Double Play

by Joanne Rock

  “No more panic?” His lips hovered close to her face and she debated how best to put them in contact with her skin again.

  “No. I think I hurdled past the panic to the realization that I’m alone in a hotel room with a man who holds the key to my orgasmic potential.”

  “Too bad I hadn’t planned this better or I would have capitalized on that state of mind.” He eased back, giving her time to process what his words meant.

  “No quickie against the door?”

  His eyes widened a fraction and she realized how much she enjoyed keeping him on his toes.

  “I’m not saying no, but I did schedule a massage for you while I attend a meeting with the trainers.” He checked his watch as if considering how long it would take to have her against the door.

  And while she squirmed happily at the picture that painted, she was also intrigued by the alternative. “A massage?”

  “The hot stone workup is great here, but ask them for whatever you want. I figured it was the least I can do for hauling you across the country when you wanted to relax this week.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” she protested, peering toward the window out onto a terrace with a view up Rodeo Drive. “I haven’t taken a trip farther than Nantucket in years, so just being here is a treat. But tell me this—what’s your meeting about?”

  She was having a hard time envisioning the full scope of his responsibilities, and his work intrigued her. He wasn’t just getting paid for hitting a ball with a bat, the way she’d teased him once. She’d seen him exchange words with some of his team members back in the lobby earlier, and it struck her that Heath must have his hands full keeping that many young hotshots on track. Besides the obvious problems inherent in dealing with rookies who might be away from home for the first time and suddenly raking in millions, Heath also had to cope with the logistics of the different languages spoken in the dugout. Besides English and a few different Spanish hybrids from the Dominicans, Mexicans and so on, there was a pitching ace from Japan who couldn’t communicate with any of them. Had to be tough to build team chemistry, let alone give your basic pregame pep talk.

  “We need to revisit the workouts for some of our guys on the disabled list and see if we can figure out a way to keep Diego in the training room instead of on the phone with Jasmine every day. I’m really worried about him—his batting average has taken a nosedive the past two weeks, and I know he’s going to be in a tailspin if he gets cut from the team.”

  “It’s that serious?” She remembered the fans whooping it up for the third baseman at the stadium and couldn’t imagine him disappearing from the game. But maybe it wasn’t so rare for someone to screw up the chance of a lifetime.

  Heath picked up the room keys off the dresser and gave one to her while putting the other in his pocket.

  “It’s like a disease in the dugout and it’s infecting more players every day. Diego’s swing is off, and it throws off the guy behind him in the lineup who now needs a big hit and not just a single. We’re down by a few hits each game, and the pitchers start getting antsy, thinking they have to win the games with defense because the offense isn’t producing. But aside from the way one guy’s problems play out in a game, the effects are worse in the locker room.” Heath shook his head, clearly frustrated. “How so?”

  “Diego’s girlfriend had a baby and the news gets passed around the players and their girlfriends and wives. There’s some jealousy from the wives who have been wanting to start families but their men have put it off because of their careers. Other players see the hell Diego is going through and bust up with their girlfriends because they’ve been struggling to make their relationships work, and seeing Diego get the crap kicked out of him by life only makes them more wary about getting involved. None of them want to screw up their careers.”

  “You guys really live in each other’s back pockets that much?” It sounded more like a dysfunctional family than a team. Although they did spend a lot of time together, Amber supposed. The bonds would be tight.

  “We’re like a travelling fraternity.” Heath checked his watch and pulled her in for a kiss. “We spend more time together than we do apart. If you ever spent three hours in a rain delay before a four-hour game, you’d know that it makes you damn close to the people waiting out the storm in that dugout with you. Good or bad, you know each other’s business.”

  The visual created a concrete image for her and Amber thought she understood a little better. This was Heath’s family, maybe more than the real genetic deal had been. No wonder he didn’t want Diego to lose his spot on the team. He was one of Heath’s own. And—to take it a step further—how crappy would it feel to get booted from your own family?

  It was the position Heath sat in as much as Diego. One more reason why Heath surely fought to keep the player in the game. Knowing that about him—that he would work hard to help someone who was struggling—touched her.

  “Good luck at the meeting.” Winding her arms around his neck, she leaned in for a last kiss. “I’ll see you back here later and you can make up for the quickie against the door.”

  His muscles flexed in the most interesting places in response.

  “You’re on.” He growled the words against her ear, his mouth dipping to the sensitive place just below there to brush a kiss. “Be thinking about me when you get that massage, okay? Know that I wish it could be my hands all over you.”

  She tilted her head to one side to give him full access to her neck, her breath catching at the idea of stripping down and letting Heath feel her everywhere…

  “Amber? Will you do that for me? Picture my hands on your hips when you’re getting touched here.” His palms drifted down to the curve of her waist and then edged lower. Lower. “And here.”

  “Mmm,” she agreed, ready to shed her clothes here and now. How could he ramp up the heat between them so fast? If she’d ever felt like this with Brent, she would have known she wasn’t cold.

  Then again, maybe the problem had been that Brent had left her cold and she’d been too stubbornly determined to make a rational match that she hadn’t seen that.

  With one final kiss on her hungry lips, Heath turned and saunted out the door into the hallway. She was so hot and bothered she slumped into a boneless mass against the back of the sofa. Flustered and breathless, she hugged her arms about her waist, holding the feeling tight.

  For the first time, she realized that saying goodbye to Heath at the end of the week would be more difficult than she’d ever guessed.

  11

  DIEGO ESTES KNEW BETTER than to hit the hotel bar.

  Even as a rookie, he had an identifiable face and people tended to recognize him. Normally, he didn’t mind the attention. Hell, he’d risen from the slums of the Dominican Republic to become a highly paid athlete. He still couldn’t believe his good fortune to have a gift for baseball. He’d been a skinny, gawky kid with zero interest in sports, but his father had made him try out for a team when he was twelve.

  Somewhere in between his old man shouting expletives from the stands and his new coach quietly explaining how to crank back his bat for the most power, Diego had fallen in love with the game. And not just because his father quit yelling for the few hours a week when Diego connected with one pitch after another. No, Diego liked baseball because it was a way he could stay out of the gangs, yet have a brotherhood all his own. The toughest gangs he’d ever run across in the D.R. still liked baseball. Being on a team had saved Diego in a lot of ways.

  He sat in the juice bar at the hotel spa, a place where a few women might hit on him, but a place where he wouldn’t be recognized. At least not at a hotel in L.A. On the east coast, he might not get away with it, but in the Midwest or the west coast, the women who frequented the spa weren’t expecting to meet a ballplayer downing carrot juice with ginseng. The spa towel partially draped over his head as if he were in between aromatherapy treatments helped, of course. Moving incognito through a spa was a cakewalk. “Diego?”
r />   The feminine voice behind him, therefore, surprised him.

  Turning, he found Amber Nichols, the manager’s new girlfriend. The skipper hadn’t revealed much about the woman when Diego had shown up at his place the other night, but Diego had eyes. He knew Donovan was seriously hot for her.

  “Hi.” He gestured to the row of vacant chairs beside him and hoped the skip wouldn’t castrate him if he bought her a drink. “Want to join me? I seem to be the only one in town feeling the carrot ginseng special.”

  “Actually—” she peered over her shoulder toward the reception desk just visible in the next room “—I do have a few minutes before my appointment.”

  She climbed onto the stool next to him, her long, dark braid swinging around her shoulder to brush against his. She was the kind of pretty you saw in a soap commercial. Nice skin. No makeup. A smile like she was happy inside and not trying to play head games with you.

  Right now, he could really appreciate the appeal of that kind of woman.

  “Any luck with Jasmine?” She pointed to the cell phone in his palm and he wondered what Donovan made of her pull-no-punches approach.

  The Aces’ manager wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who spilled his guts for snickers and giggles.

  “Nah.” He couldn’t even think about Jasmine without his heart going into a stop, drop and roll routine as if it sensed the need to protect itself. That shit hurt every time. “I think she’s screening her calls for me. I tried from the hotel phone, too, but she must know the team is in L.A. this week.” He ordered another carrot smoothie special for Amber from a spa employee who did double duty as the juice bartender and spa greeter.

  Taking her drink, Amber thanked him and passed him her cell phone.

  “Why don’t you try calling her from mine?” She sipped the dark orange concoction experimentally. “I’ve got great international rates on my phone plan.”

  “She probably wouldn’t pick up for any Boston-based number. Maybe she wouldn’t pick up if I called from anywhere in the whole damn U.S.”

  Amber set down both the phone and her glass.

  “Okay, that’s way too defeatist of an attitude. First of all, she’s got to talk to you sooner or later because you have a legal right to see your child.” She tapped an unpolished fingernail against the smooth granite bar top. “Plus, she needs to know you want to see her and work this out, so you need to call her, her family and her friends until she gets that message. If she doesn’t want anything to do with you after that, you can work out some custody with the courts, but at least you’ll know you did everything you could.”

  She blinked at him with an earnest expression on her face and the sincerity in her voice made him feel that she knew what she was talking about. At least she had a better approach than he did, which had mostly been to drunk-dial Jasmine and tell her how much he missed her.

  But maybe he didn’t need to win her over to see his kid. Maybe, like Amber said, they could work out something for his son whether they were together or not.

  “I don’t know. I think she just flat-out hates my guts.” He slumped on the juice bar, wondering where the hell his confidence had gone the past two weeks. But when even his baseball skills were in the crapper—the one thing he’d always counted on to pull him through whatever life doled out—he had to question himself.

  “Get real. She had your child. She’ll always be connected to you.” Amber drummed her nails on the bar. “Think about it from her perspective. She’s taking care of business back home while you’re playing baseball for legions of adoring female fans and living it up in fancy hotels. All the groupies could give any woman a complex.”

  “You think?”

  “Imagine how you would feel if you saw twenty guys swarm your woman for an autograph.”

  Diego pounded the bar and both their glasses rattled. Damn, he hated that picture.

  “You talk some sense, you know that?” He took Amber’s cell and dialed Jasmine’s digits, thinking he could find her sister’s number somewhere if she didn’t answer. That sister had never liked him, but damn it, even she had to see the wisdom of letting a kid know his father.

  Even if they thought he’d screw up the paternal thing, they’d have to appreciate the child care funds he wanted to contribute. His kid wasn’t going to end up in a gang.

  All his arguments and rationalizing disappeared, however, when Jasmine’s voice answered on the other end.

  “Diego, I know it’s you. You can’t call me every ten minutes. This phone ringing all night is going to make me lose my mind.” She wasn’t yelling, exactly. But it wasn’t the warmest greeting he’d ever received.

  Still, he enjoyed hearing the husky briskness of her voice, a voice that had whispered some really amazing things in his ear when they’d made love once upon a time. She’d always made him feel like a million bucks—long before baseball had ponied up the cash.

  “Don’t hang up. I need to talk to you.” He tucked his head against the bar to shut out the sound of the smoothie machine mixing up a drink nearby; he didn’t have to worry about Amber hearing anything because she’d already discreetly excused herself.

  She hadn’t even asked about getting her phone back.

  For the first time in two weeks, Diego felt that he wasn’t drowning in his own life. He knew he couldn’t think about baseball until he had his personal stuff resolved.

  On the other end of the phone, Jasmine hadn’t said a word. For all he knew, she’d set the handset down and left him there to talk himself hoarse. But in the back ground, he heard the trill and coo of an infant and his heart puddled up inside.

  “Jasmine, even if you don’t want anything more to do with me, we need to at least work out something for our son’s sake.”

  He held his breath, hoping she was there somewhere, listening. The soft sigh he finally heard might have been heavy with resignation, but after weeks of silence, it seemed like sweet music in his ears.

  “Okay. But I’ve only got a few minutes before Alex needs a bath.”

  THE HOTEL ROOM was dark when Heath returned.

  He’d checked out of the training meeting early, hoping to catch a glimpse of Amber in a towel down in the spa. Visions of her half-naked in the middle of a rubdown had plagued him so bad he hadn’t been able to focus. But when he’d arrived in the spa, the director said she’d already been there and left, skipping out on her scheduled appointment with profuse apologies.

  She didn’t seem to be lying in wait for him in the hotel room, either. He hoped she would leap out at him from a darkened corner to demand her quickie against the door, but she was nowhere to be found.

  When his phone rang, he expected to see her number on his caller ID. Instead, the illuminated digits be longed to his boss back in Boston. Or at least, one of his bosses. Although the team was owned jointly by several companies and individuals, the guy with the controlling share had hired him and—should the need ever arise—would be the one tasked with firing him, as well. Heath’s blood temperature dropped about twenty degrees in two seconds.

  “Heath Donovan,” he answered, knowing Bob Tarcher III rarely made his own calls anyhow. Usually an administrative assistant contacted Heath or, if Bob needed to talk to him, the assistant got Heath on the line first.

  “Heath, this is Bob. You have a minute?”

  Shit. The big kahuna dialing him directly. Heath’s gut sank like a high fly ball dropping in centerfield.

  “Sure. Just finishing up a meeting with the trainers to evaluate some workouts. We’re working with the hitting coach to see if there’s anything we can tweak in Estes’s swing.” Might as well be straightforward about the team weaknesses. They’d been obvious enough to fans and sportswriters around the country. Thankfully, no reporters had found out about Estes’s problems back home. Media glare always made that stuff worse.

  “Good, good.” Bob cleared his throat. “I’m calling to—hell, I don’t want to be making this call at all, Heath. You know I’ve been behind you ever
since Jeff Rally retired. But you’re taking over for one of the most storied managers in baseball history. Of course that’s going to invite unfair comparisons.”

  Heath was pretty sure his knees buckled. Something damn well buckled, because he found himself holding on to the wall like a drunkard making his way to the bar bathroom. He shook his head to clear it.

  “You’re axing me?” He’d been an assistant coach for one season and the manager for less than that.

  “Not today, Heath. But the board met earlier in the week and they’re coming down on me hard about the recent losses. You know with your inexperience, you were a controversial pick. I can only fight for you for so long.”

  He so did not need this now.

  “Look, I appreciate the warning. Really. But I can’t play every game like the guillotine is about to fall or I’m not going to build a stable foundation here.” He couldn’t fix Estes’s problems overnight any more than he could tell the rest of the clubhouse not to worry about them. “We’re dealing with some personal stuff as a team and I’m trying to help these kids, but they’re young and they’re rough and they don’t need instability. They need consistency and help navigating rough waters.”

  Pulling him out of the head slot would only send the guys reeling that much more. Not that he was such a great manager. But he was a known entity at a time when the club was really struggling to find their identity. Cohesiveness.

  “Right. And I agree. I just wanted to let you know to do everything you can do to win this road stand. If you can win in L.A., I think it will buy us the rest of the season without the board breathing down our necks.”

  Heath shook his head. Clearly, Bob had already struck a bargain with the other owners—if the Aces won on the west coast Heath would have the team for the remainder of the season.

  “Understood.” Not that he liked it one damn bit. How much more pressure could he put on these guys? “But I guess I’d better get back to work if I’m going to make that happen.”

  They disconnected as Heath slumped down into the hotel couch, his brain turning backflips to try to figure out what he could do differently for tomorrow’s game when his heart told him he shouldn’t rattle the team any more. What he really wanted—needed—right now was to see Amber so he could quiet the useless second-guessing in his head. He’d never met anyone else who could divert him from baseball as well as she could. Sadly, that list included his ex-wife who had been so passionate about her job that she’d tended to get as thoroughly lost in her work as he did in his. Drawn together because they understood one another’s drive, they’d quickly grown apart because their strong interests didn’t leave enough time for each other.