Free From Left Field: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 7) by Mindy Klasky Page A

but she begged to differ. Three inches were a hell of a lot more than the Keds she usually wore. They even put her navy pumps to shame.
    And they rubbed blisters around the backs of her heels like a mother.
    She rolled her eyes and told herself she was a big girl. She could take it. The alternative was letting Adam think she was too chicken to show up at his gala.
    The bathroom door opened and a trio of Raleigh society matrons rolled in, bringing a cloud of perfume and stern looks of disapproval at Haley’s decidedly unfashionable dress.
    Time to take her leave, before the old biddies started making pointed comments about how some people couldn’t be bothered to put on decent lip-liner these days. Haley grabbed for her ridiculously tiny clutch purse and escaped toward the ballroom.
    She had to hand it to Adam—he’d pulled together a classy event. She wasn’t quite sure how he’d done it, either. He’d been on the road until Wednesday, and the Rockets had started a grueling home stand against St. Louis. At least they’d had an early game that afternoon; Adam had ended up with a few spare hours before he’d needed to don his tuxedo and play host.
    The ballroom was decorated with accents of bright green, BUNT’s signature shade. Tall tables held arrangements of wildflowers, thrown together with such haphazard grace that Haley knew someone had taken hours to complete the displays. Four bars were scattered around the room, serving up complimentary beer and wine and a specialty cocktail that riffed on a Lemon Drop and was called a Sunny Afternoon.
    Giant screens dominated the walls, and carefully synchronized photos flashed across the surfaces—laughing children running across a green field, studious boys and girls peering into a jar of pond water, kids of every age leaning out the windows of a giant treehouse.
    The good mood was infectious. Everywhere Haley looked, people were smiling, laughing, having a good time. More than once, she saw the flash of pen on paper, the discreet movement as a check changed hands. Everything was classy. Everything was elegant. Everything connoted big money for a big cause, and Haley felt a surge of jealousy so hot she almost fell off her three-inch heels.
    “Wow!” she heard behind her—Michael’s voice. She turned around to meet her brother’s goggle-eyed astonishment. He surveyed her from head to toe and said, “You look exactly like my sister, but she wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress and heels.”
    She smiled her sweetest smile as she flipped him the bird. “Come on, big brother. If I have to be here, at least I can take a turn on the dance floor.”
    Adam had skipped an expensive band, opting instead for a disk jockey. The woman wore a black T-shirt tucked into black skinny jeans, and she looked comfortable enough that Haley seriously considered bribing her to change clothes. Not that Haley could get the DJ’s attention. The woman was working with actual vinyl, managing two turntables at once, mixing her own transitions from song to song. While she looked likely to handle anything the hip-hop world might throw at her, she was sticking to much more traditional music for the gala. Frank Sinatra gave way to Nat King Cole who yielded the floor to Louis Armstrong.
    Michael bowed like some sort of medieval knight. “May I have this dance?” he asked, extending his hand in perfect cotillion etiquette.
    After completing painful dance classes with her Girl Scout troop, Haley was the one who’d taught her brothers to waltz, Michael and Billy both, with Adam thrown in for good measure. They’d spent hours in the basement, Haley switching to hiking boots when her toes screamed in protest at the boys’ clumsiness. With each of them, she’d started out leading, getting them used to the rhythm, but then she’d handed over responsibility, letting them guide her around the coffee table, over to the TV, back to the card table in the corner.
    Adam had been the slowest study of