High Heat (Hard Hitters #1) (17 page)

On Tom’s porch, Sarah sniffed and wiped away a tear. “Can I come in?”

“Sure. What’s wrong?” This did not look good. It was only five o’clock. Sarah never got off work so early on game day. He’d need to shower up and head over to the stadium soon, even though he wasn’t starting today.

He welcomed her in out of the heat. Drenched in sweat, he wiped his forehead with the hem of his shirt. God, he needed a drink, but it would have to wait. “Just got back from a run. What’s up?”

She stood in the foyer, arms crossed, her shoulders hunched, looking worn out. “My dad saw the pictures of us at the vineyard.”

“And?”

“He had a fit. He gave me orders to stop seeing you on pain of getting fired, and he’s fining us each five thousand dollars.”

“What? He can’t do that!” A fine for holding a woman’s hand? Good thing her dad didn’t know everything they’d been up to. Even Tom didn’t have enough money to pay that fine.

“He can, apparently. The team has a non-fraternization policy I didn’t even know about. It never came up before.”

The caveman inside him took pride that she’d never even considered dating a player before. “He thinks he can tell us what to do? Where the hell does he get off? I’ll pay your fine, by the way.”

“No, you won’t. It’s my fine and I’ll take care of it.”

“Come on, Sarah. I don’t know what he’s paying you, but I know it’s not that much. Let me take care of it.”

“Sorry, but it’s my mistake and my responsibility.”

“Mistake?” The word stopped his fury cold. “What do you mean, mistake?”

“I mean, getting involved with you. Tom, hear me out.” She lifted a hand as he opened his mouth. “I care about you. I do. But saying we can hang out for a while, driving back and forth from Chicago. I don’t know. You’re asking me to defy my father, give up my job and my place in this town and on the team, and for what?”

“For you, Sarah. For the right to make your decisions, choose your own life. It’s the same reason I think you should look around at other clubs.”

“Don’t you see? There’s still no future in it. What happens with us if I get a job with a club in, say, Oregon? Or anywhere else? You’re saying you’d maintain a long-distance relationship with me?”

“Maybe.” The word shocked him as much as it clearly did Sarah. He couldn’t do a permanent commitment. True, he hadn’t cheated on any woman he’d dated, but that had been different. Temporary. Being faithful was easy when you both knew that either one of you could end it at any moment.

He’d never thought seriously about anything more. The specter of his dad’s destructive philandering and the agony it had left in its wake never left him. How many nights had he spent in bed as a child, listening to his mom cry and curse over his father or, later, some other man just like him?

He’d always known he wasn’t cut out for family life. He wouldn’t do the same thing to another woman. Which meant he’d never be a father. That gave him an unexpected pang. Working with the kids in the pitching clinic Sarah had set up had been fun. In the back of his mind, he’d wondered if he might have a son that he could teach to pitch someday. Hell, he’d teach a daughter to pitch too, if she wanted to learn. He was no Walter Dudley.

Nothing he said seemed to matter to Sarah, though.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “A ‘maybe’ isn’t enough. You said we’d have fun, and we did. I guess it’s time for the fun to end.”

“You’d do that? Let me go to please your father?” The betrayal made his gut burn.

“Let you go?” Her arms stretched wide. “That implies we have something serious between us. You’ve promised nothing. I fight with my father, true, but this is my legacy. I grew up here. The stadium that the Thrashers play in is
Dudley
Field. It has my name on it. My great-grandfather founded this team, and a Dudley has run it ever since. I learned PR from my Uncle Frank. The team isn’t what it used to be. Ticket sales have been dropping for years, and I can’t abandon my family, my team, when it’s in trouble. When I have children, if I do, I want them to grow up being part of that tradition too. I want the team to still be there for them.”

“If they’re boys, they’ll be a part of the tradition,” Tom pointed out. “But what if they’re girls?” He hated to see her flinch, but the truth hurt sometimes.

“I don’t believe my brother will make that kind of distinction for his kids, or mine either. What do you have to offer me that compares to that? A call once in a while when you get horny?” She wiped away the tears that flowed freely, but she didn’t look sad. She looked mad. Furious, actually.

Fine. He wasn’t too happy with her either. He hadn’t been this pissed since he’d had to leave game seven and the team had failed to hold on to his lead.

“Oh, please. That leaves you right back where you were. Waiting for your brother to take over the team in the hopes that he’ll finally give you the job you want. You ought to want to break free. Of your father, and of this town—for yourself, if not for me.”

“Break free?” She spit out the words. “I’ve seen your idea of freedom, and it doesn’t impress me much. Dating the biggest bimbos you can find and leaving them before they wake up. Winding up on TMZ as much as you do on ESPN. If that’s your idea of freedom, you can keep it.”

“Being free doesn’t mean sleeping around.” Wait, where had that come from? For him, that was
exactly
what freedom had always meant.

Apparently she didn’t buy it either. “Oh, that’s how you’ve always seemed to take it. Did you see the interview Christina Caputo gave to ESPN? She said you got her into drinking and drugs.”

“Yeah, my agent called and told me about it. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him.” He waved his hand. “I don’t do drugs, and hell, nobody had to talk her into drinking. She’s full of it, and everybody knows it. She’s been a wild woman since I’ve known her.”

“It says a lot about you that you were with her in the first place.”

“Oh, come on.” He threw his hands up. “I worked my ass off on rehab when I was out. There’s only so many hours a day you can run, lift weights, and do physical therapy. So I had some fun, partied a little too hard. Who cares?”

“You’re on the other side of thirty, Tom. Recovering from an injury that could have ended your career. How long is the party going to go on?”

“It’ll end when I want it to end.” His stomach knotted. God, nothing like a lecture to make that same old defiance rear up in him.

She shook her head. “We aren’t a good fit for each other, Tom. We’re too different. We had some fun, but I guess that’s all it was. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to see that. For a while, I wondered . . .”

“Wondered what?” some demon prompted him to ask.

“I don’t know. I guess I had some stupid dreams that were bound to never come true. I had some time on the drive home to think about what mattered to me. I don’t want to be stuck in a dead-end relationship. The kind that lasts only as long as I don’t expect too much or ever make any demands. I want some commitment, Tom. I want permanence, and to know where I stand. I want someone to love and someone who loves me. Maybe I want kids and marriage someday. At least I want the option. I don’t want to always be afraid that you’re going to walk away.”

“I don’t do well with ultimatums.” Tom crossed his arms. Whatever he wanted out of this . . . thing they had going, he had to figure it out on his own terms, not because somebody threatened him. He liked Sarah a lot. Some days he thought he loved her. He didn’t know for sure, because he’d never been in love. But he sure as hell didn’t want anyone telling him what do to.

Some things never changed.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t giving you an ultimatum, but it’s sad that you took it that way.”

“You don’t want to waste your time with me, so you’re going to dump me for that guy who lives with his mom? Come on.”

“No, I’m not going back to Rich. I’ll be on my own for a while. It’s the way it needs to be. I can’t find someone who is right for me if I’m always involved with Mr. Wrong.”

The door buzzer sounded and he cursed. Of all the times. Who was it—Paul, to give him the good news of his fine? He went to tell whoever it was to fuck off. He yanked the door open and went still.

Holy crap.

“Hi, Tom. Can I come in?” Christina looked thinner than the last time he’d seen her.

What the hell? Just what he needed. Sweat broke out on his upper lip. “Christina, what are you doing here? This is a bad time.” He kept his voice low, hoping Sarah wouldn’t hear. He kept the door cracked only a few inches, calculating the odds that he could get rid of her before Sarah saw her and got the wrong idea.

“Why?” Her eyes sharpened. “You have somebody with you?” Christina looked young without her makeup, her tight black top and miniskirt leaching all the color out of her complexion. Her bleach-blonde hair hung around her shoulders in a tangle. She looked like hell, actually.

“Don’t worry. I won’t be staying long.” Sarah’s voice came from behind his shoulder, colder than frost. “Good-bye, Tom.”

“Wait!” He clutched at her arm as she shoved passed him, but it did no good. She simply fixed him with a glare and sidestepped Christina.

“Paul will call you later to officially notify you of the fine. Don’t give him a hard time. He tried to stand up for you.”

“At least someone did.”

Her eyes narrowed, and Christina looked back and forth between the two of them.

“Good-bye, Tom. Good luck in your last start. I know you’ll do well. You’ll be back in the big leagues before you know it.”

“Thanks.” He was on the verge of achieving everything he’d been working toward for the last year and a half, and damned if he knew why, but the idea left him cold and empty.

She nodded to Christina, who swallowed and nodded back. Sarah let herself into her apartment, leaving him to face Christina’s pleased smile.

“It didn’t take long for you to move on, I see. Then again, it looks like she’s not too happy with you. Maybe there’s hope for us after all.” When he didn’t answer, she looked past him. “Can I come in?”

He sighed and opened the door to let her in. She sat on the couch and he took care to sit on a chair next to it.

“There’s no hope for us, Christina. There never was. You shouldn’t want that anyway, to be the girl that a guy goes running back to because he’s been dumped. You can do better than that.”

Christina drew her arms in tightly around her body, almost like she was cold, but she couldn’t possibly be. Her grin faded. “You’ve replaced me already.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Christina, we’ve been broken up for months. I haven’t called you in forever. Of course I’ve moved on. The question is, why haven’t you?”

“Because we were so good together!” Her voice went high. “Remember how it was, Tom? When we walked into a club, the whole place stopped. All eyes were on us. Everybody wanted us at their parties and in their restaurants.”

He shook his head. That was her idea of being good together? “I don’t want that, Christina. I never did. I went along with it because you did, and it was kind of fun for a while, while I was rehabbing and out of baseball. But it’s not me. It’s you.”

“Tom, we were the power couple, the one all the paparazzi followed! My agent’s phone rang off the hook. How can you not want that?”

“I don’t know, Christina. I’m not sure what I want.” That wasn’t entirely true. He had a feeling that what he wanted was the angry woman in the apartment next door, but he had no idea how to go about getting her, or even if he should want her. He ought to be one hundred percent focused on getting back to the White Sox and getting that ring he’d always wanted. Unfortunately, what he ought to want and what he
did
want seemed to have no relation to each other.

Instead, all he could think of was Sarah. The tomboy exterior that hid a surprisingly feminine woman. Her habit of rolling her eyes and giving as good as she got whenever he tried to BS her. The way her dark hair swung around her shoulders when they made love, her eyes warm and surprised, as if she hadn’t known about the kind of passion they shared until they discovered it together.

“I don’t know what I want, Christina, but it’s not us. We’re over. We’ve been over for months, but now? How could you possibly think I’d take you back after you trashed me in the media? All those lies you told about how I got you into drugs.”

“I wanted you to notice me.” She bit her lip. “You didn’t return my calls whenever I left you a message. You were screening my calls, weren’t you?”

Why bother to be polite? “Yes. I didn’t want to get into a confrontation, and I guess I fooled myself about how seriously you still thought about me. I thought you were drunk-dialing because you were bored or lonely.”

Tears rose in her eyes but she wiped them away, sniffling. Her gaze broke. “Can I use your bathroom?” Her hand slipped into her pocket and fingered something there.

“Okay,” he said slowly. That was abrupt. He stood when she did, but she still wouldn’t meet his eye. Acting on instinct, he grabbed the wrist that had disappeared into her shirt pocket.

“No!” She twisted frantically to get away from him, which only served to heighten his suspicions. Pulling her clenched hand out of the pocket, he pried her fingers open relentlessly until he saw what rested in her palm: a tiny bag full of white powder.

“Jesus, Christina.” He reached into the pocket and pulled out three more bags.

“I need it, Tom. It calms me down.” Tears rolled down her face. She wiped one hand across her reddening nose. “Tom, no! What are you doing?” She followed him, clutching at his arm, but he ignored her, resolute. Being nice and waiting for her to get tired of him hadn’t worked. He was exorcising the Christina demon from his life forever.

He went to the kitchen and turned on the faucet, and then ran the tiny bags down the garbage disposal.

“You asshole!” she screamed and struck out at him. “Do you know how much that cost me! It’s all I brought with me!”

“Sounds like this would be a good time to quit, then. You need help, but I can’t be the one to give it to you. Talk to your dad. He wants what’s best for you. He can help you. I can’t.”