AUSTIN
The doorbell rang nonstop,and I tore my eyes from the baseball game playing on the television, pausing from doing curls with twenty-pound weights. Off-season had just started for me, but I was still watching last season’s replays to see how I could elevate my pitching game. I wanted to clinch the Cy Young Award this year. I hadn’t made it last year—lost by a fraction of a vote, I was sure of it.
At the end of the baseball season, most of my team had gone home, wherever home was. Me? As a free agent, I was lucky enough—or more so good enough—to pick where I wanted to play ball, and Illinois was where I had been born and raised, so essentially, I’d picked the Chicago Tigers as the team I wanted to play for.
When I opened the door, I smiled automatically.
Sydney Loverly. My future sister-in-law.
Her scowl was heavy on her face. Usually, women had a smile every time they were around me.
She was the prettiest out of the Loverly clan, in my honest opinion, but she also had a stick far up her ass, and I always wondered who had put it there.
“Well, hey there, Sydney.”
Her scowl deepened, and my smile only widened. Why did it seem like this woman always got up on the wrong side of the bed?
At holiday parties or birthdays, I hardly ever saw her smile.
She looked like she was stuffed in a sleeping bag, her bubble down jacket reaching the ground. Snow pelted me in the face from the wind blowing it in, and I shivered because I was only in a T-shirt and shorts.
Snow had come early this year, given it was barely November.
“It’s cold. Get in here.” I tugged on her sleeve and pulled her inside the house so quickly that she almost tripped.
“I’m not planning on staying,” she said.
I laughed again. “Look at you. You remind me of an Eskimo.” A deep chuckle vibrated from my chest as I pulled on her hood string, closing the gap until I could only see her nose and mouth.
“Hey.”
She slapped at my hand and shoved the hood off her head, which made her hair stand on end. I was so tempted to flatten it, but I somehow knew if I touched her again, my ass would be on the floor.
“Sydney, we’re basically family,” I said, leaning in, purposely throwing her flirty vibes. “Or we will be in two weeks. So, you should try to relax around me.”
When she turned up her nose, I walked farther into the foyer, making sure she was following me as I headed to my kitchen. The kitchen was the best part of the house. I’d had it custom-made, fit for Gordon Ramsay himself. Brandy, my sister, loved to cook. My mother was hardly ever home, so she made little use of the kitchen.
“Brandy told me to come by. She said you would know where the wedding favors are.”
I scratched at my head. “Why the hell would she think that?” I moved to the marble countertop and started fixing my lunch—chicken and steak and greens. I grabbed two beers out of my industrial-sized stainless steel fridge.
“Are you having company over or something?” she asked, her gaze moving over my spread.
“Nope.” I popped open the first beer with an opener and slid it across the counter, offering it to her.
“No, thanks. Not much of a drinker.” She gave me judgy eyes, as though it were wrong to drink in the middle of the day.
I shrugged, taking a huge swig of my own. “Sucks to be you.”
She reeled back like I’d knocked her on the head with the bottle. “Actually, it’s great to be me. I’m a lot of fun.” She lifted her chin. “Even if I don’t drink at three p.m.”
I cackled like a chicken. I gotta give it to her—she was cute. “Who says that?I’m a lot of fun.”
I leaned in closer. She stood her ground and didn’t move, but her eyes went up, up, up as she met mine.
“Only people who don’t know how to have fun say that.”
She rubbed at her brow, irritated. “So, Brandy said she’s with your mom today and told me to come by here to pick up favors. The wedding planner is going psycho at the moment, and if I don’t get those favors to her today, she’s gonna call the cops on me. Or she might hurt someone, and I don’t want that on my conscience.”