the pounding in his ear was starting to recede, at least.
“I thought you were still going with us! You looked at me—I thought that meant I should throw.”
Both Grayson and Daniel crowded around him, brows knit together as they inspected his head. Blake touched the hot part of his face, but Grayson grimaced, drawing his hand away.
“Wait. Your face might be busted.”
“Busted?” Blake repeated.
“Let’s get you to a trainer,” Grayson urged.
“Am I bleeding?” Blake asked.
His best friends shared a worried glance. “Not bleeding, per se,” Daniel began.
“Actually, yes, you’re bleeding. Come on. In we go.” Grayson steered Blake away by the shoulders, pushing him off the field and down into the dugout.
“Guys, come on. I feel fine,” Blake protested, not wanting to show up to the trainer’s area with an injury. It just seemed like one of the more humiliating things that the owner of a baseball team could do. “I’m not blacking out. There are no sparkles at the edges of my vision.”
“Sparkles?” Daniel asked.
“You know what I mean,” Blake said, and then paused, searching for the word. “Like…”
“Pinpricks?” Grayson offered.
“Right.” Blake frowned as they headed for the big, modern gym lining the edge of the practice field. “Maybe I do have a concussion.”
“That’s for the trainers to figure out,” Daniel said. “Which is who we will be seeing. Immediately.”
Blake grunted, allowing his friends to steer him down the gravel path leading to the gym. The heat and pain had segued into something dull and far-reaching. Like his entire body had been steamrolled. Being injured was exhausting.
“You really throw hard,” Blake said, glancing at Daniel. “Maybe you should ditch the new consulting gig and start thinking about the major leagues.”
Daniel laughed. “Yet another way to ensure that my father actually has a heart attack from my life choices.”
“As if you quitting the family business wasn’t traumatizing enough for him,” Grayson quipped as he pulled open the metal door of the gym. A cool draft of bleach-tinged air reached Blake, clearing his senses slightly.
The gym was thankfully empty, which meant fewer witnesses to Blake’s embarrassing injury. A trainer breezed over to them, a willowy woman that Blake didn’t remember seeing before, much less hiring. Not that he had much hands-on contact with staffing the lower rungs of his businesses. But still. He’d been into the gym before. He visited the training fields. And he’d never seen her before.
“Can you check out Mr. Boss Man?” Daniel asked, jerking his head toward Blake. “He caught a fly ball to the face.”
The blue-eyed beauty had her hair pulled back into a low ponytail. She wore a simple team T-shirt and mesh shorts, the standard workout gear of the trainers, but somehow, on her, it looked far more attractive than usual. Maybe it was the way her curves filled out the uniform, or the way her lips quirked up into a smile as her gaze washed over him.
Whatever it was, Blake was into it. And he could barely remember where he’d placed his voice.
“I wouldn’t have caught a fly ball to the head if you hadn’t dropped a bomb on me right before you threw it,” Blake protested finally, sending a glare to Daniel.
“Details, details,” Daniel said, waving the accusation away.
“Well, luckily, it doesn’t look too serious,” the brunette bombshell said, propping a hand on her hip. Her eyes narrowed as she leaned toward him, checking out the side of his face. Blake felt his cheeks heating up, but he wasn’t sure if it was from the injury or her sizzling cerulean gaze.
“So he’s gonna live?” Grayson asked, clapping a hand on Blake’s shoulder.
“He should, as long as he stays away from more fly balls and whatever sort of bombs you two like to drop,” the trainer teased, her gaze lingering on Blake. “I need to go grab some stuff from the first aid closet. I’ll be right back to fix you up.”
“What’s your name?” Daniel asked.
“Michelle,” she said, smiling at Daniel before swinging her gaze back to Blake. “And I would ask for your names, except I already know.”
“Oh. Do our reputations precede us?” Grayson asked.
“Indeed.” She grinned over her shoulder as she walked off. “I’ll be right back.”
The three friends watched her walk away into the first aid closet. Once the door clanged shut behind her, Daniel turned to Blake with a mischievous glint in his eyes.
“I think we’ve determined who you should be taking out on the dates for the bet.”
Blake propped his hands on his hips, looking between both his