Page 7

CHAPTER 7

CAMDEN

M y beautiful, little niece was almost a week old. Well, five days and today was an off day for Brooks, so I wasn’t at their house. During the season the guys got so few days off—just two a month—and sometimes one of them was a travel day, so if my brother was going to get some time with his little family, I wouldn’t push in on that.

At least not unless I really needed to or was asked.

Today was a day like that. I’d go over a later, before he left, because this was a first for them. Harlowe was more than capable of taking care of Kelsie.

Later, I headed over to Brooks and Harlowe’s house so I’d be there when Brooks left. That had been his request, but he didn’t want Harlowe to know. She’d assume that he didn’t think she could handle it when in reality, he just wanted to make things easier on her, considering how damn hard it was all going to be. Which was why I was going over early. She wouldn’t think I was just there to pick up the slack.

The door opened before I had a chance to knock. My brother stood in front of me tall and dressed for the road. They had to dress nicely, so Brooks always wore slacks and button-up shirts, but the sleeves were undone and pushed up.

Women on the internet loved it, but that wasn’t why he did it .

“Come in.” He stepped out of the way so that I could get inside. Harlowe and the baby were on the couch, where she was breastfeeding. Right now, she tried to do it straight from the tap as much as possible, but she’d pumped a couple of times so that Brooks could feed their baby as well.

“Hey, Mama,” I said as I came in then pulled the hand sanitizer out of my purse to douse my hands. “What’re we doing over here?” I ran my hand gently over Kelsie’s head once the sanitizer had dried. That was a beautiful baby.

“Teaching her math,” Harlowe responded then snorted. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

I snickered. “I mean, I assumed that was a case.” Then I dropped into the chair near the couch. “‘ How are we doing over here? ’ I guess is the better question.”

Harlowe and I were roughly the same height, but she’d always been curvy, whereas I had a little more of an athletic build, given how I’d grown up. However, this last year, without being in a sport or working out in any real way, that build had started to soften. Still strong muscles and I still had the agility, but I’d also turned twenty-two and was starting to round out a little more. Fuller breasts, more of a curve to my hips.

My mother had said that my body was preparing for babies. I’d immediately pretended to throw up on her.

Brooks didn’t join us in the living room. My guess was he still needed to pack for the road trip because my brothers always left that kind of shit until the last minute .

“How do you feel about all this?” I asked once I knew we were alone.

Harlowe sighed and in that one response, I already knew it all. “I’m not feeling so confident right now,” she confessed, disengaging Kelsie and covering herself up. She was less careful about not exposing herself around me because we’d both already seen the other naked. Now if my other brothers were around… that was a different story.

“Why not?” I asked with furrowed brows. Harlowe was a natural at this whole mom thing as far as I could tell.

“It’s six days. I haven’t been alone with her that long.” She glanced worriedly at the baby, who was milk-drunk asleep in her arms.

I scoffed. “You won’t be alone. I’ve got you, friend. In a little while, I’ll run to my house and pack a bag. Move in while he’s gone.”

Some of the fear left her tired hazel eyes. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

I made a show of glancing around. “Did you ask me? I didn’t hear that? Where is the ask?”

She snickered. “You know what I mean. I had a baby. You didn’t. You shouldn’t have to rearrange your life for me.”

My mouth dropped into a soft O. “Do you think this baby is any less mine than she is yours? Please. We’ve been sisters for a long time, Harlowe. It’s not a hardship for me to snuggle a baby for a week. Hell, it’s easy. You have the hard job because you don’t just leave at some point and go home. ”

“I wouldn’t want to.” She nuzzled her nose against the baby’s.

“I’m here for you, Harlowe. You know I could be even if Kelsie weren’t my niece officially. But she is.”

“Yeah.” Her voice was quiet, then she looked back up at me as I heard Brooks coming down the stairs. “Don’t tell him I’m nervous.”

“I won’t.” Because we had an agreement. Harlowe’s and my relationship was separate from hers with Brooks. She didn’t tell him things I didn’t want her to know. That meant secrets, sure. But it was the only way Brooks and Harlowe would work.

I also wouldn’t run to my brother with anything told to me in confidence. That way, they got the person they loved and I got to keep my best friend.

“I’ll go get clothes after he leaves so he won’t even know I’m staying until later,” I added. Though Brooks would be glad that I was there. His whole intention had been to get Harlowe as much help as possible so that she could heal. When she’d refused a nanny—even just a night one—I’d become the next best option.

And I loved every second of it.

“When’s graduation?” she asked as she set the baby in the little bassinet they had in the living room. The idea was to get her used to sleeping through some noise so that every little thing didn’t wake her and having her all the way upstairs in their bedroom—where she slept right now—wasn’t going to do that. She wouldn’t hear anything. “A month? Six weeks? What are you doing after that? I assume you’re not looking to become my full-time nanny.” She grinned then her eyes darkened. “You are staying in Kalamazoo, though, right?”

“I sure hope so.” The idea of leaving hadn’t occurred to me. This was where my friends and family were, so I wasn’t excited to think about leaving it. “I guess it’d depend on the job and I still have to talk to my mom about that. But the more I think about it, the more I’m worried that I shouldn’t get any more enmeshed with the team.” I rolled my eyes. “With the guys. I’m literally the lady who hates baseball players. Do I really want to be spinning their shit as my career?”

Harlowe snickered quietly. “Yes. You do. You know you do. Besides, you wouldn’t be spinning their shit. You’d be spinning the team ’s shit. This is your grandpa’s team. Your mom is going to own it one day. She’ll leave it to you and your brothers, right? Don’t you want to manage how it reflects on you and your family?”

I sighed.

“You want this, Camden. You know you do.”

Finally, I couldn’t even pretend to deny that she was right. “Yeah. I do. I’ll have to talk to her. But I did kind of hope that someone would think I’m so amazing that they had to have me, not Mommy gave me a job .”

Harlowe barked out a laugh that she quickly stifled with her hand over her mouth as she glanced toward Kelsie. “Your mom would want you even if you weren’t her kid because you are amazing. She’s a shrewd businesswoman. I don’t think she would’ve drafted any of your brothers if they’d sucked. ”

Yeah. Maybe not, but knowing her, she would’ve found something for them to do. Talk them into being a hitting coach if they could at least hit. Something like that.

Right then, someone knocked on the door. I was about to get up to get it, but Brooks beat me to it. When he opened it, Cobb and Monroe stepped in.

“Oh, right,” Harlowe said. “Your other brothers and the girlfriends are coming over.”

“To see the baby?”

She shrugged. “You know they do this sometimes. They’re all going to be here until they have to get to the field. I think it’s time for them to just be brothers and not teammates.”

Yeah. They didn’t get much time to just be brothers.

“Wait.” I hurried over to the couch next to her so that my brothers, who were talking kind of loudly as they went to the kitchen, wouldn’t hear me. Monroe had given us a wave, but she went to the kitchen with Cobb. “Is it just my brothers and their girlfriends?” That, I could handle. But a lot of the time… someone else was included.

“Jenner too.”

I closed my eyes and blew out a breath, calming my erratic heartbeat. Normally, when he was invited, I made sure that I was busy and couldn’t come. It didn’t always work, but I tried my best.

“Is he bringing someone?” Because that I didn’t want to be here for and worry burned my stomach along with a huge lump forming in my throat .

Fighting a smile, Harlowe said, “Not that I know of.”

I moved back slightly and pinched my face together. “What?” I asked.

“What do you mean, ‘what’?”

“You’re hiding something, Harlowe. I know you and I don’t like surprises.”

“You do know me, but you didn’t put together that I had a thing for your brother now, did you? No. So you don’t know everything.”

“Harlowe,” I chastised in a whisper.

She shrugged. “I’m just starting to think that I might know where your hate for ballplayers comes from.” I raised one eyebrow. “Jenner.”

“Get bent,” I told her, but all she did was snicker as we stood to join the others in the kitchen/dining area.

“I don’t think you hide things as well as you think you do,” she said as she made her way around the coffee table. “Your brothers are clueless, obviously, and now that I really think about it, I’m even more convinced. I’ve had suspicions but didn’t want to dig into it before because I had my own baseball player secret. Now…”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her as Brooks came to open the door, though no one had knocked. The rest of my brothers and their girlfriends showed up with Jenner right behind.

Jenner was wearing roughly the same as my brothers did for travel. Dress pants with a long sleeve dress shirt but the sleeves were rolled up to the middle of their forearms, I assumed for a little whimsy. They all has incredible strong forearms but Jenner’s were… sexy. It was what this group tended to wear on travel days because proper dress was required. They each had jackets that they could slide on if they wanted to.

That was when I noticed Harlowe watching me take him in and my jaw tightened while she cocked her head slightly to let me know she’d seen it. That she knew more than I wanted her to.

At first, they were all cooing over the baby. But you never wake a sleeping baby, so Kelsie stayed right there in the bassinet while we went to the dining area.

“So is there about to be a baby boom?” I asked once we were all in there and I had promised myself I wouldn’t look at or speak to Jenner unless absolutely necessary. All so I didn’t give Harlowe any more ideas. “If there is, you should time it out with each other. I’m only one person and can’t handle all of them at once.”

A rumble of laughter rode over the group. The only one missing was Everly because it was a school day and she was teaching.

As if on cue, Kelsie cried from the other room. Jenner was nearest the entryway, so he said, “I’ll get her.”

I was about to protest but thought better of it. If Harlowe didn’t care, then who was I to say anything? Especially to him. Seeing him holding a baby had my ovaries threatening to explode. Then he handed the baby over to Brooks as he said, “This smells like something only a dad should take care of.”

Harlowe bit her lips together as my brothers laughed. Brooks wouldn’t shy away from changing the baby. Hell, he probably insisted on being the one to do it when he was there just because Harlowe had to do it when he was gone and he’d be gone a lot.

Once Brooks was out of the room, Jenner said, “I think you could handle all the babies.” It took a second for me to realize that he was referencing what I’d said before he’d gotten the baby. I just scowled. He was standing too close to me and I wasn’t sure anyone else could even hear him. “I think you could handle just about anything, Camden.”

I moved away from him because that was a compliment and the last thing I needed from him was a compliment.

Yet, deep down, it felt good for him to have that kind of confidence in me. Which I hated. And I told my damn hormones to calm the hell down. They’d been messing with my head since the moment I’d seen him as they always did and I hated it.

Absolutely hated it.

Worse than that… Harlowe had a very knowing smile on her face, as she had just seen our interaction. Even if she couldn’t hear—though I thought she probably could—she’d watched every movement and the fact that he’d even spoken to me.

Whatever he was trying to do was ruining my resolve.

But I was nothing if not stubborn. There was zero chance he was going to get whatever it was he wanted from me. Not forgiveness. Not anything.

Jenner Greene would never been more a part of my life than he had to be.