Page 43 of Wild Hit (Wild Baseball Romance #3)

MIGUEL

A couple of peaceful weeks have passed after the colorful and chaotic first night of Audrey living with us, and since the last time Henry Big Asshole Vos reared his entitled head.

Part of it is because I’m suing him, and the other part is because allegedly he’s been on a business trip.

Who the hell knows if that’s true—after all, I’m not gonna hire someone to follow him back like a stinking creep.

Or at least, that’s how the passage of this time seems to have developed for my kid and Audrey.

They’re pleased as punch in each other’s company, working side by side, or playing in a more civilized way—such as baking cookies together with Consuelo—or watching movies together.

They both pretty much ignore me every time I’m home.

It’s great. Pure bliss.

Not.

I am dying inside. This is how dogs must feel like when their humans aren’t paying attention to them. Thankfully I don’t have a tail to wag, and I somehow manage to keep my tongue inside my mouth.

Sometimes I forget that this is only a convenient arrangement and nearly make a fool of myself.

For example, a few mornings ago before flying out for an away series, I was mixing a protein shake to chug on the way when Audrey joined me in silence, brewed a pot of coffee, and poured two mugs—one for herself and one for me—still without saying a word.

As if we’d done this exact routine every morning for the past five years or something.

The sheer domesticity of it speared me through the gut with visceral hunger, and not the stomach kind. I had to casually go up to my room on the pretense that I needed to find something.

And yeah, it was my logical brain. Because I was a raging torch for a woman who is just my friend, and is under my protection, and has minus ten interest in more.

The only way I could calm the hell down was with upside down pull ups.

Just to really punish myself. And also to get the blood flow going to my brain.

You’d say, Miguel, you know your place, dude. Why do you keep punishing yourself?

Because I can’t help it. Because my damn cells vibrate when she’s nearby. Because I’m in awe of her and I know I can be her rock. Because I’m in love, damn it.

So here I am, on the field for the SPORTY commercial shoot, wishing she’d just look my way once.

It doesn’t matter that everyone else has their attention on me—including my rowdy teammates—Audrey just keeps her focus on the director and the crew.

I know it’s her job, and I’ll never interfere with it, but I feel like a teenager trying to catch the attention of his crush without having the cojones to verbally ask for it.

“Hey, Machado,” Cade Starr, the pitcher we’re riding our season upon, calls out from behind the crew where the rest of the team is gathered to watch the show. He brackets his mouth with his hands to really make sure I catch every word. “Looking buff out there, what’s your secret?”

I glance down. To my surprise, my abs are showing. And I’m not even clenching.

Slowly, I look back up at him. “Hard work, man.”

And by hard work, I mean the difficult task of behaving around a certain woman.

Lucky Rivera, the best shortstop I’ve ever seen, of course chimes in with, “Hard marriage work, ey?” He nudges the guy next to him.

The combined braincell of the Orlando Wild bursts into various forms of laughter, the dominant ones being guffaws and giggles. I was wrong when I thought I was acting all high school like. This is middle school.

“Stop acting like clowns,” our captain barks, but this time the comedians are having way too much fun.

I twist my lips and tongue in a very specific way, passed down by my dad, and let out a whistle loud enough to echo around the field and pierce everybody’s eardrums. All the attention returns to me.

“Make fun of me all you want but I will appreciate you not joking about my wife or making her feel uncomfortable, or there’ll be consequences.”

There’s a beat of silence, where everyone looks at me like they’re meeting me for the first time. It takes a while to realize that it’s because I used a new voice. Dad voice, relaxed teammate voice, and heck, even tax prepping voice sound very different.

This was husband voice. The caged animal type that really conveys if you hurt my person, I will destroy your life.

And now Audrey’s certainly looking at me—in a weird way. Like she got a glimpse of something she didn’t want to see.

I run my hand down my face and drop my hands on my waist. “Sorry, I?—”

“You’re right, I went too far,” Lucky says and turns to Audrey. “I’m sorry, Audrey. I really didn’t think before I spoke. I’ll only focus on sock pranks.”

The what?

As other guys join in—including Cade calling her sugar for some reason—Audrey just waves their remorse away, explaining, “It’s okay, guys. I know none of you are malicious and all of you have too much testosterone to be fully rational.”

That dig brings the mood, or the testosterone, back up. The guys go back to joking around about what has now become a tradition for the team: SPORTY coming over to photograph or film one of us, and how apparently I don’t have enough baby oil rubbed up on me.

“It’s fine,” I try to argue, but the vultures aren’t satisfied.

“No, our superstar needs to shine the brightest,” Lucky fires back, cracking a grin that I now recognize too well. I don’t know what sock pranks are, but I’m pretty sure what’s coming next isn’t that. “Can someone bring the baby oil?”

His best friend also smirks. “That’s right, when it was my turn at this I got oiled up in every damn crevice. Same for you, right?”

That he asks to our captain, who answers in a nonchalant way with, “It’s true.”

I empty my lungs. It was super weird to have a random person from the crew try to do this, so I politely asked if I could just do it myself.

But obviously I missed spots. I was counting on sweat saving the day.

After all, we’re standing in the middle of the open field, the sun blaring over us while we cook in a million degrees and a thousand percent humidity.

The same crew member from earlier comes over with a damn bottle of baby oil, but before she makes it a quarter of the way, Lucky finds his moment. “Wait, unlike the case of Starr and Kim, Machado here is married.”

He says nothing further. Just lets the obvious meaning hang in the air.

“I can do it myself, I’m pretty flexible. You just have to tell me where I missed.” I start for the oil girl, offering my hand out for the bottle.

“But what if something goes wrong-wrong?” Lucky asks, widening his eyes in the most earnest way.

Baseball players are notorious believers in luck, omens, jinxes, curses, and everything superstitious under the sun.

As I’ve learned, one of this team’s shticks is to not use any word that alludes to getting injured, to guard off from attracting that possibility.

And never in the history of the team have we been closer to the World Series.

It is especially important to prevent wrong-wrongs.

“Fine.” I return the bottle to the crew member and brace myself.

“I got it.”

We all turn in complete silence. Audrey’s breaking through the line of filming staff and heading over…

Here?

I resist the instinctive urge to look around to confirm.

Consciously, I know there’s nothing but green behind me.

Subconsciously, I can feel all my teammates’s excitement at the unfolding scene.

You’d think they’re watching a telenovela being filmed, instead of the behind the scenes of a sports apparel commercial.

But sure enough, Audrey receives the oil bottle from the other girl and pops it open with calm and certainty. Complete unfazed. Unbothered. Bored, even.

“All right, let’s start heading back to the gym,” our captain barks in the quiet. There are some mild protests until he adds, “We’ve wasted enough time here and we have a World Series to qualify for. Let’s move it.”

Groans and complaints echo as he starts to herd the cats back inside, but fortunately some of the more rational guys join in the efforts. That’s precisely when Audrey lands her warm, oiled up hands on my chest.

I jolt. She doesn’t seem to pick up on it. Something distracts me from behind her, and it’s Lucky giving me the most exaggerated wink.

Shit, so this was his little prank this time.

He figured out that I don’t have platonic feelings for my fake wife and is now making me suffer.

Meanwhile, the filming crew is busy setting up the equipment—cameras at different angles, reflectors, microphones, and stuff I don’t even know how to name.

They’re professionals and don’t pay a lick of attention to us, which gives me the wrong feeling like Audrey and I are alone.

While she rubs baby oil on my exposed skin.

I wonder if she can tell I’m sweating with the effort to not moan.

“Is this making you uncomfortable?” she asks all of a sudden, still in that casual tone of voice that betrays nothing.

The real answer is: yes. Like I’ve never been before. But only because I’ve never been at bigger risk of embarrassing myself in public.

Wait, is she noticing that?

I try to speak but a thick lump in my throat forces me to clear it first. “Why do you ask?”

“Well…” She trails off as her hands travel down my chest without bypassing the, uh, sensitive areas. “You looked really out of sorts with the idea of the crew member doing this, but it’s not like this is any better.”

Shit, it is. So much better. Too damn good.

I clench my jaw to keep down the noise of a feral raccoon in the dumpster of a fast food chain.

“I’m okay.” The hell I am. “Thanks for stepping in.” Hell yeah, I’ll treasure this moment for the rest of my damn hungry single dad life.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be quick,” she says while squeezing more oil onto her hands. She tucks the bottle under one of her arms, rubs up her hands to warm up the oil, and starts on my ribs.

I look up into the sky and nail my eyes into a cloud suspiciously shaped like a heart. Yeah, I know , I scream in my head.

“Are you okay, though?” I manage to ask.

“Hmm?”

“With the teasing and all that.”

“Oh.” She pauses. “Yep. Pretty sure this whole thing actually helped bystanders believe we’re married.” Another pause. “You acted like a very convincing husband too.”

Therein lies the problem. I wasn’t acting.

Even I surprised myself with how ready that threat was in my tongue.

She moves on to my back and I close my eyes in pure, tormented bliss. “I deserve an Oscar, huh?”

“You sure do,” she whispers behind me.

Somehow I keep my shit together, even as she unknowingly touches some other sensitive areas. When she’s done, the director asks me to do some basic stretching while they film to demonstrate the quality of the new SPORTY pants I’m modeling.

This time I’m the one who can’t meet Audrey’s watchful eye. And like every other time I’ve gotten my own damn mind deep in the gutter, I take it out on my hornball body with grueling exercise.

Except this time it’s happening on cameras, and will soon be on everyone’s screens.