Hitting It_Locker Room Diaries

by Kathy Lyons

  “I’ve got it under control, Dad.”

  “Yeah,” he drawled as he stepped back from the door. “That’s what I thought when I took your mom’s sister out to a movie.”

  I snorted. That was a famous story in our house. Dad had been interested in the prettier, more dynamic sister and had asked her out for a date. According to Mom, she’d let them go, just to watch the disaster. Dad would never tolerate Aunt Donna’s antics. She had an irrational need for attention—something I saw in Brittany, too. Aunt Donna led my father on a merry dance until Mom stepped in and told him to get his head out of his ass. They were married a year later, and Dad still wondered why Mom hadn’t set him straight months earlier.

  I chuckled as I slugged him lightly on the arm. Then together, we headed out to the main living area. I could smell the meatloaf heating in the microwave and grinned as I saw what Mom was doing. She was walking Heidi through the Wall of Accomplishments—photographs of everyone in the family, excelling at anything they’d done. Mom was up there with her blue ribbon–winning pie, as well as Dad getting an award from the Nebraska Agricultural Society. My sister’s graduation and CPA certification, plus wedding photos occupied one corner. Currently, Mom was discussing my army brother’s deployment in the Middle East. A few key baseball photos hung for me, but the largest was my framed college diploma. I’d finished through an online school since I’d already been playing in the minors, but Mom was big on me finding something to do after baseball. Dad, however, loved to stroke the picture of me in my Bobcats uniform.

  I set down the wastebasket and smiled when Heidi looked my way. “Mom talking your ear off?” I asked.

  “She’s been lovely,” Heidi said, her voice a little hoarse. I wondered what that was about, but the microwave dinged and distracted me.

  “Come, come eat,” Mom said as she bustled into the kitchen. We did, including my dad who grabbed a piece of blueberry pie, his favorite.

  Heidi hesitated, but I silently pressured her into staying. I saw her shrug and settle in to eat. The food was just like I remembered, and I could feel the pressures of the national spotlight flowing off me like water. I was home. Even if I destroyed my career tomorrow, I would still have this waiting for me in Nebraska. Family, good food, and a place to regroup.

  Then I looked at Heidi and had a thought that sizzled straight through my brain, like a lightning bolt that blew everything up with a big, electrical boom.

  I wanted Heidi in my life.

  It made no sense. Despite what I’d said to my parents, we’d spent less than twenty-four hours together. They’d been great hours. The best in my life, outside of baseball. But it was still only a few hours. No way could I make any kind of logical decision about her and my life. Together.

  But it felt right. In the way a baseball connected with the bat. It wasn’t a World Series kind of feeling. It was something else, something a lot quieter.

  It was right in the way of enjoying a piece of blueberry pie after a long day, or coming home to a woman who loves you. As if my body and my life were straining to align. I’d never felt that way about anything but baseball, and truth be told, this scared the shit out of me. And yet, I never questioned things when the stars aligned. Just like I never second-guessed a swing, I sure as hell wasn’t going to double think this.

  Heidi was mine. As of that moment, I was all about finding a way to keep her. So I finished my meatloaf and pie. I even drank the tangy lemonade without adding sugar. And then I grabbed Heidi by the hand and led her out of the house.

  I had a plan. It was time I got to it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Heidi

  Rob was different. Sometime between pleading with me to get into his Corvette and finishing off his mother’s amazing cooking, he’d become a different man. The first change was his clothes. Soft blue jeans cut low on his hips and his T-shirt fit like a second skin. The man had gone from professional baseball player to Nebraska farm-boy hottie. He even had the light scruff on his chin and the work boots on his feet to complete the outfit. His body had gotten harder somehow, too. The muscles more defined, even as his eyes had grown warmer and his expression more open. Rob already had the Honest Abe-Opie Taylor look down, but suddenly there was a joy in his face I’d only ever seen when he hit a home run. He was happy here in Nebraska and it showed. When he’d first stepped out of his bedroom in that outfit, my mouth had gone bone dry. Suddenly I understood why cowboy romances were popular. My knees went weak and I lost control of my voice for a bit.

  Then there was the other change. There was a moment during the meal when his gaze had landed on me. His eyes had widened, and he’d just frozen like that with his fork halfway to his mouth. His father was talking, so I’m pretty sure the man hadn’t noticed, but I had. And his mother certainly had. I’d heard her set her coffee mug down as she watched him watching me.

  And what had I done? Sat there staring back at him while my heartbeat increased. I didn’t even know why it happened, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. And I couldn’t stop my body’s steady rise in temperature.

  Then the moment was over. Rob blinked and looked at his fork. He put it to his mouth, chewing slowly as he continued to look at me. Not directly anymore, but in a slow tick of movement. To me, then to whomever was speaking, then back to me. Steady, relentless, and as dependable as the tide. He kept looking at me, and I grew flustered enough that I had to stop eating or choke.

  Then he’d declared that we were going out to the fire pit. He’d knocked fists with his father, kissed his mother, and grabbed me by the hand. His other hand snatched up a wastebasket like that was normal. And together we went out the back toward a barn dimly lit in the distance. Halfway in between was a fire pit surrounded by benches and rocking chairs.

  He went right to the business of lighting it and soon we had flames dancing in front of us. It was a lovely night with a nearly full moon and more stars than I’d ever seen, even down in Ft. Lauderdale. He pulled me to a bench and sat down next to me. We were near enough to the fire that I felt the heat of it on my face almost as much as the press of his large body heated my insides. We were thigh to thigh as he grabbed the full wastepaper basket.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  He pulled a handful of newsprint out and showed it to me. “Press clippings. Mom cuts out everything anybody says about me and leaves it on my dresser.”

  I eyed the full wastebasket. “That’s a lot of press.”

  “Tell me about it,” he drawled as he tossed a handful into the fire. He didn’t even look at the headlines, much less read all those column inches. He just tossed them all in the fire.

  “Your mother spent hours doing that,” I said. “You’re just burning them?”

  “Yup. And she knows. It’s been my ritual since I was in high school.”

  “To burn the newspapers?”

  “To burn whatever is said about me—good, bad, or ugly.”

  I watched him toss more words onto the fire. I followed a particularly large chunk as it curled on the edges, caught flame, then disintegrated into ash. A black square lifted up into the air and I followed the tiny piece until it fluttered away, caught on the breeze.

  “You really hate the press that much?” I asked.

  “Nope. But it’s easy to let this shit get into my head. So after a particularly bad game in high school, my dad and I came out here and burned it all. The bad reviews first, but eventually everything. The stuff about me breaking hitting records. The first time someone said I was the new Babe Ruth. The time the story broke that I’d gone into the minors and then later to the Bobcats.” He held up a big article about his jump to the majors. It was the lead sports story in the Indianapolis Sun from a few months ago. With a grin, he tossed it into the fire. “It’s how I keep myself real. This stuff…” He held up another handful of careful clippings. “It’s not who I am.”

  Again they went into the fire. Piece by piece until the wastebasket was empty. And I was impressed. I s
till had a copy of every article I’d written for the newspaper. I had a copy of my award-winning essay tucked in my file cabinet. My SAT scores hadn’t been important for years, but they were still pinned on the corkboard in my bedroom at home. Not to mention all the stuff my mom had put on our Wall of Accomplishments. I couldn’t bring myself to burn any of it. They were proof that I was smart. That I was a good writer. That I had value. And I looked at them when I began to doubt myself. I couldn’t imagine burning any of it.

  “So if that isn’t you,” I asked, “what is?”

  “Nothing is. I’m me, not this stuff.”

  Grounded. The man was so damn grounded in who he was that I couldn’t begin to fathom it. I was my accomplishments. If someone asked me who I was, I’d list my job and what I’d written. Apparently, Rob was just a guy who played baseball really well and that blew my mind.

  “You can’t possibly be that free of ego,” I said.

  He flashed me that thousand-watt grin. “Well, I do count the pieces of paper.”

  “What?”

  He pointed at the waste bin. “There were three hundred and twelve articles in there. All about me.”

  And there it was. A sparkle in his eye as he laughed at himself. Not only was he grounded, but he could make fun of his own ritual. He could show me that even burning all the press about him, he was still very aware of how big a deal he was in some circles. And somehow that just made him more freaking attractive. Humility, humor, and enough self-awareness to admit that part of him loved every moment of his fame.

  “You are so full of shit,” I teased. “Burning the articles while counting every column inch.”

  “It’s part of my charm.”

  It was. And I was bewitched by his farm-boy freckles and his sun-streaked hair. By his muscles and his cheeky grin. And most of all by the way he was honest with me. He was showing me the real him, and I was falling hard.

  The kiss was so natural I almost didn’t realize it was happening. Did I lean in to him? Or did he swoop down on me? Didn’t matter when his mouth found mine. He tasted like blueberry pie as he thrust into my mouth as if he’d been waiting all night to do it. Maybe he had or maybe I was the one who’d been longing for his kiss. For the thrust of his tongue and the grip of his hand as he held the back of my head. My nipples tightened and I reached for him. My hands touched soft cotton and the tight ripple of his abdominals.

  His hand went behind my back to support me as he pursued the kiss deeper. He thrust in my mouth, he held me tight in his arms, and then his free hand shifted from my face to caress my neck as he headed down toward my breast. I had to stop him. I had to stop us before I lost all sense of reason. So I grabbed his wandering hand and I turned my face away, but it was the second-hardest thing I’d ever had to do. The first hardest was voicing my next question. It was guaranteed to put us back in enemy camps. But it was that or fall into his arms again, and we both knew how stupid that would be.

  “Tell me what happened with Jill Sullivan.”

  He stiffened as if he’d been slapped. Even knowing it was coming, I still felt bereft by the way he jerked away from me. I had to grab the bench to keep from falling over.

  “What the hell, Heidi?”

  I swallowed, doing my best to tamp down the lust surging in my blood. “You heard me. Her brother claims you got her pregnant, then dumped her.”

  He stared at me, dark fury in his eyes. And then he spoke, his tone flat. “I am not giving an interview.”

  I nodded. “Then why I am here, Rob? Why did you abduct me off the street to come meet your parents?”

  He gestured at the fire pit and the house. Then his hand tightened into a fist that he tucked close to his belly. He didn’t use words, but I understood the gesture. He was trying to show me the real him. He had shown me who he was. So now, I had to show him who I was.

  “I know you can’t give an interview. But you need to know that you can’t intimidate or seduce me away from my job.”

  “This has nothing to do with your job!” He didn’t so much shout the words as invest them with his anger. Every word was bit off.

  “And I’m telling you, we can’t avoid my job.” Didn’t he know this was killing me? Couldn’t he see that I wanted him in my life? Hell, three years ago, I’d thought I’d marry him. But now I knew that as much as I wanted him, I wanted my career, too. “I’m writing a story on you.”

  “I’ll pay your rent.”

  He knew he’d said the wrong thing as soon as the words were out of his mouth. I saw his eyes widen and his mouth flatten. And the longer I stayed silent, the more his jaw tightened, but he didn’t take back his words. So I stood up from the bench.

  “If I had twenty million dollars, could I pay you to stop playing baseball?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then don’t think that I can be bought off of my job, either.”

  He blew out a breath. “You’re the one who brought up your rent.”

  He had a point, but I didn’t want to concede it. “I was trying to make you see how important this article is to me. But even if I had all the money in the world—”

  “You’d still insist on writing an article about me?” He pushed to his feet, and his face was lit by the red light of the fire. “Why? You don’t even like sports. Why is this story so important?”

  “Because I want to be a journalist and a piece on you is the only way!”

  Oh shit. Had I said that out loud? Must be because he tilted his head and looked at me. The firelight painted his hair burnished gold and his blue eyes held so steady on mine that I absolutely hated him. Which wasn’t true at all. I wanted him in the worst way, but most of all, I didn’t want to face what he’d just made me say out loud.

  So I flopped back onto the bench and glared at the fire. And eventually, words started coming out of my mouth. “I tried,” I said. “You don’t know how hard I tried to pitch a different story. But the only one they want, the only one that will prove to everyone that I can make it as a journalist, is an in-depth article on you.”

  “There isn’t another story you could write? Someone else to interview?”

  I shook my head. I’d been over and over it in my head. I’d made such a big deal with Hank that I could get the interview with Rob. I’d forced him to get me a press pass to the stadium. And when everyone had said it couldn’t be done, I’d answered with a blithe, “Watch me.” So now I was stuck. Anything else would prove that they were right and I was wrong. Then I’d never get a real job as a journalist.

  So I faced Rob straight on, keeping my voice level, even though inside I was a weaker then warm Jell-O. “Tell me what happened with Jill. Show me that you didn’t leave her high and dry. I’ll do a piece on how you helped out a girl in trouble.”

  “No. Comment.”

  I took a step forward. “I’m going to go talk to her. I’m going to find out the truth from her.”

  “It’s her secret to tell.”

  And right there he’d confirmed what I had suspected. If he’d actually done what Tommy accused—gotten the girl pregnant, then bailed—he’d be worried about himself. He wouldn’t want Jill speaking about any of it. But he hadn’t said that.

  It’s her secret to tell.

  This secret was so important that he’d even let his best friend believe the worst of him rather than tell the truth.

  “You didn’t get her pregnant, did you? Someone else did, and you’re covering for her.”

  His expression was stony. “No. Comment.”

  I shook my head. “Nice try, choirboy, but I’ll bet my rent that I’m right.”

  “So leave the story alone. Write about bad drinking water or global warming. Jill’s gone through enough.”

  “I told you. They don’t want those stories from me. I tried, and they said they already have experts for that. They want this story. They want you.”

  He blew out a breath and ran his hand through his hair. “There are thousands of articles about me and you h
ave to do one more.”

  “What happened with Jill? Just tell me.” I almost promised not to write about it. The words were on my lips, but I knew it would be a lie. Once I knew—whatever it was—it was going into an article. “Every female in town claims they’ve had a hot night with you.”

  He snorted. “And just when was I going to fit that in between school and practice?”

  I’d already done the math. If even half the women’s claims were true, he’d have been the biggest Lothario known to mankind. All while getting good grades and playing both baseball and basketball.

  “I know they’re lying, but someone isn’t. You didn’t show up in Ft. Lauderdale a virgin.”

  His face tightened. “Neither were you.”

  “Nobody cares who I slept with.”

  He grabbed my chin with firm fingers. He held my head still as he glared down at me. “I care,” he said, his voice thick and grating. “How many men were there before me? After me? Who has kissed those beautiful breasts besides me? Who else rooted between your thighs and licked you to orgasm? How many men have fucked you—?”

  “Stop it!” I jerked back from his hold and if I weren’t stepping back, I might have slapped him. “How dare you?”

  “How dare you?” he tossed back. “You’re allowed to poke deep into my life, but I can’t look at yours?”

  “This is my job!”

  He shook his head. “Get a different one.”

  “This is the one I want.” But even as he said it, I knew he had a point. He’d only asked me three questions about my love life, but the invasion I felt was real and visceral. As if he wanted to point a spotlight at my most private moments.

  I turned away from him to stare at the fire. Was that how he felt when reporter after reporter dug into his life? Would it be worse or better to know that the reporter was also a lover? Worse. Immeasurably worse.

  I sighed. “Why did you bring me here, Rob? Why couldn’t you let me be?”

  He dropped down onto the bench beside me, the gesture defeated. “I had to see you.”