Game On(44)

Tim wrapped his arm around my shoulders and led me away from reception before the kid could answer.

“Fucking idiot,” he said with a smirk.

“I’m sure he just forgot,” I told him, reminding myself to include as big a tip I could manage to the receptionist before I checked out.

“Of course he didn’t.” Tim waited until we were outside before bursting into laughter. Thankfully he let go of me at the same time. “I never told him to put only whiskey in my room.”

I gaped at him. “What?”

“Yeah.” Tim slapped his leg with glee. “Oldest trick in the book. Make them think they made a mistake so they’ll always get you what you want and they’ll comp half of it. It’s the only way I’d drink something from the minibar.”

I was speechless. He frowned, clearly not pleased that I was disapproving of his scam.

“Oh come on, sweet cheeks,” he sneered. “They jack up the prices anyways. It doesn’t matter to them if they lose a few bottles to a guy like me.”

It matters to the kid at the front desk, I thought, but said nothing. That was usually the best method with Tim.

He tried to drape his arm over my shoulders again, but this time I was too fast and avoided him.

“Ready to head to the field?” I asked.

“Sure thing, Saucy,” he leered. I didn’t even bother asking him to call me something else. It hadn’t worked in the past, it wasn’t going to work now. “Mike told me you need a lot of help on this one,” he said as we headed towards the parking lot.

“Mike just wants a good article,” I said, trying to be as diplomatic as possible.

“Yeah, and clearly he regrets sending a girl to do a man’s job.” Tim unlocked his car—some vintage model that he was trying to rebuild himself and doing a really, really bad job. The whole thing looked like it was Frankenstein’s monster gone very wrong. I yanked the door open, knowing there was no way Tim the jerk was going to open it for me. This, of course, was the same guy who complained about women being too independent these days. He always seemed to long for the era when his car and his imagined ideal woman existed. Not like he practiced any of the manners men exhibited during that time.

The seatbelt in the car was broken, and the entire thing smelled like fast food and cigarettes. I was incredibly grateful that I wasn’t hung over, because if I threw up in Tim’s car, he would have surely found a way to get me fired immediately.

“So, I took a look at what you sent Mike,” Tim was saying, pulling out a cigarette with one hand, driving with the other. I had sent a very rough draft of my article last night after my cry fest, half hoping that Mike would call off Tim, but knowing that was very unlikely. He had been right—I didn’t have anything. Everything I had on Nathan was off the record and I wasn’t going to cross that line, not even to forward my own career.

Tim was swerving all over the road and I held tight to my useless seatbelt, thankful that the car ride would be over soon and praying that it wouldn’t end in a wreck. He grinned, clearly enjoying my fear and blew smoke over at me. I tried not to cough. The windows were open and the A/C was either broken or not on, so I was being blasted with hot smoke and thick, humid air. How someone could smoke in this heat baffled me. Even my mother, who loved her cigarettes, found air-conditioned dive bars to do it in.

“It’s rough.” I wondered if I could hold my breath until we got to the field as Tim blew another plume of smoke in my direction.

“You can say that again.” Tim shook his cigarette at me, raining ash down on my slacks, which I quickly brushed away. This was my nicest suit and I couldn’t afford to replace it. “It’s a mess, babe. It’s got no balls.”

If it had been anyone else, if it had been Nathan or Mandy, I would have made some joke about baseballs, but it was Tim so I said nothing and just gritted my teeth.

As we pulled into the lot next to the field, my stomach was twisted up in knots. And it wasn’t from the smoking or even Tim’s shitty driving. I was nervous about seeing Nathan. I wanted not to care, but I hated that he thought that I might have planned all of this—that this was all some big, elaborate plan to get him to spill his deepest, darkest secrets. Secrets I hoped he did not have. Because if he did, Tim was going to find them. That’s what Tim did. It’s why he kept his job after years of complaints from female employees and inappropriate pranks and the occasional public intoxication—because he knew how to find a story, and the dirtier, the better.

We got out of the car and Tim squinted over towards the stands. I could see Mandy there with Chris and Nathan. My stomach did an unpleasant flip-flop. My heart did the same, much to my annoyance. How had I let myself get in so deep, so quickly?

It was the kiss, I decided. Nathan was an amazing kisser, I admitted to myself, lost for a moment in the memory of last night. His wonderful, hot, perfect mouth. Fuck, I thought, desire surging through me. This was the wrong time to be turned on. I mentally poured a bucket of ice water over myself, but it did as much good as one would expect a mental bucket of ice water would do.

“So where is this guy?” Tim asked, grabbing his leather jacket from the backseat. Yep. Tim was the kind of guy who wore a leather jacket in the summer in Texas. He had some serious (and delusional) James Dean fantasies.

I pointed in the direction of the stands, half expecting Nathan and Chris to scatter the moment they saw us. But then again, neither of them seemed to be the kind of guys who ran away from trouble. And I appreciated that they weren’t leaving Mandy to fend for herself against Tim. Not that I would let him do anything to her. Being an inappropriate shithead to me was one thing; if he said anything to Mandy, I’d slash his f*cking tires. Maybe cut off his balls, too. But that would be more for me than anything.