Chapter 2
[Vee]
“I just need a minute,” I state, pointing to the bathroom while Ross helps himself to the coaster covered glasses on the dresser. With my back to him, I rustle through my suitcase, conscious that I’m standing in a hotel room with Ross Davis sans underwear.
“Need help with your dress?”
I freeze with a clean pair of comfy underwear and folded jeans at my chest.
“Uh . . .” I turn to face him.
Ross stands with both hands raised in the air, emphasizing his innocence. “I just noticed the zipper is only partially undone and thought . . .”
He isn’t wrong. I do need help. “I was trying to do the contortionist thing.” I lift one arm, showing him how I bend it over my shoulder, attempting to unzip my dress.
What the heck am I doing?
Lowering my arm, I clutch the clothing to my chest again. “Anyway, I’m not as flexible as I used to be.”
Somehow that sounds as dirty as him asking if he can help with my dress. I clear my throat, and he inches closer. Unconsciously, I step back, and he lifts both his hands again.
“Just offering my services.” There isn’t a drop of seduction or innuendo in his rugged voice. He looks beat down, and he doesn’t need the ridiculousness of me imagining he’s making an advance.
Why would he do that? He’s Ross Freakin’ Davis. Hot manager of a major league baseball team who can get any woman he wants, and he has. According to the snippets I’ve seen online, his latest conquest is Chandler Bressler, a reality TV diva, roughly fifteen years younger than him.
We lock eyes a second before I slowly turn and give him my back.
“Thank you,” I whisper over my shoulder as his fingers come to the zipper and he smoothly lowers it. I ignore the chill rippling down my spine and the tingle between my thighs. Don’t even think about the pulse thrumming at my bare core.
Holding the front of my dress pressed to my chest along with my change of clothes, I head to the bathroom with the back of my bra exposed. I don’t give Ross another glance. I couldn’t stand to witness him turning away from me while I walk away from him.
Which is as bizarre a thought as this entire evening so far.
Once inside the bathroom again, I decide against slipping into my jeans.
He’s casually dressed. I’ll dress comfortably.
I put on my plaid flannel pajama shorts and a graphic T-shirt which I’d left hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
Stepping back into the main room, Ross has taken a seat on the edge of the king-sized bed. A glass of amber liquid awaits me on the nightstand between the bed and an over-stuffed chair with a matching ottoman. Picking up the container, I take a seat on the ottoman and face him.
“What should we drink to?”
“Not losing,” he huffs, before lifting his glass without clinking against mine and draining it.
I sniff the alcohol in my glass and risk a sip. Instantly, I sputter on the sharpness and struggle with the burn scorching down my throat. Holy hellfire, it’s been a long time since I’ve drank the strong stuff.
Glancing up, I catch Ross watching me.
Can there be anyone less impressive than me? I nearly peed myself, had a hot flash, panicked about plummeting, and now I’m gagging on alcohol while dressed like a college co-ed, age advanced by twenty-five years.
“I’m Ross Davis, by the way.” He tilts his head. “But somehow I think you know that.”
“I do,” I admit but remind myself of a few things that tamp down the stalker-effect. He came to my door. He asked to enter said room.
“And you are?”
“Verona Huxley. My friends call me Vee.” I smile, like we are old acquaintances when we are not.
Ross observes me as he takes another sip of his drink, eyes watching me over the rim of his glass.
He starts at my bare toes, which I dig into the lush carpeting, and he travels up my exposed legs, lingering on my knees a second.
Then his gaze leaps to my hair, before dropping to my chin, mouth, nose and eyes.
His slow perusal is so intense. Not sexual, just focused.
His gaze is almost tangible, sending goosebumps over my skin.
“Why do you look familiar?”
The question startles me, and I realize he isn’t checking me out so much as trying to figure out who I am. If he knows me, how does he know me. But there is no way I am familiar to him.
“Maybe because we just shared ten minutes together in an elevator.”
His thick strained chuckle sounds like sandpaper on wood. “Why does that sound dirty?”
I sit up straighter. Not a suggestive hint filled my voice. I wouldn’t know how to seduce a man like him. While I’ve been on a slew of dates over the years, sexually enticing were two words I would not pair together to describe myself. Then again, neither were the men I’d swiped on.
“Let me have a look at your social media.” Ross doesn’t appear to have a phone and the command implies he wants mine.
“What?” I scoff. “Why?”
“I swear I know you.”
“I’m certain you do not.”
Ross Davis and I are not likely to round the same social circles nor have our paths crossed in any manner other than I’m a baseball fan and he was once a well-known player.
My phone is plugged into the base of the lamp on the opposite nightstand.
Earlier, I’d left the dead device behind to charge when I met friends in the lobby bar.
Ross sets down his drink and shifts on the bed, suddenly lunging across the wide berth of the mattress and extending his long arm for my phone.
“No,” I canter, scampering after him, reaching for the back of his sweatshirt and missing.
Instead, I catch the back of his leg using it for leverage to climb up on the bed and partially over his broad body as if I can get to my phone before him.
His arms are longer. Once he has the device in his hands, he shifts, forcing me to fall to his side while he flops to his back and holds up my phone.
“Use your own phone,” I argue, irritated by his intrusiveness.
“Nope. Coaching makes me a strategist. I always look for the straightest path forward. And right now, that’s to open your apps, not search mine.” He rolls his head to look at me. “Passcode?”
Is he serious? “So invasive,” I mumble.
Our eyes meet. Blue to blue, we’re a matching set, yet we couldn’t be more opposite. Think book nerd and popular jock in high school.
“Fine.” I grumble out the six-digit code, knowing he’ll never remember it nor hold my phone in his hands again.
Once the device is unlocked, he easily finds my Instagram, scrolls through the images, and pinches his brow.
“You really like books.” Curiosity fills his voice.
I reach for my phone, but he rolls to his left side, body-blocking me and forcing me to drape over him a second while he holds the device out of my grasp.
I hitch my shoulder. “I like books.” The truth is more complicated than that, but he doesn’t need to know my life’s work.
Ross pauses to glance at me again, reading my tee.
Cool Girls Read Hot Books.
Without a comment, he turns back to my phone and continues to scroll. My heart hammers the longer he searches. Then he taps over to the reels and my stomach drops. There aren’t many saved videos, but there’s one I’d rather he didn’t see. His roaming thumb stills, and he presses on the screen.
“Put Me in Coach” screeches into the room and gives away exactly what he’s watching.
A thirty-second blip on the jumbotron at Anchor Field of a woman dancing. Arms raised. Hips swaying. Exaggerated movements which express enthusiasm and suggest one too many margaritas. There’s no way Ross watched the screen during that game or recalls a video from years ago.
However, the video hit social media and went viral.
Ross quickly turns his head; eyes searching my face once again. “I knew you looked familiar.”
“How would you remember thirty-seconds from eight years ago?”
Yep, that embarrassing moment captured on film and shared across the internet was me.
Wiggling. Jiggling. Shaking my then-thirty-something groove thing.
Slightly ashamed by the antics on the video, I tug the phone from his grasp and collapse on my back, holding the device so the screen faces me.
The video replays, splashing the image of me dancing in the bleachers of Anchor Field, rhythmically waving my arms and over-enthusiastically rocking my hips, when the girl beside me holds up a posterboard with a giant arrow pointed at me that read:
Hey-hey Ross Davis. Date our mom.
The video captures me turning toward my then teenage daughter and jumping up and down as she holds the poster beyond my reach. She’s six inches taller than me.
“She was grounded for a month after that stunt,” I mutter, knowing not only was the poster humiliating, but the timing was insensitive.
“How many children do you have?” His voice lowers.
My attention returns to him. “Two girls.” Although I’m aware of his marital status and family dynamics I still ask, “You?”
He scoffs and hikes himself upright, scooting to the edge of the bed. “Two boys. But I bet you knew that, too.”
I sit up as well, but don’t move from the middle of the mattress. With his back to me, I hold my breath, assuming he’s about to leave. To my shock, he pours himself another drink.
For some reason, the need to defend myself and my daughter arises although that video was innocent enough.
“My girls love baseball, and they’d been pushing me to date, but I wasn’t ready.
” I swallow around the lump in my throat, around a word still difficult to say after all this time, but one Ross might relate to as well.
“I’m a widow.”
Ross shifts, lifting a bent knee to rest on the mattress while his other leg hangs off the side, foot braced on the floor. He eyes me suspiciously, but I’m quick to remind myself he asked to enter my room, not the other way around.
“Me too. Widower. But you probably know that about me, too.”
“I only know what the media shared.” Shame fills my tone. The confession feels intrusive and wrong. “Your boys are adorable.” Your wife was, too.