Free Taken by Storm by Kelli Maine

the last career on earth she wanted. Since then, she’d bounced from job to job and wascurrently without one. She couldn’t take care of herself, let alone an aging father. If something happened to her dad—if he needed to be hospitalized for some reason—Old Man Rocha would pay the bills. She couldn’t lose that and risk her father’s financial stability for her own love life.
    But, it wasn’t just her love life. It was MJ’s entire life—who he was. Didn’t that deserve to come first?
    “Hey, Peach?” Kara said. “Don’t do anything stupid. Okay?”
    Maddie’s mind immediately went to MJ licking gelato off of her. “Define stupid.”
    Kara groaned. “Do what you have to do to get him out of your system. Trust me. You’re just nervous about having that ring on your finger.”
    “You’re probably right.” She couldn’t imagine the ring on her finger. It was making her a nervous wreck just being around her neck. “I’ll talk to you soon. Hope Steven’s sunburn fades fast.”
    Maddie hung up feeling marginally better. She stretched in the grass under the sun like a cat. Kara was right. In a couple days, this situation would look much better. She’d get MJ out of her system, have a level head and make the best decision she could. Even if that meant being alone.
    It was an option that was looking better by the second. MJ, with his crazy family and terrible temper, wasn’t a good choice no matter how her body and heart responded to him. Her mind knew better. And Talan might be perfect on paper, but her heart and body failed to respond the way it should to him.
    It was all wrong and backwards.
    The only decision that was logical was to cut them both out of her life and strike out on her own again.

    MJ stuck some tokens in the pitching machine and took his stance in the batter’s box. He needed to blow off steam and whacking baseballs at the batting cage was the best way he could think of without getting in trouble.
    The balls came at him and he hit as hard as he could. They crushed into the back of the fenced-in cage.
    Since he’d been booted off the GSU team, he had to settle for the run-down, slow-as-hell pitching machine at the mini golf course a few miles from the Rocha Estate. The group of middle school boys hanging out at the cage beside him wouldn’t shut the hell up, there was a half-dried puddle of soda making the soles of his tennis shoes stick to the concrete, and the huge lights throwing a yellow glare across the entire place buzzed so loud, he couldn’t concentrate.
    If there was a baseball Hell, this was it.
    He hit the last couple balls and took off his helmet.
    “Hey! Coach MJ,” one of the boys said.
    MJ dropped his bat and turned around. How could he not have recognized these kids? He helped coach their team the past couple years. Two years ago, Maddie had too.
    “Hey fellas, what’s up?”
    “Where’ve you been all summer?” the pudgy one asked. MJ forgot their names—had always relied on them beingprinted on the back of their shirts—but he knew this one. This one had a single dad who hit on Maddie every chance he got two summers ago.
    “I’ve been around. Playing ball?”
    The four boys had their fingers thread through the chain-link fence and were all staring at him. “We’re playing,” Pudgy said. “Coach could use some help if you ask me.”
    MJ gathered his bats and zipped them in his bat bag. “Coach doesn’t need help. He always did fine on his own.”
    “He’s getting old,” the tall kid with glasses said. “We did better last year with you helping.”
    “Well, I don’t have time to hang out at Little League games.”
    “Too busy getting in fights at Coach’s bar? That’s what my dad says.” Pudgy was really starting to piss MJ off, just like his big-mouth dad had. He’d like to shut Pudgy’s dad’s mouth for him.
    “Is that what he says?” MJ pushed through the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The boys gathered around him like he was