Page 35 of Vegas Heat

“What?” she screeches again, and thank God she didn’t have a mouthful or merlot this time.

I nod. “She’s incredible, Mom. She’s beautiful. Long dark hair that’s almost black, and these big green eyes that just look into my soul. She’s smart, and she’s hilarious.”

She looks a little skeptical, and I answer the question before she even asks it.

“She has no idea who I am,” I say.

“You’re sure?”

I shrug. “Maybe she looked me up, maybe not. But she never mentioned it, and neither did I.”

“You can’t fall in love with someone when you’re not being honest about yourself,” she says.

“Iwashonest about who I am.” I lift a shoulder. “I just left out baseball.”

“But that’s a huge part of who you are, Coop! You can’t just leave it out of the conversation,” she points out.

“I’ll tell her at some point. I keep thinking it might be good to take her to the stadium and confess it all there. Once I’ve signed the contract and it’s been made official, of course. But for now, I really like being Cooper, the guy who works with kids, instead of Cooper, former baseball player.”

“I suppose I can’t fault you for that, but you have to be honest with her. She needs to know what she’s getting into before shefalls for you, too.” She follows up that statement with a sip of wine.

“Too late. We both felt it, Mom. We toured Vegas, and she took me out to the middle of the desert where we watched the stars when it was dark and we stayed out there long enough to watch the sun lift over the horizon while we drank wine and talked about everything.”

“Except baseball,” she reminds me.

“Except baseball,” I confirm.

“So she’s the one?” she asks.

“It’s way too early to decide that, but if the next time I see her feels anything like this past weekend did…then yeah, I think she might be the one.”

“I want to meet her.”

I laugh. “No.” I don’t tell her I invited her home with me.

“Oh, come on! YouknowI’ll know within ten seconds whether she’s right for you. Like with Stacy, remember?”

“Exactly why it’s a negative, Mother. I’m not letting anyone get inside this yet.” I drain the rest of my beer.

She blows out a loud and dramatic sigh. “Fine. But if I don’t like her and you want me to say I do, I’d do that for you.”

I laugh. “Like you did with Stacy?”

She rolls her eyes. “Point taken.”

Stacy first met my mom when she came into town from Chicago to visit during the offseason. We’d only been together a few months, and she wasn’t living with me yet, but she was staying over most nights. She headed up to bed first, and my mom let me know how she felt the minute she was out of the room.

“I don’t like her,” she’d whispered to me.

She hasn’t liked anyone I dated. Ever. Mostly, I always suspected, because even though she wanted me to settle downand have kids, nobody would ever be good enough for her baby boy.

She loves Marissa, but it’s different with my mom and Connor. He’s always kept to himself, while I’ve probably overshared with her. He was thirteen when we lost my dad, and he turned inward while I clung onto my mom. He bolted from her house the second he turned eighteen, and that left us time to grow closer and closer as her life became my baseball games.

“Do you at least have a picture so I can have the mental image of you with her?” she asks.

With a bit of reluctance, I pull out my phone. I flip to the message she sent me with the photo of the two of us, and I stare at her for a beat. Her smile is wide, and her green eyes are expressive. God, she’s beautiful.

I hand over the phone, nerves pinging my chest as my mom studies the photo.

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