Page 7

I still didn’t understand him. “I don’t get it.”

Mark laughed and shook his head. “If you’re going to manage a professional sports team in Tampa Bay, you might want to get familiar with the starting rosters of the rest of the Tampa Bay teams.”

Hot, sexy, and an athlete? I couldn’t keep my own schedule, let alone that of another athlete. Three strikes and you’re out in baseball and in life. Strike one: she was female and I swore them off. Strike two: way too sexy for me. Strike three: an athlete.

I wasn’t dating anyone this year, and definitely not an athlete. Not now, not ever. Not even a year from now if I still had a job.

And that was a pretty big if. I might be a good manager or I might be a terrible one. No one knew. This time next year I could be a laughingstock that got passed down in the annals of baseball lore. The rookie who quit, came back, and bombed.

“You’re thinking about failing again, aren’t you?” Everett asked.

“No.”

Everett rolled his eyes and pushed my beer closer. “You keep thinking like this you really are going to bomb. Self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Look, managing a team is hard enough for someone who knows what they’re doing. Managing a team with a new owner hell bent on fucking everything up? I’m pretty sure I’m the fall guy if the team bombs.”

“So don’t let us fall apart. Brother, no one loves baseball the way you love it. You know the sport inside and out. Upside down even. You might have been an amazing player. We’ll never know. We didn’t take that path, neither one of us. But man, look at where life did take you. Rosie has taught you to be patient and thoughtful. You’re an amazing father. I’ve watched you break things down and explain complicated concepts to my niece. She’s amazing because of the ways you’ve coached her along the way. Maybe life put Rosie in your path to teach you that and make you the world’s best manager.”

That was a stretch, but Everett was trying to be helpful and I appreciated it. “I do know the game and I also agree that I think I’ll be good with the guys, but that doesn’t mean I’ll manage well. We both know that’s a weakness for us.” The Ansons were notoriously bad at planning and were well known on the island for our knee-jerk reactions.

But we did have excellent instincts. So there was that.

“You’ve managed the sanctuary for years.”

There was a reason being a ranger worked for me. It came with a playbook and a rules manual. I had a set job that allowed me some flexibility and a new challenge each day. As long as I followed the path laid out in front of me I was golden. Managing a team would take a lot more creativity, skill, and focus than I’d ever put towards anything before.

“I thought we were celebrating.” I grabbed a piece of the garlic bread that just arrived.

“Maybe swearing off women was a terrible idea.” Everett looked me up and down. “You’re sadder and grumpier by the day.”

The words were funny on their own, but Everett’s expression as he said it was even funnier. I laughed. Hard. And then felt a shiver race down my spine immediately afterward. When I turned, the woman I really should not have anything to do with was giving me a look that made my dick sit up and take notice.

The kind of look that could make me forget my own name, let alone all the stress built up in my mind and body. Maybe our pact was a bad idea after all.

3

Kate

“He’s handsome,” Mei said simply enough. The sexy man at the end of the bar hadn’t moved all night while a feast was brought out for him and the man beside him. They looked enough alike that I assumed they were brothers.

“I suppose.” For some reason I was still clinging to this silly idea that my perfect match looked a certain way. It was really unlike me. Well, in every other aspect of my life it was unlike me. It went against my professional and personal mission to make assumptions about someone based on appearance.

And yet…here I was, judging a man I hadn’t even spoken to based on his beard and flip flops. It came from somewhere deep inside me. Like an instruction that had been inserted in the early days of my coding. I really needed to figure that out and purge it, but not tonight. I had enough thinking for one night.

“Why don’t you go up to the bar and order something special for Jeri’s birthday?”

The idea appealed to me. I wanted a closer look and the opportunity to flirt a little more directly than stolen glances across a restaurant. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. One failure for the night seems like more than enough.”

“That doesn’t sound like you, Kate.” Adrienne Monroe sat directly across from me beside her husband Geoff. They both worked with Mei and knew me fairly well.

“Did you not hear my story?”

“It’s not like it’s catching,” she countered. “Don’t let that asshole win.”

Adrienne knew me too well. One little sentence turned my entire perspective around. “It would be like letting him win, wouldn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Geoff said with a nod. “Don’t make any decisions because of Garrett the Asshole. What would you do if you’d never met him? What if you came straight here and had been at this table the whole time? Would you go flirt with the beach bum?”