It Happened in L.A.: Ms Match / Shockingly Sensual / Playmates

He rolled his eyes a bit. “I’m overwhelmed.”

“Stop. I had the best time yesterday. I should have said that first thing. It was a spectacular day.”

“It was pretty great. We’ll have to do it again, sometime.”

She looked down, then past him. Her arm went up to call the infamous waitress, who came over. The woman had enormous breasts. She’d probably tried out for Hooters but the T-shirts wouldn’t stretch enough. He’d actually never seen breasts that large in real life.

“Hey, gorgeous,” she said, her voice kind of scratchy, as if she’d just come back from her cigarette break. “I sure haven’t seen you here before.”

Now that he was looking at her face, he saw she was older, maybe early forties. “Heineken for me. And refill the table.”

The waitress, Carla according to her name tag, winked at him, leaving a tiny smudge of mascara on her cheek. “A hunk and generous. Ain’t that a pisser.” She walked off with a sashay that Autumn would have envied.

“Game’s gonna start in a few minutes, Newbie,” Gwen said. “Better get ready.”

“I’m always ready.”

Gwen’s look told him he’d better watch the clichés. Funny, that line would have garnered a deliciously salacious response from Autumn. Or from most of the women he knew.

This was a different crowd with different sensibilities, and he felt like a foreigner learning the language.

It was weird, too, because he’d been in all kinds of social situations. With Yale professors, multimillionaires, CEOs, even minor royalty. Yet none of that experience helped him here.

Maybe it was because they all worked together? No, he’d hardly spoken to any of them, except Gwen and Holly. In fact, Holly didn’t make him feel this way.

It was Gwen, then. She made him feel awkward. He never felt awkward. His job, in fact, was to make other people feel awkward. Or comfortable. Or whatever he damn well wanted them to feel. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, he looked at his talent in a new light.

“Hello?”

Paul’s gaze snapped up to meet Gwen’s. “Sorry, what?”

“Log in if you want to play.”

He turned his attention to the machine, and a few moments later, to the game. And his drink. The other people at the table as they thanked him for the round. Anything but Gwen.

HER MOUTH WAS OPEN, but nothing was coming out. Mostly because she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. Holly, the woman previously known as Gwen’s best friend, had just told Paul that she couldn’t drive Gwen home. Despite the fact that she’d driven them both to work. Despite the fact that they lived in the same apartment complex. The excuse was obviously fake, but did that stop her?

“I’ll be happy to take her home,” Paul said. “Even though she beat me.”

“By two points,” Holly said, pushing in her chair and fitting her purse strap on her shoulder, the better to make her escape. “I have to run. Thanks, Paul. See you tomorrow, Gwen. Bye.”

So now she was standing next to Paul with nothing but a giant slice of awkward between them.

“It’s no big deal. It’s not as if you live in Connecticut.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you especially since you had no choice.”

He pushed his seat in, picked up his machine and Holly’s, and they left. “I don’t mind.”

“Thanks.”

As they passed Carla, she gave Paul a lascivious grin. Paul barely noticed.

He made the lights of his Mercedes flash with his remote as they hit the parking lot. It wasn’t as warm as it should have been in April.

Paul glanced at her as they circled a behemoth truck. “I’ve got a jacket in the car.”

“Thanks, I’m fine.”

They reached his car, and he was very gentlemanly, as always, and yet the touch of his hand on the small of her back made her shiver. It was becoming something of an issue, these butterflies. Whether his hand landed on her arm or her back, it didn’t seem to matter. Alarmingly, tonight, in the middle of the game, all it had taken was meeting his gaze. She’d like to blame it on his looks alone, but even she’d stopped believing that. Something was happening here, and she had no idea what to do about it.

Once he was behind the wheel, he started the engine and the heater at the same time. The radio came on, too. She recognized the voice from NPR, but he turned that off before she could identify a topic.

“NPR, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m a fan, too.”

He got them out of the lot and on the way to her place with a minimum of fuss. She stole glances as he drove, the silence in the car not all that uncomfortable, except for, well…She put her hand on her tummy. It occurred to her that things had changed yesterday. He’d been so thoughtful. Gracious. Downright adorable. Dammit. And then today when he’d given that cap to Holly. She sighed. Baseball had leveled the field. There was a common ground between them and yep, that had taken their relationship into a whole new direction.

So much so, that she hadn’t thought about her sister more than a couple of times tonight. The evening had been really fun. Winning had been great, yes, but that wasn’t all of it. He’d laughed at Steph’s jokes, and Kenny’s, too. He’d been made fun of, and he’d accepted the ribbing with humor.

Yet, was he worth knowing? Outside of baseball, was there anything in him that she could admire? Did it matter?

They pulled into her apartment complex just as she decided that it did matter if she were to become friends with him. She didn’t take friendship lightly.

He found a parking spot pretty close to her apartment. As she grabbed the door handle, he turned to her. “Are you happy?”

She stopped. Debated laughing off the question, but didn’t. “Yeah. For the most part, I am. Why?”

Paul turned off the engine. “Do you think it’s because you’re close to your colleagues?”

She exhaled, curious. “That’s part of it, I guess.”

“What else?”

“I haven’t thought about it all that much. I like my work, but it’s not my whole universe. I’m usually busy. I play trivia, I go to old horror flicks, my book club once a month. I watch way too many games, but I guess it doesn’t matter because who cares? I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling.”

“Huh,” he replied, as if she’d said something he hadn’t expected.

“Why?”

He leaned back a little, staring at her in the semidark. “I’m damn busy, too. I love my work. I have most everything I could want. The car, the house, the women, the toys. But I don’t think I’m very happy.”

“You don’t think you are?”

“Okay. Gun to my head? No. Don’t ask me why, but that’s a very difficult thing to admit. I should be happy. I’ve got it made.”