Leslie Kelly - Boys Of Summer - Sliding Home / Fever Pitch / The Sweet Spot

They’d make it to the parking lot before they kissed. Riley’s hands would be buried in her soft hair while he roughly explored the depths of her mouth with his tongue. They’d share breaths, share heat, share an almost indescribable excitement.

Once inside his car, they’d pause for another intense, more private kiss. And if they were lucky, he’d have the strength to start the car and drive to his place—or hers—to finish what they’d started. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to wait, though, and his cramped car would do for some quick, hot, fabulous sex.

He’d played this scene before. Not recently—not for a few years. But it had happened in his early days with the Slammers.

You’re not that guy anymore.

No, he wasn’t. He’d long since realized meaningless sex was not the way to eradicate the memory of his failed marriage. And that, as strange as it seemed, he was being used, too, by women who never wanted Riley the person…just Riley the pitcher.

He didn’t hate them for it. Hadn’t his wife, the woman who’d pledged to love and honor him until death, wanted the sports star, too?

Not the man. Never the man he was inside.

So he’d changed. He wasn’t one of the players off the field anymore, despite the rumors. And he didn’t care. Life was good now without women. Which made it hard to understand why he couldn’t stop thinking about the brunette.

“You know what,” he murmured to his waitress as she came to deliver his dinner, “I’ve changed my mind. Can you box that up?”

The waitress jerked her head up and down, as obsequious to one of the star players in this town as most other people.

Like the lady in red?

That cinched it. He wasn’t certain the woman had recognized him, but it was possible. And he sure didn’t want any obsequious woman willing to do anything to say she’d made it with a sports star. He’d been there, done that. So as soon as the waitress came back with his food and check, he handed her some cash and stood to leave. His stride didn’t slow as he passed the stranger, though he was unable to resist giving her an appreciative nod, if only to thank her for the distraction she’d provided.

Once outside the main dining room, however, he realized he’d forgotten his dinner. “Damn,” he muttered. Because he was hungry. And because he’d look like a loser going back in there to get it after playing Mr. Cool and Confident while escaping.

“Problem?” the hostess asked.

He could ask her to retrieve his bagged dinner. Or he could walk out and hit a drive-through on the way home. In the end, however, he decided on a third option. “I just decided to go into Fever Pitch for a while,” he told the woman, smiling as he crossed the vestibule to the quiet bar, which served light food. Not his nice medium-rare steak, but it’d do.

Anything would do, as long as it got his mind off the temptress he’d just walked away from.

* * *

“THIS WAS the stupidest idea on the face of the earth.”

Janie didn’t bother keeping the disgust out of her voice. There was no point. Callie had witnessed the entire humiliating scene that had just unfolded in the restaurant. There was no way the other woman, no matter how loyal, could deny the truth: Janie had given it her best shot. And had been completely shot down.

“He was interested.”

Snorting, Janie reached for her wineglass. “Right.”

“He could barely keep his eyes off you.”

“Sure managed to keep his hands off.”

As the owner of Diamond, Callie enjoyed a lot of privileges. Like being able to ignore the rest of her customers and sit at Janie’s table. “Janie, he was so into you. Maybe he was just unsure…needing you to make a more obvious first move.”

More obvious? Good grief, the only way she could possibly have been any more obvious was if she’d stripped off her dress and flung it at the man. “Riley and unsure are two words that do not belong in the same sentence.”

Callie frowned. “I can think of one: Riley wanted you badly but you are unsure of that fact.”

She didn’t give an inch. “Riley wanting me badly is, I am quite sure, fiction.”

“Why are you convinced you don’t have a shot with him?”

“Why are you so determined to think I do?”

Callie leaned closer, staring so hard at her that Janie wondered if she had a splash of wine on her cheek or something. “I am determined to think that,” she said, her voice low and no-nonsense, “because ever since you first mentioned who your mystery man was, I knew you two would be perfect together.”

Knew it? Janie barely knew whether she’d be able to get her newly cut, newly highlighted hair back up into this style again after tonight. Much less who her perfect man was.

But her friends really had tried to help her, and, despite what had just happened with Mr. Slammer Stud, Janie was feeling pretty good about herself. Maybe she wasn’t sexy enough to garner the attention of a sports superstar, but, for the first time in a long time, she felt capable of holding her own with a normal man.

Okay, probably not her customers, the jocks who wanted big-boobed blond bimbos, either. Still, she looked good and felt almost capable of trying to pick up a man for some much needed sexual release. A normal man. Teacher. Accountant. Salesman.

Yawn.

It was no use. There was only one man she wanted. But she wasn’t brave enough to go after him again, not in this lifetime.

“This can work. I know it.”

“Thanks but no thanks,” she murmured, giving Callie a weary smile. “Though I do appreciate everything you and Babe did.” Remembering one particular part of her makeover—a visit to a woman’s salon earlier today—her smile faded, dissolving into a shudder. “Except the, uh, painful waxing. I will get even some day for this afternoon’s experience.”

Callie bit her bottom lip, trying to hold back a grin. “Janie, honey, I didn’t suggest that thorough a wax job.”

“Yeah, well, I wish you had been a little more clear with that Brazilian woman before you let her drag me back into the torture chamber. She could give tips to the mob on making people talk.” Janie shifted in her seat, still not entirely accustomed to the feel of her, um, bareness. There wasn’t much left down there, other than what her torturer had referred to as a “landing strip.” It felt strange against the skimpy-to-the-point-of-nothingness panties she was wearing.

“I hear some women get off on just the process of having it done,” Callie said with a shrug.

Oh, right. How arousing…having her hair ripped out by the roots while being fingered pretty damned intimately by another woman. “Look, I don’t think Angelina Jolie could convince me to swing to the dark side sexually, so I’m quite sure a three-hundred-pound Brazilian woman named Consuela couldn’t.”

Callie snorted.

Finishing her wine, Janie pushed her chair back from the table. “Thanks again for everything. But I think I’ll go and turn back into my real self before I change into a pumpkin.”

No, it wasn’t midnight. But it didn’t matter. As much as Callie and Babe had played fairy godmothers, Janie hadn’t ended up with the handsome Prince Charming. She wasn’t Cinderella.

She was still Just Janie. And despite her best efforts, still very vanilla.

* * *

UNFORTUNATELY, his dinner in the bar did not do a damn thing to eradicate Riley’s hunger. Physical…or sexual. It didn’t change a thing. By the time he finished his burger, an hour after he’d left Diamond, he’d decided he was a total moron. He’d let his unexpected reaction to a woman drive him out of his favorite restaurant, away from a juicy steak that had most likely turned into a congealed, artery-hardening mess by now. “Asshole,” he muttered before he paid his tab and left.