Listen, Pitch (There's No Crying in Baseball 3)

Gentry held his hands up. “Nothing. I was just curious. I mean, it’s not every day a person has a dress hanging in a locker of an all men’s locker room.”

That was true.

“Fine,” I said, slightly stilted. “Sorry, I’m having a bad day.”

And I was. I’d been doing well until about halfway through practice when my sister had called with the news that she thought she was in labor. That was when the headache had magnified.

“Why, because the media found out about your bride, and they’re questioning why a man like you would be interested in a simpleton like her?” Came Manny’s question.

I looked over, anger starting to roll off of me in waves, and stared at the little prick.

The asshole was holding up a newspaper, and he was reading it.

When he realized that he’d caught my attention, he turned the paper around and showed me what he was looking at.

I gritted my teeth when I saw Henley on the front page of the sports section.

What saved Manny’s pretty face was the fact that he was reading, verbatim, what was quoted in the newspaper.

“Who wrote that article?” I asked, quiet and controlled.

Manny flipped the page, then said, “Says ‘Dodger Field.’”

Dodger Field.

That motherfucker!

“Hmm,” I said as I carefully hung the dress back up, so I didn’t completely shred it in my anger. “Is he the one that wrote that article on your wife?”

I looked over at Furious George, and he nodded. “One and the same. Also happens to be my goddamn brother-in-law.”

The article I was referring to was one that decided the public needed to know exactly why George and his wife had divorced and then had continued a three-part serial on the two of them getting back together, and explaining how they wouldn’t last.

“Wrote an article on Sway, too,” Parts murmured. “The little fucker was lucky I didn’t plant my fist in his face when I saw him at the baseball banquet last year.”

That was true.

But I knew I wouldn’t be refraining if I ever saw him again.

“They had to dig deep to find an unflattering photo of her, though,” Manny said as he studied the picture with hard eyes. “Honestly, I’m damn impressed that she can hold three boxes of mail. I don’t think any woman I know could lift that much.”

That was true. The boxes she was holding were filled to the brim with letters, and she was moving them from a bigger eighteen-wheeler mail truck to a smaller delivery truck. I could see her bicep muscles in each arm as she easily carried the boxes.

In fact, seeing her able to lift something that heavy was really turning me on.

Just as I was about to contemplate things other than my headache—like my raging dick—my phone rang, reminding me of not only my sister’s earlier calls, but the stupid news article that included how pissed off my sister was that she hadn’t been there for the wedding.

“Hello?” I answered, avoiding the calls long enough.

“You better get down here within the next four hours, or your niece will be born without you…and your sister’s freaking out. Apparently, you made her a promise?”

I groaned.

“I made her two promises…”

***

“So, you promised your sister that you’d both be there for the birth of her baby, and allow her to be the best man at your wedding.” Henley sounded amused. “What did she say would happen to you if you broke those promises?”

I grinned at her. “She’d disinherit me.”

She giggled, and it sounded like tinkling glasses.

She was so fucking cute that sometimes I could barely stand it.

“She’d never disinherit you,” Henley patted my hand. “And how were you supposed to know that she was calling because she was in labor instead of calling because she was pissed that she didn’t get to see you marry? Don’t feel too bad here. There is this thing called voicemail…”

That was true.

“Her husband doesn’t do voicemail,” I said. “He has a problem listening to automated recordings. It messes with him.”

She nodded her head in understanding. “Sometimes, there are certain decibel levels I can’t hear, too. Which is really weird. Like, why can I hear a song on a radio, but I can’t hear sirens when they’re coming up behind me?”

My brows rose at that. “You can’t hear police sirens?”

She shook her head. “No. I also can’t hear train horns, doorbells, or anything really high pitched.”

I frowned. “That’s not exactly safe. That means that you can’t hear a fire alarm, or a smoke detector either?”

She shrugged. “Nope, but that’s also why they’ve installed all the strobe lights with the alarms. We had this one phone when we were younger that I couldn’t hear, either. Mom had it for like, ever. She never understood why I didn’t answer when I was younger, and we just figured out a few years ago when they asked me why I didn’t answer Mom’s phone. I just couldn’t hear it.”