Diamond in the Rough

by Marie Ferrarella

  Mike grinned, nodding. “I guess you’re right. What made you agree to do this?” Slipping his hands into his back pockets, he seemed without a care in the world, just a man shooting the breeze with a Little League coach. “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” he admitted, looking over toward the playing field.

  “Not exactly rocket science,” Steven told him. Just a hint of a smile curved his lips. The next moment, it was gone. “And my daughter thought I needed to get out more. She’s the one with the clipboard hovering behind me,” he added, nodding his head back in Miranda’s general direction. “I think you’ve already met.”

  For form’s sake, Mike glanced back at her. “Yes, in the parking lot,” he acknowledged smoothly. He nodded at Miranda, as if to say hi. “Everyone needs a guardian angel.”

  Miranda was grateful to be standing behind her father so that he wouldn’t see her cheeks go pink. Marlowe was right, she’d never pass for a spy.

  Steven snorted. “The existence of those is highly debatable.” And then he paused for a second, watching the other team’s second batter swing at the pitch after the fact. It was his second miss, done in identical fashion. “Keep your eye on the pitcher’s arm, not the ball,” Steven told him. The boy looked at him with wide eyes. “You see it coming at you, it’s already too late to swing. You start swinging a second before he releases.”

  The batter, gangly and nervous, nodded his head up and down like a bobble-head figurine.

  “Isn’t that seen as aiding and abetting the enemy?” Mike asked, amused and, at the same time, impressed that the man was willing to give advice to someone not on his team.

  It was obvious that Steven didn’t agree with his supposed take on the situation. “It’s helping a kid not feel any worse about himself than he already does.”

  Mike laughed softly. “Wish you’d been around when I was trying out for the Little League team. I could have really used you.”

  Steven merely nodded, as if he was taking in just another stray piece of information. And then the man appraised him for a long moment. Mike had a feeling that he was being weighed and measured, just like the kids on the team.

  “I’ve already assigned all the coaching positions,” Steven told him matter-of-factly.

  Mike looked out on the field. Every base had a father in close proximity and there were a couple more out in the field, as well.

  “Yeah, I can see that. I’m not here for a position, I just thought I’d see how close I could get to a living legend.” It was the truth in a manner of speaking. Mike was surprised to see a dark look descend over the former pitcher’s face.

  Scowling, Steven turned his attention back to the players. “You’re in the wrong place for that. No living legends here, just a man trying to give a little something back.”

  At that moment, the boy he’d just coached finally made contact with the ball. The baseball flew in a high arc overhead, gaining more altitude than distance. Steven leaned forward, watching as two of his infielders ran in from separate points toward the ball. Both appeared to be watching the ball and were oblivious of each other. They collided, falling to the ground amid groans. A fraction of a second before they did, the shortstop ran back, stretching his arm up overhead as far as it would go.

  Miranda regretted not having a camera with her to capture the look of pure amazement, then joy when the boy saw that the ball was nestled in his glove. And that he had been the one to catch it.

  “That one,” Steven said, leaning back in his chair again, “has more than just potential.” He nodded, as if conferring with himself. “That one has instincts and you can’t teach that.”

  “Way to go, Robbie!” a father shouted from the sidelines.

  “And he’s also got a cheering section,” Miranda commented with a smile.

  “That’s important, too,” Mike heard himself adding. He remembered how Kate had demanded that his father take time out of his overwhelmingly busy schedule to watch his brothers and him play. He remembered, too, how angry she’d become with his father when, despite her urgings, he had failed to show up for one of the earlier games. His father had still been her employer at the time, but that hadn’t stopped Kate from standing up to him for what she believed was right.

  For them, he thought. He glanced at the man in the wheelchair, marveling at the twists and turns life took. Who would have ever thought that he’d actually meet the man he had once worshipped? Or that he’d find some common ground?

  “You remind me a little of my stepmother,” Mike confessed.

  Steven glanced over at him. Mike couldn’t begin to guess what the man was thinking. Was he insulted? Amused? Or just annoyed?

  “She have a deep voice, too?” Steven finally asked him.

  “No, just a deep-seated sense of integrity,” Mike replied honestly. He hesitated for a moment, then he asked, “Do you mind if I just hover around for a bit, watching you?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t hover—” And then he shrugged, as if rethinking the dismissal. “But you can take a seat on the bench when our team bats if you want. I don’t have a batboy,” Steven remarked, not that he had planned on filling that position. It was more for show in professional games than an actual necessity. “You can hand out bats to the players before they get up to take their turn in the cage.”

  Mike didn’t bother hiding the grin that came to his lips. He had to admit, part of him felt like a kid again. “Yes, sir.”

  Steven waved his hand dismissively at the term he’d just used. “Coach’ll do.”

  Truer words had never been spoken. Mike went to drag over the canvas duffel bag filled with baseball bats.

  “Do you realize that you’ve been grinning for two hours now?” Miranda noted when Mike worked his way over to her.

  The game was over and they were packing up. Their team had won by two runs, thanks more to errors on the part of the other team. Mike was gathering up the equipment that Steven had brought with him in the van.

  His grin only widened at her comment. “I think being here like this tapped into the inner kid in me,” Mike confessed. He stopped and looked around. In the distance, parents gathered up their kids and cars pulled out of the lot. It was dark and the artificial lights were on, but no one seemed to notice. There seemed to be an electrical charge in the air. “This wasn’t what I expected,” he admitted.

  Miranda had volunteered to bring the after-game snacks and was collecting the drinks and granola bars that hadn’t been eaten. She stopped packing them away and looked at him, curious for more than one reason. “What did you expect?”

  “I’m not sure. A little of the killer instinct on display, I guess. A former player I knew, Jim Bishop—he played in the minors for a few years—never seemed to have what it took to reach the majors. But he trained the kids on his team as if they were getting ready for the pros. He barked orders and threw around insults whenever his team didn’t play up to his expectations. And I won’t even go into what he said about the players on the other team. They didn’t let him coach the following year. There were too many complaints from the parents.”

  And he thought that her father was going to be like that? Her protectiveness flared up and she banked it down as best she could.

  “Little men with something to prove do that,” Miranda told him coolly. She narrowed her eyes. “My father doesn’t feel he has anything to prove—or apologize for,” she emphasized, throwing the last in for good measure.

  That brought them back full circle to the subject of Steven’s permanent ban from baseball. But Mike didn’t want to think about that right now—or delve into the principles he’d quoted so religiously in the initial article that had brought Miranda into his life. He wanted to savor what he’d just experienced.

  Mike’d found himself really liking the man. He wanted to enjoy having spent part of an afternoon with the man who had once been his hero.

  “No, he certainly doesn’t have anything to prove,” Mike agreed.

  She was a scientist
and it was in her nature to examine things, including words. She heard what Mike was saying, as well as what he wasn’t saying, thereby delivering his message loud and clear.

  After bundling up the leftover snacks, she tossed them into a double-lined garbage bag and yanked hard on the red tie.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. When was she going to learn that she just couldn’t trust everyone without limits? Just because Mike Marlowe sounded sincere and professed having been a dedicated fan didn’t mean he would give her father a fair shake in his article.

  Mike reached over to help her with the bag and she pulled it out of his reach. She didn’t need his damn help.

  Miranda squared her shoulders. “He doesn’t have anything to apologize for, either,” she informed him in a low, firm voice before she turned on her heel and quickly walked away from him.

  Chapter Seven

  Miranda held her breath the next morning as she opened the newspaper to the sports section…and then released it after she’d read Mike’s column. There was no mention of her father.

  No news was good news, right? And, after all, what had transpired yesterday on the field hadn’t exactly been an interview. It was more like a semiconversation between the two men.

  She’d been close enough to hear what was said. There hadn’t been anything in the discussion that Mike could report as offensive. She knew that didn’t stop some journalists, but she was holding Mike to his word.

  When she found nothing in his column about her father on the second day, or the third, she began to wonder if Marlowe had decided to give up the idea of writing about Steven Shaw, good or bad. That wasn’t what she’d wanted, either, although “nothing” was preferable to a bad “something.”

  By lunchtime on the fifth day, she couldn’t contain her curiosity. Promise Pharmaceuticals not only had a cafeteria for their employees, but also provided shaded tables on a wide terrace facing the back of the building. She took her lunch there and removed Mike’s folded napkin from her wallet. Time to get in touch.

  It took two tries to reach him. The first went to voice mail. Though impatient, she forced herself to wait until she was finished eating before trying the cell-phone number again. This time, she would leave a message.

  She didn’t have to. Mike picked up just before the recorded message kicked in.

  “This is Mike.” His baritone voice rumbled against her ear. His declaration was punctuated by the sound of a female voice laughing in the background.

  Well, that certainly explained why she hadn’t been able to get him before, Miranda thought.

  “Am I interrupting something?” she asked him, struggling to keep the coolness out of her voice.

  “Miranda?”

  “Yes.” She should have just hung up instead of saying anything. For reasons she couldn’t pin down, she felt like an idiot now.

  “Hi.” He sounded happy to hear from her. Obviously the man had hidden acting talent. “Wait just a second. Hey, guys,” she heard him say to someone in the background, “keep it down, will you? This is business.”

  “Business.” Now there was a female voice echoing his word back at him coyly. “Is that what you call it now, Mikey?”

  Miranda had no idea why that comment annoyed her. Both the coy tone the woman used and the fact that she, Miranda, was “business.”

  Well, what else would she be? she silently demanded, irritated. You know you wouldn’t be comfortable if it was anything else. You wouldn’t have called him if this wasn’t about “business.”

  At least with Mike it was more clear-cut. For most of her life, people had tried to garner her friendship in order to get autographs or tickets to a sold-out ball game. She found out who her true friends were after the gambling scandal. The ones who no longer called her had been there under false pretenses. Tilda was among the very small number who remained loyal and trustworthy no matter what. As for Mike, could she trust him even if it was just business?

  “Sorry,” Mike apologized. By the sudden stillness in the background, she guessed that he had to have gone to another room to talk to her. “My sister’s at that weird age where she thinks everything out of her mouth is witty.”

  “Your sister?” Miranda realized she was smiling. Why should it matter to her whether or not he was with another woman?

  “Yes, my sister. Kelsey. You’ve reached me at my parents’ house. I’ve got the day off and—” He stopped himself midexplanation. “Well, you didn’t call to hear a bunch of personal stuff. What can I do for you?”

  She cleared her throat, focusing. “I was just wondering why you didn’t write anything in your column about my father. It’s been five days. Did you change your mind?”

  “Hell, no,” he said with feeling. “I didn’t write anything because I didn’t interview him yet. I want to talk to him at least a few more times before I put an article together.”

  Then he did want to do an interview. That was both good and bad, she thought, feeling ambivalent again. “So are you going to tell him that you’re interviewing him?” she asked.

  “It’s only ethical. But I think I’d be better off doing it after I get him to like me a little,” he added. She could almost see the way his grin spread out over his face. “Don’t worry, I won’t implicate you.”

  “But he saw us talking,” she reminded him.

  “Dozens of reasons for that,” Mike told her. “Not the least of which is my trying to get your number to ask you out.” He paused for a moment, as if waiting for her to say something. When she didn’t, he forged on. “Speaking of which, what are you doing next Sunday afternoon?”

  She thought for a second, her mind suddenly a blank. “Um, having brunch with a friend.” Barring something unforeseeable, she and Tilda had a standing date at 10:00 a.m.

  “Oh.”

  Was that a tinge of disappointment in his voice? Or just fanciful thinking on her part? In either case, she heard herself clarifying, “A girlfriend,” for absolutely no good reason.

  “Oh.” This time the word sounded a great deal brighter. It wasn’t her imagination. “Would your girlfriend mind if you postponed it?”

  Air stopped in her lungs. “Why would I do that?”

  “My parents are having an anniversary party on Sunday—their anniversary’s really the following Tuesday, but we can’t all make it at that time so they’re having the party on Sunday. Anyway, I thought that maybe, if you weren’t doing anything…Look, if this is the slightest bit awkward for you, then never mind. I understand.”

  She took a breath. “And if it’s not awkward for me…?” she hypothesized.

  “Then I’d like you to come.”

  “To your parents’ house?” she asked in disbelief.

  “Yes. It’s a barbecue. You do eat meat?” he asked suddenly.

  “I eat meat,” she assured him.

  Well, this was certainly different than being lured to a man’s apartment for an evening of covert seduction. She had to admit that she was attracted to Mike. What safer place to see him than in his home setting? Besides, she could learn a few things, watching him interact with his family.

  “And your parents won’t mind my crashing their anniversary party?”

  “You won’t be crashing, you’ll be coming with me,” he pointed out.

  That meant he didn’t have a girlfriend, she realized. Her pulse accelerated just a tad. “Do you mind if I think about it?”

  Everything inside her shouted “yes” but she had to be cautious. Impulse had gotten her into a couple of relationships that had soured without warning, hurting her after she’d invested a large chunk of herself. For all she knew, this could have just been Mike’s way of thanking her for putting him in touch with her father.

  “Sure,” he said, “but it’s all aboveboard. And if you find that you’re not having a good time, just tell me and I promise I’ll take you home. What could be more fair than that?” he coaxed.

  “Nothing,” she admitted, and then she laughed softly
to herself. “I’ll say this for you, you know how to mount a good argument.”

  “My father’s a lawyer, and so is one of my brothers. Maybe it’s in the blood, like a latent gene,” he speculated.

  Or maybe it was just pure charm, she thought. The man certainly had it to spare. She could all but envision the expression on his face right at this moment.

  “That would explain it,” she allowed. Oh, what the hell? “Okay, I’ll come.”

  “Great.”

  He sounded genuinely happy to hear her decision. She tried not to let her mind get carried away. This was just going to be a sociable afternoon, nothing more.

  No matter how appealing his mouth seemed.

  “I need to know what to wear,” she began. Did that sound as mindlessly lame as she thought? She didn’t want him to think she was a fashion diva. “I mean, is it casual, or—”

  “I’ll give you all the details Wednesday,” he promised.

  “Wednesday?” she echoed.

  “Yes, on the field,” he reminded her. “Your father’s going to be coaching his team tomorrow, right?”

  “Right.”

  Was that his angle? she suddenly wondered. To make her father think that he was interested in her so that his constant questions would seem normal? Was he using her after all?

  “Okay, then I’ll see you there,” he said, winding down the conversation. “’Bye,” he said, before hanging up.

  Miranda sat for a moment, looking at the cell phone in her hand. What had just happened? Had she just agreed to a date—or a setup?

  “You look as if you don’t know if you should laugh or cry.”

  Miranda glanced up and saw that Tilda was crossing over to her table. Their usual lunch routine was broken today because Tilda had to make a quick run to the bank.

  Miranda rose to her feet, falling into step beside her friend as Tilda continued on to the back entrance of the building.

  “Funny, that’s just exactly how I feel.” And confused as hell, she added silently.

  Tilda smiled with not-so-hidden amusement. “Does this have anything to do with that cute sportswriter?”