The Perfect Catch

by Linda Cajio

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

In Linda Cajio’s playful, sexy story of instant attraction, a feisty widow and a straight-laced executive discover love is a contact sport.
 
Wearing an expensive suit and an air of bored calm, Graham Reed looks like a fish out of water at the ballpark. Even after enthusiastic fan Elaine Simpson soaks him with cold soda, he manages to keep his cool. Hot and bothered by this sexy stranger with broad shoulders and smoldering eyes, the perky schoolteacher insists on cleaning his suit. When he shows up at her door, Elaine realizes that the game has just begun.
 
The busy owner of a successful pizza chain, Graham can’t get the memory of kissing pretty, down-to-earth Elaine out of his head. But it’s clear her teenage son hates him, and his own batting average when it comes to long-term relationships isn’t impressive. So is he in or is he out? Only his heart has the answer—and he’s putting it all into winning Elaine in a game called love.
 
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: About Last Night, Blaze of Winter, and Lana’s Lawman.

Release date: November 12, 2012

Publisher: Loveswept

Print pages: 256

Sample

ONE
 
“Whoooo! Struck him out, the stinkin’ loser!”
 
Elaine Sampson clamped her hand over her mouth and flopped back into her seat, horrified at her outburst. It didn’t matter that the crowd at Veterans Stadium was roaring its own approval as the Atlanta Braves batter walked away dejected from the plate, struck out by Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Curt Schilling.
 
“Mom!” her son, Anthony, exclaimed, staring at her with a thirteen-year-old’s complete mortification for his mother’s embarrassing action. His face was bright red as he glanced around to see if anyone was looking.
 
“Hot damn! Leave her be, sugar,” Cleo Burfield said to Anthony. The big black woman patted him on the back in commiseration. “First home game of the season and your mama’s ready for action.”
 
Anthony grinned at Cleo. If Cleo approved, it was cool.
 
“Never thought I’d hear that from you, Elaine,” Mary Ososa said, pressing her rosary beads one after the other in silent prayer as the next batter faced Schilling. Mary was as prim as Cleo was sassy, although she was grinning at Elaine.
 
“It’s about time we heard that from her, Mary,” Jean Keenan said, laughing. “We’ve been the Widows’ Club for nearly two years now, and she’s never lost it before at a game.”
 
“I’ve got to stop listening to the morning guys on WIP radio,” Elaine muttered, slouching down in her seat. She still couldn’t believe she had shouted like a fishwife. Her, a seventh-grade schoolteacher with a master’s degree, for goodness sake. But the Phils were the Phils. They had to win their home opener.
 
The two men in the row in front of her had turned around at her outburst, and she realized they were still staring at her. Their more formal clothes gave them away as businessmen attending the game, probably in their company’s block of seats, a business entertainment phenomenon of the last few years. “Suits,” the fans called the corporate types, because they just sat and did deals, barely watching the game. Certainly they never cheered for the team, either team. They never clapped for a player. And they always left before the eighth inning, to beat the inevitable traffic jam. Even worse, by getting season tickets to choice seats, they moved more fans to the upper levels of the stadium, out of the lower 100, 200, and 300 levels. Elaine felt lucky her little crowd still managed to get in their same 300-level row year after year when they bought their own season tickets.
 
One of the men in front of her, with the perfect hair pulled back in a tiny male ponytail, and with the perfect tan, and with a pierced hoop earring in one ear, glared up at her as if she had uttered absolute filth at him. She knew he was thinking she was one of “those” kinds of fans, abusive and without manners in general. The other man, although wearing an expensive suit and also sporting a perfect, if shorter, haircut, looked less urban-plastic than his companion. He was older, for one thing—around forty, she judged. His face was lean and rugged, with age lines beginning around the mouth. His hair was dark except for a few silver strands at his temples, just one or two, as if he’d earned them early rather than through the normal aging process. Elaine had noticed him before, when he had sat down. Throughout the opening innings, she had found herself catching glimpses of his profile, which had somehow piqued her curiosity and made her wish she could get a fall look at him.
 
Her wish had now come true. As the man stared at her, her heart beat at lightning speed, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her brain turned to complete mush. But her insides were swirling with a deliciously warm sensation that left her breathless. The intensity scared her, for she hadn’t felt like this in a long, long time.
 
His eyes held her own gaze. They were a deep brown, the same color as the eyes of a fawn she had once nursed to adulthood. Gentleness, though, wasn’t in the depths of these eyes. They were hard-edged … speculating … impossible to turn from.
 
Panic shot through Elaine as if she’d just found herself teetering on the edge of a cliff. The noise of the crowd faded to a vague mumble until the world seemed to darken and close in around her and the man. He glanced lower, his gaze traveling down and back up again, taking in her red Phillies cap with her ponytail poking through the gap in the back, her hooded sweatshirt, jeans, thick white crew socks, and sneakers. He couldn’t see much of her body, not with the way she was huddled in the molded plastic seat. But every inch of her felt the shock of his gaze. Here she was, a thirty-seven-year-old widow with one adolescent son, and she couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked at her like this. She ought to be flattered, but she felt as vulnerable as a rabbit under a wolf’s paw. She also wished she was ten pounds slimmer and in a strapless gown. Heck, this kind of male assessment came along once in a blue moon, and she ought to look good when it did.
 
“Mom … Mom!”
 
The man turned forward again, finally breaking their locked gazes. Elaine blinked. She took a deep, cleansing breath, trying to regain her equilibrium. The world came back into focus.
 
The bright lights of the Vet blazed down on the field, illuminating the players. The crowd’s cheers were suddenly deafening, the salty odor of popcorn and the sweet scent of soda overpowering. People all around her were on their feet, screaming at the top of their lungs.
 
Curt had struck out another one.
 
She grinned at her son, who was cheering and hugging Cleo. She knew he would die a thousand deaths before he hugged his own mother in public. Cleo was different.
 
“Bottom of the fourth, and my boy’s coming up!” Cleo announced proudly.
 
“If Lenny Dykstra really was your boy, we’d have the story of the year,” Jean said, chuckling. She was tall and angular where Cleo was short and busty.
 
“I couldn’t be his mama!” Cleo laughed with glee. “Lenny’s Mr. Excitement. Whenever he’s at bat, he gives me that sexual high.” She belatedly put her hands over Anthony’s ears. “You cover your ears, baby, you’re not near ready for this. But, oh my, if my Luther were still alive, I’d be saying ‘Get ready, Luther, tonight’s your lucky night!’ ”
 
The three older widows erupted into laughter. Anthony grinned. Elaine, normally used to this banter, found her face turning red because of the man in front of her.
 
“You hush up and watch, Jean,” Cleo added. “We’re down one run, and Lenny is about to tie it up.”
 
“He better,” Mary muttered, the beads moving through her fingers at record speed. “If someone doesn’t break this game open soon, those you-know-what Braves are going to win.”
 
It was odd how she had come together with these women, all of whom were in their sixties, Elaine thought. They had met years ago right here in this row, when Anthony had been little. She hadn’t had an interest in the game at the time; she’d come for her husband’s sake. But they had become friendly with their seat “neighbors.” Mary’s husband had already passed on after a long illness, so Elaine had never met him. Jean’s husband had died from a stroke the year after they’d met, and four years back Luther’s heart had given out suddenly.
 
And then her own husband, Joe, had died, long before he should have. It had happened a little over a year and a half ago. Joe had gone out for bread and milk, and someone had run a red light on Route 70 when Joe had been crossing. She had been left with a house with a too big mortgage payment, a young son, and little insurance.
 
The women had been staunch support then, and she often felt she had been blessed with three extra mothers. Cleo, Jean, and Mary hadn’t given up their season tickets after their husbands’ deaths because they were true aficionados of baseball. Elaine had continued going to the games for Anthony at first, because the boy needed men to look up to, men who could show him man things, who could show him that hard work and dedication paid off. A baseball team he had idolized all his short life seemed a good place to start. She had had to learn the finer points of the game for her son’s sake, and slowly she’d become a true fan.
 
Jean had started calling them the Widows’ Club, and Elaine had evolved into a chauffeur for them all. With this season opener at the Vet, she sensed something big about to happen with the team, and it had infected her. Baseball. Springtime with the all-American pastime. Somehow the combination had pushed itself into her soul, and at that moment, nothing was finer.
 
It had to be the game, she told herself, because it couldn’t be the man in front of her.
 
To her horror, Cleo leaned over and tapped both “suits” on the shoulder. “You boys better be watching this, or you’ll miss the play of the game.”
 
“But he’s down two strikes already!” the younger man said in disbelief to Cleo.
 
Cleo sniffed. “That’s just part of Lenny’s show. He’ll work that count to a full one and make that pitcher throw ten times, just trying to get him out. Wears those snotty pitcher boys down and gets them off the mound early.”
 
“Here endeth the lesson of the day,” Mary said.
 
“Amen to that!” Jean added.
 
Elaine looked for heavenly salvation herself, because mortification of the flesh was already guaranteed. Those three were in rare form tonight.