Chapter Three
Connor
Back home.
I inhaled the peculiar scent of male sweat and deodorized carpet that was the Bobcat home stadium. It was three days after the All-Star Game. We’d won, by the way, and my knees weren’t any worse for wear. Which meant now the team could get serious about the sport we all loved without the media distraction. The only thing looming was the trading deadline, but that was a couple weeks away. Plenty of time for me to get the Bobcats focused on winning the pennant, and I was eager to get to it.
I needed a pennant before my knees completely crapped out on me.
But just before I made it to the privacy of the locker room, a cheerful brunette stepped in front of me—Gia Kubic looking fierce, which on her tiny frame looked adorable.
“Connor, you’re looking happy this morning.” It was the opening salvo in her perky war, and I wasn’t having any of it.
“Because I was about to go bond with my team. Practice is in thirty minutes.” I started to go around her, but she slipped right in front of me again. Impressive how she did that while teetering in those heels.
“I’m part of your team,” she said, smiling. “Come bond with me for a few minutes.”
Not a chance. Not with her ginger spice scent teasing my nostrils. Little Connor was joining her in the perky department, and I had no desire to go down that road. “Sorry. Baseball stuff to do.” I was going to throw the ball around a bit before the practice started. That was my plan, in any case.
Then she set her hand on my arm. “Sounds good to me,” she said, her ever-present smile in place.
I glared at her hand because it was making my muscles clench. There was nothing lovelier than a woman’s hand. It heated just the right amount. It gave just enough pressure without being firm. And I could throw it off, whenever I wanted. Apparently, I didn’t want to, so I just glared at it until she pulled it back. And I—stupid ass that I was—regretted the loss. And then she kept talking.
“I’ve been on the phone with your agent all morning.”
“Charlie? Why?”
“Because he wants me to do more to promote you.” She rolled her eyes as if that were something she had to deal with every day.
“I’m sorry I skipped out on those interviews. Thank you for covering for me. Rob did a good job with the extra attention.”
She blinked in surprise and then flashed a mega-watt smile. “Thank you. It helped that he won the Home Run Derby.” Apparently she hadn’t expected anyone to appreciate how well she’d handled damage control after I’d bailed. But I’d noticed, and I’d been very grateful to have gotten back early enough to spend time with my younger sister, Cassie, before the regular season games started up again. Seeing that she was okay had allowed me to come back to work today, ready to focus.
“Don’t worry about Charlie.”
“He wants me to make you into a media darling,” she huffed, the first sign that the perkiness was slipping.
“I’ll talk to him—” I offered, but she waved it off.
“And Joe DeLuce agrees. He’d like publicity to spend some time focusing on the Bobcats’ more stable, mature players.”
Jesus, I was only twenty-seven! Hardly old enough to be talked about in those terms. “What happened to Jake and Ellie?”
Her jaw tightened, and I saw that there was trouble in that fake paradise.
I grimaced. “I’ll talk to Jake.”
Her eyes widened. No doubt she remembered the last time I’d “talked” to Jake—I’d nearly put him through a wall.
“No, no! Whatever is going on with them is their business. We don’t need it in the media.”
Which is exactly what I thought about my life. Damn it, I just wanted to play baseball. I had enough balls in the air. I didn’t need the complication of publicity, but she just kept talking.
“So here’s your choice. I could pick the promotion I want you to do and get Joe to sign off on it.”
“In which case, I’d have no say in the matter.”
She grinned as if I were an especially perceptive student. “Or you can be part of the discussion. Right now. With me.”
I stared at her. I think I might have growled low in my throat. She just met my displeasure with determined cheer.
“The more time we stand in the hall trying to stare each other down, the less input you’ll have into your own future.”
“I pick my future,” I said. “Joe can’t force me to do any bullshit I don’t like.”
She wrinkled her nose and looked up at the ceiling as if she was trying to remember something. “Very true. But as I recall, your contract requires you to participate in all reasonable promotion.”
She was right. “I think our definitions of reasonable are vastly different.”
“Probably,” she said with a laugh. The sound teased through my chest. “You won’t know unless you join me in my office,” she quipped, then she stepped around me and walked down the hall.
Right now, I still had a choice. I could go into the locker room and get on with the business of winning the pennant, or I could turn around and head into that infuriating woman’s office to fight over publicity bullshit. I knew what I wanted to do—play baseball. And not think about how I felt her laugh on a visceral level. Or notice that her ginger spice scent lingered long after she’d left. Regardless, my feet were already following her down to her office.
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.”
She quickly crossed out a dozen lines on the list in front of her. Ha! I’d caught her. None of her ideas would work, which got me neatly off the hook. I leaned back in the chair and let my lips curve into a smile.
“Last one,” she said.
Perfect. The word “no” was already on my lips.
“We could do a series of articles on you as you train to improve your batting average. We could line up one particular reporter to come here and watch what you’re already doing. It would only cost you a few minutes every day to give him your thoughts on your training. Maybe add a few pictures and a couple more personal interviews. I’ll oversee the rest. Easy peasy.”
I stared at her. It sounded too good to be true.
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch. Except that you need to be honest with the guy about what you’re doing to become one of baseball’s top hitters…and why.” She leaned forward, and damn it, I was distracted by the way her cleavage plumped right before my eyes. “You’re doing this anyway, Connor. Let me make a story about it.”
I tensed for all the wrong reasons. The first was the sudden urge to do some very naughty things with her breasts. Graphic things that burst through my brain in a parade of erotic images that had me instantly hard. The second was that I couldn’t act on those thoughts because we were alone, in her tiny little office, surrounded by all the things that I thought I hated.
The third was because it had suddenly hit me that she’d said something I didn’t like, though I couldn’t remember it at the moment. But then it came back to me. I dragged my gaze off of her tightening nipples and looked back to her face.
“How do you know what I’m training for?” I rasped.
She rolled her eyes, and again, I thought it was adorable. Damn it!
“I work in this building, and I’m not blind. Besides, I keep track of my players so I can get them press. That’s my job.”
Okay, I’d give her that. But how did she know about me? I’d only just started focusing on improving my batting average. Everything up until now had been about catching those wild pitches and throwing out runners. The lifeblood of a catcher. Then there was sizing up opposing batters—how they hit, where they hit, and how they screwed up. A catcher called the pitches, watched the field, and was as much the brains of a game as a coach. Sometimes more. That was my job, but my knees were a ticking time bomb. I had to become valuable in another way, before I lost the ability to play the position I loved so much.
So I’d started trying to improve my batting average. I was a power hitter, but my accuracy sucked. If I could just connect with the ball more, and place those hits in open field, then maybe, I could transition into being a Designated Hitter. It would keep me in the game for a few more years, and give my knees more time to rest. As a DH, I wouldn’t be expected to field.
So I had started training differently. It was a subtle thing, and I didn’t think anyone had noticed. Only the batting coach was in on the decision. No one else…I thought.
“How did you know?” I repeated.
She sighed and gave me a pitying look. “You guys think you’re so inscrutable. Honestly, Connor, it wasn’t that hard a leap. And if I noticed, then you can damn well bet that a couple of journalists will likely notice soon, too. So let’s make it a story. One that highlights your climb straight to a .400 batting average.
“Four hundred?” I gaped. Dream on. I was currently at a respectable .265. “Babe Ruth only got to .342.”
She shrugged. Did the woman ever sit still? Her body was constantly saying things to me, and most of them were erotic. “Statistics can be cut a thousand different ways. We’ll find a way to slice it so you come out in the middle three hundreds at least.”
My gut tightened. “You mean lie.”
She sighed. “I couldn’t get a journalist to lie if my life depended on it. I’m saying that for the articles, we’ll make it a point to end on a positive note. You’re going to improve—”
I hoped.
“So let me deal with how to paint the happy ending. That’s my job—”
“Your job,” I said with her, not bothering to hide the disgust in my tone.
She raised her eyebrows, and I glowered. She was going to find a way to spin my stats, and I hated it. Once upon a time, baseball had been about me and the ball. About making the play, getting on base. But the higher I climbed, the more expectations were thrown at me. I no longer played because I loved the game. I played to win—a game, a series…a pennant. I played because the team needed me. I played because I was paid to be spectacular.
And then my sister had become involved. She’d turned me into a heartthrob, a sex symbol. As a college kid, I’d loved it. But now, it just added to the expectations. Somehow I was supposed to win at baseball, and more importantly, look good while doing it.
Now Gia was suggesting I put my batting average on the line. A million eyes would read all about my struggles to become a better hitter. It would be out there, in public. What would happen if I failed? And I could, very easily. I hadn’t recovered yet from how I’d failed my youngest sister. The last thing I needed was another way to be watched and found wanting.
“Got any other ideas?” I growled.
“Nope. It’s this or a celebrity date-a-thon.” She leaned forward. “Come on, Connor. Charlie really likes this idea. It’s a great way to highlight your skills before your next contract negotiation.”
My contract wasn’t up for another year, but Charlie was always looking ahead.
“And Joe’s on board, too,” she pressed. “It’s good for the team to see how hard you’re working. And it will increase interest in the team too, as you all work toward winning the pennant.”
I blew out a breath. Young players needed constant reminders that talent only got them so far. Next came discipline and sweat.
“And your sister insists that women love a man who’s not afraid to work. So, in a way, you’ll pull in more female viewers.”
And there it was—the trifecta. Do it for my contract, my team, and for all those female fans. But what if I couldn’t do it? What if all I did was fail?
“Talk to me, Connor. What is holding you back?”
Nothing. Just the memory of how spectacularly I’d let down my younger sister. And how that had thrown everything in my life into a different light. Instead of thinking about publicity for me, I was focused on finding private time with her. To support her, however she needed it. But that was the last thing I wanted anyone to know, so I gave in.
“Fine. Set it up. The batting, not the bachelor thing.”
“Excellent,” she said in her most obnoxiously perky tone. “We’ll start this afternoon. I’ll get a reporter to watch you at batting practice, then there’ll be a half-hour interview afterward. Rinse and repeat daily over the next six weeks.”
“Fine.” Then I pushed up from her chair and stomped out of her office. Or rather, I started to. One step outside, and I stopped. Then I backed up enough that I could slug the cut-out figure of myself, straight in my “gotcha” face. Because, damn it, I was well and fully caught.
Now I had to improve my batting average by an impossible .100—because everyone from my agent, my boss, and my fans were expecting me to do it. God, I hated publicity.