Fix Her Up (Hot & Hammered #1)(76)

The route she took on their run brought them past the high school. Honestly, Georgie didn’t plan it. But after that, it seemed only natural to cross over through the baseball field. Since the season wouldn’t start for months, the expansive green sat deserted beneath a cloudy gray morning sky, automatic sprinklers ticking and spraying in the distance. Without looking at Travis, she could feel the tension creeping into his frame—his reluctance to go toward the diamond.

He’d started talking to her more about baseball, especially since he’d started gunning for the commentating job with the Bombers. But the idea of actively playing the sport again seemed to make him uncomfortable. As if he wouldn’t allow himself full enjoyment of baseball unless he could be the best at it. Sadness settled over her. Made loss spread in her belly. She could blink and see him in his starched gray Port Jefferson uniform, standing at home plate and tapping the metal bat off his cleats. Trash-talking the catcher. Absorbing love and excitement from the crowd—especially her. He’d so obviously been the best, no one ever questioned his superiority. They celebrated it. Add to that the fact that Travis Ford practically glowed while holding a bat, and Georgie couldn’t help but miss watching him play. The sport was a part of him.

Jogging beside him through the outfield and remembering the deafening cheers from the crowd, Georgie’s gut told her not to stop pushing him. It could be something he loved, even if he couldn’t make millions of dollars playing. More importantly, like she’d told him last night, he didn’t have to be the best baseball player to be the best Travis.

With these thoughts dancing in Georgie’s head, it couldn’t have been a coincidence that the gray light happened to glint off a bat that someone must have left propped against the dugout. No. Coincidences that perfect didn’t exist.

She veered right, praying she was doing the right thing.

“Where are you . . .” Travis stopped following her around second base. “Georgie.”

She didn’t let his warning tone deter her. “I’m just going to grab this bat. I’ll drop it off at the lost and found later.”

“Someone will probably be back to look for it before then.” God, he looked so uncomfortable, rolling his shoulders in that stressed-out manner he broke out only when truly out of his comfort zone. “You should leave it.”

Georgie hummed. “Okay.” She started to return the bat to its original position, but swung it up onto her shoulder instead, bending her knees in a pitiful stance. “Too bad we don’t have a ball.”

“You don’t have a hope in hell of hitting a ball standing like that.” He made an absent gesture that wasn’t really absent. His eyes were zoned in on her. “Choke up, Georgie. If you swing like that, you’re going to knock yourself out.”

“This is how Stephen taught me,” she returned with a frown.

“Stephen was always better at hockey.” Travis took a few steps into the diamond and sighed. “Bend your knees, weight on the back leg.”

She locked her knees and leaned forward.

Travis groaned up at the sky. “You’re killing me, baby girl.”

When he stomped toward her, crossing over the pitcher’s mound and looking like the cover of Sports Illustrated, Georgie took a bracing breath. But she could do nothing to stop the flood of excitement that pooled in her stomach. “What?”

“I know what you’re doing.” He leaned down and growled into her neck. “Come here, anyway. You’re mocking the baseball gods.”

His front curved to her back in such a delicious fashion, Georgie had to close her eyes. His strong, capable arms bracketed her, the scent of male sweat and mint toothpaste giving her no choice but to sway. “Um. Who are the baseball gods?”

“Ruth, DiMaggio, and Gehrig. No question.”

Georgie dropped her voice to a whisper. “Are they watching us right now?”

“They’re too busy spinning in their graves. Slide your hands up, grip tight—and try not to make a sexual innuendo about it.”

She giggled like an honest-to-God middle school girl but somehow managed to follow the dictate, even with pheromones having a rave in her bloodstream. “Like this?”

“Good girl,” he said huskily against her ear, bringing his flexing thighs up against hers, securing her backside tightly in his lap. “Now drop that beautiful ass a little. Weight on your back leg.” He groaned as she complied, thanks to her bottom dragging right over the swell of his manhood. “God yeah, just like that.”

Oh boy.

It was safe to say the situation was getting away from Georgie. She’d chanced picking up the bat in an attempt to draw Travis back into his happy place. But the longer this went on, the greater the chance they would end up in an entirely different venue of happiness. She couldn’t let this opportunity pass, though. Who knew when she’d have another chance like this?

When his hand traveled beneath the front of her shirt to massage her breast, his lips leaving an openmouthed kiss on her neck, it was now or never. “I think I got it,” she said in a tremulous voice. “But could you show me, just so I’m sure?”

Travis’s breath sighed out onto her neck. Above them, the sky darkened further, blurring their shadows on the ground, releasing a hint of salt into the air. “I think we’ve done enough for one day.”