Chapter 7 #2
Ross lowers his gaze and I glance down at his big feet as well, wondering if, as the saying goes, his shoe size equals the length of another body part. Then I wonder if staring at his shoes will give me a hint as to why I’m in his office and why the heck he seems so nervous.
“Did you lie to me?”
“What?” My head snaps up like a player watching a pop fly to centerfield.
“About the writing? About being an author?” He stares at me. “I never found your books.”
“I write under a pen name,” I state, not offering the name. That’s a secret he hasn’t earned yet, but an additional flutter flits through my low belly.
Ross Davis sought out my books.
He nods once, slowly, as if understanding the anonymity.
“Why would I lie to you?” If I’m here for an inquisition, then I don’t need to be here. I don’t owe Ross Davis an explanation about my life or my secrets. He’s the one who asked me to come to his office.
“I don’t know.” Ross swipes over his hair again with a thick hand, nervously glancing at me before looking away again.
I stand. “I don’t know why you called me into your office. Just like I still don’t understand why you came to my hotel room, but if I’m here to be interrogated or something, then . . . I don’t need to be here.”
Nothing I said made sense, but Ross had me tongue-tied and weak-kneed, and he stands too close to me, although I’m the one who stood up.
“I have a proposition for you.”
The word has me blinking and my heart hammering. The strangest thought occurs. Would Ross propose he and Kip share me? It was improbable. It was also absurd. It was so out in left field I don’t know where the thought came from.
With a shaky hand, I rub my forehead, as if my fingertips can erase the thought.
Is it hot in this office? I’m suddenly too warm and I’m having an out-of-body experience.
Ross Davis is too close. His manly, spicy scent invades my olfactory senses. Like being stuck in that elevator with him, my body wants to squirm. Thankfully, I’m not experiencing a bathroom emergency.
With trepidation, I question him. “What is the proposition?”
“As you know, baseball players are highly superstitious.”
Why is he using that tone with me? One that sounds instructional and distant.
“And once we have something set in our head, a routine . . . a ritual, we don’t like to break the pattern.”
I nod, mouth opening with no ready response to what feels like schooling in baseball lore.
“And I’ve noticed a pattern.” He pauses, lifting his head and meeting my eyes. “With you.”
“With me?” I squeak out, like I’m about to be reprimanded. Like he knows I’ve been skipping out on writing to do anything but write.
“Yes. You.” He folds his arms over his chest again. “And I’d like to propose an experiment.”
“With you?” I ask, tipping my head forward and wide-eye staring at him, like opening my eyes wider will help me confirm I’m hearing him correctly.
“Yes. With me.”
“And what exactly is this experiment?”
“I’d like you to sleep with me.” He exhales. “Again.”
I stare blankly at him, certain I misheard him. His voice has been so off-putting and detached, and yet, I think he just asked me to sleep with him again.
“You want me.” I point to myself. “To sleep with you.” I point at him. “Again.”
“Yes.”
“Just sleep.”
“Yes.”
“In the same bed?”
“That’s how it happened the first time.”
“And this time?”
“In the same bed again.”
“Why?”
Ross sighs, lowers his head and squeezes the back of his neck, like he can’t believe what he is about to say. “Because you might be my lucky charm.” He slowly lifts his gaze. “My happy chance.”
“Your happy chance?” I sound like a freaking parrot with all the repetitiveness. Because I’m confused.
Ross waves toward me. “That happenstance thing.”
“That—” I cut myself off from echoing him again. This is ridiculous, but because I’m mid-forties and fully in my F-it era, I ask, “And how exactly would that work? Me. In your bed.”
He rubs his knuckles beneath his chin, the gesture bordering on anxious. The sound of his skin against that coarse hair causes a quiver in my belly. His mouth is tightly smug, like I’ve said yes when I’m still trying to process what he’s suggesting.
“I guess, you’d come to my place.”
My mouth gapes.
“Or I could come to yours,” he states, noting what I’m certain is a horrified expression on my face.
Finally, I smack my lips closed and blink once. “You know, typically, a man asks if he can buy me a drink or dinner before suggesting his place or mine.”
From his casual position, still perched against his desk, his eyes narrow. “And how often do men propose his place or yours to you?”
More mouth gaping. More lip smacking. Never. “I don’t see how that would be any of your business.”
My dating history is not the discussion at hand. This preposterous proposition is.
Those blue eyes of his become flames before he rolls his gaze down my body, the look causing a feather-like rush right down my center. A ripple of lust skitters over my skin, and I shiver.
Then I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I’d like to help but I just can’t—”
“This was your idea.”
“Mine?” I choke, back to one-syllable questions.
“The morning after.”
My lips part once more, prepped to repeat what he’s stated. Instead, I stare at him, my brows knitting tightly together in confusion.
“You said I needed a change in routine. Like sleeping with a stranger in a hotel room.”
“I never said that.” More blinking. More staring. “But if I had”—because I’m slowly recalling I might have said something similar—“How do you remember that?”
“Because I remember everything.” His eyes laser in on mine. The look intense, electrifying even.
About that night? About me?
“And I’m thinking it can’t be just anyone in my bed. It needs to be you.”
Me? A virtual stranger?
Truthfully, we aren’t complete strangers anymore.
Did ten minutes trapped in an elevator make us besties?
Absolutely not. But we shared roughly nine hours together in one bed in a hotel room in Houston.
We learned a thing or two about one another.
However, that didn’t make us friends or bed fellows.
His final request stalls all higher functions. My brain stops trying to make sense of his thought process. My breath hitches. My heart, however, continues to hammer because deep down in my gut, I want to be significant to him, which is a puzzling concept.
“The facts are, I wanted this job, managing the Anchors,” he continues. “And the only person I’d told about my fear of being fired from the Flash, and my hope of being hired here, was you. Then it happened.”
Coincidence, I want to argue.
“Then we hadn’t won a game in the first week of this training season, until you showed up a week ago. Then we win.”
“Not exactly scientific evidence of—”
“And then . . .” he continues as if I wasn’t speaking. “Today. You’re here and we finally win for the second time.”
I stare at him. He can’t be serious with this nonsense, and yet, staring at him, the hopeful gleam in his eyes tells me he’s convinced this is how things evolved. My presence, not the talent of his team, brought about a win.
“So give me training season tickets, and I’ll attend a few more games.” I can’t believe I’m playing into his theory. This preposterous idea that I’m lucky for him. But as I’m not writing like I should be, maybe attendance at a couple more training games will be good for me, too.
Silence falls between us like a ball-drop in the outfield. I turn my head, glancing at a whiteboard with a baseball diamond embossed on it. Players on a team working in sync are vital to success, not a silly talisman. And certainly not some random set of happenstances.
Facing Ross again, I prepare to present my argument.
“Look.” He holds his hand up, stopping me before I speak. “I know it sounds outrageous. Strange. Ridiculous even. But I’m not beyond begging you to take a chance on me. On this little experiment. Just give me one night. Maybe two. I’m staying at the hotel here on the campus.”
I glance behind me as if I can see the four-star chain hotel on the opposite side of the stadium grounds.
“I need you,” he states, his raspy voice softening from sandpaper against wood to soft grains of sand falling. His eyes lighten, vulnerable, hopeful.
And herein laid the problem.
I didn’t want to be some hairbrained experiment for Ross Davis.