Dating Trouble (Grover Beach Team Book 5) Read Free Page B

and was wiping his face with it. Before he shook it out and put it back on, I got an exclusive glimpse at his rock-hard abs and shapely chest. I was pretty sure the real Charlie Brown didn’t look anything close to this beneath his yellow shirt.
    Determined not to get caught staring again, I quickly turned my head away and rose from the bench. The backpack was already on my shoulders and I was about to walk off in the opposite direction when Ethan called out to me, “Hey, Susan, can you wait up a minute?”
    Startled, I pivoted to him. He loped over and stopped so close to me that a whiff of his sweat caught me square in the face. Luckily he’d put on enough deodorant that it didn’t smell bad at all. Maybe it was just his shower gel, I couldn’t tell. In any case, it smelled manly and… nice .
    Still slightly out of breath from practice, he sat down and glanced up at me. His cheeks were red and he’d tossed his ball cap aside, displaying a disheveled thatch of blond hair. He resembled a little boy, which was quite a cute look. It suited him.
    “What’s up?” I asked, feeling a bit awkward because of my previous gawking. Hopefully that wasn’t the reason he wanted to talk to me. I’d put his iPod back on the bench without a scratch, too.
    When Ethan reached out for my hand and pulled me down next to him, I didn’t protest. “I need to talk to you about my joining the team,” he said.
    “You stole my place, end of story,” I answered, a little sullen now. “What more is there to talk about?”
    He grimaced and released my wrist. “Hunter says I can stay, if you say I can.”
    “Oh.” My gaze skated over the soccer field to find Hunter with Lisa some sixty feet away. When I lifted my eyebrows, he started to walk toward us, but Lisa quickly grabbed his arm and said something to him that made him stop and smile. She cast me a brilliant grin, gave me two very unsubtle thumbs-up, and dragged Ryan away to the parking lot. I rolled my eyes. Did she think she was Grover Beach’s new matchmaker all of a sudden?
    It was a miracle Ethan hadn’t seen them sneaking off. He was still gazing at me. “So what do you think? Do I make a worthy player for the Bay Sharks?” His voice sounded awfully hopeful.
    Dropping my gaze to the ground, I coughed to get rid of the annoying dryness in my throat. “How would I know?” I mumbled. “It’s not like I watched you play today.”
    For a few seconds, Ethan just stared at me. The feeling was aggravating. As I turned to him again, the corners of his mouth tilted up in a slow grin and he drawled the word, “Liar.”
    The heat of embarrassment rose in my body and here I was, once again wishing for a time machine. Since that wasn’t going to happen, all I could do was laugh. I don’t know why, it just burst out of me, and rather hysterically, too. I sounded like a hyena. Yeah, that was sexy Susan Miller at her best.
    But sexy or not, the anger and tension from the past hour slipped away from me. I could look Charlie Brown straight in the eye and didn’t even blush. “Okay, you’re right. I did check you out, but I had to see what Hunter came up with to replace me. And”—while we were at it—“the thing with the girls before was totally stupid, but I’m not saying sorry for that.”
    Ethan had watched me, fascinated, when I had my laughing fit, but now he chuckled, and the sound of it was quite delightful. “You don’t have to. It’s sweet that you couldn’t wait to tell your friends my name.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right. Like that was the only thing on my mind since you introduced yourself.” Yeah, right. Like that wasn’t the truth. A shrug rolled off my shoulders, and suddenly I felt I could be honest with him. “As for joining the team—only temporarily, of course—you’re actually a passable player from what I saw. Your long passes are excellent. I guess Hunter could use you. And yes…I like your music.” Now I stuck out my tongue at