The Game Changer

by Megan Ryder

  He straightened up just in time to see Savannah slip into a pink hoodie and a pair of white yoga pants, covering up all the skin he had wanted to spend more time studying, touching, kissing. He shook his head, dispelling the images from his brain before another part of his body could take over.

  She grabbed the leashes and faced him. “Well, I think we’re all set. I changed your sheets but I got tired. You know, you don’t really have a lot of extra things like sheets or towels. It’s like you don’t even live here.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t. I shower at the stadium more often than not and I’m on the road at least half the time. Didn’t the cleaning staff come in last week?”

  She arched her brow. “You mean that sweet older lady who had no clue you had two dogs and a woman living here? Thanks for the warning. I thought we’d have to call an ambulance. A little warning would have been nice.”

  He flushed. “Damn. Sorry. I didn’t think about it.” He glanced at the leashes. “You’re leaving?”

  “You’re home. You don’t need me anymore.”

  “It’s four o’clock in the morning. Too late for you to be on the road. You should just stay here tonight. I’ll take the couch.”

  She burst out laughing. “There’s a divot in it from your sweet lady there. Not the most comfortable place to sleep. Seriously, Dylan. I’m fine. I have Carl to protect me.”

  “I’d feel better if he was a bit more intimidating.” He glanced at the big gray dog who was sprawled on his back, family jewels on display for everyone to see. “Jeez, man. Have some decency.”

  She clicked her tongue. “Come on, guys. We’ll be fine. I’m often on the road late at night for my rescue. I’ve got this.”

  “But who watches out for you?” he asked.

  She planted both fists on her hips, glaring up at him. “I do. I don’t need anyone looking out for me. Now, I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon to begin your training since you’re off tomorrow. Or should I say today.”

  She brushed by him, the dog grumbling behind her but following obediently. He sighed, gazed longingly at his bed, and looked at Sadie. “Want to go for a ride?”

  Chapter Seven

  Savannah would have been worried about the headlights steadily following her every turn on her way home if they hadn’t been following her since Dylan’s house. That man was too protective by half. She’d been on her own since she was eighteen. Hell, since before she was eighteen if anyone wanted the whole truth. Not that she hadn’t had a mother or a family, it was just that they tended to be a bit flighty, not quite concerned with things like food, bills, a roof over their head. More often than not, it was left up to Savannah to ensure they had the rent paid and something to eat while her mother was on the hunt for her one true love. Some day she might even find him. She sure shopped around.

  She pulled into the dirt driveway of her rental house and turned off the car. She didn’t remember leaving all those lights on. Sure, a couple for when she came home late but not the whole freaking house. She opened the door and the sound of deep base tones rolled through the ground.

  “Oh, hell no,” she almost growled. Not tonight. Not now.

  Dylan pulled his truck up behind her and rolled his window down. “Everything okay? You having a party or something?”

  “Or something,” she snarled, then pasted on a fake, cheery smile. “Thanks for seeing me home, Dylan. Night.”

  He frowned, the shadows of the cab lending his face a deep glower. “I’ll wait until I know everything is okay. Want me to come in with you? Check things out?”

  She grinned. “Nah, I’ll take Carl. He’ll handle any intruders. But it’s probably only my sister.”

  At that moment, the front door banged open and Savannah winced. “Vannie! You’re finally home! I’ve been so bored!”

  Her sister’s voice echoed through the still night air, piercing and loud enough to wake the dead in the cemetery down the street. “Hey, Lucy. Keep it down. We don’t the cops to come visiting.”

  “You got yourself a man tonight? I can sleep on the porch while you have your fun. Unless he likes to share.” Lucy stood framed in the doorway, wearing next to nothing, the light clearly showing her full breasts and tiny scrap of panties and not much else.

  Damn, she’d found her secret stash of Patron tequila. She whirled and, completely ignoring the neighbors, yelled back, “Damn it, I left you the cheap stuff to drink. You’d better not be drinking my Patron.”

  Lucy froze then ducked back inside, stumbled really. Probably to hide the evidence. Damn it.

  She turned back to Dylan. “Look, I have a family situation here. So, I’m all set.”

  Dylan stared at the doorway her sister had just vacated, Sadie’s head poking out the window too. “Your sister. Is she drunk?”

  “Drunk, crazy, there’s really no difference. In the South, we embrace our crazy and let it hang out on the front porch. I’d like to say this is unusual but it’s really not. So, before the cops come and you get your name in the paper for something other than a homerun, you’d better head for home. I’ve got this. As usual.”

  He still looked unsure but definitely not looking forward to heading into her house, which kind of made Savannah dance a little happy jig inside. Most men, when confronted with her sister, half-naked on the front porch offering a threesome, couldn’t get out of their trucks fast enough or they hightailed it out of the region never to be heard from again. So, what did that make Dylan? Sweet for staying and being concerned or bat shit crazy for not running as fast as his truck could go?

  Ever since she had been woken up in his bed to the sight of a hot sexy man, half asleep on his feet but loving up the dog who was delirious with joy at seeing him, she had had visions of him joining her in the bed and doing things the dogs did not need to see. She’d put her life on hold for months now, focusing on her rescue and she had no room for a relationship. But Dylan was a serious disturbance to her balance and focus, one she feared she’d be more than happy to allow to distract her. And what would that get her? Further away from her dreams and a broken heart, that was all. She’d watched her mother and sister follow this same path their whole lives. No, Savannah Georgia Monroe did not need a man but these poor, abandoned dogs did need a rescue facility that would treat them right and not euthanize them within hours of their arrival. She had a mission and no man would distract her.

  A loud whoop from the house drew her attention.

  Although her drunken sister could put a major dent in her savings if she had to bail her drunken ass out of jail that night.

  She turned back to Dylan who was looking a bit green around the gills. “I’ve got this. Head for home. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.” She patted the door of the truck a couple of times for emphasis then stepped back, nodding more confidently than she felt.

  He frowned. “I’ll wait until you get inside.”

  She grinned suddenly, a warm feeling bubbling up inside her. “Who said chivalry was dead in the South? Ain’t you just a southern gentleman? Thank you kindly, sir.”

  She sashayed a bit into the house, leaving the dog in the car with the windows rolled down until she knew what she was up against. With her sister, that could mean anything.

  Savannah walked in the small house and was immediately confronted by a mess. She had never been the neatest housekeeper. With a rotating schedule of dogs, usually four or five at one time, it was hard to keep an immaculate house. But she never had pizza boxes on the floor, clothes strewn on the tables and a bra dangling from her television set. She flicked the stereo off and Lucy stopped dancing and whirled around, almost falling over one of the pizza boxes.

  “Why’d you do that for? I love that song?”

  “You love all the songs. When did you get in? I thought you were in Charlotte with Ricky.”

  Lucy’s lower lip pouted out and she flopped on the couch. “Ricky is a jerk. All he wanted to do was hang out at the bar and flirt with girls while he played with his stupid band. He e
xpected me to be a waitress and support us while he played for free until he was discovered.” She used air quotes around the last word.

  Savannah nodded noncommittally as she started cleaning up. “Ricky was a drummer?”

  “Guitar player. Bass guitar. He had the best fingers, Vannie. I mean that man could play. Then I caught him playing one of the girls in the alley behind the bar while I was busting my ass serving drinks to drunken morons who were groping me.”

  “So, you dumped him?”

  “After I slept with the drummer.” She grinned, a smile of self-satisfaction. “Pissed Ricky off to no end. I think they broke up. The band. Whatever. They sucked. No one was paying them to play anyway. And then I came here. I knew you’d help me out.”

  She jumped up and threw her arms around Savannah and dragged her down for an off-balance hug. Savannah barely managed to keep her feet. She disengaged from her sister and placed her firmly on the couch while she moved all the glasses off the floor and out of reach of flying feet. How many glasses could one person use? She didn’t even think she owned this many glasses.

  She took a few deep, even breaths, trying to remain calm. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “Plan?” Lucy sounded truly puzzled. “I thought I’d hang out with you for a while, visit, relax. You know.”

  “What about a job?” She braced herself for the reaction. Knowing her sister, it could go one of two ways depending on how much tequila she had had that night.

  “A job? I’m heartbroken and you want me to go out and get a job? How unfeeling and mean.”

  Okay, she hadn’t had time to finish the bottle. Savannah spied the neck of the bottle sticking out from the chair cushion. She subtly snagged it and slipped it in with the glasses and brought it into the small galley type kitchen to hide it in a new spot.

  “I’m just saying, the best way to meet new people and to forget about the lowlife, Ricky, is to stay busy and not dwell on your broken heart.”

  “He’s not a lowlife.” Lucy followed her into the kitchen, sucking on a beer. “He’s just misunderstood.”

  Savannah dropped the dishes in the sink. “At least tell me he won’t be coming here to find you and try to win you back. Because I won’t have him here, Lucy. No way.”

  Tears welled up in her sister’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “I can’t believe you want me to be alone and miserable the rest of my life. You hate me!”

  And she ran down the hall, slamming the door to Savannah’s bedroom and locking it. Damn. She should have taken Dylan up on his offer. He would have been better company than a snoring dog and the couch here.

  Chapter Eight

  Dylan had slept fitfully the night before, despite being dead tired on his feet. After leaving Savannah, he headed home and tumbled into bed, Sadie determined to curl up next to him. Instead of the smell of freshly laundered sheets, his senses were tortured by the scent of raspberries and vanilla and he tossed and turned the rest of the night, fighting wet dreams he hadn’t had that explicit since high school. Finally, around eight, he gave up and headed straight out for the furniture store, after leaving Sadie in the kitchen, her heartbreaking whines not letting him leave her in the big crate. As much as he loved the idea of Savannah in his bed, it was murder on his rest and, if she was going to be staying at his house with Sadie, she needed her own space for his own peace of mind.

  After ensuring delivery to be made of a new bedroom set and a couch later that day, he headed to the store for food and then back home, hoping not to find a mess. Sadie, the escape artist, had gotten out and was in the living room, papers strewn around the floor, shredded and partially gnawed. A blue binder sat opened in the middle of the room, some of the papers pulled out of it. Oh shit.

  “Sadie, not my hitters’ bible!” The one thing he needed for every game, his listing of every hitter and what they liked, could hit, and how they hit it. Damn it.

  He gathered them up after a stern talking to, during which Sadie sighed and avoided his gaze.

  The front door opened and Savannah walked in and took in the scene at glance. “You just couldn’t put her in the crate, could you?”

  “She hates it. She cried,” he replied defensively. “I’m really sorry. She got into some of your papers here, too.”

  Savannah dropped her hobo bag and grabbed the pages. “Oh no! These are some documents for the foundation. Colleen is going to kill me. Sadie, bad girl.”

  Sadie whined and hid her face. Dylan frowned and squatted next to Sadie, stroking her ears. “I already scolded her. You don’t need to yell at her again. Besides, she ate some of my hitter’s bible. You don’t hear me whining about it.”

  “Hitter’s bible?”

  He held up a half chewed blue binder with papers falling out. “I keep notes on all of the hitters in the league. Every time we meet them, I update it.”

  “Don’t you have scouts for that and video?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Yeah but these are my notes, my observations. I use them to prepare for every game. Most pitchers have them too.”

  She laughed, the sound musical. “And Sadie used them to punish you. Poetic justice. Now, will you use the crate?”

  He grunted. “Fine.” Then he turned to her. “We don’t have a game tonight and I owe you for everything you’ve done. How about some lunch? As a thank you? It’s the least I could do.”

  He added the last part, holding his breath, unsure if she would accept anything more. Hell, he wasn’t sure what else he wanted. He only knew Savannah was the first person in a long time who had helped him, talked with him, not because he was Dylan Prosser, catcher for the Georgia Knights, but because he was Dylan, a guy with a rescue dog. He’d use any excuse to spend more time with her, and have her see him as someone other than Sadie’s owner.

  “The very least,” Savannah snorted. “If you had just left her in her crate, this wouldn’t have happened. Well, she didn’t chew anything critical. I can fix this.”

  He arched his eyebrow. “And lunch? You have to eat sometime.”

  She bit her lower lip, looking away for a moment, as if fighting an internal battle with herself.

  Then she nodded. “Sure, sounds great.”

  He let out an inaudible exhale of relief. “Excellent. Is turkey okay?”

  She peered up at him suspiciously. “Are you turning this into a date, Mr. Prosser?”

  He gambled on the truth. “What if I did? Would it be so bad?”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth opened and closed a couple of times as she worked out what to say.

  Finally, she gathered her composure. “I don’t have time for dating. My rescue takes up all of my time.”

  Her answer was exactly as he had expected and, normally, it would have made him dance for joy. A woman who didn’t want to interfere in his baseball season. A treasure really. But her answer, while not unexpected, bothered him. She was the first woman in a long time who intrigued him, attracted him on so many levels. But it was clear she wasn’t quite ready to jump into the relationship. He could work with that. He was nothing if not patient.

  He shrugged fatalistically. “I’m busy with my team. But we both need to eat. It’s just lunch.”

  She eyed him skeptically then slowly agreed. “Just lunch.”

  He smiled, a bit wolfishly. “Just lunch.” He headed for the kitchen and she followed. “What kind of papers were they?”

  She hopped on one of the bar stools and watched him pull out sandwich supplies. “You went shopping. Nice.”

  He spared her a glance. “I’m not completely helpless. I even ordered a new couch and a new bedroom set with a bed for the guest room.” He slid some grapes across the counter and tossed one to Sadie who caught it on the fly.

  “Grapes aren’t the best thing for dogs. Carrots are better.” She took a bunch of grapes and popped one in her mouth. “These are just plans for fund-raising and ideas for growing the rescue. Like I said, I can fix them.”

  He slid the turkey sandwic
h in front of her and tossed a piece of turkey for Sadie who swallowed it without even chewing. “That was okay, right?”

  She shrugged. “Only if you want her to beg every time you have food. I’d keep the people food to a minimum and only in her bowl at dinner time. She’ll start to expect it and become a real pest at meal times.”

  He nodded, filing away the information for later. “So how long have you been running the rescue?”

  “Officially? A couple of years, but unofficially much longer. I always helped at shelters and adopted dogs where I could. I hooked up with the Southern Route rescue group who takes dogs from the south and brings them up north to new homes. My friend Colleen and I started Soul Paws a couple of years ago, mainly as a foster rescue but we have plans.”

  He nodded, chewing, trying to understand the passion that coursed through her words as she spoke of her dream. “What’s your end game? I mean, what are you trying to do?”

  “Well, we want to build our rescue beyond fosters. Staff, training, programs. We could do so much.” She paused, cocking her head to one side and studying him for a moment until he thought maybe he was wearing some of his lunch on his shirt. “Do you want to see what we want? Finish up. I want to show you.”

  He swallowed past a suddenly dry throat. “The furniture is coming today.”

  “We won’t be long. I want to show you what I want to do.”

  Her zeal was contagious and he found himself intrigued. Anything to spend more time with her.

  They got out of the truck at the abandoned pound in the middle of nowhere and for the first time, Savannah looked at it through a stranger’s eyes and found her dream lacking. The former pound was a one story, long, squat concrete building, almost a bunker, with a central office space, and several kennel runs coming off each side. The pound had been part of the town’s public works storage area where they stored their trucks, supplies and other material. But it was too remote and theft was high so they moved it to a new location closer to town and in a more secure place. The pound tried to stay here for a while but it was too small for the needs of the animals so they built a larger place closer to town, leaving this building empty.