Long Relief (Hardball 1)

Thorgerson offered his arm. "Shall we take a tour? It’s been a while since you’ve been here and there have been some exciting renovations."

She nodded but didn't take his arm. He wouldn't have offered it to her father. "My assistant hasn't seen the park, either. Let me get her."

She pulled her phone from her inside pocket and slid the keyboard out to text Molly. Touring ballpark. Need back up. Thorgerson wasn’t the type of guy Maggie longed to be alone with. Looking up, she gave her most pleasant fake smile. "She'll catch up."

Thorgerson and men like him had been the reason she'd stayed away from baseball for the past twenty years. She'd been nineteen when she'd gone to college, and her father had tried hard to rope her into the family pizza chain. It wouldn’t have been a bad job; her brother, Tommy, pulled in mid-seven figures as CEO. But Maggie’s head for business had earned her far more.

With Thorgerson's eyes all over her ass, Maggie gritted her teeth and walked ahead of him, down the concrete stairs that led through the stadium's rows of narrow plastic seats. "These are a tight fight," she said, and then wished she hadn't. Who knew what perverted thing it would conjure to his mind.

"More seats means more tickets sold," he reminded her. As the manager of the ballpark, that kind of thing would interest him more than the comfort of the asses that had to squeeze into those seats.

"It's so different." Continental Bank had sunk millions into renovating the classic park rather than tear down nearly a hundred years of history, but not much of that history remained. Maggie hadn't come home to see the changes, even when they’d dedicated the bronze statue of her father outside the main gates. She'd been too busy building her fortune.

You could have taken the time.

Now, it was seventy-two hours to opening day, and Maggie was worried about fans' asses fitting in seats. She would have laughed if she could trust it wouldn't make her cry.

"Different means more revenue," Thorgerson reminded her.

"That it does." She didn't say any more as she walked with Thorgerson through a security gate and onto the warning track. From the field, the view of a ballpark was substantially more daunting.

"You see everyone is hard at work for the home opener." Thorgerson waved a hand at the groundskeepers. "We can move on."

Ignoring him, she waved to a man on a riding lawnmower. He pulled to a stop at the very edge of the grass and cut the engine.

Thorgerson looked put out when he introduced them. "Mr. Sheff, this is our new team owner, Miss Harper—"

"Ms. Harper," she corrected, putting her hand out to shake the groundskeeper’s. "Thank you for all your hard work, the outfield looks fantastic."

Sheff was a short man, round like a barrel, with dark skin and a pair of glasses that looked like they were from the 1990s, at least. He pulled his ball cap—not a team cap, a green one that proudly proclaimed the name of the landscaping company that was also emblazoned across his nylon jacket—down and shook her hand, but he didn't return her smile. "We got grubs in the outfield. Only reason it looks good is 'cause you can't see ‘em."

"Mr. Sheff has been concerned about the grubs for weeks, but the pest control company isn't nearly as alarmed." Thorgerson had a really irritating laugh when he was condescending to people.

"You'll be concerned," Sheff replied matter-of-factly.

"We should really move along," Thorgerson took Maggie by the elbow and tried to steer her away

She reached for her phone as a polite way to break contact with him. "Sheff. You were here when my father was coaching."

“That’s right.” The old man grinned.

“Well, I’m glad you’re still will us. We need people who understand what this park needs beyond what’s best for the bottom line.” Opening her text to Molly, she entered grubs and slid her phone back into her pocket, then extended her hand to Sheff once more. “Very nice to meet you again.”

Thorgerson made a non-committal noise.

They toured the dugouts, as if one needed a tour of a hole in the ground. Both home and away sides had been scrubbed clean and given a fresh coat of paint, but that wouldn't last long. The amount of trash that accumulated in a dugout during a game was disgusting, and Maggie suspected that hadn't changed much over the years.

Molly caught up with them as Throgerson was explaining why he felt the new net behind home plate was far superior to the one from last season. Maggie had never been so relieved as when she spotted her assistant picking her way down the stairs toward them. Molly had the uncanny ability to be both completely scatterbrained and entirely too organized. If Maggie asked her to find a piece of paper she'd written a phone number on, Molly probably already had it filed away. Ask her to show up somewhere on time, though, and she'd miss every bus, drop her wallet in the sewer, and probably get arrested. Molly had committed fireable offenses every week since she’d been hired five years before, but Maggie knew it would be impossible to find anyone as good at the job. Plus, Molly had been willing to uproot from New York to move to Michigan—and an entirely different industry—with her boss. That kind of loyalty was rare.