Page 13 of Playboy Pitcher

Pissed, I spin around and scowl. “Whose side are you fuckers on?”

“However,” Willow continues, ignoring all of us. “I’m sure you’ve heard rumors, and they’re true. I do plan to sell.” At that, I twist back around, my stomach plummeting to my feet. She meets my stare head-on, her gorgeous face void of anything but disgust. “I have no interest in running a third-rate team.”

My blood boils. “Third rate? You bit—” The last word is muffled as someone shoves a sweaty sock in my mouth.

What the hell?

Blinking, I turn to see Cruz glaring at me.

Nowthis asshole wants to have an opinion?

“Bitch?” Willow hisses, yanking the sock out of my mouth. “Go ahead. Say it, LaCroix. I dare you.”

When women dare you to do something, it’s usually a trap. There’s no reward waiting at the end of their challenge, only a night on the couch and a set of blue balls. But I’m standing here in front of my friends. My teammates. If I back down now, I might as well rip off my own balls and let Kyle knock them into left field.

“Bitch,” I finish.

Seconds pass as Willow and I glare craters into each other. Just as I’m about to ask if she’d like me to repeat myself, she smiles. “You seem to be under the impression I think that’s an insult. On the contrary…” Balling the sock in her fist, she launches it at my face. “I consider it a compliment.”

Impressive.Yeah, I’m pissed, but the girl has an arm.

“You think being called a bitch is a compliment?”

Invading my personal space once again, she looks up at me with that self-righteous smirk. “It means I get under your skin, LaCroix.”

Sucking air between my teeth, I’m about to tell her to back the hell up when a sweet, floral scent smacks me across the face.

I inhale again.

Damn it. It’s her, and it’s fucking addictive.

I snort, forcing her scent out of my nose. “Yeah, like a splinter.”

“What’s wrong, Ben?” she whispers under her breath. “Don’t want my number anymore?” I growl out a response, and she chuckles, returning her tone to a normal volume. “Regardless, this will be our last encounter, as I’m meeting with the buyer tomorrow.”

“You already have a buyer? How? You just got into town yesterday.” My mind spins a drunken roulette wheel of chance meetings, bad lines, and hidden truths.

“Well, here’s to your meetings going well,” I say, holding my glass up.

Forcing a smile, she lifts her drink. “To signing on the dotted line.”

As if reading my thoughts, she offers a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Looks like dear old Dad thought of everything, huh?”

“So instead of fucking me last night, you waited until today?”

The words are barely out of my mouth before the earlier spark in Willow’s eyes dulls. Her laugh is bitter and resentful, the end catching in her chest like a rusty hook. “The only one getting fucked here is the poor asshole who gets stuck with this team.”

She wants a reaction, so I stare at her in silence. I can’t figure her out. She’s an impossible puzzle. A walking contradiction. Growing up with what she had and givenwhoshe was, what the hell could she have to be angry about?

She doesn’t give me a chance to find out. Without another word, Willow turns her back on me and walks toward the exit.

“Roger loved this team more than anything,” I call out after her.

The rhythmic click of Willow’s heels comes to a dead stop as her fingers grip the doorframe. For a moment, I don’t think she’s going to answer, then slowly, she glances over her shoulder. “Yeah,” she says, flashing me a watery smile. “I know.”

Chapter Five

I spentthe majority of my childhood sitting on a leather couch, staring at a pair of closed boardroom doors, under the watchful eye of my father’s secretary. I remember trying hard to hear his voice, wondering what it would be like to stand on the other side. To one day be the one calling the shots instead of straining to hear them.