda sucks. Between the stale air and the rude travelers, I just feel gross and hate everyone. I shouldn’t do anything resembling customer service when I’m pregnant.”

“Okay, first of all?” Lo counted off on her fingers. “Congratulations. I’m happy for the three—uh,
four
—of you. Second of all, if you leave the airline, there’s not going to be anyone left there who I like.”

“Sounds like you shouldn’t do customer service, either,” Gary said.

“I shouldn’t, but fortunately, most people can’t tell when I’m being rude.”

“You act like you’re rude more often than you actually are.” Dean picked up a fork and got some fruit into his mouth without Lo’s assistance.

“I’m rude most of the time, baby.” She smiled, and the bastard’s ears turned pink.

Are you kidding me?

Gary pushed back from the table and took his coffee mug with him. “I’m gonna go give Wallace a call and see if he arranged for those plane tickets after all. I never got the email he said the team travel agent was supposed to send.”

“So, you’re going to go?” Olivia asked.

“Go where?” Lo asked.

Gary poured hot java into his mug and sputtered his lips. “To try out for that minor league baseball team I’ve already been kicked off of once, of course.”

“You don’t
have
to go back,” Clint said. “I told you, I’d find you something if you’re willing to be patient.”

“Patience isn’t one of my good things. You know that.”

“Yeah. I know. Still, the offer stands.”

“Look, I gotta try, you know? There aren’t that many gigs I’m any good at, and if I want any shot of showing my face in the majors at all, I need to go back to the one team who’d take me and prove myself again or some such shit.”

“So, you’ve thought about trying out elsewhere?”

“Yeah. But who else is gonna take me at this point in the season? And also, I’m kinda blacklisted, so there’s that small problem.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t get Clint to pull some strings for you,” Olivia said.

“Nah. You, more than anyone else, should know that some Morstads don’t put much stock in the legacy bullshit. I’m going to succeed or fail on my own worth. My Magic 8 Ball says failure is likely, but at least I can say I tried.”

“Where’s the team?” Dean asked.

Gary couldn’t be sure, but he thought that might have been the first non-hostile question the man had ever asked him.

He turned from the counter and brought his mug to his lips. He sipped, stared at the blond bruiser for a moment, and then swallowed. “Reedsville. Middle-of-nowhere Florida near the Everglades. More alligators than baseball fans down there.”

“Not much trouble to get into, then,” Lorena said.

“Oh, I can find trouble anywhere.”

“That’s an understatement,” Clint muttered.

“In my blood, I guess.” Gary gave his cousin the finger as he padded toward the hallway.

The truth was, Gary was sick of trouble, and he needed some things in his life to be simple for a while. Unfortunately, for guys like him, messy was the norm. His mind was always churning a million miles per minute, but rarely mulling over the right things. His thoughts flitted from one concept to the next as if someone was holding a remote control up to his head and flipping the channels in his brain too rapidly. Making plans was hard.

Making friends was harder.

Most folks told him to grow up. He wished he could.

He shut the bedroom door, set his mug atop the coaster someone had helpfully left atop the dresser, and rooted his phone out of the pockets of the jeans he’d left wadded on the floor the previous night.

The manager of the Reedsville Roosters, Bruce Wallace, huffed onto the line, foul and gruff as always, after three rings. “Who the hell is this?”

“I won’t even pretend to be appalled by your phone demeanor,” Gary said, rubbing his eyes. “This is Morstad.”

“Oh. Morstad, how the hell are you?”

“Fine. Listen, I didn’t get an email from the travel agent.”

“Shit, I forgot to call you. Team owner wanted a contingency.”

“Uh-huh. You
forgot
, huh?”

“Shit happens when you get to be my age. Whaddaya gonna do about it?”

“Not a damn thing, and you know it.” Gary groaned and rubbed his sinuses through his face.
Always a fucking game with these jokers.
“What’s the contingency?”

“Hear me out. This may sound like one of my creative schemes to force you guys into the realm of decency, but Cassavetes actually came up with this one on his own after your pal Quinn ran off with his daughter.”

“Ex
cuse
me?”

“He was your roommate.”

“Yeah. I gave him a place to crash because we were friends from the team and we got along. What’s that have to do with anything?”

“Guilt by association, and Lord knows you already had enough things to be guilty of.”

“Oh, and Cassavetes is totally faultless, right? He couldn’t have pushed Marina harder into Quinn’s arms if he’d tried, the controlling dickhead.”

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. That controlling dickhead signs my paychecks and has final say over who stays and who goes. This is a business for him, not just a game.”

Gary rolled his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose hard. If his sinuses didn’t kill him, Wallace keeping him in suspense just might do the job.

“Tell me about this contingency you were talking about. What do you want, me to promise you my firstborn? If so, you might be waiting a while. Gotta find a girl, first.” He added in a mutter, “Preferably, one who isn’t married.”

“You know, I should be used to you not making a heap of sense, but you always get me scratching my head, anyway. And, nah, nothing that serious. A couple of conditions of you rejoining the team are you signing a modified behavior contract—”