Hanky Panky: The Liquor Shop Series

By M.K. Chester

A swing and a miss or a bases-loaded home run?

 

Baseball titan Rian Murphy returns home to nurse a career-ending injury and his shattered ego. When he learns he'll never return to the game he loves, he takes a job tending bar on the Carolina beachfront and tries to ignore his best friend's little sister, all grown up.

 

Harper Jones doesn't intend to hit on Rian, but her brother's best friend always seemed so out of her league. When he serves her his signature drink and sparks fly, neither mind when a few stolen kisses go a little further. She might be the one to show him his life isn't over.

 

After all, a little hanky panky never hurt anyone…

• Language: English
• Publisher: LBD Media
• Release date: Dec 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201783440

M.K. Chester

M.K Chester is an avid reader who began writing at an early age to entertain herself. She began to take writing seriously after college and her work developed timeless themes of redemption and second chances. ​​She won some RWA awards, published with The Wild Rose Press and Carina [Harlequin] and now considers herself a happy Indie. Her romance titles include something for everyone: historical, contemporary, and paranormal. 

Book preview

Chapter One

Him

Rian Murphy? One of the best orthopedic surgeons in the country strides into my exam room, his nose deep into my medical chart. He’s younger than I expect and looks up with a genuine smile, and I can’t hate him like I want to. The team doctor says, I go to Wave’s games quite a bit. I’m a fan, along with my four-year-old son.

I nod. This is good to hear, given he’s cutting on me this week. My palms itch for his expert prognosis. Thanks. Have you had a chance to look at everything?

Everything being the x-ray, CT scan and MRI done on my right arm after I threw a nasty pitch in the second game of last weekend’s double-header.

He puts down the chart with a frown and studies my arm in its sling. I have. Let me get your arm loose. I need to see your full range of motion.

He helps me out of my sling and puts me through a few moves, which break me into a cold sweat. I’m not a big baby, and I know I’ve done some serious damage to my golden pitching arm. I’m fighting not to curse by the time he’s done putting me through my paces.

And he’s not happy at all, which means I won’t be happy either. I’m really sorry, Rian. I don’t want to mince words. Based on the scans and what I’m seeing today, I’d be very surprised if you’re able to play baseball again, not on a professional level anyway.

He drones on about the specifics, what’s happened to my joints, ligaments, and cartilage, as if these new words matter, and outlines what surgery will accomplish even though we both know if the surgery doesn’t give me my career back, cutting me open accomplishes nothing of meaning.

He must tell guys like me news like this all the time, given the high-profile cases he catches in a professional sports town. He still manages to look and sound compassionate about a mid-level guy from the coast. Hell, maybe he does feel bad. I only know one thing for sure.

I’m crushed. My blood pressure rises, I start to perspire, and I swear to God I can taste blood in the back of my throat, like my soul is bleeding. Don’t mind the buzzing in my ears, my career is dying. Suddenly, I’m on the verge of hyperventilating.

I feel like I’m dying, and I am, on the inside.

I struggle to keep my feelings off my face, which is impossible, given the bad news. I knew when I threw the pitch something horrible had happened involving both my elbow and my shoulder. If I’d hurt one or the other, recovery might be possible.

I’ve always been an overachiever.

I ignored how horrible my prospects were until hearing the outlook from the team’s primary surgeon, this guy right here. He’s sorry, again, and I’m more than sorry, too.

The pain in my arm is nothing compared to the pain I feel in my soul, knowing my childhood dream is dead. I worked all the way up to Triple-A only to become a cautionary tale for future high school baseball prospects.

Don’t be another Rian Murphy.

Thanks, Doc, I mutter, shoving my feelings deep into my gut, where they belong. I guess you deliver bad news all the time.

Something like this never gets easier. Let me give you the name of a good sports psychiatrist, he offered, reaching into his pocket. 

Jeez, the guy carries the shrink’s digits on him, like he hands them out several times a day. Maybe he does. I don’t need therapy. No, thanks, I’ll be all right.

A scowl greets my lie. Don’t be a hero, Rian. The surgery alone is a lot to go through, both mentally and physically, to say nothing of the recovery and a career change. Take the referral. What you do is your business.

I nod and take the shrink’s card. When can we schedule the surgery?

He becomes curt. This week, Thursday, outpatient. Check with my nurse on your way out and she’ll give you the details. You’ll need a ride home afterward.

And that, as they say, is that. He disappears to visit another poor schmuck in another exam room while I struggle to digest his diagnosis.

Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe he gets into the surgery and the damage isn’t as bad as he thinks. Maybe I can rehab like hell and get everything back.

Maybe I’m the one, exceptional case.

I go through the check-out process. In two days, I’ll have my pitching arm carved open, tendons and ligaments repaired and/or reattached and go into full-blown physical therapy a few days after. I’m now a long-shot and I know I am.

If things are as bad as he says, I won’t be staying in Charlotte past my first round of rehab, which is all the team is obligated to cover. And, if the doc is right, I won’t go back to the team no matter how well I recover. I’ll be forced to go home a whole lot sooner than expected, and not to a baseball hero’s ticker-tape parade.

Embarrassed. Hurt. Defeated.

All this goes through my mind even before surgery. If only he’d given me some hope. I can be a long shot. I could defy odds, couldn’t I?

I swallow, blinking in the bright sunlight outside the doctor’s office, contemplating my bleak future. Best case scenario? I work like an animal for at least a year to get back to where I was last week, and the dream continues against all odds.

Worst case scenario?

I go home. I won’t deserve any accolades, not when I didn’t achieve my goal. Instead, I’ll be sliding in through Greenbriar’s back door, hoping and praying no one in the quaint little beach town notices my return at all.

Where I can lick my wounds in peace, as the Good Lord intended grown men to do.

Her

I close my eyes and let out a huge sigh as the final bell rings on the last day of school. Thank you, Jesus.

My sophomore history students scramble for the door, a few shoveling platitudes at me. Have a good summer, Miss Jones!

I smile, remembering how liberating the final bell could be. For teachers, too. We need a break as much as these kids, time away from the daily grind. Double for me, because I’ve lived in Greenbriar my whole life, graduated from this very bastion of secondary education.

No one recommends you go back and teach where you went to school. No one sees the adult you, and you’re young enough to make all kinds of awkward connections to people you know.

After the mass exodus, I shut down my classroom and head home, planning Friday night in my mind. The end of the school year marks the real beginning of summer, which means a trip to my favorite beach dive, the Hanky Panky, with my best friend, Mandy Arena.

We’ve been going there together since high school (don’t tell my mom) and tonight is no different. She’s already at my apartment when I get home.

Happy last day of school! she squeals and hugs me.

She smells like oranges. Why do you smell like fruit?

Because why not?

We go into my place, a studio closer to work than the beach. I hurry to change into something more comfortable, a flowy white dress to show off my early, yet fake, tan. As a blonde, I don’t risk my skin in the sun often.

You sure you don’t want to try someplace new? she asks, going through my wardrobe.

I’m sure, I tell her, sliding into my Converse.

Mandy gives me a once-over. You are a study in opposites. Look at your closet. Beach clothes, fitted and revealing, and school clothes, boring history teacher. What do your students do when they see you at the beach?

Usually they don’t recognize me, which is kind of the point. I take my hair down, shake the strands out, hate how it falls, and put everything back up. I’m ready. Dinner first?

Why? She screws up her face as if I speak Latin.

She’s right. They have food at the bar.

We’re overdue for a night out and take off as soon as I’m ready. I need to blow off some steam. The end of the year is always stressful, and with the focus on the students and their accomplishments, teachers easily get lost.

When we pull up to the Hanky Panky, named for its famous gin-fueled beverage of choice, I’m surprised how full the lot is already. Reggae music spills from the patio, lifting my tired spirits.

Full house tonight, Mandy says with a wicked grin. Looks like you’re not the only one with an itch to scratch.

I wouldn’t call this an ‘itch’ exactly. Adulting is hard and the Hanky Panky has always been