High Heat (Hard Hitters #1)

by Linda Morris

  “You going to call him?”

  “Tom?”

  “Of course, Tom!” Tracy sounded downright impatient—a first for her mild-mannered friend. “You were mad at him because Christina came to town, right? Now you know he didn’t want her there, so you can work everything out.”

  Sarah shook her head. “It wasn’t that simple.” Nothing in love ever was. “It’s complicated. Much more than you know.” It was all mixed up in her head. She wasn’t the kind of woman he normally went for, he’d forget her soon, her dad would toss her out of the family business if she got mixed up with him. So many things going against them, and really only one thing going for them.

  The way he made her feel: sexy, feminine, special. Treasured.

  Please. He made every woman feel that way. It’s what a playboy did. Tom hadn’t ended up on the front page of Deadspin so many times because he couldn’t charm a woman.

  Unfortunately, a real relationship took a lot more than charm.

  Tracy shook her head. “I may not have dated a lot of guys, but it doesn’t sound that difficult to me. You love him, he loves you. It’s only as complicated as you make it.”

  “You don’t understand. Relationships are … a pain. And he’s leaving town. Pretty soon, he’ll be in Chicago and he’ll forget all about me. None of this will matter anyway.”

  It would matter to her, though. Just not to him. Relationships didn’t work when they only mattered to one person.

  The waitress arrived with their food, cutting off conversation. As they ate, she thought about Tracy’s words. They were wrong; she knew they were wrong.

  But for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out exactly why.

  ***

  “You turned on the jets today for the White Sox brass, man. You sure you got enough in the tank for your start?” Reedy Johnson stopped in front of Tom’s locker in the clubhouse.

  Friday had arrived at last. Time for his last start as a Plainview Thrasher.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” He resisted the urge to stretch his aching arm in front of Reedy. He’d be fine when he got on the mound, and the last thing he needed was questions from his well-intentioned pitching coach.

  “If you say so.” Reedy lingered when Tom didn’t answer. “You have any doubts about throwing tonight, let me know. We can put in Brazos. He’s next up in the rotation.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Reedy nodded and moved away, thank God. Tom wasn’t in the mood to listen to doubters.

  He’d spent the day getting a full physical from the White Sox team physician, followed by a throwing session for their front office brass, who’d come down for the occasion.

  “We’ve been watching you on TV, Tom, but we wanted to see you in person to gauge your progress.” The general manager, a thin man with a dusting of sparse reddish hair, had nodded at him. “How’s the elbow doing?”

  “Fine,” he’d replied, and proceeded to hurl a series of pitches that lit up the radar gun to prove it.

  He had the soreness to pay for throwing so hard, but he’d be damned if he’d admit that to Reedy or anyone else.

  Sarah would frown and tell him it served him right for throwing hard on the day of a start.

  He threw his glove into his locker and ripped the cap off a bottle of water.

  What did Sarah’s opinion matter? He hadn’t seen or heard a word from her since she’d left his apartment the other day. He drained half the bottle of water in a gulp, the cool liquid soothing his parched throat.

  If he’d told Christina the unvarnished truth a week earlier, maybe he and Sarah …

  No. He pushed that thought out of his mind. Christina’s badly timed visit had simply been the last straw. He and Sarah wanted different things, were two very different people. She obviously didn’t want him enough to choose him over her stupid family legacy.

  What was so important about a family legacy, anyway? He’d never had one and he’d gotten by. He’d been a vagabond kid raised by a rootless mother, and he’d turned out … well, mostly okay. From what he could see, Sarah’s baseball legacy hadn’t done much besides give her a lot of chances to fight with her dad. He’d done plenty of fighting with his dad just fine on his own.

  The only family legacy he’d ever had from his dad was drinking too much, screwing a lot of women, and moving around a lot. Come to think of it, he’d lived up to that sorry tradition pretty well.

  Enough. You’ve got a start. Get your head in the game.

  Maybe a shower would help. He stripped down, wrapped a towel around his waist, donned his shower shoes, and headed down to the shower room.

  It wasn’t much by majorleague standards—a ten by ten cinder block room painted bilious green, with six shower heads and a drain in the floor—but it had hot water, and that’s what he needed.

  After the spray warmed up, he stepped under and let it run down his arm, wincing as he flexed the muscle. “Shit,” he muttered, glad that no one was around to see him in pain. He turned the water up until the scalding heat overwhelmed the pain of his elbow. He couldn’t run the risk of someone seeing him copping an ice bag, especially with the Sox brass in town. It would be all over the blogs by morning if Tom Cord iced his bad elbow before a start. He’d take a few Advil and get through it. It would be fine.

  It would have to be.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sarah sat in the stands alone, the bag of peanuts between her feet, forgotten.

  This is fine. Watching a game alone is better than listening to Rich’s annoying drone or being ignored all night while he checks Twitter.

  She didn’t really feel like company anyway. Solitude had been her preference since the … thing with Tom. What could she call it? Breakup? They hadn’t been a couple anyway, she told herself savagely, relishing the spike of hurt the thought brought. She’d been his distraction for a few weeks.

  The night after they’d argued, she’d lain awake in bed for hours, eyes and heart aching. In the morning, she’d risen after only an hour of sleep, showered, and had an extra-strong cup of French roast while sitting at her kitchen table and thinking. Should she talk to him? She was pretty sure he hadn’t really wanted anything to do with Christina, upon further reflection. Tom had his faults, but he wasn’t a liar. If he’d wanted to still be with his ex, he could have been, and he probably would have been.

  He’d made another choice. She’d made a choice too. Talking to him again would reopen a wound. She had to move on and forget him.

  First, though, she had to get through tonight, watching the man she loved pitch the most important game of his comeback.

  Tom had looked good through three innings, but his teammates weren’t helping him much. In the second, he’d given up a solo home run on a curveball that got away from him, which must have made him crazy, but the Thrashers’ offense had been flat. The score stood at 1–0.

  “Whoa.” A wild pitch sailed over the catcher’s head. He was able to snag it before the runner at first could advance, but still. Tom normally had great control. That was unlike him.

  She watched him more closely over the next several pitches, tension gathering at the back of her neck. He was dropping his elbow when he pitched. Her eyes went to the radar gun readout on the scoreboard. He’d lost a few miles per hour of velocity since the first inning.

  He was hurting.

  She knew it as surely as she knew that Rich Blakely was the one his mom liked best. The next couple of batters confirmed her suspicion. He walked the first batter on five pitches. On his second pitch to the next, he missed with his slider. That should have been a home run, except the batter got only a piece of it and it was caught in the outfield for the first out.

  With runners at first and second, a home run would be a disaster. Tom shook his head at Coco, who was catching tonight, signaling that he didn’t like the pitches he was calling for.

  Sarah squinted into the lights to the president’s box, where her brother watched games. The White Sox brass were in his box tonigh
t as special guests. She couldn’t see them well enough to know how they were reacting, but she had her guesses.

  The next pitch was right on-target, a wicked fastball at close to full velocity. The batter swung but missed by a mile. Tom hit him with a changeup next, and the batter barely made contact, sending a pop-up into the infield that the shortstop snagged with ease.

  Two outs. Sarah exhaled. Maybe Tom could get out of this and pull himself out after the next inning.

  Who was she kidding? If he could still stand upright and throw in the general direction of the batter’s box, he would not pull himself out of a game. If he sucked up the place, the coaches would pull him no matter what he wanted. If he recovered, they’d leave him in, possibly letting him reinjure himself.

  She bit her thumb, frowning. Dad would kill her if she talked to the coaches during a game, and in the unlikely event her father didn’t get to her, Tom would finish her off if he ever found out about it. Trouble was, she had inside information she knew no one else did. Tom Cord had played with, and worsened, an injury in game seven of the World Series.

  He might do it again.

  Tom struck out the next batter on four pitches. Three outs. She exhaled slowly. On the way to the bench, he high-fived Coco.

  Not the demeanor of a man getting ready to pull himself out of a game.

  You’re being an idiot. That was game seven. This is a minor league game. He wouldn’t do something so stupid for a minor-league game.

  “Oh my God, yes he would,” she muttered, earning an odd look from the septuagenarian in front of her. “Sorry.”

  Tom had never been a strategic thinker about baseball—he’d told her that himself. He liked to win, and it didn’t seem to matter what the stakes were or how big the stage was. Heck, he’d been throwing hard before a start his first day in Plainview.

  It served him right if he hurt himself.

  No. She couldn’t let that happen, even if he brought it on himself with his stubbornness. He deserved his shot at the World Series ring.

  After all, it was the only thing that really mattered to him.

  She swallowed hard past the tightness in her throat. Damn it, she was not a crier, but she couldn’t deny that a big part of her cared about Tom. Had cared about him for years. Would always care about him. She couldn’t sit by and let him wreck his career. Even if he hated her for meddling, she had to act. It would be her last gift to him.

  Before she could stop herself, she was edging down the aisle to make her way over to the Thrashers’ bench. She hovered out of sight of the players for a moment, and then snagged scrap paper and a pen out of her purse, scrawling a quick note.

  “Pssst!” she hissed. “Jason!” She called the name of the batboy softly.

  “Yeah, Ms. Dudley?” the redheaded boy responded, coming over right away.

  She handed him the folded square of paper. “Give this to Reedy Johnson, and don’t tell him who it came from. Oh, and don’t let Tom see you give it to him!”

  “Oh, okay.” He turned to deliver it, and then stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Are you really Tom’s girlfriend?”

  Her face must have made him realize he’d overstepped, because he flushed red. “I just think you’re really nice, and so is he. I thought you’d be a nice girlfriend.”

  “No,” she said when she finally managed to recover her voice. “That’s nice, but I’m not his girlfriend.”

  “Oh. Sorry, then.” He shoulders slumped and he went to deliver the note. She had the feeling she’d disappointed him. Funny. He couldn’t possibly be as disappointed as she was.

  ***

  Back in her seat at the bottom of the next inning, she cracked open a peanut and tried not to worry. The batboy had delivered her note and she’d watched the pitching coach read it. She’d done all she could do. It was out of her hands.

  She hadn’t told Reedy to pull Tom, because she’d known he wouldn’t take her word for it. Instead, she’d pointed out that his elbow was dropping and that he did that when he experienced forearm tightness or pain, the first sign of a UCL tear.

  Tom got the first batter to pop out, a long fly ball to left field. His arm didn’t seem to be bothering him quite as much, and the tightness in her back eased a little bit. Maybe she’d exaggerated things. Maybe he hadn’t been dropping his elbow quite as much as she had thought.

  Then the second batter came to the plate, a nasty right-handed slugger named Adam Duvall. Tom had faced him a few weeks ago and given up a two-run home run. He’d be looking for revenge tonight.

  Right away, Tom fell behind in the count, throwing two bad pitches. If he didn’t right this ship and throw a few unhittable strikes, he’d walk him and have a runner on base with only one out. Tom shook his head at Coco again and again, refusing his suggested pitches. She smiled faintly. She could only imagine how well that was going over with Coco. Finally, Tom nodded sharply and went into his windup.

  It looked good at first. Nothing unusual until the end, when everything went crazy. The pitch scudded into the dirt in front of home plate as Tom let out a shout. His body bent at an odd angle. Shaking his arm, he ran off the mound, his face a mask of pain. A groan rose from the crowd. Coco, Reedy, and the team manager ran to the mound to check on him.

  “Oh, God.” Heart pounding in her ears, she rose, peanuts flying everywhere. Adrenaline surged through her, but it was useless. She was useless. In the stands, she could do nothing.

  She made her way down to the dugout, where every player had gathered along the railing to watch Tom. The stadium’s organ player struck up a soft tune to fill the lull, but it clashed with the hush that hung over the crowd. Even the visiting team stood by in respectful silence, watching the knot of managers and players that had gathered around Tom.

  Oh, God. She lifted a shaking hand to her forehead. Her worst nightmare had come to pass. Why hadn’t the idiot listened to her?

  Because if he wasn’t stubborn, if he wasn’t born to win or die trying, if he wasn’t full of passion for winning and the game of baseball, he wouldn’t be the man you love. That’s who he is, take him or leave him.

  Jesus. Sarah ran a hand through her loose hair and wished to God she could see what was going on out there.

  High up in her brother’s box, she could see activity, people milling around. One man with a paunch and glasses leaned in close to the window, peering down. No doubt the White Sox brass were about to come down and check on their most valuable investment.

  How dare they? This wasn’t about their investment, or their roster, or their plans for the postseason.

  This was about Tom, the man she loved. The man who brought her soup and carried her to bed when she’d been sick. The man who stood up for her when her father bullied her, the man who had thrown the ball back and forth with her and treated her as an equal, even though he was ten times the athlete she’d ever be.

  The man she’d let slip away.

  Reedy trotted back to the dugout and picked up the phone to call the bullpen, and she wanted to cry. No doubt he was telling a backup pitcher to get warmed up.

  After a long discussion, the managers walked Tom back to the bench. He doffed his cap in response to a standing ovation from the home crowd, but he never looked up. Before trotting back out to home plate to help the new pitcher warm up, Coco gave him an awkward hug that he returned with his uninjured arm. At the dugout, Tom headed straight down the tunnel to the clubhouse.

  “Damn.”

  She hustled up the stairs and showed her pass to the usher to go down the concourse and access the clubhouse from the other side. Heart pounding, she broke into the fastest trot her flats would allow and covered the concrete corridor in record time.

  At the clubhouse door, she stopped. The swipe card wouldn’t allow her to enter—her father had seen that she didn’t have clubhouse access programmed into her security card. She grabbed her cell phone and called Paul.

  “Yeah?” Her brother sounded out of breath.

  “Wh
at’s going on? Did he tear it?” She couldn’t even bring herself to say “UCL.” They both knew what she meant anyway, what had been the fear ever since Tom began his rehabilitation.

  “I don’t know. The Sox team doc and I are headed down to the clubhouse. He’ll examine him.”

  “Have you talked to Reedy?”

  “I don’t know anything, Sarah! I’ll tell you when I know something.”

  “Wait!” She couldn’t let Paul go yet. “You have to tell Tom … tell him—” She broke off, at a loss. What on earth could her brother tell the man she loved that could possibly make a difference? That she loved him? That she hated to see him in pain, brought low by a stupid elbow injury? No, those things had to come from her, face-to-face. “Tell him—”

  “Look, I gotta go. I’ll tell him you called.” Paul clicked off the line.

  She bit her lip and put away her cell phone. Leaning against the wall, she slid down to begin what would no doubt be a very, very long wait.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Tom tried to keep his mind a blank, to ignore the fear eating at him. The pain wasn’t that bad. He’d endured pain lots of times, through injuries big and small, after surgery, through a year and a half of grueling rehab.

  But fear, on the other hand. Fear ate at you, and for what? Fear wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t make bad news into good news. It was a waste of time.

  God almighty, what if he’d torn the ligament again?

  Tom was an optimistic guy. Hell, he’d laughed in everyone’s faces when they told him he might not make it back, or that he’d be a shadow of the player he’d been. But even his optimism couldn’t stand up to a second UCL tear. He knew as well as anyone that the recovery rates for a second tear sucked.

  He sat on a massage table with his eyes closed, trying not to think, trying not to feel the dull ache that focused on his elbow and radiated down his forearm. Around him, a low buzz of concerned voices rose and fell. No one spoke directly to him.