by Pamela Aares
Chloe pressed her lips together and bit back the beginning of a snarky reply. She hated the way Fisher made decisions and then asked her in a patronizing way if she agreed. Most of the time she didn’t, but she’d decided to choose her battles wisely. Of the many things she learned from her dad, one was the importance of timing.
There were times when Fisher’s smoothness and outward charm seemed almost menacing. From what she’d seen of him, he wasn’t a community-minded sort of guy. Not to mention she’d already sensed that he had some underlying issue with Scotty. She’d seen from her dad’s notes that he’d ignored Fisher and orchestrated the trade for Scotty himself. How he’d done it as sick as he was amazed her. Exactly why he’d done it she was still sorting out.
And was it her imagination or had Alex stiffened when Fisher spoke? Alex’s contract with the Giants was up at the end of the season. Maybe Fisher had approached him. But she could tell from Alex’s cool demeanor that whatever Fisher was up to, it wasn’t working.
She’d call George Ellis as soon as the game was over. It was time they talked some baseball.
“I love American picnics,” Royce Berenson said as he slipped a beer from the galvanized tub at the end of the wooden table.
Chloe had invited Royce to the friends and family picnic on a whim. He’d been in town less than two weeks and knew no one. But he’d agreed to take on her teaching commitments. His disappointment that she wouldn’t be on staff during his visiting professorship had seemed genuine. Hers was too; giving up teaching had been harder than she’d expected. She’d driven to Stanford and introduced him to her class and used the opportunity to say her goodbyes. Royce could handle the subject—he was a rising star in cosmology and had glowing reviews from his colleagues at Oxford. Her class would be well served. Besides, Royce’s crisp English accent and roguish good looks had the women in the class swooning within minutes.
Across the parking lot, Scotty pulled up in a BMW convertible. He opened the door, and the dog he’d rescued leaped out. It didn’t look like the same animal. His coat was still patchy, but his body had filled out. The dog wagged his tail with a healthy enthusiasm as he waited for Scotty to put on his leash.
“Friend of yours?” Royce grinned.
“One of the Sabers’ pitchers.” She walked to the cooler and pulled out a beer.
“I meant the dog.”
“Oh. I helped rescue him. That player took him in.”
“I had an Australian Kelpie once.” He took a long swig of his beer. “Great breed.”
To her horror, Royce put down his beer and headed straight across the parking lot. He bent down, scratched the dog under his collar and exchanged a few words with Scotty. If there was one thing that could uncork the stiffest Englishman, it was a dog. Chloe sipped her beer while Royce and Scotty stood talking. After a few minutes Royce waved her over. She could hardly refuse.
“It is a Kelpie,” he said when she reached them. “Scotty here says he had him tested. I knew it was.”
Chloe knelt down and the dog came right to her, wagging his tail.
“He can’t possibly remember me.”
“I think you’d be rather hard to forget,” Royce said. Scotty frowned at him. Chloe was grateful that Royce was looking at the dog. “I mean,” Royce added smoothly, “what with your being part of his rescue and new life.”
She started to correct him and say that she wasn’t part of the dog’s new life and that she hadn’t had much of a hand in the rescue, but realized that all that explaining would show just how nervous she was kneeling there, close to Scotty.
She stood and smoothed her hands down the sides of her capris. “What did you name him?”
“Smokey.”
Chloe hoped she was imagining the clipped tone in his voice. He had no reason to dislike Royce, and she wanted so badly for the guy to have a fun day.
Scotty nodded toward a row of trees. “I’m going to put the top up and move my car into the shade. Smokey’s still not used to loads of people around. He’ll be happier in the car.”
“He’s a charming fellow,” Royce said as he walked Chloe back to the picnic table.
“I think he’ll turn out to be a great dog. Already is.”
“I meant Scotty.” He winked at her, and she didn’t like the smile she saw. It wasn’t unkind, just mischievous. “I hadn’t imagined meeting a baseball player who has a ken for cosmology.” He took a swig of his beer. “Before coming to California, I hadn’t imagined meeting a baseball player at all, come to think of it.”
Definitely mischievous.
“You two certainly got the measure of each other in a short time.” It was the most neutral retort she could come up with.
“Male trait: who, what, when. We don’t waste time on why.”
She laughed.
A spark came into his eyes as he glanced over her shoulder. “Cosmologist coming this way,” he said with a grin.
Scotty headed straight for Chloe. There weren’t many people at the picnic yet, and he wanted to talk with her before it got crowded. Already he didn’t like the way her professor date was making her laugh. The guy made it look easy. Probably some academic joke about galaxies or dark matter. What he had to tell her wasn’t going to make her laugh, but it was important, and who knew when he’d have another opportunity?
He tried out several lines in his head, all of them complicated by the presence of Mr. What’s His Name. Probably some English lord with a degree from Oxford and a place in the country. Royce. Scotty liked What’s His Name better.
“Could I have a word with you?” His tone was formal and tight. What’s His Name was rubbing off on him already. Or maybe he’d watched one too many Sean Connery films. Chloe’s lips curved into a slight smile. He didn’t bother to look at Royce. He might plant the guy a facer if he grinned at her one more time.
Chloe followed Scotty to a shady spot under an oak a few yards away.
“You surprise me,” she said.
“I surprise myself sometimes.”
She smelled of flowers and woman. Damn, she had a way of shaking him up. He’d better say what he had to say and get out.
He’d thought hard about what Alex had told him, about how much to tell her. Alex wasn’t one for hearsay or gossip—it wrecked people, wrecked lives—so Scotty knew the information had the weight of fact behind it. And he knew enough of Chloe, of the game and its pitfalls, that he wanted her to know. Baseball might be America’s game, but it was also a business, a business that was changing fast. He didn’t want to see her broadsided or undermined before she had a chance to prove herself. He’d told himself the protectiveness he felt toward her was like what he felt for his sister, but Chloe wasn’t his sister, and he didn’t want to think about what she was. No matter how he assessed his response to her, the force of his feelings never made any more sense than they had that first night.
“I spoke with Alex Tavonesi,” Scotty said. “What I’m about to tell you, well, he’d prefer if it’s kept confidential.”
She pressed her lips into a line.
God, he thought about her lips a lot. Best to focus and get straight at it.
“Alex had a buddy who played for the Rivers in Montana. Dick Fisher worked there, in the front office. There was an embezzlement scandal, it was covered up quickly, but some people knew. Word is Fisher was at the heart of it. There were also rumors he was betting on games.”
She searched his eyes as he spoke. He could see that she believed him, believed Alex. Alex had a reputation as an upstanding guy. Shoot, their families probably had known each other for generations; that’s how rich people worked.
The Sabers were a good team—no, a great team. He didn’t want some jerk ruining what it’d taken a lifetime to put together. And he felt protective of Chloe, as if having met her before she’d had to take on the team had bonded them and in a way he couldn’t put words to. Fisher was a snake and Chloe was too damned trusting. She didn’t say anything, and he hauled in a breath.
<
br /> “I’ve seen how Fisher is dealing with you, dealing with Kemp, how he’s playing favorites with guys he’s brought onto the team. And I know this looks bad, my being new to the team, and . . . well, how we met. But I thought you should know. We thought you should know.”
Why adding we and including Alex seemed important, he wasn’t sure. All of this, even his actions toward her, could be construed as self-serving.
She crossed her arms and let out a deep sigh. People had begun to filter into the picnic area while they’d stood talking. She glanced over her shoulder as players and their families roamed in and claimed tables.
“My dad wasn’t a hundred percent in the months after he hired Fisher, I know that now.” She ran her hand along the bark of the oak tree. “I appreciate the heads-up. I’ll look into it.” She let out another breath and tipped her face to the sky. “And you have my word that I’ll keep this confidential. I’ll tell Alex myself.”
“He had to head back up north,” Scotty said. “There was an emergency at his vineyard. There aren’t many afternoons off.” He felt stupid for adding that. She knew how few afternoons, how few days there were off during a season. “But Jackie’s headed over. Alana’s driving her.”
She smiled, but tension lingered behind her expression.
He wanted to reach out and pull her to him, to hold her, rock her, kiss her. He wanted to vaporize Fisher and every guy like him and make her world safe and smooth. But he saw her glance nervously toward the gathering crowd.
The woman needed an out. He would too, if he’d been on the other end of things.
“Look, see you on the volleyball court? I need to check on Smokey.”
She touched his arm. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he mumbled in an uncomfortably formal tone. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and headed for his car. He damn well hoped that his reaction to her touch didn’t show in his eyes. Because he knew it showed somewhere else. He felt like a jerk. She was struggling to run a team against some pretty serious odds and, in spite of his best efforts to ignore his urges, all he could think about was getting her into his bed and making love to her until the lines of worry melted from her face.
Scotty let Smokey out of the car and threw a tennis ball for him. Picnics were usually fun, but this was shaping up to be a damn miserable afternoon. He tried to put on a good face, but every time he glanced at Chloe, the professor dude had her laughing.
When Jackie and Alana arrived a few minutes later, Jackie wasted no time before pointing out his less-than-cheery mood. At least Alana helped take his mind off his misery. He’d met her a couple times up at Alex’s place in Sonoma; she was the life of any party. Within minutes she dragged him out into the perfectly manicured sand rectangle where the volleyball net was set up and had him teaching her the basics of the game. He showed her how to bump and spike the ball and concluded that she was stronger than she appeared.
“Alex told me you live on a ranch,” Scotty said as he chased down an errant ball and tossed it to her.
“Oh no. I just visit,” she said. “It’s my grandmother’s. It’s more like a farm.” She gripped one hand over the other and bumped his toss perfectly. “Forty thousand olive trees.” She gave Scotty a slow-lidded wink. “I live in the city. But I do like to spend time up there. Sometimes I like to dig in the earth.”
He dove for one of her spikes, and she landed on top of him. With a grin, she climbed off in a slow, smooth slither. Scotty looked up to see Chloe glaring at them. He could’ve walked the ice bridge that shot out from her stare. Alana saw it too, but it didn’t faze her. Why it made Scotty feel elated was something he didn’t want to think about.
He set the ball. Alana dug out hard to reach it and fell face first into the sand.
He gave her a hand up. “Good effort.” He meant it. She had a real gusto and athletic moves to match.
She held his hand, then squeezed it and patted his ass. “Told you I like to dig in.” She smiled. “But I prefer receptive territory.”
Maybe women had some sort of radar that told them where to focus their energies.
“He’s quite something,” Alana said, looking over at Royce. “Although I see he’s taken.”
Then again, Scotty hoped Alana’s radar wasn’t operating so well after all.
Royce was leaning toward Chloe. They were talking with a woman with two children in tow. Royce was gesturing in such a way as to make the children giggle and laugh. Chloe laughed too. Then she beamed one of her sweet, beautiful smiles at Royce. Scotty felt heat shoot into him, heat that’d better have an outlet soon or he’d do something rash.
A whistle blew. A man in a referee uniform lifted a megaphone and summoned the volleyball tournament into action. He lined up the players and told them to call off numbers.
Scotty and Royce ended up on the same team as Alana and Chloe. Jackie was on the third team and made a face at him as he took his position in the sand court.
The referee went over the basic rules and scoring. The team who won the first round would play the third team.
Scotty had been elected to serve. Royce and Chloe stood side by side in the front row. Scotty bristled when Royce brushed a leaf off her back. Then he slammed the first serve so hard that it went about fifteen feet out of bounds. Alana flashed him a saucy smile.
“Word has it our server gets paid to aim,” she said in a flirtatious tone. “Must be an off day.”
Chloe tossed her head and turned to face the net.
He focused and his next serve was a perfect blast, but Ribio got to it on the other side and set it up for a woman in the front row. She jumped and batted it over the net. Royce leaped and shot the ball back over the net. No one on the opposing team got to it in time. Royce, grinning, high-fived Chloe.
Scotty didn’t care if the guy was on his team; he wasn’t about to let him show off like that again. If the professor wanted blood, blood it would be.
The ref tossed the ball back to Scotty. He blasted his next serve right into the middle of the opposing team. They scrambled and returned it. It arched high and was coming down to Royce. Though he knew he shouldn’t, Scotty took advantage of the four inches he had on the guy and rushed forward and batted the ball back to the other side.
“Our hero!” Alana shouted.
He saw Chloe turn and mutter something to Alana, though he couldn’t hear her. Ribio spiked the ball back—it barely cleared the net and bulleted straight at Chloe, hitting her square in the shoulder. She spun and tried to get her wrists under it to set it, but her leg twisted in a way Scotty knew all too well. She was going down and going down hard. He dove and broke her fall as she collapsed in the sand.
The ref blew the whistle and all motion stopped. Chloe, blinking slowly, appeared stunned. Scotty leaned down and gently straightened her leg, then wrapped his arm under her to help her up.
“No need to fuss over me,” she said. But the quiver in her voice told him she was in pain. She pushed away from him and tried to stand, but her ankle wouldn’t hold her.
“Lean on me,” he said as he steadied her.
“There’s a first aid kit on the far table,” the ref said.
“I’ll be fine,” Chloe said, brushing sand from her pants. They were those strange pants women wore—not shorts, not pants, some sort of in between that showed her calves. Chloe had lovely calves. But her ankle was already starting to swell.
Scotty helped her walk a couple of steps.
“I insist that you all get back to your game,” she said in a much firmer tone. The players returned to their positions.
“I’ll help,” Royce said.
“No need,” Scotty said, waving him off. “I have years of experience taping twisted ankles.” The last person he wanted around was Royce. He’d already imagined the pleasure of decking the guy more than a dozen times. He didn’t need any new incentive.
The ref called in two replacement players to take their positions. Chloe insisted on hobbling over to th
e table. He was half-glad since he wasn’t sure he could control himself if he lifted her into his arms. He was having a hard enough time ignoring the heat from her hand as she leaned on his arm. By the time they reached the table, shouts and laughter told him the volleyball game was back in full swing.
He rummaged in the first aid kit and came up with an elastic bandage. “Let’s have a look at that.”
She pulled her foot back and tucked it under the edge of the table.
“I just twisted it. I don’t think—”
“You need a wrap and ice. If you do both, you’ll be walking fine within a week.”
“A week!” She scrunched up her face and shook her head.
“If you take care of it, that is. Let’s have a look.”
Slowly she drew her foot out in front of her.
He eased off her shoe and peeled off her sock. He wrapped his fingers around her instep and tipped her foot up toward him. He almost jumped at the jolt of desire that flamed in his groin. He quickly shifted so his arousal wouldn’t be obvious.
The nervousness pumping through him told him that what he felt was way more than desire. He was used to touching women, to feeling their bodies, meeting their rhythms, creating and enjoying the sensations that touching them aroused. But no experience had ever lit him like touching Chloe did. In meeting her he’d entered territory he thought he knew well, territory he’d carefully mapped and measured, but now he knew he’d been wrong. Those old maps would do him no good. She fired a need in him that he’d never expected to feel.
He didn’t dare look at her. If he did, he might just lay her back on the table and kiss her until he’d sated the beast she’d awakened. And he doubted he’d stop at a kiss. He kept his eyes on her ankle, concentrated on spiraling the bandage around it.
“Ow!” Her foot jerked in his hand. “That’s tender.”