Winning With Him (Men of Summer #2) by Lauren Blakely

The dog wants what’s on the other side of the door.

Must stay cool.

When I reach the corner apartment, I lift my hand to knock, but Declan’s already opening the door, and he’s waiting—jacket off. Tie loosened. Eyes only for me.

Like he was in Arizona.

The difference, though, is he’s not only looking at me with hunger, but with hope too. And I’ve no idea what the hell I’m going to do with it.

Or how I’m ever going to stay cool with him.





16





Declan





I rehearsed.

Practiced in front of the mirror and all.

Given my speckled history with public speaking, I didn’t want to leave a word to chance.

I recited all the words.

And I also recited the nine short lines of Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice over and over today.

I did it this morning.

I did it this afternoon.

I did it when the doorman buzzed to tell me that my visitor was on his way up . . .

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

But as soon as the door closes, everything I planned to say falls from my mind. So do the other seven lines of that poem I’ve known by heart since I was a freshman.

Who could blame me?

Grant Blackwood is in my home. My heart lunges at him. My brain is like mushy peas.

“Come in,” I say, even though he’s already here.

Hey words, nice time to vacate my head.

After he sets his suit jacket on a chair near the door, he takes off his shoes. Mine are off too. Then, the sexy catcher strides across the hardwood floors, looking around as he tugs at his teal blue tie, the perfect color for those eyes. “Nice pad,” he says as he loosens the neckwear a bit.

“Yeah, it’s got a good view.”

Not of hyacinths.

His gaze drifts to the floor-to-ceiling windows, and he points at the view of the New York night. “Is that . . . the East River?”

I smile and nod. “Yes, it is. How many times have you been in New York?”

With that grin that drove me wild in March, he holds up two fingers. “Second time here.”

“That so? The series the other month was your first?”

He wiggles a brow. “I was a New York virgin in September.”

“And now you’re not,” I say as he makes his way to the windows, stopping in front of them.

“Now I’m not,” he says a little heavily as he stares out the window. “But when I was younger, New York was on the list of places I always wanted to go.”

“The list you and Reese made?” I ask, thinking of the night he told me the story behind the mountain tattoo on his pecs.

Grant’s eyes snap to mine. “Yes. That list.” He seems impressed I remember, but I remember nearly everything about him.

“And what do you think now that you’ve seen it?”

“New York is grittier than San Francisco, and we have better burritos on the West Coast.” The corner of his lips curve in a grin. “Also, our baseball team’s better.”

I narrow my eyes. “Yes, the Dragons are better than the New York Minotaurs,” I say, naming the other teams in each of our cities. “Funny story—I had to convince my own mother to start rooting for the Comets. Not sure I convinced her or my stepdad. They tried to wear Cougars gear when they came to a few games.”

“I like them even more now,” he teases. “My sister’s the same. Sierra always rooted for the Dragons when we were growing up. I had to beg her to switch allegiances when I signed.”

“Did it work?”

He grabs his phone from his pocket, clicks on the screen, then taps through his camera roll. “You tell me,” he says, brandishing the phone.

I move closer, standing inches from him now, catching a whiff of his arousing scent. My favorite smell in the world.

Him.

But I do my best to focus on the image he’s showing me.

It’s Grant in his Cougars uniform on Opening Day. He’s on the field, flanked by two blonde women, an arm around each. “That’s Reese,” he says, pointing to the more fair-haired one. She’s tall too, maybe just under six feet. “And that’s Sierra,” he says, pointing to the other woman, her hair closer to Grant’s in color, but with a long purple streak down the side.

She’s decked out in Cougars gear.

I furrow my brow, trying to find the Where’s Waldo? hint he’s dropping.

“Look closer, Deck,” he encourages, and that nickname unknots some of the tension in me. He zooms in on the picture, and I crack up when I spot the issue. “Ah, I see she’s wearing Dragons earrings.”

“She is, indeed. She’s a rebel. And she loves to give me a hard time,” he says, then lifts a brow. “You don’t have siblings, do you?”

I shake my head. “No. It’s just me.”

He nods like he’s absorbing that intel, then sets his phone on the nearby coffee table. I swear I can hear what he’s not saying—only child. That makes perfect sense.

“But I have a stepbrother,” I volunteer quickly, even though Aaron hardly changes my only child status, or behavior. “He’s older, so I never lived with him.”

“Yeah? How much older?”

“Nearly ten years. My mom married Tyler when I was seventeen, so I didn’t know Aaron much. Honestly, I don’t know Aaron that well now, either. He lives in Tokyo with his wife, who’s from Japan. They’re both doctors. He met her while working at a hospital there.”