chapter 13
RYAN HIT THE Patriots’ practice field just before ten o’clock, as Pedro Delgado had ordered yesterday when he finally gave him a break after a hard, two-hour workout before the game. This morning, Delgado leaned a hip on his big green fungo bat, his eyes locked on Ryan like a hawk circling high over its prey. So far, Ryan’s work with the infield coach had mostly been about positioning—where to station himself in a range of situations—and repetition. Today, though, Delgado had promised to put him through his paces on pivots and throws, both to second base and home. The Patriots’ backup shortstop and catcher were scheduled to show up in an hour to help him with that.
Ryan was determined to show the GM, the manager, the coaches and especially the players that he’d succeed in the transition to first base or die trying. He still didn’t like the trade, but what Ryan Locke liked or didn’t like didn’t matter a sweet damn anymore. What mattered was to repay the Patriots for the confidence they’d shown in him and, most importantly, to secure his financial future for Devon’s sake.
Devon. The kid had taken the news hard when he called her after school. He couldn’t blame her. She was obviously fragile as hell, even more so than when he’d taken her to Edenwood in the fall. And she didn’t need the added stress of losing the home in Pittsburgh she’d lived in for over seven years, even though absence seemed to have made the place a whole lot more important that it had been when she actually lived there full-time.
Devon’s disgust hadn’t even been mollified by the fact that he was going to Philadelphia, so her home would now be even closer to her school than before. When she hung up—too abruptly—he wasn’t sure she even wanted to come see him in New York, where the Patriots would be playing a weekend series against the Mets after opening at home against the Nationals. His offer to get her an adjoining room at the team hotel had been met with silence, and when he asked her if she wanted to come to Philly for a day to help him look for an apartment, she’d refused. Right then, Ryan’s chest had felt like somebody slammed a wrecking ball into it.
“Ready?” Delgado bellowed from near the plate, obviously noticing that Ryan’s mind had briefly wandered.
Ryan pounded the unfamiliar first baseman’s glove, wondering how long it would take until the big mitt felt anything other than weird with its rounded back edge and giant, single post pocket. “Go,” he shouted back.
Delgado stroked a hard ball that skipped across the infield grass well to Ryan’s right. Ryan didn’t dive for a whole lot of balls in left field anymore, but the instincts honed by more than twenty years of competitive baseball made him realize as soon as the ball left the bat that the only way he was going to get his glove on it was by a full-out flying lunge. His body reacted even before his brain fully processed that thought, because suddenly he was about to make impact with the dirt, his left arm extended full length and the glove stabbing backhand at where he anticipated the ball would be.
Whap. Thud. The ball slammed into the big pocket of his glove a millisecond before Ryan’s chest slammed even harder into the dirt.
“Nice.” Delgado’s voice seemed far away as Ryan pushed himself up on his knees and then slowly upright. “Very nice. You okay, man?”
Ryan scrambled up, rolled the ball back toward Delgado and then gave his uniform a couple of quick, hard swipes to knock off some of the dirt. “You could try to ease me in a little, dude,” he responded in a wry voice.
The big man nodded. “Yeah, that one was a little off. But, hey, I don’t expect you to be a hero chasing shit like that. Just let it go next time, for Christ’s sake. It’s just practice.”
Yeah, but I’ll bet you liked that hustle, didn’t you?
“Instinct,” Ryan said with a shrug. “I’m not sure I could have gotten up and made the throw, though. I’m not used to landing on this brick-hard dirt. It makes me appreciate the outfield grass.” He just thanked God that he’d mostly missed the Astro Turf era, when synthetic surfaces at the multipurpose stadiums built in the seventies were murder on outfielders’ bodies.
Ryan flicked a glance into the stands to his left. He realized he’d been doing that regularly both at practice yesterday and during the game. It was almost as if he expected Taylor to somehow materialize there, in the exact same spot where she’d first eyed him waiting for his turn in the batting cage. He wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t get the woman off his mind—maybe because it felt like she’d knifed him in the heart. As he continued to mull over what she’d done through the rest of the long day and night, he was glad she’d gone back to Philadelphia. If he’d met up with her yesterday, he would definitely have said stuff so over the top that it would probably have been impossible to take back. And that wouldn’t have been such a smart idea, since alienating the assistant general manager—and probably Dembinski, too, in the process—wouldn’t have been the best career move for a player skirting with marginal status.
But one way or the other, as soon as Taylor got back to Clearwater, they were going to have it out. Ryan had cooled down in the meantime, but he still wanted answers. He deserved answers, especially because what she’d done made no sense. Why would she manipulate him like that when it was obvious she’d eventually get caught out? Why trade for a player like him, and then piss him off in the process? If Ryan hadn’t been in such a rock and a hard place position, he would have refused the trade to the Patriots solely on the basis that the AGM had been screwing with him—both literally and figuratively. Taylor was far from stupid, so she had to know what consequences would likely flow from her actions.
He suspected she might be in for a rough ride from somebody other than him, too. Dembinski had schooled his features to try to mask his reaction to Ryan’s question about Taylor, but there was no doubt it had hit him hard. His gut told him at that same moment that she’d been operating on her own, not on orders from her boss. And Dave Dembinski did not strike Ryan as the kind of guy that liked his staff to operate as free spirits. Everything he’d ever heard about the man indicated exactly the opposite.
Taylor had taken a flyer on Ryan, and had succeeded in bringing him over to the Patriots. And instead of balking at the trade, he’d committed to busting his ass to make it a success. So, in that sense, she’d scored a personal victory, and maybe that was because she’d figured out what he was all about, thanks to all the time they’d spent together and the way he’d opened himself up to her. She might wind up paying a price for her little gambit, though, if Ryan was any judge of her boss’s reaction. Would it be worth it to her? Was she so calculating that she’d weighed the risks and rewards and decided to go for it?
“Jesus, are you still with me, Locke? You look like you’re on some other planet.” Delgado’s booming voice crashed through Ryan’s brief reverie like a sledgehammer.
Jesus, stop thinking about the damn woman and get your ass in the game. He nodded apologetically at Delgado, who was tossing a ball up and down impatiently.
“Sorry. Hit away,” Ryan said, dropping into a crouch.
* * *
“HI, GUYS,” TAYLOR said as she opened the door to the GM’s suite. Dembinski had his back to her, looking down onto the field where the Mets and Patriots were battling it out. Rick Clark was with him, and only Clark swiveled his head to acknowledge her presence. Her fellow AGM’s initial frown quickly changed into what Taylor thought was an embarrassing smile as he got up from his chair.
“Hope your mom’s doing okay, Taylor.” Clark glanced down at Dembinski, who still hadn’t turned around. “Dave, I’ve got some calls to make, so I think I’ll head back downstairs.”
Not waiting for a response, he brushed by Taylor so quickly that she wondered if a nest of fire ants had crawled into his underwear.
Taylor sat down in the chair Clark had just vacated. Dembinski stared straight ahead through the glass, still not looking at her, and Taylor’s stomach knotted even tighter. She’d raced back down from Philadelphia after taking her mother to an early breakfast at her favorite diner, and every minute on the plane and in the cab from Tampa International had been torture. She had a pretty good idea why her boss appeared ready to tee off on her.
“How’s she doing?” Dembinski finally said, eyes still fixed firmly on the action below.
Taylor stared straight ahead, too, but didn’t register anything going on down on the field. “Between my sister-in-law and me, we were able to deal with the immediate issues.”
Dembinski gave a little nod as he stroked his chin. “Yeah, well, I guess I was a little hasty telling you to hightail it back here.”
Now you tell me. She stayed silent. He’d get to the point in his own time and own way.
“I’ve had a day to calm down,” he continued.
Taylor couldn’t stand the suspense. She inhaled a deep breath as silently as she could manage and said, “Talk to me, Dave.”
She wasn’t going to start apologizing until she heard what he had to say.
He finally turned his body so he gazed directly into her eyes. “You have to know what this is about, Taylor, and I gotta tell you, it damn near made me fall flat on the floor when Locke told me what was going on between the two of you.”
Taylor gulped. She’d figured Ryan must have said something about what they’d been up to. She’d known deep down that it couldn’t be anything else that had suddenly pushed Dembinski off the rails. Taylor only hoped Ryan hadn’t told him everything. “What exactly did he tell you?”
Dembinski shook his head. “No, I want you to tell me exactly what you did, and then I want you to explain why in terms a simple guy like me can understand, because I’m f*cking mystified.” He gave his head what looked like a regretful shake. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to fire you if you come clean.”
Taylor realized she’d been holding her breath, and she let out a little inaudible sigh.
“Especially not after Locke socked that two-run double last inning,” Dembinski added. “He’s looking pretty good out there at first, too.”
Some of the tension flowed out of Taylor’s rigid shoulders and clenched hands. Getting fired hadn’t really been on her radar screen. No matter what she’d done, she figured Dembinski would still think highly enough of her ability to give her a chance to atone for whatever sin he thought she’d committed. But, at the very least, she was sure she’d let him down badly.
She decided to tell him the whole story—at least an edited version. “It all started when I bumped into Joe Ridge here at the stadium a few days ago,” she said, smoothing her hands over her simple skirt of blue cotton. “Joe invited me to dinner—you know we’re old friends from the Dragons. Locke was there at the same time, and he came over to our table as Joe and I were finishing up. After Joe left for a meeting, Locke and I wound up talking for a while.”
“Yeah, and this happened right after you’d hit me with your idea of trading for him,” Dembinski said skeptically.
Taylor sighed. “Yes.” Don’t elaborate any more than you have to.
“Go on.”
“We talked about a lot of things. He said he thought he was being showcased for a trade. I probed a little about where he might want to go if a trade were to happen. Nothing earth-shattering.”
“What else?”
“The next day, I bumped into him in the stadium parking lot. Maybe he’d been waiting for me. I don’t know. Anyway, he asked if I’d like to have dinner with him.”
“And you obviously agreed.” Dembinski frowned.
“I guess it was a mistake, considering I was suggesting we trade for him.” She shrugged. “Honestly, Dave, the truth is that I just wanted to see him again. We’d kind of hit it off the evening before.”
“Did you give him any indication that we might be interested in trading for him?”
She shook her head. “No. He was a little suspicious, but I certainly didn’t say anything to confirm that.”
“Keep going.” Now his eyes bored into hers.
“Well, the night before last, he called me and said he’d just had a really upsetting conversation with his daughter in New York and needed to talk to someone. The way he sounded, I didn’t think I could say no. So, we had a few drinks and talked.”
Sorry, but I’m not going to mention that I had the best sex of my life, too.
“Then I left for Philly the next morning, and we haven’t spoken since,” she concluded.
Dembinski nodded, but showed little reaction. “Let me ask you this. Are you planning on seeing Locke again? Socially, I mean, if I’m not being clear enough.”
That was not what Taylor had expected to hear. She rolled her lips nervously as she thought about her answer. What did Dembinski want her to say? Obviously, he would expect her to not see Ryan again, wouldn’t he? In any case, the way he’d phrased the question didn’t make sense. How could she plan on seeing Ryan again, even if she wanted to take that risk? She could plan until the cows came home, but the chances of Ryan wanting to be with her again after this seemed more remote than the Cubs winning the World Series anytime soon.
She decided to try an oblique response instead of giving him a direct answer. “Do you really think he’d want to see me again socially after all this?” She forced a smile. “I’d imagine he must have been more than a little pissed off when he talked to you.”
“You think?” Dembinski said, curling his lips.
Taylor flinched but didn’t respond. She could imagine how another guy would react to being told something like that.
“So, are you going to answer the question?” He wasn’t letting her off the hook.
What the hell—you’ve shaded the truth enough, Taylor. Time to let the chips fall.
“As far as I’m concerned it’s a hypothetical question. But I’ll tell you this. Yes, I would like to see Ryan again, but it’s not going to happen. I’m sure he thinks of me as swamp life right about now.”
Dembinski gave her a slow smile. “Well, at least you didn’t try to tell me that it’s none of my f*cking business. And, in one sense, it isn’t. But you two are on the same team now, and if I’m reading you right, that guy’s gotten to you.” His expression hardened. “Shit, Taylor, you know damn well how problematic it would be to get involved with a player.”
Taylor hung her head instinctively. “Of course. I told him that, too. Believe me.”
Too bad you couldn’t follow through on it.
“Then enough said on that for now. The most important thing I’m going to say to you is this.” Dembinski fixed her with a gaze that gave her a new definition of steely. “I don’t want you to ever go free agent like that on me again, you hear me? When you do anything—and I mean anything—that impacts the Philadelphia Patriots, I need to know about it, and not days after the fact, either. And I sure as hell don’t want to have to hear about it from goddamn Ryan Locke, or anybody else other than you. Are we perfectly clear?”
Taylor swallowed hard but looked him straight in the eye. “Crystal clear, Dave. Absolutely.”
“Good. Now, get the hell out of here.”
Though Taylor didn’t appreciate the abrupt dismissal, she counted herself lucky to be exiting the room with her head still attached to her shoulders. She strode quickly to the door and opened it.
“And Taylor?” Dembinski said without turning around. “You need to realize that it’s really lucky for you that this trade seems to be working out.”
Shuddering, Taylor closed the door behind her.