Pitch Perfect(3)

“Oh, Christ. You’re Tucker Lloyd.”

“Guilty.” He crouched beside her and reached his hand out to her. She was so awestruck by his long, beautiful fingers she didn’t realize what he was doing until he’d already rolled up her ripped pant leg. Emmy let out a shuddering breath and gasped when his fingers brushed against her knee.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.”

The jolt of pain brought Emmy back to her senses. She appreciated Tucker’s immediate attention to her injury, but she should have been able to take care of it herself. And not in the I’m a tough, modern girl, I can handle myself kind of way. In the I’m an athletic trainer, and dealing with this is my job kind of way.

She tried to pull away, but his fingers tensed. The feel of his calloused skin, hot against her—thankfully shaved—knee made her shudder involuntarily. He gave a brief, concerned smile as one might to an injured animal that was ready to bolt.

“Let me look at it,” he instructed. His voice was soft, but she could tell he meant business.

She started to argue since she was perfectly capable of fixing her own oozing road rash, thank you very much, but when he pushed the hem of her pants higher, Emmy relaxed into his touch and sat on the hard ground staring at him. Her back and bloody knee throbbed in time with her fluttering pulse.

Tucker removed the bandana he wore over his dark brown hair and gave her another tentative smile.

“Oh, um, you really don’t need to do that,” she insisted. In her medically trained mind, Emmy thought, Oh yeah, awesome plan, clean my wound with a sweaty bandana. She placed her fingers on his wrist in an attempt to stay his hand. It was nice to have a smoking-hot MVP pitcher attending to her, but he was the MVP pitcher she would soon be attending to. Professionally. How could he respect her as his therapist if he thought she didn’t know how to look after a little scrape?

“It’s okay, I know what I’m doing,” Tucker insisted, his gaze meeting hers, and up close she got a chance to marvel at his famous eyes.

A lot of baseball players had pretty eyes. Sometimes it was all you could make out of a man with the brim of his cap pulled low and a serious scowl on his face. Tucker’s eyes were famous because of how unusual they were, though.

He had heterochromia—a mouthful to say, but a glory to behold. One eye was a warm melted-chocolate brown. The other was so blue it put the spring sky to shame. He was a bit of a freak, but in a good way.

Staring at his eyes made her forget whatever argument she’d been about to make, and she pulled her hand away from his wrist.

Oh, what the hell? He’s just trying to help. She made a mental note to douse her knee in rubbing alcohol when she got home.

Besides, his touch was distracting her from the pain, and that was something she wouldn’t have been able to do on her own.

She looked from Tucker to his friend, and knowing who the pitcher was, the realization of his sidekick’s identity sank in. Alex Ross. She’d almost run over the star pitcher and the team’s only reliable catcher, all in one fell swoop.

For someone who’d been hired to keep the players of the San Francisco Felons in good working order, Emmy was doing a hell of a job.

She’d joined the Felons club over the winter as their new head athletic trainer. The competition had been fierce—every trainer worth their salt wanted to have an MLB team on their resume—but she’d been the only candidate who needed more than mere skills. She was a woman seeking access into the almost totally male-dominated world of professional baseball, and she’d known from the outset getting her dream job wouldn’t be easy.

But she’d fought for it, clawing her way up the ladder from intern to the head of the athletic department at her alma mater. She had her master’s degree while many of the men in her profession made do with their bachelor’s degrees and prominent internships. More than anything, though, she had a passion for baseball, and it had shown when she’d gone through her interviews.

It wasn’t only about a good job. Emmy had wanted to be an integral part of the team. She wanted to matter to the clubhouse. Even if she couldn’t play the game herself, she wanted to do her part to lead a team to victory.

She’d never been a cheerleader, or a baseball groupie. Emmy was a true lover of the game, and she’d laid her desires on the table during her interview. She must have seemed crazy to the managers, but something about it stuck out because they offered her the job later that same day, and a week later she was moving from snowy Chicago to Northern California.

And now—on her first day at spring training—she’d almost taken two key players in the Felons lineup off their roster.