Double Play

by Jennifer Bernard

  “Maggie Blythe. The hospital knows about her. Her doctor is…” He racked his brains for the man Maggie had mentioned. “Steve something? He’s a top cardiologist.”

  “All right, we’ll call it in. Do you want to ride with her?”

  “Uh…” He was supposed to be playing a baseball game. But suddenly that didn’t matter at all.

  He looked around and saw that Crush and Wendy had come down from the owner’s box.

  “Yes, he does,” Crush said firmly.

  Dwight could have hugged the man. He straightened up and realized he’d ditched his glove somewhere along the way. Oh well.

  “Dwight, if you need anything, you call me,” Wendy was saying. “Anything at all. I have lots of strings I can pull in this town.”

  He nodded gratefully, then jogged after the paramedics. They transported Maggie past gawking fans and stands selling hot dogs and beer. The vendors flashed him thumbs-ups and shouted encouragement to him. Baseball had never seemed so irrelevant—and yet so much like a family.

  14

  Maggie came back to consciousness in a familiar place—a bed in the ER. Dwight, wearing his baseball uniform, was talking to a female doctor she didn’t recognize.

  She cleared her throat and immediately drew their attention. Dwight rushed over and crouched next to her. “You’re okay, sweetheart. Everything’s okay.”

  Her glance slid to the doctor, who was also smiling. “You got dehydrated and overheated, it seems. You experienced an episode of syncope, but it seems unrelated to your heart condition. Some oxygen and some fluids and you’ll be good to go.”

  She drew in a breath. Her chest still felt tight, but that was probably just anxiety. “Dr. Hill should probably check me out.”

  “I talked to him on the phone and shared all the test results with him. He agrees that you can go home, but he’d like to see you in the next few days.”

  Maggie nodded with relief. She hated spending nights in the hospital. She’d probably be tired for the next few days, but she’d much rather rest at home.

  After the doctor left, she pushed herself into a sitting position. Dwight tried to help, but he did it awkwardly. He didn’t have the experience her parents did.

  Ugh, she couldn’t believe he’d witnessed a fainting spell. A lot of other people probably had too. The last thing she remembered was watching a pitcher warm up and someone telling her to kiss the fish.

  Delusional, clearly.

  She sighed. “I need to call my parents. I promised I’d let them know if I had any episodes.”

  Dwight still hovered over her, big and healthy and smelling of the outdoors. Now that he’d gotten a taste of her true situation, he’d probably run for the hills. She wanted to cry, but not right now, not in front of him.

  “Your purse is at the stadium,” he told her. “Nina has it. Want to use my phone?”

  He handed it to her and she dialed her parents’ number. Except she hit the wrong button and suddenly she was FaceTiming them. From the hospital bed. Crap, just what she didn’t want to do—terrify them.

  “Help me, Dwight. Can you get it off FaceTime?”

  But it was too late. Her mother had already answered. “Maggie, is that you? Where are you? Is that a hospital? Who are you?”

  Dwight shot her a look of alarm as he tried to fix the FaceTime situation. She beckoned to him to hand the phone back, then angled the phone so her mother could see both of them.

  “This is…” She hesitated. Should she call him her boyfriend? Her lover? “This is Dwight. He’s…uh…we’re…uh… We’re seeing each other,” she said. “Dating.”

  A pause. “Tim!”

  Of course her mother would call for backup. Her father appeared in the next second. A reserved man plagued by nervous tics and an ulcer, he didn’t respond well to surprises.

  “Maggie is in the hospital and she’s dating someone,” her mother explained.

  “You make it sound like there’s a cause and effect relationship there.” Maggie struggled to sit up again while Dwight held the phone for her. “It’s not Dwight’s fault I’m here. I was at the game and I got overheated. The doctor says my heart is fine, so there’s no need to worry.”

  Her parents didn’t look any less worried. “What game?”

  “Baseball. Dwight is a Catfish, the team I’m working with. He’s a center fielder.”

  She shot Dwight a panicked plea for help. This conversation was already tiring her out. She sank back on the pillow as Dwight angled the phone more toward him.

  “Hi, I’m Dwight Conner. I’m a big fan of your daughter.”

  Her mother’s forehead creased. Maggie could have told him that ploy wouldn’t work. Her parents despised flattery or even compliments. They liked to be accurate with their praise.

  “Hello, Dwight.” Both her parents introduced themselves with a respectable amount of politeness. “What’s a center fielder?” asked her mother. “Is that important?”

  “A center fielder’s job is to catch the fly balls that are headed for the center of the baseball field, which is usually as far as you can get from home plate.”

  They looked blank. Maggie loved her parents, but right now she was cringing. “Home plate is where the batters stand to hit the ball, Mom. You’ve watched games with me, you know what it is.”

  “Of course, Maggie.”

  “A center fielder has to be very fast and have a great throwing arm. It helps if they can jump. And as a matter of fact, the center fielder is considered the captain of the outfield. Dwight is also the captain of the whole team, which is voted on by the players. That means he’s respected and loved, as he should be. He’s even been in a Nike ad.” She touched his arm, which was close to her face. It felt tense as iron. Was he nervous about speaking with her parents?

  “Well done, Dwight.” Her father flashed an awkward thumbs-up, as he used to do when Maggie aced a test.

  But her mother still looked confused. “But this is a lesser team, isn’t it? What do they call it again, the lower league?”

  “Minor League.” Maggie gritted her teeth. “It’s a Minor League team, but it’s Triple-A, which is the next level below, so it’s practically the Major League.”

  “But not quite.”

  The disdain in her mother’s voice cut Maggie to the core. Not on her behalf, but on Dwight’s. “He’s plenty good enough to make the majors. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Dwight laughed, but it sounded forced to Maggie’s ears. “Maggie’s leaving out the fact that I made one trip to the majors and it didn’t go well.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Maggie said. “That was just your first time. It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” She glanced back at her parents in time to catch their appalled expression. “That’s a baseball saying,” she said quickly. “A quote from Yogi Berra. Don’t worry, I’m not all of a sudden saying ‘ain’t.’ I mean, other than just now. But that didn’t count.”

  Her parents exchanged an alarmed glance. “Maggie, you really need to rest. This is exactly what we were so worried about when you went to Texas. Of course you got overheated. The climate is not amenable to someone with your challenges.” Her mother toyed with the chain of her horn-rimmed glasses.

  “There’s a research position here we want you to consider,” her father added.

  Oh lord, she didn’t have the energy for this right now. “You’re both right, I really should rest. I’ll call you when I get home.”

  “Make sure you see Dr. Hill in person—”

  Maggie blew a kiss and ended the call. Dwight shoved his phone into his back pocket. She desperately wanted to sleep, but her nerves were bouncing like guitar strings. Dwight, her parents, fainting…gah!

  “How are you feeling?” Dwight asked. His quiet, neutral tone made her even more anxious.

  “Tired,” she admitted. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “Sorry? Don’t say that. Damn, I was so worried.” He squatted by her bed again and pushed a strand of hair awa
y from her face. “You should nap now, but I’m going to stick around until you’re ready to go home.”

  She nodded, but wasn’t quite ready to let the moment go. “My parents can be a little overbearing.”

  He didn’t answer, so she shifted to peer up at him. His jaw was set. “Don’t worry about it. Go to sleep, sweetheart. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  She did as he said, mostly because she couldn’t keep her eyes open a second longer. Her last thought before she drifted off was to wonder why he wasn’t at the game.

  She worked at home for the next couple of days. Dwight got her settled in and brought her grocery bags full of snacks and healthy beverages. On the surface, everything seemed normal, from his magnetic smile to the way he lifted her spirits with his jokes. But she knew something was wrong.

  He either couldn’t explain it or didn’t want to. But ever since her fainting episode, he’d seemed quieter than normal.

  She was screwing up her courage to ask him why, but she ran out of time. On her first day back at the stadium—where flowers from Crush and Wendy greeted her at her desk—he called her from the clubhouse.

  “Big news, baby. I got called up again.”

  “What?” Her stomach did a crazy spinning wheel kind of move. Dwight was leaving, which made her want to curl up and cry, but she had to act happy because this was his dream. She had to support him, not whine about how she wanted him with her. This wasn’t about her, it was about him. “Congratulations! That’s fantastic!”

  “They’re flying me out late tonight, but you probably know that.”

  Know? How would she know? Crush didn’t share news like that with her. “Tonight, really? That’s so soon.”

  “That’s baseball. Expect the unexpected.”

  The empty tone in his voice disturbed her. “Where are you right now?”

  “About to eat some lasagna down in the clubhouse. The guys are celebrating with me, which also means harassing the hell out of me about last time. They’re taking bets on how fast I kamikaze this time around.”

  “Well, they shouldn’t do that. You’re going to do great. Maybe I should come down and take some of those bets. Easy money.”

  “That wouldn’t exactly be fair, would it? You got the inside track.”

  She bit nervously at her thumbnail. His attitude was unsettling her. “What’s going on, Dwight? You ought to be a lot happier right now. Are you nervous?”

  “Why should I be? Like you said, I’m going to do great. Look, I have to get back to the guys. I’ll call you later.”

  But even when he stopped by to say goodbye on his way to the airport, things felt different. Distant. Strange. Empty. As if an invisible glass wall separated them. As if he was already two thousand miles away.

  “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself,” he said sternly. “Listen to your parents.”

  “What am I, tw—” Before she could finish her indignant sentence, he dropped a quick kiss on her lips.

  Then he walked out the door.

  15

  Nearly the entire town of Kilby was invited to Crush and Wendy’s wedding, not to mention large swaths of the baseball world. To distract herself from obsessing over Jim, Nina spent every spare hour helping Paige get Bullpen Ranch ready for the event.

  It wasn’t the most effective distraction, since Paige’s cell phone beeped every other minute with a message from Trevor. If Trevor could find time to communicate with his love, why couldn’t Jim? They were on the same baseball team! Doing the same promotional events! Grrr.

  The only reason that made any sense to Nina was that Jim didn’t care for her anymore. The baseball groupies in San Diego had snapped him up like the adorable, single catch that he was.

  When he did call, their conversations teased her with what could have been, if they weren’t fifteen hundred miles apart. He gave her blow-by-blow accounts of his at-bats. He described all the players and their eccentricities—superstitions, warm-up routines, feuds with other players.

  He told her he missed her. Sometimes they ate ice cream together—long-distance. They’d each order the same thing and chat while they licked their cones. She told him about all the work she and Paige were doing for Crush and Wendy’s wedding. And that was the part that really got her. He was going to miss the biggest event in Kilby. She’d never been to a wedding before. To attend with Jim would have been so wonderful.

  Paige tried to reassure her as they strung fairy lights around the pool one day. “The players can barely get time off for things like childbirth. Crush’s wedding definitely doesn’t qualify. And Lieberman is still a rookie so he can’t take a chance of getting stuck here or missing a flight or something like that.”

  “But what about Trevor?”

  “That’s different. Crush is my father, so it’s a family event. But it’s iffy for him too. He’s thinking about flying out for the night, as long as he’s back in time for the next day’s game. But there’s a good chance he won’t because it’s just too much traveling.”

  “He will,” Nina told her gloomily. “I know my brother. He’ll be here. He’ll probably charter a plane. If he knows you want him here, he’ll do it.”

  A tender, secret smile touched Paige’s lips. A pang of envy struck Nina like a bolt of lightning. She wanted the right to smile like that, to know beyond a doubt that her man would move heaven and earth for her.

  Maybe Maggie was right. Maybe she was wanting something from Jim that wasn’t in his nature. Maybe she should either let it go or find someone else. Dean McFarrin, the new catcher, had asked her out the other day. He was a tall, good-looking guy from the heartland, clean-cut, almost Mormon in his manner. He’d probably be a perfect choice as a stable, family-oriented partner.

  But would he accept her with all her flaws and weirdness? How would she explain the fact that she’d bonked a drug dealer on the head with her baseball bat and sent her brother to juvie? How would he feel about the fact that she spent a few years under the protection of a fierce Israeli bodyguard? What would he think of her ice cream obsession?

  She couldn’t even imagine telling him all those things.

  Jim accepted every bit of her. So maybe she should do the same for him. Maybe she should stop wanting him to be the alpha hero who would take on dragons for her. She should accept him the way he was.

  She snapped out of her thought process to see Paige watching her with amusement. “Whatever you’re thinking about, it looks serious.”

  “Well, it is, I suppose. I just realized I’ve been doing this all wrong. Why should I need proof that Jim cares for me? Just because he’s so far away and we don’t really talk about our relationship and—” To her surprise, she burst into tears.

  Damn, just when she thought she’d grown up once and for all.

  Paige rushed to her side and wrapped one arm around her. “Oh honey. No need to cry. It’ll all work out, you’ll see.”

  “I just want…to be with him. Even if I’m not with him, physically, just to know he’s thinking about me and lo—oves me.” Shaking, she wiped away her tears while Paige rubbed her back in soothing circles.

  “I have an idea,” she finally said when Nina had calmed down. “Why don’t you go to San Diego? You can stay at our place. We have two guest rooms, after all, and you know who has one of them.”

  “But Trevor will be there too.”

  “Well, yes. He lives there.”

  “Jim won’t so much as kiss me with Trevor around.”

  Paige rolled her eyes. “I keep telling him to lighten up. I thought he had. He promised me he wouldn’t interfere.”

  “He doesn’t interfere, he just glares.”

  Paige sat her down in one of the lounge chairs that surrounded Crush’s pool. “Okay then, how about this? Go to San Diego while Trevor’s here for the wedding. That way he won’t be around to glare.”

  “Miss the wedding?” Nina looked around at the white tents a crew was setting up on the rolling lawn surrounding the ranch house,
the fairy lights, the banquet tables. It was going to be beautiful and romantic. She’d been looking forward to it so much—not to mention all the work she’d put into it.

  But she wasn’t related to either Crush or Wendy, so she had no real obligation to attend the wedding. “Maybe I should,” she said slowly. “I could surprise him! He knows how much I’ve been working on this wedding, so he’d never guess that I’m not going to be here.” She jumped up from the chaise and hopped around in glee. “This is perfect! Thank you, Paige. You’re brilliant!”

  “Wait—Nina, I’m not so sure about making it a sur—”

  Nina’s phone rang and Maggie’s face flashed on the screen. “Hang on, Paige, it’s my roommate. Hey, Maggie, what’s up?”

  “I was wondering if you’d like to skip the Friars game with me,” Maggie said.

  “Excuse me? Did you say ‘skip it’?” Nina frowned at her phone; the service wasn’t always great out here at the ranch.

  “Yes. I have big plans to completely ignore the game tonight and wondered if you’d like to join me.”

  “Ignore the game? Why?”

  “Why are we centering our lives around their baseball games? There are plenty of other important things to think about and do. Why is it always about them?”

  “Oh my gosh, you are absolutely right, Maggie! Let’s do something that has nothing to do with baseball tonight. Like watch a movie or play Monopoly or—I know. We could draw! I have these colored pencils, they’re really fun. We can make ice cream sundaes. And we won’t even mention baseball or baseball players.”

  “Perfect. I’ll see you later.”

  When she hung up, Paige was back on a ladder working on the lights. “Let me guess,” she said, glancing down with a smile. “Something happened with Dwight.”

  “Yes, something did, but I don’t know what. She won’t talk about it. I think she doesn’t even know what happened. They were all hot and heavy, but now that he’s in San Diego they barely talk.”

  “Trevor says Dwight’s not himself at all. Really distracted and down.”