Game Face (Small Town Bachelor Romance Book 3) Read online

  Troy

  All of the alarm bells. All of them clanged in his head like he was about to make the biggest mistake of his life.

  “You know what you need, Mrs. Dawson?”

  He saw her swallow again and moisten her lips, the anger still flashing in her wide eyes.

  “Oh please, do tell me,” Her words were still resolute, but there was need in the depths. He could hear it.

  “You need to fucking get laid.”

  What are you doing? You can’t stand this woman.

  “You’re disgusting,” she spat.

  “And you’re fucking crazy,” he hissed.

  Troy was not interested in listening to his voice of reason or the alarm bells going off. He was very interested in shutting her up with his lips.

  Before he knew it, he was forcefully, angrily kissing her and she was hungrily kissing him back. Oh shit. This was better than he imagined, but so wrong.

  This was a terrible idea, kissing a baseball mom. Not just any baseball mom. Remy Dawson, the craziest, pushiest, most uppity of them all.

  But God, he could not take being close to her without thinking of kissing those lips, being the cause of some shock and surprise in those flashing eyes of hers.

  Finally, her mouth was not talking. Instead it was passionately holding on to his kiss.

  Everything was refreshingly silent except for their kissing and her faint noises of pleasure and need. They grasped and tussled with each other until he had backed her up against his desk. There was no classroom, there were no kids out in the hallway, it seemed. There was just this woman and her lips, opening for him. Her feminine curves pressing into his chest and abdomen. He knew she would not admit it with words, but her response to his kiss said everything he already knew—she needed to be kissed. Hard. She needed to fool around. Badly. She needed a man between her legs, to wipe that stern look off her face and change it to wantonness and ecstasy.

  Troy grabbed her around the waist and pulled her in tighter, pressing her perky breasts against him, hard. She did not object. She was furiously grabbing his shoulders and running her hands up the back of his neck, to his hairline and back down again. Troy teased her with his tongue and opened her mouth more deeply, pressing hungrily.

  They kissed like that, furiously and passionately, for many seconds. Maybe minutes. Troy had no idea how long until he heard the bell ring.

  The startling clang bounced them away from each other like the opposite energies they were. Remy stood with her hand on her mouth, eyes wide and round and a little scared, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  “What just happened?” she asked.

  Troy thought it was pretty clear what had just happened. He had meant to kiss the crazy out of her. Give her a little taste of what life could be like when a person isn’t completely and over-the-top obsessed with their child’s career.

  Instead, all he could think to say was, “I…sorry.”

  Then another female voice shattered the entire scene. “Don’t be sorry, Mr. Mattis, that was hot!” It was Sophie Fuller, one of his honors English students, plopping her notebook onto her desk and smirking at him through the office window. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”

  Oh shit.

  He looked between Remy and Sophie and honestly had no idea what to say next.

  Remy was doing her best to recover her composure, smoothing her hair and her top. “Well, I’ll let you get back to work. Think about what I said. I haven’t changed my mind about filing a complaint with the league.”

  As Remy walked away, he could not help but stare at her tight black yoga pants and that round ass of hers. If the bell had rung thirty seconds later, Sophie would have seen Troy kissing Mrs. Dawson with both hands full of her ass cheeks.

  Not only were those cheeks jacked as hell, but they somehow swung seductively as she walked away, even in gym sneakers.

  But nothing about that woman’s tight body in his memory made up for the fact that Elliot’s throwing arm was, once again, fatigued and sore at practice the next day.

  In fact, the kid’s pitching was outright bad, if Troy was honest with himself. What was going on here?

  After practice, Troy took Elliot aside.

  “Based on everything I’ve heard, this is not up to your usual standards. Do we need to get you to a doctor to look at that shoulder?”

  “Nah, it’s fine. I’m just tired from pitching lessons.”

  Troy was taken aback. “Lessons. What are you talking about?”

  Elliot looked up at him as if he thought Troy already knew. “Mom sends me to private pitching lessons three nights a week.”

  Holy shit. He’s 13!

  Elliot must have seen the shock and anger forming on Troy’s face because he backpedaled immediately. “But it’s fine!” Elliot said. “I don’t mind! Mom says he’s the best we can get around here and it will give me an advantage when I get to the next level if I’m a strong pitcher.”

  Troy’s heart was starting to break into a million pieces for this poor kid. He was simply overworked, all because of his psychotic mother.

  And what a sob story she’d fed him about trying to make ends meet. Sure, she had to pay rent, but she left out the fun fact of paying god-knows-what for private lessons how many times a week? He guessed she had to be spending more than $150 per week for that much private training, which he knew added up to be more than the average cost of rent in Middleburg. What a hypocrite she was, pretending they were poor when, if they would give up these unnecessary lessons, she’d probably have plenty left over to finance the car she said she so badly needed.

  Well, Remy needed lots of things. But not what she said she needed. What she actually needed were lessons in time management, anger management, money management, and oh yeah, that other thing—to get laid.

  She may not believe he had her all figured out. But now he had the real scoop, he definitely understood her now. She really was toxic.

  “Listen, Elliot. I want you on my team. But I want you to take care of your arm. You’re staying home from practice tomorrow and that’s an order. No throwing anything. Not so much as a paper airplane until the scrimmage on Saturday. OK?”

  Elliot nodded in agreement, but looked apprehensive. No doubt he was deciding how to break this news to his mom.

  Well, Elliot would not have to break the news alone. Troy was going to have a little talk with her himself first.

  9

  Remy

  That’s weird, she thought as her phone rang. Remy was on her way to pick up Elliot from practice and yet she was receiving a phone call from Coach Mattis.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, we need to talk.”

  Relief flooded her tight chest. Finally, yes, they would talk about that kiss.

  “Yes, we do,” she said. She knew she shouldn’t be on the phone while driving, but hell with it.

  “Things are going to have to change,” he said.

  “I couldn’t agree more. I should never have come to your office, and you never should have kissed me without some ground rules first. We should start over.”

  The pause that followed was chock full of awkwardness.

  “Actually,” Troy finally said, “I’m calling to tell you to cancel the private pitching lessons. Elliot is exhausted and his shoulder is fatigued.”

  Oh my god. He wasn’t calling about the kiss. OK, how do we recover in this situation? She didn’t know. She’d never kissed a coach before.

  But wait a second. The real reason he was calling was to intrude on her whole entire life. Again.

  “You’re telling me? Well, I am not canceling lessons. Rodney has a waiting list a mile long and he’d never agree to pick us up again in the off season.”

  She heard Troy sigh on the other side. Or maybe it was a grunt of frustration. One kind of caveman noise or another.

  “Ma’am, I don’t think you are hearing me. Your son is not fit to pitch because this Rodney character is ruining his arm.”

  “You’
re being a tad dramatic.”

  Troy marched on with his macho self. “I have ordered him to rest until Saturday and you need to take him to the doctor in the meantime.”

  This was a shock. Totally uncharted territory. This was a new level of interference, and now it was getting dangerous. Elliot was fine. If his shoulder was hurting, he would have said something to her. This coach was just beating his chest because he felt threatened by another coach taking up Elliot’s time. Well, with kids as talented as Elliot, there will always be multiple coaches. Maybe Mattis could not handle it with his fragile ego.

  But now the coach had brought up doctor visits. Which meant, if she refused, he could complain to the league about her. Or worse, make an unfounded call to CPS—every parent’s nightmare.

  “Elliot has never complained to me about his arm, but I’ll talk to him and see what’s going on.” She kept her words vague, not saying she would take him to the doctor, but also not saying she wouldn’t. Of course she would take him to a medical professional the second Elliot ever complained about pain.

  “Ma’am, I don’t think you understand what’s going on here. Perhaps Elliot hasn’t said anything because he doesn’t want to disappoint you.”

  This made Remy’s temper flare but she tried to keep it under control, knowing she was simply exhausted. His comments triggered her self-defense mechanism, but she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “I’ll talk to Elliot and we’ll decide together what to do. If he truly is taking too much on, then we will agree to fewer private lessons. We can go twice a week. Anything less than that and Rodney will drop us,” she said with an even tone.

  Coach Mattis did not look happy when she picked Elliot up. She doubted there was anything she could do as a parent to make him happy, except maybe letting him maul her in his office.

  Yeah. Right. That was clearly a mistake. A mistake that was never going to happen again.

  10

  Troy

  Strawberry-frosted Pop Tarts, check.

  Count Chocula cereal, check.

  Peanut butter and jelly, check.

  Wrapped orange cheese slices, check.

  Chips, salsa, refried beans and Velveeta, check.

  Troy checked his grocery cart against his list. He supposed he needed something that had not actually been developed in a factory. Something green and maybe some fruit.

  In the produce section at the Hy-Vee, he heard a man evidently having a heated argument with someone, and Troy felt sorry for the person on the other end of it. As he approached the apples, he caught sight of where the noise was coming from: a pale, freckled, paunchy dude in a track suit, blustering into a phone.

  “That’s not going to work for me. I told you how we do this. I cut you a break on my fees because you said you are on a single income. Cutting back won’t be enough to make it worth my while to fit you all into my very busy schedule. And I am very, very sought after. Believe me.”

  Man, what a dick, Troy thought as he approached the rows of apples. Whoever was on the other end of that phone call was probably rolling his eyes just as hard as Troy was.

  Not particularly interested in deciding between apples, oranges or nectarines, Troy kept listening as he stared at the fruit.

  “Listen, I don’t care what that panty-waste youth league coach has to say. If your kid can’t handle it, then maybe this isn’t the right fit for him. Are you going to listen to an English teacher or the professional? Yeah. That’s what I thought. All right, see you tonight, doll.”

  Holy shit.

  He turned around and got a closer look. So that was Rodney. Shorter than Troy, and smaller by about 30 pounds. Flabby. High-end track suit. Kind of a metro haircut. Gum chewer. Big talker.

  He watched Rodney hang up the phone and stuff it into his jacket pocket and mutter to himself, “Whiny little bitch working that hot ass of hers, taking advantage of me. Well, that boat payment ain’t making itself.”

  Yep, Troy could definitely take him.

  “Excuse me, Rodney?”

  The freckled, put-upon face on the man wearing the track suit sized up Troy.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “You’re Rodney, the guy giving lessons to Elliot Dawson, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Rodney took a step back and eyed Troy precariously. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Now, now, Rodney. This is a small grocery store in little ol’ Middleburg, full of little kids and sweet old ladies. You wouldn’t want to set a bad example with your language, would you?”

  “What do you want?” Rodney crossed his arms in front of his chest, mimicking a bouncer stance, as if he could ever do that job effectively.

  Troy took two steps closer to Rodney. Rodney put his palms up and told Troy to back off.

  Troy kept closing in. “Listen, man, I am not going to hit you. Today. I just want you to know, I’m the panty-waste coach of Elliot Dawson. I don’t care if you call me names, but I take issue with you talking to—and about—his mother that way.”

  Rodney’s tense shoulders dropped and he looked around, suddenly feeling brave again, apparently.

  “Oh, that’s cute. You got a crush on her or something, boy? What do you care?”

  “Because she’s a human being and Elliot’s a good kid. They’re a good family.”

  Rodney laughed. “Oh man, you definitely got the hots for the baseball mom. But man, you gotta know she’s a small-town whore who got knocked up at 17 and never left this pissant little town, right?”

  Troy filed away this new information without any judgment. Well, no judgment for anybody but this sleazebag.

  “First, her situation is none of your business. Second, do not talk about her that way. That’s your final warning,” Troy said. Usually, that’s all it took to shut a guy up.

  But Rodney? Not the kind of guy who enjoyed shutting the fuck up. He continued as Troy’s blood pressure rose. “Buddy, it is our business, whether we want it to be or not. That’s the whole reason for everybody’s shit in this town. All these serious sports moms got some goddamn baggage. That’s why they pay me the big bucks. That’s why she’s looking at her sweet little angel boy like her damn meal ticket out of here. You know that, right?”

  “That’s not a fair generalization.” Although, he knew he himself had made that generalization, recalling his own accusation of Remy living her life vicariously through her kid.

  “Life ain’t fair. Life is what you make it. You oughta know that after what happened to you. That’s right, I Googled you, pretty boy. I know all about you. And now you ain’t shit. Well, I got a brain and I made use of it. I got out of Middleburg as soon as I got my diploma, and now I have a condo in Dubuque. Do you have a condo in Dubuque?”

  A condo in Dubuque sounded to Troy like a pretty weird bragging right, but the way Rodney spoke, you’d think it was the Taj Mahal. Troy let that slide because there was a more pressing issue at hand: how this joker was treating the Dawsons.

  “You can’t treat people this way. You can’t talk about your clients this way.”

  “I can if they’re my clients and not yours. How many you got? Oh, I forgot, you work for the guv’ment.”

  Troy ignored this odd insult to public school teaching. “These are human beings who live in my town. You can’t just work Elliot down to the bone because it makes you more money.”

  Rodney threw back his head and laughed. “Dude, you’re a volunteer and a teacher, what do you know about running a business? I’ll tell you what. Nothing. You try for one day to break free of the guv’ment teat and go out on your own, and then come back and tell me how ‘nice’ I should be to slutty single moms who beg for special treatment. You’ll be cutting breaks for the hot ones, too. Like this Dawson bitch, I got her in my sights, man, and it doesn’t matter what I say, she’s not going to fire me.” He leaned in closer to Troy and said quietly, “You can smell the desperation on her, can’t you? She’s dripping, man. She wants a new daddy to play catch with her baby
? Well she’s gonna pay—”

  Rodney hit the floor holding his jaw before he could finish that sentence, along with a loud clatter and a colorful scattering of items from a display of seasonal plastic plates and margarita glasses. Troy’s knuckle sandwich to the teeth had packed a surprise wallop—a surprise both to Rodney and to the handful of shoppers in the produce section. Troy had rung his bell but good.

  As the store manager escorted Troy out—informing him that he would not be welcome back into the local Hy-Vee, any other Hy-Vees, or any commercial establishments belonging to Hy-Vee’s parent corporation—there was only one thing that Troy regretted. Not paying for his groceries first.

  11

  Remy

  There was a knock on the door.

  Remy looked through the peephole. It was Coach Troy. What the hell was he doing here? Oh shit.

  Dammit, her car was in the driveway so she could not pretend to not be home, like she did with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  She considered just not answering and later pretending she had not heard the doorbell because she had been taking a shower, but she had a feeling Troy would not buy that story. She also had a feeling he was the kind of guy who would just keep knocking and ringing until she was finished with her pretend shower. Remy sighed and opened the door. Troy stepped inside without even being invited.

  “Rude,” she said.

  He looked upset. “I’m rude?” At least I do what I say I’m going to do.”

  She folded her arms and kept her distance. “What are you talking about?”

  “I heard your friend Rodney yelling at you on the phone in the grocery store, and I could tell by the conversation that you caved. You promised me yesterday you were going to cut back. What’s going on here, you don’t have the balls to stand up to him?”

  “I didn’t promise, I said I would think about cutting back.”

  “And did you even think about it?”

  She was feeling extra defensive. This was the second male to shout at her today and she was pretty well fucking done with that noise.