Damn it, this was not how I wanted to spend my morning. Or any morning. And yet I stepped into her tiny closet of an office and was immediately assaulted by pictures of me. Holy moly, not just the calendar, but my baseball card blown up ten times its normal size, plus what looked like every article that had ever been written about me—all the way back to the minors! And behind it, almost obscured by all the crap, sat Gia busily scrawling on a list.
WTF?
“Stalker much?” I asked.
She snorted without looking up. “Don’t flatter yourself. This is my job. Plus, your…publicist sent most of this stuff. Including that…” She waved behind me, and I turned around to confront a life-size cardboard cut-out of myself, one with that stupid “gotcha” expression on my face. “I’m giving that to the pitchers for target practice,” she said. “How long do you think your face will last?”
Less than five seconds.
“My sister sent this stuff?”
“She has a clipping service for this pile.” She gestured to it with her manicured nails. Except I noticed two of her nails were chipped and the others were trimmed short. Somehow that made me like her more. “Giveaways are over there.” She pointed to a large, loaded plastic laundry basket. “And that cut-out? My guess is that it was a freebie from a printing company trying to interest her in buying a few thousand.”
I stared at it in horror. “She wouldn’t.”
“She’s trying to get the Bobcats to pay for it.”
“Don’t.”
“Wasn’t planning on it. Though if the pitchers take up a collection and do it themselves, that’s not my fault.”
I snorted. Knowing them, that was entirely possible. Meanwhile, I maneuvered around a pile of promotional jerseys, a huge box of baseballs, and a small one of Bobcats earrings in order to sit in the one tiny chair opposite her desk. “Okay. Let’s make this quick. What have you got?”
She looked up and smiled at me.
“Pitching contests at youth leagues throughout the state. It’d be a cardboard cut-out like that, only of you squatting as if to catch the ball. Kids would have to throw it through the hole in your middle. You’d have to make personal appearances at as many of them as we can manage. The travel might be a killer.”
Another cut-out of me? I shuddered in horror. But even worse was the idea of traveling all around the state doing appearances when I should be here, practicing with my team. And nursing my knees.
“Pass.”
“Celebrity bachelor contest.”
“Double pass.”
“That was your…publicist’s idea.”
“My sister. You can say it. She’s my sister, and she’s been handling my publicity since I was in the minors. She’s done a good job.”
She nodded. “I never said she hadn’t. But those bachelor contests are a nightmare to put on and never bring in as much money as they need to.”
I’d let her think that was why I turned it down. The truth was, I’d done a few of these things earlier in my career, thanks to Sophia, and the dates had been hideous. The women had fixated on their idea of who I was. They wanted calendar Connor, who was suave and sexy. Only that was the exact opposite of the real me.
“What else have you got?” I asked as I looked at my watch. Practice was about to start, and I wanted to be out on the field with my team.
She noticed my impatience but, true to form, kept her smile firmly in place. Sort of like me during an interview. Though, I had to admit, her smile looked a lot more natural than mine. And pretty. And it had me remembering what it was like to kiss those lips. To hold the soft shape of her head in my hands as I covered her mouth with mine. Or to just look into her expressive brown eyes that shone with intelligence. And here I was again, wanting to shake her. She was way too smart and beautiful to be in this line of work. I knew she’d had a rough childhood. Rumor had it she’d lived on the streets for a while before being adopted by her foster family. But that just proved my point. She was smart, determined, and would be dynamite at any career she chose. She ought to be contributing to society somehow, as a talented lawyer or whip-smart scientist. Anything but someone who created fantasies for public consumption.
“Tour with a charity,” she said. “Any charity, you just have to pick it.”
Now that was intriguing, and I leaned forward. “Anything I want?”
“Within reason, of course. But yeah.” Then, before I could say anything, she raised up a finger. “But it would require a lot of time and coordination. And again, you’d be doing a bunch of public appearances.”
I grimaced. “I can’t travel that much. Not during the season.” And probably not afterward. That was my rest and rehab time.
She nodded as if she expected that response. “Is ‘no travel’ a hard and fast rule?”
“Yes.”
