Either that, or he’s trying to demonstrate how horrified he was of kissing me and touching me and getting close to me by planting evil garden gnomes in my yard. “Looks like. So, I apparently need to up my prank game. Seems there are two fools in town who have no idea the beast they’ve unleashed.” I flex my muscles, grin, and then take another hit off my coffee backpack.
“Tillie Jean.”
I roll my eyes at Grady’s older-brother frown. “Would you rather I was pranking the assholes over in Sarcasm?”
“I would, but my wife wouldn’t. Gotta keep the missus happy.”
“Sue, eat Grady’s shoe,” Annika orders.
The goat looks at both of them, then flops to the ground.
Coco Puff, Brooks and Mackenzie’s not-quite-one-year-old, adorable, curly-brown-furred Cavapoo, barks, and his collar translates. “I love Ash the Baby Dragon best!”
I lock eyes with Grady. “Long Beak Silver,” we say together.
“Your grandpa’s parrot?” Mackenzie asks.
“Where’d you get that collar?” I point to Coco Puff. “We need one for Pop’s parrot. He’s getting worse.”
“Can it give an electric shock every time he cusses?” Grady adds. “Just until we’ve re-trained him to only say normal pirate things again.”
“Seriously. He’s a nuisance. I won’t repeat what he said at lunch today, but no one wanted to eat after that. And we don’t want enough volts to fry him. I’m joking when I say I want to serve parrot burgers.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Whatever, Mr. Fondant Parrots for Therapy. I know you bite the parrot heads off first and smile while you’re doing it.”
“Stop.” Annika’s waving both hands in front of her face like she’s overheating as she laughs. “Dammit. Tillie Jean, I need your bathroom.”
I turn and make the it’s all yours gesture, and catch sight of a Mercedes SUV turning the corner as I do. “Oh, crap.”
“Busted,” Grady mutters while Annika dashes for the house. She’s only a few months pregnant, not showing yet, but I know she’s drinking a ton of water and hormones are crazy things.
“Is that Max?” Mackenzie claps her hands. “He’s not throwing too much, is he? He needs to rest that arm.”
“He’s got this, Kenz. Not his first off-season.” Brooks grins at her, then waves as Max passes us and turns into the driveway next door.
He climbs out of his SUV, his eyes flickering over the gnomes, landing on me for a split second before switching his attention to Brooks and Mackenzie.
But that split second?
That split-second glance had a big ol’ dollop of amusement sparkling in it.
Not a single ounce of growly bear.
Nope.
It was all so you think you can rearrange the gnomes and that counts as winning, do you? Lame.
It definitely wasn’t this is better than almost kissing you again.
Nope.
Wasn’t that.
I refuse to admit there might’ve been any smolder in his sparkle.
How could there be?
They don’t go together at all.
Mackenzie slips to my side, giving Coco Puff enough leash to say hi to Sue without losing control of the puppy. “Did Max just smile at you?” she whispers.
“Nope. Had to be a trick of the light.”
She is so not buying it. “Tillie Jean. I thought you two just liked to annoy each other. We really do have a lot of catching up to do, don’t we?”
I sigh and angle closer to her, dropping my voice low. “Remember Chance Schwartz?”
Mackenzie came out of the womb a die-hard Fireballs fan. I used to think Cooper was the ultimate Fireballs fan—his life goal from the time he could walk was basically to play for the Fireballs and lead them to World Series rings—but he has nothing on Mackenzie. Of course she knows who Chance Schwartz is.
“He had potential, but that’s pretty much every player to play for the team for the last fifty years,” she murmurs back, clearly confused about where I’m going.
“The reason I annoy Max at every opportunity is that he found out I was flinging with Chance and told Cooper, who had him traded, and so I’ve been trying for four years to get Cooper to get Max traded too.”
She gasps.
The men all turn and glance at us.
And because she’s Mackenzie, and she’s come so far from the days when she couldn’t even blink in the presence of baseball players, she immediately dials up a grin. “I didn’t think it was true, but Max, your hair really does sparkle. And pink looks so good on you.”
“Flip my wife off and die,” Brooks says before Max can react.
But the weirdest thing happens.
Max smiles.
He smiles. An actual, full-faced, happy-eyed, no-questions-asked smile.
It’s aimed at Mackenzie, but it’s still a smile. “Only the best sparkle.”
And oh my god, is he sparkling.
Growly Bear Max?
Adorable in a resistible way.
Smiling Max?
I’m in so much trouble.
The men huddle back up. Mackenzie grabs my hand and squeezes. “But now you don’t want him to get traded,” she whispers.
“There is nothing going on here,” I whisper back. “Absolutely nothing. He’s only smiling to try to annoy me now.”
“He’s the best pitcher we have. The team isn’t trading him, no matter what Cooper thinks about anything. I won’t let them. No matter what you do or don’t do with Max.”
She’s dead serious.
It should be funny. There’s no way anyone—even Mackenzie—can tell the Fireballs’ management what to do.
Except if anyone could, it’s Mackenzie. She made quite the name for herself with her support for the team this past year. The national news covered some of her antics. She’s not a superfan. She’s the superfan.
“This is nothing,” I repeat.
It’s not. It’s a silly practical joke that I totally deserved—aside from the fact that he used garden gnomes—and I’ve paid him back, and that’s that.
We’ll now go back to being a woman who flirts incessantly with a guy who hates it, and everything will be completely normal, and Max won’t smile at me again, and my ovaries won’t melt again, and the team will have nothing to worry about.
I think.
I hope.
I gulp and look at Mackenzie. “But if it’s ever not nothing and I need help or I accidentally break his game, you’ll be my first call.”
11
Max
“Dude, your balls do glow in the dark.” I grin at Cooper over the first hole at Scuttle Putt, Shipwreck’s miniature golf course, where we’ve broken in to play a round while Brooks is in town.
Doesn’t hurt that we just came from The Grog. Between settling into the post-season routine, having more teammates in town for a few days, and deciding that I can adopt Tillie Jean as my sister two days ago, I’m feeling relaxed and steady and on top of the damn world for the first time since before the play-offs.
“My balls don’t just glow.” Brooks pumps his hips. “They fucking sing.”