She shakes her head. “Not just any front row seats. They’re right behind home plate.”
“We should be able to see everything.”
Brittany’s eyes glisten under the soft light and my gut twists. Is she crying? Did I do something wrong?
“I can’t believe you did this. How did you…” She snaps her mouth shut, swallows hard, and blinks several times.
I snatch the tickets from her hands. “We don’t have to go,” I say, desperate to fix whatever the hell I did to make her cry. “We can do something else, like go catch a movie or have dinner or something.”
“No.” She steals the tickets back. “The game is perfect. It’s exactly what I would’ve picked. It’s just that…well… no one has ever done something like this for me before.”
I have the intense urge to punch her ex in the nose. What man in his right mind wouldn’t want to spoil this woman? I sure as hell do. Especially when she looks at me with those big, expressive doe eyes—like she is right now. “Well, I’m not your normal guy.”
“No,” she whispers. “You’re not.”
“So,” I say, sliding my hand to her waist. “How fast can you get decked out in your Cardinals gear? I’d like to take you out for lunch before the game.”
“No ballpark food?” She pushes her plump bottom lip out and it’s too damn enticing. Leaning forward, I suck the offending piece of flesh into my mouth.
“Definitely ballpark food,” I say, biting gently on her lower lip. “But a light lunch first.”
Brittany pats my chest and steps away. “I’ll be back in ten minutes!”
Spinning on her heel, she runs out of my house. And, if I’m not mistaken, she just took a tiny little piece of my heart with her.
“Connor,” she says, nudging my arm. “This is amazing. I’ve never been this close.” The look on her face is priceless and tugs at something deep in my chest. Brittany’s lips part, a wide smile stretching across her face.
Casey told me her sister has an addiction to the St. Louis Cardinals, but I don’t think Casey even knows just how deep that addiction runs. When Brittany showed back up to my house earlier today, she was wearing a red Cardinals shirt with a matching hat and even dangling Cardinals earrings. But the kicker was her shoes. Yes, the girl has Cardinals shoes.
Her blonde hair was pulled up in a ponytail and tucked into her Cardinals hat—an incredibly sexy look on her—and she had her face painted with a red number four proudly displayed across her left cheek.
“Oh my gosh, there’s Yadi!”
Who the fuck is Yadi?
My eyes follow her gaze. Sure enough, there he is—number four. Apparently, Yadi is the object of my date’s affection.
“Have you always been a Cardinals fan?” I ask, genuinely interested.
Dragging her eyes back to mine, she nods. “Yep. My dad is a huge baseball fan. He used to bring me to games all the time, but we sure as hell couldn’t afford seats like these. We were usually in the nosebleeds. Way up there,” she says, pointing to the top of the stadium. “But that didn’t matter. It was our thing.”
I wish I had memories like that. Hell, I wish I had a dad. I take that back. I’ve got a dad—somewhere—but the piece of shit decided drugs were more important than his own kid.
“How about you?”
Brittany asks. “How long have you been a fan?”
I tilt my head to the side. “About three days.”
“What?” she asks, crinkling her nose.
“I’ve never been much of a sports fan.” I shrug, leaving out the fact that I didn’t even have a TV to watch sports until I was put into foster care at the age of fifteen. And even then I wasn’t allowed to actually watch the TV. “When your sister told me how much of a Cardinals fan you were, I decided I should rectify that.”
Brittany watches me for what feels like hours, her blue eyes churning with emotion. Warm fingers tangle with mine, and I look down at our joined hands and then back up at her. “I’m not really sure what to say.”
Leaning over the arm rail, she kisses me gently on the lips. I don’t know what it is, but I’m starting to think she has a magic mouth. Every time we kiss, it’s as if nothing else in the world matters but that kiss. At first I thought it was just a fluke, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t happen every single time.
Brittany pulls back and my mouth follows hers, begging for more. “You’re getting major points for this,” she says softly.