I squat, feeling my butt cheeks stretch the fabric of my yoga pants, and lean back on my heels. Then I pull with every muscle fiber in my body.

I pull until my face feels like it’s going to burst. I give the machine another jiggle, hoping it will break free. But the only thing that breaks free is me.

“Ah!” I yelp as my movement propels me backward. My sneakers slip, my arms flail, and—“Umph!”

Suddenly, I’m not flying through the air but being scooped up and hauled into a hard chest.

Cole’s deliciously hard chest.

I would’ve been more prepared to smash my face into the sharp end of a cleat, bang my head off a base, and then fall face-first into a bag of brick dust than to land in Cole’s arms.

He turns me to face him. His hands lock against the small of my back. I’m not sure if it’s to steady me or to hold me close, but I’m in no state to start assessing that kind of damage.

My nostrils fill with the scent of leather. A spike in my body temperature has me teetering on the edge of passing out. The contact of our bodies—chest to steel chest—makes my insides turn to mush.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asks, a chuckle in his tone.

The levity in the words is what lets me shuffle myself back into some semblance of a grown woman not in the throes of a lust-fueled breakdown.

I push away from Cole and then make a show of checking for injuries—mostly so I don’t have to look at him.

“I was trying to move the pitching machine so I can organize around it,” I say, dusting off my knees even though I didn’t land on them.

“Where do you want it?”

He means the pitching machine. Clearly. I blame it on the fact that I was touching my knees and he was looking at me like he wanted me on my knees that my brain goes . . . elsewhere.

I look up and realize he’s thinking the same thing.

He smirks. “The pitching machine, Palmer?”

“Oh. Yeah. Just . . . put it wherever it fits best.” What? Oh shit. “I mean, just push it to the side.”

This doesn’t help.

I roll my eyes as he laughs.

“I’ll help?” I say to avoid stumbling over more words that lead us both to the gutter.

“I think we’re both safer if you just stay back.”

My hand goes to my hip in defiance. “Like you can move it yourself. I can’t even budge it.”

He flips me a look, and then, as casually as reading the Sunday paper, he glides the machine to the entrance.

“I must’ve loosened it for you,” I say.

“Sure.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “So . . .”

“Don’t you have a team to coach?”

He grins. “I do. And someone is hitting them pop flies. They can manage without me for a second.”