Thrown by Love

by Pamela Aares

  Scotty buzzed a fastball to the inside and brushed Deron back from the plate. Deron tapped the dirt from his cleats and stepped back in.

  Chloe watched Scotty’s windup. Her breath caught in her chest when she saw the hitch come into his movement. He released the ball, and it sailed fat and hung over the plate. Deron connected with a crack so loud she felt it. The ball bulleted straight for Scotty’s head.

  Chloe’s scream as the ball blasted into his temple was muffled by the gasps of the crowd. She ran into the aisle and down the steps toward the dugout. The Sabers’ center fielder chased the skidding ball and threw it in to second. Charley Kemp was already jogging to the mound. Deron had stopped at first and stood there, shifting from foot to foot and looking miserable. No one planned to hit a pitcher, at least no guys she’d want playing for her. Charley reached Scotty and waved for the medics. She knew then that Scotty wouldn’t be getting up.

  She dug her fingers into the chain link of the fence beside the dugout. She didn’t pray a lot and sometimes she wasn’t sure what or who to pray to, but she started praying hard, realized she’d been beseeching the heavens for his safety since the moment Scotty fell. Medics carried him off the field on a stretcher, and Charley jogged over to where she stood by the fence.

  “Harborview Medical Center. Go, Chloe. I have this handled.”

  She’d always loved Charley, but now she loved him more than ever. As she turned to leave, she saw the umpire brush red dirt off the home plate. The bottom of Seattle’s order was up. The game would go on.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Two days later Chloe sat in a hospital room in the same medical center in San Francisco where she’d spent her last days with her dad. The center had a brain trauma unit, the best in the country. They’d flown Scotty—a silent and unconscious Scotty—down from Seattle on a Helivac the day before.

  She’d just missed his parents. They’d been there all night and had left for an hour or so to check in to their hotel. His dad had texted her, had invited her to get a bite to eat with them. But not only did she not feel like eating, she didn’t much feel like seeing them. She felt responsible for Scotty taking the hit. No matter how she turned the sequence of events, she played a starring role.

  She’d earlier overheard the doctor say that Scotty’s brain scans showed no internal bleeding, although he had severe swelling on the left side. But the doctor hadn’t said how long Scotty would be in the coma or if he would come out. Chloe wasn’t family; there was little they were allowed to tell her directly. They’d already ascertained that she wasn’t the wife. Owners had no privileges when it came to this sort of thing. If she hadn’t known the case manager from the last days she’d spent in the hospital with her dad, they’d probably have kicked her out. The case manager still wore the lab coat with the cartoon-like bunnies and bears marching across it. The cheery-faced animals did nothing to lighten Chloe’s sense of dread.

  She sat at the edge of the bed and took Scotty’s hand in hers. It was cool, almost waxy. His left eye was partially covered by the layers of bandages wrapped around his head. He looked like a war victim, not a man who’d been hit playing a game. She swallowed down the lump of terror in her throat.

  “You certainly have a way of clarifying a girl’s feelings, Donovan.” He probably couldn’t hear her, but saying the words, giving them life, certainly helped her.

  She stroked her fingers along his hand and then lowered her lips to his palm.

  “You have to come back. We never finished that argument. And you still have my Green Dragon book. You know how I am about loaning out my books.”

  A nurse came in, looked at her holding Scotty’s hand and shook her head. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave now, Miss McNalley. We have to take him down for tests.”

  “Can I go with him?”

  “No, dear. Only family.”

  She watched them wheel him through the massive doors.

  “His parents are coming back in twenty minutes,” the case manager told her as she passed by the nurse’s desk. “But I didn’t tell you that,” she added with one of those horrible, sad smiles.

  At least he wouldn’t be alone.

  Chloe drove back to Woodlands. She wouldn’t feel right hanging around the hospital while Scotty’s family was with him. And she thanked the heavens that no one knew about the trade. Mike had convinced the Giants to continue to hold any announcement. She’d even managed to stall sending the signing papers out to his agent. Even so, she cursed the timing of it all.

  Four days later she paced the gardens in back of the house. When she couldn’t sleep for the third night in a row, she’d called Jackie Brandon and asked her to come down for a visit. She had to talk to somebody, and Jackie was married to one of Scotty’s best friends.

  As she paced and waited for Jackie, Smokey, Scotty’s dog, weaved through her ankles. She fished a ball from her pocket and threw it across the grass. She’d had to do some quick talking earlier that morning to convince the dog walker to let her bring Smokey to Woodlands. No matter how many walks he had per day, an empty apartment was no place for a dog. She’d actually had to show the dog walker photos of the house and gardens before she’d let Chloe take Smokey. The woman had a sense of humor—when she’d seen the shots of Woodlands, she’d asked Chloe if she could come too. And she’d been very happy with the check for a month’s work that Chloe had given her.

  The gate buzzer sounded, and she heard Mrs. Dayton’s voice answer. Chloe dashed around to the front of the house with Smokey keeping pace beside her. A few minutes later Jackie roared up the drive in a beat-up truck.

  “Alex sends his best,” Jackie said in her smooth English accent as she climbed out. “He’s in Cincinnati, or he’d have come down with me.”

  Chloe was glad he hadn’t. Jackie was about all she could handle.

  Jackie leaned down and let Smokey smell her hand, then rubbed behind his collar. “Great pup. What’s his name?”

  “Smokey.”

  Jackie wrinkled her nose.

  “Scotty named him,” Chloe explained. “He’s his.”

  Jackie looked out over the gardens. “Bet he likes it here.”

  “They’ve flown Scotty to Nebraska,” Chloe said. “Charley Kemp told me. He’s regained consciousness, but he’ll need a rest.”

  Jackie stopped fussing over Smokey, straightened and without pause strode to Chloe and wrapped her in her arms.

  “I can only imagine how you must feel.”

  Chloe swallowed a sigh that was perilously close to a sob. She pulled away from Jackie.

  “Chloe.” Jackie clasped her wrist. “Pitchers get hit. It happens. I’m sure he’ll be okay.”

  “You might feel differently when you hear what I have to tell you.”

  “Then how about a stroll in the gardens? We English are immensely more capable of listening and offering sensible advice and astute insights when we’re in a garden.”

  Chloe smiled. How long had it been since she’d smiled?

  They strolled along the reflecting pool and past the water gardens with their blooming water lilies.

  “Those ponds are just about the right size for a couple of harbor seals to recuperate in,” Jackie teased. “And they’re carnivores, so they won’t eat your lilies.”

  Chloe managed a quick smile as she steered Jackie out into the gardens that extended south of the house. They were wilder, and the native perennials were in full bloom.

  “It reminds me of Trethewen Hall, my family’s estate in Cornwall. It must be a bear to keep up.”

  “I have loads of help; Agostin, the head gardener, has been here since the 1950s. He and his crew keep it all going.” But the help Chloe needed most right now was standing beside her.

  “He must be ancient.” Jackie looked back toward the reflecting pool. “Maybe that pool is the fountain of youth.”

  Chloe laughed, but Jackie must’ve heard the forced sound of it.

  “Enough about gardens. Tell me why the weigh
t of the world is on your shoulders.”

  They climbed the knoll and sat in the grass. Smokey nudged Chloe’s hand, dropping the soggy ball he’d rustled up, and she threw it out toward the tall oaks. Then she told Jackie everything. She’d thought hard about what to edit out, but in the end laid all her transgressions bare.

  Jackie shook her head. “You can blame yourself.” Her tone had a fierce edge to it. “You can tell yourself that he was distracted, that he might’ve reacted more quickly if he hadn’t been upset. But he’s the one who decided to go out on the town the night before a big game, not you.” She turned to Chloe and nailed her with a piercing stare. “Alex knows baseball, Chloe. He watched the slow-mo replays, every single one of them. No one could’ve reacted fast enough to avoid that ball. No one. Not even Scotty.”

  “I watched the replays.”

  “Yes, but no matter how well you know the game, you can never see it with the eyes of a player who has stood in front of thousands of fastballs.” She rested her hands on Chloe’s shoulders. “And I’m a doctor. I know bodies, what they can and cannot do. Okay, so most of the bodies I work with are animals, but I have experience judging movement; it’s part of my research. It wasn’t your fault.”

  She stood and offered Chloe a hand up. “Let’s get something to eat; I’m starving. And if you’ve been carrying this black bag of guilt around, I can imagine you could use a little sustenance too.”

  It took only a few minutes to return to the house and give Jackie the quick tour before they made for the kitchen.

  Chloe rummaged through the fridge and put together a salad.

  “I’m going to do something very un-English,” Jackie said with a mischievous smile. “I’m going to commandeer your kitchen.” She walked to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. “I don’t suppose you have any whiskey?”

  “In the study.”

  “Good. Go get it.”

  When Chloe returned, Jackie had opened a can of beans and had bread toasting in the toaster oven.

  “Beans on toast, English cure-all. Especially with whiskey chasers. But don’t ever tell my mother I rummaged about in your kitchen without an invitation.” She raised her hand to her mouth in a look of mock horror. “It simply isn’t done.”

  Chloe laughed.

  “That’s better,” Jackie said. She pulled the bread from the toaster and spread beans across them. “And now that we’ve cleared your good name, let’s sort out the other thing.”

  “The other thing?”

  “You know, the part where you’re sure you’ve lost him forever and the sun will never rise again.”

  “Oh. That thing.”

  “Yup.” She poured two shots of whiskey. “Down the hatch.”

  Jackie stayed over that night—neither of them had been in any shape to drive. They watched a full season of Downton Abbey and drank nearly a pint of whiskey.

  When she saw Jackie off the next morning, Chloe felt that maybe, just maybe, she could face the world again. She might never work things out with Scotty, but at least she didn’t feel the suffocating burden of guilt. Though she knew she’d done the right thing in trading Scotty, it took Jackie’s fierce logic to drill the knowledge home. But logic couldn’t ease the hurt inside where she mourned losing the man who’d made her feel whole, the one man who cared about what she loved. The man she’d imagined had truly cared for her, if only for the briefest of time.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Without wavering, Chloe cleaned house in the Sabers’ organization. She not only fired Fisher but with Charley’s blessing, she paid out the four players Fisher had brought onto the team and released them. She followed Mike’s advice and turned all the information they’d gathered on Fisher over to the commissioner. Mike was sure there was enough evidence to boot the man out of baseball for good. She was relieved not to have to press charges against him regarding his attempt to blackmail her and for his underhanded proposition to Halliman. A public trial would be a nightmare.

  In two days George Ellis would be back, and he and Charley could decide which players to bring up from the minors. She’d signed Tory Griffin; he arrived yesterday. He could fill the gap and then some. She was pretty sure her dad would’ve done the same. Halliman called her from Capri and assured her that the vote would go through. If it didn’t, he’d help her buy a new site. There were plenty, he’d said, and they had the funds to buy any of them.

  She kept busy, tried hard not to think about Scotty and managed to get through the days. But at night, when she did sleep, she dreamed. They were less than pleasant dreams.

  Today was her birthday. Rather than spend it alone, she decided to drive in for the game that afternoon. She couldn’t hide out at Woodlands and be effective. It didn’t matter that her heart was broken—whether it mended or not, she had a job to do and a team to lead.

  She drove in through the main public gate. The crowd gathered in the plaza in front of the stadium bubbled with excitement. A couple of kids climbed up onto the statue of Jackie Robinson and posed while their parents snapped photos. Robinson had been her dad’s favorite player. Her dad admired people who broke through prejudice, people who went after their dreams against great odds.

  She flashed her pass to the guard and pushed through the turnstile, felt the click of it along her waist as it slid in place behind her. She glanced back as the next person stood ready to enter. It was true for most fans that when they entered a baseball stadium, they entered a world of excellence and promise, a world where time served baseball until the last out.

  Speaking of time . . . she glanced at her watch. Batting practice started in less than an hour.

  “Hey, Spitfire,” Charley called as she was about to take a turn toward her office. “I think you’d better come with me.”

  Charley wasn’t one for dramatics. In fact, his calm, steady demeanor made him a stellar manager. She’d never have made it through the past months without him. And he hadn’t called her Spitfire in years. She followed him down the hall.

  They stopped in front of the clubhouse door.

  “Wait here,” he said, his face suddenly serious.

  What now? She stared down the empty hallway. Who had done what and what would it take to fix this new problem?

  She turned to the door. A minute later Charley ducked out and took her hand. “Come in here.”

  “But Charley—”

  “No buts.”

  She hadn’t been in the clubhouse since the team had won the Series. And that night she’d gone in with her dad.

  The clubhouse smelled of leather and sweat and . . . men. She felt like an intruder. She tugged her hand away from Charley’s.

  “The guys . . . We should warn th—”

  “They’ve been warned.” A grin crawled across Charley’s face.

  They rounded the corner to the locker area.

  Her entire team stood at attention against the back wall of lockers.

  “Happy Birthday!” they called out.

  Chloe put her hands to her face and pressed her lips together. She started to both laugh and cry.

  “No crying in baseball,” Charley chided her. He pulled one of those long lighters out of his pocket and began to light candles on a massive cake. It featured stars and moons and baseballs orbiting the sun.

  “Let’s see what lungs you have,” Ribio said, ushering her across the room.

  She wiped her face on her sleeve and leaned over the cake. When she blew out the candles, the guys cheered again. Charley cut a tiny square of with lots of icing and plopped it onto a plate.

  “We forgot the forks,” he said as he handed the plate to her.

  “Thank you,” she stammered. “I happen to have brought my fingers.”

  They laughed at that, and she pinched off a big bite. It was sweet and delicious. She brushed the crumbs off her face. “You guys have no idea what this means to me.”

  “But we do,” Pete Little said. “And just to prove it, open this.” He handed her a sq
uare box with an enormous, elaborate bow. One of the front office women must’ve wrapped it—no man ever made a bow like that.

  She pulled off the bow and tore open the box. She dug through a mound of pink tissue paper and pulled out a Sabers cap. But not just any Sabers cap. This one had her name and an infinity symbol embroidered on the back.

  Charley pointed to the infinity symbol. “Figured that was your number,” he said with a pleased grin.

  Chloe traced the symbol with her finger. Emotion swelled in her throat. To quell it, she plunked the cap on her head and mugged to their applause.

  As they finished their cake, an awkward silence fell.

  It was time to go.

  Not because she was a woman, although she wasn’t so sure the women reporters were as comfortable as they let on or as welcome as the players tried to pretend. But she needed to leave because she was an owner and this was the players’ space.

  But first there was something she wanted to say, something she’d wanted to say for a long time.

  “Thanks is a small word—six letters,” she said, breaking the silence. “But I mean it.” She pushed her emotions down—no crying in baseball wasn’t a reminder she’d needed. “My dad would have been so proud of all of you. I’m so proud of you.” She paused. “And I’d like to say let’s win this game for Scotty, but that would be—”

  “No.” Ribio said holding up his hand. “Not for Scotty.” He spread his arms. “We play this game for all three of you—Scotty, your dad and you.”

  The players cheered their agreement. Now she really was going to cry.

  “Better let them get at it,” Charley said with a wink, giving her an out.

  She huffed a breath and willed back her tears. Best to end on a high note. She eyed the cake. “One slice for the road?”