Pitch Perfect(77)

Tucker wasn’t sure what it would take to make an impression on the GM and the higher ups. A good performance was one thing, but he wondered sometimes if the men with the power would know a good performance if it bit them on the ass.

Emmy had told him about her meeting with the GM and his accusation she was lying to keep him in the game. After that kind of show, Tucker wasn’t sure if he even wanted to stay with the club anymore. If they wanted him gone so badly they would suggest he was willing to lie about a potentially fatal brain injury, maybe he’d be better off on a different team.

But he had to remind himself the team was more than the owners and the upper management. The real team was Alex and Ramon, Chet and Miles. It was the guys he spent eight or nine months a year with. It was the fans who made those terrible Tucker pun signs and wore jerseys with his name and number on them.

That’s why he played for the Felons. GMs came and went. Tucker had outlasted four of them in his career. He’d been with the team longer than the current field manager and most of the coaching staff.

If Tucker could outlast one doubtful GM and avoid any further injuries, then maybe, maybe he’d be able to play out the remainder of his contract in the place he thought of as home.

He’d planned on walking from the hotel to the ballpark, but considering how the previous night’s game had played out, he didn’t want to run the risk of meeting up with any bitter Yankees fans who might recognize him.

And since they’d moved the park to the Bronx it was a much longer walk.

He stood in front of the hotel waiting for a town car when Emmy came down the steps and stepped to the curb, raising her arm to hail a cab. She was so focused on her mission she completely failed to notice he was standing ten feet away from her.

Since they’d avoided being busted in his room their first night together in Cleveland, they’d continued the nightly tradition of hotel room hook-ups throughout the road trip, swapping whose suite they would meet in to avoid too obvious a routine.

And the team continued to win, further solidifying his opinion she really was a lucky charm.

Emmy’s cab arrived before there was any sign of his town car, so as she ducked into the vehicle he climbed in beside her, surprising her as he shut the door.

“Excuse me,” she snapped, hugging her duffel bag close to her side and looking ready to spit venom before she recognized it was him.

“You get into the New York spirit quickly.” He relieved her of the bag and put it on his opposite side, sliding close to her so their hips were touching.

“You sneaky bugger.” Emmy squeezed his thigh and gave him a kiss on the lips as they pulled away from the curb.

“No funny business,” scolded the taxi driver.

“Do you have a lot of people trying to have sex in the back of your cab at ten thirty in the morning?” Tucker asked, meeting the man’s disapproving gaze in the rearview mirror.

“Ten thirty in the morning. Ten thirty at night. No difference. No funny business.”

“Just giving my lady a little PG-13 loving. Nothing immoral, I swear.”

The driver grumbled something but stopped lecturing them, and Tucker took the risk of further cabbie vitriol by slipping his hand between Emmy’s thighs. The soft material of the yoga pants she wore before games left nothing to the imagination. The firm, toned muscle of her legs and the heat radiating off her skin made him think about all the filthy things they’d recently been forbidden from doing.

Which made him want to do them all the more.

He kissed her neck and brushed his lips against her ear. “Want to get up to some funny business?”

Her fingers twitched on his leg, and he could feel her cheek rise up in a smile.

“Mr. Lloyd. We’re being watched.”

The cab driver’s glare filled the rearview mirror, and it was lucky they were in bumper-to-bumper traffic or Tucker would have worried about the cabbie not watching the road. Instead he gave the man a look of wide-eyed innocence but rubbed Emmy’s crotch with focused strokes of his pinky finger.

She pursed her lips and her hand went to his wrist, but she didn’t push him away.

Again he leaned close and breathed lightly into her ear. “I might need a little extra luck today.”

Emmy laughed loudly, bringing the full attention of the driver to the backseat and almost causing them to rear-end another cab ahead. “How about you win the game and then we see about you getting lucky, okay?”

He kissed her cheek, trying to tamp down his half-mast. “Seems like as good a reason as any to win the game.”

“I can think of a better one.” Her tone was more serious than it had been a moment earlier.