“Hi, you must be Starla.”
“Yeah, hi. Nice to meet you.”
She had direct dark eyes, but honestly, Starla detected no hint of animosity there—and she was looking hard for it. “I know Ash and Mimi will be glad to see you,” she said. “They talk about you all the time.”
Wow, really? She was touched. Her gaze wandered to the girls, who hadn’t noticed her yet. They were warming up on the field now, chasing ground balls, ponytails bouncing. If Starla had seen them beforehand, she would’ve loved to put their team colors in their hair. “They’re awesome girls. I think the world of them.”
Shelly gave Jared a glance and moved closer to the fence, propping a knee on the bench to bring her face as near as she could. “I am so sorry about what you’re going through. I’ve been there. Maybe not like you have, but I know the fear. Anyway, you probably don’t want to talk about it, especially here, but I wanted to say that.”
Starla blinked twice, swallowing a lump in her throat so she could speak. “I… Thank you. Seriously, thank you so much.”
“Hang in there.”
“I will.”
Feeling scrubbed raw, she found an empty spot in the bleachers and sat on the warm metal by herself as the girls’ team came back to the dugout and Shelly began the impossible task of putting seven-and eight-year-old girls in lineup order. Jared walked out to take his place at third, looking entirely too fine with his ball cap pulled low and those jeans hugging him in all the right places. Ashley and Mia were both waving at him, calling, “Daddy! Daddy!” and the grin he flashed them started a small fire in Starla’s panties. Holy shit, he was a miracle worker to get her turned on while she felt like a slab of meat surrounded by bloodthirsty sharks. She might want to have his babies after all.
Nah.
“Are you and Jared dating?” asked the blonde woman beside her, who was dressed in a clingy, blingy T-shirt version of the girls’ jerseys. She had an equally blonde toddler sitting on her lap, a little girl whose ponytail ribbons cutely matched the team’s colors.
“Just friends,” Starla said.
The woman nodded knowingly, too knowingly, as if to say, “Well, of course, he couldn’t really be with you,” and it pissed Starla off. She bit down on the urge to say, Just banging on the regular. Not really true, of course, but it would be funny as hell.
The game started, and Starla had to repress a laugh at how the parents in the stands acted like the fucking World Series was being played out in front of them. So ridiculous. This whole charade was more for the parents than the kids, it seemed, but maybe she was just cynical. She’d loved playing, but she’d been thrown out of more games than she’d finished.
But then Mia came up to bat in her cute pink helmet, M STANTON written across her back, number eight. Her coach pitched her the first ball; swing and miss. Starla found herself calling out encouragement with everyone else. Jared had his hands on his knees, watching his daughter with a keen eye. “Elbow up, baby, you got this.” Fuck, he was sexy. To think she’d had that last night. She had to tear her gaze away to watch Mia again as she complied with his instructions, lifting her elbow higher. The next ball sailed way too high. She didn’t swing.
“Good eye!” Starla called, clapping. She noticed Jared look at her. He was probably wondering what the fuck she knew about a good eye. She had news for him: the reason she’d gotten thrown out of games was because she’d used softball as an outlet for her repressed, adolescent aggression. She’d played like a rampaging beast, and she’d been damn good at it. And she felt those old urges awakening in her gut.
Of course, she had to remind herself that these were eight-year-olds.
Mia gave the next ball a decent whack, and it sailed over the pitcher’s mound to drop into the infield. The shortstop scooped it up, dropped it, scooped it up again, and threw it to first—way too far to the left. Starla shot off the bleachers, screaming her head off. “Run, Mimi! Go baby go baby!” Mia hustled it to second, saw her dad waving her toward him, and took off for third. The runner ahead of her scored. By the time Mia reached Jared, the other team got the ball back to the pitcher, so he gave her the stop sign. They high-fived each other as Mia hopped excitedly on third base. Jared pointed Starla out in the stands, and the little girl waved to her.
Starla waved back and sat down, laughing—more at herself than anything else. She had a good view of Jared’s ass as he knelt beside his daughter to give her instructions, and she wondered how many other moms out here were admiring that view as well. Glancing around revealed, however, that most of them were looking curiously or amusedly at her.
“Mia’s a good hitter,” said the woman to her right with the little girl, who was getting squirmy on her mother’s lap.