Page 9 of Lust
Joey shrugged. “My dad gets angry all the time. Angry doesn’t scare me. So, you wanna play?”
Joey’s childhood voice echoed in her memory and she smiled. She’d played on his neighborhood baseball team the entire summer. Her younger brothers hadn’t cared, but the older ones? They’d been mad as hell about her betrayal. But Liza knew they wouldn’t tattle on her. Mama would just put them in their place and say a girl could do whatever a boy could do... as long as they were being careful with their strength.
And Liza did. She’d become the team’s official pitcher, despite the game being heavily male-orientated. The sad part was, once summer was over, baseball was too. Joey had turned up at the last game with a split lip and said he wouldn’t be able to play for a while. He’d been distant and quiet, but in the end, he’d handed her the baseball and wrote her name on it.
“If you ever need someone on your team, throw that into my yard, and no matter what, I’ll come. Codename: Baseball. Right?”
She hadn’t understood what he’d meant at the time, but as the years went on, Liza had signed her name and thrown the baseball a few times. Joey had returned it too. If one of them needed help, no questions asked, the ball came out. Sometimes in lockers at school, a lunch box, or pockets. It was a secret code.
Even after Liza’s years abroad, and they’d reconnected at the police academy, the baseball was still in play. That’s why it still mattered now.
If Joey thought she’d forgotten all that, he had better get his affairs in order.
She put on her jacket and scarf and then was across town at Joey’s apartment within thirty minutes. The super let her in with a flash of her CCPD badge, and then she made her way up three floors. She pounded on Joe’s door and stood back to wait with the baseball turning in her hand.
Joey was her friend. The only person she’d ever felt at ease around. The only person she’d never sensed lust from, and that included her family. Every time a pretty girl walked past one of her brothers, she’d get a cramp. But never around Joey. She used to think he was broken, then she thought he was gay, but she knew deep down that was a lie too. She still would have sensed lust from him. But the last time she saw him, he claimed to have been in a relationship for the past two years. He was a mystery she needed to solve.
He certainly wasn’t her mate, she knew that for sure.
The mating bond triggered upon touch. Liza and Joey had touched numerous times throughout their lives, so it had to be something else, or she’d have powers by now.
She pounded on his door again.
It swung open.
A tall and dripping wet FBI Special Agent scowled down at her, dimple in chin pronounced. He wore only a small white towel wrapped around his hips. Atinywhite towel. Very narrow hips. Her eyes dragged upward over his naked torso to take in sculptured muscles, broad shoulders, and smooth Mediterranean skin she hadn’t seen since the police academy locker room.
A droplet of water fell from his short, dark hair to run down his five o’clock shadow and then plopped onto one very defined pec that twitched under the weight of her attention. The dark hair on his chest had been clipped close to the skin. He manscaped.
Heat surged up her neck to hit her cheeks.
Liza blinked.
Since when had he gotten so... not like Joey?
3
Liza Lazarus wasthe last person Joe Luciano expected to see outside his apartment, but there she was, staring up at him with big, perfect eyes. The sight of her was a hit to the sternum and, for a moment, his brain stopped communicating with the rest of his body. If he’d thought the impact of her beauty and presence would dim over time, he was wrong.
“What do you want, Liza?” he growled, one hand gripping the doorknob, the other clutching the wet towel around his waist. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“What the hell, Joey?” Her brows slammed together. The sass that had chased him his entire life resurrected. She threw something at his chest. He caught it with one hand.
Every excuse vaporized.
Painful memories of hot summers, secret laughs, and unrequited love opened a gaping hole in his chest.
Codename: Baseball.She remembered.
Liza pushed through the door.
Dazed, he pulled the door closed so his neighbors wouldn’t hear the argument he knew was coming. Then he crossed the small one-bedroom apartment, bypassed unpacked boxes, and went to the open sliding door facing the balcony. He closed that too, but remained and stared through the glass panes to the opposite building. They were three levels up, yet he felt the pull of gravity like he was falling.
His fingers trembled around the ball.
“It’s not Joey anymore. It’s Joe.” His voice was like gravel. “I told you that the last time we saw each other.”
“The last time we saw each other? I’ve left you gazillions of messages since then. It’s been two months.”
