Running Interference (23 page)

“Ooh. Is that your girlfriend?” The guy howled at his own juvenile question.

The guy next to him tried distraction with the least-effective action—he handed him another beer. Just what the jerk needed, more alcohol.

M. J. reached for Tanya's other hand and tugged on it to turn her around. The singing stopped. People around them returned to their seats, but M. J. refused to sit until Tanya sat, too. All the while, she wished her best friend and captain of the O-line didn't feel the need to represent the team
everywhere
they went. Pride was an excellent thing, but unfortunately, this wasn't the first time Tanya's apparel got them into trouble outside the Clash stadium. People just weren't that open minded when it came to women playing football.

One of these days, the Clash was going to win a championship and, along with it, some respect. Then maybe they wouldn't become targets for assholes who couldn't run a mile, let alone suit up and compete with a women's professional full-tackle football team.

Back in their seats, M. J. noticed the staccato rise and fall of Tanya's chest as she tried to calm herself down. “He's not worth it,” M. J. said. “If you get into another fight, Coach will bench you.” Tanya's dark eyes locked on M. J. “I need you on the field.”

“Fine,” Tanya snapped, nostrils flaring.

They turned their attention back to the game. M. J. focused on the pitcher, trying not to let the run-in with the guy behind them spoil her only day off this week. An inning later, the boy beside her stood to let his father pass.

“You sure you don't want to come, bud?” the man asked from his place in the aisle.

The boy shook his head and wiggled a mitt onto his left hand. “No way. Polla hits a lot of fouls.”

M. J. smiled. She liked kids. One of her favorite parts of being a professional athlete was signing autographs for boys who were shocked she could actually play, and girls who suddenly realized they had every right to play, too.

Five minutes after the boy's father left, the unmistakable crack of wood meeting leather ripped through the stadium, bringing everyone on the first-base line to their feet. The ball hung in the cloud-splotched sky.

The kid reached his glove overhead, hitting M. J. in the jaw. She didn't mind, though. In fact, she'd locked onto that ball like a pass-starved wide receiver. If she had anything to do with it,
this
kid was getting
that
ball.

And he did.

The bullet hit her left shoulder before it tumbled into his glove. She winced, but shook it off. At least it wasn't her throwing arm. And the kid … he was beaming … until the jerk behind them reached for the ball, jostling the glove.

“Lemme see it!” He sprayed beer-tinged spit into the air.

Horror flashed on the child's face as the ball rolled out of his glove, hitting the seat, only to be scooped up by the drunken man.

“Finders keepers,” the guy said, laughing.

“Give it back,” the boy shouted. “It's mine.”

People around them agreed, but the man pretended to spit-shine the ball on his T-shirt and shook his head.

Tanya growled. “Give the ball to the kid.”

All M. J. could see was Tanya's fist connecting with the guy's fleshy cheek—which was warranted, but not the way M. J. wanted to start this football season—so she shoved between the confrontational pair as best she could and attempted diplomacy. “Come on. He's been waiting all game for one. He's just a kid.” She held her hand palm up. “Be the bigger man.”

The guy laughed. “I think your girlfriend's the bigger man.”

Tanya lunged, and M. J. steeled against her. As the man wobbled in his drunken state, M. J. grabbed the ball. She had just enough time to pass it off to the child before the guy's two-hundred-fifty-plus frame careened over their seats, falling into M. J., who felt the railing scrape the back of her thighs.

“Grab my hand,” Tanya yelled. But it was too late.

Bottom of the eighth, M. J. Rooney face-planted on the right field warning track.

• • •

Dr. Tag Howard kicked his feet onto the seat of the chair across from him and admired the image on the phone being shoved under his nose by the team's orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Marcus Kent. As far as game coverage went, working with Marc was optimal, because it meant Tag gave up his complimentary seats in the stadium so Marc's wife and three kids could see the game instead. That way, Tag could stay in the clubhouse.

It wasn't that Tag didn't like watching baseball—or any other sport for that matter. He just liked fixing hurt athletes better. Besides, being near the field reminded him of not-so-pleasant things.

“She's gorgeous,” he said, eyeing the platinum paint job on the Mercedes S-Class that Marc was considering buying.

“Look at this interior.” Marc swiped a finger over the screen, changing the picture.

Tag held the phone closer. He could almost smell the flawless, hand-stitched leather. The image of top-of-the-line perfection warmed him somehow. Maybe it was time for him to get a new car. Maybe this one, if Marc wasn't buying it.

“What's holding you back?” Tag asked.

Marc chuckled. “The $95,000 price tag. Meredith's off to college next year, and that's a semester and a half of tuition payments.”

Tag nodded even though he didn't have a clue as to what college cost these days. He'd been lucky enough to be adopted by a wealthy family who paid his tuition in full—all the way through med school. A charmed life, he'd been told. And it was, if he didn't think about what came before Edna Dean and Simon Howard opened their Shaker Heights home to an unwanted nine-year-old boy.

“So lease it,” Tag said, chasing away the memory with the power of his voice and passing the phone back to Marc. As he did, the silver box lit up and vibrated.

As team physicians, their phones went off all the time, but Tag thought he recognized the name of the texter—and it was the last name on earth he expected to see.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Tag reset his brain. It couldn't be his biological brother's name flashing on Marc's phone. Tag must've been seeing things, a vision brought on by his earlier thoughts.

It's not him. Calm down.

But no amount of rational thinking could stop his throat from squeezing shut. He turned his head toward the television to hide his discomfort, and cold sweat covered his skin. He tried to swallow hard enough to break the blockage and get some air to his lungs so he could stop the panic, but he failed.

“Huh. Jordon Kemmons has a player he wants you to see,” Marc said. “He asked for your number.”

Bad joke
, Tag thought. But it couldn't be a joke. As far as he could tell, no one outside his adoptive family knew about his biological connection to baseball's storied Kemmons brothers.

“How 'bout I tell him I'll pass his number along to you?”

Tag nodded. Somehow the motion loosed the knot in his throat, and he reminded himself that Jordon wanted to talk about a player, not rehash their abysmal childhoods that ended up with awkward Tag in a foster home while his athletic brothers, Jordon and Grey, were placed on the fast-track to professional baseball.

Marc's palm landed on Tag's back. “You have arrived, my friend. When the biggest agent in baseball comes a-callin', you're the real deal. Do you think it's Causeway? I heard he's struggling with rehab after the Tommy John surgery. If you get Causeway back on the field, every agent in baseball will be referring players to you. Damn! How'd you get so lucky?”

“I have no idea,” Tag whispered.

The minute he accepted this job with the group of physicians who covered Cleveland's major athletic teams, he worried the day would come when his past collided with his present. But he wanted this, worked hard for this—the opportunity to prove to his biological father wrong. There was a place in professional baseball for a boy like Tag, just not on the field, where Tag had received the brunt of his father's emotional abuse.

Now, it was time to face the consequences of that decision.

Tag's stomach churned, but he banished the unrest with a deep inhale. He'd keep a barrier between himself and Jordon. His office manager could call Jordon's assistant and arrange for the injured player to be flown to Cleveland for a consultation. It happened all the time. Agents went outside team medical sources for second opinions. Sometimes they accompanied the player, sometimes they didn't. Under the circumstances and with a mutual history riddled with discomfort, Tag figured Jordon would want to stay as far away as he could.

“Is that a fan on the field?”

Tag snapped his head in the direction of the television suspended on the far wall. The first baseman, Johnnie Foreman, and an umpire were bent over a lump on the warning track.

Marc was already out of his seat. “This night just got a whole lot more interesting.”

After Jordon's text message, it was interesting enough, as far as Tag was concerned. He had no desire to be close to the field on the heels of that, but he jogged behind Marc toward the hallway staircase that led to the dugout. No matter what the injury was, if it happened in the seats, paramedics took control, but if it happened on the field, it was the team physicians' jurisdiction. Not knowing whether the injury was orthopedic or medical meant they both had to assess the injury. Lucky him. Tag cringed.

“Probably some drunken idiot,” Marc said, right before Tag took a huge breath and stepped onto the field.

Marc couldn't have been more wrong.

Just beyond first base in the dirt of the warning track, a woman stared up at Tag with watery, translucent eyes. They were the color of a Caribbean sea and, suddenly, the unrest that plagued Tag the minute he stepped onto the field waned. Whoever she was, she was gorgeous, but the blank expression on her sharply angled face bothered him.

“She just came to about a minute ago,” Chris Chalmer, the team's trainer, said.

“Anything broken?” Marc asked.

If anything was, that could be Tag's cue to step back and let Mark take over. Then Tag could work his way off the field and return to the comfort of the clubhouse while Marc and Chris tended to the break.

But Tag knew it was a concussion the minute he saw her vacant stare.

He dropped to his knees.

The wind picked up around them, tossing a ribbon of caramel hair across her face where a strand stuck between her lips. She didn't move except to blink.

Hooking his finger around the loose bend of the strand at her ear, Tag tugged it free on instinct.

She smiled, and something other than discomfort at his current on-field location buzzed in his blood. He ran with it, if only to get through the exam.

“Hi, I'm Dr. Howard. What's your name?”

“Maya Jane,” she answered. Her voice was soft and scratchy. “But don't call me that. I hate that name.”

He nodded, holding in the smile he wanted to release. This wasn't the time or place. They had an audience—and not just the small group of players, officials, and medical staff surrounding them. Forty thousand pairs of eyes were wondering a) what happened and b) when the game would resume. The field was one big arena of judgment.

“Get the hell off the field,” a fan heckled.

Those exact words were a one-way ticket back to a rundown little league field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Tag had heard his biological father spout the very same thing—because there was “no place in baseball” for an uncoordinated kid like him. And apparently, there had been no room in Francis Kemmons's life for a boy like that, either.

His breathing weakened as he confronted the demons again, but as he focused on the peaceful blue of the woman's eyes, his pulse settled, too. “What's your last name?” he asked.

“Rooney.”

“Then how about I call you Miss Rooney?” Tag glanced at her left hand to make sure “Mrs.” wasn't more appropriate. When he didn't see a ring, he bit back another smile. This one slightly more troubling, because it was born from an undeniable attraction—something he shouldn't be thinking about during an exam.

“Fine.”

“Good. Miss Rooney, how did you end up on the field?”

“It's my job to be on the field.”

Tag raised his brows and looked up at Marc.

“Concussion,” Marc mouthed.

Tag gave his head an almost imperceptible nod. For all he knew, Maya Jane Rooney wasn't even her name—although making up an identity would take one hell of a blow to the head.

“Do you know where we are, Miss Rooney?”

She nodded, but then she inhaled and her eyes rolled upward with a flutter and her body swayed from its sitting position.

The team trainer caught her from behind.

“Call for the cart,” Tag said over his shoulder.

Laying on her back on the warning track, the woman stared up at him. “Did I get sacked?”

Sacked? Like fired? Tag shook his head. He didn't detect an accent, but maybe she was from another country where the phrase meant something different.

“You fell,” he said. “We're going to get you to the hospital for some tests.”

She mumbled something.

Tag leaned closer until he could feel her warm breath on his cheek and smell her spicy perfume. The normal slow jog of his heartbeat turned into a full-on sprint. “What did you say?”

“I hate hospitals,” she whispered. “I hate doctors, too.”

That was worth a chuckle, so he let loose.

“Then this is going to be a long night for you,” he said, thankful he wasn't the emergency room doctor who'd be on the receiving end of her disoriented disdain.

She sat again, and her hand shot up to grip her neck, her pretty face crinkling.

“Does your neck hurt?”

She answered with a vacant stare.

“We're going to board her.”

Ten minutes later, Miss Rooney was strapped in and hoisted onto the cart. As Tag watched her get driven away toward the exit in the left field wall, his phone buzzed. He glanced at the text from Marc. It was the contact information for Jordon along with a note: