“Yup,” Dan said. “Kid’s got an arm on him.” He took a file folder from the pile he held and passed it to Lucas. “So let’s go.”
Lucas yawned. “Do I have time for another cup of coffee?”
“If you’re quick. But get used to it. None of us sleeps much in spring training.”
“Yeah, but you’re not sleeping in just one place for the most part. I’m doing it in two,” Lucas said.
“Cry me a river,” Dan said. “We’ve got a team to build.”
Couldn’t argue with that. He grabbed another cup of average coffee and followed Dan out to the field. It was, at least, warmer here in Vero Beach than in New York. He pulled out his sunglasses and put them on as he gazed out over the small park. Small but newer and in better condition than Deacon Field. But a ballpark was a ballpark, and the familiar white diamond and bleachers and scoreboard made him smile despite his bad mood.
Down on the field, a bunch of players in the silver and blue and yellow Saints colors were gathered around the lanky form of Stuart Kelso, the Saints pitching coach, watching intently as he gestured with a bat and made wild arm motions.
Hopefully it was a rousing pep talk and the players would be inspired to do what they did best so Lucas and the coaching team could make some decisions and he could get the hell back to New York.
More likely, half of them were standing down there wishing they could find a discreet place to puke their guts up through sheer nerves.
He’d never actually tried out for an MLB team, but he remembered what it had felt like being scouted at his high school games. The sheer terror that he wouldn’t get chosen. Wouldn’t be offered the money that would mean he could do what his parents didn’t want him to do and go to the school of his choice and play baseball.
“Poor bastards,” he muttered.
Beside him, Dan grunted. “Not if they’re any good. This is a good shot for them.”
Lucas nodded. If any of the players down on the field did turn out to be great players, then it was unlikely they’d stay with the Saints too long. With their finances the owners were going to be playing buy low, trade high with their players for a few years yet, but he intended to make sure that the team served as a good training ground and didn’t treat the players like interchangeable bits of meat to be moved around any more than necessary. While they were part of the team, they would be treated well. And eventually, if he and Alex and Mal got this right, the Saints would be in the position not to have to shuffle players around so often.
But they wouldn’t get to that point without taking these first steps. So he had to do what he’d been sent here to do. Which meant forgetting about crappy coffee and seeing exactly what the guys down on the field could do.
Dan moved farther down toward the barrier between the stadium seats and the field, and Lucas followed him. As they walked he noticed Sara sitting in the seats a few rows back. She had a cap—not a Saints cap—pulled over her hair and sunglasses hiding her face, but it was her. She wore a short-sleeved blue shirt and black pants and was holding an eReader or tablet or something. But at the moment she was ignoring the device and gazing down at the field, apparently fascinated.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said to Dan and detoured across to where she sat.
“Good morning,” he said.
She jumped a little, then recovered and looked up at him, the sunglasses hiding her eyes. “Hello.”
“Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I went to make sure the helo was squared away this morning,” she said. “But I didn’t want to just hang around the hotel all day. So I came down here to see if there was anything I could do.”
For a second she bit her lip and Lucas had to stop himself from staring at her mouth. She had beautiful lips. And she knew how to use them.
In ways he needed to stop thinking about.
Though, as he stood there, the pause in their conversation while they watched each other growing just that little bit too long, he saw color start to steal across her cheeks and felt a little growl of satisfaction low in his stomach.
She might be denying it but she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she wanted to be.
“Lucas!” Dan yelled from down at the fence line.
“Look, I’ve got to go do this,” he said. “But I’m sure we can come up with something to keep you busy if you insist. Until then why don’t you come down closer and watch and I’ll introduce you to the coaching team.”
“Just as long as you don’t expect me to say anything helpful,” she said.
“You never know, you might be a baseball savant.”
“I doubt that,” she said as she shoved her tablet back in the big black shoulder bag sitting on the seat beside her. “What I don’t know about baseball could fill a book.”
That stopped him. “Tell me again how you grew up on Staten Island and didn’t learn anything about baseball?”
She shrugged. “Just not that interested.” Her expression turned apologetic. “Sorry. Like I said, I was more into helicopters than sports.”
“What about high school? You didn’t have to go to games, show some school spirit?”
“I was the one hiding under the bleachers with her nose stuck in a flight manual,” Sara said with a grin. “Or playing hooky altogether.”
“A rebel, huh?” So she didn’t like sports. He could hardly hold that against her. After all, he didn’t like flying. And she liked plenty of other things he liked. Beer. Beds. Really really good sex.
“Just kind of one-track-minded back then.”
“And now? Are there other things that hold your interest now?” He couldn’t help the question.
Sea-blue eyes narrowed at him; then she smiled with bared teeth. “Yes. My dog.”
His mouth curved up before he could stop it. But he took the hint to back off with the flirting for now. And he could feel Dan glaring at him. Time to focus on the job at hand. “Well, maybe you’ll like baseball now, too. Come and see.”
* * *
Sara followed Lucas down closer to the field but took a seat a couple of rows back from the front of the stands. Lucas stood at the fence with a guy who was a few inches shorter than him and a few years older, if the glimpse she’d gotten of him when he’d yelled for Lucas to join him was anything to go on.
If she had to guess, she’d say he was Dan Ellis, the team’s manager—which was the coach as far as her baseball for dummies research could determine.
Lucas was definitely paying attention to whatever the guy had to say, anyway.
But Sara wasn’t likely to understand anything they had to say, so she didn’t bother trying to make out what they were talking about.
Instead she turned her attention to the group of men standing on the field, listening to what another man in a Saints jersey was telling them.
They all wore Saints uniforms that were blindingly white and new looking, so they were probably the ones trying out.
From what she’d read and what Lucas had told her, that was what spring training seemed to be about. Trying out new players, getting the team gelled before the season proper started in April.
The guys in the new uniforms varied in age, a couple of them looking painfully young still—all legs and arms and potential.
About eighteen or nineteen, she thought. She’d seen enough fresh-from-basic-training young recruits in her army days to know a lanky not quite a man when she saw one.
It seemed pretty young to her to be trying out for something as big as professional ball.
Then again, she’d started working toward her commercial license at sixteen, so who was she to judge?
Two of the younger guys were bouncing on their toes, swinging their arms, while listening to whatever they were being told. The third, the one with the very short dark hair and broad shoulders he hadn’t quite grown into, hung back. She saw him swallow a few times, and her stomach tightened in sympathy.
Poor kid.
She watched him a little w
hile longer, saw him adjust his cap a few times then swallow again. Was he going to barf?
For his sake, she hoped not. If a baseball team was anything like an army platoon, then he’d never hear the last of it if he did.
She turned her attention to the others in the group as the guy who was talking to them finished and they all peeled off and headed in different directions across the field. The nervous guy and his two youngest buddies stayed near the fence.
The guy in the jersey walked over to Dan and Lucas. The three of them conferred.
“You’re new,” a voice beside her said.
She looked up. A tall guy with dark curly hair and a killer smile was standing at the end of her row. He wore a Saints uniform but it wasn’t as painfully new as the ones on the guys trying out. He had a cap and a baseball glove in one hand and a smartphone in the other. His eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. The expensive weirdly shaped kind.
His smile widened when their eyes met and he moved down the row toward her. “Ollie Shields,” he said, dropping down beside her. “And you are?”
“Sara Charles.”
“Definitely new. I haven’t heard of you. Remind me to chastise the grapevine.” He frowned down at his smartphone as though blaming it for his lack of information.
“What makes you think the grapevine should have heard of me?” she said. She studied him warily. He seemed to think she should have heard of him, but she hadn’t gotten as far as studying the actual Saints players in her research. She’d wanted the basics, not the details.
But whoever Ollie Shields was, he was not hard on the eyes. Tall, olive-skinned, in great shape. About her age. Maybe a little older.
“This place is one big barrel of testosterone,” Ollie said. “Trust me, when a new female walks through the gates, we hear about it.”
That was something she was familiar with, too. Being a female in a sea of men. “Well, I got here kind of late last night. Maybe your grapevine was asleep.”
“Like I said, chastisement will be delivered. So, what brings you to Florida, Sara Charles, and can I convince you to stay awhile?”
His cheerful assuredness made her smile “Confident thing, aren’t you?”
He grinned. She had to admit it was a pretty cute grin. Not as good as Lucas’s, though.
“Just getting in early before the masses.”
She relaxed a little. He was flirting but it wasn’t serious. It was just cocky guy banter. Another thing she’d learned about in the army. The key to cocky guy banter was to banter right back. “And here I thought you’d been struck by lightning at the sight of me.”
“Who says I haven’t?”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “Somehow I get the feeling you’re not the struck-by-lightning type.”
He pouted. “I’m wounded.”
“You’ll survive.” She studied him for a moment. “I take it you’re on the team.” She waved a hand at his uniform.
“You don’t know who I am?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
That made her smile. “Sorry, not a big baseball fan.”
“Then what brings you to spring training, Sara Charles?” He pulled his glasses off, as though he wanted a better look at her. Well, non-baseball fans were probably a rarity in his world. His eyes were a very dark brown and smiley. Which didn’t make him any less attractive. “You didn’t tell me why you’re here.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “You’ll just have to live in suspense for a while.”
“Ah, that means you’re going to be around for a bit,” Ollie said. “There’s hope for me yet.”
“You don’t want me,” she said. “I’m sure dating a girl who doesn’t like baseball would be terrible for your ego. After all, I wouldn’t swoon appropriately when you murmured your stats in my ear.”
“It’s true,” he said, “I do like a good swoon.”
She smiled again. She had to give Ollie points for being entertaining, no matter what else he might or might not be. And maybe he could teach her a bit more about baseball so she didn’t sound like a complete idiot in front of Lucas. “So who are the guys out there?”
Ollie shrugged and pushed his glasses back into place before assuming a bored expression she thought was at least partly for show. “Rookies, mostly.”
She lifted her eyebrow. “Eloquent, aren’t you?”
“You want chapter and verse?”
“How about just a couple of verses. In non-baseball-speak?”
He shrugged. “Okay. I’ll keep it simple. The guys out there are trying out for the team. When we got sold—you know the team changed owners, right?”
She made sure not to look at Lucas. “That much I know.”
“Well, when the terrible trio took over, some of the guys got traded and some wanted out. That’s why we’re down at spring training earlier than usual. We have more gaps to fill than we normally would.” He jerked his chin toward the field. “Those guys are pitchers. Couple of guys from the Preachers—that’s our minor-league team—couple of kids from colleges, and a couple of guys from other teams who’ve been dropped.”
“Why do you want them if they’ve been dropped?”
“Means they’re cheap,” Ollie said. “We at the Saints have a proud history of not having a lot of cash to spend.”
“Aren’t the guys who bought you gazillionaires?”
That got her another shrug. “Alex Winters is definitely a gazillionaire.” For a moment his mouth tightened, and she got the distinct impression that he might not be a fan of Alex Winters. “Lucas Angelo—” Another chin jerk, toward Lucas. “—well, he’s got family money and he’s a hotshot surgeon so he’s not hurting for cash. Neither is Mal Coulter, the other guy. But I don’t think they’re quite as rich as Alex.”
“But rich enough to buy good players.”
“It’s a business,” Ollie said. “I guess they’re playing things carefully. They could spend a lot of money upfront but it’s not going to guarantee a good solid team. They say they’re in it for the long haul, so I guess they’re being smart. Seeing if they can find some undervalued talent. Build from there.”
He seemed to think it made sense. She didn’t know anything about baseball strategy so she’d take his word for it.
“Are you a pitcher, too? Is that why you’re here today?”
“Nah, I’m first baseman. Reasonable batter. Can’t pitch for shit, though. I’m here to run around a bit and pick up balls once they start trying out. Start getting my hand in, so to speak.” He leaned forward as he spoke. Toward the field and the action. Like a puppy eager to be let off the leash so it could go join in the fun.
“Am I keeping you?” she asked.
“No, the coach is still putting the fear of God into them,” Ollie said, relaxing a little. “They won’t start getting into it for a bit longer.”
Sara looked down at the field at the three young guys again. They were all looking seriously tense now.
“Surely that makes it harder for them to do well? Getting them wound up, I mean.”
“If they can’t perform with just the coaching staff yelling at them, how are they going to do with thousands of fans screaming at them?” He sounded unsympathetic. “Better to know now if they’re going to crack at under pressure. This is the big league. Literally.”
“I guess.”
“If you want something, you’ve gotta go after it, no matter how nervous you might be. Feel the fear and do it anyway or whatever that shit is.”
“Deep.”
He laughed. “Baseball philosopher, that’s me.” Then he straightened as the coach turned in their direction and jerked a thumb toward the field. “That’s my cue,” he said, standing. “Don’t go falling in love with anybody else while I’m down there.” He grinned one last time, hitting her with full-out ridiculous charm, and waggled dark brows at her.
“I’ll do my best,” Sara said, but even as she spoke the words she felt her gaze drift toward Lucas. It wasn’t Ollie Shields’s r
idiculous charms she had to worry about.
Chapter Ten
After Ollie left, Sara turned her attention back to what was happening on the field. If she didn’t have anything else useful to do—and that was a pretty weird feeling, not having something urgent to do—she might as well watch and see if she could make any sense of what was going on.
The players broke off into groups and, once again, the three younger guys stayed closest to where she was sitting. Lucas and Dan Ellis stayed right by the fence, too. Ollie and another player—a tall black guy who’d walked past her swinging a gleaming silver bat idly in one hand—stood beside them.
Sara shifted a few seats over so she could see past the group of men, feeling herself tense in sympathy as the young guys headed over to a batting cage and started stretching and jogging in place, nerves written all over them.
Once again, her gaze was caught by the one with the short dark hair. He was lanky but he still moved fluidly, hints of grace peeking from beneath the lingering adolescent gangliness. Once he filled out he would be no one to mess with.
The guy with the bat and Ollie strolled over to the three young pitchers with the other coach. Ollie jogged on past and took up position out on the field a fair way from the cage. When he was in position, the batter walked into the cage.
The first of the young guys picked up a ball from the pile of them sitting outside the cage and walked out to the pitcher’s mound.
Sara could feel every step he took, her heart pounding in sympathy.
She held her breath as he took his first pitch. And winced when the batter connected solidly and the ball went flying past to where Ollie stood.
Ollie scooped it up easily and sent it back to the pitcher, yelling something that Sara thought was, “C’mon, rook. Get it together.”
Not helpful.
The second pitcher was better, she thought, the kid not looking so nervous. He had curly dishwater-brown hair and a solid build and even managed a flash of a nervous amazed grin before he took his shot. But he, too, got his pitches smashed solidly by the batter.
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