The copper valley bro co.., p.90
The Copper Valley Bro Code Series: Volume 1, page 90
“I can do it, and you know it.”
“All I hear is ego.”
“All I hear is you holding a grudge and refusing to give me a chance.”
“This has nothing to do with New York. It’s all business.”
“Is it? Because if you want to run a good business, you talk to your president of operations before firing the whole damn coaching staff. And how the hell are you planning on paying for better coaching when the team barely has money to make payroll as it is?”
“The money’s my concern. Your concern, Mr. Wilson, should be that if I want to run a good business, I test my president of operations to make sure he’s man enough for the job.”
Man enough.
Christ.
“Back to that, are we?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her eyes are so dark, midnight would drown in them.
“I told you I was sorry about New York.”
“You told me what you thought I wanted to hear. Apologies don’t earn my trust. Actions earn my trust. So go on, Tripp. Prove you have what it takes.”
I don’t know if we’re talking about the team or our chemistry anymore, but I know that my brain is no longer in control.
No, that’s all my hormones.
Taking over and driving me to tangle my fingers in her hair, grip her scalp, tilt her mouth to mine, and kiss her the way I kissed her in that club bathroom back in New York.
Not the way to solve this either, an obnoxious voice that sounds like Levi whispers in my ear.
No kissing, it adds. She said so.
But Lila’s gripping my sweaty T-shirt and parting her lips and kissing me back, and fuck me, now I’m the one drowning.
Drowning with tongues and teeth clashing with this woman who won’t forgive me and who I can’t resist, even when she’s pissing me off so badly that the Hulk wouldn’t stand a chance against my rage.
And I’m even more pissed at knowing it’s not just Lila I’m pissed at.
I’m still pissed at myself.
For way more than just kissing her in the bathroom after telling her I was Levi.
But this kiss?
She knows who I am.
She knows what I want.
And those little moans in the back of her throat suggest she’s just as on board with this as my baser nature is.
She moves her hands to grip my ears. I push her against the edge of the desk. Her legs wrap around my hips to cradle my rapidly hardening cock, and I want to rip all of our clothes off and thrust into her and end this stupid tension between us.
Show her who I am.
Not the man the world sees. Not the man she thinks I am after our first meeting. The man I am.
She suddenly tenses, and it’s as effective as being doused with a bucket of cold slime.
This is not how to win over the boss.
Fuck.
I disentangle myself, but I don’t back up. Instead, I stay right in her face. “That was me. Tripp Wilson. The man who’s going to save your damn baseball team, no matter what shit you throw my way. Got it?”
I don’t wait for a response, because if it’s coming in the form of the words you’re fired, I don’t want to hear it.
I have too much work to do.
And at the top of that list is staying the hell away from my new boss until I can find a way to get rid of her.
This baseball team is mine.
Maybe not officially yet, but they will be.
The sooner, the better.
9
Lila
I’m still blinking at the door seven minutes after Tripp slammed it, trying to puzzle out exactly what happened. Arguments rarely end with me tumbling into bed with the man I’m arguing with, but my panties are wet and my breasts are tingling and my nerves are buzzing in anticipation.
Tripp Wilson knows how to kiss a woman.
And also how to make an entrance. And an exit.
I sink back onto the desk with a shuddery sigh, because once again, he’s making me feel like I’m in a romance novel, except I can’t trust the happily ever after here.
I didn’t consider that firing the entire coaching staff would piss him off, because after I started going through all of the emails on Uncle Al’s computer, and then the financials, it was obvious they needed to go.
Emails asking about the annual trip to the Caribbean for two weeks at an all-inclusive with hookers and booze as soon as the season was over. Pictures from previous years’ trips. The bill for this year’s trip. After Uncle Al died.
Which explains why none of the coaching staff showed up at the funeral.
He would’ve wanted us to go, Salazar told me last night when I called to ask him about the trip. We went every year. Earned our team vacation, so we took it.
When I pointed out that the team finished with the worst record ever recorded in professional baseball, he chuckled, told me I had a lot to learn about the game, and hung up.
I didn’t fire him.
He fired himself. I just made it official.
No sense in dragging out the inevitable, and I did give them all severance packages, even if they didn’t deserve them.
What’s the difference in having a new coaching staff lined up beforehand in the off-season? We’d still need to do the same work whether I fired them all this morning, or waited until we had replacements lined up.
Except I know exactly what the difference is.
Two differences, actually.
One is that I’m pretty certain some of the emails I found on Uncle Al’s computer mean that he was involved in a scheme to fund next season through a massive gambling operation that at least two of the coaches were also in on.
The other is, firing the coaching staff pissed off Tripp Wilson enough that he had to kiss me.
I’m really not an expert in personal relationships, but even I know that’s not quite normal. And I don’t think I mind.
Not at all.
Except, naturally, for the part where I shouldn’t be kissing my president of operations. I grab the jockstrap I’ve been dusting with, also known as my cover for figuring out if this desk has any hidden compartments triggered from the outside, because my mom loved secrets and compartments.
She grew up here. In this building. In the ballpark next door.
Uncle Al’s letter said they used to crawl around all over the ballpark hiding treasures.
Is it wrong to want to find a few more bits of my mom in the place that turned her into the woman who wanted to live overseas, spying for the CIA?
There’s a knock at the door, and I straighten. “Yes?”
A dark-haired, blue-eyed man pokes his head in. He’s in a red Fireballs T-shirt, black athletic pants, and white sneakers, and the combination of arm muscles and dimples make it click.
“Cooper Rock?” I guess.
One dimple gets deeper. “Mornin’, Ms. Valentine. Just wanted to say welcome to the Fireballs.”
“Thank you.” I’d ask what he’s doing here in the off-season, but I’ve studied all of the players on the team in the last two weeks, and I know he lives nearby year-round and is loyal to a fault. Interview after interview, he deflects How do you feel about the Fireballs losing so much? with Hey, that’s my favorite team you’re talking about. Tomorrow’s another game.
“You got a minute?” he asks.
“Sure.” I gesture to the couch.
He eyeballs the orange paisley monstrosity like it’s a death trap in danger of spontaneously bursting into flames and spraying us all with flesh-eating bacteria, then rocks back on his heels and grins at me again with a quick fist-thump to his chest. “Gotta stand. Better for the ol’ ticker. Anybody tell you yet that the coffee in here sucks, but the hole in the wall a block down makes a hazelnut latte that’ll make you weep tears of joy?”
“I have no intention of firing you. Kissing up isn’t necessary.”
His grin gets bigger. “Ma’am, when you’ve got my kind of ego and track record, you don’t really worry about getting canned.”
“And your kind of agent?”
“He’s a dick. I should fire him, but he keeps getting me endorsement deals for bandages and dog kennels and therapists. You know, all the stuff you need to heal your wounds.”
It’s actually impossible to not smile back at Cooper, which also puts him on my not to be trusted radar. “What can I do for you this morning, Mr. Rock?”
He turns the puppy dog eyes on me. It’s like he has the handbook for make Lila as suspicious as possible. “I just wanted to put in a good word for my buddy Trevor Stafford. I know his arm isn’t what it used to be, but the dude’s got this presence. He’s like that wise uncle that nobody wants to admit they need. Always knows what to say in the locker room after we get our asses whooped. You ask me, he belongs in the dugout, not the bullpen. Get him in there calming guys down between innings, helping us all focus, and I bet you a thousand bucks we win ten percent more of our games right off the bat.”
I remind myself that most of these guys really do just care about baseball. That it’s not about infiltrating the front office so they can stage a coup, which I can freely acknowledge is paranoia talking.
But there’s a lot of money in baseball.
Money, power, and fame make people do bad things.
I’ve been around money for years, but there was little power and no fame involved with it.
Now, I have all three, which changes everything.
“What do you want to be when you can’t play baseball anymore, Cooper?”
“Dead,” he replies with a cheeky grin.
And again I’m struggling with my lips tipping up, but I make myself stare him in the eye until he blinks.
And then he’s still smiling, but it’s rueful. “You sound like my brother.”
“What do you tell him?”
“This game’s in my soul, Ms. Valentine. If I’m not on the field in the majors, I’ll be coaching the little squirts. And if I ever can’t coach, I’ll be right back in this office begging for a job. And if you won’t give me one, I’ll go work at a bar and grill with the baseball channel on twenty-four seven. And if I can’t do that…” He shrugs. “Then maybe I’ll sell Fireballs fan art on Etsy. It’ll be ugly, but it’ll be Cooper Rock originals. That’ll be enough to pay for my season tickets, hot dogs, and beer.”
“That’s very focused of you.”
“I know who I am. And I know where the best cookies, muffins, and donuts in the whole state are too, so if you’re into dessert, you know where to find me.” He winks.
Is every man in this state a walking hormone?
His eyes suddenly go round. “Whoa. Didn’t mean dessert that way. Would’ve made the same offer to a dude in your shoes. Cross my heart. Not that I—okay. Time to stop talking. Gonna go hit some balls. Wait. By balls, I don’t mean—you know what? Never mind.”
He cuts himself off, shaking his head, and darts back out of my office. I can hear him muttering shit fuck hell until the elevator dings in the lobby.
I can relate to that feeling.
It sums up very nicely what it’s like to inherit a baseball team.
A baseball team that comes with a president of operations who can kiss a woman like he means to deliver ten thousand orgasms before the night’s over.
I toss down the jockstrap again and close my office door.
If I were in New York, I’d make up an excuse to have a business meeting with Knox, who’d bring Parker along, who would yell at me for not telling her that I was working with Tripp Wilson, and then promptly demand all the details.
I wouldn’t mind being yelled at. It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but if the payoff is being able to talk to someone who passed a background investigation—though she doesn’t know we did a background investigation back before we got close, and her friend Eloise is highly suspicious to Uncle Guido—then I think I can handle being yelled at.
Sure enough, it takes fewer than two whole rings before Parker picks up. “I’m trying really hard to be patient and understanding about how much you have going on right now, except you’re hanging out with Tripp Wilson, aren’t you? I always picked Davis Remington first—hello, tattoos—and I have to love Levi first because of that thing where he played with our band last summer, which I still can’t believe happened, but Tripp is definitely third or fourth in my Bro Code rankings. And even if he was fifth, he’s still Bro Code, which makes him hotter than basically every man on the planet except for maybe fourteen. With Knox at the top.”
“I kissed him,” I blurt while she pauses for a breath.
Her squeal is so fast and high-pitched, I drop my phone. I scramble to the ground to pick it up, and suddenly realize that if this desk had a secret compartment that my mom hid her childhood diary in, it would be under the desk.
“Do not repeat that.” Oh, hell. I’m sweating. The last time I told a friend in confidence that I kissed a boy that I didn’t want the whole world to know about, her mother called my mother and all of the neighbors listened in while my mother called my boyfriend’s mother, and we ultimately had to have a conference with our kindergarten teacher, because kissing and dating in kindergarten isn’t allowed.
At least, it wasn’t at my school.
Yes, I learned at five years old to not kiss and tell. Not that I wouldn’t have learned it otherwise from my mom in all the subtle lessons from a spy that she slipped into my childhood, but parent-teacher conferences were never my favorite after that.
“Lila. I’m not going to tell. But I do need something juicy for book club. Everyone will want details. Also, please don’t leave book club just because everyone will want details. We like having you at book club. Especially when my brothers are there. Jack and Brooks and Gavin are still arguing over which one of them you liked best at the wedding. Speaking of, please tell me you didn’t make out with Jack.”
“Is he saying that?”
“He’s not not saying it. The family text messages since the wedding have been brutal.”
“Nothing happened. He asked me if Dalton ever invests in overseas securities.”
She sucks in a loud breath, and I also hear traffic in the background. She must be walking to work. “That’s why you two disappeared?”
“Isn’t don’t make out with your friend’s brother a rule or something?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
There’s a story there. And I don’t need to have had a spy for a mother to pick up on the undercurrents in her voice. “I didn’t make out with Jack. It was a business discussion, and obviously a short one at that. Are your brothers making out with your other friends?”
“Rhett’s dating Eloise.”
“Eloise? The…interesting one? And Rhett—he’s the SEAL, right?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, because talking about it makes me picture them having sex, and I’m not going there.”
“I approve of this plan.”
“Now. Back to Tripp Wilson. I can tell Knox, right? You know I can’t keep secrets from him. But he won’t tell anyone or else I’ll threaten to hide our favorite unicorn blanket.”
I squat to the floor behind Uncle Al’s desk and start studying the space where the chair goes, looking for secret panels. “Will this interfere with me being able to look Knox in the eye?”
“No way. We’ve actually agreed if I ever get the chance to jump Davis, it’s not grounds for divorce, though I probably wouldn’t do it because he’s top on half my friends’ lists too. Anyway. Tell me about this kiss, and if I lose you in the elevator, you’re going to have to tell me again when I’m off. Was it totally romantic? Was he comforting you and then it just happened? Did you stumble walking down the hall and he caught you? Or was it lust at first sight? Are you going to sleep with him? Or was it a one-time thing?”
The first kiss? Or this last kiss? “It was…an angry kiss.”
“Ooooh. So he was mad that you basically fired the entire Fireballs organization?”
“Yes.”
“And so he kissed you?”
“Yes.”
“Lila and Tripp Wilson, sitting in a tree…”
“I will hang up on you.”
“Men don’t angry-kiss women they’re not totally into.”
“He works for me.”
“So fire him. And then jump his bones. I approve.” There’s a ding, then a shuffle, and for a second I think I’ve lost her, but I’m wrong.
She says something quietly that I don’t catch to someone else. Getting to the office this morning, I assume.
“Sorry. I’m back. Continue. Tell me about how you’re going to live out every teenage fantasy that I ever had. Or…later than teenage fantasies. Whatever.”
The paneling under the desk is solid. Nothing hidden in here. “First, I don’t think that’s the normal way into a man’s pants. Second, I can’t, or else the baseball commissioner will force me to sell the team and move them wherever he can find a buyer for them. Ouch!”
“What are you doing? You’re breathing hard. And not in the I’m calling to talk to you about Tripp Wilson while riding him naked kind of way. Which would be awkward.”
“This entire conversation is awkward.”
“If people would embrace their own awkward more instead of trying to conform to some random normal defined by people who probably have bigger problems than the rest of us, can you imagine how much more humanity could accomplish? Like, if all the people in the world would quit putting energy into pretending they didn’t have quirks and issues? That’s the biggest energy suck in the entire universe and it’s keeping us from unlocking our full potential.”
I rub my head while I climb back out from under the desk. My skirt is not built for this kind of stretching and sneaking around, and not for the first time in my life, I understand why my mom preferred pantsuits when she had to play the businesswoman.
Also not for the first time, I understand how Parker can be the vice president of marketing at the nation’s fastest-growing organic grocery chain. She embraces her own quirks and uses them to steer marketing campaigns that people relate to at a gut level.
