Drive You Wild: A Love Between the Bases Novel

by Jennifer Bernard

  “Count me out,” he said, making it casual, like he didn’t care that much. “I’m not a trained monkey. I’m a ballplayer.”

  “A ballplayer who’s on a thin line right now,” Crush said sharply. “A ballplayer who said he’d help me.”

  Trevor bit back an automatic Fuck off. “I said I’d help win the championship. Not go viral.”

  “This isn’t going to work unless you’re all on board,” said Marcia. “Baseball’s Hottest Outfield needs all three positions. It’s an opportunity, fellas. Make a name, get some press. If you think all you have to do is go out and play, you’re living in the olden times, boys. My era, as a matter of fact. You gotta market yourself. Brand. Platform. Buzz.”

  As she ticked those items off on her fingers, Shizuko slowly straightened. Marcia was speaking his language right now. During the off-season he toured in a thrash-metal punk band, and all year round he put a lot of time into his social media. “I’ll do it.”

  “I’m in,” said Dwight. “I’m the Captain of Hot.”

  Everyone looked at Trevor. Oh, hell. Marcia came close enough for him to catch a whiff of her body lotion. She narrowed sharp brown eyes at him through those intimidating black frames. “You need this more than anyone. Conner’s Mr. Popular, Shizuko’s a heartthrob in Japan, but you . . . you’re the bad boy. You could use some love from the people.”

  “I don’t need love.” Each word sounded like an ice cube.

  Dwight got up and slung an arm around his shoulders. “You know I love you like a brother, Stark. But sometimes you gotta step up and be there for the team.”

  Trevor shook off his arm. “I’m not doing it.”

  Tense silence fell across the room. He set his jaw and stared back at the array of faces. Then Paige stepped forward. “I know what might make a difference. What if we attached some sort of charitable cause to the campaign, like, say the Boys and—”

  “Hang on.” Trevor raised a hand to stop her. No one with the Catfish knew about his time at the Boys and Girls Club. He’d asked the Club to keep it quiet and they had. He couldn’t let the team know; it might mess with his bad boy reputation. “What I meant was that I’m not doing it without Paige.”

  Her jaw fell open, her expression of shock repeated in every other face in the room. “What do you mean, without me?”

  “You know your social media, obviously.” He gestured to the Instagram photo on Marcia’s iPad. “If we’re going to do this, you should be part of it.”

  “No problem at all,” said Marcia promptly. “Right, Paige?”

  “I have a problem with it,” Crush said, prowling across the room toward Trevor. Paige stepped between them.

  “Please don’t embarrass me, Dad. I’m more than happy to work on this campaign.” She shot Trevor a look that implied something more like, You owe me a new car for doing this. “I think it would be fun. I get to take pictures of baseball players. Think of all the girls who will wish they were me.”

  That argument didn’t seem to impress Crush much at all. He glared at his daughter, then at Trevor, then at Dwight, who made a Who, me? gesture. Finally he threw up his hands and stomped out of the office.

  Marcia spent the next few minutes setting up a schedule with the four of them, and then the meeting broke up.

  As they left Marcia’s office, Trevor lagged behind until Shizuko and Dwight were out of sight. He snagged Paige’s arm and whirled her through a side door, into an empty stairwell. If they were going to work together, they had to get a few things straight. But before he could say a word, she preempted him.

  “You don’t want anyone to know about the Boys and Girls Club, do you?”

  Automatically he looked behind him to make sure no one was listening. “It’s no one’s business.”

  “So you don’t mind everyone knowing about all the girls you sleep with, but you don’t want them to know you work with troubled kids during your down time?”

  Yes, that was exactly right. But he didn’t know how to explain the reasons for that. “It’s personal, and if we’re going to work together, you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  She gave him a long, level look, the kind that made him uncomfortable because it meant she was actually looking past the surface. He didn’t want anyone looking there. “Sure, I’ll promise. As long as you give me a good reason.”

  “The reason is that I don’t want people to know.”

  “That doesn’t count. An actual reason why you would want people to think you’re more of a jerk than you really are.”

  The way she was looking at him made him nuts. He felt her gaze like a hand stroking his body. This close to her, he noticed a million little details about her. The scattering of golden freckles across her cheekbones, the purple rim around her true-blue irises, the way her chest rose and fell, the swell of her breasts against her striped dress. The pendant she wore, in the shape of a branching tree. Everything about her was fresh and sparkling as an April morning. He braced one hand on the wall next to her. “Are you so sure I’m not a jerk?”

  Instead of being intimidated, she raised her chin. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m pretty intuitive, and I did happen to see you doing a great job with those kids.”

  “Kids are one thing, women . . . that’s a different story,” he drawled. He hovered his face close to hers, letting her know—with only an inch between them—how much she turned him on. The sensory memory of what she’d felt like in his arms flooded him in a wave of lust. Her pupils widened, a flush stained her cheekbones. Her throat moved with a hard swallow, but she didn’t shrink away.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said in a low whisper. “That night in the parking lot, it was a dangerous situation. And every step of the way, you kept trying to protect me from the guy with the BB gun.” Her voice gained in strength. “You didn’t do one single inappropriate thing except take your shirt off. And I kind of goaded you into that. You want everyone to think you’re a bad seed. But you’re not.”

  “Your father thinks I am. You should listen to your father.”

  “Do you always listen to your father?”

  The question slammed into him like an arrow. He flinched backward, unable to hide his reaction. “That’s different,” he choked. “Your father’s a legend, mine was a—”

  He pushed away from the cement block wall, raking his hands through his hair. She followed him. “What? Your father was a what?”

  “Nothing, anymore.”

  “He’s dead?”

  Yes, he was dead. If only he’d died ten years earlier, before he’d taken his first hit of heroin, before he mortgaged the house, gotten into debt, and destroyed every single solid thing in his and Nina’s life. “He’s dead. And before he was dead, he was bad.”

  That sour, twisted mouth, the deadened eyes. The memory of his father didn’t belong in the same stairwell as Paige Taylor.

  “So don’t be so sure you know me, Paige.”

  “But I want to know you.”

  “Not going to happen.” He took her chin in his hand, blocking out the feel of her soft skin. He had to make her understand, make her stay away from him. “I’ll do your damn campaign, you can take your photos, but that’s it. Don’t be thinking I’m some kind of good guy. I’ve done things and been places you have no idea about.”

  Their eyes locked, his words echoing around them in the dusty stairwell. He formed his features into the stony, intimidating mask that warned most people off. But at the same time . . . he couldn’t help feathering his fingers across her fine skin, a light touch like a butterfly landing on a flower.

  Her eyelids fluttered, though she continued to hold his gaze. Behind his hard expression, he felt like a fraud, because all he wanted was to pull her against his body and revel in her softness. Beg her to look at him this way—as if he was worth a damn—all day, all night, tomorrow and the next day.

  Rattled by that thought, he dropped his hand. Paige was dangerous, so dangerous, with her shining blue eyes and tempting mouth.


  She rapped him on the chest, right over his heart. Surprised, he dropped his hand from her chin. “No, Trevor Stark, I don’t just think you’re a good guy. I’d stake the future of the Catfish on it.”

  With a saucy nod, as if that settled everything, she dashed back up the staircase toward the marketing department.

  Damn it, once again she’d gotten the last word.

  Chapter 8

  SHE WAS NOT . . . not . . . going to let Trevor rattle her. She’d be a disgrace to the family name “Taylor” if she let that happen. She’d grown up around tough, driven, athletic, freewheeling, occasionally profane men. Granted, that was only when she was with her father, which was during school vacations and summer. But she’d learned early on that you couldn’t back down from a man like that. You had to hold your own.

  She had her own way of doing that. Her tried and true method with Crush was to let him bluster and lecture, then simply go her own way. Sheer persistence could get you far. There was a Ninja kind of Jedi mind trick to it.

  Take road trips. As a girl, when Paige stayed with her father during the season, he left her behind with a nanny when he went on the road. For years she’d begged and pleaded to go with him. He wouldn’t hear of it—too dangerous, too boring, too logistically challenging, too distracting. Then the summer she turned twelve, she showed up at Crush’s apartment with a four-ring binder filled with photos of landmarks from every city he’d be playing in. The St. Louis Arch, the Empire State Building, the Margaret Mitchell house in Atlanta. School project, she informed him. If she wrote a personal essay for each city, she’d get extra credit.

  He’d laughed so hard he cried. Instead of yelling or crying—which would always earn her a lecture about “no crying in baseball”—her sheer doggedness won him over. She’d traveled with him for several weeks that summer and loved every second of it. Her persistence paid off just in time; it turned out to be his last season, since he retired when she was thirteen.

  From what Paige had seen of Trevor Stark, he had some similar characteristics, pigheadedness being right at the top of the list. Well, he could act as tough as he wanted, but she’d seen something in him that night outside the stadium. She’d seen how hard he tried to protect her. Even though she’d been annoyed when he tried to grab the wheel, she understood his reasons. And all those lectures about putting herself in danger . . . bottom line, he hadn’t wanted her to get hurt.

  Trevor might be a badass, but he was a protective one who related well to troubled kids. He wasn’t a bad person, no matter how much he tried to convince everyone.

  He definitely had Crush fooled.

  “I don’t like you being involved with this ‘selfie’ campaign,” Crush told her after whisking her off to dinner at an Italian place near Kilby City Hall.

  “It’s not just selfies. We’re going to do billboards too. And I told you, I want to really dig into something. I want to help you keep the team. Go Catfish. Down with the Wades.”

  “I like that enthusiasm, it’s the company I’m worried about.”

  “Let me guess. Trevor Stark.”

  “Bingo.” Crush shook parmesan over his pasta with a violence that indicated all sorts of strong opinions about the left fielder.

  “I don’t get it. He’s a ballplayer like all the others. What’s your problem with him?”

  “He’s too good-looking.”

  Paige took a large swallow of her merlot, remembering his powerful shoulders and crystal green gaze pinning her to the wall in the stairwell. And then that gentle, feathery touch on her cheek. What she wouldn’t do to feel that again . . . to stand so close to the molten volcano that was Trevor Stark. “That’s absurd. They’re all good-looking. That’s why they’re Baseball’s Hottest Outfield.”

  “I’ve seen the effect he has on women. I don’t want you going near him. I’ve watched him watching you, and it makes me want to tear his head off.”

  A thrill traveled through her. Did Trevor really watch her? Good.

  She decided to toy with Crush a little bit, while also prying some more information out of him. “I’m surprised, Dad. You always talk about how much you respect baseball players who have real talent. Is Trevor not actually all that good?”

  Crush pushed his plate to the side, clearing a spot for his forearms, bowing forward with his intensity. “Let me tell you something, Paige. Hitting a major league fastball is the hardest thing in sports, I’ve told you that. I’ve seen thousands of players, millions of hits. More importantly, I’ve heard the sound of a bat hitting a ball countless times. Only four times in my life have I heard it sound a certain way. Like a fucking trumpet, like a call from God, like this ball is going to be obliterated and turned to dust because bigger forces are at work. One of those times was Bo Jackson. Another was Mark McGwire. Barry Bonds. And one was Trevor fucking Stark. That’s how good he is.”

  Chills rippled up and down Paige’s spine. When Crush Taylor displayed his passion for baseball, it was a sight to see. “Okay, so he’s very, very good. Why do you hate him?”

  “Because he fucks himself over, again and again. He gets distracted by girls, by drinking, by being a big shot. Sometimes I think he’d rather be a big fish in a small pond than actually develop his gift the way it deserves. He’s so goddamn smart, it just about kills me. Do you know that the first time I saw Trevor play, he was nineteen or so, playing in an independent league up North. Michigan, somewhere like that. Buck O’Neil, great scout, calls me up and tells me I have to see this kid. I fly up there and rent a car, drive out to the town park. It’s one of those ramshackle teams of misfits, mostly just a chance to drink beer after the game. There’s a guy mowing the outfield during the first inning. Anyway, I see this blond kid out there, big, muscular, standing in left field, reading a book.”

  “During the game? He was reading a book?”

  “Yup. When a fly ball came his way, he’d put the book on the grass and chase the ball down. Then go right back to his book. I nearly got up and left right then. Disrespect for the game, I thought. Buck says, ‘Just wait, you gotta see him hit.’ Inning ends, he comes up to bat. Crouches over the plate like a junkyard dog on steroids. And there it is, that sound. Incredible bat speed, tremendous power, horrible form. I knew if he kept that up, he’d blow out his shoulder. I don’t know where he got his coaching, but if he was that good without any decent coaching, well . . .” Crush whistled.

  “I called up an agent I trust and told him to keep an eye on this guy. Get him somewhere with a good hitting coach and a good manager. Then call me when he’s ready for prime time.”

  Paige put down her forkful of spaghetti. “That was what, five or six years ago?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You’ve been following him all that time?” She felt a pang of jealousy, since nothing she’d ever done in her life had inspired that sort of interest from her father.

  “In between other things, yes.” Crush shrugged. “That’s me, honey. Baseball is . . . I wouldn’t say ‘everything,’ but close to it. When I see a player who could be great, I take notice. But in the end, it’s up to the player. Trevor Stark has taken every opportunity and spit in its face. He’s been traded three times, and every time he gets on a major league roster he fucks it up. He should be anchoring the Friars lineup by now, but instead he’s here seducing local girls and getting chased by jealous husbands with BB guns. That’s why I don’t like him.”

  Paige looked down at her plate, uncomfortable at the mention of the night she’d met Trevor. Someone had certainly been chasing him. But did anyone really know the full story? And what about the things he’d said in the stairwell? I’ve done things and been places you have no idea about. She stabbed at a black olive with her fork. “What if there’s more to the story, something we don’t know?”

  Crush reached over and gripped both her wrists. “Oh no, you don’t. None of that counseling crap. Don’t go thinking you can fix Trevor’s problems because you took one class in college.�
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  “Excuse me?” She tugged against his grip, but he didn’t let her go.

  “Whenever you start spouting therapy crap, I know we’re in trouble. I usually zone out and let you go on. But if it starts leading you in directions I don’t like—”

  Paige finally got her hands free. “Directions you don’t like? Do you even hear yourself?”

  Crush set his jaw, muscles jumping. “You know what I mean. I didn’t like Hudson, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

  She slammed both hands on the table and glared back at her father. “You didn’t ‘know’ Hudson. I’m glad I married him. If he was here right now, I’d marry him again. Double.”

  “Double? What the hell does that mean?”

  Paige wasn’t exactly sure. All she knew was that her father was pulling his usual King of the Mound act. And that she needed to make a statement, right here and now, if she was ever going to get along with Crush. “It means, Dad, that marrying Hudson wasn’t a mistake, no matter what you think. We had three really fun years. I ate some great veal Milanese. I learned a lot about life.”

  Crush’s forehead creased. “Veal Milanese?”

  “Yeah, it’s got this delicious breading, we used to order it in every city he played in. The point is, I don’t regret marrying Hudson.” Even though she’d just this moment realized that fact, it felt true. She’d taken a chance with Hudson, and it hadn’t gone the way she’d dreamed. But she’d make the same choice again. “I also don’t regret meeting Trevor. You have no right to interfere in my love life.”

  “Love life? You’re using the word ‘love’? That makes me nervous. Are you in love with Stark? Has it gone that far? I’d take ten Hudsons over Trevor Stark. I’ll bench him. I’ll trade him. I’ll—”

  She jumped to her feet. “Stop it, Crush. You’ll leave him alone and let him do his job. Same applies to me.”

  With the way Crush glared at her, there ought to have been sixty feet and six inches between them instead of the width of a tabletop. But Paige knew the drill. If she gave in, she’d get trampled. She held her ground, giving thanks that Crush couldn’t nail her with a 95-mile-per-hour brushback.