Sweet Spot for Victoria (Men of Baseball Book 4) (8 page)

I can’t believe I was expecting her to be truly ill and I was almost disappointed when she wasn’t. Then, like an idiot, when I found out she was pregnant, I didn’t rejoice, I accused her of not being responsible.

I am a fucking asshole.

Carlos is a fucking asshole.

I look around at my friends. We’re locked in the sauna, but it isn’t on. They all insisted we
not
turn it on, no one quite sure it was safe for the babies.

Babies
.

It still shocks me to think about two little lives growing inside of me.

“Men are assholes,” Libby points out, taking a sip of white wine. I almost whimper at the sight of the cool liquid as I take a sip from my bottle of water.

“Yeah, well, Carlos is the leader of the assholes today,” I say with a sad smile.

“He’ll apologize. He reacted badly; he was surprised.” Amalie smiles and pats my leg.

I almost roll my eyes. She’s so fucking perfect it can be annoying, but I love her. She may have herself all together, but she is also genuine.

“I’m not sure when or if I’ll be able to forgive him,” I confess, looking away from my friends’ scrutinizing gazes.

“You will,” Maggie says softly. I turn to her, our eyes locking.

“It’s a complicated situation, Maggie, children are involved,” I say.

“You’ll forgive him, Victoria, because you love him. You’ll forgive him because his initial reaction was shit, but you know his heart. Most of all, you’ll forgive him because he’s your other half, a wonderful husband and an outstanding father.”

Maggie’s speech sends a punch to my gut and it makes me feel guilty for being angry with Carlos in the first place. She’s right, of course; I will forgive him and he is everything that she mentioned and more, so much more.

Los is the man of my heart.

The man of my dreams.

The best man I could have picked to be my husband.

The only man I could have picked to be the father of my children.

But he can also be a dickhead.

I could clock Carlos in his stubborn head. I will refrain because my best friend, my sister, loves the idiot. She’s been struggling with this pregnancy, finding out that she’s carrying not only one but two sweet bundles inside of her.

However, I must admit that she blurted it out at a time where all of his brain cells were occupied. It probably wasn’t the best time to burst out that you’re knocked up. You know, while he’s still inside you and his brain is completely empty.

I drain my glass of wine and lean back against the warm wood of the building we’re in. It would be nice if the sauna were on, but we all voted against it for Victoria’s safety and I’m truly all right with that. What I am not all right with, is my friends fighting.

“Do you think he’ll be happy about this—you know, later?” Victoria asks hesitantly.

I want to smack her, too – maybe I’ll smack their heads together.

“He was probably happy about it two minutes after you walked out of the room and blood started flowing through his brain again, Vic,” I suggest. Amalie starts to laugh.

“How do
you
feel about it?” Amalie asks, narrowing her eyes on Victoria.

“Still unsure. I never expected to have another one, let alone
two
. I honestly don’t know how I am going to do it. I’ll never sleep again,” she whines.

We all laugh and it feels good. Serious situations are not my strong point, so laughing I can deal with.
Laughing is good.

“I’ll send you plenty of
Zip Fizz
in the mail,” I offer. She just chuckles, wrapping her arm around my shoulders.

I’m not joking about the
Zip Fizz
, though. I never laugh about my energy booster. Pete and I have a crazy one year old who has way too much of Pete inside of her and keeps me on my toes. She’s non-stop, twenty-four-seven
on
until she crashes at night.

Lillian, our daughter, is Pete’s twin and the absolute love of my life. However, I couldn’t imagine having two of him at the exact same time, so I completely understand Victoria’s feelings of uncertainty.

“We’ll figure it out. I may need to cave and get help,” she confesses. I can see that it kills her. She wants to be perfect, but she wants to be able to do it all.

We can do anything but we cannot do everything.

“What about, possibly, just getting someone to help clean and do laundry?” Amalie suggests.

“Think about how helpful that would be, Vic. Not having to worry about cleaning and washing, folding, and putting laundry away. That would probably really free up your daily to-do list. It would give you more time to focus on the kids and on what you want to do instead of the things you
have
to do,” I say, trying to help lessen the load on my friend.

I know she doesn’t want to hire a nanny and I completely understand why. I was raised by nannies, for the most part. As a child, I didn’t understand why my parents weren’t hugging, kissing, and tucking me into bed at night.

Eventually, I understood that it was just the way we lived. Now that I am a mother, I cannot imagine handing my child to
anybody
to take care of day-in and day-out. Leaving her with our friends, the Taylor’s in Boston, was frightening; even though I know they are fantastic people and I trust them implicitly. They have proven in the time we have known each other to be wonderful loving parents and fantastic friends.

I still worry, I still stress, and I still obsess over my child’s safety, does this feeling ever go away? I don’t think so, not when you’re as involved in your children as I am or as Victoria is.

I let Amalie and Libby’s words roll around in my head. It makes sense.
They
make sense. A housekeeper would be a wonderful help to me every day. Errands, laundry, and housekeeping would free up my day to spend it with my children—
my true passion and my focus.

I also think that Carlos will love the idea, considering how often he tries to talk me into hiring help. Plus, it might keep his mother away.

“A housekeeper slash personal assistant?” I ask, arching my brow and turning to my friends.

“Yes.”

“Definitely.”

“Perfect.”

All of my friends say something really different, but their consensus the same —
I need help
. I let out an exhausted breath and resign myself to the fact that I cannot take care of two small children and twin babies by myself. I can’t ever truly count on Carlos. While he’s extremely helpful when he’s home, he just isn’t consistently there.

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” I admit, nodding my head.

“You won’t be sorry, Vic. Once you find the perfect person, you won’t know how you did it all of these years without her,” Libby says. I roll my eyes.

“Because you have so much help?” I quip.

“I hired a housekeeper when Lillian was six months old. I was running myself ragged trying to keep that monstrosity of a mansion that Pete bought clean.” She grumbles but I know that she loves that house just as much as Pete does.

“You like her?” I ask. Libby smiles.

“She’s the sweetest, Victoria. She saves my sanity. Now I spend my days doing things with my family,” Libby murmurs before she smiles. It seems as if she’s remembering something happy and I leave her to it.

“After Clara was born, I had to have help. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was exhausted and Axel is a handful already. Jarrod didn’t even allow me to decide myself. The caveman just called an agency and had them send someone over. I was so pissed; but when I didn’t drop dead that night, because I could nap while the kids were napping and not clean, I sucked his cock as a thank you,” Amalie admits. We all burst out laughing.

“I think Jackson heard from Jarrod about hiring help, because I wasn’t even six months pregnant when he started interviewing people,” Maggie says with a shrug.

Controlling ass of a husband she has.

Not like my Carlos is much different, though.

Maybe my friends are onto something.

They aren’t dragging ass.

They’re happier than I have ever seen them.

They have all accepted the fact that they cannot do everything on their own.

I decide right then and there that I am going to start the process of hiring somebody to help me around the house. I truly feel that I could do it all; I could keep house, and cook, and take care of my babies, but I would be exhausted and probably a bigger bitch than I already am.

Nobody deserves to have
Big Bitch Victoria
on a daily basis.

The girls and I relax, drink, and talk for the next few hours before we are joined by all of the men, including a very sullen looking Carlos. I narrow my eyes at the asshole as he walks straight toward me and plops his ass right next to mine. I stiffen when I feel his knee nudge mine and then I try my hardest not to melt when his hand slides across my lower back to wrap around my waist.

“I’m sorry,
hermosa
,” he murmurs as his nose slides up my neck and his lips gently suck on my earlobe.

Sweet Carlos.

I can’t fucking take sweet Carlos.

The bastard knows what he does to me.

Makes me inexplicably horny every time.

“I’m mad at you,” I announce, crossing my arms over my chest.

I don’t know if our friends are paying any attention to us or not. My heart is pounding so loud, it is the only thing I can hear aside from Carlos’ breathing in my ear.

“I know. I deserve your anger. Love it when you fuck me angry though,
morenita
,” he mutters.

His finger lightly trails across my collarbone and down, then across the top of the exposed part of my breast, uncovered by my bikini. I want to laugh that he thinks I’m going to be fucking him angrily or otherwise. He has some serious assholiness to make up for before he gets between my legs anytime soon.

“Dinner time, kids,” Jarrod bellows, his voice bouncing off of the walls, causing me to jump.

We girls quickly throw on our cover-ups and follow the guys into the bar area to eat. We decided that this weekend was going to be casual, nothing fancy, and that included meals. We’re here to relax and have fun before the serious work of the season begins.

My eyes grow wide when I see the spread the Inn has laid out for us. Maybe it’s the final acceptance of my pregnancy, or maybe it’s just me, but I am freaking starving. I practically run toward the food table and quickly start to pile my plate with the delicious dishes that are spread out.

I ignore all of the giggles and chuckles from my friends as I add ribs, chicken wings, veggies, fruit, fried mozzarella cheese sticks, bacon wrapped jalapeños, and chips and salsa on top of an eight inch plate. I’m thankful this place is nice and put out ceramic plates because paper would have buckled after the third chicken wing.

“Hungry?” Los chuckles as he sits down beside me.

I’m gnawing on a rib bone like I haven’t eaten in months and this is going to be my only meal for a while
. I don’t even care.
They are fucking spectacular.

“You don’t even know,” I say with a mouth full of food.
So ladylike, I know.
I lick the sauce off of my fingers with a moan, it is
that
good.