High Heat (Hard Hitters #1) (21 page)

“I don’t know. I think you’ve done a decent job. I haven’t been on TMZ in weeks.”

“See that you keep it that way.” She reached behind him to swat at him lazily, but he dodged it with no trouble.

“My agent is delighted.” He leaned forward and caught the scent of her shampoo. Not too flowery. Clean and uncomplicated, like her.

“That’s great, but if you wind up on TMZ again, your agent will be the least of your problems.” A lazy, seductive note crept into her voice that made him want to drag her off to the bedroom and have his way with her.

Not yet, though. He had something to say.

“I love it when you’re bossy.”

She chuckled and moved her head to one sigh, stretching and sighing.

“My point was, working with those kids was kind of fun.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So I thought maybe you might want to do that.”

“Teach little kids to pitch?” The seductive tone disappeared from her voice.

“Not just little ones. Big ones too. You know, prospects from high school.” Lord, he was mangling this, but he hadn’t had a lot of time to think about it. Still, his heart pounded. This was a good idea. He knew it was, even if he hadn’t one hundred percent thought it out yet.

“Tom, you’re not making any sense. Why do you want
me
to teach kids how to pitch?” She pulled away and turned to face him, her face a puzzle.

“I was sort of thinking about starting a pitching academy.” He watched her closely to see how she took it. “The Cord Pitching Academy, to work with young pitchers and help guide them on their mechanics and mental attitude and stuff.” All the guidance he’d needed as a kid and hadn’t gotten, coming from a big leaguer who’d seen it all and knew what the game required. “I could do it full-time when I retire. Down the road, of course,” he added hastily. It might no longer be his only reason for living, but no way was he giving up on the dream of a World Series ring. “Many years down the road,” he repeated, just in case she hadn’t gotten it the first time.

“Of course.”

“In the meantime, you could run the pitching academy. Sarah, here’s the thing. It would be coed! You could give young girls the training you never got yourself!”

Her face lit. “Oh my God.” She clutched his hands, eyes wide. “Seriously?” At his nod, she beamed. “That’s a brilliant idea. You’re a genius!” She threw herself at him, covering his face with kisses. He could get used to this.

After a moment, though, she pulled away with a frown. “What about working for you, though? It might be weird. I can’t imagine you as my boss.”

“I can. I kind of like the idea of telling you what to do and you having to listen.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m tempted to decline on those grounds alone.”

“Besides, I wasn’t really thinking you’d be my employee. I was thinking you’d be more like a partner.”

Her brow wrinkled. “A partner? You mean like the Dudley and Cord Pitching Academy?” She put a finger to her chin. “I think that sounds better, but you’d probably want your name first. Cord and Dudley Pitching Academy? No, it sounds better with my name first.”

“Actually, I was thinking just Cord Pitching Academy might cover it.” He swallowed the knot that had appeared in his throat. God almighty, why hadn’t he opened a bottle of wine or something? This was ridiculous.

“What?” Her brow furrowed. “You’re leaving me out of the name entirely? That doesn’t sound like a partnership.”

“I was hoping that ‘Cord Pitching Academy’ would cover it because I was hoping both of our last names would be Cord.” She froze. “You know, like we’d be married. Although I guess you don’t have to take my name if you don’t want to.” She didn’t react. “Maybe you could hyphenate?”

He closed his eyes in frustration. Proposing marriage was harder than walking a home run hitter. How had he bungled this so badly?

But when he opened his eyes, it didn’t really seem like he’d messed up at all. Her eyes were glowing, her breath coming fast, and she looked happy. Excited, even.

“I think Cord Pitching Academy sounds really good,” she whispered.

He could hardly breathe for fear he’d misheard her soft words. “Does that mean you want to get married?”

She nodded solemnly, tears shining in her eyes. “It does, Tom. I do.”

He’d never thought this moment would come for him, but now that it had, it felt utterly, perfectly right. What had taken him so long? He kissed her, slow and deep. A ceremony would be nothing more than the official recognition of what they both already knew: They were better together than they were apart.

He’d always wondered why people got married. Now he knew. They found that one person who made them better, and they wanted to be that better person for the rest of their lives. No matter what the future brought, he couldn’t possibly feel more wedded to Sarah than he did at this moment.

Somewhere deep in his heart, a piece he’d never known was missing clicked into place.

Thanks to my fabulous agent, Dawn Dowdle, and her assistant, Babs Hightower, at Blue Ridge Literary Agency. This book would never have seen the light of day if it was not for your belief in it and your dedication to finding it a quality publisher. Thanks to Julie Mianecki at Berkley for loving this book and bringing me on board for this series. Thanks also to Martha Cipolla for her insightful comments and detailed work, and for looking up Peter Gabriel songs in the devoted pursuit of perfect accuracy. All of you made this a better book than I could have done alone.

Keep reading for a preview of the next Hard Hitters novel

SCREWBALL

Available September 2015

That went well. Not.

Paul Dudley watched Willow’s car’s taillights disappear down the road. What the hell happened? Over the course of the last half hour, he’d gone straight from shock to total confusion and still wasn’t sure how.

She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge their past in front of Tracy. He got that. He was a guy, with all of the occasional cluelessness about women that went along with that, but he wasn’t a stupid one. He’d followed her out to her car to get a chance to ask her to coffee at the Ladybird Café. Maybe they could hash it out, discuss the hulking elephant that had been tromping all over the room during their interview.

If he was honest with himself, he hoped to find out which way the wind blew, see what she thought about him, and if she was still available and might be open to spending some time with him while she was in town.

Okay, be honest
. Spending some time equaled sleeping together, in his wishful thinking. He sure as hell didn’t want a relationship and didn’t know if she did either, but God, surely they could both use the connection and release that came with a friend with benefits.

Well, he’d gotten an answer on that score fast enough. That night on the beach was a “mistake,” according to her, never to be repeated.

For his self-protection, he probably ought to try to see it that way, but he doubted he could.

Their night together had happened a little more than a year ago, and he’d never been able to forget it. If he was honest with himself, it was the last time he’d been happy. Plainview, Indiana, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of young available women for him to date, and work—well, hell. He worked fourteen-hour days during the season to try to turn the team’s fortunes around, but between fading revenues and his father’s stubbornness and interference, he was caught between a rock and a hard place. He’d inherited a touch of that Walter Dudley stubbornness, however, and he wasn’t about to let his old man chase him off from the Thrashers the way he’d chased off Sarah.

He loved his sister, and he understood why she left. Walter Dudley would never have given her a job in baseball operations. For Sarah to have the career she wanted, she had to move on. As for him?

He never would.

He was a Dudley, and the Plainview Thrashers were his birthright, the legacy he’d inherited from Grandpa Dudley. Nobody, not even his father, was going to stand in the way of him doing what he’d been put on this earth to do.

He could have gone to a dozen teams throughout the country. Considering the constraints his dad put him under, he did a fine job running the team. He’d had offers through the years, offers from teams that would have given him a free hand. Let him run things his way. He’d turned down every one, knowing where his place was.

Across the parking lot sat the low-slung concrete edifice of the stadium, the bright spring sun picking out every crack and patch of rust. On the outside of the seating deck, block letters spelled out
Dudley Field
, one letter between each column, as it had been since the fifties when the stadium was built. From here, he could barely make out the statue of his grandfather, James Dudley, who founded the Thrashers and built Dudley Field.

His father had commissioned that statue when Paul was a boy. He’d been a child of five at the dedication ceremony, holding his grandfather’s hand as his father had dropped the cloth that shielded the new statue from the view of the assembled crowd. Everyone had gasped and applauded, and a photographer from the
Plainview Herald
had snapped pictures. Paul asked the man if his picture would be in the paper, and everyone had laughed, without him understanding why.

“Better than that, son. This will all be yours one day,” his grandfather had said with a smile, hoisting him on his bony shoulders so he could get a better look at the statue. “I created this team for you.”

“But you did it a long time ago. I wasn’t borned yet.”

Everyone laughed again, except his grandfather. Grandpa Dudley never laughed at him, except when he meant to be funny, which was why Paul loved him so much. “But I knew you would be born one day, and I wanted you to have a baseball team of your very own, so I made you a good one.”

He’d loved the old man fiercely, almost more than he loved his father. Losing him right after college graduation had been the second-hardest blow he’d ever suffered, right after losing his mom.

His grandpa had taken him fishing when his dad was too busy running the team. Now it was Paul’s turn to be so wrapped up in running the team he never had a chance to go fishing for stripers out at Raccoon Lake anymore.

How Grandpa Dudley would hate to see the state the team had fallen into. As Paul had grown older, he’d realized his grandfather had often disapproved of the way Walter ran the Thrashers organization, but he’d believed in staying out of management after he handed the team over to his son to run.

Unfortunately, Walter didn’t share the old man’s ideas in that area.

The stadium was in dire need of renovation, yet another thing he couldn’t get his father to admit.

“People like the history,” his father insisted.

“People also like to know the grandstand isn’t going to crumble beneath them while they watch a game,” Paul had pointed out, but his father simply scoffed, leaving Paul to get the team ready for the season in the same run-down stadium as last year.

No point in dwelling on it when a hundred e-mails and voice mails awaited his attention back in his office.

He’d returned last week from another spring training in Florida. Although he’d cursed himself for a fool every time he did it, he’d visited the Crimson Lounge a few times, hoping to see Willow once again. The players had teased him ruthlessly, noting the “old man” was more interested in the nightlife than the twenty-two-year-old players were.

He didn’t think about Willow every day, but she had crossed his mind since then more often than he would have expected. Memories of her laugh, her hair blowing in the salt-scented breeze, her arms around him under the pier.

He’d dated his old girlfriend, Susan, for years before she had decided to make her move to Chicago. It was almost like her obsession with his imaginary cheating had sustained the relationship. After she’d well and truly understood he was faithful, she’d lost interest and decided to pursue a modeling career in the city. Funny, since she left Plainview, she’d scarcely ever crossed his mind, yet he flashed back to one amazing night he’d shared with a woman he barely knew more often than he cared to admit.

His cell rang and he checked the readout. Fantastic. It was the Thrashers’ new manager, Alex Moreno-Lopez. A bit of a legend in his own mind. At thirty-eight, he was young for a manager, but chronic knee injuries had ended his major league catching career and now he was on the fast track to a major-league managing job. Another hotshot passing through the Thrashers organization on the way to somewhere else.

“Hey, Alex, what can I do for you?”

“You can do something about this shitty turf, that’s what.”

His eyebrows rose, and he counted to three, searching for patience. “Nice to talk to you too, Alex. You don’t waste time with preliminaries, do you?”

“Screw that. Reece damn near broke an ankle during a fielding drill today. There are divots in the field everywhere, and our first game of the season is in three days.”

Great. Another long-standing problem he didn’t have the budget to fix.

“Right. I’ll get the ground crew on it. You make sure you show them where the problem is. Is Reece okay?”

“He’s icing it down now. It’s swollen, but not broken, by the grace of God. Sending somebody out there to patch up a few divots isn’t going to cut it. What you need is new turf. The whole thing needs to be stripped up and replaced.”

Tell him something he didn’t know. He had to think about the practicalities of it, though, not just indulge in wishful thinking. “We don’t have the time to replace the field, with the season starting in three days. Even if we did, it’s not in the budget.”

“Aw, come on, man, get up off that wallet and invest in the players,” Alex cajoled, ignoring the whole bit about how they didn’t have time. “How can we groom players for the majors if they’re worrying about breaking a leg every time they slide into third or go for a deep fly ball?”

Paul gritted his teeth, reminding himself Alex was a year out of being a ballplayer. He’d never been a businessman or even a manager before. He couldn’t tell you the difference between net and gross and probably had no idea how to make an accounting ledger balance. “Alex, I know you’ve been in the majors for years. Ground crew budgets there run in the millions. Hell, my entire operating budget for the year doesn’t match what the Yankees put into their field in a season. This isn’t going to be a big-league quality field, okay? You’re going to have to adjust your expectations.”

“I’m not going to lower my expectations if it means sitting by while my guys get hurt.” His voice took on a surly edge.

Patience
. Paul needed to exercise patience, which he never seemed to have enough of. “I said I’d get ground staff out there to repair the holes, okay? We’re not getting a new turf this season.” He hoped to be able to swing it in the off-season, if they had a good year this year, but that looked unlikely already. Preseason ticket sales were low, and that didn’t bode well for their bottom line.

“Fine. If you can’t do it, I’ll talk to someone who can. I’ll call your dad.”

His hand tightened on the phone. Screw patience. “Like hell you will. I’m the president of this team. If you don’t like the answer I give you, go manage some other team, but you will not go, hat in hand, over my head to someone you think will give you the answer you want, understood?”

After a long moment, Alex exhaled. “Fine. I may not be able to change the turf, but I don’t have to like it. That turf is going to cause a serious injury someday. I hope you can live with yourself when it does.” The phone clicked off.

Paul slid his phone into his pocket. Upstairs, in his office, a host of problems he didn’t have the budget to fix awaited him. The woman he’d been idly daydreaming about for a year had just walked back into his life, but she wanted nothing to do with him. His manager was on the verge of mutiny, and the terrible field conditions he could do nothing about were endangering his players. His father, whom he loved in spite of everything, seemed determined to chase off everyone who cared about him and maybe wreck the Dudley legacy in the process.

Yeah, that seemed about right for an average Tuesday.

***

Back in her motel room, her fingers shook as she dialed the phone. Only one person would understand what she was feeling right now.

She put the phone to her ear and waited, squeezing her eyes shut as it rang.

“How’d the interview go?” Kendra’s voice was warm and familiar. “Willow, what’s up?” Her voice took on a note of concern when Willow didn’t answer.

She swallowed the lump of fear in her throat and took a deep breath, opening her eyes. She wasn’t an ostrich. Putting her head in the sand wouldn’t help. “I think I’m in big trouble, Kendra. Remember my interview was with Paul Dudley? Turns out, he’s
that
Paul.”

“What Paul?”

Several seconds elapsed as Willow bit her lip and tried to stem the rising tide of panic. “
That
Paul. From the Crimson Lounge.”

“Holy shit. Are you kidding me?”

“I wish I was.” She started to pace, from one brown shag-covered side of the floor to the other.

“Oh, my God. What did he say?”

“Not much. He seemed kinda interested, but I blew him off. I need a relationship like I need a hole in my head.”

“No, I mean what did he say when you told him about Jack?”

“Yeah, that’s the thing.” She stopped in her tracks, winding one lock of hair around her finger in a gesture that had been a habit since she was a kid. “I didn’t exactly tell him,” she said in a rush.

“Oh, well. I guess you must have been pretty shocked.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“It’s not the kind of thing that’s easy to blurt out during a job interview.”

“Um, definitely not.”

“When are you going to tell him?”

“Ah, I’m not sure about that.” She looked out at the half-empty parking lot. Empty beer bottles sat in a ring around an ancient phone booth with no phone in it. That was how far behind the times Plainview, Indiana, was. Nobody had bothered to pull down the pay phone booths. It was the land both time and AT&T forgot.

“You’re not sure when you’re going to tell him?”

“No. I’m not sure
whether
I’m going to tell him.”

“What?” Kendra’s voice broke on a shriek. “Are you nuts? He’s got a right to know, Willow. This is his kid we’re talking about.”

“I know, I know. Of course I’ll tell him
eventually
.” She used the same soothing tone she’d used to tell her mother about being pregnant. It hadn’t worked then. Here was hoping for better luck this time. “I don’t know anything about this guy. I need to get to know him a little bit. I definitely don’t want him to know while I’m working on this profile. That would screw everything up.” She let the curtain fall closed and paced toward the bathroom.

“Willow, you don’t know that. You need to come clean and tell him everything.
Now
. Give him a chance to do the right thing.”

Willow shook her head. Kendra’s relationships hadn’t been one disaster after another. She had the gift of being able to date guys, have a good time, and move on with a minimum of fuss when it was over.

She’d never understand.

“I gave Tony a chance, remember? That relationship not only went to hell, but it took my career with it. I’m not letting that happen again.”

“Every man is not Tony, hon.” Her friend’s voice was soft with sympathy, which oddly only hardened the steel in Willow’s spine.

“Some of them
are
like Tony. Look, I’ll probably tell Paul everything after this project is over. But for the next few weeks, I’ve got a job to do, and I’m not going to let Paul get in my way. You know I need this job, Kendra. The stakes are high. I have a kid to support.”