Long Relief (Hardball 1)

He pulled her against him, growling into her neck. Let her think it was all a game, but he was going to hold her to that.

The hard part would be dragging his sorry ass—and arm—to a championship season.

* * * *

Their next home game was a hard win, but at least it had been a win. Chris hadn’t pitched; watching had been almost worse. Not that he could have done any better than Derek Sands had done pitching relief. The Las Vegas Rattlers had some of the cleanest hitters in the league, and their fighting spirit had gotten a hundred pitches out of Sands in three innings. There had been a time when Chris would have been chomping at the bit to get to the mound, but watching a guy ten years younger than him struggling in the seventh had almost caused him physical pain.

After the game, he found himself lingering in the clubhouse. It wasn’t that unusual. Just like any job, sometimes the thought of heading straight home, without any buffer time to unwind, was unbearable. Tonight, it was more the thought of going home alone, to his big, empty bed.

No drop-in sex visits the night before a game. It was the only ground rule he and Maggie had, and he hated it, but he wasn’t a young guy anymore. He couldn’t get by on four hours of sleep and still pitch the next day. And he knew for damned sure that if Maggie came over, they wouldn’t be getting much sleep.

She had gotten into his blood, and it had happened fast enough that it scared him. All he thought about was her. All he wanted was to be with her. If it was this bad now, how bad would it be when he was way down south, coaching in Charlotte?

Vargas came out of the showers, whistling as always. Chris lifted his hand in silent greeting.

Javier slowed his walk as he passed Chris by. “Why do you look like someone peed on your ice cream?”

He thought about telling the truth with an exhausted, one word, “tired,” but that would make him sound like the old man everyone thought he was. He could trust Vargas to keep a secret. “Is it a bad idea to want to marry a woman you’re not dating and have only slept with five or six times?”

“It doesn’t sound like a good idea.” Javier went to his locker and pulled out his bag. He slipped on a pair of boxer briefs and tossed his towel aside. “Why, are you seeing someone?”

“Yeah.” No, that wasn’t quite right, was it? He wasn’t seeing Maggie, at least, not yet. “Well, we’re not labeling it. But I’m pretty sure she said if we wrapped up the season with a championship, she would marry me.”

“So, two bad ideas?” Javier shook his head, laughing to himself. “Go for it, man. You’re a hundred years old, right? Time is ticking away.”

“It’s complicated. Because of who she is.” He’d already given too much away, with that sentence. But it seemed like saying it would help, and Vargas would never sell him out. “It’s Maggie Harper.”

“Yeah, right.” Javier pulled on a shirt and grabbed a pair of jeans from his back. The little gold cross he always wore glinted against the black cotton of his t-shirt. When Chris didn’t say anything, Javier zipped his jeans and said, “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.” Chris leaned back in his chair. “I am dead serious.”

“You probably don’t want to talk about it ever again,” Javier warned. “Someone is going to have a problem with it.”

“Which is why I’m retiring at the end of the season.”

“Whoa, whoa. Wait, you’re retiring? Over a woman?” Javier straightened, sneakers in hand.

“No, I’m retiring because of my shoulder,” Chris clarified, strongly. He didn’t care if Sophia Loren circa 1963 walked through the door and begged him to give up baseball to make love to her nine hours a day, no woman would ever come between him and playing. Coaching, however… Playing baseball had been such a huge part of his life, it was probably coded into his DNA now. He’d never coached and didn’t have a love for it yet. “I got offered a job in Charlotte, coaching next season. I don’t know if I want to take it.”

“Not this early. Wait and see what else comes up,” Javier answered automatically. Then, the unspoken hit him. “You don’t want to take any job that’s going to take you away from this mystery woman whose identity I don’t know, right?”

Chris made a little finger gun and cocked the hammer. “Exactly.”

Javier ran and hand over his jaw. “That’s rough, man. I mean, you can’t take the Charlotte job right now, anyway. You don’t want to look like you’re checking out before the season is over. But I assume they wanted an answer, at least informally.”