Putting It to the Test Read online

  Now all Matt had to do was the same.

  Easier said than done.

  “So are you going to tell me her name?” Stu asked.

  He absently replied, “Carly,” before realizing Stu had tricked him into talking.

  “She must be special if she’s brought you here. How come I haven’t met her?”

  “She’s just a woman I work with.”

  “Hmm. But you’re reaching wide right, which means the problem’s more pleasure than business.”

  “It’s both,” he said, popping another high fly. Easy out.

  “That explains why you can’t hit anything today.”

  Against his will, a smile broke one corner of Matt’s mouth. Damn, he loved Stu. The man always knew how to get him out of a funk, mostly by not putting up with any BS. If it was sympathy, hand-holding and coddling Matt wanted, he could seek out his mother, but he’d grown up enough these last few years to learn the poor-me attitude got him nothing more than a pink slip and a one-way plane ticket home. This time around, he was going to the Stu Callebrew school of wisdom, where to get ahead in life you worked hard, sucked it up and let your mistakes be a lesson, not an excuse.

  And the lesson he’d learned this time around was to stop thinking he and Carly could someday see eye to eye and to never, ever play with fire. At least where beautiful women were concerned.

  “It’s nothing I can’t get over,” Matt said, and it was true. Having sex with Carly had been high on his list of stupid moves, but it didn’t look as though she intended to destroy his life over it. Now he just needed to forget their encounter and get back to business—a feat not easy but certainly manageable. All he had to do was somehow erase the taste of her from his lips or her scent from his nostrils or the memory of her body in his arms and around his cock or the sound of her moans—

  How much did a good lobotomy cost these days? he wondered.

  “Ouch,” Stu said. “That sounds like you’re the one who got turned down.”

  “Open one mouth, insert one pair of size-thirteen cleats.” Readying himself for the pitch, he shifted his weight and stood focused.

  And the fastball sailed past him.

  He stepped out of the box and kicked the inside of his sneaker with the tip of his bat. “Every time I’m around this woman I can’t seem to say the right thing. This last time it got me in more trouble than usual, but she seems to be moving past it. Now I’ve just got to do the same.”

  Stu responded with a wide mouse-eating grin, and Matt frowned. “I’m glad you find that amusing.”

  “I’m glad you’ve finally found someone special.”

  Matt blinked. “I must have been talking to your bum ear, Stu. The woman hates me. And if she wasn’t so damned sexy, I’d hate her, too.”

  It was a bald-faced lie, but Matt said it anyway. Truth was, he admired the hell out of Carly. She had that spark of something special that made people love her, and it wasn’t just the favors she did. It was something magical, something completely elusive to a guy like Matt, who always had to work hard to keep a friend and even then failed more often than he succeeded. Matt would do anything for anyone who asked him, too, but people rarely asked. It was as if he walked around with Leave me alone tattooed on his forehead, and for the life of him he didn’t know how he got it or how to make it go away. It was just there, part of his being, his soul.

  The next ball came in square, and he tipped it back to the machine, not even really trying anymore. Being honest with himself, he hadn’t come here looking for the thrill of a solid shot, he’d come here to talk to Stu, and this was the way they’d always communicated. Stu wasn’t his dad, so Matt had never felt right about coming up and flat-out asking for his ear, but Stu knew Matt better than anyone. He read the signs and always came around when Matt needed to talk. It was like a little dance. When Matt needed a friend, he’d show up at the cages and start swinging a bat until Stu got him talking about his troubles. And like the father-friend he was, Stu always made things better.

  “Well, I know not to try and teach you anything about women, what with me and Leonora married thirty-seven years and you so successful with your love life.”

  Matt smirked at the slam.

  “I just happen to think hate’s a pretty strong word,” Stu added. “And when people start using strong words, it’s usually because there’s some strong feelings underneath.”

  “Sure, like animosity, ire, frustration, competition. We’ve got all that going on.” He twirled the bat in a circle and stepped out of the box. “In fact, now that you’ve made me think about it, we’re practically perfect for each other.”

  Stu laughed and Matt smiled as he stepped in for the pitch. This time he hit it square into the painted mural of an outfield filled with fans Stu had commissioned about a dozen years ago. Netting kept the balls from actually smacking into it, but the sentiment was the same. You hit the ball into the far wall net and you’d just hit a home run.

  “See? You start telling the truth and things shift in your favor,” Stu pointed out.

  Matt hit three more like it, not really wanting Stu to be right but enjoying it nonetheless. This was exactly what he’d needed—to get out of the condo, blow off some steam and go back to the office tomorrow with a clear head and a new attitude. He’d accomplished the first three and he knew before he left here tonight he’d accomplish the last, as well.

  “Hey, while you’re here, I’ve got something I want you to do for me,” Stu said.

  “Shoot.”

  “I got a kid I want you to work with. He could use some help with his swing.”

  Matt stepped away from the plate and flicked off the machine. He found it odd Stu was asking him to help with the kids. Back in high school, he’d liked working with them, remembering the days when he was a scrawny tyke himself and one of the older players paid him extra attention. Given his natural talent with a baseball, he’d gotten a lot of that, and it had become somewhat of a rite of passage to take the younger kids under his wing when he was in the mood and had the time. A side of him had thought Stu might ask him to help out now that he’d moved back to town, and when he hadn’t, Matt had never asked why.

  He’d been afraid of the answer.

  He’d already been told by the Scottsdale Sidewinders he wasn’t good enough to move up from the Nationals’ AA team, and his agent had been told the same by a half dozen more teams. When he’d come home defeated, he hadn’t wanted to hear that Stu thought he wasn’t good enough to work with the kids anymore, either, even though he’d never truly believed it. But given the gravity of his disappointment back then, he hadn’t been able to risk any more knocks, so he simply never went there.

  But he could go there now.

  “I thought you were through asking me to coach,” he commented.

  Stu hung his hands on the fence and smiled. “No one’s ever through coaching, son. Sometimes you need to take a break, though.”

  “And when I came home, you felt I needed a break?”

  Stu’s tired eyes looked at Matt with all seriousness. “Sometimes when a man takes a hit, the best thing is to get right back on the horse. Other times it’s best to stay away for a while.” Nodding, he added, “You needed to step away for a while.”

  “So why the turnaround now?”

  Stu shrugged and cocked his head. “I think you’re ready.”

  Matt twirled the bat in his hand, a nervous habit he’d had since he was a kid. He wasn’t sure what to think of Stu’s words, but in his maturity he’d learned that Stu was right more times than he was wrong. In fact, Matt couldn’t ever remember Stu being wrong about anything.

  “This kid,” Stu said. “He’s cocky.”

  Matt raised a brow. “So you instantly thought of me.”

  “Yep. He also thinks I’m too old to know anything about baseball. He’ll probably think you’re too old, too. But he’s got good focus and good instincts. He just has some mechanical problems, and if he’d get over that hump of doing
something that doesn’t feel natural for a minute, we could retrain his bad habits.”

  “Let me take a crack at him,” Matt offered.

  “He’s ten,” Stu said as if that might make Matt change his mind. They both knew that was a tough age. If the boy had started in T-ball, he already had five years of bad habits to break. If he was cocky, that meant he was probably better than most and didn’t think he needed the help. And if he was ten, that meant he was heading for middle school and some of the toughest years of a young boy’s life.

  Exactly the kind of challenge Matt needed to get his mind off the mess he’d made of his working relationship with Carly.

  He flashed Stu a knowing smile. “You’re giving me this kid on purpose, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m tired of the whining.”

  “Are you talking about me or the kid?”

  Snapping a wink, Stu backed away from the cage and headed toward the pro shop. “Yes.”

  9

  “I NEED THOSE presentation materials. Have you finished up the slide show yet?”

  Matt’s smooth, quiet voice slid over Carly’s shoulders like raw silk. It seemed no matter how angry she wanted to be with him, her body kept responding to the slightest of gestures. Even with her back to him and her eyes on some very gnarly looking HTML code, the mere sound of his voice slipped down around her waist and tingled at the apex of her thighs.

  And the vivid memory of his hard, naked body plunging her into euphoria wasn’t helping one bit.

  Shaking the scene from her thoughts for the umpteenth time, she replied, “I e-mailed it to you a half hour ago.”

  She hadn’t intended the clipped tone. It had simply become her normal voice around him since their interlude in the lab and that lame apology he’d attempted in the hall later that day.

  The apology you didn’t deserve.

  Now there was another thing keeping her nerves on edge. That stupid voice in her head, the one that kept trying to tell her she’d overreacted and that she should be the one offering him apologies. She really didn’t need it. She’d gone over and over the incident more times than she wanted to admit and she always came to the conclusion she’d had every right to be mad. So mad she would stay, voices or no voices.

  “Aren’t you being a little hard on him?”

  Okay, now the voices are just getting creepy.

  Blinking, she looked up and saw Bev hanging over her cubicle wall.

  “Huh?” She glanced back and saw that Matt had walked off.

  “I said, weren’t you being a little harsh? You practically bit his head off.”

  Carly frowned. “He needs to learn to check his e-mail.” That way he’d stop having reason to come by her desk and ask her questions in that sultry tone while wafting that darned aftershave around her cubicle, where it seemed to linger all day. At least this time she hadn’t had to look at him. He was probably wearing those worn, rugged boots today, the ones with the buckles at the ankles that made him look all sexy, like a young Clint Eastwood in one of those spaghetti Westerns.

  Bev lowered her voice. “He doesn’t deserve the treatment you’re giving him. From what you told me, all he did was ask you not to spread it around.”

  “That was offensive. I wouldn’t have told a soul.”

  “You told me within minutes of leaving the room.”

  “You’re different. You don’t count.”

  “You’ve told a half dozen other people what a jerk he is.”

  “But I never said why.”

  “It doesn’t matter. People are still beginning to talk.”

  Carly’s frown deepened into a pout. She hated logic when she felt like being illogical. It was the party pooper crashing her misery gala, and she’d been having a good time wallowing in her self-inflicted pain.

  Bev held up her wallet. “I’m going for coffee. Come on.”

  Carly let out a long breath and rose from her seat, knowing she was about to get a block-long lecture from Bev and, worse, knowing she deserved it. She was being irrationally testy, punishing Matt from the moment he’d climaxed and failed to look dreamily into her eyes and profess his everlasting love for her.

  Of course, that wasn’t what she’d consciously expected him to do, but after she’d considered that awkward postsex moment, she’d surmised that was about the only thing he could have done to avoid the reaction he got. Because when he’d gotten up and started gathering his clothes, Carly had discovered something very important about herself.

  She was not a just-for-fun-fling kinda gal.

  She’d been trying to deny it for days, telling herself that Matt’s insensitivity was the cause of the wrangling nerves nestled in her stomach. She’d hoped to convince herself that she could be free and loose, a cosmopolitan woman having wild, flippant sex square in the middle of her office and not expect anything more from a man.

  But when she shoveled her own garbage away, she realized it was all a lie. Truth was, as much as she craved a hot sexual thrill, she craved loving affection more, and as the two women stepped through the double glass doors and out into the late-afternoon sun, Carly tried not to groan. Apparently, she did belong with nice, steady men who bored her to tears in bed. At least she’d never stormed out on any of them, and when the act was done, none of them had felt compelled to tell her to keep her mouth shut.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” she said, holding up a hand before Bev could open her mouth. “I went over the deep end.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. What did he say? You get around? Not exactly the words of a prince.”

  “He’s never been very graceful with words. I should have figured that out by now.”

  And honestly, it wasn’t how he’d said it but that he’d seen through her so easily that touched a hot nerve. When she’d sat basking in the aftermath of the two best orgasms of her life, she had wanted to run out and scream it to the world, and Matt’s comment had made it painfully evident he hadn’t felt the same way.

  He’d made the truth between them obvious. To a girl like Carly, sex was intimate and special. To a guy like Matt, sex was sex. She couldn’t deny who she really was. Sally Sunshine. Mary Quite Contrary. The little good girl who’d tried to take a walk on the wild side but couldn’t even round the first lap. She was a fake, a fraud and, worse than anything else, Matt had called her bluff before he’d even pulled his pants on.

  Yes, she was definitely that pathetic. Contrary to the wild sex puppet she’d envisioned she could be, reality proved she was completely inept at carrying out a casual tryst, and when Matt had pointed that out in his offhanded way, she’d lashed out by making him the bad guy.

  The two women stood at the corner next to the Happy Lantern restaurant, waiting for the light to change.

  “Listen, be mad at him all you want,” Bev said. “And unless you want to get him back in the sack, I wouldn’t lose sleep over what’s come down between you two. I’m only saying you’ve got to lighten up on the I-hate-Matt campaign. Like I said, people are starting to talk. And, in case you’ve forgotten, thanks to your own scheme, you two are supposed to be the ideal couple.”

  “According to a stupid survey.”

  “According to our biggest client that you need to impress if you want that promotion.”

  When the signal changed, they stepped across the street on their way down the block to Lone Dog Coffee, and Carly let Bev’s words and the breezy air clear her mind. Bev was right. She really did need to let it go, if for no other reason than to take back the control she’d surrendered that afternoon. Matt wasn’t worth the energy she’d been pouring into hating him, and Bev’s reminder was exactly the reality check she needed.

  Get her head on straight, forget about him and go back to the task of showing management how ideal she was for that team lead position.

  “Of course,” Bev added, “given what you told me about your encounter, I wouldn’t rule out trying to get Matt back in the sack.”

  Carly huffed and shook her h
ead. “I think I’ve humiliated myself enough for one lifetime, thank you. Besides, I’m not cut out for the casual tryst.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Of course you’re cut out for casual trysts. Have you forgotten Marty Pritchard?”

  “I’m trying to.” Marty Pritchard was a corporate event planner down in the peninsula who liked to call her up when business brought him north of San Francisco. Though the man had never given her two cosmic orgasms like those she’d shared with Matt, he was okay—okay being the operative word. Her heart had never ached watching Marty walk out the door, mostly because she wasn’t interested enough and he wasn’t good enough to make her pine for something more. In fact, timing was the best thing Marty had going for him. He always seemed to call when she had nothing to do, and a quick dinner and a romp in the hay sounded better than reruns of Friends.

  Matt Jacobs was a different story. He was the type of man she’d yearn for something more with, and even if he were apt to give it to her, she knew without a doubt playing around with him would lead to one heavy heartache. His survey hadn’t lied. It had painted a clear picture of a man wrong for her in every way that counted, and no matter how badly she wanted to ignore that fact and enjoy him for the sex, she simply couldn’t separate her emotions where he was concerned.

  The sex was too good, the man was too wrong. It was as simple as that. And if she wanted to keep her career intact and her heart in one piece, she’d need to keep her distance from Matt Jacobs.

  MATT CONNECTED his laptop to the wall monitor so he could test the presentation materials before his and Carly’s meeting with Brayton and Andy. With a hum, his CD drive whirred on and the display on his laptop came to life on the flat-screen monitor mounted on the far wall of the company’s main conference room. Clicking through the screens, he took a moment to add final touches to the materials Carly had put together, adjusting an occasional font or modifying a screen transition to give the overall presentation more flair.

  Though Carly had brought good insights to the project, her presentation skills tended to be too primitive for his taste, getting the point across but lacking the dazzle Matt had learned impressed clients. It was funny, really, how the most difficult and complicated programming tasks seemed to go unnoticed, but add a dancing bear or dissolve the screen into a shimmer of shooting stars and clients marveled at the results.