Chapter 8
8
“ A re we interrupting something?” Tuck asked cheerfully, prompting an eye roll from his wife, a scowl from Jude, and a mad blush from Brynn as she scrambled away.
Not knowing what else to do, Jude let her go. “What are you two doing here?”
“E is working the tattoo expo at the casino this weekend, so we thought we’d surprise you,” Tuck said. He cut his gaze to Brynn, then back to Jude, a wide grin splitting his thick ginger beard. “Surprise.”
“Knock it off, Tuck,” Esme said and stepped forward to hug Jude. “Sorry, sweetie. I told him we should’ve called first.”
“It’s okay,” Jude lied, hugging her back. “It’s good to see you.”
She pulled back, a knowing look in her pretty hazel eyes—probably because she could feel the erection he hadn’t yet managed to suppress—and turned to smile at Brynn. “Hi, I’m Esme.”
“Brynn Cates.” Brynn held out a hand, her cheeks the color of ripe raspberries. “I’m, um, Jude’s assistant.”
“Sorry.” Jude wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. “This is Esme and Tuck, friends of mine from Grand Rapids.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Esme said warmly while Tuck waggled his eyebrows at Jude over her head. “Tucker?”
Alerted by the warning note in his wife’s voice and practiced in the art of switching gears from dickhead to charmer, Tuck beamed a smile at Brynn. “A pleasure, darling. Sorry about barging in.”
“Nice to meet you, too. It’s fine. Um.” She glanced at Jude for the first time since the door had banged open. “I’m sorry, but we’re supposed to be at the stadium in half an hour.”
“Shit.” He’d forgotten about the game.
“Stadium?” Tuck draped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. She wore a narrow strapped red tank top tucked into jean shorts that showed the half-sleeve tattoo on one arm and her curvy figure. Tuck wore a faded Yesterdog t-shirt over khaki shorts he’d probably had since college. “You guys going to a game?”
“Jude’s throwing out the first pitch at the Tiger’s game,” Brynn explained.
“Nice,” Tuck crowed. “You’re a local celeb. You opening supermarkets yet?”
“Shut up.”
Esme dug her elbow into her husband’s rib cage. “I told you we should’ve called first.”
“Nah,” Tuck said, still grinning. “This is better.”
“Would you like to join us at the game?” Brynn asked, and everyone turned to look at her. Well, Esme and Tuck did—Jude was already looking at her.
“Can they?” Jude asked, surprised.
“Sure.” Brynn walked around him to pick up her phone from the counter. She picked up her glasses, too, sliding them on before opening her phone case. “They had four tickets set aside, so I’ll just make sure they’re still available.”
“Do we have time, babe?” Tuck asked.
“I’m not due on the floor of the convention center until five, so unless it goes thirty innings, sure.”
“Aces.” Tuck grinned. “I love baseball.”
Brynn looked up with a smile. “Me, too. I like to keep score.”
“Keep score?” Jude echoed, confused. “Don’t they do that for you?”
“Ignore him,” Tuck said and turned up the charm factor on his smile. “He’s uncultured.”
Brynn laughed and dialed. “I’ll just call them, make sure the seats are still there.”
She walked out of the living room and down the hall, her phone to her ear, and as soon as she was out of sight, Jude scowled at Tuck. “Knock it off.”
“I’m just being friendly,” Tuck said, the picture of innocence.
“You’re messing with Jude,” Esme corrected.
“I can do both,” Tuck pointed out, then looked at Jude. “So?”
“So, what?”
“How long have you two been banging?”
“We’re not,” Jude said, keeping his voice low.
“Really? Cuz that was a lot of banging-adjacent activity going on a minute ago.”
Jude rubbed a hand over his mouth. If he pressed his lips together, he could still taste her. “First kiss.”
“Aw, really? If we’d known, we’d have gotten you a card or something.”
“Shut up, Tuck,” Esme said absently, her eyes focused on Jude’s face. “You don’t seem very happy about it.”
“I’m…conflicted,” Jude admitted.
“Because?”
“She’s my assistant,” Jude reminded them.
“Is dating her against the rules or something?” Tuck asked, wandering over to settle onto the couch.
“No, not technically.”
Tuck plopped his feet on the steamer trunk and crossed them at the ankle. “Then what’s the problem?”
“Just because it’s not against the rules doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,” Esme pointed out, still watching Jude. “Are you afraid of a sexual harassment situation?”
“No. Or not exactly. It’s…complicated.”
Tuck snorted. “No, it’s not.”
Esme sighed. “Tuck.”
“It’s not. Look.” Tuck tipped his head back against the sofa, hanging his head upside down to look at them. “Do you like the woman?”
“Yes.”
“Does she like you?”
Jude thought about her hands in his hair, her tongue in his mouth. The desperate yearning in her voice when she’d said more . “Yes.”
“See? Not complicated.”
“Why do you take him places?” Jude wanted to know.
“He’s cute, and he keeps my feet warm at night,” Esme said while Tuck grinned, looking like an upside-down ginger Muppet. “And while he may be looking at this situation from the simplistic perspective of a man trying to get his dick wet?—"
“You’re so crude,” Tuck tsked.
“—he also has a point. If you like each other, the complicated stuff can usually be worked out.”
Jude opened his mouth to say object—then shut it again.
“There, his brain just turned on.” Tuck stood from the couch and stretched, his lumberjack body taking up the space of three people. “Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that it has blood flow again.”
“You’re such a pain in the ass,” Jude complained, smothering a smile.
Tuck let out a bellowing laugh and leaped over the couch to wrap Jude in a back-thumping hug. “I love you, too, you fucker.”
“Um. What are they doing?” Brynn asked, coming back into the living room to stand beside Esme. She had on her Tiger’s fielder’s cap and sunglasses, her phone and a white sweater in her hand.
“Bonding?” Esme guessed as Tuck picked Jude up and spun him in a dizzying circle, laughing like a clown.
“Oh. Sure.”
“We don’t have to go to the game if it’s going to be a problem,” Esme began, and Brynn shook her head.
“It’s no problem at all,” Brynn said as Tuck finally set Jude down. “We should go, though.”
With his feet on the floor again, Jude planted a hand on the counter to keep the room from continuing to spin without him. “I have to get my mitt. Glove.”
“You have a glove?” Brynn asked.
He lifted his hand from the counter, pleased when he kept his balance, and did his best to look affronted. “Of course, I have a glove.”
“Since when?” Tuck wanted to know.
“None of your business,” Jude muttered. “It’s down in my truck.”
Tuck grinned. “Then I guess you’re driving.”
“I’ve already got a car waiting, actually,” Brynn said, her eyes invisible behind the oversized sunglasses. “I thought, you know, to avoid parking…”
“And no need to limit our beer consumption,” Tuck put in. “I like her, Jude.”
I like her, too , Jude thought and wished he could see her eyes.
“Speaking of beer, you’re buying,” Tuck continued.
“Says who?” Jude asked.
“Says me, because I’ve been holding off making fun of that mustache for—” Tuck followed Brynn and Esme into the hall, checking his watch, “—at least six minutes, and I deserve a fucking reward.”
Jude let the apartment door swing shut behind him. “I can’t believe I’ve missed you.”
Tuck wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “I’ve missed you too, bud. So, did you lose a bet, or what?”
Brynn had never been this miserable at a baseball game. She was sitting in the best seats she’d ever had—right between the on-deck circle and the visitor’s dugout on the first base side—the Tigers had a four-run lead heading into the bottom of the sixth, and Jude’s first pitch couldn’t have gone better. She’d expected some awkwardness, and she’d have bet her newly flush bank account that he hadn’t thrown a baseball since Little League. He had no poker face and hadn’t fooled her a bit with that I’m a professional athlete, I can throw a ball bit. But he’d pulled it off, managing to get the ball over the plate, look both competent and charmingly out of his element all at once, and drew enough cheers of both recognition and appreciation that she’d had to put her phone on mute in the first inning due to all the social media notifications.
So she should’ve been happy, or at the very least pleased. But it was hot, she was sexually frustrated and emotionally confused, and for the first time in her life, genuinely couldn’t give a rat’s fat ass about baseball.
“Damn, that was a good throw,” Tuck said beside her, and she glanced over to watch him record the out in the scorebook he had in his lap. She’d passed it to him in the third inning when it became clear that she was too distracted to keep track.
On his other side, Esme peered over his shoulder. “Who’s up next?”
“Bridges,” Tuck and Brynn both said.
“Hot bat,” Tuck added. “He’s hitting five-fifty since the all-star break.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous,” Esme declared.
“It is,” Brynn agreed while Tuck grinned at his wife.
“You’re so fucking sexy when you pretend to know what you’re talking about.”
“Hey, I know the sportsball,” Esme protested, giggling when Tuck snatched her up in a passionate kiss.
“Are they kissing still, or again?” Jude asked, appearing at the end of the row with his hands loaded down with food and drinks.
“Again,” Brynn said, grateful for the sunglasses that let her look her fill without being exposed. She pulled her knees in so he could walk past her to his seat on the other side of Esme. “They said they’re trying to get on the Kiss Cam.”
“Exhibitionists.” Jude stopped in front of her, clearing his throat to get Tuck’s attention. When the kissing didn’t stop, he scowled and knocked one sneakered foot into Tuck’s shin. “Yo, dickhead.”
Tuck merely shot up a middle finger and kept kissing his wife.
“Fuck it,” Jude muttered and, backing up, plopped down in the seat next to hers. “I’ll just sit here.”
“That’s technically not our seat,” she reminded him, taking the box of hot dogs he handed her.
“Nobody’s sat here all game,” he pointed out. “But if they come by, I’ll apologize and move.”
But now you’re sitting next to me, and I have enough problems to deal with, she thought, staring at the hot dogs . “Fine. Did you get napkins?”
“In my pocket. Hang on, let me unload these beers.”
Hearing the magic word, Tuck lifted his head. “You got my beer?”
“Now he comes up for air,” Jude muttered, but he was smiling. “Here, take your wife’s too.”
Esme leaned around Tuck, her lipstick smeared to her chin. “What about my popcorn?”
“I got it,” he assured her. “Here, take a napkin too.”
“I don’t need a napkin.”
“You kind of do.” Brynn tapped a finger on her bottom lip.
Esme sighed, pinning her husband with a scolding look. “I told you not to smear me.”
“Sorry, babe.” Tuck chugged his beer. “You’re too damn hot when you talk about sportsball.”
Esme took her popcorn and the napkin Brynn passed down. “Well, try to control yourself, for God’s sake. This is a baseball game. Some things are sacred.”
Tuck grinned, beer foam in his beard. “You keep saying sexy shit, I’m not going to be responsible for my actions.”
“Are they always like this?” Brynn asked, wrapping a napkin carefully around half of her hotdog so she wouldn’t spill mustard on her dress.
“Yeah.”
“It’s cute.”
“It’s annoying as fuck,” Jude countered, but there was unmistakable affection in the words.
“That, too,” Brynn agreed and bit into her dog.
They watched Bridges bat—a double off the wall in center-left—and the next two batters strike out, and Brynn ate her hotdog and Jude drank his beer and it was all a very normal all-American Saturday afternoon at the ballpark, and if she didn’t find a way to release the tension that had been building inside of her since Tuck and Esme had burst into the apartment she was going to start screaming.
There had been a moment in the fourth inning where it had looked like a bench-clearing brawl might have been in the offing, but things had settled down quickly, and both teams had been playing nice since then. And as the side retired, Tuck and Esme went back to kissing.
“Give me a break,” Jude groaned and pitched his now empty beer cup at Tuck’s head.
The big man broke the kiss to aim a shit-eating grin over his shoulder. “Jealous.”
“Be nice,” Esme chided, wiping at her chin. It was free of lipstick this time, but only because it was already all kissed off.
“He is, though.” Smug, Tuck winked at Jude. “Aren’t ya?”
“Shut up,” Jude grumbled good-naturedly, laughing. But his cheeks were pink, and Brynn would’ve sworn there was a warning in the blue eyes aimed at Tuck.
She started to turn, wanting to see Tuck’s face, but the giant screen over the left field fence caught her eye. “Hey, Tuck,” she said, pointing. “You’re on.”
“What?” He looked up, his face spitting into a mile-wide grin when he saw the big pink heart on the screen, with him and Esme in the center. “We’re up, babe.”
“Make it good,” she ordered, grabbed his ears, and yanked him in.
Though envy curled deep, Brynn couldn’t help laughing. They made the kiss as dramatic as possible, Esme falling backward over the seats and dragging Tuck on top of her. “Jesus,” Jude muttered, but he was laughing too, and when the Kiss-Cam moved on to another, less demonstrative couple, he stood to haul Tuck off his wife.
“This is a family venue,” he scolded, still laughing, and nudged Tuck into his seat while Esme shifted upright into hers.
She pushed her hair out of her face. “My boobs didn’t fall out, did they?”
“No, you’re good,” Brynn assured her.
“Because I didn’t even grab ‘em,” Tuck said righteously. “On account of I was being family-friendly.”
Jude sat back down with a snort. “Your tongue was down your wife’s throat is family-friendly?”
“To be fair, you couldn’t see that,” Brynn pointed out, enjoying herself. “You know, since his beard is so bushy.”
“What was I supposed to do, give her some anemic little peck on the lips?” Tuck scoffed. “That wasn’t happening.”
“There’s a lot of room between a little peck and inappropriately sucking face,” Jude pointed out.
Esme leaned forward to see around Tuck. “Were we gross?” she asked Brynn.
Brynn shook her head. “Adorable.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, show us how it’s done, son,” Tuck drawled and jerked his chin at the big screen.
Brynn glanced up to see her face, and Jude’s, centered in the big pink sparkly heart.
Oh, she thought and swung around to stare at Jude.
He was staring back at her, his gaze sharp and bright and blue as the summer sky. There were nerves, and heat, and as she watched, a dawning resolve that whipped the butterflies in her belly into a frenzy.
He lifted a hand to the bill of her cap, pushing it back as his head dipped down. She kept her eyes on his until they were so close they blurred, then let hers drift close, then his mouth was on hers.
The crowd gave a roaring cheer, and Tuck let loose a big booming laugh, but she barely noticed. Every part of her was focused on the kiss.
It wasn’t like before, all desperate heat and frantic need. This was softer, deeper somehow, and all the more devastating.
His lips were firm, tasting of beer and the salt from the pretzel he’d had earlier. His mustache was a gentle abrasion, making her lips tingle, and his tongue—oh, his tongue. It was at once a soothing balm and a seductive tease. It glided along the seam of her lips, dipping inside when she parted them eagerly. The beer taste was sharper now, but she ignored it to concentrate on the good stuff. The press of lips, the scrape of teeth. The way his hand, still holding her cap, cupped the back of her head to hold her at just the right angle.
Then with a last glide of his tongue and nip at her bottom lip, he was gone, easing back, and she blinked as the world started spinning again.
“There,” he said, a soft little smile on his face as he snugged her cap back onto her head. She knew he couldn’t see her eyes through the sunglasses, but it felt like he was looking right into them anyway. “That’s how it’s done.”
“Um, that might not have been as family-friendly as you think,” Esme warned.
“Gave me a boner,” Tuck rumbled.
“You already had a boner,” Esme pointed out.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Shut up, Tuck,” Jude said mildly, his burning blue gaze still locked on Brynn. “You okay?” he murmured.
She nodded, but what came out of her mouth was, “Not really.”
“Me neither,” he said.