Out of Her League

by Lori Handeland

  “Isn’t this marvelous?”

  Evie winced. She knew that voice.

  “Mrs. Larson.” Evie greeted the elderly patron. “What brings you to Little League?”

  Decked out in her usual attire—dress, hose, heels, pearls, hat and purse—Mrs. Larson looked as though she’d arrived from a garden party. She just might have, since they still had those in Oak Grove.

  “I’m here to see this, dear.” She swept out a perfectly manicured hand, indicating the game and the crowd. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Wonderful?” Evie echoed.

  “Oh, my!” Mrs. Larson pointed to the parking lot. “Why, this is a dream come true.”

  Evie followed Mrs. Larson’s finger. A crew from Channel 8 News hurried toward them.

  “A dream? It’s shaping up like a nightmare.”

  “What are you mumbling about? This is splendid. Look at all the spectators. Look at that concession stand.”

  Evie did—and moaned. The parents who were running it were—well, they were running. The line was long and getting longer. If this kept up they’d have to close down, or go and get more stuff to sell.

  The level of noise surrounding the game was amazing. Evie turned toward the field. Joe no longer seemed to notice. Why would he? He was used to doing his job in front of television cameras, beneath field lights and under the scrutiny of thousands. This was nothing to him.

  What had she done in letting Iceman Scalotta coach T-ball? Would this chaos repeat itself at each and every game? If so, how could she stop it?

  “I’ll have to fire him,” she blurted.

  “You’ll do no such thing, missy.” Only Mrs. Larson could get away with calling grown women “missy”—and she knew it. “That boy is the best thing to happen around here in aeons. The school board, and Don Barry, have plans for him.”

  Don—her father’s oldest and dearest friend—was the athletic director who had hired Evie to teach at Oak Grove. Also the vice principal, he had the final say on who was employed. He wouldn’t screw up her life for a sound bite, would he? The school board, of which Mrs. Larson was also the president, was another story.

  “What about the board?” Evie asked, though she had a very bad feeling she wasn’t going to like the answer. “What would they want with Joe Scalotta?”

  “If he can bring this many folk to a Little League game, just imagine what he could do for our varsity program.”

  “Varsity baseball?”

  “What else, dear?”

  What else, indeed. At Oak Grove, baseball was all she wrote.

  “He’s a football player!” Evie’s shout drew disapproving glares from several people engrossed in the game—or rather, in watching Jock Hollywood.

  “What difference does that make?” Mrs. Larson frowned. “Just look.”

  The camera crew set up shop right next to Joe and began filming the game from his point of view. The reporter stuck a microphone next to his mouth and taped his words of wisdom to the kids. Scalotta didn’t even flinch; he just kept right on coaching. At least he didn’t stop the game and give a live, prime-time interview.

  “Just because he was a football hero doesn’t mean he knows diddly about baseball,” Evie pointed out, quite calmly, too, considering her roiling stomach and the state of her mind.

  “If he doesn’t know ‘diddly,’ as you say, then why have you allowed him to coach your sons?”

  Evie glanced at Mrs. Larson. Just as she’d thought, the sweet-voiced question did not match the deliberation in those eyes.

  Evie didn’t think Mrs. Larson would be happy to hear “He was the only man for the job.” Only being the operative word. Evie hadn’t searched elsewhere for a better candidate because there weren’t any other candidates, let alone better ones. Therefore, because Evie had let Joe coach her kids, he had just become Coach Extraordinaire in Oak Grove.

  And Evie was hung with her own rope.

  She spent the rest of the game helping at the concession stand, while trying to glimpse what was happening on the field. The news that one of her Big League coaches had fallen off his roof and broken his leg made Evie’s night complete—completely disastrous. How was she going to find another coach at this late date?

  “Only one disaster at a time, if you please,” she muttered as she tried to keep her mind on the worries at hand. Namely, that they had run out of hot dogs in half an hour, and soda in forty-five minutes. There was no candy left by the fourth inning, and there were people whining all over the place.

  When the game wound down, Joe’s team had lost. Evie would have taken childish and unprofessional pleasure in that, except no one seemed to care about the loss. Everyone gathered around him, slapping his back and shaking his hand as if he’d just won a gold medal.

  So she returned to her own disappointment. She’d been promised that varsity coaching job if she won the championship. She’d been willing to work hard to get it. Now Joe would likely be handed her prize on a platter just for being a great big manly man. Grr.

  Mrs. Larson approached Joe and introduced herself. Evie was close enough to hear what followed, though she pretended to be checking the bench for leftover caps and gloves.

  “Mr. Scalotta, I’m the president of the Oak Grove School Board, and we’re convening a special meeting tomorrow night that we’d like you to attend.”

  Joe appeared puzzled, but he nodded. What else could he do? He had a child in the system and no idea of the kind of politics that went on in a small town. He probably thought the school board was like some welcoming committee.

  Well, Evie wasn’t going to roll over and play dead. Not yet, anyway.

  *

  Chapter Seven

  Joe had no clue why the little old lady wanted him at the school board meeting, but he also knew better than to argue with a woman like her. When she said jump, Joe bet, most of Oak Grove didn’t even ask how high.

  He tried to get Mrs. Larson to tell him what was going on, but she merely smiled and said, “We want to talk to you, sonny. Make you welcome and all that.” By the time he stopped chuckling over someone of her size calling someone of his size “sonny,” she was gone. The woman moved amazingly quick for an octogenarian.

  With all the people waiting to talk to him, it took Joe another half hour to get to his car. He hadn’t thought there were this many people in Oak Grove. Now that he did, he realized there weren’t. Some of his new best friends had mentioned driving in from neighboring towns.

  Joe hoped this circus atmosphere was a one-night occurrence. Why would people watch him coach T-ball once a week? How boring was that?

  Evie had disappeared in a flash, just like Mrs. Larson. The few times he’d glanced her way during the game, she’d looked shell-shocked. He figured he should give her a call and reassure her that he didn’t think this fiasco would repeat itself.

  Joe drove home meaning to do just that. But when he arrived, and Toni wasn’t in yet, he got caught up in pacing the floor.

  She showed up before eleven—by five minutes, but still before. Joe, who had been staring out the window down the long, empty street, wishing and waiting for headlights to appear, dove for a chair and the remote control when twin beams turned onto his road.

  By the time he heard the car door slam, Joe was sufficiently engrossed in the “Nick at Night” episode of Happy Days to answer any quiz on this particular adventure—mainly because he’d seen it ten times already.

  The fifties—now those were the days, or so he’d heard from his parents. He himself had grown up in the seventies. By then a lot of the innocence had gone.

  Growing up in the nineties and the first years of the new millennium? Joe shivered. Toni had a tough road ahead. He only hoped he’d be able to help her negotiate the trials without making things worse. The terrors out in the big bad world were enough to cause a grown man to cry for his mother. Joe planned on doing so regularly. His mom had raised four boys and no girls, but she was all he had available for expert advice. Joe was a firm be
liever in the adage When the Going Gets Tough, Call Mommy.

  The front door opened—then shut with unnecessary force. What was it about kids and doors? They had to slam every one.

  “Hi, Joe.”

  He glanced up, trying to act as though he’d fallen asleep in the chair. Toni leaned in the doorway, that new dreamy smile on her face.

  “Did you have fun?” Joe narrowed his gaze and checked her for telltale rumples or hickeys, keeping his sigh of relief silent when he found nothing. He’d moved to Iowa to eliminate some of the everyday dangers of the world, but even in Iowa they had teenage boys.

  “Yes. Fun.”

  She sighed like a teenage girl who’d just gone out with Elvis. Make that Paul McCartney. No, not him, either. Who the heck was the dreamboat of the decade? Probably Adam Vaughn. Joe resisted the urge to growl.

  “What kind of ice cream did you have?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Ice cream. You were going for ice cream.”

  Suddenly she focused on him and caught him focusing on her. “You checking up on me, Joe?”

  He blinked at the unexpected ice in her voice. Where had that come from? He’d heard teenaged girls could switch moods in a heartbeat, but he’d yet to see such behavior from Toni. Still, he’d only had her for a few weeks.

  “Checking up on you?” he repeated.

  “Asking me what kind of ice cream I had, like I didn’t go to the DQ or something.”

  “Where else would you go?”

  She peered at the television. “Inspiration Point?”

  He followed her gaze and saw the Fonz escorting a duo of giggling, taller women to just that location. “They have one of those here?”

  “I doubt there’s a Point, or even a Hill, but I’m sure they have a make-out place.”

  “And if they do?”

  She returned her gaze to Joe and anger flashed in her eyes. “What are you asking me? If I’ll go there? Or if I’ll tell you where it is?”

  “Why would I want to know where the equivalent of Inspiration Point is?”

  “According to the papers, you’re quite the ladies’ man.”

  Joe winced. “You read about me in the papers?”

  She shrugged but didn’t answer him.

  “I did a lot of things I’m not proud of,” he acknowledged. “Before I met your mother and after.”

  Toni stiffened. “Like having me?”

  “No! You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. One of the few things I am proud of.”

  She didn’t look convinced. Why would she be? She barely knew him.

  “I just want you to be happy here, baby. With me.”

  “I’m not a baby anymore. I haven’t been for a long time.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry I missed it.”

  “Missed what?”

  “You’re being a baby.”

  “Well … you did.” Belligerence colored her voice.

  Joe sighed. He felt as though he was walking on thin spring ice and could break through into cold deep water at any time.

  “I can never get back those days no matter how badly I want to, no matter how sorry I am for screwing up. But I can be with you now. And if you’ll let me, I want to be your dad.”

  “You are my dad.”

  “Just because your last name is Scalotta and my name’s on your birth certificate doesn’t give me the right to be your dad. I have to earn that privilege, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

  If he could only figure out what that was.

  Toni didn’t say anything–didn’t dispute or agree. Instead, she turned around and walked upstairs without even a good-night. Joe let her go. They both had to get used to each other before they engaged in deep conversations about the past.

  Or maybe Joe was just too chicken to hear what he had done that was so bad she could not bring herself to love him. Because maybe it was so bad she would never be able to love him. And cowardly though it was, he’d rather not know that his dream might not come true.

  The next day Toni was even more quiet than usual, and Joe didn’t pester her. She would have to come to him on her own.

  When Joe was ready to leave for the school board meeting that night, he found her sitting in the living room with a book open in her lap and the television blaring a music video. Her hair still wet from a shower, she wore her sleeping-cat pajama shirt, and curled bare legs beneath the knee-length hem.

  “How can you read and watch TV at the same time?” Joe asked.

  She shrugged. “I always have. You should see me study and watch TV.”

  Joe frowned. Didn’t sound productive to him, but that would be a discussion best saved for fall, when school started. “I’m going to the board meeting. It probably won’t take more than an hour.”

  “Okay. Adam’s coming over.”

  Joe already had his hand on the front doorknob. After that announcement, he walked back into the living room. “For what?”

  “Huh?” She looked up from her book, her eyes unfocused, no doubt still thinking of the story—or Vaughn.

  “What’s he coming over for?”

  “To watch television. His mom’s going to the same meeting as you.”

  That threw Joe for a minute. Why was Evie attending this “welcome to the neighborhood” thing? Maybe she was on the welcoming committee. “And the twins?”

  Toni rolled her eyes. “Are not my problem. But Adam said they were at a bowling party tonight, or he’d be stuck watching them.”

  Joe grunted. Toni was right. The twins weren’t his problem—at the moment. Toni was.

  “I assume you’ll put on pants before he gets here.”

  “Why?”

  “Toni,” he warned.

  She laughed. “Yes. I’ll put on pants, and a shirt, even.”

  When Joe hesitated, she waved toward the door. “Have a nice time. See you later.”

  “I’m not sure I like the idea of him being here while you’re alone.”

  “Jeez, Joe. We’re gonna watch a movie. Besides, you’ll be back in an hour. What could happen?”

  Joe knew very well what could happen, but since she didn’t seem to, he didn’t want to give her any ideas. “All right. See you.” He started out once more, then poked his head around the door. “Soon,” he reminded her. She just raised her eyebrows and stared at him, unsmiling.

  Joe’s uneasiness followed him all the way to the meeting. It only increased when he walked in on a room full of people who took one look at him and immediately started whispering.

  Scalotta didn’t appear too pleased at the size of the welcoming committee. Fancy that.

  He stood in the doorway. Actually, he filled the doorway, and for a minute Evie just sat back and enjoyed the view. She’d never seen him in anything but T-shirts. Tonight he wore a powder-blue dress shirt, the cuffs rolled up to just below his elbows, revealing muscular forearms. Evie nearly groaned. The man had a way of playing to her weaknesses.

  The shade of that shirt brought out the intense blue of his eyes. As he scanned the room, she shivered. Very few men—heck, very few humans—had eyes that shade of blue. He was impressive—the stuff outright fantasies were made of.

  Unfortunately, she’d been having quite a few fantasies lately—and Joe was always in them. Like the one last night, where she’d imagined him without a shirt, out in the sun, on a beautiful summer day. He’d been painting her house—something she badly needed done but couldn’t afford. His muscles, all of them, had glistened, and not with the pretty-boy oil bodybuilders used but with a combination of sunshine and well-earned sweat.

  Joe was not a boy. Thank God. She really did enjoy looking at men who were built like him—tall and firm, and large in all the right places. Too bad he was off-limits to all but her secret fantasies.

  Since she was an underpaid, overworked, overtired, school-teaching mother of three, Evie continued to fantasize. She was entitled.

  How much hair did he have on his chest? How much did she lik
e? Just a little, so she could see all that glistening skin. Presto chango—just what she wanted.

  Washboard stomach? You betcha.

  Pants tight over the rear but loose enough at the waist to gape and allow a teasing hide-and-seek glimpse of a golden line of hair leading down to—

  “Evie?”

  She opened her eyes to find the subject of her fantasy leaning over her. With the harsh light of the fluorescent bulbs behind him, his hair looked more silver than blond and his eyes had gone dark.

  “Oh, yeah.” The two words escaped before she could prevent them. The tone of voice—husky, sexy, inviting—was not one she’d ever heard herself use.

  Joe blinked as if the lights had suddenly blinded him, or as if he’d also heard a stranger’s voice coming out of Evie’s mouth.

  “Pardon me?”

  Evie blushed. She couldn’t help it. Even though Joe had no idea she’d just been having mindsex with him, she still wanted to crawl in a hole and pull the hole in after her. Just because she hadn’t had sex in … oh … six years did not mean she had the right to conjure visions in the midst of a school board meeting—no matter how appealing they were.

  Evie sat up so fast that her tailbone bumped against the metal foldout chair, and she hissed with pain.

  “You okay?” Joe asked, holding out his hand.

  She ignored the hand, even though the palm was wide, the skin tanned and the fingers long—just the kind of hand she liked. The man who owned it probably knew just what to do with it to make her every fantasy come true.

  Her entire body went hot, and she pulled on the scooped neckline of her ivy-green dress, hoping a little air would help. It did not.

  “Evie?”

  Joe appeared worried now, and she couldn’t blame him. She was acting like a lunatic.

  “I’m fine,” she hastily assured him, more to get him to back off than because she was fine.

  The way he loomed above her made Evie’s flushed skin tingle. The way he smelled… She caught herself breathing deeply of his scent and mind-cursed both him for smelling that way and herself for being aroused by it. Joe Scalotta smelled better than any man had a right to—like summer heat and winter breezes, picnics and ice skating, lemonade and hot tea.