Long Relief (Hardball Book 1)

by Abigail Barnette

  “No. I’m saying that I need to know what this is. I need to label it.” And as long as he was going that far… “Look, I don’t mind you showing up for random sex drop-ins. Except for the night before a game. I like to get to bed early on those nights. But as much as I really enjoy having sex with you, I’d rather date you.”

  She groaned and snuggled her face against the pillow. “That’s impossible. I’m the team owner, I’m not supposed to fuck the players.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not supposed to talk to the other team while in uniform, either, and look how often people get punished for that.” He was having a difficult time keeping his frustration out of his voice. “Besides, I’m retiring next year.”

  “So, maybe for your retirement gift, I can get you a nice, big label.” She batted her lashes up at him.

  He’d had enough with the game playing, enough with the casual dismissal. “I’m serious.”

  Something in her expression changed, maybe it was her eyes became a dimmer blue or the vertical crease that appeared in her brow, when otherwise her smile hadn’t quite faded. “You really are serious.”

  “I want to go out. I want to see if there’s anything between us. And maybe I’m not okay with you just dropping by for sex.” Wait, had he said that last part out loud?

  Maggie’s frown deepened. “Okay, then I won’t drop by for sex. I can’t commit to anything with you, Chris. There’s too much at stake.”

  “And there’s nothing at stake if you miss out something that could be fantastic?” He sighed. He knew when he’d been beaten. “Okay, fine. So, right now, while I’m playing for the Bengals, we don’t do dating. We do… whatever this is, that doesn’t have a label on it. But when I’m off the team?”

  “Maybe it’s something we can revisit after the season is over,” she said, after a moment of deliberation. “I do like you. And I do think we have something… pretty okay going on here.”

  “Wait, do you mean after the post?” He caught her hand and brought her knuckles to his lips.

  “Well, obviously. You’re going all the way, right?” Her voice quivered a little as he kissed each finger.

  He arched a brow. “What if we do? Let’s say we go all the way. Let’s say we actually win it this year. What will you do for me?”

  She laughed. He loved the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed. “If you bring me back a ring, I’ll consider that a proposal.”

  He pulled her against him, growling into her neck. Let her think it was all a game, but he was going to hold her to that.

  The hard part would be dragging his sorry ass—and arm—to a championship season.

  * * * *

  Their next home game was a hard win, but at least it had been a win. Chris hadn’t pitched; watching had been almost worse. Not that he could have done any better than Derek Sands had done pitching relief. The Las Vegas Rattlers had some of the cleanest hitters in the league, and their fighting spirit had gotten a hundred pitches out of Sands in three innings. There had been a time when Chris would have been chomping at the bit to get to the mound, but watching a guy ten years younger than him struggling in the seventh had almost caused him physical pain.

  After the game, he found himself lingering in the clubhouse. It wasn’t that unusual. Just like any job, sometimes the thought of heading straight home, without any buffer time to unwind, was unbearable. Tonight, it was more the thought of going home alone, to his big, empty bed.

  No drop-in sex visits the night before a game. It was the only ground rule he and Maggie had, and he hated it, but he wasn’t a young guy anymore. He couldn’t get by on four hours of sleep and still pitch the next day. And he knew for damned sure that if Maggie came over, they wouldn’t be getting much sleep.

  She had gotten into his blood, and it had happened fast enough that it scared him. All he thought about was her. All he wanted was to be with her. If it was this bad now, how bad would it be when he was way down south, coaching in Charlotte?

  Vargas came out of the showers, whistling as always. Chris lifted his hand in silent greeting.

  Javier slowed his walk as he passed Chris by. “Why do you look like someone peed on your ice cream?”

  He thought about telling the truth with an exhausted, one word, “tired,” but that would make him sound like the old man everyone thought he was. He could trust Vargas to keep a secret. “Is it a bad idea to want to marry a woman you’re not dating and have only slept with five or six times?”

  “It doesn’t sound like a good idea.” Javier went to his locker and pulled out his bag. He slipped on a pair of boxer briefs and tossed his towel aside. “Why, are you seeing someone?”

  “Yeah.” No, that wasn’t quite right, was it? He wasn’t seeing Maggie, at least, not yet. “Well, we’re not labeling it. But I’m pretty sure she said if we wrapped up the season with a championship, she would marry me.”

  “So, two bad ideas?” Javier shook his head, laughing to himself. “Go for it, man. You’re a hundred years old, right? Time is ticking away.”

  “It’s complicated. Because of who she is.” He’d already given too much away, with that sentence. But it seemed like saying it would help, and Vargas would never sell him out. “It’s Maggie Harper.”

  “Yeah, right.” Javier pulled on a shirt and grabbed a pair of jeans from his back. The little gold cross he always wore glinted against the black cotton of his t-shirt. When Chris didn’t say anything, Javier zipped his jeans and said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.” Chris leaned back in his chair. “I am dead serious.”

  “You probably don’t want to talk about it ever again,” Javier warned. “Someone is going to have a problem with it.”

  “Which is why I’m retiring at the end of the season.”

  “Whoa, whoa. Wait, you’re retiring? Over a woman?” Javier straightened, sneakers in hand.

  “No, I’m retiring because of my shoulder,” Chris clarified, strongly. He didn’t care if Sophia Loren circa 1963 walked through the door and begged him to give up baseball to make love to her nine hours a day, no woman would ever come between him and playing. Coaching, however… Playing baseball had been such a huge part of his life, it was probably coded into his DNA now. He’d never coached and didn’t have a love for it yet. “I got offered a job in Charlotte, coaching next season. I don’t know if I want to take it.”

  “Not this early. Wait and see what else comes up,” Javier answered automatically. Then, the unspoken hit him. “You don’t want to take any job that’s going to take you away from this mystery woman whose identity I don’t know, right?”

  Chris made a little finger gun and cocked the hammer. “Exactly.”

  Javier ran and hand over his jaw. “That’s rough, man. I mean, you can’t take the Charlotte job right now, anyway. You don’t want to look like you’re checking out before the season is over. But I assume they wanted an answer, at least informally.”

  “Yup.”

  “So, what’s the big deal? Don’t women love that whirlwind romance shit?”

  If only it were that easy. “She doesn’t want to pursue it. At least, not right now. And I can’t tell if she’s putting me off, using the job as an excuse.”

  Javier whistled. Not his usual, cheerful tune, but a low, mournful note. “That’s a tough call. But the job isn’t an excuse. It’s a reason. Neither of you can endanger this team. But you can’t exactly stay in the game and stay here, either.”

  That was where Chris had gotten stuck, too. Somewhere between staying in baseball, which he couldn’t do in Michigan, and being near Maggie, which he couldn’t do in North Carolina. Neither was guaranteed to make him happy.

  “Maybe you should let her decide,” Javier suggested. “Put both options in front of her. ‘I got this job offer, but I don’t want to go because I want to date you.’ She’d have to be a real devious person to tell you to stay just to use you for sex.”

  Chris would never have accused Javier of having common sense, b
ut that advice sounded dangerously close to it. Still, it seemed like a dodgy prospect. “What if I do that and it scares her off?”

  “Then I guess your decision is made, either way, right?” Javier slung his bag over his shoulder. “I wish you luck.”

  He whistled a funeral dirge on his way out of the clubhouse.

  Chapter Seven

  The nice thing about working from home was absolutely nothing. Maggie hated bringing her job home with her, and it was even worse when “home” didn’t feel like home yet. Her condo was beautiful, far enough away from the ballpark so that she wouldn’t feel like she lived there full time. Except, when she was trying to balance staying invested in her company and staying on top of things for the team, she found herself shuttling from her day job at the park to her night job in her home office.

  When the doorbell rang and she checked the clock, she realized it was ten-thirty already and she hadn’t even bothered to eat dinner.

  I have got to start living like a grown-up. I have to remember to at least eat.

  She stood on her tip-toes and checked the peephole. The moment she recognized the person standing on the other side of the door, her breath caught in her throat.

  “Hey, how did you find me?” she asked, opening the door to let Chris in.

  He held up a plastic bag full of take-out containers. “Your assistant sent me. She texted me and said that you probably hadn’t eaten dinner, but she was too swamped with quarterly projections?”

  “Not for the team,” she clarified as he carried the bag to the open kitchen. “It’s New York business stuff.”

  “What do you do out there, anyway?” He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on the counter, then set to unpacking the take-away.

  She didn’t know how he did it, but he managed to look like he belonged in her kitchen. Like he was absolutely made to bring her dinner and be interested in her job. She’d never met anyone who looked so comfortable in her crazy life. “Believe it or not, I founded a company that develops software for the hospitality industry. Cash register operating systems, reservations scheduling across national hotel chains.”

  “And that’s probably to do with the pizza place, right?” he guessed with a half-smile.

  “Yes. And no.” She shook her head fondly. “I got into it when I realized how inefficient dad’s systems were, chain-wide. But my brother won’t make the switch to our company. We’re too expensive for him.”

  “Can’t even give the poor guy a deal?” Chris looked up, hand frozen on a bag of crab rangoons. “Wait a minute. Are you wearing the suit you wore to work today?”

  She looked down. She’d shed the sleek gray jacket, but she still wore the knee-length skirt that matched and her black silk blouse had wilted into an extremely unattractive, ruffled mess. Sheepishly, she admitted, “I guess I didn’t slow down to change.”

  “Why don’t you go change into something comfortable—and I don’t mean that in a sexy way, I promise—and come eat? You can finish whatever you’re doing tomorrow, right?” He opened one of the cartons and sniffed it, then made an approving face and set it aside. “I’ve got five different preparations of chicken here, you don’t want to miss this.”

  “Putting things off until tomorrow is Molly’s job,” she protested, but her stomach rumbled as the smell of Chinese take out hit her nose. “Fine, give me two seconds.”

  She jogged down the stairs, to the master suite, and found her softest, baggiest sweats and t-shirt combo. If Chris was serious about wanting her to be comfortable, he would have to accept the reality of what she looked like in her downtime. She pulled her hair up and quickly, guiltily dashed into the bathroom to swish her mouth with Listerine. There was a pretty good chance he would want to kiss her, and no man should have to endure her breath after an entire day of not eating and chugging back enough coffee to stop a rhino’s heart.

  By the time she got back upstairs, Chris had already set two plates at her small dining table and move aside the mound of paperwork she’d dropped there.

  “I didn’t change the order of anything, I swear,” he said when she lifted the stack of papers and moved them to the half-wall between the kitchen and the dining area. “I just scooted them over. Let me guess, if I went into your home office right now, I’d find dishes next to the computer.”

  “You’re absolutely correct,” she slid into a chair and reached for a carton of fried rice. It might have been good manners to wait for him to sit before she dove into the food, but she was starving. Besides, that was what friends did, right? Disregarded stupid conventions like table manners and just enjoyed each other’s company?

  “So, you must be pretty good with computers, right?” He snagged two beers from the fridge and popped the tops off, handing one to her.

  She took a long swallow and shook her head. “There’s a difference between being ‘good with computers’ and ‘good with software concepts.’ I couldn’t fix your laptop if it broke, but I understand how your laptop talks to the programs it’s running. But I’m not an expert; that’s why I have so many nerdy people who know a lot working under me.”

  “But you’re obviously good at what you do. I mean, you’re successful enough to buy a baseball team.”

  It was hard to talk around a mouthful of steaming hot rice. She covered her mouth to lessen the shock of seeing her talk with her mouth full. “When I started out, it was a really fast-growing, super-specific field. I started the company after I sold my shares in the pizza chain to my brother. When we started out, we hit it big with a drive-thru ordering system, and from there, we started looking at what other companies were doing and made our own versions, which were less shitty.”

  “Isn’t that…” Chris scooped some General Tsao’s onto his plate as he searched for a word. “I guess stealing, is what I would call it.”

  “That’s what I hear a lot.” It used to bother her, but now she could accept it for what it was, layman’s understanding of how her business worked. “But if no one improved ever improved on the Romans’ designs, we’d still have aqueducts all over the place.”

  He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  “That we still use. In modern plumbing,” she clarified dryly. “Besides, it’s what Steve Jobs was famous for. I mean, he didn’t invent portable MP3 players. He improved what was out there for ease of use and branded it well.” Why did she feel so defensive, all of a sudden? “I mean, overhand pitching was something someone else thought up, but you guys are always working to improve it.”

  “I didn’t say a word,” he smiled at her over the top of his beer bottle.

  She had to laugh because he was so impossible. “Whatever. Besides, at least I look good at what I’m doing. You guys look straight up deformed if the camera catches you mid-throw.”

  “Because overhand pitching is an unnatural thing to do to your body.” He sat back and folded his arms. “Look, I had something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Ooh, zero to serious in three-point-five,” she teased, but then the sinking feeling started. She hated the sinking feeling. “What’s going on?”

  He sat up a little straighter. “First, I want to make sure I’m talking to Maggie, the woman I’m pretty into, and not Maggie, the team owner.”

  “Okay. I’ll put on my girl-you’re-trying-to-chase hat.” Where this was coming from, she had no clue. Where it was going… she couldn’t even guess.

  “I got an offer from Charlotte. I’m going to take it.”

  “You’re going to pitch in North Carolina?” Then the rest of her thoughts caught up. There was no way another team would have approached him, not this early in the season, especially not when he wasn’t throwing all that well. “Wait, I didn’t hear about any offer. And you’re not free yet, we could still—”

  “I wouldn’t be pitching. I’d be coaching.” He watched her, carefully gauging the play of emotions she knew she wasn’t hiding. “I’m not doing so hot this season. And I’m forty-two. I don’t want another surge
ry, and I don’t want to end up in the minors, doing rehab for a season before whoever might be dumb enough to pick me up realizes what a bad investment they’ve made.”

  “I understand. You have to protect your image. No one wants to leave on a down note.” She pushed her plate back, trying too hard to appear cool and rational. “We’ll see each other around, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah, now and then.”

  That was the worst part of it. They couldn’t even pretend they’d be able to maintain a relationship across such a distance, even if they wanted to. It wasn’t like you could hop in the car and drive from North Carolina to Michigan after work. It wasn’t practical. Flying, sure, but when would he have time? When would she? In the off-season, they might be able to hook up for a few sordid little flings. But he didn’t want that with her. He wanted something serious. Something permanent. And she couldn’t give him that.

  Even though she wanted to.

  When had that happened? She was attracted to him, she liked spending time with him, she really, really liked having sex with him… wasn’t that what she should be looking for in a guy with long-term potential?

  He cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded tight. “I haven’t formally accepted yet. If there were a reason for me to stay—”

  “That’s not fair.” Her eyes glazed with tears. “You know I can’t keep you on the team. Casey wants you out next season. It’s not personal—”

  “Wait, you thought I was asking you to keep me on the team?” He looked angry, and worse, hurt. “You thought I would come in here and use this… whatever we have between us, you thought I would use it as a bargaining chip for my career?”

  She raised her chin, challenging him to deny it. Even though she knew she had misjudged him, even though she knew he was a better person, if she let herself believe that, it opened up too many complications. “I know how this stuff works, Chris. Dad always said players were going to be looking out for number one, and we had to eat our own. You have to use something to stay in the game.”

  “Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t use you!” He paused, and when he spoke again, he was more controlled. “Are you suggesting I would sleep with someone to keep my job?”