Page 25 of Last Night Was Fun

“Maybe it is.”

Gabe puffed out his chest and threw the ball into his own glove with a close-range snap. “All right, how about this: You get a hit off me, and I’ll step aside for the promotion.”

Emmy gaped at him, unable to stop her mouth from falling off its hinges.

Pedro cackled from home plate.

Based on the grin stretching Gabe’s lips, he was serious.

“You arethatconfident that you’d risk your job?” Emmy said, still blinking in shock.

“Yep,” he said, and pointed at the plate. “Go on then. One at bat to see who gets it.”

A laugh escaped Emmy’s mouth. “I don’t know whether to be offended by your lack of faith in me or thankful for your arrogance for giving me this opportunity to so handily destroy you—with an audience.” She walked to home plate with the bat in her hand, ready to show him.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Gabe said. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Jameson.”

Behind the plate, Pedro was grinning like a fool. “This keeps getting better and better.”

Emmy squared up in the batter’s box and kicked at the dirt, more thankful than ever she’d worn sneakers and not heels.

“You always been a lefty?” Gabe said with a curious hitch to his voice. As if he was suddenly recalling only ever seeing her write with her right hand in the office.

She swung the bat a few times to warm up her arms and hips. “Only in the batter’s box. Stop stalling and let’s do this.” She’d played a few seasons of softball in school, but most of her experience came from days in the backyard as a kid. Her ambidexterity was directly inherited from her dad.

“Okay, you asked for it,” Gabe said in a taunt.

“Just throw it,” she called back. She squared herself and took a deep breath, trying to remember the last time she’d even swung a bat.

With the stadium lights off, all they had to work with was the surrounding buildings glowing down on them. A marine layer had mottled the sky in a patchwork of gray. Even so, she narrowed her eyes on the ball in his hand. He turned it inside his glove, lining the seams up with his fingers to make it spin a certain way.

Good thing she knew how to read a fastball.

He went into his windup, and Emmy fought to focus through the long lines of his powerful body bending and angling for leverage. She would never admit it—especially to her colleagues—but one of the perks of working in men’s sports was getting to watch men do sports. The precision bodies cut like diamonds from all the training. The explosive yet graceful movements. The sheer power of it all. She kept such thoughts locked up with other unprofessional ones—like how good Gabe Olson looked standing on the pitcher’s mound right now. Even if he wasn’t in the game anymore, he still looked the part.

Gabe turned to face the third base line and then brought his left knee to his abdomen, spring-loading his limbs to explode with motion. The giant step forward he took left his jeans tight on his thick thighs and his broad chest flexed through his T-shirt. Emmy blinked in the split second he was fully extended with his right arm out behind him, ball gripped in his hand, and legs nearly in the splits, shamelessly storing the image in a part of her brain she did not know craved such a view of him until that exact second. Before she knew what happened, the ball sailed past and landed with a sharp smack in Pedro’s glove.

“Shit,” she hissed as Gabe cackled.

“You know, Jameson, you might want to swing if you’re hoping to hit the ball. Strike one!” he called.

Emmy forcibly snapped out of the haze watching him had put her in and reminded herself she had a job to do. “Shut up and throw it again,” she demanded as Pedro threw the ball back to him.

“As you wish.”

He went into his windup again, but this time she was prepared. Braced for the mesmerizing motion of watching him hurtle a ball with laser precision like his body was a perfectly tuned instrument. He planted his front foot into his wide stance, stretching his limbs as far as they could go, and rocketed the ball at her. The pitch sailed by with just as much speed as the first but sank hard at the last second. She swung, but it was embarrassingly late.

“Strike two! Trying to send that one to Mexico, Jameson?” Gabe roared with laughter. He bent over and slapped his knees. “Might as well hand me the job now.”

Pedro stood from his crouch to throw the ball back and whispered, “Dude, I thought we had a deal.Beat him, Jameson!”

“I’mtrying!” she said back.

“He’s probably going to go tight on the inside,” Pedro muttered. “Belt high.”

“Hey! What’s all the whispering?” Gabe called. “No conspiring at the plate.”

“We’re not conspiring!” Pedro called. “We’re discussing who’s going to take care of the ficus when Jameson moves into her new office.”