SWITCH-HITTER

Hit and Run #1

by E.M. Lindsey

Cover & Excerpt Reveal

Release Date: March 16, 2022

Cover Design: Kelley York / Sleepy Fox Studio

Photo: Golden Czermak / FuriousFotog

Model: Grant Mims

Genre: M/M Sports Romance
Trope: Grumpy sunshine, satire

Synopsis

Get a personal chef, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.

And then Thierry shows up and Pietro realizes his mistake. Because he knows Thierry. A little too well.

Thierry is the man who told his ex to leave him.

Thierry is the man who punched Pietro and ran.

Thierry... is his ex-boyfriend’s best friend.

But Pietro also knows the man needs a job. An injury destroyed his former career and Pietro is nothing if not a bleeding heart. Besides, he doesn’t have time to search for a new chef, not with the World Series looming and his team ready to go all the way.

Life gets more complicated, though, when he and Thierry cross a line one night after a lot of wine and several bad jokes. And while hooking up is one thing, Pietro knows the last thing in the world he needs is for his heart to get involved.

Too bad it tends to make decisions without him.

Switch-Hitter is the first book in a fictional MLB series featuring a lonely baseball player with a chip on his shoulder and hope in his heart, a team ready to win no matter what it takes, a grumpy French chef who will defend escargot to the death, and a few bottles of dry red wine leading to the sweetest happily ever after. Each book in the Hit and Run Series stands alone, contains no cheating, and has a happily ever after.

Excerpt

The massage picked back up again, and the moment quietly passed.

“I know you wanted to be a chef,” Pietro said softly a few moments later. “That was something I knew about you before, uh…before everything.”

Thierry closed his eyes again and sank into the sensations. “Ouais.”

“Do you ever miss what you used to do?”

“Chasing after Hervé and his drunk friends?” Thierry asked with only a hint of scorn. “No. I just didn’t realize how miserable I was until I was forced to leave it.” He shifted, something sort of hot and not quite uncomfortable under his skin. He wasn’t sure what it was—a familiar feeling, but he couldn’t quite find the words for it. He didn’t know if he wanted to lean in and chase or pull away.

Pietro’s hands moved to the backs of his knees, and it got worse.

He shifted, then froze when he heard a strange noise, and flushed hard when he realized it was coming from him. A moan—chest-deep and wanting.

Pietro’s hands stilled, but they didn’t leave him. “You…”

Thierry wasn’t brave enough to look, but he felt it now—the hardness pressing behind the zipper of his jeans. And fuck—fuck—it had been a long time since that happened. He’d tried to masturbate plenty of times since the accident and always failed. His erections had been involuntary and pointless.

Until now.

“It happens to me,” Pietro said in a rush. He sounded embarrassed, but he still wasn’t pulling away. In fact, he seemed to be holding on tighter, which was only making Thierry’s situation worse because he was starting to actively want. “I can’t tell you how many embarrassing boners I’ve gotten during massages after games and shit. Uh…”

Thierry licked his lips and waited.

“Is that what’s happening? Do you want me to stop?”

It would be so easy to lean into the lie and just tell Pietro this meant nothing—it was just his body’s way of reacting. And yet it felt almost cruel to deny himself, even if it meant Pietro throwing him out on his ass, because for so long, he wasn’t sure he could want anyone again.

Not just physically, either. His life had changed so fucking drastically, and he’d come to realize that working for Hervé, the sacrifice he made all those years ago had been connection with anyone else.

And Pietro was sitting here offering him scraps of it, and he was too afraid to deny him the answer to that small, simple question.

“Don’t stop.”

Pietro’s fingers spasmed, and Thierry finally forced himself to open his eyes and look at the other man.

“I’m hard because of you,” Thierry went on.

Pietro swallowed thickly, and then he shifted in his seat. “Me too.”