Baseball and Other Lessons (Devil's Ranch Book 2) (9 page)

“Oh, nothing much. Your dad watched a YouTube video earlier on charging your battery with a chainsaw, so now he’s out at the truck with the chainsaw seeing if it works.”

“Um, is that safe?”

“Of course it is! You take the blade off and wrap a fan belt or something around it and hook it up to something under the hood and it’s supposed to charge the battery.”

Images of her father electrocuting himself danced in her head.

“Well, if it works, great, I guess.”

“Oh! And we also got our new composting toilet installed.”

Fantastic. Just what she wanted to talk about.

“It’s great. Your sister complains about having to stir it, but I keep telling her it’s a part of her science project for the next few months.”

Only Rebecca McDonnell would consider stirring crap inside a composting toilet to be a suitable homeschooling project. Jenn could only imagine how thrilled her fifteen-year-old sister, Lacey, was about that. Lacey who should be getting her learner’s permit and dating boys rather than stuck out in the middle of nowhere with their crazy prepper parents.

“Oh! And I bought you some more MREs. You should get them today or tomorrow. You do have your BOB ready, right?”

Jenn tried to remember where the BOB—or bug out bag—her parents had given her four Christmases ago was. She vaguely remembered shoving it into the back of the closet of her spare bedroom, along with the other dozens of survival supplies her parents had sent her over the years. At this point the closet was beyond full and the buckets of Meals Ready to Eat were lined along one wall and slowly beginning to climb up it.

“Yeah, Mom, I have it ready. But I really don’t have any more room for more MREs. Or anything else, really. This house is kind of small, remember?”

“Oh, pshaw. You have plenty of room. What about your spare bedroom? No one’s in it, so you might as well use it for your preps.”

Jenn closed her eyes and let her head fall to the desk. “Mom, seriously, I know you care about me and that’s why you do this stuff, but you know I’m not a prepper nor will I ever be one.”

Rebecca sniffed and continued on with her usual blithe attitude. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jennifer, it’s not like it’s a big deal. It never hurts to be prepared, and you never know when the shit will hit the fan.”

“Mom, the only shit hitting a fan is in the monkey pen at the zoo.”

“Do they have fans in the monkey pen at the zoo?”

Oh, for crying out loud. “I don’t know, Mom. Why don’t you have Kyle research that for his next paper that’s due?”

“Oh! That’s a wonderful idea! And I can have him further research primate feces, diseases and how to prepare for them. I’m going to go right now and get him to get right on that one.”

Great. Now her youngest brother (and Lacey’s twin) was going to want to kill her. Knowing there was no convincing her mom otherwise, though, Jenn followed the advice of the girls from
Frozen
and just let it go. “That’s great, Mom. I’ll talk to you later. Love you. Bye.”

“Love you too, dear.”

Jenn quickly tapped “end” before her mother could come up with any other ways to drive her nuts today. Knowing Reece, her other brother, was probably next on Rebecca’s to-call list, Jenn picked up her phone and shot him a quick text.

Jenn: Heads up. Mom alert. Dad’s using a chainsaw on the truck battery and she’s making Lacey stir shit for a science project.

It took all of five seconds for Reece to text her back.

Reece: Seriously? If Lacey’s stirring shit, what’s Kyle doing?

Jenn: Researching monkey shit and diseases.

Reece: I’m so glad I’m getting my MBA.

Jenn: I’m so glad they pulled this crap after we were eighteen.

Reece was eight years her junior, and had just graduated from high school when their parents decided to sell their house in Del Rio, buy some land out in Terrell County close to Sanderson and build the ultimate prepper’s paradise. Unfortunately their two younger siblings weren’t old enough to be on their own yet, and had been dragged out of Del Rio with Rebecca and Richard McDonnell.

The first year was spent building what Jenn could only describe as a west Texas Doomsday fortress. While the idea of using shipping containers to build a house was a bit weird, she had to admit that they’d actually done a great job and had truly created a home out there. A heavily armed and booby-trapped home, but whatever.

Once the shipping containers had been properly assembled, the next phase had been what Rebecca called their “preps.” Jenn had asked as few questions as possible—she’d had a bit of a hard time wrapping her brain around her parents’ sudden turn into crazy land—but one Sunday afternoon curiosity had gotten the best of her and she’d found herself watching a marathon of
Doomsday Preppers
.

She was pretty sure her parents hadn’t gone that far off the rails, but she wasn’t entirely sure so she hadn’t asked any questions. Besides, after watching that marathon she’d come to the conclusion that it was kind of silly to prep for something as specific as an EMP, a New Madrid Earthquake or a massive polar shift. If you were going to prep for the end of the world as we know it, shouldn’t you play some REM and prepare for just a general collapse of society? That made a lot more sense to her than preparing for something that had a one in a bazillion chance of happening.

So she hadn’t asked any questions, and had basically just nodded and smiled as her parents had talked about their preps, their storage container house, and the arsenal they were compiling. Her mom, a former teacher, had chosen to homeschool Lacey and Kyle. Jenn had nothing against home schooling—especially when the person doing the home schooling had been a teacher for almost thirty years—but over the past year or so it seemed as though the lesson plans had gotten stranger and stranger. Seriously? Lacey was stirring human feces for a science project?

Jenn shuddered. Yeah, she was definitely glad they’d pulled this stunt well after she’d turned eighteen. Her life was enough of a hot mess as it was.

Chapter Eight

@Deadspin: Where’s Matt Roberts? Texas ace hasn’t been seen in weeks deadsp.in/7mAt9T0

@BleacherReport: TX Ace Reportedly Missing, Hasn’t Been Seen in Weeks

@ESPN: Team says haven’t heard from @MattRobertsTX in weeks es.pn/0JeE43n

@TheFakeESPN: Matt Roberts missing. So is Taylor Swift. They’ll never go out of style.

Matt barely resisted the
urge to throw his phone across the backyard. He was seconds away from going into the windup when he pulled back. It would do him no good to play pitch and catch with his iPhone and a boulder.

Instead, he set the phone face down on the table, walked away and climbed into the hot tub connected to Chase’s pool. Never mind the fact that it was at least a hundred degrees outside; he was just hoping the hot water would help loosen the muscles that had been tense since seeing Jenn the other night.

His phone dinged again and he sighed. Taylor Swift? Really? She was ten years younger than him, for one thing. For another, he’d never even met her. The Fake ESPN Twitter account could have done a much better job with that one. Why not Hannah Davis or Kate Upton? Even if they were both currently taken, at least they both had a track record with baseball players.

The crazy thing was, hot as both of those women were (and if he was being honest with himself, as hot as Taylor Swift was despite the age gap), neither of them turned him on like Jenn did. Jenn with her crazy curly red hair, green eyes, perky breasts and constant hatred of him. If the attraction hadn’t been simmering under the surface for the past ten years, Matt would have to wonder if that hit to the head he’d taken had been much worse than the doctors had thought.

He sighed and closed his eyes. Showing up at her place the other night probably hadn’t been his best idea ever, but he hadn’t been able to stay away. Chase and Jo were in that newly in love phase and he had no desire to horn in on that. He and Owen were friends, but not the type that hung out together by themselves. His parents were great, but Mom hovered and babied him, which just made him feel itchy and angry.

So that had left Jenn, since public places were pretty much out these days. In all honesty, the decision to unexpectedly show up at her place had been an easy one. He’d wanted to see her, simple as that. Even though she was constantly sniping at him and definitely threw up a “don’t touch me” vibe, he was finding it harder and harder to
not
touch her.

Memories of their night together in San Antonio had filtered through his head more often than he cared to admit over the past ten years. He wasn’t sure if it was the memory, the way he’d left things, or the fact that his life had become a clusterfuck with one horribly placed line drive, but he wanted to see her, be with her and make her smile and relax with him like she had that night.

God, he wanted to be with her again.

Even with her hedgehog vibe, he wanted her. He wanted sex, yes, but more so he simply wanted
her
. He wanted to get to know her, to talk with her again the way they had that night. He wanted to feel the way he had again that night, even if that feeling had scared the crap out of him then and still scared the crap out of him now.

Matt groaned and lightly thunked the back of his head against the limestone rocks lining the edge of the hot tub. If anyone knew he was sitting here in his brother’s hot tub, going all
True Confessions
in his head about a woman he’d once had a one-night stand with, they’d think he was certifiably crazy.

To be fair, Matt sometimes wondered himself. This constant need to be around Jenn had to be madness, right?

“You okay? That was a pretty heavy sigh.”

Matt opened his eyes at Chase’s voice and turned his head to see his younger brother standing a few feet away from the edge of the hot tub.

“Just thinking too much about stuff.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

Matt shrugged. “Go take a look at my phone and the latest tweets.”

Chase didn’t move. “Haven’t we all told you to ignore Twitter?”

“Yeah. But even if I turn it off I still get text messages and emails about what other people are seeing on Twitter. It’s easier to keep up with it myself rather than getting them second and third-hand.”

Chase shook his head. “So what you’re saying is Baseball Yoda is more than willing to dish out advice, but not so willing to take it?”

Matt pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

“There’s a first.”

Matt barely refrained from rolling his eyes. “So where’s Jo?”

“She’s having a girls’ night out with Jenn. They’ve barely spent any time together over the past few weeks, and apparently margaritas and then dancing were called for.”

“Dancing, huh?”

Chase glanced at him. “Since when are you into dancing?”

“I’m not. Was just asking a question.” He could totally be into dancing if Jenn were involved, but he wasn’t about to share that information with his brother who also happened to be pretty protective of the woman in question.

“Actually, I was kind of thinking about crashing their girls’ night a little bit later. Jo hinted it would be okay, so if you want to get out and maybe have some fun, you’re welcome to come with Owen and me.”

“Sure. I have nothing better to do.”

Chase grinned. “I figured you would say that. And hey, turn off the fucking tweets for the night.”

#

“Don’t look now, but the boys just walked in,” Jo yelled in Jenn’s ear over the strains of “Uptown Funk.”

Jenn kept dancing and didn’t bother to look towards the front door of April’s, the small bar she, Owen and Chase had been frequenting for the past few years. “I thought this was supposed to be a girls’ night out?” she yelled back, a smile on her face.

Jo’s guilty look pretty much said it all. “Sorry!”

“No worries! Let’s go say hi so you can make out with your man.”

Jo’s skin flushed even pinker than it had been and Jenn laughed. They wound their way through dozens of dancing bodies towards the table the boys had co-opted. It wasn’t until they reached the table that Jenn realized Matt was with Chase and Owen. Their gazes met, and Jenn barely resisted the urge to smooth her hair and fidget with her tank top. Instead, she glared at him briefly before smiling at Owen and leaning in to hug him.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight,” she shouted in his ear.

“Chase didn’t want to crash y’all’s party alone. Where the hell have you been?”

Jenn tried not to feel guilty about not seeing or really even talking to Owen all week. “Busy. I’ve been working on a bunch of lesson plans and dodging calls from my mom.”

Owen was the only person who was privy to all the details about her parents’ new lifestyle, and only then by accident; he’d happened to be at her place one day when a shipment of MREs had arrived on her doorstep. Being ex-Army and a current member of the Army Reserve, he’d taken one look at the packages and asked her what the hell was going on. Really, she’d had no choice but to break down and tell him. He’d laughed and shook his head at most of it, and hadn’t judged her for her parents’ actions. Not that she’d thought he would but, well, her parents had kind of gone off the deep-end.