Read Online High Heat (Hard Hitters #1) by Linda Morris - Free Book Online

said. “They’re an important Thrashers sponsor.”
    “Fine. Just don’t make me get my picture taken with a guy wearing sprinkles.” He cast a wary eye at the circulating team photographer. “That’s one PR debacle my image can’t stand.”
    “Oh, if you insist.” She cast an eye down him. He looked good today. Nothing new about that—he looked good every day. For this occasion, he’d traded in his usual T-shirt and jeans or Under Armour gear for a pale blue, checkered button-up with the sleeves rolled up, a pair of crisp khakis, and Italian loafers. He looked surprisingly dapper when he took the trouble. Without thinking, Sarah reached up to smooth his collar.
    She froze, feeling the warm ridge of tightly knit muscle and bone in his shoulder. The gesture was too proprietary, the kind of thing a woman would do for a husband. Or a lover. She withdrew her hand, letting it drop in her lap. “Sorry. Your collar was out of whack.”
    His dark hair really was the perfect foil for those bright blue eyes. It set them alight. “Devil’s eyes,” her grandmother would have called them if she’d been around to see them.
    “The devil is a handsome man,” Grandma Dudley had always said. That had always confused her as a child. Handsome? In all the kids’ Bible picture books, the devil had been a hideous thing with red skin, glowing yellow eyes, horns, and a forked tail.
    As an adult, Sarah knew exactly what her grandmother meant.
    “You can touch me anytime you want,” the devil said, a smile playing around his lips.
    “I have a feeling you make that kind of offer to too many women.”
    “Only cute ones,” he said with a smile. She lurched as the car started forward. This perch was more precarious than it looked. Tom grabbed her around the waist to steady her, and her inner teenager swooned. What wouldn’t she have given as a sixteen-year-old to have Tom Cord touch her and flirt with her?
    “Thanks.” She pulled a few inches away and braced herself on the seat back, determined to hold steady without Tom’s help.
    The car inched to the start of the parade route.
    “You look nice.” His eyes ran up and down her in a way that was a shade warmer than friendly, but stopped well short of skeevy.
    “Thanks.” She wore a sheer blue and white print cardigan over a sleek blue halter top and a pair of summery gray trousers. She’d taken the time for makeup as well, and had spent twenty minutes blowing her long hair out with a round brush and pinning it back with a couple of large combs. It was a change from her usual ponytail, but it suited her.
    She was glad she’d taken some extra care now that she would actually be in the parade, but she had to admit that she’d had no such idea in her mind when she’d gotten herself ready this morning.
    Instead, she’d only wanted to impress Tom Cord.
    That didn’t mean anything. Any woman who’d been slighted by a man had dreams of making him regret passing her by. That was natural enough. It didn’t mean she was hung up on him.
    Still, Tom’s eyes had lit up when he’d first seen her, and it had sent a zing to her heart.
    The car made a tight turn onto Main Street. Crowds lined the street: the old, the young, families, and groups of kids. She’d known many of the people her whole life. Some she knew from school, Sunday school, or rec league baseball. Others she’d been seeing at Thrashers games for years. When your dad ran the only team in town, everyone knew you, even if the team’s popularity wasn’t what it once had been.
    “This must have been some kinda town to grow up in.” Tom waved and gave a thumbs-up to a ten-year-old boy in a baseball uniform who was waving to get his attention. The kid jumped up and down at the acknowledgment, hugging his mom and high-fiving his dad.
    “It was.” She smiled and waved at people she recognized: the town’s librarian. The woman who cut her hair. Her ninth-grade math teacher. An usher who’d worked at Dudley Field