by Linda Morris
A staffer retrieved the ball and tossed it back. The kid tried again, and this time, the ball sailed farther, hitting the net with a soft plop.
“Fantastic! Try that again, but this time, bring your knee up a little higher. Try it in slo-mo first. That’s it.”
She watched Tom go down the line, working with each kid, watching them pitch, giving them suggestions mixed with praise and encouragement, joking and winning smiles from them as he went. As he moved along, each kid continued to throw, until about six kids were all throwing simultaneously. The rest of the kids shifted back and forth, fiddling with their gloves and watching with wide eyes as they waited their turns. As he worked with a ten-year-old girl in pigtails, Sarah frowned at the boy in the green shirt he’d started with.
“Something the matter?” Sarah startled, surprised to see Tom’s eyes locked on hers. He’d been concentrating so fiercely on each kid, she hadn’t realized he’d been paying her any attention.
“That boy you were working with. He’s holding the ball too tight. That may be why it’s still going in the dirt. Maybe you should tell him?”
Tom looked back at the kid, watching him for a moment. “Huh. Maybe you’re right. Tell him yourself.”
Sarah’s eyes narrowed, trying to read him. It wasn’t easy. Was he annoyed with her for offering advice? He didn’t seem to be, but who knew? That type of remark from her certainly always sent her father over the edge.
“All right then.” She took a breath and went over to the boy, taking the ball from him and showing him the proper grip. She found herself copying Tom’s style, joking and praising the boy. He responded, taking the ball back from her and carefully copying her.
This time, the ball sailed into the net with authority. “All right!” She applauded and gave the kid a high five.
She looked up to catch Tom watching her with a look on his face that she couldn’t name. An assessment, definitely, mixed maybe with the pleased surprise of surpassed expectations?
Whatever it was, she was pretty sure she’d worn the same look when she heard Tom tell a dispirited young pitcher he was just like Greg Maddux.
Chapter Seven
“I’m starving,” Tom said after they’d finished the clinic and packed everything away into the trucks for the interns to haul away. “Any place to eat in this town?”
She checked her watch. “Yikes, it’s nine. Almost every place will be closed.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“You’re not in Miami anymore. You can’t roll up in your Beemer to South Beach at nine o’clock at night and get carryout from Joe’s Stone Crab. In Plainview, it’s Steak ’n Shake or nothing at this hour.”
He shrugged. “That sounds fine. A good greasy burger is all right with me.”
“If it’s any consolation, you can probably blow off your training regimen for a day or two, since you’re suspended and all.” She gave him a honey-sweet smile.
“That’s no consolation whatsoever, but thanks for pointing it out.”
“No problem.” She gave him directions to the Steak ’n Shake, Plainview’s only twenty-four-hour restaurant. They hit the drive-through.
“You want something?” He turned to her. “It’s on me.”
“Wow, you are a big spender. No wonder you do so well with the ladies.”
He winked. “Sorry, but that’s not why I do so well with the ladies.”
She would not rise to the bait. She suspected she knew part of the secret to his success, and although it was in his pants, it wasn’t his wallet. She cleared her throat and studied the menu. She really shouldn’t eat this junk, but the heavenly aroma of seared beef and crispy fries wafting out from the drive-through window overcame her scruples.
She gave him her order and took the paper bag that he handed her minutes later, noticing the goggle-eyed stare of the fast-food employee at the big leaguer in a BMW coming through her drive-through. She’d tell everyone she knew about this, no doubt.
Great. Being spotted at a PR event with him would be seen as work-related, but she had no excuse for hitting a late-night drive-through with a player on the Thrashers roster. Sarah slunk down in the leather upholstered seat and wished for a Harry Potter–style invisibility cloak.
In a gossipy town like Plainview, this would get back to her dad in a flash.
“Where can we go to eat this?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Uh, home?” It would be ideal. No witnesses.
He shook his head. “Nah. Too wired from the clinic. That was fun, though.”
“It was fun,” she agreed, feeling as surprised as Tom sounded.
“I need someplace to wind down. All that talking about baseball got me juiced up and I feel like throwing. Is there some park around here where kids hang out?”
The first place that sprang to mind was Jules Park, which was known for its view of the starry night sky over the Blue River. Teens parked along the bluffs and drank, smoked pot, and had sex. So she’d heard, anyway. Her father would have throttled her if she’d done any of the three as a teen. Heck, he wouldn’t be happy about her doing those things now if he found out about it.
It was so not the ideal place to take Tom Cord after dark.
Maybe Bales Park? No, it had a skateboard ramp and would be full of teen boys at this hour. They’d get mobbed. Founders Park was mostly a kids’ water park, and they locked it after dusk.
Resigned and hoping she wasn’t doing something stupid, Sarah gave Tom directions to Jules Park. At least the other people would no doubt be up to their own illicit behavior and wouldn’t pay any attention to them. The bluffs nestled under cottonwood trees short of the river, and a couple of cars sat spaced a good distance apart in the nearby parking lot, no doubt to afford privacy to their occupants. A bad case of nerves brewed in her stomach.
Tom parked, rolled down the windows, and killed the engine. The music of frogs on the riverbank filled the car as fireflies winked to life and faded out below them. The river glimmered in the light of a nearly full moon. A dragonfly flickered to a rest for a moment on the wiper blade, stretching his iridescent wings in the moonlight, and then flittered away as quickly as he’d arrived.
“This looks like a good make-out spot.”
She snorted. “Trust you to know one when you see it. Here’s your sandwich.” She shoved the foil-wrapped burger into his gut and then handed over his fries. “Drink your water. You worked up a sweat at the pitching clinic. Better stay hydrated.”
“Wow, I’d be touched by your concern, except I suspect you just want to shut me up.”
“You’d be right.”
Silence fell as they both tucked into their burgers. The flavors of hot beef, onion, and cheese exploded on her tongue, and she had to bite back a moan. Even though she no longer played organized baseball, she’d never given up the healthy habits she’d acquired back then. She still ate right and ran five times a week. This was an unexpected orgy of indulgence, and damn, it was good.
“Tell me the truth.” Tom swallowed a mouthful of burger and washed it down with some water. “Did you ever come up here when you were a teenager and rub uglies with your boyfriend?”
“Did I—” Words failed her. It took a moment for her to master her voice. “Did you just refer to sex as ‘rubbing uglies’?” A French fry dangled forgotten from her fingertips as she watched him chew and swallow another enormous bite of burger.
“Do you object to that one? I have lots of others. Hide the salami, make the beast with two—”
“Yes, I know! You don’t need to share any more.” She shook her head slowly. “I get it. I was just temporarily in shock that a man over the age of fourteen had used that phrase.”
“Obviously you don’t spend much time in a baseball clubhouse.”
“Obviously.” She meant it matter-of-factly, but it came out sour.
“Oh, yeah. Right. Your dad’s got that thing about keeping you away from the players, right?”
“That’s righ
t.”
“So, he said you were a frustrated baseballer.”
She took a long time chewing her burger, and then swallowed and washed it down with iced tea. “You could say that. I played Little League with the boys when I was a kid. I was pretty good too.”
“What position did you play?”
“Pitcher.”
“No kidding? Just like me.”
She smiled. That was sweet of him to say, really. Her game had been based on finesse and smarts, not power, like his. She couldn’t throw a 100 mph fastball if you gave her a thousand tries—no woman could—but he’d compared them as equals anyway.
It almost made up for the “rubbing uglies” comment.
Almost.
“You were good, huh?” His brilliant grin shone bright in the car’s dim interior, and she suddenly understood why all those women lined up to make fools of themselves over Tom. Even without the money and the fame, he had a charm she couldn’t deny.
With the money and the fame, he was deadly.
“I went 10-6 my final year. They don’t keep stats, of course, but my father was such a number cruncher, he did it for my brother and me unofficially. I had a 2.1 ERA.”
A low whistle escaped him. “That’s a big-time number.”
She shrugged, unaccountably pleased at his praise. She’d been going up against pubescent boys, not major leaguers, but still. A killer ERA was a killer ERA.
“Why did you quit?”
Just like that, her pride winked out. “My mom died when I was twelve. She had a heart defect and didn’t know it. A time bomb, the doctor said after she died.”
She pondered the lettuce on her burger like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. Tears thickened in her throat, but she swallowed them down with a gulp of tea. Her mom had died sixteen years ago. She ought to be able to talk about it without crying. Unfortunately, sometimes it still seemed like yesterday that she’d come into the kitchen to see her mother lying on the floor, pale and slack.
She’d screamed for Paul, who’d called 911, but it was too late. When her mother was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, she and Paul, who had just gotten his driver’s license, had followed behind. Both of them had cried the whole way. Their father, who had been at Dudley Field at the time, had met them grim-faced in the waiting room an hour later to tell them their mother was dead.
“Mom always encouraged me to do what I loved—play baseball. My dad was never thrilled about it, but she talked him into letting me do it.”
“And when she died, there was no one left to run interference with your dad?” Tom’s voice was ripe with sympathy.
“Yeah. It’s understandable. He loved her and took her death hard. He was never the same, really.” She lowered her burger to her lap, not hungry anymore. When her mom had died, Sarah had lost her mother, her defender, and her best friend in the blink of an eye. Of all the hard losses she’d endured, baseball shouldn’t matter, but it did. “I don’t know why I took it so hard. I was never going to pitch in the majors. No woman can throw hard enough for that. Very few universities even have sanctioned women’s baseball programs. It was only a matter of time before I was forced out of organized ball.”
“Maybe so, but your dad should have been on your side, fighting for you, not against you. He didn’t have to take away the one thing you loved because he was hurting.”
She looked up swiftly. Sorrow gathered thick in the back of her throat. Those blue eyes of his. They saw everything, and sometimes not in a comfortable way. Sympathy. Understanding. Compassion. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise her, but it did.
Before she could stop it, the sob burst out of her. Tears streamed down her face. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Oh, God. Of all the people to lose it in front of, she had to pick him.
Who cared if he could be surprisingly kind, shockingly understanding? He still hit on everything in a skirt, and he hadn’t given her the time of day when she’d been that lonely teenager. She had to get it together, but she couldn’t. The harder she tried, the bigger the grief swelled, as fresh and raw and goddamned painful as if it had happened yesterday.
She didn’t know what she was crying for, exactly. For memories of her mother? Anger at her father’s brusqueness to a lonely, sad, teenage girl? Disbelief that a playboy passing through town for a few weeks understood her better than people she’d known for years?
If her mother had been alive, she’d have taken her in her arms and held her. Something her dad had never done. Paul was kinder, but still freaked at the sight of her tears. He became so frantic every time she cried back then, she’d soon learned not to do it in front of him.
“Shhh,” Tom soothed, running one broad hand down her back, his fingers tangling in her long hair. “It’s okay. Cry if you need to.” He put her food on the dash, along with his.
She fumbled in her purse for a tissue and dried her tears, trying for one of those ladylike, discreet nose-blowings she’d never quite mastered. This one was no better than average. She shot Tom an embarrassed look as she wiped her nose, but he didn’t react.
Oddly, he didn’t seem to be falling to pieces at the sight of a crying woman. Instead, he kept up that pressure, his broad hand moseying up to her neck and down again, then across her shoulders, firm, warm, and comforting. She didn’t know what the heck he was thinking about this chick who’d burst into tears in his car, but caring and comfort radiated from his splayed fingers. She soaked it in, the hard ball of anxiety in her chest easing.
As he soothed her, the pain faded from a burn to a sting, and then finally to a dull ache. Quick on the heels of calm came awkwardness. They were in uncharted territory.
Who could she be around Tom Cord if she wasn’t yelling at him about his promiscuity? Looking down her nose somehow took the sting out of his rejection all those years ago. Scolding him for being the kind of guy who talked about “rubbing uglies” came so much more naturally than having a heart-to-heart with him.
“Hey, come on.” Before she could ask, he got out and went around behind the car. “I’ve got an idea. When I’m having a bad day, this fixes everything.”
“Wha—” She twisted in her seat and saw him pop the trunk. Moments later, he appeared at the passenger side window holding a couple of gloves and a ball. She opened the door and looked at him mutely.
“C’mon. Let’s play catch.”
“That fixes everything?”
“Baseball fixes almost everything in my experience. What baseball doesn’t fix, winning does.” His cocky grin brought a smile to her lips. What a rooster he was—but his good humor was infectious.
Maybe Tom was right. She’d had enough soul-searching for the night.
He turned and headed off into the darkness, shoulders square. She followed him in a hurry, glad she’d worn low-heeled sandals.
“Come on,” he called back over his shoulder. “We’ll throw under the streetlight.”
The park’s entrance, a block or two back, glowed in the beam of a security light. He staked out a patch of ground and tossed her one of the gloves. She trapped it against her stomach.
“You just happen to be carrying a ball and gloves with you?”
“Never leave home without ’em. Show me what you got, boss lady.” He lobbed the ball to her and she snagged it cleanly.
“I’m not warmed up. I haven’t pitched competitively in years.” A flutter started in her stomach. Damn, but he was intimidating. He threw the ball 100 miles per hour! She couldn’t compete.
“Quit making excuses and throw the damn ball. I know you’re not a big leaguer and I know you’re not a guy.” He held up his glove. “Put it there.”
“Fine,” she grumbled. Taking a deep breath, she donned her glove. It was too big, of course, but she wiggled her hand and jammed it in as tightly as it would go. She palmed the ball and let herself get the feel of it.
“Come on, do a few warm-up tosses before we do anything for real.”
She nodded. She didn’t know if
it had been Tom’s intention, but his words took some of the pressure off. They were warming up. It didn’t matter if she made an ass of herself. She wound up and let the ball fly at half power. It hit Tom’s glove with a satisfying thunk.
He tossed it back to her, light and easy. They threw it back and forth a few more times, and she felt her muscles start to warm up and loosen. She could have gone on like that forever, but Tom said, “You warm yet? Why don’t you give me your best shot?”
She was ready, but the urge to claim otherwise was hard to overcome. Quit being a chicken, Dudley. Give him your slider. It was always your best pitch.
Before she could change her mind, she gripped the ball in the distinctive slider grip: index and middle fingers close together at the top of the ball, with the thumb and other fingers opposite. Like a two-seam fastball, but a little off-center.
She went into her windup and let the ball fly. The pitch felt good leaving her hand, a good clean motion with a nice wrist-snap. No twisting.
Tom snagged it with ease. A smile curved across his face. “Nasty little slider, low and outside. I know a few major league hitters who’d have trouble with that one.”
His praise, and the successful pitch, eased her a bit. The big muscles in his shoulder and upper arm worked as he tossed it back to her, this time with enough heat to land in her glove with a sting.
Hmmm, nothing took her mind off of performance anxiety like the sight of his fluid strength in action.
Her distraction showed on her next pitch. It slid a little too much and he had to scrape it out of the dirt.
“Oops.”
“Pay attention,” he chided, and her face heated. Did he know that he’d been the distraction? It didn’t matter. Seeing this different side of Tom had softened her toward him, but he still wasn’t her type. Maybe they could be friends, though.
Yeah. They totally could.
Sarah gave her full attention to her next pitch, and the result was good, a solid slider so perfectly placed that he hardly had to move his glove.
