“None of the above.” When he glanced back and noticed me rushing to keep up, he slowed his pace. “Today I’m shooting a spread for Sports Anonymous. Only a limited number of issues will be printed, and they’ll be auctioned off to benefit the children’s hospital back in San Diego.”
I knew the hospital he was talking about. During the off-season, when I had more than three minutes in a row of free time, I volunteered there. It was a facility that didn’t charge anything for families who couldn’t afford it and provided top-of-the-line care.
“And before you get too far in your estimation of how much they’re paying me to do this, I can give you the exact number.” Archer lifted his hand, his thumb and index finger joining to make a circle. “Zero dollars and zero cents.” He smiled, lifting the circle his fingers were making to his eye. He peered at me through it.
A laugh swept past my lips. “That’s refreshing. Not a lot of people do something without first thinking about what’s in it for them, you know?”
Archer stuffed his hands in his pockets, tipping his head at a crew of people up ahead who looked like they were expecting him. “The way I see it, I’m already living the dream. I get paid to do what I love.”
“You get paid a lot to do what you love,” I added. Last I’d heard, Archer was one of the top five paid players in the sport.
“I might be the only guy in this sport with hamburger tastes on a steak budget, but maybe one day I’ll go crazy and buy a house or something.”
My eyebrows came together. “You don’t have a house now?”
“I have an apartment back in San Diego. Nothing elaborate, but it works. We spend so much time on the road that having the kind of sprawling estates some of the guys have and only getting to enjoy it a few weeks out of the year seems like a big waste. Plus . . .” Archer’s speech came to a succinct end.
“Plus what?”
The crew of people at the end of the hall were opening up doors leading into a room, practically paving a runway for us. Sports Anonymous logos were plastered everywhere, from the carpet leading into the room, to the lanyards around people’s necks, to the stickers on the side of cameras that looked to be filming us as we moved closer.
Luke Archer was a god in this world—it was easy to forget when he was walking beside me with his hands in his pockets and talking about apartments.
“Plus”—Archer shrugged, slowing down as we got closer—“you know.”
“I don’t know.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Plus I don’t want to live in some big house by myself. My sisters still live in our family home north of San Diego, and I don’t want to come ‘home’ to no one. Until I have someone waiting for me, my apartment works just great.”
His pace picked back up again, and this time it seemed like he wanted to put some distance between us. I could have told him I felt the same. I could have told him that that was the reason I was living in my own apartment back in San Diego. I could have told him, but something about the way Luke Archer looked at me made me wonder if keeping the private parts of our lives to ourselves was better.
I couldn’t get involved with another player. Definitely not one on the very same team I worked for. People already talked shit about how I’d gotten here. If it got out that I was sleeping with the star of the team, no one would ever take me seriously again. My credibility as a damn good athletic trainer would be stamped out by the assumption that I did my best work on my back.
No. I couldn’t get involved with a player.
One like Luke Archer especially.
THIS WASN’T THE type of photo shoot I was imagining. This was the hot baseball player equivalent of the Sports Anonymous swimsuit edition.
Thanks to my line of work, I’d seen more than my fair share of half to mostly to fully naked men. I didn’t even blink when the full monty processional rolled out of the showers after a game. But for some reason, seeing Archer shirtless from a good twenty feet away was threatening to put me into cardiac arrest.
I’d never worked with him before, since Shepherd oversaw him, but when Archer had emerged from the dressing room a few minutes after being sent in there, I was relieved I hadn’t. Holding onto my removed professionalism would have been impossible while working with Archer.
There were plenty of good bodies in this sport. Plenty of good bodies I’d had my hands all over. A good body didn’t turn my head anymore. They’d become commonplace and everyday.
But Luke Archer . . . his body went beyond good and fell somewhere in the realm of unreal.
Muscles bulged from his shoulders down to his forearms, veins drawing jagged patterns down his arms. His chest was wide, narrowing into a stomach that was so cut, I found myself wondering how many women had fantasized about running their tongues down the canyons tapering into his pants.
The baseball pants they’d stuffed him in were at least two sizes too small, showcasing the ideal ballplayer’s round ass, along with something just as prominent around front.