Read Knox (Sexy Bastard #3) for Free Online Page A

for a shake.
    “Hey man, someone’s gotta represent the team on camera,” he shrugs.
    “Heard you were already up and at ‘em and wanted to say hello. Why don’t you come by the locker room and let me introduce you to a few of the guys?”
    “Sounds good,” I say, smelling some kind of trap. Even a seasoned player’s going to be in for a little bit of hazing. Especially when he’s been traded from a legendary team that inspires an equally legendary amount of beef.
    “Ladies! We’ve got some fresh Yankee blood in our midst,” Hunter calls out as we enter the clubhouse.
    Three of my new teammates are huddled around a laptop. “Don’t worry, Yank,” the biggest one says, walking over and reaching over for a pound. “We won’t bite. I’m Derrick.” Derrick Hernandez, the Braves’ left fielder. Six-foot-four, pure muscle, and a temper that sometimes spills out into the clubhouse.
    Johnny Caruso, one of the team’s most dependable batters, strolls over with a really not-convincing innocent smile on his face. “Hey man, welcome to the neighborhood. Let me know if you have trouble finding anything.”
    A glance around the room shows everyone watching me at once, their eyes huge and cheerful. Too cheerful.
    “Got a feeling I should be keeping an eye on my valuables,” I say with a smirk. “How’s security around here?”
    Busting into a player’s locker and messing with his stuff is amateur hour. Hell, the MLB makes it child’s play by setting us up with doorless closets and lockboxes nobody actually uses.
    I turn to assess the damage when my phone starts blowing up—an avalanche of Twitter notifications.
    I click the first. A video. Hot girl in a Braves hat, a cropped sweatshirt, and a tight-as-shit pair of low-rise jeans. If this is what the local fan base looks like, I may be spending some more time signing baseballs this year. I turn up the sound.
    An off-camera male voice asks, “Would you ever date a guy in a Yankees cap?”
    “Absolutely not,” hot girl responds.
    “What if the guy were an actual Yankees player?”
    Girl pauses. “Depends how rich he was. But I’d make him take the hat off.”
    Derrick Hernandez approaches the girl and turns to the camera . . . in the Yankees cap that’s clearly missing from the top shelf of my locker. “Cooper Knox, consider this a public service announcement. If you’re planning on getting laid in this town, you’re gonna have to ditch the hat.”
    Motherfuckers. Three hundred views and counting.
    And the video keeps going. Next on screen comes an animated GIF of me throwing my mitt on the ground after losing to the Red Sox. Caption? “Cooper Knox ain’t getting none.”
    Then a few more team members pass my hat around to random chicks, all of them saying similar things as the first girl. The bastards turned my hat into a traveling meme.
    Gotta hand it to ‘em: It’s a step up from amateur level, with a few bonus points for viral content. Even as the butt of the joke, I can admit it’s kind of funny. Guess I should just be grateful I’m not enough of a rookie to warrant the ice-bath treatment.
    But fuck. That hat was my lucky charm. I need it before the season starts. I have a habit of keeping my first ever issued hats from each team I played . . . even down to high school. They keep me grounded, and each time I look at them, I remember how far I have come.
    I toss my phone in my locker and stride off to the gym without giving my snickering teammates the satisfaction of seeing my face. “Nice,” I call out over my shoulder as I flip them the backwards bird. “You pieces of shit better get my goddamn hat back by the end of the week.” Not even the dumbest ball player would be dumb enough to permanently remove a pitcher’s good-luck charm from his bag of game-day tricks.
    Or at least, I fucking hope so, if they want me pitching well for them now.
    In the weight room I meet my new strength coach, Mikey. We’ll be following the regimen I’ve