Read Bases Loaded (Mustangs Baseball) for Free Online Page B

she saw. She would hate
his Manhattan apartment. It was all glass and chrome and cold stone floors—all
the things Clare said were not him, and he knew for certain weren’t her style.
    Maybe he would put
it on the market, furniture and all. That way he could start over completely in
Dallas. He’d find a place that suited both him and Clare.
    He mulled that
over for a few minutes. Yeah, it was time to make changes in his life. He
hadn’t lied to Doyle Walker. He had actively sought out the Mustangs
when his contract with the Marauders expired. He loved New York, but he’d
always liked it when the Marauders played in Dallas. There was something about
the city that appealed to him. It could be the slower lifestyle or the more
hospitable climate. Or maybe he’d sensed Clare was near.
    He needed to leave
more than New York behind. It was time to relinquish his spot in Bases Loaded
to someone else. The club existed in the shadows of the Major League. The
brainchild of some players with giant egos and even bigger libidos, it wasn’t
for everyone. Most of the membership hailed from East Coast teams, but thanks
to trades, there were members on just about every team. As far as he knew, he
was the only one on the Mustangs, but perhaps not the first to wear the red and
blue uniform.
    Sworn to secrecy,
the women who played the game successfully earned a clit piercing along with a
gem and diamond studded charm. He hated that every time he took Clare in his
arms, he thought about how beautiful she would look running the bases.
    Clare would
probably club him over the head if he suggested she any such thing. She wasn’t
the kind of woman to do something like that, and he damned sure wasn’t going to
corrupt her by suggesting she play. He would not project his depravity on her.
    But that didn’t
keep him from imagining how the tiny charm would look dangling from her clit.
    Shit.
    He shifted to
relieve the pressure behind his fly. If this kept up, his cock would have a
permanent indentation of his zipper along the length of it.
    He would not invite Clare to run the bases. He wasn’t even going to tell her about the club.
Thankfully, the tattoo on his ass was easily explained away as a tribute to his
baseball playing days. She need never know the truth of it, even if he did
manage to get close enough for her to see his butt. Maybe when they were
tottering around the nursing home together in about fifty years, he would tell
her what it really meant. Perhaps they could laugh about it then.
    He snagged a soda
from the mini-bar and set his laptop on the desk near the window. He logged
onto the real estate website and plugged Georgian and big yard into the search engine.
     
    * * *
     
    Clare slipped into
her comfy sweats and huddled under the throw she kept on the sofa. She wasn’t
really cold, but after spending the afternoon with Antonio, she wanted to hide
from the world. What had come over her? What kind of alien had taken possession
of her brain to make her blurt out her house fantasy?
    He must think she
was totally insane. And really, she’d opened her mouth and shot down every
apartment they had looked at—all because she had some fantastical image of the
man in her head. Maybe he liked all those ultra-modern designs. He probably
did. That’s why the realtor had to show them all those places. They’d been what
he had asked to see. He’d probably be the proud owner of one of those
apartments right now if he hadn’t asked her along.
    She pulled the
fuzzy throw over her head and groaned.
    Well. That was
that. He wouldn’t call again. He probably ran up to his suite and called the
realtor as soon as he saw Clare’s taillights leave the garage. It wasn’t any of
her business if he wasted his money on a place that was all wrong for him. It
wasn’t like she would ever see it anyway.
    She groaned again
and popped her head out from under her makeshift tent. Her obsessing over
Antonio needed to stop. Ever since the fundraiser, all