From Left Field: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 7)

by Mindy Klasky

  ~~~

  Haley waited by the players’ parking lot, having left the Pups at the Park program in Kate’s competent hands. Truth be told, the event had netted a lot less interest than Paws had hoped. That might be the result of choosing the wrong place at the wrong time—people going to a ball game just weren’t thinking about bringing home a new pet. It could also be the result of the team wimping out—animal lovers who had hoped to meet their favorite players before batting practice had just walked past Paws when the players weren’t there.

  Sure, she was disappointed. Paws needed funds. And Adam had promised he’d deliver the guys, at least enough of them to make a real impression.

  But more than that, Haley was concerned. She’d followed the game on her phone; she knew Adam had been thrown out. A quick scan of social media described the scene at the plate, the way he’d thrown himself around the dugout. And that wasn’t like Adam. He didn’t lose his temper. He didn’t have a temper to lose.

  At least that’s what she thought when she caught him slinking out the door from the clubhouse, heading toward his car with his shoulders hunched and his fingers gripped tight around his keys.

  “Adam,” she called through the fence. She hadn’t even tried to get past security. They had no reason to let her in among the valuable vehicles.

  He heard her. She saw his shoulders stiffen, saw the way he checked himself as he started to turn toward the fence. But he stopped before he looked at her, went back to his car, and fitted his key to the lock with precision.

  “Adam!” she called again, sharp enough that he could never pretend she wasn’t there.

  He turned on his heel and strode toward her. And she almost wished she hadn’t tried again.

  He stepped right up to the fence. That was close enough for her to smell the shampoo on the tight spikes of his still-damp hair. It was close enough for her to hear his short, sharp breath. It was close enough for her to see the iron arrows darting from his cold grey gaze. His voice was ice as he asked, “What do you want, Haley?”

  “What do I want?” She sounded incredulous, even to herself. “I want to know what happened in the game. I want to know that you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What set you off? Did the catcher say something to you?”

  “No one said anything.”

  “Adam, I’ve watched you play since you were in Little League. You’ve never been thrown out in your life.”

  “There’s a first time for everything.”

  She stared at him, trying to parse his words like he was speaking a foreign language. This wasn’t Adam. This wasn’t the guy she’d known forever. She tried again, purposely softening her voice. “Look, if this is about what Parker said, let’s talk about it. I know you wouldn’t sacrifice Paws just because we’re competing over the Reeves place.”

  He swallowed hard. He met her eyes with a look she’d never seen before, a hardness that shimmered like stone. “You don’t know anything, Haley. Parker had just about every word of it right. I’m going to buy the farm out from under you. Whatever it takes, I’m going to get that land.”

  Her nervous laugh cracked. Then she realized he was serious. “Fair and square, though, right? That’s what we agreed on. May the best person win?”

  “That was great, back when we were just joking around. But I’m serious now, Haley. I need the farm. The Foundation needs the farm.”

  “Paws needs it too!”

  “If you can’t see the difference between the Foundation and Paws, I don’t know what to say.”

  His dismissal sawed through her breastbone. She took a full step back, stunned by the nasty twist of his lips. But she’d never backed down from a fight in her life, and she wasn’t about to start now. “Say you’re angry, Adam. Say you just played the crappiest game of your career. Say you’re pissed with Parker, pissed with yourself, pissed with Jason Reiter. But don’t even try to say this is about me.”

  His jaw worked. She glanced at his eyes again, at that steely stare that didn’t begin to melt at her argument. “Dammit, Haley, I need to come out of this with something. If I let the Foundation die, I might as well never have played.”

  “That’s ridiculous! You’ve set records! You’ve won awards! You’ve made a hell of a living for ten years, doing the thing you love most! And you’re going to rebuild the Foundation. Jason Reiter is just a hiccup, a bump in the road.”

  He shook his head. “What do I have, a contract for one more year? And then what? Shifting from team to team until they ship me down to single-A. I had a plan, Haley. I had a dream.”

  “I thought we were building a dream together.”

  “Jesus Christ!” His fingers clutched the chain link fence, tight enough that his knuckles turned white. “I can’t do this,” he breathed. And then his voice boiled over. “My dream is saving children, Haley! Living, breathing, human children! You’d know how important that was, if you weren’t wasting your time with animals. You’d understand if you weren’t just wrapped up in pets!”

  She heard his words. She processed his tone, his stance, everything about him. But her brain kept saying she had to be wrong. Her heart stuttered that he didn’t mean it, that he understood about Paws, that he understood her. “Adam,” she said, and her voice was high in her ears, like a string on a tennis racquet, vibrating wildly just before it broke. “You don’t mean that. The animals at Paws get to live because of the work we do. Without us, they wouldn’t just have a crappier life. They’d be dead.”

  His laugh was harsh. “For a smart woman, you can really be stupid sometimes. I mean exactly what I said, Haley. Every single word.”

  He turned on his heel and strode toward his car, and her control began to crumble. “Don’t walk away from me!” she shouted.

  But he did.

  “Stop!” she screamed.

  He ignored her.

  “If you get in that car, don’t you dare try to make this right later!”

  He didn’t give her a chance to make any other argument. He slammed his car door, and when he gunned the engine, the sound echoed off the far wall.

  She stepped back from the fence and stared as he screamed out of the parking lot, barely waiting for the security gate to open. In the thundering silence after his departure, she kept picturing his face, kept picturing his eyes, kept picturing that stony expression she’d never seen on him before.

  But she was wrong. She had seen it. Once. It was a winter day, their senior year. They’d come home from school, and his father had met them at the foot of the driveway. His dog was sick, the old hound that Adam had raised from a puppy. The animal was too old to hunt, too ill to stand. But he was Adam’s. Adam had to be the one to make the decision. Adam had to be the one to sentence the dog to one last ride in the car, one last visit to the vet.

  “Yeah,” he’d said to his father, setting his jaw and raising his chin. His eyes had been as hard and stony and dead as she’d seen them five minutes before. “Let’s do it. It’s time to put him down.” And he’d never had another pet again.

  CHAPTER 8

  Haley crouched beside the bed in the boys’ room, fighting to keep her voice low and comforting. “Come here, sweetie,” she cooed, shoving forward a bowl of the stinkiest cat food she’d ever bought in her life. Chicken and liver—it was enough to turn her stomach. But it was Emma’s favorite. And she had high hopes it would be Spike’s favorite too.

  One day.

  As the black cat huddled beneath the center of the mattress, Haley renewed her round of inviting chirps. The animal had been dropped off on Paws’ doorstep months earlier. His right ear had been mangled in some fight, and the thin skin had become hideously infected. He’d had deep puncture holes in his right shoulder, too, and his tail had been so crushed she’d known he would lose it.

  Something about the animal had spoken to Haley on his very first day at the shelter. She’d watched his recovery closely. Two operations and three months later, Spike had been stabl
e, but he would never be comfortable enough with humans to earn himself a forever home.

  But when Haley had finally accepted that her … whatever … with Adam was over, five days after their fight in the parking lot, she’d brought Spike home. The terrified animal had spent the past twenty-four hours isolated from the rest of the household menagerie, giving him a chance to settle in gradually.

  “Come on, sweet boy,” she crooned, lying on her stomach and looking at the foot of the bed, only capturing the cat in her peripheral vision. She didn’t want him to perceive a challenge. She didn’t want him to feel pressured.

  But God, she wanted him to come out from under the bed, to crawl into her lap, to rub his head against her forearm, and to purr up a storm. Because she needed something to comfort her. She needed something to fill the aching hollow beneath her breastbone.

  She’d waited two days for Adam to call. She’d purposely given him time to cool off, to realize just how far out of line his words had been, even though she didn’t really believe he deserved the benefit of the doubt.

  When he didn’t reach out to her, she gritted her teeth and picked up her phone. After all, isn’t that what a relationship was all about? Being a grown-up? Not keeping score over every little thing, but being there when you knew the other person was hurting, the other person was scared.

  Her first message was terse: “Call me. We can talk this out.”

  Her next one was exasperated. “What are you? Ten years old? Call me back.”

  Her third bargained. “Adam, please. I don’t want it to be like this. We have to talk to each other. Come on, please call me.”

  Her fourth reflected her reforged spine. “Last time. Call.”

  But he never phoned. Or emailed. Or texted. She’d forbidden herself from looking out the front windows of her house, from checking to see if his car was in his driveway. She’d studiously avoided watching a Rockets game—even the highlights that played endlessly on the sports channels.

  She had to check the box scores. Otherwise, she’d have to give up her credentials as a Thurman. But as day after day passed with no sign of communication from Adam, she sharpened her scalpel and set about the task of carving every last cell of him away from her memory.

  It was impossible.

  They’d spent too much time together over the years. As neighbors and friends, never mind lovers. She ruffled Heathcliff’s ears, and she thought about how Adam had thrown tennis balls for the tireless dog. She gave Darcy a treat, and she remembered how Adam could always find the perfect spot to scratch behind the beagle’s ears. She brushed Killer’s fur, and she recalled how Adam had scoffed at the tiny dog, even as he’d contrived excuses to pick her up, to set her on his lap, to march his knowing fingers down her spine. She stroked Emma as the grey cat curled up in her lap, and she remembered Adam’s amusement—was it only two months ago?—that she’d branched out to feline solace.

  There was too much Adam in her life.

  She did what she could to clear the decks. She poured three bottles of Guinness down the drain, immediately burying the empty bottles in her recycling bin so she wouldn’t have to see them. She tossed the last handful of salt water taffy into the outdoor garbage can, covering it with a bag of used kitty litter. She laundered her sheets, repeating the process when she could still smell pine, and then she bought new pillows when she realized they were the source of contamination.

  And she threw herself into work. There was one week until the biggest Paws fundraiser of all, the auction on which she’d pinned all her hopes. Kate had scoured Wake County, bullying and cajoling people into donating amazing goods, incredible services. There were vacation packages in the auction catalog, gourmet dinners at local restaurants, a pair of season tickets for the next hockey season.

  If bidders were generous, there was a shadow of a hint of a chance of a possibility that it would be enough. But Haley wasn’t willing to take that chance. She wouldn’t gamble with Paws’ future. Just the day before, she’d bitten the proverbial bullet and told Kate, “Go ahead. Add Pet Ownership University.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Of course I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything these days. “Absolutely,” Haley had said, making sure her smile was big enough to hide her misgivings. “I’d kill myself if I didn’t do everything possible to make sure we can buy the farm.”

  It wasn’t enough to forget Adam. Nothing could be enough for that. But she felt like she was doing something, protecting herself somehow. And if she couldn’t fill the hollow in her belly, if she couldn’t stop dreaming of Adam, of his lips on her, of his body in her, then she could at least promise herself she’d feel better the next day. Or the one after that. Or sometime, somewhere down the road.

  She sighed and pushed the stinky cat food even farther under the bed. “Come on, sweet boy. Just one bite.”

  But Spike didn’t take a single step closer to her.

  ~~~

  Adam cashed out of the poker game, down thirty bucks. He could have gone another round or two. Marshall was dealing, and the guy still hadn’t figured out that he scratched behind his ear every time he was bluffing.

  But Adam didn’t give a damn about cards. He didn’t give a damn about much of anything these days. He slouched across the lounge of the charter jet and slumped into a seat by a window. Farmland stretched beneath them, a scattering of tiny towns, clusters of houses. A bigger city hulked off to the south, but it was too far away to make out any landmarks, any familiar twists of freeways and airport runways.

  How many years of his life had he wasted, flying to and from games? How many road trips, how many anonymous hotel rooms, how many restaurants with crappy food at astronomical prices?

  He drummed his fingers on the armrest. At least he’d sleep in his own bed that night. His car waited for him in the airport lot. He could get from the gate to his driveway in half an hour.

  Not that he had anything to rush home to. Best case, he’d be walking into a cold, deserted house. Worst case, Michael and Billy would be waiting for him on the porch. He’d avoided them for the past week—one single advantage of being on the road. But he couldn’t avoid them forever. He didn’t think things would really come to blows, but he wasn’t looking forward to ripping more of his life to shreds.

  He could be damn sure Haley wouldn’t be waiting for him—not like she’d surprised him after his last road trip, taking over his kitchen to lay in supplies of hot chili in a slow cooker, cold beer in the fridge. He’d found her upstairs, sprawled across his sheets, stark naked like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “What are you doing here?” he’d asked from the doorway.

  “Just being neighborly,” she’d said with a wicked smile. And she’d set about making him forget the nights on the road, the hours on the plane…

  Shit. He was wasting his time thinking about Haley. She wouldn’t be waiting for him this time, he’d made sure of that. If he hadn’t broken her heart saying her entire life’s mission was shit, he’d done it by refusing to answer his phone.

  He’d wanted to talk to her. Wanted to apologize. Wanted to tell her he’d been an asshole, that she knew he was better than that, that he’d make it up to her.

  But he couldn’t. Because what he’d said was true.

  Of course he wanted Paws to succeed. He’d watched Haley grow it from a tiny seed of an idea, securing funding, signing a lease, getting clearance from the county board and everyone else. She was good at what she did, the best he’d ever seen. The animals were lucky they had an advocate like her in their corner.

  Sure, he’d been angry when he slammed Paws to her face. He’d been furious with Parker, with the ump, with himself for losing control. He’d watched his entire image of himself shift off its foundation, shatter like a window hit by a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball. He didn’t want to be that guy, the one who argued strikes and balls, the one who got tossed from games, the one who tore up the dugout like a maniac.

  But he was that guy
. He was that guy every bit as much as he was the idiot who’d trusted his manager, the fool who’d thought bad things only happened to other people.

  And when he was stripped down to the basics, to the bare reality, to the core of who he was and what he did, he had to say that he believed the Foundation was more important than Paws. Getting kids outdoors was more important than saving animals. He could make more of a difference through his Foundation than Haley ever could with her work.

  “Hey, man. Are you going to rip that thing in two?”

  He glanced up to meet Ryan Green’s dark gaze. The center fielder nodded toward his armrest, where the leather now bore a perfect arc of half-moons from Adam’s fingertips. He forced himself to relax as Greenie collapsed into the chair across from him. “Sorry,” he said. “I just want to get home.”

  “Don’t we all, man? Don’t we all?”

  Despite his black mood, he snorted. Green had been drafted right out of college, and he’d spent a couple of years bouncing back and forth from Double-A to the majors, paying his dues. He’d been up for a while now, and he’d hit his stride, playing good ball and getting along with management. The guy was on Easy Street, and he didn’t even know it. “Yeah,” Adam said. “Who’s waiting for you?”

  “Not a who,” Green said. “What. I’m going to see Zombies Heart Brains at the Paradise tonight.”

  The Paradise Ballroom. Adam remembered when he’d tried to sneak into the place, senior year in high school. He’d presented his fake ID but hadn’t had a prayer of getting past the bouncer. Now, he grunted. “You don’t know how good you’ve got it.”

  Green shook his head. “If you miss her so much, go talk to her.”

  “Who says there’s a she?” Adam protested, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  “There’s always a she.” The kid looked like he was barely old enough to shave, but he sounded like one of those old guys, the half-naked men who sat on top of mountains and offered advice to any asshole stupid enough to climb all the way up there.