“Question for both of you. If you could do anything else, besides be a ballplayer, or an art historian for Emma, what would you do?” I ask.
Grant gestures to Emma. “Ladies first.”
She adopts a wicked grin. “Hockey play-by-play commentator.”
“Oh yeah, I can totally see that,” Grant says.
“And you, G-man?” I ask, tossing out the nickname Sullivan and the other guys use with him. It sounds all wrong on my tongue.
He smiles my way, his blue eyes sparkling maybe with mischief as he gives a casual shrug. “We’re birds of a feather, Emma and me,” he says, tapping her shoulder. He’s touchy-feely with her in the way I suspect he is with female friends. Maybe in the way he’s fully able to be only with women. He’s a physical guy, and with females he can set a hand on an arm or a shoulder without any undertones. Then he answers, “Though in my case, I’d play hockey.”
“Sports, natch.” As I do, my brain snags on something. What Grant said in the car on the way over. If we were other people. If I played baseball and he played hockey. Is his comment just now about us? Is it a private remark? And why do I like it so much?
“What, this surprises you? Sports is my love,” he says to me, all casual and charming.
Yeah, it’s not about me. It’s not about us, and that’s fine too. His answer is all him, all one-track-mind athlete, and I laugh. I am in knots over him.
Grant’s face goes starkly serious. “Baseball is everything,” he says, then shoots me a stern stare. “Don’t try to pretend it’s any different for you.”
“No arguments here,” I say. “Baseball is life.”
Emma shakes her head, laughing. “You guys.”
“What?” I ask.
She lowers her voice to a barren whisper. “You’re so ador—”
I growl, a warning sound.
She holds up her hands in surrender.
“She’s not wrong, Deck,” Grant whispers.
Emma’s eyes twinkle with Cupid’s arrows. “Deck.” She clasps her heart. “I die.”
“Rookie,” I rumble in an even lower voice.
Emma gasps, flaps her hands. “Stahp, stahp.”
Grant clears his throat. “Okay, how about we answer what we’d do outside of sports. I’ll go first. I’d be James Bond. How about you, Declan?” he asks, making a production out of sounding all professional when he says my name.
And it is adorable.
One of the guys.
He’s one of the guys.
My answer is easy—same thing I’d say to anyone. “If I could do anything besides baseball, I would shred a guitar like nobody’s business. I would rock out to Guns N’ Roses.” I pick up my air guitar. I play the opening notes to “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” humming along. Grant’s eyes light up, twinkling. “Damn, that’s good.”
“Thank you. If only I could do it for real. What about you, Emma?”
She exhales deeply. “I suppose if I can’t call a game, I’d be a ski jumper or a fighter pilot.”
Grant offers her a fist for knocking and then dives into a conversation with her about jets. The fact that he gets along so easily, so smoothly with everyone, but especially my friends, makes my brain scramble a little more.
I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do when this fling ends in another day, another night.
This man is gorgeous inside and out.
He’s the heart-stopping kind. It’s frying my sense of reason.
When intermission comes and Grant excuses himself for the restroom, Emma grabs my arm, drops her voice, and murmurs in my ear, “Holy Rembrandt. Holy Vermeer.”
I crack up. “Explain.”
“Those are some of my favorite Dutch painters,” she says, wildly animated as she whispers, “Seventeenth Century Dutch art is my favorite time period.”
“And?”
“He’s like a painting,” she says.
I laugh. “Didn’t Rembrandt paint dudes with fancy collars?”
She rolls her eyes. “Rembrandt painted gorgeous works of art. Vermeer painted the most incredible images that move my very soul.”
“Fine. I hear ya. Though that’s not the comparison I’d use.”
“How’s this? He’s like a Bugatti. Is that better?”
That makes my engine purr. Grant is top-of-the-line everything. I grin, wide and honestly proud. “I know, right? He’s a ten.”
“More like a fifteen.”
I stroke my chin. “If he’s a Rembrandt, and he is, then he’s a one in a million,” I say, a little in awe because how the hell did someone like Grant fall into my lucky lap? But mostly I’m damn grateful that he’s with me.
At least for now.
And for now, he feels like mine.
She keeps her voice low, understanding the importance of discretion. “He’s funny and sweet. I bet he’s as besotted with you as you are with him.”
“No way. I’m not besotted.”
She narrows her eyes. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Emma,” I chide.
“I know, I know. It’s impossible. Still.”
“It is. We are impossible.” I underline the cold, hard truth with a Sharpie.
“I get it,” she says sadly and pats my shoulder, rubs it sympathetically. “I do get it. It’s just that after college and poetry class, and the things you shared and knowing your heart . . .” Her voice hitches. This woman knows the truth about some of the toughest times in my life. She knows more about me than almost anyone.