by Linda Morris
His contract had come up for renewal while he was out, and they’d declined. “You’re thirty-one. Who knows if you’ll ever be the pitcher you were before the surgery?” his agent had explained with a shrug.
He knew, and in a couple of months, everyone would know. Tom Cord was coming back.
The White Sox had snapped him up, willing to take a chance on a bargain at only five mil a year.
He nodded to the kid who’d been catching for him and headed for the clubhouse. Time to shower, rest a little, and get his mind right before the game tonight. The clubhouse was small and dark and reeked of sweat—a far cry from the spacious, airy lounges in the big leagues—but he didn’t care.
He’d be in Plainview for two, three games max before he proved to everybody that he was better than ever. He’d worked his ass off in rehab in the year and a half since the surgery. He was ready to go. This stint in the minors, on the White Sox minor-league affiliate, checked a box. He would do what he had to do to prove he was ready to get back to the bigs.
For months, he’d been telling everybody who would listen, and a lot of people who wouldn’t, that he was ready to roll. Finally the team doctors had agreed and approved him for this rehab assignment in Hicksville, USA. He had to do it, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it, and he’d be damned if he’d listen to what some paper-shuffler from the front office had to say, even if he did feel bad for her.
He stretched out his throwing arm and worked it in a circle. He had been throwing pretty hot, and his arm was tight. It wasn’t sore, though, not really. No sorer than usual after a warm-up. He didn’t think.
Everything was going to be fine.
Chapter Two
“Sarah, we’ve got a problem!”
She blinked and peered at the clock on the bedside table. “Paul?” She sat up in bed, clutching her phone. Why was her brother calling her at this hour? “It’s two AM! What do you want?”
“You’d better get down to the Home Plate. Tom Cord’s down there, and he’s partying his butt off.”
“You’re kidding.” She paused for a yawn. “At the Home Plate? What’s he doing in that dive?”
“It’s the bar closest to the stadium. I assume that has something to do with it,” Paul said dryly. “You saw how he pitched tonight. He had something to celebrate. He woke me up texting me to join him, but I wouldn’t.”
“Couldn’t talk the ball and chain into letting you go out, huh?” Susan, Paul’s suspicious girlfriend, never let him out of her sight if she could help it.
“She knows Tom’s reputation.” He cleared his throat. “I guess I may have told her a few too many details about the parties we went to back in college.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I really don’t want to think about you at some wild jock party.” Yuck.
“That was a long time ago, for me anyway. Tom doesn’t seem to have changed much. The SOB is drunk-tweeting from the bar. He’s posting photos of himself with the Bailey twins.”
“Oh, God.” The whole situation suddenly became a lot less funny. The Bailey twins were barely twenty-one, blonde and busty, and enjoyed hanging around the ballpark—and the ballplayers—too much for their own good.
They were the daughters of the Dudley Field box office supervisor, who happened to be a good friend of her father’s. Her stern, old-fashioned, upright father. Both men would freak if they realized one or both of the Baileys were hooking up with Tom. She threw the covers back and flicked on the light, wincing at the glare.
“I’d go get him but Susan would have a fit,” Paul continued. “Can you please get down there and get him out of there before he makes an even bigger fool of himself? Who knows how long he’s been drinking? He’s tweeting with the hashtag ‘majorleaguehurler’ and I’m afraid he means it both ways.”
God. Were they talking about a grown man or a middle schooler? Sarah rubbed the point of tension that had erupted between her eyes. “All right, all right. Let me get going. I’ll get him under control.”
“Thanks, hon. I owe you one.”
She pulled on jeans and a Thrashers T-shirt. She scraped her hair up in a ponytail and, without examining why, splashed water on her face and swiped on some lip gloss. Everyone in town knew the Dudleys. She needed to maintain a somewhat professional appearance, even if it was two AM.
Stepping out into the summer night air brought a blast of heat and humidity. Moths fluttered around her porch light and a noise came from the garbage cans at the curb. Raccoons again, probably. She loved her old Victorian, located on a tree-lined street in one of Plainview’s oldest neighborhoods, but she could do without the nighttime visitors.
She didn’t have time to deal with them now, though. Another pest took priority. She backed her Nissan crossover out of the side building that served as a garage for her duplex. On the short drive to the Home Plate, she scanned the radio until she found a sports talk station.
“Did you see the Thrashers’ pitching debut of Tom Cord tonight?” said the host. “Phenomenal! Not many guys come back from Tommy John surgery stronger than before they went under the knife, but Cord looks like he might be an exception. All his hard partying hasn’t slowed him down a bit. Six innings of shutout ball pitched, nine strikeouts, two hits, only two walks. The guy was on fire!”
“It was one game,” she muttered, switching off the radio. Why did it irritate her so much that he’d had a fabulous outing? She didn’t want to see the team lose a game just to prove her point that he shouldn’t have been throwing hard before a start, but it would have been nice if he’d at least had to break a sweat.
No such luck. He’d cruised through six innings and chewed out Reedy when he’d pulled him to save his arm, insisting all the way back to the dugout that he could have gone the whole game.
The guy had no sense of self-preservation. No wonder he’d spent the last year and a half out of baseball.
The streets of Plainview were deserted at this hour, but the Home Plate was a different story. Lights and loud music blared from the dive bar.
She parked and went inside, peering through the dimness.
He wasn’t hard to find.
In one corner of the bar, flushed and grinning, sat Tom, tapping on his cell phone, a beer in front of him, and a Bailey twin at each elbow. A group of adoring bystanders watched his every move. A TV over the bar was tuned to ESPN, which was running highlights of his performance tonight.
Great. He was holding court, and she had to break it up.
Heart hammering at the prospect of another public confrontation with him, Sarah shouldered through the crowd to stand before him.
“Congratulations. You threw a heck of a game tonight.” It pained her to admit it, but hey, credit where credit was due. He looked up, his eyes lighting in recognition.
“Thanks, boss lady.” Her eyebrows quirked. She was “boss lady” now, huh? He seemed to hold no grudge from their earlier confrontation. Maybe he’d gotten lubricated enough to forget about the tussle. In any case, his good humor made the tightness in the back of her neck ease a fraction.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Looking for you. What are you doing here?” she asked, sending his question back to him.
“He’s partying with us and having a good time!” One of the Bailey girls yelled over the Journey song pumping out of the sound system, throwing a possessive arm over his shoulder. “Ain’t that right, Tommy?”
“That’s right.” He kept his gaze on Sarah.
“Think maybe you’ve had enough of a good time? I’m here to take you home. You shouldn’t drive, and the Home Plate is going to be closing down soon.” She had no idea if that was true. Probably they’d keep it open as long as the big-shot pitcher wanted, but he seemed to buy her logic.
He slipped his phone into his shirt pocket and shrugged. “I don’t have a car, anyway.”
She crossed her arms. “How were you planning to get home?”
He shrugged and looked at one Bailey t
win, and then the other. “I figured that would take care of itself.” Both girls erupted in giggles, and Sarah rolled her eyes.
God, she’d never be able to face their dad if she let the Bailey girls get mixed up in a threeway with Tom Cord. Heat crept up her neck at the picture and she shut it out of her mind.
She jiggled her keys. “I think you’d better get home and rest that arm, don’t you?”
“My arm wasn’t what I was planning on using.” He didn’t blink as he met her eyes, ignoring the snickering of the girls.
“From what I’ve heard, you need to give that a rest too.” She jerked her head toward the door. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride home.”
He sighed and leaned forward, his blue eyes still fixed on hers. “Fine. I guess boss lady is right. Girls, I’m afraid I’ll have to say good-bye.” He smiled and winked at her, and she barely kept her eyes from rolling.
Hours ago, he’d made it clear that he didn’t care to hear her opinion about his throwing. Now he was flirting with her? Obviously the old saying was true: Winning fixed everything. Throwing a kick-ass game had left him in a sunny mood. Then again, he had a rep for hitting on anything female and passably pretty. No need to inflate his übersized ego by responding to it.
Between accepting congratulations, signing autographs, and reassuring the heartbroken Bailey girls that he’d see them again before he left town, it took him another fifteen minutes to get out of the bar.
“You should find some other women to hang out with,” Sarah informed him as they headed to the parking lot.
“What?” He slid into the passenger seat beside her. “You’ve got a problem with my hanging out with the Bailey girls?” Looking at him closely, she wondered how drunk he actually was. He seemed pretty lucid to her.
“They’re the daughters of the Thrashers’ box office sup, who is an old friend of my dad’s. My dad would be pretty upset if you got … uh, mixed up with them.”
“You mean if I slept with them.”
His directness made her pause. She gave starting the car her full attention, carefully adjusting mirrors that didn’t need it. “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
“I was just hanging out. I wasn’t really going to sleep with them.”
“You weren’t?” Her brows rose. He’d done a damn good impression of trying.
“No, I don’t do threeways. I can only concentrate on one thing at a time.”
She tried, God knows she tried, but she couldn’t keep a smile off her face. “Really?”
“Yep. I like to give a woman my undivided attention.”
Oh, dear. She bet he could really give some good attention when he wanted to. He’d had plenty of practice, no doubt. As any coach would tell you, practice really did make perfect. She swallowed and thanked God for the darkness so he couldn’t see her throat bob.
She approved of his single-minded devotion to a woman’s pleasure, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying so. He was off-limits. He was a player, in more ways than one.
She fastened her seat belt and backed out of her space. “Where are you staying?”
“Louisville.”
She slammed on the brakes, surprising a curse out of him. “Louisville? Kentucky?” At his nod, she stared. “That’s almost two hours away!”
“I’m at the Hilton. My agent set it up.”
“Your agent’s an idiot.”
“I wouldn’t disagree with that, but he gets me a lot of money.”
“Did you plan on spending four hours in the car every day you were here?”
Behind them, a car honked, and she waved it around.
“I didn’t have time to do a whole lot of planning. They activated me this morning and I got here at noon. Besides, I won’t be in town long enough for it to matter. One more start, maybe two, and they’ll be calling me up to Chicago.”
She let that pass. He’d convinced himself this stay in the minors was no more than a brief yet necessary evil on the way back to the bigs. Maybe he was right. He’d certainly been on fire tonight.
Still, the Thrashers were a team, and everyone from her father on down lived that philosophy. The team practiced and played together. “Dad has always been pretty adamant about the team practicing together, and Paul runs the team the same way. He’ll want you in town and coming to practice, even on the nights you’re not pitching.”
He yawned into his hand. “Fine. Take me to a motel or something.”
“That might be a problem.”
“Why? Surely this burg has a decent motel?”
“Motel, yes. Decent, no.” Most minor leaguers who stayed in Plainview for any length of time rented houses together. Those who were passing through for a very short time stayed at the Plainview Motel, which had earned the nickname “Painview Motel” due to its bowed mattresses and paper-thin pillows.
She couldn’t send him there. If Tom Cord would need anything during his stay in Plainview, it was a proper mattress.
Strangely, the idea of him test-driving a bed at the Painview with a local woman made her lips purse.
She didn’t know why. She had no designs on the jerk. She’d put the gawky teen who had a pathetic crush on her big brother’s friend behind her long ago.
Then again, he’d been a giant pain in her butt so far. Maybe she should let him suffer there for a few nights.
A smile curved her lips at the thought of torturing the big shot by dumping him at the dive motel, but she shook it off. She could only imagine how many tongues would wag if she showed up at the Painview in the middle of the night with Tom Cord. This was a small town, and people needed something to gossip about. Nobody would ever believe there was an innocent explanation.
Sometimes, being the town’s most well-known good girl could be a huge hassle.
“Fine,” Tom said, “I’ll find a place to stay tomorrow, but for tonight, my reservation is in Louisville.”
“I’m not driving you to Louisville at this time of night. I can’t spend four hours on the road,” she explained at his scowl. “I’ve got to work in the morning. Some of us have real jobs, you know, regardless of what anyone thinks.” That bobblehead comment still stuck in the back of her throat.
“Yeah, yeah.” He looked at her out of the side of his eyes. “Sorry about what happened at the field this afternoon.” He grimaced. “I don’t like being told what to do when it comes to pitching. Nothing personal.”
His apology deflated her ire a little bit. “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t take it personally.” Not that part, anyway. Unfortunately, she was used to bearing the brunt of her father’s wrath. Someday he’d accept that she belonged in the Thrashers front office every bit as much as her brother Paul, but that day hadn’t come yet.
Anyway, it was being completely forgotten by her teenage crush that had stung the most. Not that she was dwelling on it. “You can crash on my couch for tonight and figure out something else in the morning.”
She eased off the brakes and headed for home.
“Maybe I can crash with Paul for a while. I’m kind of surprised he didn’t ask me to.”
“He couldn’t ask you to stay with him.” She smiled slightly in the car’s dark interior. “His girlfriend thinks you’re a bad influence.”
“What?” Cord stared at her. “You’re kidding me!”
“You’re saying you’re not a bad influence?”
“I already told you I wouldn’t have done the Bailey girls together. What do you want from me, sainthood?”
Pain started behind her eyes. She needed to get away from Tom and back to bed—alone—before dealing with him brought on a real headache. “That’s scrupulous of you. You wouldn’t have done them together, but on their own, they’d be fair game?” A voice whispered that she was being unfair—the Baileys were hardly innocents—but she squashed it.
“Why not? They’re over twenty-one.”
Why not, indeed? Most ballplayers got all the girls they could handle, and then some. Tom Cord liked to sleep
around, but at least he was single and made no bones about being a playboy, which was more than she could say for some other guys she knew. Why did his incredible ease with women rub her the wrong way?
“Besides, I’m a bad influence, my ass. I could tell her a few stories about Paul back then that would set her straight on that score.”
“Please!” She put one hand over her ear. “This is my brother you’re talking about. I don’t want to hear about it!”
“Sorry, but you gotta know, your brother’s no saint.”
“And you are? What about Christina Caputo?” she said, naming the reality star he’d recently broken up with. She’d been photographed climbing out of a limo with Tom—sans underwear. The wind had lifted her skirt and paparazzi had been waiting to immortalize the moment. Tom’s nude swimming photo had been blurry and indistinct, but a dozen paparazzi with high-resolution cameras had captured Christina’s mistake in excruciating clarity. A censored version of the photo had been on the cover of every supermarket tabloid in America the next week.
“You know about her?” he asked, all fake-casual. Even from the corner of her eye, she could see his smile.
“Everybody knows about her! Her hoo-ha was all over the Internet.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his chin, his fingers rasping against stubble. “I didn’t know she was planning on doing that.”
“She planned it?” Her mouth fell open.
“Yep. She was quite the publicity hound. She thought dating a famous athlete would raise her profile.”
“I’ll say it did.” Sarah pulled into her driveway and hit the clicker to raise the garage door. “Did it bug you, that she used you that way?”
He shrugged. “I get that a lot from women. Occupational hazard.”
In the garage, she killed the engine and turned to look at him, hand on the door handle. “Women date you to, um, get their profiles raised?” Was it her, or did that sound faintly dirty? Maybe Tom Cord just made everything seem a little naughty.
His teeth gleamed white in the moonlight. His strong chin had a tiny cleft, a hint of sculpture in an otherwise rugged face. He really was the most appallingly handsome man. It almost made her want to overlook his colossal ego.