I was only there because Uncle Al wanted something. Not because he had something for me.
“I’ll text you if you promise to text back,” I tell Parker. “That’ll be an even better distraction.”
“Do you want autocorrect translations or not?” Knox asks.
“Not. I want all the autocorrects, and this gossip is girls only.” Just in case I confess to kissing Levi Wilson last night. Because if I’m going to talk about it with anyone, I’m going to tell Parker.
Who will tell Knox, naturally, but I can pretend that’s not happening so long as I don’t see it in my text string.
Parker grabs me in a hard hug. “I’m working from home the rest of the day. Ten minutes away. Call me and I’ll be here, understand?”
I squeeze her back.
And not for the first time in the past year, I wonder how I ever survived without my friends.
I might not have had a normal family or a normal childhood, but I’m slowly learning what it means to belong somewhere.
And that’s worth way more than a hot make-out session in a bathroom with a pop star.
5
Tripp
Two weeks later…
My house is a disaster. My new nanny quit after less than forty-eight hours on the job. I spent yesterday cleaning a family of chipmunks out of a closet.
Yes, those are related. No, I don’t know where James learned to bring woodland animals into the house. He’s four.
I burned the bacon this morning. My mom’s out of town with all of my kids’ other stand-in grandmas from the neighborhood where I grew up. My last back-up babysitter, my buddy Beck Ryder, is with his girlfriend in Europe for a vacation where the goober probably isn’t proposing, because he’s an idiot who can’t decide how to do it. Levi’s running late to join me this morning because he flew in from god only knows where overnight.
And we have a meeting in three minutes with Sam Pakorski and the Fireballs’ new owner.
Beversdorf passed a few days ago after being in a coma since the stroke. His private funeral was yesterday, here in Copper Valley, and his sole heir—a distant niece, apparently—requested that Pakorski fly into Copper Valley to meet with her about the team.
He tells me she’s working hard to get his estate in order so she can get back to her regular job.
He also tells me the bidder who wants to move the team to Vegas will be at the meeting.
I doubt he’s bringing his two young kids with him.
This is either going to be a disaster, or it’ll be an accidentally brilliant strategy. I have no idea how Beversdorf’s niece feels about kids—or about baseball—but I do know I’m not letting anyone move the Fireballs away from Copper Valley without me putting up the biggest damn fight of my entire life.
I don’t fight. I wait. I watch. I negotiate.
Until today.
Today’s a fighting day.
I will do whatever it takes to get control of the Fireballs.
“C’mon, Emma. Pretend your feet are birds and run.”
“Feet aren’t birds, Daddy!” James shrieks with laughter and drops one of the seventeen trucks he’s insisting on bringing with us.
I scoop it up and put it into the diaper bag, make a mental note to wash all his trucks in bleach when we get home, then heft both my kids into my arms. “Right now, feet are birds.”
“Fwy! Fwy!” Emma pumps her legs, and I shift her so she doesn’t kick me in the jewels. But shifting her makes four more of James’s trucks fall to the pavement of the parking garage.
He bursts into tears.
And I have to remind myself that I missed this for the week they were with my in-laws.
I did. I missed this. So much, even while I was grateful for the breathing room.
It’s complicated.
We’re seven minutes late for the meeting in a rented private room at Noble V, and I get side eyes from a few lunchtime patrons for bringing my noisy kids into an upscale wine bar.
But the minute we push into the meeting, everything changes.
There’s an older man in a cowboy hat who’s on his feet not far from the refreshments, thumbs tucked into his waistband, showing off his big belt buckle under his belly paunch while he smiles like he’s patiently waiting for a temper tantrum to die down.
Pakorski’s sitting at the head of a long table, grimacing like he’d rather swallow a goat than sit in this room for one more minute.
And Beversdorf’s niece—
My eyes bug out.
I almost drop Emma.
My heart plummets so fast it kicks me in the balls on the way down.
The atmosphere is already heavy, but when the lone woman in the room turns flashing eyes on me, I suddenly feel like my bones are made of graphite and the weight of ten thousand ballparks has been dumped on my shoulders.
And in the midst of the horror of realizing Beversdorf’s niece is the Lila who thinks I’m Levi, one thought gongs through my chest, a syllable at a time.
I. Am. So. Screwed.
Probably should’ve read that report that my team put together on her, but I was busy making sure my smoke alarms didn’t go off and packing a diaper bag.
She’s standing across the table from Cowboy Hat in a hunter green pencil skirt that highlights every last inch of curve, stiletto heels, and a white blouse that’s giving me bad, bad fantasies. I swear I hear club music thumping and Levi’s voice whispering do it, bro. Have some fun.
When recognition hits, she blinks once.
Then twice.
And a tentative smile pulls at the corners of her lips before her gaze shifts to my two wiggly beast-children.
Fuck, she’s pretty.
Even with the hint of that smile fading and her brows slowly drawing together like she’s well aware that Levi Wilson doesn’t have kids.
“Dada, where my penis?” Emma asks. It comes out in two-year-old speak, except for the word penis. Naturally.
“You don’t have a penis, Emma,” James tells her. “You gots a javina.”
“Toys?” I ask them both while I set them on the floor.
Pakorski winces harder. And Lila—there are so many expressions dancing over her face that I almost turn around and walk out.
Happiness fading to confusion to amusement to suspicion to irritation, and a million little micro-expressions between.
Cowboy Hat snickers. “Got a confused one, son? Ain’t surprised, since you can’t find the nursery. Private meeting. Check the next building.”
“I’m here to buy the Fireballs,” I reply.
Cowboy Hat momentarily freezes before forcing a laugh. “That right there’s funny.”
Lila’s brows quit dancing and she pulls up a poker face. And as Pakorski is tipping back his antacids, the door swings open behind me, and my brother strolls in.
Wearing his fedora, white pants, a paisley button-down, and indoor sunglasses.
So, so screwed.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says easily, because he still thinks that’s our biggest problem.
“Lila Valentine, meet Tripp and Levi Wilson.” Pakorski gestures to us. “You heard of the boy band Bro Code? They’re from here, and they’ve all put together a proposal for you.”
Lila’s gaze darts between me and my brother, and did I say poker face?