Stopping Short: A Hot Baseball Romance (6 page)

Forget the signs flashing from the first base coach to the runners on second and third. Drew got the message loud and clear: Skip was sitting him down. Teaching him a lesson.

Yeah, it was spring training. No one took substitutions seriously in March. But Skip wasn’t even putting him
in
.

Truth be told, Drew had been glad for the break after he’d gotten beaned. Sure, he’d dragged himself out of bed, pulled on his clothes, clenched every muscle in his body against the throbbing pain of his bruised back. But once he got to the park, he could sit forward on the bench, watch the game from the dugout, rest his aching muscles, and recover.

By Wednesday, he’d been ready to get back out there. Hell, if it had been the regular season, he would have sucked it up and headed back out the day before, bruises or no bruises.

But benched for two weeks while Ordonez strutted like a goddamn peacock? That was a message—loud and clear. And there wasn’t a goddamn thing Drew could communicate in response. Just sit there, follow the game, and look as eager as a rookie.

Feeling helpless was actually worse than watching his career circle the drain. Feeling helpless brought back too many nights of throwing his clothes into garbage bags, of sneaking out to a car that rumbled lights-out on the driveway, of heading to another run-down apartment on another crumbling street to start at another goddamn school where no one knew his name.

And being benched was a thousand times worse because of Jessica. She put on a show every morning, kissing him in the hotel lobby, sending him off to the wars like she believed in him. She sat in the stands every game, whether he played or not. She waited for him in the Vista Linda lobby at the end of the day, after all the time bullshitting in the locker room, after all the team meetings, after all the suspense of whether Skip was going to call anyone into the office, trade someone or cut someone before the end of the day.

And damn if Jessica wasn’t starting to convince
him
with those kisses.

One month into their crazy fake engagement game, Rule Two still applied. One kiss in the morning, one at night, five seconds a clinch.

But tongue hadn’t been in her initial game plan. Neither was the way she brushed her tits against him now. Last night, he’d been certain she wasn’t wearing a bra—he’d felt her nipples through his T-shirt, hard and—

“Get your ass out there, Marshall.”

Drew coughed into his fist to disguise his shift in focus, and he hustled up the two steps out of the dugout. Pinch-hitting in the bottom of the ninth, after two weeks of warming the bench. Going up against against Joaquin Hernandez, the best closer in the league—one out, no one on base, down one run.

Thanks, Skip. Thanks a million.

Faking a confidence he didn’t feel, he clutched his bat and strode to the on-deck circle. He tried to settle into the routine, the clunk of the iron donut he slipped onto the bat, the picture-perfect swings like he was posing for his rookie baseball card. He focused on the angle of his hips, on the timing as he shifted his weight from his back foot to his front.

“Strike three!” the ump shouted. Durban had been caught looking. Great. There was nothing like the chance to get the last out in the game. Screw it. He could be a hero, too.

Drew banged the end of his bat against the ground, knocking loose the practice weight. He took his time walking to the plate, and he dug in hard, making sure the earth felt solid beneath his left heel. He set the bat on his shoulder and stared out at the pitching mound.

Just before Hernandez delivered, Drew called time. The ump granted his request, and they all went through the usual game. Drew stepped out of the box, adjusting his batting glove and rolling his neck.

But this wasn’t just the everyday screwing around, calling time to blow a pitcher’s concentration. Drew didn’t want to take a chance at the plate. He didn’t want to swing the bat and miss putting the ball into play, because if he failed, Skip might sit him down for another week. Two weeks. Forever.

Telling himself to focus on the things he
could
control, Drew stepped into the box. The next pitch was a fastball, low and outside. He knew he should let it go. Even if he hit it, he couldn’t do anything with it.

But his reflexes were off, jumpy from days of sitting idle. He swung. Even as he heard the concussion of wood against leather he knew he’d gotten under it. He ran out the pop-fly anyway, pounding down to first as the second baseman scooped up the easy catch.

The Washington players spilled onto the field, high-fiving Hernandez and rioting around the mound like they’d just won the World Series. Drew dragged his ass back to the dugout, which was already emptying. Just before he ducked into the shadows, he looked toward the stands.

Jessica was there, on her feet, looking out over the field. Her hands were still clenched in front of her chest, and if she could have willed that ball out of the park, he was pretty sure it would be halfway to Europe by now.

Just that morning, she’d been cheerfully going through her websites, shifting from spreadsheets to data plans to whatever else she kept on that computer of hers. She’d been all Competence Index this and Charisma Index that, insisting there was great news she could distribute through her networks for the next week, until her deadline.

Well, his Competence Index was in the toilet. And he’d be damned if he’d head back to the hotel right now to listen to her insist otherwise.

He’d run, instead. Running was in his blood. He’d learned it at Susan’s knee, and he wasn’t about to stop now.

He grabbed his keys from his locker and hit the road before he had to face his teammates. Before Skip could call him into the office. Before anything else in his life could go to hell.

He rolled down all the windows and squinted his eyes against the rushing wind as he floored the gas pedal. The grey ribbon of road drew him out of Coral Crest, like venom pulled from a snakebite.

~~~

Jessica’s heart pounded as she slammed on the brakes, narrowly missing the doe that leaped across the road. She waited until her breathing had returned to something vaguely resembling normal, and then she continued down the narrow street, taking care that she didn’t outpace the car’s high beams.

“In five hundred feet, turn right on Plover Drive.”

Her phone’s mechanical voice made her jump. She hated wandering around these back roads. In New York City, she always knew where she was, how to get where she wanted to be. She shoved down the tug of annoyance at the back of her mind, the frustration of being dependent on anything, even a GPS.

Drew had called her
. That’s what mattered. Unlike that long, lonely night two weeks ago, he’d told her where he was. His words were terse, his voice tighter than she’d ever heard it before, but
he’d called her.

She’d been so happy to hear from him that she hadn’t minded walking through the hotel lobby alone. She’d smiled at a couple of the players who were hanging out, getting ready to storm some restaurant as a group. She’d waved her fingers at Tyler Brock’s fiancée, Emily Holt, who was visiting for the week, taking time off from the charity she ran to help veterans and their families, back in Raleigh.

Jessica had tried not to feel rueful as she glanced at the pirate display, as she thought about the first kiss she and Drew had shared, right there, a month ago. She’d tried not to think about all their other evening kisses, the displays that had begun to feel like a ritual, like something she expected. Something she craved. Four weeks of this game was getting to her, warping her mind. Warping her body.

“In one quarter mile, the destination is on your right.”

Jessica slowed the car even more, picking out each reflective house number as she drove past. Most of the homes were huge—hulking mansions that could sleep a dozen or more. She knew that type of house. She and Kevin had rented them, going on vacations with friends to explore parasailing and scuba, ocean kayaking and kitesurfing. Well, Kevin had explored those things. Jessica had enjoyed long walks on the shore and a break from the office.

That all felt like ancient history. Her memories were drenched in sunshine and laughter, a far cry from the concern that twisted through her gut now. The dark sky stretched ahead of her, punctuated by stars that looked like wounds in velvet flesh.

“You have arrived at your destination.”

She flipped on her turn indicator, even though there wasn’t anyone else on the road. She pulled in behind Drew’s Audi and sat for a moment in the rental car, steeling herself to confront whatever waited in the house.

She knew she needed to face facts. The project was falling apart. They had less than two weeks until the end of spring training, one week before Chip’s ironclad deadline. Drew’s Competence Index was half of what it should be, and his Charisma Index was lagging too. No amount of statistical analysis and social media manipulation could change the fact that he hadn’t played in days, at least until that afternoon.

Chip had to be getting restless. He hadn’t called since Friday. It was high time for him to check in, to remind her she only had six days before he pulled the plug.

But she didn’t give a damn about Chip. She didn’t care about Image Masters. She was worried about Drew. Drew had her afraid to open her car door, to walk into the house, to see what waited in the darkness.

If there was one thing she’d learned in the past year, though, it was how to do things she didn’t want to do. She took a deep breath and collected her cell phone from the cup holder, where it had faithfully guided her every turn to get here. She clambered out of the car and shoved it into her back pocket.

This house was different from the others. It was tiny, more like a cottage. It was a single story, low to the ground, painted a white that glowed like silver in the moonlight. Heavy wooden shutters covered the windows, clearly intended as protection for the summer hurricanes that swept through on a regular basis. She guessed the shutters were blue, but it was hard to tell in the darkness.

She wiped her feet on the sisal welcome mat and knocked softly on the door. When she didn’t get an answer, she tried the knob, and she wasn’t surprised to find it open. She stepped into the dim foyer and closed the door behind her.

A pair of rooms sat to either side. Glancing in, she could just make out beds—twin bunks in one, something more generous in the other. A tiny bathroom lay at the end of the hallway. She caught a ghost of her reflection in the mirror.

“Drew?” she called softly as she stepped into the single large room that filled the back of the house. A kitchenette lay to her left, the bare bones of an oven and range, a sink, a refrigerator that hummed quietly. To her right sat an overstuffed couch and an upholstered chair.

The back of the house consisted of windows—four huge panes with their shutters chained into the open position, and a massive sliding glass door. The slider was open, allowing an unencumbered view of the ocean—the ocean, and a giant wooden swing that was suspended from triangular braces. A person sat on the swing.

She recognized Drew from the back. His blond hair reflected traces of moonlight. His shoulders stiffened as she stepped through the open door.

“Hey,” he said softly, not turning around. He shifted to the right, though, offering a silent invitation. She sat on the swing, grateful that he planted his toes against the porch to keep it from shifting too wildly at the change in weight.

“Hey yourself,” she said.

After she settled, he lifted his feet, and the swing rocked gently back and forth. They stared at the waves for a long time, the breakers riding high on the beach, spreading a thick carpet of sparkling foam. Finally, he said, “Thanks for driving all the way out here.”

“What is this place?”

“I bought it six years ago, the first time I came down for spring training. The team had an afternoon off, and I drove up the coast just to see what was around. The old owner was hammering in a for sale sign right when I drove by.”

“So you thought, ‘why not?’”

He shrugged. “We moved a lot when I was growing up. I liked the idea of having one address that wouldn’t change, even if the Rockets cut me, even if I end up out of the game.”

“How often do you get here?”

“A few times during the year. But during spring training, I come up when we have a day off. Or when I need a break. Like Tuesday night, a couple of weeks ago.”

She remembered how she’d felt that Tuesday, the fear and desperation that had clouded her thoughts as the night dragged on. That seemed like ancient history, though, like they’d lived a lifetime in the intervening fourteen days.

Because since then, they’d settled into their lives together. They’d relaxed around each other, teased each other, gotten used to a million little habits. She knew he took one sugar in his coffee. He squeezed his toothpaste from the middle of the tube. More often than not, he battled nightmares when he slept, tossing and turning and tangling his sheet around his feet.

So now that he admitted where he’d been that Tuesday night, it seemed like another puzzle piece was slipping into place. He’d told her something important, admitted a real truth. But she wasn’t going to make too big a deal out of it. She wasn’t going to jump up and put him through the third degree.

Instead, she leaned back in the swing, consciously telling her body to relax. She wasn’t surprised to find his arm behind her head. She didn’t sit up, didn’t pull away. Instead, she concentrated on easing the iron bands that stretched from her jaw to her shoulders, the muscles in her neck that ached with tension.

His fingers brushed idly against her arm. She didn’t want to think about Image Masters, about the afternoon game, about Drew’s Competence Index or regression analyses or standard deviations or any other statistical tool, so she asked, “Do you rent this place out when you’re not here?”

He barely shook his head. “I have to know it’s free when I need it. It’s mine, and I like it that way.”

The calm possessiveness in his voice tugged at something deep inside her. She understood that desire for a foundation. She’d always needed an anchor like that, a place where no one interfered.