Catching Hell: A Hot Contemporary Romance (12 page)

The words were so easy to say. They slipped from her lips as if she weren’t twisting a knife into Zach’s chest. She held her voice even as she turned to Gregory Small. “Go ahead and call his agent today. Tell Zach Ormond that the team will no longer pay for unnecessary luxuries like a nutritionist and a private doctor. He’s welcome to work with the team experts, to whatever extent he needs medical assistance.”

Small sat back in his chair, a pleased smile curling his lips. Anna took no satisfaction in knowing she was doing what was best for the team. She was even less pleased at the prospect of facing Zach and telling him directly about her decision.

But she didn’t have a choice. If the intimacy of the past weekend was going to have a chance at survival, she needed to let Zach know before he found out from his agent.

To guarantee that, she tossed an off-hand comment to Small as she powered down her laptop. “Do me a favor, though, Gregory. Wait until tomorrow to give Epson the news.”

The scouts made noises of surprise, of blossoming disagreement. Small, though, nodded. “Good thinking,” he said. “No reason to give them extra ammunition. It’ll be just a little tougher for them to scramble around a reply, with Ormond flying out to Pittsburgh in the morning.”

That’s right. The suspension would be lifted by Tuesday night. That left Anna a single day to prove to Zach that she really wasn’t trying to sabotage his entire career. Just the part that dealt with the Rockets. And their need to stay in contention for the post-season.

* * *

Zach took the pencil from behind his ear and carefully marked the length of the plank he had suspended across the sawhorses. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the left sleeve of his T-shirt. This was turning out to be a hotter and thirstier job than he’d expected, when he’d started replacing the rotten boards on the back porch. He’d be pushing it to get things done by tomorrow morning, by the time he had to hop a plane for Pittsburgh.

Measure twice, cut once. Corny advice, but it worked. He flexed his wrist before he picked up the circular saw. The tool screamed as he triggered the power, and the tone climbed as he forced the blade through the two by four.

The end fell onto the ground with a satisfying
chunk
, and Zach swung the trimmed plank onto his shoulder. Before he could walk around to the back of the farmhouse, though, he looked toward the main road. A cloud of dust rose from the long gravel drive, moving closer to the house.

He had visitors.

Make that
visitor
, he corrected, as a cobalt-blue Mini Cooper swung into view. He knew the car, of course. Noticed it every time he arrived at the ballpark, every time he pulled into the players’ lot.

And now that he thought about it, he knew the driver pretty well too. He let himself stare as Anna climbed out of the car, flashing a long, lean leg before she pulled herself upright. He had to believe she was fully aware of the effect she had on him—and anyone else with a Y chromosome who might be watching—as she leaned inside the car to retrieve a tote bag.

He balanced the fresh-cut pine board against the sawhorse and crossed his arms over his chest. Trying to make his voice gruff, he asked, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Not a pleasure,” she said, darting only the swiftest of glances at his face.

Shit. He’d hoped the team would give them a little more time. No surprise, though. Anyone who read the paper knew St. Louis would make an offer for the kid. Time for the Rockets to make his life more difficult.

“Sounds serious,” he said, purposely keeping his voice mild. “Maybe we should go inside?”

Huh. He hadn’t expected to see that. He hadn’t thought Anna Benson could
feel
fear, much less that she’d let it pinch her face that way.

“Relax,” he said. “I don’t bite. Unless you want me to.”

She recognized her own words thrown back at her, and she actually laughed. Good. Then things weren’t totally desperate. Yet.
 

He gestured for her to lead the way up the three steps to the porch, and he held the door for her to step into the living room. Following her into the dim interior of the house, he dipped his head toward his pit, caught a whiff of hard-earned sweat from his labor.

“Have a seat,” he said, already tugging his T-shirt out of the band of his jeans. Once he gained the relative privacy of the bedroom, he used the damp cotton to wipe away the worst of the sawdust from his face before tossing it into the corner of his closet. He ducked into the bathroom for a few strategic splashes of water and then he peeled a clean shirt from the stack in the top drawer of his dresser.

Anna was still standing in the center of the living room when he returned. She looked like a child in a museum as she studied the framed photographs on the mantle. He moved behind her, purposely stepping close enough to make her shoulders tense. She didn’t step away, though. The bastards must not have found the way to shove him all the way out the door. Yet.

“That’s Mama and Daddy, the day they bought this house.” He pointed to the black-and-white photograph of his smiling parents, younger and happier than he could possibly remember them. “Those are the girls.” His sisters were arrayed in identical Easter dresses on the front steps, looking like four stepping stones, with their identical tangles of curls, their identical smiles. “And my brother and me.” He nodded at the pair of them, sporting matching gingham shirts and crisp blue jeans, fresh from the county fair one perfect summer day.

“You all look so happy.”

“We were.” He smiled. “We are.”

Anna looked around the room. “This place is lovely.”

He tried to see it through her eyes. The quilts folded over the sofa had been sewn by his mother and his aunts. His grandmother had made the doily under the lamp, and his father had made the cedar chest that served as a coffee table. Everything was old, the rough edges smoothed out by the passage of time and the hard application of elbow grease. There was a place for everything in the farmhouse, and he was only truly at peace when everything was in its place.

Just about the opposite of the cluttered mess in Anna’s apartment.

“Can I get you something to drink?” he said, because he wanted to delay the real reason for her visit.

“That would be great.” Her smile was fraying now, failing to reach her eyes. She followed him into the traditional kitchen, with its whitewashed cabinets and dark metal trim.

“Lemonade or sweet tea,” he said. “Or water. I don’t have any Coke.”

“Sweet tea would be fine.”
 

He took his time taking down two glasses, filling them with ice. They both knew he wasn’t going to be happy with whatever she had to say. The longer he could take to get their drinks, the longer they could pretend she had just stopped by on a social visit.

She barely touched her lips to the rim of the glass before she set it on the counter. “Zach,” she said, and then she trailed off.

Of course, this was a different woman from the Anna he’d seen in bed. And this was a different woman from the Anna he’d seen in the hospital as well, from the professional businesswoman driven by stress to distraction.

Today’s Anna wasn’t overwhelmed by the emotion of the moment. She wasn’t giving in to tears in a split second of weakness.

Instead, she was the determined creature he’d watched grow up in the Raleigh Rockets’ front office. She was a business executive with a job she temporarily hated, an unpleasant task that was snagged at the top of her to do list, keeping her from moving on with the real business of owning the team.

“Spit it out,” he said. “It’s not going to get any easier if you stand there till the ice melts.”

* * *

He was right, of course. Nothing was going to make this any easier. She made herself raise her chin as she fished Gregory Small’s memo out of her tote bag. She placed the paper between them, carefully lining it up with the edge of the counter. “I’m delivering official notice from the team. You won’t be allowed to use your own nutritionist any more. Or see your own doctor. Any consultations with them will have to be paid out of your own pocket.”

He laughed.

She’d expected anger. Disgust, maybe. Possibly, just barely possibly, a sigh of resignation. But he was standing in front of her, laughing from the very pit of his belly, shaking his head as if she’d just told him a hilarious dirty joke. “That’s it?” he finally asked.

“Zachary Ormond, I spent every minute of the drive out here trying to figure out how to break the news to you.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. You should have called Jeremy Epson. Let him be the bearer of bad news.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you.” She felt like she was confessing something to him, a terrible secret, something so shameful she’d never shared it with anyone before.

She hadn’t realized she was avoiding his eyes until his hand closed over hers, on top of the hated paper. “Anna,” he said, and she had to look at him then. “This isn’t a surprise.”

“I know it’s going to be difficult for you to change things mid-season, and it totally sucks that you’re heading out on a road trip now. I—I wanted you to be able to shift money in your bank accounts before you hit the road. I wanted…” She trailed off, unsure of
what
exactly she’d wanted.

“We have these newfangled things called computers,” he said, and she heard the amusement that coated his voice. “We can shift money with the click of a few keys. When it’s necessary.”

“I know—” she started to retort, stung that he wasn’t accepting her explanation, the closest she could get to an apology.

“It’s not about the money,” he interrupted.

“But the team has always picked up your costs in the past. And we’re still going to pay for the other players; they can see whoever they want—”

“Until you’re ready to shove
them
out the door,” he said evenly.

“How can you be so calm about this?” she demanded.

“What other choice do I have?” He took a long draft from his tea. The ice cubes crashed against each other when he set his glass on the counter. “Anna, your grandfather taught you a hell of a lot about owning a baseball team. I’m sure you learned even more at Michigan—wrote papers and analyzed case studies and all that shit. But it’s time to roll up your sleeves now. It’s time to see how everything plays out in the real world. And I have to warn you, none of it is going to be pretty and neat and wrapped up in a bow.”

“You’re going to hate me.” Where the hell did those words come from? She hadn’t planned on saying them. Hadn’t planned on admitting them, even to herself.

“Never.” His denial sliced through her like a frozen sword, solid and sharp enough that she actually gasped.

“What?” she asked because she had to say something, had to move forward instead of dwelling on all the thoughts that suddenly swirled through her head. “You’re just going to accept whatever I say, and never get upset with me for saying it? You must have had a better time on Saturday night than I ever expected.”

“I did,” he said. And there was that gaze again, that solid hazel certainty, pinning her to the kitchen floor. The expression on his face was frank, open. He was telling her everything, baring infinitely more than he had when he let her strip away his trousers, when he let her lips trail over the scar that crossed his knee.
 

She swallowed hard enough that the sound was audible in the immaculate kitchen. Suddenly, she wished that she
had
left this conversation for Zach’s agent. That if she had to have it herself, she’d done it over the phone. That if she couldn’t avoid seeing him in person, she’d called him into the Rockets office, into the utterly impersonal leather-and-walnut boardroom where she could take shelter behind a table and never feel the pull of his magnetic aura.

She couldn’t speak, and yet she wasn’t surprised when he did. “I’m not going to hate you, Anna. Any more than I hate New York or Los Angeles or Toronto, when I play against them. But I’m not going to let you off the hook, either. I’m digging in my heels for this fight. I’m going to put up every barrier I can. I’m going to do everything in my power to stay with the Rockets, because here’s where my professional life has always been. This is the only job I’ve ever had, the only one I’ve ever loved. And I’m not going to walk away from it, even when it hurts. I’m not going to walk away from
you
, even when you’re doing everything you can to make me cash in my contract, to take a trade and finish with some other team. Even when we get to the bottom of the ninth, two outs, two called strikes, I’m not stepping out of that batter’s box for a second.”

She couldn’t look away, not for all the money her grandfather had ever poured into the team, not for all the expectations of the men who had gathered around the boardroom table that morning. “So what happens now?”

“Now?” He took a single step closer, and she felt the heat pouring off of him. “Now, you have two choices. You can turn around and walk through that door, without looking back. You can get in your car and drive up to the city, and call your lawyer, and talk to my agent, and dig in for what’s going to be a long, nasty fight.”

“Or?” she whispered.

“Or you can stand there for about twenty-seven seconds more before I carry you into my bedroom. And don’t even
think
about asking for mercy there, because those papers you delivered haven’t exactly put me in a merciful mood.”

Twenty-seven seconds was far too long. She was stripping his belt from his jeans before she could count to five.

Anna looked up from the papers she had spread across her kitchen table. It was almost two in the morning. She should pack up her work, stumble off to bed, get a few hours of sleep.

Gramps had asked her to make a full report on season-ticket holders at the next day’s management meeting. With the current season almost half over, it was already time to look to next year, to figure out new ways to lure the faithful to Rockets Field.

If it wasn’t the middle of the night, she’d phone Gregory Small. He was the one person who truly knew which of the farm-team prospects were likely to make the move to the majors next year. There were three local guys, all strong contenders for an advertising campaign—Hometown Boy Makes It Big.