chapter 1
“HE’S SO NOT ready, Dave,” Taylor Page said as she watched the new kid take his cuts in the batting cage at Clearwater’s Cal Torrance Field. Nathan Corbin was the team’s prized young prospect, and he looked more than lost as he swatted futilely at batting practice pitches. “We’ll shatter the poor guy’s confidence if we keep putting him through this nightmare.”
The former first round draft pick had managed just eight hits in fifty-six spring training at-bats, and even his fielding stats were subpar, no doubt reflecting his rattled nerves and crumbling spirit.
The fact that the man sitting beside her, Philadelphia Patriots’ general manager Dave Dembinski, had decided to rush Corbin straight from Double A to the major leagues didn’t alter the long odds of the raw youngster making the jump before paying his dues in the minors. Being so new to the Patriots’ front office, Taylor hadn’t wanted to argue her boss’s call. She might be one of the team’s assistant general managers, but she had only a couple of months under her belt. Nor did she know the team’s minor league system well enough yet to gainsay either Dembinski or the legion of scouts singing Corbin’s praises.
Dembinski tugged at the zipper of his team windbreaker, hunching his shoulders against the stiffening breeze that blew a few raindrops almost sideways in front of him. Normally they’d be watching from inside the suite, but the GM liked to sit behind the plate when he needed to take an extra close look at a player in game conditions. “He sucks, you mean. So, just say it, Taylor.”
“Say what?” Taylor responded cautiously.
“Say I told you so, damn it. Everybody else is, and you were skeptical about the Corbin move from the get-go, too.”
That was true enough, but she wasn’t about to rub the mistake in his face. Her self-preservation instincts were way stronger than that. “It’s easy to get hopes up with a five-tool prospect like Corbin,” she said. “He’s special. But still a work in progress, it seems.”
The Patriots had hoped Corbin could fill a desperate gap at first base—the one created by a February car accident that had come close to killing their regular first sacker, Jared Stark. With two broken legs and a smashed pelvis and lacerated organs, Stark was lucky to be on the right side of the grass. No baseball for him for a long while, and definitely not this season.
“Assign Corbin to minor league camp after the game,” the GM said abruptly. “Now, I’d better get back to the office and make some more calls.”
Dembinski started up the concrete stairs and Taylor followed. The stands were almost empty, a result of the unusually cool and rainy weather in sub-tropical Florida. “We’re up against the wall, Taylor,” her boss said without looking back at her. “Corbin’s not the answer, and there’s no way I’m going to have Cruz in the lineup every day. No f*cking way.”
Taylor agreed. Ramiro Cruz was a fielding whiz, but his on-base percentage was pure garbage. Basically a Triple A player masquerading as a major leaguer, the guy was the kind of marginal utility player used at the end of the game as a defensive replacement, or when a starter needed a rest.
From the moment she knew Jared Stark was out of commission, Taylor had started to compile a list of possible trades. She’d quickly come up with a few first basemen who might be available and whose contracts wouldn’t break the bank. Though some might think it cold of her to give the names to Dembinski the day after the car crash—hell, poor Jared was still fighting for his life at Jefferson Hospital in Philly—she hadn’t had a choice. Her boss was a tough son of a bitch and Taylor had to do the job. And sooner rather than later, too, or she’d likely find herself standing in the unemployment line.
Dembinski had, in fact, seemed impressed with her initiative, and had been working the phones with his fellow GM’s ever since. But nothing had yet to pan out. In every case, the other team had stuck to an asking price too steep for the Patriots to swallow.
“Dave, I think we have to go in another direction,” Taylor said as they headed for the Patriots’ spring training offices below the stadium.
“Okay, brain girl, that’s why I’m paying you the big bucks. Go ahead and dazzle me.” He unleashed a smarmy grin that made her want to roll her eyes.
Big bucks? Though Taylor’s salary was more than she’d made in her last job as a special assistant to the L.A. Dragons’ GM, the small salary bump in her Patriots’ contract hadn’t been the reason she’d left the Dragons. It was the opportunity. The opportunity of a lifetime, especially in a sport notoriously reluctant to incorporate women into management’s ranks.
But her boss was right about one thing—she’d better soon find a way to dazzle him. When he’d awarded her the position as assistant general manager, he’d told her they had the potential to make a hell of a team. She saw the game through cold statistics and data while he relied on accumulated knowledge and wisdom, along with a whole lot of gut instinct. He’d said that what he wanted from her was analysis. Hard numbers. Unforgiving stats and the tales about players and teams they could hide in their murky depths.
Those words had been music to her stat-loving ears, and now was the time to really start proving herself. “I’m already on it,” she said as Dembinski pushed open the door to his sparsely decorated subterranean lair and peeled off his jacket. “Thinking outside the box.”
“Okay, then. Sit down and we’ll kick your idea around.” He pointed to one of the chairs grouped opposite his desk where he liked to relax and shoot the shit with manager Jack Ault or some of the scouts.
Taylor shook her head. Even with her ball cap still on, her long, blond hair swirled around her shoulders. “I’ve still got some work to do before I’m comfortable coming to you. It’s not my style to throw ideas against the wall to see if something sticks,” she finished with a placating smile.
“Yeah? What have you got against good, old-fashioned brainstorming?” Dembinski sat down and tilted his executive chair back hard, almost over-balancing. “We could call the boys in and get their take right away on whatever you’ve got in mind. There’s no more time to screw around, Taylor.”
By the boys, Dembinski meant the seven or eight scouts who floated in and out of training camp all spring. Taylor had no desire to find herself on that particular hot seat, at least not yet. Most of the scouts seemed to regard her as either an uppity know-it-all or a nice piece of ass.
Or both—a truly irritating combination.
“Soon, okay?” she said. “Let me do my work first.”
He shrugged. “Just be quick. By morning, I’ll know if the trade feelers I’ve got out are still alive or gone completely dead. And the season opens next week, for God’s sake.”
“Then I’d better get moving, hadn’t I?” Taylor said, backing out of his office.
She refused to think about the consequences of failure, because her instincts screamed that this was her chance to brand a permanent, positive image of Taylor Page in the GM’s mind. An image not just of technical competence, but of guts, too. She had to hit this one out of the park because someday Dembinski would move on to greener pastures, or maybe even retire early from the game. And when that day came, Taylor had every intention of sliding right into the high-back leather chair her boss’s chino-covered ass was currently occupying. That had been her dream since she was a kid—to be the general manager of the Philadelphia Patriots.
Nothing on God’s earth would have made her dad prouder, and nothing could mean more to Taylor than finally achieving her long-sought, hard-won goal.
As she strode down the echoing concrete corridor to her hole-in-the-wall office, Taylor conjured up the image of a particular photo from the Pittsburgh Hornets’ media guide. The rugged face of Ryan Locke swam into her mind. Could Locke be the one? That red-hot iron she needed to brand her success into Dembinski’s mind? She thought so—no, she knew Locke could be the answer.
But if by some chance he wasn’t, it was all too likely that Taylor would be on the receiving end of that hot iron.