by Sierra Dean
It would work out if it was meant to work out, she told herself.
When she spotted Tucker across the room, she gave a little sigh. You have a boyfriend, she reminded herself. And you can’t date a player on your own team.
There wasn’t actually anything in her contract against it, probably because her contract had been drafted for a male therapist and the idea of dating between players and trainers hadn’t ever come up before. She didn’t want to be the reason a new clause had to be added to future contracts.
“So, tell me everything. How was the big first day?” Alice found them two stools at the bar and ordered them each a Corona.
“Exhausting,” Emmy confessed. “But it’s nice to be back here. Really different to be in charge of everything, though. I keep getting asked questions, and my first response is Why aren’t you asking the head A.T. until I realize I am the head A.T.”
Alice chuckled. “You’re living the dream, Em. This is what you’ve been talking about for as long as I’ve known you. How excited is your dad?”
Ah, there it was. The question Emmy had been hoping to avoid. At least it was Alice asking and not one of the guys. She worried that by telling Tucker her favorite team was the Cubs she might have given herself away, but he hadn’t put two and two together yet.
Emmy sipped her beer thoughtfully, a rush of fresh lime filling her mouth. “He doesn’t understand why I left Chicago. I think he figured I’d pay my dues there forever and wait for Mitch to retire. But Mitch was set to keep that job for another decade. The Felons gig was way too good to pass up.”
“Of course it was. He’ll figure that out.”
It was hard to say what Vince Kasper would do now that Emmy had packed up and moved to San Francisco. He’d been proud of her accomplishments thus far in her life, bragging to his baseball buddies about his talented daughter while their sons peaked in college or went on to fade away in the minors.
Her dad was so legendary there was a bar in Chicago named after him. He’d been a Hall of Fame hitter and a great third baseman when he’d played. Now in his retirement years, he was the long-standing voice of the Cubs, calling games for radio broadcast, with another ex-player providing the cutesy color commentary. Vince and Angelo were as much a part of Cubs tradition now as Wrigley itself.
Thankfully no one—with the exception of her bosses—seemed to have made the connection yet. Kasper wasn’t as unique a name in baseball as say Mantle or DiMaggio. She was part of a proud baseball family, but she needed the men to respect her for her merits, not because her daddy was one of the modern greats.
And she wanted her father to be proud of her no matter where she worked. He had to understand not everyone could make their careers last in one city the way he had.
“Uh, hey.”
Emmy and Alice turned to the deep voice behind them. Alex Ross offered a sheepish grin and raised a mostly empty pint glass in their direction. “Hi, Emmy.”
He was being polite, but he wasn’t looking at her. His big brown eyes were focused right on Alice.
Emmy smiled to herself. “Alex, this is Alice. Alice, this is Alex. May you two never date, because that couple name would be hell to figure out.”
Alex grinned at Alice, and Emmy’s friend eyed him warily. “You’re Alex Ross?”
“I am.”
“You crowd the plate when you bat,” she replied, then sipped her beer. “And you get really pissy when home plate umpires make perfectly fair strike calls on you. You know it’s not a ball just because you’re too close to the plate. A strike is a strike.” Then she flashed a bright smile at him while he stared at her, his mouth slack.
“Who are you?”
“Alice Darling.”
Emmy leaned in close to Alex, bracing her hand on his shoulder. “She’s a Grapefruit League umpire. You’d have better luck hitting on Alex Rodriguez than you will with her.”
“You’re an umpire?” Alex asked, eyeballing the pint-sized blonde again.
Alice gave a You’re out arm gesture.
“Goddamn.” He finished his drink, then glanced between the women. “Look, your friend’s poor job choices aside, we’ve got some room at our table and the pitchers seem to refill themselves. Why don’t you join us?”
Emmy regarded the crowded table warily. “I don’t know, Alex.”
“You’re going to be spending the whole season icing these guys down in their underoos. Might as well get to know them now.”
There was a sort of perverted logic to that. She would be spending almost every single day with these guys, and she knew what a locker room was like. Once they got over the initial she’s a woman thing, they’d start up with the typical bawdy jokes and would walk around the locker room butt naked. She’d seen it happen with the Sox. On the regular forty-man roster, she had seen thirty-nine out of the forty Sox in all their masculine glory. She used the phrase loosely because a majority of ballplayers were not as in shape or sexy as fangirls would like to believe. And after only a few months with the team, all the guys started to feel more like brothers than potential hook-up material.
Four years later she knew every mole and freckle on the team, and their nudity had long ceased to shock her. She was a locker room veteran at this point, and this new job only meant forty new naked asses to adjust to.
Alex was right. They might as well get comfortable with her now and put the awkwardness aside ASAP. And she should get used to being around Tucker. He was one of the main reasons she’d gotten the job after all. She had a lot of experience with post-Tommy John pitchers, having coddled six of them in her four years with the Sox. Of those six, five had reached or surpassed their presurgery power. The sixth accepted a set-up position instead of his previous starting slot and ended up being traded by the end of the season.
Such was the life of a baseball player.
Emmy and Alice followed Alex back to the Felons table, and a few players shuffled positions to allow the women room. Emmy made introductions, and Alice pleasantly informed the guys she’d be seeing them during the preseason matchups when she was calling games. Any interest the men had shown dwindled when she told them what she did. Alice was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. An umpire masquerading as a pretty girl.
Talk had already begun about the season ahead. The guys were speculating about the blue chip drafts—players who were considered the most likely new recruits to make it into the regular roster. Miles Cartwright was one, and Emmy noticed he hadn’t joined the team for drinks.
Another missing member was the new second baseman Jamal Warren. He’d been a late acquisition, and a handsomely paid one at that. Two hundred million over seven years. Simon had called Emmy shortly after the announcement to grill her for details, but she didn’t have any. Warren was a heavy hitter, and the expectation was that the one-two punch of him and Ramon Escalante would take the Felons straight to the World Series.
Emmy had her doubts. No team’s success was made or broken by one player. But if people wanted to call Warren the second coming of Babe Ruth, they were welcome to do it.
It just meant one more player for her to fret over like an overprotective mother.
The guys asked her questions about the Sox, a few openly probing for dirty little secrets they thought might give them the upper hand during their first matchup a month down the road. Emmy demurred, telling them she didn’t train-and-tell. But she did imply their second baseman was crap at fielding grounders.
The owner brought them more pitchers, and steadily they all built up a healthy buzz.
“Let’s play a round,” Alex suggested, his deep voice a few octaves louder than was appropriate. No one in the bar seemed to care.
The guys were divided, a few cheered while a couple groaned.
“A round?” Emmy asked.
“Alex likes to play Greatest Player Names,” Tucker informed her from a few seats down.
“Like, naming the greatest players?”
“No, that would be too obvious,” Chet Appleton ex
plained, a Southern twang in his voice. “You have to pick the best names.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Alice said.
“How do you win?”
“You don’t really win. Once upon a time we played to see who’d pay, but that stops being fun when you’re all making a few million bucks a year.” Tucker shrugged, like Emmy would understand what it felt like to make a seven-figure income.
She did not.
“So what’s the point?”
“Basically you play until someone can’t come up with a name, then Alex gets bored and we stop playing.”
“I’ll start!” Alex crowed.
Tucker leaned back in his chair and gave Emmy a nod. She too leaned back. He mouthed the words Milton Bradley to her, then they both looked at Alex.
“Milton Bradley.”
Chet was next to Alex and offered, “Yogi Berra.”
That put Emmy next. “Um…Coco Crisp.”
Tucker smiled, and her heart went all fluttery.
Alice, who’d thought the game was stupid, suggested Homer Bailey. Though not a funny name, the group agreed it was a great baseball name and accepted the turn.
“Buster Posey,” Tucker added, going on the same vein Alice had begun.
“Catfish Hunter,” someone offered.
“Dizzy Trout!” Ramon said, going off the fish-named theme.
They went around the table twice, polishing off both pitchers in that time, until Chet was stumped. “I got nothing.”
“How about Chet Appleton,” someone said, then laughed.
The bar crowd had begun to dwindle—none of the major leaguers stayed up late during training—so even though it was still early, it felt more like closing time.
“I gotta go.” Alice got to her feet, the first to admit defeat and call it a night. “See you boys later.”
Any harbored grudges over her profession were forgotten, and the men wished her a good night. A few followed shortly behind her, making the quick walk back to the Hyatt.
“Are you staying at the hotel?” Tucker asked Emmy when only he, Chet and Alex remained at the table with her.
“No, I rented one of the little cottages at Lakeland Villa. I don’t like hotels. The laundry detergent they use gives me a rash. On road games I have to ask for hypoallergenic linens, but for training it’s just easier to do my own laundry.” Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment at the admission. Maybe she should have stopped after two beers.
“Those aren’t far, I’ll walk you.” He got to his feet, all six-foot-three-inches and two hundred and ten pounds of glorious Tucker Lloyd stretched up in front of her face. She might have reviewed his stats once or twice before coming out for the evening.
“You don’t have to. Really. It’s so close.” Don’t listen to me. You should definitely walk me home. Please don’t listen to me.
“Nice try.” He offered her his hand and pulled her to her feet like she weighed nothing. He was almost a foot taller than her, so even on solid ground she still had to look up at him. “I’m walking you home.”
Chapter Seven
They fell into a bashful silence as soon as they left The Low Ball, neither quite sure where to pick up the conversation. During the evening they hadn’t spent much time talking to each other directly, and it made it tricky to start on a topic when they hadn’t left one unfinished.
Tucker got tired of listening to his internal monologue and settled on the first thing he could think of.
“Do you miss Chicago much?”
Emmy tugged her thin coat around her shoulders, fending off the nighttime chill that had crept into the air. Palm fronds still dry from winter rustled overhead, whispering dirty little secrets in the darkness.
“I’m not sure yet. Everything happened so quickly, getting the call. I barely had time to dump all my boxes at the new place before we had to fly out here. Kind of hard to figure out if I miss anything, you know?”
Tucker had spent such a long time living in the same city he didn’t think he could relate to her cavalier attitude about being uprooted.
“Actually, scratch that. I miss Giordano’s.”
No stranger to Chicago, Tucker chuckled. “The pizza place?”
Emmy nodded enthusiastically. She seemed to forget her chills for a moment and started speaking animatedly with her hands, letting her jacket flutter open in the breeze. “I used to go in—before I worked with the Sox mind you—and watch games at the bar. That damn pizza takes forty minutes to make.”
“I know.”
“So I’d sit around shooting the shit with the bartenders, talking smack about visiting teams.” She gave him a soft smile, her eyes dancing in a mischievous way that made him want to hug her. Or punch her in the shoulder like he was in sixth grade. Instead he dropped a step behind and let her lead, afraid he might spook her if he gave in to his beer-tinted urges.
“Is there anything you like that isn’t baseball related?”
Emmy’s frown made him regret the question. She gathered her lapels together and crossed the street, not waiting for the walk sign to change. “Is there anything you like not baseball related?” she fired back, like she was teasing but still sounding a bit peeved.
“Not for the last decade.” Tucker jammed his hands into his pockets and met her pace easily. “Unless you count Guitar Hero.”
She laughed, and he felt stupidly proud of himself for making it happen. “You need to be careful. Guitar Hero is notoriously dangerous for pitchers. You don’t want to be the next Joel Zumaya.” She was referring to the former Detroit Tigers pitcher who was sidelined with an injury he got playing the video game.
“I lack his dedication to the solos.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I need you throwing knuckle-curves, not mastering ‘Freebird’.”
“I was never good at ‘Freebird’ anyway. That song goes on forever.”
They’d cleared the distance from the bar to the nearby Lakeland Villas along Edgewater Beach in short order, and Tucker was wishing he’d walked slower.
“So are you from Chicago originally, or did you move there for the Sox?”
“My Cubs loyalty didn’t give away my seedy Windy City roots?”
“Probably should have, but you never know what kind of weird stuff a girl can get into when she moves to a big city.” He’d intentionally slowed down to draw out the trek a bit longer.
“Born and raised. I’m surprised you haven’t made the connection yet. Smart guy like you should know baseball history.” She was rifling through her purse for keys and barely paying attention to him as she spoke.
“Connection?”
“Kasper. Of the Chicago Kaspers.” Shyly she raised her eyes and blushed. “Damn. I wasn’t going to say anything, and here I am scolding you for not knowing. Nice work, Emmy.”
“Emmy…” Tucker paused thoughtfully, running a hand through his hair. “Kasper. Kasper.” His eyes widened. “Holy shit. You’re Vince Kasper’s kid?”
“Ever since I was born.”
“I always thought he had a son for some reason.”
“Probably because my real name is Emmett.”
“It is not.”
She screwed up her face in a way that was entirely too adorable and yanked her keys from her purse with a triumphant whoop. She picked up her story where they’d left off. “He named me after Emmett Watson, this old-school sports writer. I guess Ruth and Sandy would have been too obvious?”
“Maybe you should be grateful he didn’t name you Nolan,” Tucker suggested, invoking the name of pitching legend Nolan Ryan.
“Nolan’s real first name was Lynn. I’d have taken that over Emmett.”
“Emmy is nice though.”
“Thanks.” They were standing in the courtyard of the Lakeside Villas, next to a stucco fountain. “That’s me.” She pointed to a squat little cottage painted salmon pink. “You’ve got a definite baseball name too, don’t you? Were your parents plotting that from day one?”
> “Nah.” He followed her up to the tiny porch in front of her cottage and watched her fidget with her key ring, noting the Sox logo dangling from a metal clasp. “We need to get you a new keychain.”
“What?” She followed his gaze downwards and then laughed again. “Oh God, I guess so. Good thing I didn’t pull these out in the clubhouse.”
“Can’t have you cursing us from the get-go. This is supposed to be a winning season.” He took a step towards her and reached for the keys. Tucker’s touch on her hand was tentative. He didn’t want to overstep some personal boundary and make Emmy uncomfortable, but he didn’t think he could stand within three feet of her and not touch her. It would have driven him crazy.
She didn’t withdraw when his fingers grazed her palm, and handed the keys over willingly when he took them. He kept his gaze on her face until she glanced up, and neither of them looked away as he twisted the old silver keychain off the ring.
“You guys take your superstitions seriously,” she said. He could tell she was trying to make a joke, but her voice had lost its light humor and was in a huskier register.
“It’s hard to say what might bring you luck.” His own voice was lower too, barely above a whisper. Returning the keys to her, he traced the grooves in her palm with his fingertips, circling the heel of her hand. Emmy gave a shiver, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with the spring air.
Emmy leaned in, her jacket fanning open, and the warmth of her body called to him across the inch of space separating them. The sweet smell of her skin caught in the breeze, making him want to close the gap between them.
“I wouldn’t want to be bad luck.”
“No.” Tucker lifted his hand, drawing it over her arm and up to her shoulder, which he gave a small squeeze—a gesture that eased his tension whenever he was on the receiving end of it. When she didn’t pull away, he touched the back of her neck, cupping her head in his palm, his fingers brushing back strands of her soft hair.
“Tucker…” There might have been something more to her sentence—an invitation perhaps—but it was lost. She said nothing except for his name. Her big hazel eyes were round, and he couldn’t stop staring at them as he lowered his head for a kiss.