More than the Game by Jenni Bara

3

@CelebPeopleMag:Hopefully not too many people got sucked into @HotShotDemoda’s angry hurricane last night as he left the bar, taking a few trash cans out on his way. Can his agent get him some anger management classes?

Driving to Beth’s house, Marc wondered what he was doing, but he honestly didn’t know. Beth’s motor had come in this afternoon, and his sister said she was sending one of the guys over to fix it. He’d told Glory there was absolutely no way the new guy was going. The guy had only worked for the company a couple of months, and he couldn’t handle the job.

That was complete bullshit, but it didn’t stop Marc from insisting on going himself. He kept replaying Austin’s words in his head.

Find one that you can keep around for a while.

Marc didn’t want that.

If it hadn’t been for the car accident, none of this would matter. When he was pitching, no one cared about anything beyond how he threw the ball. He would have been at the stadium right now with the Metros; instead, Corey Matthews, second in the rotation, was sitting in his spot on the team.

Agitated, he got his stuff and walked to the front door, calming himself down. After a day full of speculation about phantom anger issues, he didn’t need Ms. Evans posting something on social media. He hadn’t seen anything about his last trip here though; maybe she was too busy to bother gossiping about him or maybe she didn’t realize who he was. She hadn’t treated him like most people who recognized him as a professional ball player did.

He took a deep breath and pushed the doorbell. A dark-haired boy—a kid he hadn’t seen yesterday—opened it. How many kids did this woman have running through her house? This one let Marc in and without a word moved back to the couch where he was playing Mario Kart with another green-eyed boy Marc had never seen before. Two more made seven. Seven damn kids. She was definitely too busy for gossip.

“I’m in the kitchen; give me five minutes to finish these green beans. I’m finally winning this battle,” Beth called.

Moving toward her voice, Marc reached the kitchen area in time to see Beth give the baby a mouthful of some gross green mush. The baby spat it back onto the tray.

“Almost winning,” Beth corrected.

“I’m here to fix the dishwasher,” Marc prompted. Had she forgotten about him completely?

“Oh, the office said you were coming later,” Beth said, standing up. “But I think we should probably wait until your dad is back. I don’t mind doing dishes by hand.” Marc could tell it was a lie as it left her mouth.

“So you think I’m incompetent?” Marc asked, crossing his arms. Now he needed to fix it; there was no other option.

Beth paused. “Uh…”

“Yesterday was my first dishwasher call in a few years, but I could replace one by my senior year in high school. I know what I’m doing,” Marc assured her, “And frankly, I’d rather not have to explain yesterday to my father.”

She grimaced before she sighed, like she could understand his desire not to tell his father.

“Okay. Sorry,” she said, apologizing for the tenth time since he’d met her. She moved over to the sink. “This time, when I say the water’s off, I mean all the water is off.” She waved her hands in the general area of the sink and dishwasher.

“Yeah,” came a voice from behind him. “Uttle Will came here and sut it off.”

Marc turned, to see the crazy curls and fierce gray eyes of the little girl who had thrown soap the day before. She stood staring at him, her hand was on her hip, and a scowl was on her face. She was adorable.

“And I toll him about your potty mouf, and he said you were a bad sample.”

“Mandy.” Beth sighed, but Marc’s irritation vanished.

He bent down to make amends. “Can I say sorry? Yesterday was a bad day for me. I promise to be better. No soap needed.”

Mandy paused for a moment. “Otay.” She put her finger up, “But tish is you fidal warding.”

She nodded firmly, letting him know she was serious.

Marc bit his cheek and nodded back. When Mandy walked away, he chuckled.

“How do you not laugh at her?” he asked Beth.

Beth smiled. “Trust me, she’s a character. Go ahead. I’m going to have to make dinner around you, I planned for no water so I won’t be too much in your way.”

“It’s fine,” Marc assured her. Beth sat down to finish the jar of green gunk that she was giving the baby. Another boy ran in and put a blue baseball hat on her head, and she adjusted it sideways.

“How does it look?” she asked.

“You look silly.”

“Silly?” Beth jumped out of the chair and caught the boy, tickling him as they both fell to the floor. The little boy crackled with laugher, and Beth laughed right along with him.

Marc wanted to smile or laugh, but his stomach stuck painfully in his throat. Silly wasn’t the word he would have used to describe Beth at this moment; maybe radiant would be better. Was he high? This woman was a mess—but even covered in green goop, she enthralled him. Why? Bored, he reminded himself; he was just bored. This woman just wasn’t his type; she was interestingly different, and once he figured her out, she’d lose her appeal.

The doorbell rang and Beth swept out of the room. His eyes followed the sway of her hips below the yellow shirt the entire way. He reached out to the counter to steady himself. She was not his type.

A nervous woman with big brown eyes collected the baby and one of the bigger boys while Marc prepared to install the new part. Beth ignored him as he worked. It wasn’t until they bumped elbows at the sink—as she went to grab the squash while he drained the motor—that they spoke.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

He rolled his eyes: apology number eleven. “What are you making?” he asked, eyeing the many vegetables on the counter.

“Seasoned steak, grilled veggies, and rice.”

“Kids will eat that?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” she said. She chopped the squash with maddening speed. One of the boys came running through the kitchen and she sent him a look that silently said Stop.

He shrugged. “I thought they preferred Micky D’s or something.”

“That stuff is gut rot,” she said.

Hearing him chuckle, she glanced his way. Her bright green eyes sparkled.

“My gut is used to paying for my inability to cook. I don’t know when my last home-cooked meal was.” He avoided his parents’ house. Although his mom could be a bit of a nag, it was his father who kept him away. His father, the guy who was well-liked by everyone except his own family. To the world, Frank was the charming, good-looking repairman. To his family, he was an asshole. And since, unlike some celebrities, Marc wasn’t uppity enough to employ a chef, he ate out. So even though it was May, his last home-cooked meal might have been Thanksgiving.

She paused, cocking her head. “Seriously?”

“What you eat then?” Mandy asked, having come back into the room at the sounds of conversation.

He shrugged. “I like Burger King.”

Mandy scowled. “That make your body sick, and you can’t be big and tong, wite, Mommy?”

Beth’s eyes flitted shut like she was bracing herself for something, but Marc didn’t have any idea what. Mandy’s hands went back to her hips, and she stomped her little foot.

“Wite, Mommy?” she asked again.

“Yes,” Beth finally agreed.

“You eat wif us,” Mandy confirmed with a head nod.

“Uh—” Marc’s eyes shot to Beth. Now he understood her unease.

Mandy’s gray eyes quickly got big and wet. “We want him to be big and tong wite Mommy, so he eat wif us?”

“Well…” Beth looked like a trapped animal. “I guess.” She swallowed. “Yeah, you can stay for dinner, if you don’t mind the crazy.” As soon as she said the words, she looked like she wanted to wish them back into her mouth. He could see it on her face. If he’d been a complete jerk, he could have refused and made the little girl cry, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“How can a man say no to a home-cooked meal?”

Marc moved back to the floor, but not before he flashed Beth a charming smile, trying to ease her discomfort. But she sucked in a breath and froze before she swallowed, glancing away.

Mandy always had the worst timing—first the soap and now this. If she’d just stayed in the playroom for five more minutes, Marc Demoda wouldn’t be eating dinner at her house. Beth should have been quicker on her feet, explaining to Mandy why he couldn’t stay.

She looked his way again. Today he was smiling, frequently. And the dimpled smile was cute. No one his age should have such a boyish charm. Not to mention that in the skintight black shirt, it was easy to see his broad shoulders, the corded muscles of his forearms, the flat stomach above the belted cargo pants that sat low on narrow hips. A hard-tight body, but there was a gracefulness to his movement that softened him. A strange combination of hard and soft that was very—

Beth swallowed.

She was immune, she reminded herself. She didn’t get involved with people with larger-than-life reputations anymore. The hard lesson she’d learned as a teenager had taught her to keep her personal life far away from anything involving the media, and that included the paparazzi’s favorite bad boy.

Most people dreamed of the intense, all-encompassing lose-your-head kind of passion. Beth didn’t. She’d done that as a teenager and crashed and burned. Now she wanted the comforting partnership of someone being there through the hard times, not just riding high on the fun. She wanted normal; she was even okay with boring as long as it was comfortable. So she went back to her vegetables and ignored the well-known playboy in her kitchen who was everything she was looking to avoid.

“Mom, you promised to throw with me today.” Steve, her eight-year-old, came in tossing his baseball. Beth snapped her hand out, grabbing the ball before it could hit his mitt.

“No baseball inside.”

The guilt flashed in her son’s eyes before he turned it on her.

“Please, Mom, you never have enough time. I need to throw every night if I’m going to be any good.” The constant guilt of being a single parent struck her again. She never had enough time.

“We will,” she promised. “I just need to finish dinner and get the girls in bed first.”

“It’s going to be dark by then,” he exaggerated.

Marc cleared his throat getting her son’s attention. “I’m almost finished up here. If I’m still invited to stay for dinner, I could toss the ball around.”

Beth shot suspicious eyes at Marc. Why would he offer?

“Can he, since you throw like a girl?” Steve asked.

“I do not,” she retorted. That statement must have come out of one of his uncle’s mouths.

“Uncle Danny says you do.” Steve shrugged, proving Beth right.

“Ask Uncle Will instead,” Beth suggested, but her son looked exasperated.

“He’s prejudiced. You broke his nose with a football. I can ask Uncle Clayton tomorrow, but he’ll probably side with you too since you’re his favorite person on the planet.”

Well, not right now. Beth and nineteen-year-old Clayton were currently arguing about why he couldn’t waste half his inheritance on an overpriced car. But since Bob had died, she got the final say on spending his money until Clayton graduated college or turned twenty-five

Although she had known the Evans family her entire life, she and her late husband had begun dating when she was eighteen and Bob was twenty-five. His youngest brother, Clayton, hadn’t even been nine. After the boys’ parents died, Beth and Bob raised him, and she was more of a mom than a sister to Clayton in a lot of ways.

“I have a ton of uncles, and most of them think Mom throws like a girl,” Steve told Marc. Beth frowned again.

“Well, since none of those uncles are here, I’ll have to do,” Marc said. “Let me put this stuff away, and then I’ll be right out.”

“Awesome!” Steve said. He went flying out the back door, tossing the ball up in the air and catching it again.

Marc turned to walk out of the kitchen, but Beth caught him by the arm. Her pale skin stood out against his tan complexion. Their bodies were close, and she could feel the heat vibrating off of him. He glanced above her head, not looking at her. Did Marc regret the offer, as much as she regretted the dinner invitation?

“You don’t have to play with him.” Beth waited until Marc’s warm brown eyes finally met hers.

For a minute, everything else in the world disappeared. The air buzzed between them, and her stomach flipped. Marc stepped toward her, so that her chest brushed lightly against him, and she couldn’t breathe. He reached out like he was going to touch her.

Beep! The oven timer blared and they jumped apart.

Beth quickly shook her head, and Marc cleared his throat.

“I know I don’t have to, just like you didn’t have to offer to feed me. But I’m currently not busy, while you seem to have a lot on your plate,” Marc said, a small smile creeping across his lips as the timer beeped again. “Plus, it seems like he needs someone besides you to tell him not to use ‘throw like a girl’ or any of the other sexist phrases that so many men throw around.”

Beth stood in stunned silence as Marc grabbed his hat off the counter, pulling it down over his eyes before he walked out. The media made Marc out to be the exact type of guy who’d use a sexist phrase without a thought—not one who’d correct it.

She shook her head again.

Anything Marc said would become Steve’s gospel. Steve loved the former Metros pitcher; he had two Metros posters and Marc’s signed jersey hanging on his bedroom wall. He had known Marc was coming, and Beth had warned him to leave Marc alone. They’d discussed the concepts of privacy and respect; thankfully, having grown up with her father’s fame as a normal part of his life, Steve grasped them. Still, she knew Steve was excited about Marc’s offer to throw with him.

A few minutes later as she stood on the back deck shutting the grill lid, she turned to Steve and Marc in the yard. Instead of throwing the ball back and forth, Marc was squatting next to Steve; they each held a ball in their hands and Marc was teaching him how to grip it correctly. Her son was drinking in every word.

Marc stood back up and demonstrated the windup. Steve mimicked the motions a few times before throwing his ball at the pitchback, hitting it straight in the center of the red square. Beth could tell that Steve was about to explode under Marc’s praise and encouragement. She frowned and spun the ring on her thumb. She needed to finish dinner and straighten up, not worry about a pitching lesson.

Beth was cutting steak for one of the five kids when the back door opened.

“Shoes off,” she called to Steve as he tried to skip that vital step.

“Sorry.” It was Marc who answered, and he toed-off both sneakers. Before Beth could tell him he didn’t have to, Steve made that impossible.

“Mom’s real strict about muddy shoes; she loses it if you track in mud,” Steve told Marc as if they were best buddies. They moved to her sink to wash up together. Seeing the sparkle in her son’s eyes, she couldn’t regret letting Marc eat with them. There wasn’t much Beth wouldn’t do to keep that sparkle there, and if it meant letting Marc hang out for the evening, it was worth it. “Rule one, shoes off. Rule two, hands washed.”

“Place looks different,” Marc commented, glancing around.

Yeah, because while they were playing, she had disarmed the bomb that went off in her house multiple times a day. Now Marc could see things—like the floor.

“Rule three, clean up before quiet time and dinner,” Steve said softly, and Marc chuckled.

“You must need to stay organized with—what, two sets of twins?” Marc let the question hang as he moved to sit at the opposite end of the table.

Before Beth could correct him, her nephew Travis spoke up. “Only me and Trevor are twins,” he explained. “Ava’s our sister and Mandy is our cousin. Two sisters would kill me.” Beth tried not to laugh, but Marc did.

“Aunt Beth watches us while Mommy and Daddy work all the time,” added Ava. “She and Mommy are sisters.”

“Yeah, Dad says Aunt Beth needs the cash because she squatted her money away,” Trevor chimed in helpfully.

Beth frowned. That was far from what had happened. It was true that she no longer controlled the money she’d inherited from her father’s family. Donating it to start Helping Hands hadn’t been irresponsible, but her family never saw it that way. Letting go of the money from her father had been more an act of self-preservation, a way to separate herself further from the parents who had never wanted her but for public opinion couldn’t disown her completely. Playing the part of a family man to the outside world had always been her father’s priority.

She cleared her throat.

“You mean squandered, or wasted. Squatted means ‘bent down.’” She corrected the verb, but not the idea.

“Oh, yeah,” Trevor agreed, his mouth so full that a bit of rice fell out as he spoke.

“Swallow before you talk,” Beth reminded.

“Rule number four,” Steve mumbled to Marc. “And Mom didn’t waste her money. She gave it to people who needed it more.”

Most eight-year-olds wouldn’t have known this, but her family regularly reminded her how they felt about her ‘wasting’ her money, and she couldn’t let her kids believe that helping those less fortunate could ever be a waste.

Marc’s eyes jumped to Beth’s. “I get the impression she’s a bit too responsible to waste anything.”

Beth wasn’t sure whether it was the dimpled smile he sent her way that made her blush or the inaccurate compliment, but the uncertainty didn’t stop the blood from heating her cheeks. She swallowed hard.

“Use your fork, please, Mandy,” Beth said, distracting herself by stopping her daughter from grabbing steak with her fingers.

Mandy’s gray eyes glared back at her accusingly. “You mate my life so hart.”

Marc coughed, and Beth glanced up to see him hiding a smile behind a napkin. It was going to be a long dinner.

The evening was made even longer because the boys insisted that Marc follow the household rule of girls cook and boys do dishes. Beth thought Marc would bow out and try to run for the door, but he simply smiled and washed dishes with six little helping hands.

Dinner and cleanup were so entertaining that Marc almost hated to go. Beth kept things organized even in the funny-as-hell kid chaos, and her smile was infectious. So it was a pleasant shock when he got an excuse to stay.

When Steve, Travis, and Trevor suggested an after-dinner baseball game, he didn’t think Beth would agree. But when she came down after putting the girls to bed, not only did she agree to play, but she also consented to the unfairly unbalanced teams: Steve and Marc vs. her and the twins.

“Mom can never say no when you make it a challenge,” Steve explained. “It’s the athlete in her.”

Marc doubted she had any real athletic ability; kids often made their parents greater than they were. She’d probably played tennis in high school.

“What does the winner get: control of the remote for the day or their choice for dinner tomorrow?” Beth asked the boys.

“Remote,” all three shouted at the same time.

“Remote?” Marc asked. He expected them to say dinner so they could have pizza.

“You must live alone.” Steve shook his head in a gesture that seemed to age him ten years. “When you live with other people, you realize how important it is to hold control of the television.”

Beth chuckled, and the sound twisted weirdly in Marc’s chest. This woman possessed a laugh that did all kinds of things to him.

Steve looked up, his eyes serious. “Let’s win, okay? I can only handle so much Paw Patrol.”

Unfortunately for Steve, it wasn’t Marc’s night. They started in the field, which meant Beth helped the boy’s bat. She bent at the waist, enthralling him with the way her hip jutted out, and made her ass wiggle with each swing of the bat. When it was her turn to the plate, she took a stance that pushed out her chest and ass, drawing his eye helplessly. When Marc told her not to stand like that, Steve looked at him like he was ridiculous and knew nothing about baseball.

When Steve single-handedly got the three outs, and it was Marc’s turn to bat, he couldn’t hit the ball because she bounced when she threw it. Her form wasn’t bad, but the scoop of her yellow shirt dipped, and two perfectly round breasts jiggled with every pitch, and his eyes stayed glued to her chest as the ball soared past him.

Every. Single. Time.

He’d been playing baseball for thirty years and never had he been so unable to concentrate on the game he loved. They ended up losing by two runs—which said something about how good Steve was. Marc had done nothing but try not to drool.

“Next time I get Mom. You’re as bad as Uncle Corey,” Steve mumbled, slamming his mitt on the ground while the other two jumped up and down, celebrating. Until this moment, the frequent mentions of these many uncles had annoyed him. But Marc suddenly felt sorry for Uncle Corey. Playing against this insanely attractive woman was a version of sweet torture.

What was he going to do about his attraction to Beth?

Marc stood, hands on hips, lecturing the three boys on being a good sport, something none of their uncles encouraged. They all went by the adage that ‘Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.’ The brothers made rubbing it in look like an art form. She tried not to laugh when Travis asked what the point of winning was if you can’t be excited about it? Marc started his lecture over.

Part of her didn’t want to like the man. It was bad enough he exuded masculinity and sex like it was a cologne he wore. But watching him teach the boys something important was even sexier than his dimples.

Once she was sure he’d finished his lecture, she called out, “All right, head upstairs, teeth and PJs. Say thank you to Marc.”

After a few fist bumps and head pats, the three boys took off with cries of “Last one to the bathroom is a stinky toadfoot!”

Marc chuckled as they ran off.

“Thanks for that.” Beth smiled.

“The game?”

“Well, that too,” she said as she walked him to the door. “But I meant the lecture. Most of the men in their lives promote that kind of poor sportsmanship.”

“Even if it makes me old and no fun?” The corner of his mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile as he repeated her nephew’s words.

“Well, now that you mention it…” Beth smiled and cocked her head to the side playfully.

“Are you saying I’m old or no fun?” Marc demanded as his brow furrowed, and his hands slammed onto his hips, much the same stance he’d used to lecture the boys. Was he about to scold her? Beth shrugged as she turned and led Marc out the front door.

“We’re pretty much the same age. I wouldn’t call you old,” she said once they were on the porch. Her teeth dug into her bottom lip. His brown eyes turned dangerously dark as she met his gaze.

“I know how to have fun,” he said, his voice dropping to a husky whisper, sending a shiver down her spine.

He stepped closer and stared into her eyes. His chocolate irises flooded with a desire that pounded into her system. Her tongue snaked out and wet her lower lip as she stared, hypnotized by him. One more step and they were close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. Slowly his hand came up, and the warm, callused skin pressed against her cheek. His eyes dropped to her mouth, causing her stomach to tighten. She swallowed back the lump in her throat as Marc dropped his forehead to hers.

“These uncles, they anyone I should worry about?” he asked, and his breath danced across her lips.

“I have a big family, but they’re not that bad,” she said.

He smiled. “Does anyone babysit?” he asked. “You know, so you can have one night off for some grown-up time?”

Was he serious? Get a babysitter for a one-night stand? She suddenly remembered what a playboy this man was, and it was like a bucket of ice-cold water doused any heat she felt.

“Never going to happen.” She turned back to the house, and slammed the door behind her.