Anna huddled in the back of the coffee shop, slouching low in her seat and watching the door. Every time another patron entered Club Joe, she jerked to attention. Each time she realized she didn’t know the newcomer, she settled unhappily, eyeing the cooling latte that sat across from her.
She sipped from her own soda, sniffing a little when the ice-chilled bubbles tickled her nose. The Coca-Cola burned down her throat, and she wondered if she’d broken her own record. This was, what? The third Coke she’d had since midnight, and it wasn’t nine o’clock yet. She shook her head, forbidding herself to think about how tired she was.
The door opened, and Anna repeated her ritual. This time, her vigilance was rewarded. Emily Holt stepped over the threshold, blinking as she made her own quick survey of the tables. Her face brightened as she located Anna, and she actually laughed when she saw the thick-foamed latte on the table.
“Thank you,” Emily said as she collapsed into the empty seat. “A million times, thank you!” She lifted the cup in both hands, breathing in the coffee scent as if it were a life-saving serum. She savored a single sip before she returned the cup to its saucer and leveled a concerned gaze on Anna. “Okay. I’m here. In record time, I might add—for you, I got ready in fifteen minutes. Now, will you tell me what’s going on? I’ve been imagining the worst, since I got your call.”
“It is the worst,” Anna said grimly.
Emily swallowed hard. “Who exactly are we talking about here? All you said was he on the phone.”
Anna could not hold her friend’s intense gaze. Instead, she slipped her fingers down the sides of her glass, collecting the droplets of water that were condensing there. There’d been moisture on the can of soda Zach had handed her the night before, pooling into drops where his fingers had touched the metal…
“Anna!” Emily prompted, sliding a knife’s edge of concern into her voice.
“Zach Ormond.” Anna could barely say his name out loud. Even as she whispered, her belly tightened. The night before, she’d had hours to study the catcher, to memorize every line of his face. They’d sat together until the sun rose outside the narrow window in Cody’s room, until the young player had roused from his drugged sleep, confused and in pain.
Zach had been the one to calm Cody, to remind him where he was, to reassure him that everything possible was being done to help him. The catcher had answered every one of his teammate’s questions, truthfully saying they didn’t have a prognosis yet. And Zach had repeated himself, carefully, patiently, every time Cody made the same demands, slipping in and out of his morphine daze.
“Oh. My. God,” Emily said, her enthusiasm jarring against Anna’s somber memories. “You finally did it!”
“Did what?”
“Told Zach how you feel about him. At least I assume you told him.” Emily’s eyes widened as she set her cup on her saucer. “You didn’t tell him? You just decided it was finally time to jump his bones? Get him into bed first and worry about confessing your lifelong crush in the morning? But you said it was the worst. What happened? Was it too fast? It couldn’t be too fast. He’s thirty-seven years old. Oh my God, Anna. Was he not able to get it up? Did he—?”
“I didn’t get him into bed!” Anna protested, finally cutting off her friend’s torrent of questions.
Emily regrouped quickly. “But you did it somewhere else, right? Maybe on your couch?”
“I didn’t sleep with Zach Ormond!” Anna’s protest was sharper than she intended. A quick glance at the tables on either side of them confirmed that the other Club Joe patrons were fascinated by the shape of their coffee mugs, or absolutely captivated by nearby sugar dispensers.
“If you didn’t sleep with him, then what exactly are we talking about here? What’s the Coffee Crisis that was worth my getting out of bed at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning?”
“It wasn’t the crack of dawn,” Anna said sourly.
“Don’t try to change the topic now. What exactly did you do with Zach Ormond?”
“I cried all over him!” Anna’s embarrassment made her voice climb an octave.
Emily’s laugh sounded like a seal. She barely turned her exclamation into a question. “You what?”
“It’s not funny,” Anna insisted. “I cried all over him. I soaked his shirt.” When Emily only shrugged to indicate confusion, Anna stifled a sigh. She rushed through an explanation of the game, Cody’s injury, the resulting chaos that Anna had handled just fine, like the mature, professional adult her grandfather had raised her to be. And then, she’d ruined it all by sobbing like a little girl.
Emily looked fascinated. “Do you realize what this means?” she asked when Anna finally finished her confession. “I’ve know you for what? Eight years? Since Freshman Week. And in all that time, I have not once seen you cry. Not when you sprained your ankle falling on the ice. Not when you failed out of French I and had to change your language requirement. Not when you couldn’t get into that upperclass seminar on The Cultural History of Baseball in Asia.”
Anna rolled her eyes. Rather than respond to Emily’s absurd comments, she took a long pull from her Coke. The ice cubes had melted, turning the carbonated soft drink into lukewarm sugar-water.
But Emily was on a roll now. “Now you come to me, and you tell me you finally found the nerve to reach out to the one man you’ve been crushing on since you were what? Ten years old? And you let him get an actual glimpse of the real Anna Elizabeth Benson? And he didn’t run away screaming in terror, but instead he bought you a soft drink and spent the rest of the night with you? And that’s the worst thing that ever could have happened?”
“What am I supposed to say to him now?” Anna asked miserably.
“Good morning? Thanks for listening to me last night? I really appreciate your being there when I needed you?”
Anna glared. “Right. Like I want to remind him what an idiot I was.”
“You are acting like you just had the most disgusting, drunken one-night stand in the history of disastrous relationships.”
“I’ve had one-night stands that didn’t make me feel this bad.” Anna winced. She’d had one one-night stand. And she’d vowed never to subject herself to that sort of embarrassed morning after, ever again.
Emily shook her head. “Mountain,” she said, indicating a height far above her latte. “Molehill.” She pointed at Anna. “Really. So the guy knows you aren’t perfect. That’s not the end of the world. It might even be the beginning. Come on. What’s this really all about?”
Anna shook her head, searching for words to describe her feelings. She hadn’t needed to fight for any words in the long hours before dawn. She’d been perfectly comfortable, sitting in silence with Zach.
But she had awakened Emily at the very first opportunity, dragged her down to Club Joe like they were still on a college campus, still able to hang out in the student union, nursing hangovers and trying to make sense of disastrous dates from the night before. The least she could do now was explain herself. “All these years, I’ve had a crush on him. First, it was like he was some sort of superhero—Baseball Man to the rescue! When I was in high school, I actually wondered what it would be like to date him. And in college… You know how I felt about him then. But all those years, every time I’ve seen him, he’s looked at me the same way. He thinks of me like I’m a child. Like I’m still the ten-year-old brat coloring in maps of the United States for my social studies class. And losing it the way I did last night? He’s never, ever going to stop thinking of me as a little girl now. He’ll never, ever think of me as a grown woman.”
Emily shook her head slowly. “Grown women cry, Anna. Trust me. I’m an expert on that.”
Of course she was. Emily was a social worker. She’d already spent three years helping senior citizens arrange support systems so they could continue living in their beloved homes. She’d had ample opportunities to see grown women break down.
Anna reached for her best friend’s hand. “Okay,” she conceded. “Maybe I’m making too much of this. But I still don’t understand how I lost it so completely.”
“Yeah,” Emily said, squeezing Anna’s fingers. “It’s not like you were under any pressure or anything.”
Anna laughed at the sarcastic tone. “Thanks. I knew I could count on you for support.” She drained the last of her syrupy water, and then she glanced at the cuckoo clock on the wall. “Oh! I have to get going. I’m meeting Gregory Small in fifteen minutes.”
Emily sat back in her chair. “I’m so glad I could be of assistance.”
“You were,” Anna reassured her. “I feel like I can face Zach now.”
“Just don’t let him know about that fantasy date you planned so long ago. Where was it? An isolated mountain cabin, with rose petals strewn across your pillow…”
“I never should have told you that! You pinky-swore never to mention it again!”
Emily laughed. “Whoops.”
Anna glanced at the clock again. “I’m sorry. I really have to—”
“Go. Go. But you just might want to buy me a lemon blueberry scone, so that my mouth is too full for me to tell anyone else about those champagne flutes in your fantasy.… And the wild strawberries…And—”
“Here!” Anna tossed a ten-dollar bill onto the table. “Get yourself a scone. Get two. Get a sandwich for lunch, too!” But she was laughing as she hurried out the door.
* * *
Zach blinked as he walked out of the hospital doors. The sunlight was a lot brighter than he’d expected. It was hard to believe there was a whole world out here—a family laughing beneath a giant bouquet of balloons, an old man clutching a bouquet of sweetheart roses, a young mother shifting her fussy infant from one shoulder to the other.
Of course, Cody Tucker’s family had just run a similar gauntlet, coming into the hospital. They’d arrived at the room about half an hour earlier. Zach had caught them up on what he knew—the doctors hadn’t delivered any news when they made rounds at seven, but they hoped to have more information by the middle of the afternoon. The kid’s mother had been especially grateful, thanking him over and over again, as if he’d actually done anything. The father had just shook his hand, looking away when a film of tears rose in bloodshot eyes that had probably not slept at all the night before.
But watching them, husband and wife, staring at the worst disaster they could imagine for their child, Zach’s heart was warmed. They’d get through this. Get through it together.
Just as he and Anna had done the night before.
It was the damnedest thing. He and Anna had barely exchanged a dozen words after they’d gone back to Tucker’s room. They’d both been intent on letting the kid rest, letting him sleep through the worst of the pain.
But it had been a real comfort having her there. He’d been able to look across the hospital bed at her quiet face, try to figure out what she was thinking. It made him wonder how many other times they’d been in rooms together. Every single time he’d reported to Old Man Benson. The handful of times he’d watched games from the owner’s box. Random visits to Coach’s office, some of the pressers when there was a particular management issue in play.
He’d seen her hundreds of times, maybe thousands. The same age as his youngest sister, she’d had that same tomboy look—blue jeans and scuffed tennis shoes, shirts that never stayed tucked in. She’d kept her hair pulled back in a ferocious braid, and he’d heard her tell Old Man Benson that it just got in her way if she let it down.
Her hair had been down last night, though. It had felt soft against his fingers as he’d smoothed it back from her face.
He sighed and folded his hands into fists, wincing a little at the pull of bruised flesh across his left knuckles. He’d almost made a fool out of himself, standing there in that hospital waiting room. He’d only meant to offer her a bit of comfort, to tell her everything was going to be all right.
His dick had meant something else, though. Something else entirely. His entire goddamn body had acted like he was sitting in the back row of a movie theater, watching some tearjerk movie with his high-school sweetheart.
Screw that. He hadn’t been thinking of Anna Benson like a high-school anything. He’d been thinking of her as a woman. A woman who had been in total, complete control of an absolute disaster. And he felt like a total shit, making her lose that control, breaking her composure with his smartass question. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
But of course, she hadn’t. She hadn’t been able to solve the real problem—the kid lying down the hall, wondering if he was ever going to play ball again. And Zach just had to find the perfect pressure point, to push her over the goddamn edge.
And his cock hadn’t known the difference between honest regret—trying to fix the problem he’d made with his own idiot question—and raging teenage lust. He’d regressed twenty-five years in a heartbeat.
At least now that he was a grown man, he’d had the presence of mind to lead the distraught Anna to one of those waiting room chairs. He’d forced some distance between them. Occupied himself by passing her Kleenex after Kleenex until he could be sure his stupid cock remembered the rules.
Shit. Maybe it was like those stories he’d heard—about people who narrowly escaped death in a car crash, or a natural disaster. They went at it like rabbits, trying to affirm the supreme beauty of life or some crap like that.
Sure. That’s all it was. He’d watched Tucker’s career collapse in one bad play. He’d seen one woman bring order and logic out of the chaos. And his dick had wanted to affirm the supreme beauty of…
Yeah. Right.
The trick would be figuring out what he’d say to Anna the next time he saw her. Sure, they’d managed to joke around in the hospital waiting room, even after he’d made an ass out of himself. They’d talked about suspension. They’d made sure Tucker was comfortable.
But the next time they talked? He’d be stuck thinking about his hard-on, and she’d be thinking about… What would she be thinking about? If he was lucky, she’d think about the quiet hours, the way they’d shifted the kid’s hands on top of his blankets, curving his fingers to a more comfortable angle. The way they’d worked in tandem, him holding a Styrofoam cup of water while she raised a soaked sponge to the kid’s dry lips.
Any of that, all of that was a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
Dammit. This was all the worst parts of being a teenager, with none of the advantages. His knees still hurt, from the long sleepless hours. His back was still tight.
Maybe all this thinking and crap was because he was exhausted. He glanced at his watch. Ten o’clock. Not enough time to get out to the farm, catch a nap, and still make it back to the park for the late afternoon game.
Well, that’s why he’d bought the condo. It was convenient, even if it never felt like home. He headed toward the hospital garage, already fumbling for his keys. A nap, a meal, and batting practice. And maybe by the time he next saw Anna Benson, he’d be ready to act his age.
* * *
Anna took her time reading through the stack of papers. The package had been prepared with Gregory Small’s usual thoroughness. Anyone who had just dropped into the morning meeting would assume that the general manager had taken weeks to analyze the situation, massaging data and manipulating printouts until every last detail was perfect. They’d have no idea that the entire discussion had begun after midnight the night before.
But for the first time ever, Anna could see the tiniest hint of strain in Small’s demeanor. His scalp was shaved, and his goatee was meticulously trimmed—the man clearly kept a razor in his office. But his lips were rough, as if he’d spent the night licking them to soothe a case of nerves. And a tiny speck of blue ink stained the right cuff of his immaculately pressed dress shirt.
The real Gregory Small, the man who hadn’t been awake for more than thirty hours straight, would never have tolerated such sloppiness.
“All right,” Anna said, tapping the pages into a single neat pile. “Let me make sure we’re all on the same page here.” She looked around the table. Small sat at the opposite end of the table. Between them sat Jimmy Conway, the Rockets’ long-time manager. He’d brought along his hitting coach and a pair of his most-trusted scouts. Opposite Jimmy sat Boyd Larson, the Vice President of Finance. He’d brought a nervous kid whose primary function seemed to be swapping out pencils so that Larson was never without a deadly-sharp graphite tip.
Each of the seven men looked like he was braced for a battle. The table was already littered with coffee cups, and a tray of breakfast pastries had been reduced to crumbs. Jimmy was fiddling with a cigarette, turning it end over end, and Anna could only imagine how much smoke would have filled the room back in the Good Old Days.
But these weren’t the Good Old Days. This was now. And this meeting wasn’t moving forward unless Anna took the reins.
She cleared her throat and began by stating the obvious. “Cody Tucker is…” She hesitated. No, she’d continue to use the present tense. The man was injured, not dead. She rattled off his batting average, on-base percentage, and his slugging average.
She took comfort in the numbers. She understood the numbers. The entire time she was growing up, Gramps had tossed statistics across the dinner table like potato chips. Every morning for as long as she could remember, she’d started her day reading box scores from the previous night’s game, turning the tangle of abbreviations and numbers into a story as rich as anything taught in American Literature 101.
Bottom line, of course, was the fact that Cody Tucker was good. Most Valuable Player of the year good. A dream at the plate. But that wasn’t all. The man’s defense was above reproach as well. “He has no errors on the year,” Anna continued. “And only three in all of last year. He would have won the Gold Glove, if Jackson hadn’t been a sentimental favorite. Am I missing anything?”
She took her time, looking around the table, capturing the gaze of each man in succession. She’d learned at her grandfather’s knee. Gramps might be the team owner, but he was only as good as the men he’d hired. He paid all of them a fine salary so that he could take advantage of their expertise. She’d be an idiot to ignore that powerhouse of information now.
But when no one had anything to add, she pressed on. “Looking at Gregory’s report, I only see one real option. We need to get Tyler Brock from Texas.”
Jimmy sat up straight, his entire wiry body vibrating as if she’d shot an electric arc through his chair. The scouts started talking to each other, immediately flipping to the relevant pages of Gregory’s report, tossing out numbers like Wall Street traders in the pit. Gregory himself sat back, nodding minutely as he steepled his fingers in front of his chapped lips.
Boyd Larson’s baritone cut through the chaos. “That’s impossible,” he said. “The team can never afford a contract like Brock’s.” Emphasizing his point, he slammed his pencil down on the table. As the tip flew off, the flunky was already slipping another bright yellow Ticonderoga under his boss’s palm.
“Nothing’s ever impossible,” Anna said, forcing herself to smile. But even as she said the words, she had her doubts.
The injured Cody Tucker’s salary was guaranteed; the Rockets owed him over a hundred million dollars, even if he never set foot in the batter’s box again. Anna knew Gramps had been leery of the massive contract when he’d signed it; only his complete faith in Gregory Small had made him agree to bite the bullet.
But Cody wasn’t the Rockets’ only high-ticket player. Left-fielder Adam Sartain was the face of the franchise; they’d secured his bat with a mammoth contract five years back. The team still owed him for another year.
And Zach Ormond still had two years left—on a deal that had rocked the baseball world when he’d negotiated it eight years earlier. A ten-year contract, for a catcher who would obviously be past his prime by the end of the deal. A ten-year contract, still worth tens of millions of dollars each and every year.
Tens of millions of dollars that could buy the desperately needed Tyler Brock from Texas.
Jimmy Conway lost no time getting to the point. “We’ll have to trade Sartain. Tucker may be out forever, and no one’ll touch Ormond, at this point in his career.”
Anna couldn’t help but feel a wash of relief. Coach was certain Zach would not be traded. One of the scouts chimed in, though. “Texas doesn’t need Sartain. They’re juggling three Gold Glove outfielders right now.”
The other scout nodded. “They’ve still got Hernandez down in the minors. Lee, too. They’d be idiots to pay top-dollar for Sartain, just to sit him down half the time.”
Anna’s loyalty to the team forced her to add: “We’ve built three years of ad campaigns around Adam Sartain. We can’t let the man go now. Not when we’ve told every season-ticket holder in town that he’s the face of the Raleigh Rockets.”
The words made perfect sense. They were exactly what Gramps would say—minus a few half-swallowed curse words—if the old man were sitting at the table. Texas couldn’t use Sartain and Raleigh didn’t want to give him up.
But that left Zach on the block.
Anna’s stomach twisted around itself. Reflexively, she picked up the bright red can of soda that sat beside Gregory’s report. The drink burned like battery acid as she gulped down a swallow. There was a solution here, one that didn’t require her to send Zach halfway across the country. There had to be.
She turned to Small. “Have you talked to Texas?”
Gregory nodded. “I had them on the phone this morning.”
When had he done that? Some time between shaving his head and ironing his shirt? Texas was an hour behind—had he gotten someone out of bed to talk about this deal? Who had authorized him to do that?
But that was Gregory Small’s job. His job, which he did so perfectly no one in the Rockets’ organization could imagine functioning without him. Gregory Small was the architect of the team’s success. Without him, Anna might as well be presiding over a meeting of Little League parents, arguing about which park they’d use for practice.
Anna realized she was panicking, desperately searching for something to think about other than trading Zach to Texas. She had to calm down. This meeting was strictly business. Cold, impersonal numbers. No personalities involved. Just money.
She forced her lips to curve into something that resembled a cool, professional smile. “And?” she asked Small. “What does Texas want for Brock?”
She heard him name names. Mechanically, her mind recorded the players—a hot prospect for shortstop, that kid they’d just signed straight out of college. A left-handed pitcher who was tearing up the minors. A right-handed reliever. “And Zach Ormond,” Small concluded, just when Anna was thinking it was safe to breathe.
“They’ll take on his contract?” Boyd asked, his banker’s gaze shooting darts across the table.
Small shrugged. “If they get the rest of the package.”
“Do it,” Boyd snapped. Anna barely resisted the urge to pick up his fresh pencil and snap it in two.
“There’s a problem,” Small said.
“There’s always a problem,” Jimmy Conway muttered. Anna was pretty sure the manager would have punctuated his observation by shooting a stream of tobacco juice through his teeth, if they’d been outside.
Small looked around the table before his gaze settled on Anna. He seemed to be speaking only to her when he said, “Zach Ormond has a no-trade clause.”
“Shi-i-it!” Jimmy moaned, stretching the word into three syllables.
Anna’s heart beat so fast she had trouble catching her breath. Of course Zach had a no-trade clause. She remembered Gramps talking about it years ago, back when the contract was first negotiated. For the entire time he’d owned the team, Gramps had insisted he’d never agree to a no-trade clause, and he wasn’t about to accept one for Zach Ormond. But over the course of weeks, of months, Zach had convinced the Bensons that he truly loved the Rockets. He loved Raleigh. He’d begun his professional career with the team, and he wanted to retire with them.
And Gramps had finally been swayed by the catcher’s earnest arguments. He’d agreed to the Rockets’ first-ever no-trade clause.
Zach couldn’t be forced to go to Texas, even if that team wanted him. Even if they agreed to pick up the now-outsized payments due on his contract. Despite the waves of disappointment that rippled across the table from everyone else, Anna had to fight down the urge to laugh.
One of the scouts said, “You can talk to him, Skip.”
Jimmy shrugged. “Sure. I can explain he’ll have a bigger role with Texas. They’ve got that new kid, what’s his name, the big left-hander? With Zach catching him, that kid could win a Cy Young. Or three.”
Anna watched the men absorb Jimmy’s prediction. Coach seemed certain he could make Zach see reason, and everyone else around the table was soon nodding. As if Zach’s trade were a done deal, they fell to discussing the other players, the guys down in the minors who had vast amounts of potential but weren’t yet working cogs in the Rockets machine.
Anna listened to all the justifications. The scouts launched into spirited defenses of a couple of the guys. Before long, though, conversation switched over to the challenge of finding replacement parts. There were a couple of college kids they’d just seen play. One high-school shortstop who showed some real potential.
It was all a game to them, a giant jigsaw puzzle. Pieces could be sanded down, made to fit. A few could be flipped over, colored in on the back so everything matched. Everything lined up.
Throughout the conversation, Anna kept looking at the notes she’d scribbled on her legal pad. Zach Ormond, she’d written, underlining his name three times.
She imagined him watching this meeting, absorbing the blows as he and his teammates were swapped like baseball cards instead of like men. He’d be calm, like he’d been in the hospital last night. He’d be patient, waiting for everyone to finish making their arguments. His gaze would be intent as he followed each speaker, those hazel eyes registering every word that was said.
Would he speak in protest? Would he pound his fist on the table to emphasize exactly how he felt? Would he reinjure his bruised knuckles as he expressed his anger at being treated like a piece of meat when he had specifically negotiated a contract to avoid ever having that confrontation?
As Boyd launched into a dry summary of the team’s finances, Anna closed her eyes. She meant to blink, to rest for just a moment. But she found herself back in that hospital waiting room, in that moment when Zach brushed a tear from beneath her eyes. She could have caught his hand between her own. She could have brought it to her lips, comforted him with the gentlest of kisses.
If she’d reached out for Zach, what would have happened? Would she still have broken down in tears like a helpless little girl? Maybe he would have leaned down instead, met her lips with his own. Maybe his hands on her back would have been greedy, commanding, instead of offering the soft comfort she had known in reality.
Maybe…
She jolted upright, blinking hard, suddenly aware that she was in the crowded boardroom with a group of professional businessmen. What had Emily said? Last night wasn’t the end of the world. It might even be the beginning.
Yeah. Right. Not if Boyd Taylor and his ledger sheets had anything to do with it.
She glanced around the table, relieved to see that no one had noticed her phasing out. She was lucky. They were probably all as exhausted as she was.
Gregory Small tapped his papers together as Boyd’s financial sermon came to an end. “We’re in agreement, then? I’ll go back to Texas with our offer. All three kids, and Ormond.”
Anna held her breath as everyone around the table nodded.
Small concluded the meeting. “The only thing left is to convince Ormond to accept the trade. We just have to find the right motivation, and everything will fall into place.”
The right motivation. Anna found herself wishing that no such thing existed. And she immediately felt like a traitor to her grandfather, her team, and everything she’d been raised to believe in.