Long Relief (Hardball 1)

“What?”

She hesitated. “You’re retiring, right? After this season.”

“My contract is up.” His jaw took on a hard set. “Who told you I was retiring?”

Her stomach flipped, and not in the sexy way it had last night. “Maybe I’m confusing you with someone else.”

“You mean, maybe you’re confusing me for another forty-two-year-old pitcher?” He wasn’t buying it. She couldn’t blame him. He was the oldest player in the league, and he’d blown his last season. Maybe what Thorgerson had told her had been speculation. Gossip.

Or maybe it had been a test to see what information the new owner would leak. She should have been smarter than this. She should have been smarter than Thorgerson, for God’s sake. The man spent his entire day worrying about how many nachos the place was selling. “I’m sorry. It’s apparently unsubstantiated gossip that I was stupid enough to believe.”

“No, don’t sweat it.” He shook his head. “It’s good to know where I stand with you. Both personally and professionally.”

When Maggie stepped out of the elevator, Molly was waiting for her, that cutesy grin not quite as endearing as it had been before. Her assistant slid her phone closed and pocket it, beaming. “So… how did it go?”

Maggie didn’t give in to the temptation to reprimand Molly for her unprofessional behavior. She didn’t want to be one of those bosses who let everything slide until something wasn’t going right, then unleashed holy fury. She just headed toward the doors. “Bad,” she said finally as she slid into the car. “It went very bad.”

“Then you’re really not going to be in the mood for this.” Molly reached into her tote pulled out her iPad. She dropped it into Maggie’s lap. “Seems I’m not the only one who noticed you leaving last night.”

On the screen, the Press’s website showed a picture of the team’s celebration after winning the league championships last season. And above it, the words, “IS GRAND RAPIDS BASEBALL DEAD?”

Frantically, Maggie scanned the article, picking out key phrases like, “given Thompson’s decline” and “last season’s devastating loss.” Then her gaze fell on a sentence that made her heart stop: “Even the Bengal’s new owner, Maggie Harper, seems to have written the team off, abruptly leaving a welcome reception held by the organization her father once helmed.”

She should have known better. What did her dad always used to say? “Baseball isn’t like running the pizza place, Maggie.” No, it wasn’t. It was far more public. Your name didn’t just show up in the occasional trade journal for savvy franchise owners. It showed up on the sports pages of hundreds of newspapers, all across the country, to be read by millions of fans who analyzed every aspect of the game down to the most inconsequential details.

“The bad news is, they were talking about this article on Free Beer and Hot Wings this morning.”

“And what’s the good news?” Rebecca asked, scrolling back to the beginning of the article to soak in every doom-portending word.

Molly opened her bag and pulled out her phone. “I’ll tell you that when I’ve spun some.”

Chapter Four

Opening day used to be the very best day of the year for Chris. It signaled the end of the boring winter and a return from spring training to a place that actually had weather. Today, he wondered why he was even in the bullpen at all. They had two new pitchers, one of them starting, the other a reliever, both under twenty-five and deadly accurate as they whipped a few pre-game pitches out.

“Save it for the game,” Derek Sands, another member of the Bengal’s bullpen warned under his breath as he leaned against the padded wall.

Chris chuckled. “Nah. These kids don’t have to worry about that. It’s us old-timers who have to hold something back.”

“Speak for yourself on the old-timer front, okay?” Derek said with a half-smile. “No, I know my ticket is just about punched. What about you? Last season?”

“That’s what I hear.” Chris shifted uncomfortably on his feet, his gaze lifting to the stands. Fans already waited in the cheerfully cold sunshine, beers clutched in mittened hands. “I hate the cold.”

“Give it a few weeks, it won’t be cold anymore. Then you’ll be wishing for April.” Derek pushed off from the wall. “I’m going to go out there, pretend to warm-up and watch the announcers embarrass themselves in the pre-game. Wanna go with me?”

Chris shook his head. “After the way we ended last season, I think I want to keep some distance between me and the fans for a little while.”

When Derek had gone, Chris checked the time on his phone, then slipped it back into his jacket pocket. He scanned the seats, finding the owner’s box. He wondered if Maggie would be there. When her father was alive, he’d never missed a single home game, even when he’d been so sick from chemotherapy that he’d had to be wheeled in by his nurse. But Maggie hadn’t been to the park for years before she’d inherited the team.