Carter looked between Jeff and his truck, then sighed and followed instruction. Any moment now Jeff would be canonized for performing a miracle.
When he got in the truck, Carter shoved a bag at him. “You’re going to need this,” he said sweetly.
Jeff opened it to reveal a forest-green T-shirt with Rhodes’s Garage printed on it, in size Carter. He swallowed. “Gosh. You shouldn’t have.”
“There’s a whistle too. Really pulls the outfit together.”
“I regret our friendship,” Jeff told him as he put the truck in Drive.
Carter leaned smugly back in his seat, eyes closed and face turned toward the evening sunshine. “No, you don’t.”
He really didn’t.
They got to the ball park before any of the kids and their parents. Jeff set up one of the camp chairs in the dugout across from the end of the bench so Carter could put his foot up, then passed him a sandwich. “All right. What exactly does T-ball practice consist of, anyway? Not sure if you remember, but team sports were not exactly my forte.”
Carter looked up from unwrapping his dinner and smiled fondly. “If I recall, you were definitely one of the dandelion-pickers.” He raised the sandwich to his mouth and took a bite. Jeff didn’t know what to focus on—how wide Carter could open his mouth or the little smear of mayonnaise at the corner of his lips—so he turned his attention to his own dinner. “Practice is practice. Warm-ups, stretching, catch, what passes as batting practice.”
“I literally do not know the proper way to hold a T-ball bat,” Jeff pointed out.
“That’s all right.” Carter grinned. “Neither do they.”
Setting up the tee did turn out to be within his wheelhouse. After all, Jeff had many years’ experience setting up the band’s equipment, which was a lot more complicated than a few pieces of crappy plastic. He set a whiffle ball thing on the tee and propped a few bats against the backstop, and then he heard a car pull into the parking lot.
Time to get changed.
Jeff walked back into the dugout and reached behind him to pull his shirt over his head. He’d changed out of Carter’s T-shirt and shorts before he left the cabin, and now here he was about to put Carter’s clothes back on. Probably better if he didn’t examinethattoo closely before hanging out with a bunch of children. “So you’re gonna help me remember everybody’s name, right?”
He popped his head out from under the hem, the shirt still half on his arms, and stopped dead.
Because Carter was watching him with hot eyes, the irises almost consumed by blown pupils. There was plenty of sunshine left, so it wasn’t the low light making him look at Jeff like Jeff was about to star in his favorite adult video.
Jeff’s mouth went dry. He could feel the heat of that gaze on his skin as he dropped his shirt on the bench.
“Don’t worry.” Carter dragged his gaze up from the line of hair that led down from Jeff’s navel. “I’ll help you with whatever you need.”
Jeff wet his lips, caught in Carter’s gaze. Something pulled him inexorably closer. The heat in Carter’s eyes hooked into his belly and curled in the tension inside him.
It would be so easy. They were so close now. Another step and Jeff could touch him—could brace a hand on his shoulder, lean down—
A car door slammed and the spell broke. Jeff realized he was a recognizable famous person standing shirtless in a public dugout looking for all the world like he was about to do something that could get him arrested, and he quickly reached for the team T-shirt.
Carter was still watching him when he finished putting it on, though the fire in his eyes had been banked. Everything about his expression said,Later.
So that wasn’t going to be a huge distraction while Jeff had a dozen kids to look after, or anything.
Everyone seemed to arrive more or less at once, and they piled into the dugout in their team shirts.
“All right, kids,” Carter said, in a slightly louder version of his campfire-safety-talk voice, “I want you to listen up, okay? I had a little accident this week, and I’m not supposed to do too much standing yet. This is Coach Jeff. He’s going to help me out today. So listen to him and don’t give him a hard time if he forgets your name, all right?”
Jeff was having a hard enough time remembering his own name. “Thanks, Carter.” He turned to the kids. “All right. Let’s start with some warm-up laps. Who likes to run?”
Every kid raised their hand. Bless them.
“Me!”
“I do!”
Well, running, at least, Jeff could do. “All right. Let’s all run some laps together to get our muscles ready for practice. Ready, set, go!”
