Out of His League

by Cathryn Parry

  That must have been what she’d heard those two nurses talking about last week. She pictured it now. Jon up onstage. A line of women screaming out dollar figures for him. How much money they were willing to bid.

  “Oh. That is terrible,” she said.

  A week ago, she would have guessed he would love the attention. But she knew him better now. “They think you’ll do anything for baseball, don’t they?”

  He turned his head and his gaze met hers. He knew she understood. “I’m not a slab of meat, Lizzy.”

  No. He was so much more important than that. But lots of people thought he was just a commodity. In a sense, hadn’t she tonight? Expecting he would hop into the sack with her just because she’d asked? What if the gender roles were reversed?

  Elizabeth swallowed. There was a tight line between them, and she felt she was feeling his pain, too. Seeing what he’d really longed for.

  She kissed him softly on the lips. “I don’t think of you as an athlete, or anything like that. I think of you as a person who didn’t run away once he saw what I’m really made of.”

  The breath seemed to leave him. He rolled over and wove her fingers through his.

  She felt herself shaking. There was just something about him. Something that drew her to him, and she couldn’t fool herself that it was only physical. It was an emotional need, too. She felt as if a drape had fallen away and he saw all the damage that had been done to her, the imperfect person that she was. And yet, he understood and cared for her in spite of it.

  She sat up. She had to stop this closeness—it was frightening her. “You were right about establishing ground rules. I’ve made a new decision. I don’t need to do this again.”

  “Nope,” he said, grinning at her. “Me, neither.”

  And as she fought her disappointment, he winked at her. “I’m teasing. I want to. But whether you decide to again or not, remember the agreement. For ten more days—until the bachelor auction—you’re my secret girlfriend. Sleep with me again or don’t, but either way, you’ve got to ditch that doctor I keep seeing you with at the hospital.”

  “Albert?” She’d already “ditched” him, at least in her mind, but Jon didn’t need to know that.

  “Whoever he is,” he said, “I don’t want to see him around you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to see you with any women, either.”

  “Done. Anything else, or are we good now?” He was settling under her comforter. Fluffing the pillow.

  She looked at him with alarm. “You’re staying tonight?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “What if I told you to leave?”

  “I’d say you were being prickly. Besides...” He shook the condom box on the bedside table. “If I leave, we won’t get the pleasure of deciding if we want morning sex, will we?”

  Oh. She leaned back on the pillows, visualizing. She definitely wanted to try that with him, very much.

  He turned off the light and pulled her naked body close to him, so he was spooning her. “Good night, Lizzy baby.”

  She had never known how much she would like a man’s strong arms—and warm, broad chest—wrapping her close to his heart.

  * * *

  BUT ELIZABETH DIDN’T get a chance to see if there would be morning sex or not, because the call came in. Loud. Buzzing.

  Elizabeth moaned, rolling over. “Is that your phone or mine?”

  Jon rolled over and pulled her to him. He had an erection. Oh, God, she wanted to stay in bed so much. “I turned my phone off, Lizzy,” he said, nuzzling the back of her neck.

  “I can’t turn mine off. I’m a doctor.” She reached over him and grabbed for it on the table.

  Crap. It was from her sister’s counselor. “I have to take this.” She got up and reached for her robe. “You can take a shower if you want,” she told him.

  He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and her heart welled up. If her life wasn’t so on edge at the moment, she would ask him to stay longer.

  She went into the kitchen and took the call. “This is Dr. Elizabeth LaValley.”

  “I’m sorry I called you so early,” her sister’s counselor said, “but I figured you have an early shift. I needed to check with you because you haven’t responded to my email.”

  No, Elizabeth hadn’t checked her personal account in a while. “I’m sorry. Is my sister okay?”

  “Yes, she’s doing quite well. The reason I’m calling is to inform you of a planned family counseling session next Friday. Your mother has confirmed her attendance, and I was wondering about yours.”

  Her breath hitched in. “I’m afraid not. I think it’s best that Ashley speak with our mother alone.”

  “Dr. LaValley—”

  “Will you be requiring Brandon’s presence?” she asked.

  “No. We only allow children when they’re over twelve years of age.”

  “Very good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for work.” She hung up her phone.

  Jon met her in the living room. His shirt was unbuttoned and he was still zipping his jeans, but he looked like the sexiest guy to do the walk of shame to his car, ever.

  He grinned sheepishly at her. “I’m late, and we overslept.”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “I want to do that again.”

  He lifted his hand in a mock salute. “Any time, just call me.”

  It made her problems with Ashley and her mom hurt a little bit less.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JON WAS STILL feeling the rush from being with Lizzy when he stopped at a convenience mart near her house and ordered a take-out coffee and an egg sandwich. The local newspapers were on a rack by the cash register, so while Jon waited for his egg to cook, he idly scanned the headlines.

  To his shock, his name and headshot were printed on the front-page sidebar.

  Jon nearly choked on his coffee.

  No way was he buying a newspaper to support those bloodsucker sportswriters, so instead, he scanned the seating area to find a discarded sports section left behind from an earlier patron. He unsnapped the section of newspaper. Right there, above the fold, was the headline: Farell Named as Troublemaker in Captains’ Clubhouse.

  He sat heavily at the empty table, feeling sick to his stomach. The reporter in the byline was a guy Jon knew well, a man he personally liked, and who Jon had thought liked him back. Jon had given the bastard more quotes than he knew what to do with in the past, but this time, he hadn’t given Jon the courtesy of a heads-up? Not a single call for a quote?

  What the hell? Gritting his teeth, forcing himself to scan the article—which went against everything he believed in—Jon caught the gist of it pretty quickly.

  The Captains had lost all those games in September and had failed to make the playoffs specifically because the pitching staff had a bad attitude, sources said, and the ringleader of those pitchers was the local guy. Him.

  Jon crumpled the newspaper and threw it in the trash. Then he retrieved his order and went out to his SUV, slammed the door and rested his head on the steering wheel.

  More than anything, it stung. He got along with everybody, the ultimate team player. He’d thought they’d all liked him. He always did everything he could for them. And yet, here he sat, staring a railroad job in the face.

  Somebody on the team had dropped his name to the reporter, obviously. Of all the pitchers on the staff, someone wanted rid of him the most. They had scapegoated him. Jon wasn’t an ace, but he wasn’t small potatoes, either.

  This was writing on the wall he couldn’t ignore. He could do everything perfectly from here on out, but if management and ownership were looking for an excuse to make the scandal go away, they could easily do so by dropping him from the roster.

  Boston was a big-market sports town. Once a scandal erupted, the explosion could linger for weeks, months, years. Hell, there were still people who whined about losses from twenty years earlier, as if they’d happened only yesterday. The carping, moaning and complaining was fed by
wall-to-wall sports shows: radio programs and cable television talk fests that broadcasted in a loop over and over, 24/7. Dozens of people made good livings doing nothing but criticizing Captains games, dissecting each and every play, each and every day.

  Normally, Jon ignored it. Thought of it as a game he was pretty good at managing. But this...this...

  Was his own damn fault.

  He closed his eyes and leaned back against the seat. There was no decision. Nothing else he could do except call his agent.

  “Yes, Jon,” Brooke said when she picked up. “You weren’t home this morning. Your phone was turned off and you weren’t home last night, either.”

  “Nope,” he said. He owed Brooke no explanation as to how he spent his time.

  “Anything you care to tell me?” she asked.

  He held the phone to his ear and watched as a guy his age pulled open the door to the convenience mart, followed by three towheaded little kids. “Yeah. What can I do to get my life back?”

  “That depends. Were you drinking in the clubhouse? Did you participate in that?”

  Oh, shit. He hadn’t read the article that carefully. “Is that what the newspaper says?”

  “It does. And I’m getting nervous because you’re not answering my question.”

  Jon was silent. What could he say?

  He wanted to say nothing. He needed to think. Needed to find a way to counter this, to fix it...

  Get serious.

  “Jon?”

  “I’m here.” He ran his hand through his shorn hair. Tried to knock some of the cobwebs out of his brain. What could he do? Ask Brooke to arrange a sit-down with a reporter? That would make it worse, because he couldn’t lie, and he couldn’t explain his way out of this. Even to him, it made no sense.

  Brooke sighed audibly. “All right. Here’s where we stand. Management and ownership told me that they’re behind you. Vivian is aware of what you’re doing with the Sunshine Club, and that can only help you. I also told them you’re working on improving your changeup pitch, and that you’ve been conducting daily workouts you’ll be continuing until spring training. As far as that goes, you’re doing everything right.”

  Jon knocked his fist against the steering wheel. Watched the guy his age with the three boys come tumbling back outside to their minivan. “What about a media day?” Jon asked. “Will they be setting something up?”

  “That’s just the thing I wanted to talk about, Jon. The entire pitching staff is forbidden to talk to media. Management isn’t budging on this.”

  “Yeah, well, somebody has been leaking.” Jon thought of all the guys he worked with. Who could have talked? Who would want to blame him?

  He’d thought he was the one guy on the team that everybody liked, that nobody had a problem with.

  “Take my advice,” Brooke said. “Don’t go on the record with any reporters. That can only backfire.”

  He had a splitting headache coming on. There was nothing in his experience or background that had prepared him for this. He didn’t see a way out.

  “What does your dad say?” he asked.

  There was a silence. “Max is in the ICU,” Brooke said softly.

  The intensive care unit. Shit. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Will he be okay? What’s going on, Brooke?”

  “He’s...fine. Just a...setback with the heart surgery.”

  “Heart surgery? Brooke, you should’ve told me.”

  “You know Max.” She sighed again. “He doesn’t want anyone to know. Jon, you’re the only one I’ve told, so please keep it under wraps for him, okay?”

  “Are you okay?” Jon asked.

  “Yes. Thank you for asking.” Her voice broke. “You’re the...only one who has.”

  A lot of good it did him. Jon hung up the phone.

  Get serious.

  He did the only thing he could do: he went to his morning workout with Coach Duffy. One great thing about Coach Duffy was that he didn’t ask questions, and Jon didn’t volunteer answers. They just pitched. Videotaped. Broke down the mechanics. Videotaped again. One of the young players volunteered to catch for Jon, and he appreciated it, even though the young guy threw it back hard enough to sting Jon’s healing finger. Jon had to tell him a couple times to lighten up.

  The afternoon did not go as smoothly, though. Jon toyed with skipping the team conditioning exercises but, ultimately, ruled out raising Coach Duffy’s ire. This wasn’t like fielding practice with the pros—no joking around, no hanging out. These were college students and Coach treated them that way. He didn’t let them look sideways at someone.

  So there were whispers and stares that came Jon’s way. Most of the guys looked too frightened or in awe of him to say anything to his face, and Jon was glad that he’d set the precedence where he wasn’t their buddy, wasn’t their pal. He hadn’t ingratiated himself to them, told jokes or tried to be that easygoing, fun, good guy that everybody liked.

  For once, Jon had acted like an ace.

  It had been smart. It was serving him well now, because no one felt familiar enough to rib or question him.

  When his job was finished—when Jon had run the last wind sprint and stretched in the final lunge—he gathered his gear and headed to his SUV before anyone could waylay him. There were no reporters staked out, because reporters didn’t know about his workouts at the college.

  Coach Duffy had probably threatened the players with death—or worse, losing their scholarships—if they said one word.

  After Jon was back on the highway, rolling with traffic in the slow lane, he drove up one exit and then turned into a McDonald’s where he could park anonymously at the far end of the lot and check his messages.

  With the engine idling, he turned on his phone. As he’d expected, his message inboxes were overloaded. He didn’t dare go on Twitter. He wasn’t big on using the social media service, but he did have an account, and it would be...chaos. He dreaded looking at it. Should probably just delete the whole thing.

  He scanned his phone’s text messages: Francis’s and Bobby’s were on top of the list. Jon called Francis first. His middle brother sounded ready to explode.

  “Francis, hang tight,” Jon said. “Seriously, I’m begging you. Do not make this worse than it is.”

  “I just want to call those guys and tell them off,” Francis sputtered. “They’re such blowhards. They don’t know us at all. We gotta do something!”

  Us. There it was again. He’d never really noticed how Francis used “us” and “we” until Lizzy had pointed out his patterns, making Jon take a hard look at his history and his relationships with his family.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll fix it,” Jon said, “with the team and behind the scenes. And once my contract is inked, I’ll fix it with the fans, too.”

  “The fans love you, Jon! You’re the only one on pitching staff who won games in September and October!”

  “Francis, I said I will fix it.”

  “But I can’t take it! What if those bastards get you railroaded out? Then what will we do?”

  Jon sucked in his breath. He felt like he was a kid again and Mom had just died, and everything was a mess. Everyone was at wit’s end. Dad had withdrawn, and...

  Whoa. Dad hadn’t texted him. Jon was sure of that.

  “Jonny?” That was Bobby’s voice on the line with Francis.

  “Why are you out of class? For what I’m paying for your tuition bills, you shouldn’t miss a minute of school.”

  “I called him over to my place,” Francis said. “Family has to stick together.”

  Jon held the bridge of his nose in his fingers. There was that headache again. “Listen,” he said very quietly to his two younger brothers, “everything’s gonna be okay. I’ll take care of it. You trust me, don’t you?”

  “Keep us posted,” Francis said.

  Jon hung up and tossed the phone into his duffel bag. Then he threw his SUV into gear and steered back to the highway. Just as dusk was settling over the city and streetligh
ts were turning on, Jon came to the stoplight in front of his apartment building.

  Two television vans were parked out front.

  He stared. But maybe the news trucks weren’t for him. This was Boston, a big city with a lot of stories and people a thousand times more important than him.

  Still, it was too coincidental to risk.

  When the light turned green, Jon swung a left turn and headed toward the inner suburbs and Lizzy’s condo. Once in her familiar parking lot, he backed into her guest spot and grabbed his duffel bag. For the first time in his life, Jon was grateful to know a woman so private he would bet she hadn’t told anyone she knew him, never mind that he’d spent the night with her. Her nephew wouldn’t have a clue he had been here either.

  Brandon.

  Oh, hell, Brandon.

  Jon’s pulse plummeted. The kid was a huge baseball fan—he would have heard everything in the article by now, and he would be upset. So disappointed in Jon. And after what the kid was going through with his mom in alcohol rehab...

  He had to find him. Jon climbed out of the truck, tired, sweaty...and with a massive headache. He had no idea what he could possibly tell the boy once he did sit him down.

  But Jon had little time to consider, because as soon as his sneakers hit the sidewalk he saw Brandon on the strip of sparse lawn beside the condo building.

  The boy made a pitiful windup at the pitch-back net Jon had brought him. While Jon watched, Brandon doggedly hurled the ball at the strike zone Jon had outlined for him with black electrical tape. The baseball bounced off and veered wildly. Again and again the kid pitched, but the ball went everywhere but where it was supposed to go—back inside Brandon’s glove. Instead, it careened off the PVC piping and rolled onto the asphalt. But no matter what crazy throw he made, the kid didn’t quit.

  Years ago, that would have been Jon, too. He felt choked up, seeing up close again how baseball had meant everything to him at that age. In a sense, it still did. It was the greatest game; it connected him to family, to tradition...to himself.