“Strike one,” the umpire huffed after I blew a fastball by Grant Newman. He was so frozen he didn’t swing, even though it was right down the middle. I couldn’t help but smirk. I loved striking out this son-of-a-bitch more than anyone in the world.

There was a lot of hullaballoo surrounding us because we were both number one draft picks. Personally, I wouldn’t have even taken the guy in the tenth round. I didn’t understand how he was supposedly in the running for Rookie of the Year. He was a class-A phony.

Today, I was only half focused on Grant, and I still had his number. Even during a Tuesday afternoon game in an anticipated match-up against the New Jersey Bulldogs, my mind kept wandering to a certain girl. She’d held her own in a locker room full of guys like she’d done it a hundred times, and I couldn’t get her out of my head. Sometimes, you just know when there’s a spark with someone. And with Andrea Diggers, I’d felt this incredible chemistry. I couldn’t define it, even as I fought it a little. I even found her business-focused emails cute. Was it pheromones? Chemicals in the air? She was beautiful, yet delicate and strong. I truly didn’t understand how a girl so tough on the field could be so feminine and graceful off it. When I’d seen her from behind in the locker room, it was everything I could do to keep myself from springing an insta-boner. I mean, I didn’t care that she saw me naked, but it was a little early in our relationship for me to show her the full package.

Then she’d turned me down. That was an anomaly that had stuck with me. Every night I went out in the city, I literally had girls walking up to me, handing me their phone numbers. And yet, Andrea was all I could think about, even when I shouldn’t be, like in the middle of a game. I smirked, thinking that not one person in the crowd of forty thousand would be able to imagine the dirty thoughts swimming in my mind.

Dwayne, my catcher, threw the ball back to me, and my focus immediately zeroed in on the asshole next to him eying me and attempting the most menacing snarl he could muster. Personally, I thought he looked like Pudge from The Sandlot. I wiped the sweat from my brow and stared him down.

Newman was a rookie and a decent talent, that was sure, but he was also a punk-ass pretty boy who didn’t give a shit about his teammates. He was all about stat-padding, swinging for the fences even in situations where that was the last thing he should have been doing. Fuck, I might be a lot of things, but every single one of my teammates was like a brother to me. I had their backs, and they all knew it.

I nodded at Dwayne’s signal and threw the next pitch. As I expected, Newman whiffed badly on a curveball that was low and outside. The crowd cheered.

“You better wipe that smirk off your face,” Newman shouted at me. He kicked a little dirt toward my catcher in a gesture that got my adrenaline rocking.

What a bitch.

I sneered at him. He shouldn’t be talking shit after I just put two strikes past him.

“If you can actually hit a ball, Newman, I might consider it,” I shouted back, taking a few steps forward as Dwayne tossed the ball back to me. I caught it, walked back to the mound, and stared Newman down again.

He had a classic swollen body type; he had power, but not much skill. Me, I wasn’t the most jacked guy on the team by any stretch of the imagination. I wasn’t all ‘roided up like some of these guys, trying to overcompensate. My workout plan was about being long, lean, and flexible, not about bench pressing a million fucking pounds.

Apparently, what I was doing was working, because the next pitch I threw was a cutter that made Newman look like a blind man trying to swing at a fastball. The pitch was up and in, and he missed it by at least a foot. He swung so hard he probably altered the flight patterns of the geese flying overhead.

Once again, I took a few steps forward so he could hear me perfectly. “Christ, Newman, you ever hit a ball? I know you just graduated from tee-ball recently, but I think even my sister would have hit one by now. Maybe if I threw it in slo-mo, you’d have better luck?”

I gave a wink as Dwayne started whooping and laughing his ass off. Even the umpire couldn’t resist a cough-laugh from behind his mask, but he made a warning gesture for me to stop delaying.

Newman’s expression was priceless. “All right, that’s fucking it!” he screamed, definitely on the verge of a ‘roid rage.

“Come and get me, you little bitch,” I taunted, unimpressed.

He threw his bat down and rushed the mound.

The crowd roared as he neared me, dukes up like he was about to throw down. Dwayne and the umpire were right behind him. In my peripheral vision, I could see the other umpires and the rest of the team on the field rushing toward us.

“You’re going down, you smug prick,” he growled. He attempted to punch me, but I jumped out of the way at the last second and used his own momentum to push him into the dirt on the mound, belly first.

The crowd exploded. I jumped on top of him for a second and pushed his face in the dirt.

Seconds later, the benches cleared, and our teams were mixing it up. Dwayne pulled me off Newman.

“Jesus, man, you didn’t have to kill him, just dodge him.” Dwayne shook his head at me.

“That motherfucker had it coming.” If we weren’t on the field, I would have done a lot more than just shove his face in the ground.

I wasn’t too surprised when the umpire kicked me out of the game. As I walked off the field, I looked over at the Jaguars’ dugout, at my teammates having a good laugh and still settling down to finish the game. I didn’t overthink the looks from the coaches, whose expressions were stark and glaring. I shrugged it off, the adrenaline still pumping through me. The crowd was still going wild, the replay running on the jumbotron in case anyone missed it.

I headed back through the tunnel leading into the locker room. Fans reached down, trying to get me to sign stuff or shout at me, but I kept my head down and forward. Whatever. Fuck it, we already had a 7-0 lead. Granted, it was the bottom of the sixth and there was a lot of game left, but we had the best record in our division. Even if we lost, the Jaguars would still be on top.

Because I felt like it, I protested in my pitching coach’s office just inside the locker room, but Don wasn’t buying it as I pleaded my case. He’d been waiting for me, sitting on one of the plastic chairs along the wall, all quiet-like and hands rolling up the bill of his ball cap when I’d walked past. I should have seen it as the warning it was.

“Oh come on, Don!” I said, rolling my eyes. Why was everyone freaking out? Fights in a game weren’t unusual. “Newman was being an asshat! He kept kicking dirt at Dwayne. And he’s the one that charged me! What was I supposed to do, just stand there and take it like his bitch?”

Don did not see eye to eye with me, which was surprising because he was more of an old-school guy, and usually those types were all about a good scrap once in a while.

“Violence is never the answer,” he said, almost like he’d read it off a note card.

“Who are you, Don? Buddha? I mean, shit, the guy outweighs me by like forty pounds. If Newman had connected, he could have done damage. What I did out there was self-defense.”

Don massaged his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. God love him, he wanted to side with me, but something was holding him back.

“Coach—”

“Goddammit Jake!” he exploded, his tanned face getting red. “You don’t get it, do you? You’re on thin fucking ice! You could be up for a big suspension. Think about the bigger picture for once. Lost endorsements. Yerac could toss you on your ass, and no one wants a thug ballplayer anymore. You gotta clean up your act! You gotta stop with these antics, reacting before you think shit through. Be the better man. Newman is a rookie, he doesn’t know any better. You’re in your fourth year in the big leagues now.”

I rolled my eyes again, because this was such bullshit. For a second I thought about Tate and what he’d said last Saturday. I thought about why Andrea was brought in—to clean up my act. Because I was perceived as a…thug? I shrugged that off, too. “ I’d rather have my honor than a bucket of money any day. And Newman deserved a lot worse than some dirt in his face. Maybe he’ll see the ball better next time.” Just saying his name ratcheted up my anger. “He’s the dirty player, the real thug, and we all know it. Admit it.”

“You just refuse to get it, Jake. And that’ll be your downfall.” Don shook his head and pointed at the door without even looking at me. “Get out of my office.”

I sighed and left. He knew the game well, but Don didn’t always back his players, and I couldn’t understand it. Every single one of the other twenty-four players in the locker room knew I had their backs. The baseball season was a 162-game war, and if I wasn’t loyal to them, then I was nothing. Disrespecting one of them was the same as disrespecting me.

One of the things I always promised myself was that’d I’d be myself and not give a shit about the opinions of others. I am who I am. Could I control my image a little better? Yeah, I could, but why did people have to take everything I did out of context? I did drink, but I didn’t get out-of-control drunk. I knew my limits, especially if I had practice or a game the next day. My job wasn’t a job—I loved baseball with all my heart, but not much else outside of it. The press, the image, being put into a box. Baseball was my life. It was all I had. It was who I was. Anyone taking that away from me, threatening that, well, they were the real enemy.

Since I’d been kicked out in the sixth inning, I had another hour to kill before the game was over. I took off my baseball uniform and threw on some shorts and a tank to blow off some steam in the weight room. Often, on my pitching days, I worked legs after the game was over. Today, I’d just take care of that early.

The weight room was completely empty, so I cranked my favorite AC/DC mix before I set up the squat rack. Every once in a while, I checked how we were doing on one of the flat-screens. Hugo, one of our best relief pitchers, was doing rather well, and that was reassuring. He wasn’t always the most consistent, but he was on fire tonight.

Forty-five minutes later, I was about halfway through my leg routine. I was singing, “I’m on the Highway to Hell,” at the top of my lungs when I heard the door at the other end of the room bang shut. I looked over, but didn’t see anything. That’s when I heard a voice behind me that made the blood rush straight to one particular piece of my anatomy.

“Hello Jake.”

Her voice was smooth, sweet, and feminine. And there was that slight Southern drawl that she was trying to hide. I couldn’t help but smile, just hearing her voice.

I had no idea why she brought it out of me.

Then I turned around and I remembered.

Just looking at her, you could tell that she wasn’t your average pushover. Her smile had a kind of wry stylishness to it. Her weight was shifted to one side. Today she had on a white blouse and tight gray dress pants that hugged her long legs all the way up to her hips.

I immediately thought about all the dirty things I would do with her if I got her in bed.

This is pretty cocky to admit, but most girls basically succumbed to my will. Andrea, though—if our first meeting was any indication—was going to be a challenge.

Lucky for me, I loved a good challenge.

“Well hey there, Diggs.” I set the weight back on the squat rack and looked at her. “Looking to get a workout in? Those pants might be a little hard to maneuver in, but I think I have some extra clothes you might be able to wear.”

I liked that Andrea was tall. I’m a big guy, and it was nice to be around a woman with height so I didn’t feel like I would crush her. I took in her work outfit and wished she were in my workout clothes. Sweating beside her would be interesting.

“I’m good, thanks.” She gave me a fleeting smile and shifted her weight over to one of her hips so that her ass kind of stuck out to one side. She did it so innocently, I couldn’t tell if she was an old hand at positioning her body just so that men would drool over her, or if she had no idea at all what she was doing.

“You sure? I’m really good at designing workouts. We could do our workout...together.”

And I can think of an extremely fun workout you might like—good for the hips.

I gave her my most charming smile, but like Don, she wasn’t buying it.

I grabbed my towel and took a few steps toward her. The closer I got, the more she radiated beauty. She had the top button of her blouse strategically unbuttoned, almost begging me to stare at her boobs.

Luckily, checking out girls without being too blatant was one of my strong suits.

She cocked her cute little head. “Jake, you know why I’m here. Not five minutes after I arrived at the ballpark and took my seat, you were out in the middle of the field fighting.”

I chuckled. “Fighting? That wasn’t a fight. If I were fighting, he’d be in the hospital. That was me being nice.”

She rolled her eyes. “The commissioner just doled out a five-game suspension. Part of the non-violent image the League is trying to portray. And you shoving Newman’s head into the dirt and screaming is already a viral YouTube video with over two millions hits. Is this starting to get real for you, Napleton?”

A five-game suspension? Our series with the Bulldogs was just starting. We had a couple more games before they finally went back to Jersey. And while not seeing Newman’s ugly face for a whole week was very appealing, I lived for the game. Winning wasn’t everything, but I sure didn’t mind it. More to the point, I played because there was nothing better than being on that mound and shutting out the other team. There was no bigger rush, and having that taken away from me for some bullshit reason was unacceptable.

“There’s only a month and a half of the regular season left until the World Series. I need to keep the momentum going, stay in the dugout with the team. We have to appeal this.”

“I would advise against that. Eight’s the standard these days, no matter how rough the fight, so you got lucky, and there’s no fine. You take it, show the commissioner, your coaches, the public, that you knew you were wrong and that you don’t actually condone violence, and it’ll go a long way,” she said, then lowered her voice. “And while I also don’t encourage that kind of inappropriate behavior, that piece of…junk…I can admit, had it coming.”

“Piece of junk,” I echoed, a smile returning to my face. “You really have one of the cleanest mouths of anyone who has ever stepped foot in this locker room, you know that?”

“What can I say? I’m a small-town Tennessee girl.”

She twirled one of her brown locks around two of her fingers, but kept her smile on the wrong side of businesslike.

Did she know how frickin’ hot she was? The damn temptress.

“Do small-town Tennessee girls go out to dinner with baseball players?” I asked, taking a step toward her, then another, like an involuntary reflex.

“That depends, is this work or pleasure?” she asked, biting her lower lip and still doing that hair twirling thing that had me completely hypnotized.

While Andrea had a nice body and stellar legs, I couldn’t stop looking at her blue eyes, which were almost the color of the sea. “For me, definitely pleasure…”

“Jake.” She suddenly went serious, dropping her hand to her hip and glaring at me. I realized that she was totally playing me. Damn if I wasn’t a little impressed. “We’re talking business, not pleasure. I said it the other night, and I’ll say it again: I don’t date players. That question was a test, and you failed. Again.”

“Well I’m suspended. So for a few days, I’m technically not a player.” I grinned at my own impeccable logic. At least I’d found a silver lining and a distraction for a few days, because watching the games without being in the dugout was going to be painful.

She, on the other hand, rolled her eyes, but I knew she was about to give in. They always did.

“If dinner is the only way I can consult with you, fine.”

“So I’ll pick you up tonight at eight?” I grinned, victorious.

“Ha-ha. I’ll meet you there. Give me the place.”

I thought about it for a second. Women were impressed with fancy, pretentious places, right? Andrea was likely no different. Small-town girl like her in the big city, I’d get her in bed in no time flat. “How about the Marseille Club?”

She raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “The Marseille Club? For our casual client dinner, you’re taking us to the most expensive restaurant in the city?”

Shit. Her frown was not encouraging. So I smiled broadly. “Don’t worry, it’s on me. I won’t blow up your expense account.”

Andrea looked down at the phone she’d had tucked in her pants and pulled it out, typing quickly. Penciling me in? “Fine. I still don’t understand why you’re so resistant. I’m here to help you. I’m not your enemy,” she said, very seriously. She crossed her arms under her breasts. Eyes on her face, man, pretend you care about talking business.

“Right, sure, okay,” I said.

Another sigh and shake of her head. “If you don’t step up your reputation, you’re effed.”

I stared at her, fighting back a grin. “Effed? Do you mean I’m fucked?” I rephrased.

“Like I said, you’re effed.”

I did smile then. “Fucked. You can’t say it, can you?”

Her eyes narrowed on me. “What?”

Two could play at this. “One of these days, I’m going to get you to say the word.” I winked at her. “Preferably in a very specific context.”

Andrea smiled flatly at me. “See you tomorrow then.” She turned and walked out of the weight room. At the door, before she left, eyes cutting right to me, she added, “And don’t be late, Napleton.”

The door shut, and I laughed to myself. I would definitely get her to say the full F-word.

Ideally, when she was underneath me.

Or against the wall. Yes, against the wall did have a nice feel to it.