Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(38)

They’re worse than real hives, because they itch in places I can’t scratch.

I woke up this morning knowing one thing for absolute certain—I don’t want to help Henri learn how to not fall in love.

The world doesn’t need more of us all fucked up on that front.

But I don’t want her falling in love with the next random dick she meets either, which puts me in a conundrum.

I can tell her the secret to not falling in love is to learn to be a dick, or I can get over myself, do something good for another human being outside of a baseball team, and take a chance at making everything worse when I’m trying to be that bigger person I’d like my mother to be.

Best I can tell, even if she is crazy, Henri’s not a bad person.

She has awful taste in men and a hair trigger when it comes to getting engaged.

I can convince her marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be without breaking her spirit.

Can’t I?

She’s not bailing on her end of our bargain, crazy as it might be. So I can find a way to live with my part.

Her cat is lying at the top of the stairwell, flopped half on its side, half on its back, with its paws crossed demurely and one eye lazily tracking my movement. It’s the laziest, most chill cat I’ve ever met. Even its coloring is chill—mostly a soft white, with light gray on its face and tail, like the gray couldn’t be bothered to get any darker or spread any more over the cat’s body. Henri’s dressed the animal in the dinosaur costume I grabbed, and I pause to snap a picture of it with its scales sticking up on the back, because it could fit with all the costumes I’m in charge of finding before we leave Duggan Field for our away trip to Boston.

We have a different away series starting tomorrow in Florida, but we’ll be heading to the airport for that trip immediately after the game tonight, so we’re not wasting costume time when there won’t be anyone watching.

Plus, tonight’s for wearing our Fireballs pajamas.

Don’t mock it. It’s a thing, and we’ve swept the last two away series that we’ve worn our pajamas for.

And yes, they’re footy pajamas.

They rock.

I should ask Henri to come with us. It’s not unusual for family to travel with the team. I’ll have my own room, and the hotels always have air conditioning.

Plus, it’s better for appearances, right?

She’s out of the bathroom, so I head to the bedroom.

Not there.

Not in the guest room either.

“Henri?”

A muffled and irritated, “What?” answers me from somewhere back near my bedroom, so I head that way again, rubbing a hand over my face.

“I’m sorry on behalf of my mother and my grandmother. They can be—”

“Shh!”

What the hell?

Is this the same woman who even talked in her sleep last night?

And where is she?

I bend and peer under my bed, because I wouldn’t put it past her to be there, but all I see are dust bunnies gathering on the wood floor.

But from this angle, I hear a weird clicking.

I follow the sound straight to my closet.

Henri’s camped out with her back to the rear wall, sitting on the floor under my clothes in the smallest walk-in closet known to man, typing so fast on a laptop that I should see smoke. Her hair’s dripping on a gray T-shirt that’s inside out and backwards—you can tell by the tag flapping in front—and I don’t want to know what she is or isn’t wearing under that towel around her waist.

“What are you—”

“I’m writing, Luca. It’s my job, and I haven’t been able to do it for weeks, so shh! Go away.”

Her lips keep moving after sound stops coming out, and her fingers fly. The words Confucius, stud, amnesia, craft herpes, and boinky boinky all slip out of her mouth in the fifteen seconds I stand there watching her.

She’s a woman on a mission.

It’s weirdly fascinating.

Also, seeing her in her natural habitat is making the image of her wet and soapy in the shower invade my brain, and was that a surge of blood heading to my limp dick?

No.

It was an itch.

Or was it?

I could grab myself and test it, but if I grab myself, she’ll look up at me at that exact minute and think I’m making a crude gesture.

Jesus.

I’m a baseball player.

Grabbing ourselves is what we do.

Screw it.

I’m gonna—

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Henri snaps.

Right.

I’m gonna go grab myself in the shower.

“What are you smiling at?” she snarls.

Look at that. I am smiling. “Glad to know I’m not the only one pissed this morning.”

“Confucius is having an argument with a daisy tree, if you must know, and when my characters are agitated, I get agitated, but I can’t get unagitated until this daisy tree shifts into a fairy that he can bang, and then I’m going to get horny, so you might want to take your little tush on out to the ballpark before that happens.”

Holy. Fuck.

That’s real, legitimate blood flow to my dick. I almost have half a woody.

Henri blinks angrily at me, a very clear go the hell away blink, and since I need to see if my boner’s as big today as it would’ve been three days ago, I hightail it to the bathroom.