Pitch Please
There’s No Crying in Baseball #1
By
Lani Lynn Vale
Genre: Sports Romance
Release Date: September 8, 2017
Photographer: Michael Stokes
Cover Model: BT Urella
Baseball
is life, the rest is just details.
Everyone
who’s played the game has heard those words a time or two. But Hancock has
heard them his entire life from his parents. His family has lived and breathed
baseball even before he started little league.
Hancock
“Parts” Peters has a name that inspires grins across many faces, but the moment
those faces get their first look at him, those grins slide away.
Hancock
is gruff, filterless, and doesn’t give a crap who he offends. He is the only
man in baseball who doesn’t care if he gets an endorsement or not. He’s there
to play the game. He’s there to win. He’s there because baseball is his life.
People
think he’s a jerk.
And
maybe he is. But if that’s how he has to come off to get people to leave him
the hell alone so he can play in peace, so be it. The less people he has to
worry about offending, the better.
***
Don’t
let the fear of striking out hold you back.
Sway
Coffman didn’t mean to rock the boat. She was just there to do her job.
Sure,
she was a woman in a man’s world. Yes, she beat out several of those men to get
the job as head athletic trainer for the professional baseball team, The Texas
Lumberjacks. And yeah, she now got hate mail from those men.
But
she’s good at her job, and she earned the position.
What
she is not good at, however, is talking to men.
Men
seem to see her curvy hips, large breasts and thick thighs and automatically
think she is incompetent. Because surely a fat girl couldn’t get the job
treating some of the most fit and athletic men in the world, right?
Wrong.
This
fat girl got the job, and she is proud of it.
What
else did she get?
The
attention of the sexiest bearded man she’d ever had the pleasure of laying eyes
on.
It was
enough to bring to her down to her knees…in front of that man, the hot and
grumpy baseball player, Hancock Peters.
“Mr. Peters!”
Someone called from further down the hallway that led to the field. “Mr.
Peters! Wait!”
Hancock looked
over his shoulder, agitation clearly written all over his face.
“I’ve already
told you I won’t be doing it.” Hancock informed the small man.
And he was
small.
Maybe not
compared to a normal man, but standing next to Hancock the man looked
positively minimal.
“Please,” the
man continued as if Hancock hadn’t even spoken. “This is a multi-thousand
dollar commercial that we’ve been planning for months. Surely you understand
that we’re doing it for…”
“Craig,” Hancock
growled. “I am not doing the Harlem Shake. Do I look like a man that does
the fucking Harlem Shake?”
Craig, who I
guessed was in control of PR, smiled soothingly.
“Parts,” he held
out his hand.
I still wondered
why he was called Parts, but I wasn’t ever going to ask him.
It was weird,
and it was also a freakin’ secret. Everyone in the entire league wondered and speculated
why he was called Parts. Nobody knew, though.
“I’ll be there.
But only if I can sit in the back and nobody sees me.” Hancock conceded.
“And don’t try to move me, or I’m leaving. Capisce?”
Craig nodded his
head urgently.
“How much time
do we have until we start?” Hancock asked Craig.
“Oh, about
twenty minutes or so. Do you need me to bring you anything to drink?”
Craig asked, happy now that he’d gotten his way.
But I knew that
Craig hadn’t gotten his way.
Far from it.
If I had my
guess, Hancock wouldn’t even be in the commercial.
He’d literally
stay on the sidelines and make it a point to stay out of each of every shot,
just like he did after games when reporters were hoping to interview him.
Then there were
the photos that featured him in them.
None of them
were taken with his permission.
Other than the
one that the MLB used to show his stats during games, I’d never seen one
picture with him looking at the camera.
“No, no drink
Craig. Thank you.” Hancock waved Craig off.
The moment Craig
was dismissed, he hurried back in the direction of the field, a freakin’ skip
in his step.
When he rounded
the corner, I turned to face Hancock fully again.
“What?” I
asked, wondering what that look on his face was about.
“I’m not doing
the Harlem Shake.” He repeated.
I held up my
hands in understanding.
“I’m not much of
a dancer, either. You and me can hang out in the back like the losers we are.”
I teased.
I hadn’t meant
that either of us were necessarily real losers or anything, and the moment the
words left my lips, I realized how it sounded.
“I’m sorry,” I
said, holding up my hand. “In no way, shape, or form am I accusing you of
being a loser.”
He grinned.
“It’s okay.” He
winked. “I don’t dance. I don’t do pictures. In fact, if I had my way, I
wouldn’t even be here right now.”
I smiled at him.
“Sway!” Someone
called. “Let’s go! We have to sit together in the front.”
Sinclair, the
one man in the entire complex that I didn’t want to see, was standing there
sneering at me.
“She’s not
sitting in the front, Sinclair. She’s sitting with me in the back. We
have to talk about what I expect out of her this season.” Hancock
rumbled, stopping me with a large hand on my arm when I went to move around
him.
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