Page 62 of Vegas Heat

FASTBALL

VEGAS HEAT: THE EXPANSION TEAM

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER 1: GABBY

“Oh good, you two have met,” my dad says, his voice shocking me from my frozen state of seeing Cooper standing in my kitchen. What the hell is going on? “Cooper, this is my daughter, Gabriella.”

My eyes feel like they’re going to fall out of their sockets, they’re bugged out so wide.

“Cooper’s the guy who’s staying with us for the next few weeks until his house is ready,” my dad explains. “He’s going to be playing third base for the Heat.”

He…he’swhat?

He’s going to be playing third base for the Heat.

Of course he is.

I blow out a breath. “Nice to meet you,” I say, pressing my lips together and hoping he plays along. I dig my fingernails into my palms, hoping I don’t feel the pain so I can wake up from this nightmare.

But nope…the pain slices fresh.

Shit.

So that’s the new job that brought him from San Diego to Vegas.

He’s going back to the game, and my dad is going to be hismanager.

That’s a pretty big detail to leave out of the story, but he’sstillnever told me he played baseball. Orplaysbaseball, as in present tense. And on the exact same hand, I’ve never told him I’m the daughter of a baseball legend.

My dad isn’t going to react well to Cooper and me. We need to talk. We need to touch base and figure out how to best handle this.

Troy Bodine is a passionate man to begin with, but a flip switched in him when he met me and when the two of us started getting close. He’s protective of me—maybemoreprotective than most fathers would be over their twenty-one-year-old daughters since he missed out on the first eighteen years of my life. It’s like he’s making up for lost time now, and there’s no way he’s going to take kindly to the fact that one of his players is fucking his daughter.

Particularly not one who’s twelve years her senior.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Cooper says, his brows pinched together like he’s trying to piece all this together, too.

Is our breakfast still on?

Where do we even go from here?

“I was just heading out to meet a friend for breakfast,” I say, going for nonchalance but epically failing as my voice comes out all high-pitched and weird.

“Have a great time, sweetheart,” my dad says, clearly missing my total internal battle, and my cheeks flame as I pass by Cooper to head upstairs and grab my purse.

I hear my dad behind me as I pass by. “She’s a good kid. Great head on her shoulders.”

“She seems lovely,” Cooper says softly, and tears pinch behind my eyes as I think about what this is going to mean for us.

I never in a million years imagined he was the new player my dad invited to stay at our house. My dad’s been gone so much lately that most of our communication has happened over text message. Between school starting and falling for Cooper, I haven’t been around much myself.

I thought he retired. I thought he had an injury that took him out of the game.

I guess I thought a lot of things I was wrong about.

Oh God.

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