Long Relief (Hardball Book 1)

by Abigail Barnette

  They disentangled to get their footing, and Chris had enough brains left in his head to turn off the water.

  Maggie leaned against the counter, breathing hard. “Wow, that was…”

  Usually, when he was done, he was done for the night. There was nothing he liked better than indulging the warm, sleepy feeling after amazing sex, but the sight of her leaning against the counter, naked except for those heels, inspired him enough to surprise himself. He stepped closer, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.

  “That,” he said, grinning, “Was just a good start.”

  * * * *

  The morning light beat mercilessly through the windows and Maggie’s eyelids. She blinked and held a hand up to her eyes. Chris’s arm lay across her waist, his head tucked against her back. When she shifted a little to sit up, he stirred with a sleepy, “Morning.”

  “Mmm,” she responded with clamped lips. It was beyond unfair that there wasn’t some hormone released during sex that would eliminate morning breath. Turning her head, she asked, “Any idea what time it is?”

  “Time to go back to sleep,” he murmured, dropping a few kisses along her spine.

  “That might not be the best thing to say to your boss.” He might have a day to rest before opening day, but she sure as hell didn’t. She got to her feet, one still clad in a red pump—she would definitely feel that all day—, and shuffle-limped to the kitchen, where her dress lay in a tangled, wet puddle.

  “Oh. No.”

  “That’s no good, is it?” Chris asked, and Maggie turned to see him with one arm over the back of the couch, watching her with a barely repressed grin. “You need to borrow a shirt?”

  “Yes. And don’t look so damn amused by it.” Okay, not the most grateful response to the guy who was going to loan her dry clothing, but still. She hadn’t intended to spend the night, she was more than likely late for work, and she wasn’t Carrie Bradshaw. She couldn’t just nonchalantly waltz around town wearing a man’s shirt as a dress. Not to mention her hair had gotten wet and she’d slept on it with absolutely no regard for what it would look like the next day.

  “I’m not amused by your plight,” Chris said, laughing softly. “It’s just that it’s not every morning I wake up to a gorgeous naked woman walking around my apartment.”

  Under normal circumstances, she would have appreciated the compliment, but the situation was serious. She’d done things. And she’d said things. She’d knelt on the floor, just there, and told him, “I’m going to make you come.” Who said that? Seriously, what kind of cheesy, low budget soft-core porn line was that? Not only had she gone home with a guy on a whim and completely lost control with him, but she’d also done it with a player on the team she now owned. And now that ownership picked the absolute perfect moment to strike her as stark reality when she was standing naked in that player’s kitchen.

  She was pretty sure this was what a heart attack felt like.

  “I need a phone! Oh my god, I left my phone at the office. I was going to grab it on the way back from the reception. They’re going to think I’m dead, I never have the stupid thing more than four feet from me!”

  “Landline’s on the wall,” Chris said, rising to his feet.

  For just a moment, Maggie’s panic became secondary to her sex drive. Chris looked just as good in broad daylight as he had the night before, tight skin rippling over every hard muscle in his body. He seemed as comfortable naked as he was clothed because he wasn’t in a rush to cover himself. He walked past her, to the kitchen, where he pulled a cordless phone off the wall and placed it in her hand. It took her a minute to remember what she had wanted to do with it.

  “You want me to make coffee?” he asked, already pulling opening cupboards.

  “Sure,” she replied noncommittally as she haltingly punched the numbers into the phone. It took her two tries to get the order right, she was so used to just hitting the speed dial. If she didn’t have such a good head for numbers, she would have been screwed.

  “Good morning, Sunshine,” Molly’s sing-song greeted her over the line. Wherever her assistant was, someone was listening to loud pop music.

  Maggie plugged her ear with her finger to drown out the noise of the coffee grinder. “Where the hell are you?”

  “In a cab across the street from Chris Thompson’s building, with Starbucks and a change of clothes.” Molly paused for dramatic effect, then, in mock suspense, gasped, “Why, where are you?”

  Maggie flexed her fingers open and closed and fought to keep her annoyance from her tone. “You know where I am. Bring the clothes up.”

  “Yeah, can’t do that. I need someone to let me in. Can’t you come down?”

  Her gaze landed on the dress in the still-drying puddle on the floor and pinched her eyes shut, a promising start to a headache building up behind the bridge of her nose. “Hey, Chris? Can you ring my assistant up? Please?”

  “Yeah, tell her it’s 4B.” He left the kitchen and disappeared across the apartment. Maggie hurried frantically down a narrow hallway, the only one in the place, praying she’d find a bathroom.

  “You’re not going to let her in like that?” she called back to him before shutting the door. Compared to the high ceilings of the rest of the loft, the bathroom seemed positively claustrophobic.

  “No, of course not,” he replied. After an interminably long silence, Molly entered the apartment with a shriek of laughter.

  “I’m in here!” Maggie called, stamping her foot with impatience.

  The door opened and Molly’s hand thrust through, clutching a garment bag. “I’m sorry, just he answered the door naked, in an apron. That has to be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “You tell no one about this, do you understand?” Maggie hissed back, unzipping the bag to find a neatly pressed Tahari suit with a chartreuse jacket and black skirt. A lacy black bra and panties looped around the hanger.

  Molly snickered on the other side of the door.

  By the time Maggie was dressed and had wrangled her now totally frizzed out curls into a loose, messy bun, Chris had put on some jeans and filled a Bengals travel mug with coffee. “You can keep it, they’ve got tons of them laying around the stadium,” he’d insisted when she’d protested taking it along. “I didn’t know how you liked it, though, so I left it black.”

  “That’s how I like it,” she said, slipping into her coat as Molly held it out for her. “Molly, wait in the car a minute.”

  “No problem.” Her assistant left with a tightly stamped down smirk and raised eyebrows, but the important thing was, she left.

  Maggie shook her head, pushing a stray curl from her face. “So, I’m sorry about that. But just a tip, the next time a Bengals employee shows up in your apartment, have pants on.”

  “God, I hope not,” he said with a laugh. Then, when he realized she wasn’t joking, he asked, “Oh. So, what are my legal rights if another employee walks into the clubhouse unannounced and watches me getting dressed?”

  “I wasn’t watching. I mean, I’m not an employee. Both. I’m your boss. Which… actually makes it worse.” She squinted her eyes shut. “Listen, this was… fun. But that’s all it can be, okay?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  That only made her want to keep talking. “I mean, this can’t get out. I would be… ruined. Probably. I don’t know, I don’t even know if there are rules for this. But it would be bad for both of us.”

  He still didn’t say anything.

  She even gave him an extra-long pause so he could jump in. When that didn’t work, she asked, “You know, I’m sure you have these same concerns?”

  He shrugged. “If I did, they didn’t get in the way of anything last night. Where’s all this coming from? We had a good time. If you wanted to do this again, I’d be game. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be disappointed if we didn’t see where this led.”

  Ouch. She did really want to do it again. Several times, actually. The kitchen, the shower, and the
sofa had all been really good times. “It’s awfully fast to be talking about where things are going to ‘lead,’ isn’t is? I mean, after all, we just had sex. We didn’t have a mind transplant or something.”

  “I’m not declaring love here. I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m just saying there’s no reason we can’t see where this goes.” He shook his head. “I like you. I think you’re a lot of fun and really hot. That might be all there is, but right now, that’s what I’m interested in. So, yes, I’ll be discreet. But that won’t stop me from hoping for more, Magpie.”

  Just the use of her childhood nickname dissolved some of her strength. That reminder that he was familiar, he was safe, tricked her into believing that her love life was important. At the moment it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. “Fair warning, Chris. I don’t foresee this happening again. And I’m not saying that to issue a challenge. It’s not an invitation to prove me wrong.”

  “Fair enough. You’ve said your piece, I’ve said mine.” He put out his hand to shake hers. “Thanks for a great night.”

  “Yeah. You too.” She turned and headed for the door, then stopped. It felt wrong to leave it like this when he so obviously wanted more from her. “Maybe after the season’s over, and you’re not a player anymore.”

  “What?”

  She hesitated. “You’re retiring, right? After this season.”

  “My contract is up.” His jaw took on a hard set. “Who told you I was retiring?”

  Her stomach flipped, and not in the sexy way it had last night. “Maybe I’m confusing you with someone else.”

  “You mean, maybe you’re confusing me for another forty-two-year-old pitcher?” He wasn’t buying it. She couldn’t blame him. He was the oldest player in the league, and he’d blown his last season. Maybe what Thorgerson had told her had been speculation. Gossip.

  Or maybe it had been a test to see what information the new owner would leak. She should have been smarter than this. She should have been smarter than Thorgerson, for God’s sake. The man spent his entire day worrying about how many nachos the place was selling. “I’m sorry. It’s apparently unsubstantiated gossip that I was stupid enough to believe.”

  “No, don’t sweat it.” He shook his head. “It’s good to know where I stand with you. Both personally and professionally.”

  When Maggie stepped out of the elevator, Molly was waiting for her, that cutesy grin not quite as endearing as it had been before. Her assistant slid her phone closed and pocket it, beaming. “So… how did it go?”

  Maggie didn’t give in to the temptation to reprimand Molly for her unprofessional behavior. She didn’t want to be one of those bosses who let everything slide until something wasn’t going right, then unleashed holy fury. She just headed toward the doors. “Bad,” she said finally as she slid into the car. “It went very bad.”

  “Then you’re really not going to be in the mood for this.” Molly reached into her tote pulled out her iPad. She dropped it into Maggie’s lap. “Seems I’m not the only one who noticed you leaving last night.”

  On the screen, the Press’s website showed a picture of the team’s celebration after winning the league championships last season. And above it, the words, “IS GRAND RAPIDS BASEBALL DEAD?”

  Frantically, Maggie scanned the article, picking out key phrases like, “given Thompson’s decline” and “last season’s devastating loss.” Then her gaze fell on a sentence that made her heart stop: “Even the Bengal’s new owner, Maggie Harper, seems to have written the team off, abruptly leaving a welcome reception held by the organization her father once helmed.”

  She should have known better. What did her dad always used to say? “Baseball isn’t like running the pizza place, Maggie.” No, it wasn’t. It was far more public. Your name didn’t just show up in the occasional trade journal for savvy franchise owners. It showed up on the sports pages of hundreds of newspapers, all across the country, to be read by millions of fans who analyzed every aspect of the game down to the most inconsequential details.

  “The bad news is, they were talking about this article on Free Beer and Hot Wings this morning.”

  “And what’s the good news?” Rebecca asked, scrolling back to the beginning of the article to soak in every doom-portending word.

  Molly opened her bag and pulled out her phone. “I’ll tell you that when I’ve spun some.”

  Chapter Four

  Opening day used to be the very best day of the year for Chris. It signaled the end of the boring winter and a return from spring training to a place that actually had weather. Today, he wondered why he was even in the bullpen at all. They had two new pitchers, one of them starting, the other a reliever, both under twenty-five and deadly accurate as they whipped a few pre-game pitches out.

  “Save it for the game,” Derek Sands, another member of the Bengal’s bullpen warned under his breath as he leaned against the padded wall.

  Chris chuckled. “Nah. These kids don’t have to worry about that. It’s us old-timers who have to hold something back.”

  “Speak for yourself on the old-timer front, okay?” Derek said with a half-smile. “No, I know my ticket is just about punched. What about you? Last season?”

  “That’s what I hear.” Chris shifted uncomfortably on his feet, his gaze lifting to the stands. Fans already waited in the cheerfully cold sunshine, beers clutched in mittened hands. “I hate the cold.”

  “Give it a few weeks, it won’t be cold anymore. Then you’ll be wishing for April.” Derek pushed off from the wall. “I’m going to go out there, pretend to warm-up and watch the announcers embarrass themselves in the pre-game. Wanna go with me?”

  Chris shook his head. “After the way we ended last season, I think I want to keep some distance between me and the fans for a little while.”

  When Derek had gone, Chris checked the time on his phone, then slipped it back into his jacket pocket. He scanned the seats, finding the owner’s box. He wondered if Maggie would be there. When her father was alive, he’d never missed a single home game, even when he’d been so sick from chemotherapy that he’d had to be wheeled in by his nurse. But Maggie hadn’t been to the park for years before she’d inherited the team.

  He felt a guilty pang, thinking of Coach. It seemed pretty disrespectful to make a move on the guy’s daughter in his own park. Well, not his park. But definitely his team’s home turf. They’d played their last game with black armbands on in his memory just back in October. It hadn’t been that long ago.

  Then, another guilty pang assailed him. Maggie was probably still mourning her father, was probably still confused and emotional during a difficult time. He should have thought of that last night, before taking her home.

  Too late to think about that now, and he needed to get his head clear before the damn anthem.

  Suddenly, Maggie’s voice echoed through the park. For a split second—not for long, but the thought definitely crossed his mind—he wondered if he was having a stroke. It was just the pre-game broadcast running through the sound system. Chris went to the fence and took a peek. There she was, larger than life, her gorgeous curls pulled back into an unbelievably fluffy ponytail tucked through the back of a ball cap. He wanted to think of it as an empty, cynical gesture by an owner who cared about the money more than the game, but even this close to the Jumbotron, he could tell it wasn’t the same crisp, new hat she’d worn at her welcome reception. The brim was bent from constant worrying in a tense dugout, and the logo was the old style, the one Chris had only worn for two years before the team had updated it.

  It was her dad’s hat.

  He’d been so completely focused on the hat, he hadn’t been paying attention to what she was saying in the interview. Smiling at Luigi, the SportsChannel Grand Rapids announcer, she was saying something about how proud she was to be the new team owner, and how great it was to see so many fans turning out for game day. But it wasn’t her words that captured him, it was the way she said them like she believed they really had a c
hance this season. That they would go all the way and not blow it in the end.

  “Now, let me ask you about this,” Luigi said, holding up a copy of the press. “‘Is Grand Rapids baseball dead?’ Is baseball dead here in Grand Rapids? How would you respond to this?”

  Maggie didn’t miss a beat. “If I were going to dignify that with a response, I think it would have to be if baseball is dead, why are all these fans here? Why are season ticket sales exceeding expectations? I think if baseball is dead in Grand Rapids, no one told these people.”

  Beaming, she waved up at the fans who’d gathered off-camera to gawk, and their hoots of approval could be heard across the park before the sound system relayed it.

  There was more than just a touch of her father in her. She had the same brashness and bravado that had endeared Ron Harper to fans in the sixties, mixed with her own warm, genuine charm.

  Chris’s smile faded, and a tight knot formed under his ribs. He turned away from the screen. She’d made it damn clear that she wasn’t planning on pursuing anything with him. There was no sense in pining over her, especially when he should be focusing on the game.

  It just seemed damned unfair that the one woman he couldn’t have was the one he wanted. And it seemed even more unfair that the game, the one thing that he’d never been distracted from, wasn’t enough to hold his attention now that he’d had her.

  * * * *

  Around the bottom of the fourth inning, when no one had been killed by a line drive to the stands and the stadium hadn’t caught fire—yet—Maggie let herself breathe again. She’d spent the first inning schmoozing with all the advertisers and vendors Molly had invited to spend opening day in the owner’s box.

  She and Molly had shared plenty of immature giggles over that phrase in the last week.

  Finally, Maggie got a chance to settle back, have a drink, and watch the game the way the rest of her guests were: on a giant plasma television perpendicular to the huge windows and balcony seating that provided a bird’s eye view of the entire diamond in real life.