Curveball (The Philadelphia Patriots)

chapter 2



TAYLOR SETTLED INTO one of the plastic seats close down to the field, focusing on Ryan Locke as he stood with his back to her as he waited for his turn in the cage. Sweet Lord, but the man knew how to fill out a uniform. His broad, muscular shoulders tapered down to a narrow but solid waistline. Even under the layers of his gray uniform jersey and elbow-length black undershirt, Taylor could easily see his brawny biceps. His legs were strong and sturdy, but the furthest thing from coarse and his ass…well, she wasn’t quite sure what to say about that part of his anatomy other than that she wouldn’t mind digging her fingernails into that hard, sculpted flesh, especially when she had the man securely pinned between her thighs.

Letting out a little groan, Taylor dropped her forehead into her palm. God, since when had she start indulging in such trash talk, even silently? It had clearly been way too long since she’d had sex.

She’d seen Locke play dozens of times over the past few years, maybe even hundreds of times, both on TV and in the flesh. She had to admit to being something of a fan girl when it came to the hunky veteran outfielder. Locke had the kind of fluid swing and keen eye she admired, and had always played his position with both lethal grace and fiery determination. The fact that the man was also unbelievable eye candy had nothing to do with it—there were a lot of super-hot athletes on every team, including hers. She simply appreciated Locke’s undeniable skills on the field, and the gritty determination he’d demonstrated over the years.

The fact that he was unmarried—divorced, to be precise—had nothing to do with it, either, or so she tried to convince herself. No reason to give that fact a moment’s thought. She wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend, much less a husband. Personal entanglements were just that—entanglements. Quicksand traps that would suck a girl down until she finally realized she’d given up on her ambitions and dreams. Taylor had seen that happen too many times to count, and she had no intention of joining the ranks of women forced to give up their dreams.

As for achieving her dreams, she had a long way to go and personal entanglements were not part of the plan.

After the batting coach gave him a little slap on the back and moved away, Locke turned around, his eyes unexpectedly meeting Taylor’s dead-on. She mentally flinched but managed not to avert her eyes from his questioning gaze. His dark brows arched just a little, and his hard mouth curved up into a slowly heated smile. For some reason, she hadn’t expected him to look at her, and certainly not like that. He wasn’t exactly undressing her with his eyes, but damn, even a cloistered nun could have read that particular look.

She stiffened her back, suddenly realizing she’d returned his smile with a big, probably goofy-looking one of her own. She immediately dropped her eyes, telling herself it was merely a natural, instinctive response. Didn’t most people smile back when somebody gave them such an inviting response? Yeah, that was it. She was just being polite.

Polite and utterly ridiculous.

Trying not to feel like a complete fool, she raised her gaze back up. Locke inclined his head in a brief nod, almost as if he recognized who she was.

Strangely unnerved, Taylor flipped her sunglasses down off her head to cover her eyes. The day was overcast, so the guy probably thought she was some kind of weirdo, but the shades made her feel less vulnerable to his now laser-like focus.

Finally, with his smile turning perhaps a little sardonic, Locke returned his gaze to the batting cage. Taylor exhaled a deep sigh and retreated up the concrete stairs of the stadium and into the concourse. She’d find a less obvious place to scout Locke’s pre-game performance and take some time to think about what had just happened.



* * *



THOUGH THE HARD slider damn near kissed the outside corner of the plate, Ryan had it pegged all the way and mentally brushed away the tempting offering. Noah Cade was a craft veteran pitcher whose slider almost always broke sharply down and away at the last split second.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan watched the catcher, Nick Rome, inch his big glove ever so slightly to the left and hold it there. It was a ritual—a futile attempt to convince the umpire that the pitch really did skim the corner. But when the ump ignored the invariably useless gesture, Rome grunted and Ryan dropped his bat and trotted to first base. The base on balls made him feel only marginally better about his day—a day that he couldn’t help wishing he’d stayed in bed.

“Nice job, Locke, but I can’t f*ckin’ believe you laid off that one,” Ramiro Cruz said after Ryan planted the side of his left foot against the first base bag. “I know you got one hell of an eye, man, but that was some nasty shit Cade tossed you there. I’d have swung at it, for sure. And probably fallen on my f*ckin’ face, too.”

Ryan snorted. “Yeah, when he’s got that hard slider going, he’s damn tough to hit.” At that moment, Cade swiveled his head and gave him a hard look. Ryan figured it was one of grudging respect, but it had a major pissed-off edge to it, too. “Hey, Ramiro, that Corbin kid’s not cutting it, huh? You think they’ll pencil you in at first, now? For the season, I mean?”

Cruz had briefly passed through the Hornets’ organization a couple of years ago, one of a half-dozen teams who’d given him a shot in his peripatetic career. Ryan liked the veteran, and would be glad to see him get a legitimate shot at winning a starting job with the Patriots.

“F*ck, I doubt it,” Ramiro tossed off as he moved off the bag and took up his position between first and second, in defiance of the normal need to pay close attention to the baserunner. As usual, the Patriots weren’t making even the slightest effort to hold Ryan close to the bag. With his banged-up knees, the chances of him trying to steal second were exactly zero.

One on, one out, and Jimmy Colisanti, the weakest hitter in the Hornets’ lineup, was at the plate. Ryan looked over to the third base coach to get the signal. After a dozen or more taps and claps of misdirection for the other team, the coach flashed the hit and run sign. Ryan tensed up, but the call made sense since he was such a slow runner. He just hoped Colisanti got at least a piece of the ball, or he would be dead meat—out at second by a mile.

Pitching out of the stretch position, Cade turned his shoulder to take a disdainful glance toward first before starting his delivery. As soon as Ryan saw Cade was committed to throwing to the batter, he took off. As ordered, Colisanti swung hard at the low pitch, hitting a little grounder that managed to just squeeze by the pitcher’s outstretched glove. Running full out, Ryan could see the ball keep rolling toward the left side of the infield. By the time the shortstop had it in his glove and began his throw to second, Ryan’s aching legs had carried him close enough so he could slide to try to break up the double play. He aimed straight for the second baseman’s ankles as the guy came down onto the bag to force him out.

Sliding had never been his forte, but this time he got it exactly right. By the time the second sacker had gotten airborne in a desperate leap to avoid Ryan’s flying spikes, he was a split-second too late. Ryan’s slightly raised left foot connected solidly with the guy’s cleat, upending him just as he brought his arm forward to relay the ball to first base.

Ryan grabbed at the bag with his left hand as he slid by, the dirt flying up around him as his momentum carried him past the base. The breath rushed out of him when the second baseman’s knee slammed hard into his shoulder as Ryan slid underneath him. By the time he picked himself up, ignoring the pain, Jimmy Colisanti was trotting toward second base. The relay throw had sailed straight into the Hornets’ dugout. Happy that he’d broken up the double play, Ryan nodded at Jimmy as a few groans rose from the Patriot fans.

“Sweet slide, man,” Colisanti said with an ear-splitting grin.

“Bring the run home, now, Jimmy.”

Ryan gave a couple of desultory swipes at his uniform to knock off some of the dirt, then jogged back to the dugout, slapping high fives with his teammates there. He’d had a quality at-bat, drawing a walk against a pretty tough pitcher. And his hard, clean slide had resulted in an error and a chance for the Hornets to score the tying run. But it was spring training and nobody cared a whole lot about winning and losing these games, so Ryan knew the front office brass wouldn’t be all that impressed. And what he’d just done paled in importance when stacked up against the pitifully weak throw he’d made to the plate in the fifth—one so lame that it had allowed a run to score easily. While not officially an error on the scoresheet, that throw constituted a big, black mark just the same.

One he sure as hell didn’t need.

But he sucked it up anyway, smiling and joking with his teammates, while inside he tried not to stew about all the shit going wrong in his life.



* * *



TAYLOR HAD BARELY taken her eyes off Locke for the entire game. While her job often involved unpleasant tasks, watching him sure wasn’t one of them. Truly, the man was just freaking yummy, with his sexy, deep-set eyes, square jaw and jet black, close-cropped hair. A big guy—the media guide said six-four and two hundred fifteen pounds, which Taylor suspected was all well-toned muscle—Locke had spent years chasing down fly balls with the liquid grace of a panther. Until, that is, his knees started to go south on him.

Now, when she watched him laboring to cover left field, not getting to balls that he would have cruised to snag effortlessly in the past, she saw little trace of the fluid defender he once was. In fact, it was the consensus around the league that the Hornets had only kept Locke in the lineup last year because their number one outfield prospect had been deemed still not ready for prime time.

This year, Taylor strongly suspected it would be a different story. The understudy, a big, strong kid, had been getting as much playing time as Locke this spring, and he looked pretty damn ready now. Unless her radar had suddenly thrown a circuit breaker, Ryan Locke was about to become expendable to the Pittsburgh Hornets.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or another woman’s, in this case.

She had Locke’s stats down cold even before she spent more time reviewing his background last evening in her Clearwater hotel room. Numbers were Taylor’s best friends—probably because they were constant, unchanging, and entirely predictable. She’d always been able to remember numbers and manipulate them in her head with an ease that had made everyone from her high school math teachers to her Wharton School professors ask her why she hadn’t chosen to pursue a career in higher mathematics.

That career path had never been an option. By the time she was eleven years old, Taylor had known exactly what she wanted to do with her life, and it didn’t involve pure mathematics or physics or engineering or any of the other lofty professions she’s been encouraged to study for. She had a much more interesting way to use numbers—a way to help her fulfill her dream of one day managing a major league baseball team. And not just any major league baseball team. The Philadelphia Patriots of the National League, to be specific. Her father’s last team. The team she’d loved with a burning passion ever since she could remember.

She refocused her attention on the field. When Locke had laid off the vicious slider that had almost nicked the corner of the plate, Taylor hadn’t been surprised. Ryan Locke could do a lot of things well on the ball field, but one thing he did better than almost anyone was reading a pitch. He would consistently refuse to swing at balls off the plate, even balls that were so close that some of them would inevitably be miscalled as strikes by the umpire. In the game, that talent was called having a good eye. But it was also about having discipline and guts. If there was one thing players hated, it was getting called out on strikes—standing there like a dummy with your bat on your shoulder as the umpire punched you out. So, for most players, if a pitch was somewhere close to the plate they took a rip. Not Ryan Locke.

The key stat when it came to Locke, at least as far as Taylor was concerned, was his on-base percentage. With an OBA regularly north of .340, Locke had long been one of the better run producers in the National League. Even last year, playing hurt a lot of the time, he’d scraped together an OBA of .330 to go along with his fifteen homers and sixty-seven ribbies.

The man was slow as hell these days, but damned if he still didn’t have fire in his gut. He might have struggled to second on that hit and run play, but he gave the slide everything he had and not only prevented the double play but caused a error—an error that had ultimately led to the tying run being scored. Yes, he pretty much threw like crap, but did she care? If she had her way, he wouldn’t be throwing balls more than a few dozen feet from now on.

Only one question remained in Taylor’s mind. Could Ryan Locke play first base? More to the point. Would he?



* * *



THEY WERE LEAVING him out there for the whole game. That hadn’t happened even once this spring, and Ryan knew it wasn’t happening today for no reason. Everything that went down in spring training did so for a reason. All March, he’d been playing left field for three or four innings while the kid in line for his job played the rest of the game. Now, here it was the bottom of the ninth and he was standing in left, his knees aching and the backs of his legs still burning from that slide in the sixth. What the hell was going on?

The extra innings of work today could mean nothing good. In fact, it was a virtually unmistakable signal that he was on the trading block. That the Hornets were showcasing him for the scouts and maybe even the GM of another team that had no doubt travelled to Cal Torrance Field to check him out.

It had to happen, didn’t it? I can barely run and I can’t throw worth a damn anymore. And the kid’s ready—you’d have to be blind not to see it.

As much as Ryan knew this dark day could come, and in fact inevitably would come, he still rebelled against its early arrival. He’d given the Hornets seven great years. Okay, five great and two pretty decent—and he could still hit. He could still snap line drives into the gap. He could still bang out fifteen or more homers a season. And he could still get on base better than ninety per cent of the guys in the league. With those skills, at thirty-three he should have another five or six years left in the majors. Maybe more.

Should have. Those were the operative words. But who was he kidding? His days with the Hornets and the National League were close to done. What good was it to be a run producer when too many defensive lapses cost your team big time? His future—if he had a future in baseball—was as a designated hitter in the American League, and he was just thankful that the AL had adopted the DH format all those years ago. It was a Godsend for players like him—guys who could still hit but couldn’t play a defensive position on a regular basis anymore.

And after seven years in Pittsburgh, he’d finally put down some roots. Devon had too, telling him it felt like home. His daughter had gone through a rough time—a nightmare time—after her mother took off, and Devon’s short stint of living with Ryan’s mother had been a complete disaster. His daughter was still far from happy, though Ryan wondered if it was even possible for a fourteen year-old girl who’d been abandoned by her mom to be happy. Whenever she came home from boarding school she grumped at him, and he worried that she was putting only half an effort into her schoolwork. But at least she had some friends in Pittsburgh, along with a comfortable, familiar house and a housekeeper who she didn’t completely hate. Given what had happened in the past that seemed about as much as he could hope for.

And now it was looking like he’d have to uproot her again. What if the Hornets traded him to the Angels, the A’s, or the Mariners? Moving to the west coast would mean yanking Devon out of her Westchester County school. No way would he have her spending the school year on the other side of the continent from him. At least in Pittsburgh, it was less than an hour and a half flight home, so she could spend weekends with him whenever she could get away and he was playing a home series.

The thought of finding a new school for her—one she’d actually accept—made him sick to his stomach. She’d fought him tooth and nail last year over going to the highly-rated and expensive Westchester school in the first place, but she’d finally settled in. Round two wasn’t something he even wanted to think about.

As the Patriots’ shortstop slid into second, easily beating the catcher’s throw for a stolen base, Ryan gave himself a big mental kick in the ass for his daydreaming. The Patriots’ best hitter, Jake Miller, stood at the plate, a brawny powerhouse of muscle and talent. Even from left field, Ryan could see the grimly determined look on the big slugger’s face. It might only be an exhibition game, but there was still team and personal pride involved. And, in his case, he sure as hell didn’t want to look like a chump in front of a bunch of scouts.

Act like a veteran, Locke. Play as if your future—and your daughter’s—depends on the very next pitch.





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