The Sweet Spot

by Stephanie Evanovich

  DEDICATION

  For my sister, Alexia Evanovich Rose, and her BFF, Mary-Jane Oltarzewski, for reading and encouraging the first story I ever wrote, many moons ago. And for letting me tag along way more than they had to.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Stephanie Evanovich

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  IT WAS A top-down kind of day. The sky was blue, with a few passing clouds, and just a hint of breeze, indicating that winter was waving its final good-bye and that summer was just around the corner. The sun was bright and warm, encouraging buds to blossom into fragrant, glorious flowers. The very atmosphere spoke of all the things possible as the earth renewed itself after a cold East Coast hibernation. The day was just too tempting to leave the top up, even though Amanda never put the top down anymore—not since that first summer she’d had the Chrysler Sebring, anyway. She’d always wanted a convertible. At least fate had been kind enough to wait until August two years ago to sport around before a wasp tangled itself in her hair at forty miles an hour on her way to opening day at the Cold Creek. It ended up stinging her hand, her neck, and, inadvertently, her front bumper and an unsuspecting fire hydrant. She spent the night she had been meticulously planning for months moping in the ER with a slight concussion and a burn from the airbag. From then on, it had been air conditioning whenever she was in the car. But when she walked out the front door this late April afternoon, greeted with that first you-know-you-don’t-need-a-jacket day, she was willing to take the risk. Today felt different. And wasps would still be drowsy. As she drove past Maxwell Place Park, Amanda watched ducks and geese and squirrels roaming in pairs, actually looking love-struck, ready to extend their respective species. People on the streets were smiling as they hustled about their day; others were acting flirty. It was nothing short of spring fever, and she couldn’t help but catch it. At a stoplight, she tilted her face up toward the sun to let it shine on her for a moment as she offered up a quick prayer of thankfulness for this beautiful day, her wonderful life, and all the possibilities that came with it. Maybe she’d do some flirting herself. With that thought, she turned up the radio and began to bounce to the music. Yeah, it was a top-down kind of day.

  And then the seagull flew overhead.

  Amanda watched it all go down from the rearview mirror as she checked her makeup after pulling into the Cold Creek Grille’s small parking lot. The white and green gloppy goo fell perfectly onto the right side of her head, a stark contrast to her long black waves. She stared at it for a few moments as the reality and the poop sank in.

  “That didn’t just happen.”

  But it did happen, and once again, Amanda Cole had been reminded: Never get too cocky. Avoid using words like perfect or wonderful. Never attach your own name. It was just an invitation to comeuppance. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she considered herself particularly unlucky; she just knew her boundaries. She couldn’t pinpoint when she’d learned it for sure, but it was probably somewhere in between not making cheerleading squad and being, as her mother put it, “twenty pounds away from prom queen.”

  Her mother wasn’t cruel, but she was blunt. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference, and every now and then, someone you loved said something thoughtless, and it stuck.

  Catherine Cole didn’t really want her daughter to be a prom queen, anyway. As Essex County DA, she wanted Amanda to be smart and shrewd and strong.

  Amanda was beautiful and sensitive, in spite of herself, her retired family court judge father never failed to remind her.

  Amanda stomped in through the Cold Creek’s front door and slammed her purse on the bar with a loud thud. Two of her employees, Eric and Nicole, were going through the beer cooler’s inventory, seeing what they would need to bring up from the basement for the evening ahead. Eric was a lanky, blond, blue-eyed surfer boy who had been accepted to Harvard, but opted for bartending school instead when he realized how late he liked to sleep. All his savings and vacation time were spent in search of the perfect curl. In between budgeting, he felt New Jersey waves were as good as anyplace else’s, and here he could be close to his family. Nicki was a free-spirited Seton Hall dropout whom Amanda had known since high school who was trying to break into acting. She was a petite, vivacious brunette who had a great horror-movie-victim scream, but her booking-to-audition ratio was often disappointing. She did her best to stay optimistic, paying her dues, as they all called it. Eric was a few years younger but that didn’t prevent him and Nicki from becoming fast friends as well as roommates. Although they weren’t involved, it was common knowledge that the two were known to hook up now and again, usually the result of her not getting the call and his ability to make the best commiserating cocktail. Amanda didn’t care if they shined the bar with their butts, as long as they could work together, did it after closing, and cleaned up afterward.

  Eric looked up briefly from his clipboard and then did a double take as Amanda approached their end of the bar.

  “Yikes,” he said, his face scrunching up in distaste. “Hope that’s not a fashion statement.”

  “Bird” was Amanda’s one-word reply as she proceeded past them.

  “Geez, what was that thing eating?” he said, casting a quick look at his counterpart.

  “It’s supposed to be good luck!” Nicki called out as Amanda disappeared into the ladies room.

  “Not feeling it,” Amanda snapped as the door closed behind her. She walked up to the mirror over the sink to best assess how to clean up the mess. The goo had begun to drip farther down and appeared to be soaking into the thick black hair she’d spent a half hour blowing dry. She took a deep breath. This was nothing more than a problem that needed solving—she had this. First she took some toilet paper and tried to scoop as much of the poop as she could with one grab. She managed to get the bulk of it, but what was left behind was now successfully smeared deeper into her hair and beginning to clump together. She wet some more tissue and tried to get the remainder out, but the tissue started to decompose in her hand and her hair, leaving bits behind and adding to the mix. She took one more handful of tissue and wet them again, but this time she got them too soaked. When she tried to gently squeeze it over the affected hair, the overflow dripped down her hand and onto the front of her blue silk Jones of New York blouse, leaving a wet spot directly over the center of her ample right breast.

  “Really?” She shook her head in disgust at her reflection in the mirror. Not only did she have bird shit and toilet paper remnants in her hair, now she looked like she was lactating.

  She had only managed to make things worse. Giving the shirt priority, she tried the hand dryer on it. After a minute, it dried up the moisture but left a rather large off-color stain where the water had been. It no longer looked like she was lactating, but merely that she had lactated. The right side of her head was now crunchy.

  Strike two.

  Amanda stormed out of the bathroom, back to the bar where Eric and Nicki were now waiting.

  “You can barely notice it,” Nicki said after staring for a minute.

  “Are you kidding?” Eric took the more direct approach.
“It looks like a pterodactyl flew over her after a chili cook-off.”

  Amanda closed her eyes, bit her lip, and began counting. When she reached eight the phone rang. She quickly fired off nine and ten out loud and went back near the front door.

  “Cold Creek Grille. How may I help you?” She answered the phone as if her day were right as rain. She was a businesswoman, first and foremost.

  “I need a reservation for tonight,” a gravelly voice barked into the phone. The caller was either on a cell phone with a bad connection or had a mouthful of marbles.

  “Of course, sir. What time are you looking for?”

  “Seven,” he said impatiently, and Amanda pictured him running to catch a subway.

  “Let me make sure I have that available,” she told him, trying to buy time while she booted up the computer at the podium a few feet away. She moved the phone to the other side of her head, forgetting it was a war zone, and her hair crackled near her ear.

  “Trust me, sweetheart, you have a table available.”

  “Sir?” She didn’t know what to be more offended by, his use of the word sweetheart or the underlying threat that she’d better be able to seat him. She came to the conclusion that he was just some arrogant blowhard who was sitting with his feet on his desk, overlooking the water with a fat stogie in his mouth.

  “A superstar is having dinner at your restaurant; you don’t want to make him wait.”

  “All of our guests at the Cold Creek are VIPs, Mr.—?”

  “Maybe I should speak to the owner?” he said, cutting her off. She thought she heard more spit squish out of the end of his cigar.

  “I am the owner. My name is Amanda Cole. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

  “Don’t seat us someplace high traffic like near the front. He’s not there to be an advertisement. You’ll get your photo op.”

  It sounded so scathing, as if she were some sort of a bistro whore looking to make a buck, as if she would be interested in taking a picture with him in the first place. Supreme Court justices and past presidents dined at the Cold Creek without incident. “Mr. Whatever-Your-Name-Is, I’m concerned not only for the comfort of our guests, but the safety of my staff. And we have had some high-profile guests in the past. Several are regulars.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I heard that. That’s why I’m calling. But, lady, you never had anyone this big,” he said with an air of superiority that was nothing short of skin-crawling. At least he had upgraded her to “lady.”

  If he wasn’t being such a total jackass, she might have taken him more seriously. “Would you like to tell me who he is so that I might inform security?” she said with overt sarcasm. He could either take being spoken to in kind or start to ream her out and she would hang up on him and he could dine elsewhere, bad business or not.

  There was a pause and she thought he may have hung up on her first. But then he said, “No. Better you don’t know till he gets there. Someone tips off TMZ and the night’s a bust. And he brings his own security.”

  “Will they be joining you for dinner?”

  His laugh was particularly smarmy. “They’re not paid to eat.”

  So he wasn’t only rude, he was also a tyrant. “That’s fine, sir, they can stand guard with mine.” Only hers were imaginary. She no longer cared if the computer was ready. It was a Wednesday, when they were rarely fully booked, and this man and his famous guest seemed intent on dining there. He was probably going to be more aggravation than anything else, even if he was only half as self-important as his representative. “You’re all set, dinner for two at seven. Would you like to leave me a name or is there a code word or what?”

  There was another pause, and once again Amanda was given the false hope that he might have hung up, saving her from a night of inconvenient distractions at the very least. But then she heard him on the other end; the noise he made sounded like a snort.

  “You’re spunky, kid,” he told her. “Name under Alan Shaw. I’ll be there at six fifty. I don’t like to wait, either. And make sure there are good steaks on hand, he’s a meat eater.”

  There was no mistaking the disconnection this time. A security-conscious carnivore with popelike status was joining her for dinner tonight. One who had an obnoxious toady. She pulled the phone away from her ear, turned it off, and wiped the watered-down bird residue off it with the sleeve of her shirt before setting it down on the bar. She noted the time on the now fully booted-up computer, which opened to the day’s reservation page. They were completely booked for seven. She had forgotten about the art house theater opening a few blocks away. Strike three. Her day officially went bust at 2:02 P.M. That was fast, and on a day that had started off so well. When would she learn to keep thoughts of perfection out of her head?

  Amanda took a look over at Eric and Nicki. When the telephone exchange had started taking a turn for the testy, they’d stopped what they were doing to watch, waiting to see if their usually competent boss was about to unravel. Amanda picked her purse up off the bar.

  “Can you two hold down the fort for a couple hours?” she asked, more out of courtesy than concern, while fishing out her keys.

  “Sure,” they said in unison. Then Nicki added, “Where are you going?”

  “I’m using a mulligan and starting the day over,” Amanda said over her shoulder as she headed for the door. She wasn’t sure it was going to help.

  CHAPTER 2

  CHASE TOOK A moment to appreciate the clear blue sky just before putting on his batting helmet. He loved the first home-day games of the season, before the humidity kicked in and the sun was so high at game time the ball was difficult to spot. Not to mention, crowds were much more forgiving and optimistic in April and May. When they were being baked in ninety-degree sun for two and half hours, unless the division title was already all sewn up, fans expected a win, and even then, they could be cranky.

  But even in the dog days of summer, Chase Walker rarely needed to be forgiven. He had done his part since the day he put on the uniform as a rookie four years ago, a regular on the all-star roster. One of those years he’d won the home-run derby. He was what sportscasters referred to as “one of those naturally gifted corn-fed boys out of Iowa,” all of which were true. He could always make it as a farmer, but he’d learned early on that as long as he kept hitting balls over outfield walls, he wouldn’t have to. Luckily, the balls and the walls cooperated. The same could be said of his speed and agility. Given his size, neither was expected of him, but he worked on both anyway. He’d earned two gold gloves for the effort.

  He walked out onto the field and, picking up a weighted donut, slid it down the end of the bat before stepping into the on-deck circle. He started haphazardly swinging to get the feel, and thought about Julie Harrison’s five-year-old son, whom he’d signed a baseball for two hours earlier. Damn, that kid was cute.

  Chase watched Baltimore’s pitcher a moment. Brandon Howard didn’t have a bad start; he had struck Chase out his first time up. But his curveball was coming in high and his slider had started breaking just short of the plate. His fastball had never been anything to write home about. If Troy Miller noticed it, too, he’d be working a walk and would load the bases. With the Miller’s count going to 2–0, chances were he did.

  Chase went back to reflecting on Julie, playing with his batting gloves, oblivious to the twenty-five thousand people around him. It was such a nice surprise when she showed up at the stadium during warm-ups. Eight years had changed her from a rebellious teenager to a graceful woman. When she’d called out to him from the row above the dugout, he recognized her right away. Some women just said his name differently. He had security bring Julie and her family onto the edge of the field, where Chase met her son, Milo, and Greg, her Marine Corps sergeant husband. Greg was tall, clean-cut, and sturdy with a firm handshake and good posture. Chase thanked Greg for his service, immediately offered them seats in his luxury box, and then signed the ball for Milo, all the while musing he wasn’t the least bit surpris
ed that Julie had ended up with a military man. Julie had a thing for discipline. But then again, so did he.

  Troy Miller had swung on 2 and 0, and then took ball three. The catcher got up and ran out to the pitcher’s mound to give a small pep talk to Howard. Troy looked over to the first-base coach, then back to Chase, and they exchanged small nodding grins. Unless the next pitch was perfect, Troy would be strolling to first. Chase pounded the handle of the bat on the ground, releasing the weight, and then leaned on it. The catcher and pitcher spent a few seconds conversing from behind their mitts before the home plate umpire started making his way to the pitcher’s mound to break up the powwow.

  Seeing Julie had made Chase nostalgic. After all, Julie had been his first girl. They had been seniors at Jefferson-Scranton High School in Iowa, long before he became a household name. They had been dating for several months when he dragged her kicking and screaming out of a party when the drugs appeared.

  “I’m not about to blow my scholarship to Irvine over a buzz, Julie,” he had calmly told her from the driver’s seat of his father’s pickup truck. Wise beyond his years, he was already good at impulse control. “You shouldn’t want to get mixed up in that stuff, either.”

  She accused him of sounding like her father and told him to drop her off at home; she would find another way back to the party. He remarked that with the way she was behaving, if she were his daughter, they’d be taking a trip out to the woodshed. She threw down the gauntlet and replied she’d like to see him try.

  He pulled the truck over into the driveway of a deserted farm and showed her in no uncertain terms what he thought about dares. After scorching the seat of her jeans until she screeched a promise to stay put after he dropped her off, he drove her home and they made out in front of her house for an hour. Julie would go on to dare him countless times before they graduated. The night before he left for college she told him under a moonlit sky he was destined to be big and that she’d never forget him. He never promised he’d be back, and she had no means to follow.