Fireside

In time, Bo had grown into an understanding of what she meant, but he never forgot the feeling of being a scared kid. He would never subject AJ to that. For the rest of the weekend—or however long the boy was with him—Bo Crutcher would be a monk.

Yeah, right. He could just hear his friends now. People who knew him had never seen him go more than a week or two without a date.

He tried to be as quiet as possible as he moved around the apartment. Until last night, he had considered it a luxury to live in a place that didn’t require him to get behind the wheel at the end of the night. Situated above his favorite bar, where he worked most nights, it allowed him the world’s shortest commute after work. He simply went upstairs and did a face-plant in the bed.

Unless, of course, he got lucky, which he did with decent frequency. It was always a pleasant feeling, waking up with a woman in his bed. He loved everything about women. He loved their soft skin and all the good-smelling preparations they used to keep it that way. He loved the sound of their sweet voices, laughing at something he’d said or sighing with pleasure in his ear when he held them close. He’d had a lot of girlfriends over the years and he’d loved each and every one of them as thoroughly as he knew how.

And when each one left him, she always walked away with a piece of his heart. He never told them, though. Never complained. He was grateful for whatever time and whatever loving they’d given him.

Most of his girlfriends left believing he’d forget them the moment they were out of sight. They couldn’t be more wrong, though. The women he’d loved and lost were etched in his mind like beautiful dreams that never quite vanished with the morning.

Knowing how to love a woman had never been a problem for Bo. Knowing how to keep her, now, that was a different story. A lot of them left as soon as they realized he didn’t know shit about sharing his life, planning a future, keeping a bond strong enough for a lifetime. Others took off when they discovered that all professional ballplayers were not created equal. Yes, the Can-Am League was an organization of professionals. But the players were in it because they purely loved the game, not because they were being paid a fortune. To some women, this was a bit of a rude awakening.