Clover stapled the hotel’s evening receipts together and placed them in the manager’s inbox. Friday nights were always busy in St. George, but with the Phillies in town, they were booked out. Most of their guests were at the game, so she turned it on in the lobby to give her and Maddie warning before they returned and flooded the hotel with requests for replacement key cards and extra pillows and towels.

Dustin hadn’t come into The Pantry that day—which was a relief as much as it was a disappointment. She’d watched the game. He had a couple of great plays, one of them a dive to his belly to catch a ball and get the out. And then there was that home run. Clover had done a double fist pump before she remembered that she was mad at the guy. Baseball was seeping into her bones, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about falling for the sport when inevitable heartache would be involved.

Tonight, she had the sound off but found herself staring at the screen more often than not.

Maddie had started as a maid and occasionally took a front desk shift. She was studying hotel management, so when she was hired, she told them to train her for all positions. One day she’d own her own hotel.

However, she had to start at the bottom, so Maddie took the night shifts with Clover until a daytime position opened up. What would have been torture for an employee with a family was a great time for the women to catch up on their friendship. They worked well and always put their conversations lower on the priority list than helping guests so the work got done.

Clover didn’t mind the night shift. She’d always been a night owl. It probably came from sleeping in shelters, where her mom would tell her to stick close and not disappear in the night. She’d never slept well until the general rustling had settled. Even then, if someone got up to go to the bathroom, her eyes popped open and her breathing became harsh and loud in her own ears.

With the lull in activity, Clover was filling Maddie in on what had happened with Dustin at The Pantry. “It was like he enjoyed making me angry.” She grabbed a container of disinfectant wipes and started moving things on the desk so she could clean it off.

“Sweetie, it couldn’t have been that bad.”

“It was. I swear.” She held up a hand as if she were being put under oath. “He called me a snob and bossy and other things I can’t remember, and he smiled the whole time. It was like talking to a seven-year-old.”

“Really? How old is he, really?”

“Thirty-two,” Clover answered. She scrubbed at a sticky spot, thinking about the spark of mischief in Dustin’s eye and how she’d like to get into mischief with him. She yanked her thoughts away from that and found Maddie looking at her with raised eyebrows. “What?”

“You know.”

She did. But she wasn’t going to admit behaving like a stalker fan who had Googled his stats. “I blame his bad behavior on his bank account. No one can make that much money and remain unaffected.”

“I’d like to be affected by a couple hundred thousand a year,” Maddie quipped. “I can’t even imagine having money like that.”

“Most people can’t imagine playing a game for a living, either.”

“It can’t be all kicking daisies. I mean, look at those guys.” Maddie tossed her head toward the screen. “They look like they work hard.”

Clover didn’t have to look at the television to know what kind of muscles being a major league ballplayer created. Those muscles had brushed up against her less than twenty-four hours ago, and was still reeling from the sensations Dustin created.

Maddie wasn’t done pleading Dustin’s case. “How many games do they play a year?”

Irked that her best friend was defending the very guy they were supposed to be roasting right now, Clover replied, “How would I know?”

“I heard baseball players have the longest season out of all professional ballplayers.” She shrugged. “For guys who play a game for a living, they take it seriously.” She picked up a stack of towels with a green stripe down the middle. “I’m taking these to the pool. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“’Kay.” Clover waited for Maddie to disappear down the hall before dropping into her chair and attacking the keyboard. “How many games does an MLB team have a year,” she muttered as she typed into the search bar.

A list of sites appeared. She clicked on the first link, desperate to complete her search before Maddie returned. One hundred and eighty games with three months off between seasons, and pitchers report for spring training early.

She paused to listen for Maddie. When she didn’t hear footsteps on the tiled hallway, she clicked on the link at the bottom of the article about a day in the life of a professional ballplayer. They reported for a night game before noon. She ticked off the hours on her fingers, figuring the players were lucky to get eight hours of sleep. The general pregame workout included batting practice, watching film, workouts, and going over stats.

“Huh,” she said.

Playing baseball wasn’t a job. It was life. For nine months out of the year, assuming the team didn’t make it to the playoffs, Dustin was at the mercy of the team’s schedule. He moved around as much as Clover and her mom had when Clover was growing up. She smoothed down her hair. She’d called Dustin a Peter Pan, but he was more like a gypsy.

For some reason, she liked him all the more for that.

She clicked off the website and cleaned with a vengeance. It didn’t matter if she liked him. She’d never see the guy again unless she was watching him on television. In the same moment she had that thought, the camera zoomed in on the dugout, and Dustin smiled like he was smiling right at her.

She shook off the fanciful thoughts and got back to work.