“Of course, Daddy,” she said quickly. “I’m just trying to be encouraging.”
Here it was, the classic dilemma. Would I be swayed by the carrot or the stick? Except in my case, they were both sticks. I didn’t want to get close to either one of them. Fortunately for me, that brought all my wandering attention back to my purpose. Sure, I still worried about Heidi, but I’d sworn years ago to not let anything interfere with baseball. It was the real secret to my success, and now I recommitted to it.
I gave both DeLuces a respectful nod and headed back to the batting cage. On the way, I passed our manager and under my breath, I muttered, “I’m under control now, Coach. Thanks.”
He grunted, which was baseball speak for “prove it.” So I did.
I grabbed my bat and stepped up to the plate. I noticed pretty quick that Coach wasn’t the only one watching. About half the team had stopped what they were doing to judge me. The other half was finishing their work while keeping an eye cocked in my direction. And then there was Brittany, stepping up right in my line of vision. Her blond hair was blowing in the breeze and she’d angled herself so the full length of her legs were in view just above the fencing.
Perfect. Because I really didn’t want to see that. Which meant I swung my gaze to the white ball held in the pitcher’s hand. My whole world narrowed to the bat in my hands and the ground beneath my feet as I lined myself up. Everything else faded away.
There!
I saw the baseball speeding toward me. A white explosion of movement. My body reacted before my mind said anything. It flowed toward the white dot in the way that Niagara Falls flows to the basin below. I was smooth and inevitable, and with enough force to smash a Mack Truck.
Homer.
In the background, I heard Brittany squeal and clap her hands in delight. I saw, more than heard, the manager’s grunt of approval. And all around the field, my teammates nodded or spit according to their disposition. None of that mattered.
Inside, I feltright. Everything was aligned again. I’d come back home to baseball and Heidi was back in my life. Those were good things, even if all the details weren’t sorted out. It was all about patience. That’s what I’d told Heidi on Saturday, and that’s what I would stick with.
Patience. So I relaxed back into my stance and waited for the pitch to be perfect. And it was. I hit it with perfect timing. And I did it again and again. I hit so well that even the batting coach was impressed, and he rarely offered anything but corrections. By the end of the day, I went home tired and happy. The mood lasted right up until I checked my new secret email address for messages.
Not one.
Heidi hadn’t responded.
Suddenly, the world was dark, and I was despondent.
So much for my newfoundrightnesswith the world. Hell. I had to find her before depression crept into my life or I was in trouble for sure.
I didn’t find her for two more days, and even then, I wasn’t certain. It came in a message from my mother about a Chinese woman reporter who was poking around town asking questions about me. There were lots of reporters in the world, many of them Asian, but I knew in my heart it was Heidi. What was she doing back in Nebraska? Was she after a story, even though she’d promised? If it wasn’t for the fact that we were just starting a three-game series against the White Sox, I would have hopped in my car and driven straight home. But we were in Chicago and I had to focus.
Fortunately, I had a plan.
Chapter Eleven
Heidi
The third game, Bobcats versus White Sox, was coming to an end as I sipped my beer at the local sports bar in Rob’s hometown. My head was pounding from the noise and the discussions about their hometown hero. Rob had not done well in the first game of the series, only hitting a single and the Bobcats had lost. But then something fired him up. Game two featured a couple of doubles from Rob that brought his teammates home for a 4–1 win. Game three had started out grimly, with no one on base when Rob came up to the plate. Then Brittany DeLuce had “accidentally” lost her scarf over the field. Everything came to a stop when Rob caught it, held it aloft with his thousand-watt smile, then passed it over to the umpire. The camera had loved the shot of the beautiful blonde with raspberry lips and impressive cleavage as she blushed prettily. Then Rob had hit a home run and speculation ran rampant.
Everyone was sure he was sleeping with the boss’s daughter, and I had to look away rather than watch him grin as he rounded the bases. I remembered being the object of that smile, and it hurt to see him give it to a woman so much prettier than me. Fortunately, the moment I turned away from the TV, I noticed another person grumbling into his beer. A sour-faced lumberjack of a man, who scowled at the screen as fiercely as I’d been doing a moment ago.
Could this be the mysterious Tommy who had reason to hate Rob? I sure hoped so, because the last few days had been filled with glory stories about their hometown boy, so rosy that they couldn’t possibly be true. No one was that wholesome or talented. And yet every soul in Broken Bow, Nebraska, had a tale about Rob, of when he’d saved their cat or done chores for them when someone was ill. And that was nothing compared to the string of women who claimed to have had a hot moment with the heavy hitter. Most only claimed a kiss or three, but others were more graphic and a thousand times more glowing. That, unfortunately, was something I could relate to. Rob was nothing if not skilled in bed.
I moved closer to the grumbling man and tried to think of a smooth way to approach him. Only I didn’t need subtlety. I just needed to be female. Once the cheers had died down, the man looked around the bar and landed on me.
“Hey good looking, you hate baseball as much as I do?”
I smiled and shrugged. “Not my favorite sport. You?”
“I like the sport. It’s the people I hate.”
That sounded promising. “Mind if I join you?” The bar was crowded, but his small table was deserted except for him. Apparently, no one liked a guy who dissed the hometown hero.
He kicked a chair closer to me. Classy—not. And then our voices were drowned out by a roar of approval from the crowd. It was the seventh inning stretch, and the cameras were focused on Rob and Brittany as she tied her scarf around his bat. Her blond hair was blowing artfully back from her face as she leaned over…and over…and over. Damn, the camera did love her cleavage as she planted a big kiss on Rob’s cheek.
He grinned for the cameras, but I could see a note of strain around his eyes. I already knew that he found all the media attention stressful, but it was part of his job. I kept searching his face, hoping for a telltale sign that he didn’t feel the same way about the bleached blonde as he did for me. Something—anything—that said, I was special to him.
