“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling the need to be the first to break their companionable silence. “I get… I can get a bit bitchy, but I guess you’ve figured that out.”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” He smirked and sipped his wine. “I think your personality is, to borrow your phrasing, sunshine and rainbows.”
“Oh. You’re a deluded maniac. No wonder you like me.”
“Sorry, you were saying something about what a bitch you can be?”
“Touché. I think what I was trying to do is apologize. For last night. For today. All of it. I have my own…issues, and I think you’re getting the brunt of the fallout.”
“So what you’re saying is I bring out the worst in you.”
“No, that’s not it. Well…maybe. Just a bit.” She grinned at him, resting her head on the back of the chair so she could get a better look at his face. “But hey, you’ve seen me at my worst and apparently still think I’m okay. That’s got to be something.”
“I am not a smart man.” He imitated Forrest Gump with a spot-on Southern drawl.
“Let me ask you something.”
“Sure.”
“If I say yes to this family date you have planned, and it all goes terribly wrong, will you stop following me around?”
“Do you want me to stop following you around?”
Alice sipped her wine, swirling it around in her mouth before she swallowed. “I’ll have to get back to you.”
“Does that mean you’re saying yes to the date?”
“I suppose it does.”
“I guess I’d better plan something then.”
Chapter Twelve
How the hell do you entertain a child while trying to woo her mother? What did nine-year-old girls like? Alex didn’t have a lot of experience with kids. Two of his five sisters had children now, but the oldest was only four. The other was still a baby, and his sisters watched him with a mix of concern and delight whenever he held one of them. A girl Olivia’s age was a different story. She had opinions and an attitude, and Alex didn’t have the first clue in hell how to impress her.
He knew Olivia was a key to this. He had to get the kid on his side.
All he really knew about Olivia was that she liked baseball, and she had the bad sense to be a Mets fan. At least she’d picked them instead of the Yankees. He didn’t think he could date anyone who raised a Yankees fan.
His master plan for the date wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret. He’d asked Alice to meet him at the ballpark after sunset. The Felons had played an afternoon game that day, and all other drills were long since finished. He had needed to pay quite handsomely to keep a few willing souls on-site to run the outfield lighting and provide mandatory security.
He’d bribed the equipment manager to give him a basket of balls and a couple of bats for the night, then spent a good hour searching for a kid-friendly aluminum bat and some softballs for Olivia. He remembered enough about being a kid himself to know it wasn’t a good idea to start a child out with the big-boy equipment. Wooden bats were heavy, and a league ball was both too small and too hard to lob at the poor kid. If there was a hope in hell of her having any fun with them tonight, she’d need her own stuff.
The big add-on was a real leather glove, none of the cheap pink kiddie crap. He’d only met Olivia once, but she hadn’t struck him as the girlie-girl type. A nice sturdy Rawlings was what she needed. He had to guess on the size, but figured even if it was too big, she’d be able to grow into it.
If they’d been back at the Felons stadium in San Fran, he would have queued up a movie on the jumbotron and had attendants around for the rides. There would be plenty of snack vendors to choose from. Sure, it would have cost way more, but the options would have been endless. Here all he had was the outfield berm, a huge span of open lawn where fans frequently set up blankets while waiting for a well-placed home run.
A local delivery place would show up about an hour into the evening with food. Alex wasn’t sure about getting too fancy and scaring off Alice or Olivia, plus he was a man of simple tastes himself. Instead of soufflé or lobster, he opted to order trays of spaghetti—what kid didn’t like spaghetti?—and heaping servings of garlic toast. Éclairs were the easy pick for dessert because they were kid-friendly, a bit messy, and if they sat around in the muggy warmth of the evening, they wouldn’t totally be ruined.
So that was his plan. Private baseball, an outfield picnic, and that was it. Olivia was only nine, after all. Asking to meet after sunset put a time limitation on the evening to begin with, as Alice had informed him of a strict nine o’clock bedtime on school nights. With those constraints in mind, he hoped he’d be able to win over both ladies with the time he’d been given.
He had a strong feeling this was his one shot to prove to Alice he wasn’t what she believed him to be. It still stung, the way she’d said there were no white knights among baseball players. Okay, maybe he didn’t know how to ride a horse, but that didn’t make him a bad guy. Did Alice have unrealistic expectations of men—something he thought most women outgrew in their mid-twenties—or did she have a more personal reason for hating ballplayers specifically?
If it was the former, he hoped to prove he was a good catch. The latter might be harder to deal with. Could he erase her preconceived notions about his entire profession? How much had some dude fucked her over in the past to make her believe baseball players were such a scummy lot?
And why, why were women so goddamn complicated?
It made him happy he spent six months out of the year surrounded almost completely by other men. He could read annoyance from a grunt, and most dudes would just let stuff roll off their backs. Not women, though. They held grudges over the smallest perceived slight. And trying to use logic to make them see reason? Well, he’d have better luck giving a cat a bath.