The Change Up (11 page)

Unfortunately, Rachel couldn't think about the festival without thinking about Sam. Dancing. Divulging. She really should've passed on the dance and kept her mouth shut. But she couldn't shake the feeling that she needed him—in some capacity—to help her successfully launch this baseball team. Unfortunately, he was way past the league's twenty-seven-year-old age limit to play. Maybe he would be willing to coach? Except her father already had a list of candidates for that. Maybe operations? Administration of some kind? How to use Sam to benefit the team should've been the extent of her interest in him.
Truly.
And it would've been, had she not felt such a rush in his arms.

So now what? She, of all people, could work with an attractive man and not get sucked into something personal. She wasn't one to mix business and pleasure usually, although she'd had the occasional
arrangement
with a like-minded colleague here or there. Always short-lived, always explicitly clear on what the boundaries were.

It had been a while since she'd indulged in something like that. Rachel's mind quickened. It wasn't as though she'd be working with Sam long-term. She'd be back in Philadelphia as soon as she could stabilize the team enough to babysit it from afar. Maybe a temporary
arrangement
could be … mutually beneficial. She wondered how Sam would feel about that—should the opportunity arise.

Talk about a change of plans.

“Ms. Reed? You can follow me.”

Rachel blinked once to clear her head and then fell into step behind the nurse who led her down a long, sterile hallway to an office, where her parents were waiting after completing routine cognitive testing.

Before she could ask how it went, the doctor entered the room. He wasn't much younger than her father. Gray. Distinguished. And, like Danny—and Rachel—he cut right to the chase.

“What your father experienced at the festival is called motion blindness,” he said. “Think of it like snowflakes falling on your windshield, but your wipers aren't working. Your vision gets more and more obstructed until you can't make out the details, and you end up lost. As soon as your wipers start working again, it's clear and you can find your way.”

“Is that what happened, Danny?” Jackie spoke to her husband as if he were a child.

“I guess,” he said, clearly not remembering the event as well as everyone else did.

Meanwhile, the same storm of emotions that had been brewing inside Rachel since the festival kicked into high gear. She literally vibrated with helplessness. “So what's next, Doctor?”

The man blinked. “Next?”

“Yes. How do we go about fixing this?”

“Perhaps you don't understand, Ms. Reed, but Alzheimer's is, unfortunately, a chronic condition, not a curable one.”

“Of course, I'm aware of that. But there has to be something more you can do. Some … oh, I don't know … mental exercises, therapy, something …
anything
but sitting around twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the inevitable while you pretend you're actually helping him!”

“Rachel!” her mother exclaimed, clearly appalled. “Dr. Rictor is doing his best.”

“I'm sure he is, but sometimes our best isn't good enough … and someone else's is.” She glanced at the good doctor, whose cheeks were flushed and face looked pinched, and added, “It's nothing personal, beyond the fact that this is my father, and it's unacceptable to me that he's declining so quickly.”

Dr. Rictor opened her father's chart for a quick look. “I understand your frustration and concern, but I have to tell you, the two-year mark isn't excessively early to be experiencing middle-stage symptoms, including things like wandering, changes in sleep patterns, and the forgetfulness you've described. It simply means he's progressed from mild to moderate Alzheimer's, which is to be expected, and we need to rethink some things.”

The two-year mark? Two months ago, her parents had walked into her office and dropped this bomb. They'd known for
two years
?

Rachel glared at her parents.

Her mother broke eye contact. Her father looked vacant.

“Has Helen Anne known this whole time?”

Her mother nodded.

Of course.
The room quieted for a few seconds while Rachel seethed. No doubt they'd lost valuable time treating this disease by keeping it from her. Had she known two years ago, she would've made it her primary goal to find him the most revolutionary care.

“What about clinical trials?” she asked. “Somebody out there has to be doing something that will help more than this.”

“There are some,” Dr. Rictor said. “But I have to warn you it's not a decision to be made lightly for various reasons. There are no guarantees. There's also nothing local at the moment, which means you'll have travel and lodging expenses beyond what the trial's host will cover. Some of these studies are fully funded and work with your insurance company to ensure minimal out-of-pocket expenses. Others aren't. The price can be astronomical.”

And with a huge portion of her father's assets wrapped up in an unproven baseball team, not even Danny Reed could afford astronomical.

“Let me do some research,” the doctor said. “I'll see what's available, and then we can go from there. But please, keep in mind trials aren't always the home run you're hoping for.”

“Hank Aaron was the home-run king,” her father said, chuckling. It was a jarring sound considering the mood in the room.

But Dr. Rictor didn't seem fazed. He smiled and said, “Yes, he was. Between you and me, he still is. Bonds doesn't count.”

Her father laughed again. “Are you a baseball man?”

“I am. I played third base throughout high school and some summer ball in college, but there weren't many opportunities in medical school.”

“I own a baseball team,” Danny said proudly, and this time it got to Rachel, pinched her heart, and made her almost sadder than she was angry. “The Arlington Aces.”

“Sounds like every little boy's dream,” Dr. Rictor said.

“I always wanted a little boy. I wanted to pass down my love of the game.”

Rachel looked away. The successes of the past forty years should've be enough to dull the sting of those words, but they weren't.
Why?
What did it matter in the face of all this?

“We have two beautiful, talented daughters, Danny,” her mother said.

“Seems like an excessively fair trade,” added Dr. Rictor, but then he side-eyed Rachel, and she expected payback for her earlier outburst. “If your other daughter is as … passionate as this one, then you're a lucky man, Mr. Reed. At least you're lucky to be on her good side,” he added pointedly.

She supposed she deserved that, but she refused to apologize.

“I am very lucky,” her father said, as if he hadn't said anything even remotely disheartening.

As Dr. Rictor launched into a discussion about medications and expectations, Rachel got lost in thought. Things were much worse than she'd thought, because her father had already been dealing with Alzheimer's for t
wo years.
How could she not have known? She'd seen him regularly during that time period. Well,
regularly
was a relative term. She hadn't seen him as regularly as Helen Anne had, but Rachel had spoken with him almost weekly. Nothing on those calls had made her think anything was amiss. She'd seen him every three months for the last two years. Again, nothing had caught her eye.

“It's the little things,” Dr. Rictor said, yanking Rachel out of her head and back to the conversation. “They will make the biggest difference.”

The little things.
You mean the things she'd missed that would've tipped her off to her father having Alzheimer's? She'd made it easy for her family not to tell her. She'd been clearly focused on something else. But how could she fault herself for that? Her father had always relied on her to have everything under control.

She'd made a promise to him two months ago, and she was going to follow through. Nothing that had happened here changed that—except maybe it increased her sense of urgency. The faster she sold this team, the faster her parents would have the liquid assets they needed to pursue all angles of care, including the potentially astronomical clinical trials Dr. Rictor had mentioned. And who knew? Maybe in the process she could prove to her father, once and for all, that she was better than a whole team of sons. Although, this time, she wasn't quite sure she could do it alone.

Maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't have to.

• • •

Another day. Another step closer to getting this field in playable condition. Sam hosed a patch of right-field sod and squinted overhead at a flock of birds.
Move along
, he thought.
Nothing to see here
. He'd been informed via email they were on an even tighter timeline than he'd expected. Tryouts were coming up in four weeks. The field needed to be ready. He didn't need a bunch of birds dive-bombing the feed and seed.

Two new crewmembers carted in bags of clay with Ian, and Sam had to admit the extra hands were a big help, not to mention a point of pride. Sutter & Sons Landscaping was growing leaps and bounds thanks to this stadium job. He tried to keep that in mind every time he thought about those trees, which, to his surprise, were still standing. But any day now …

Opening Day would be here before they knew it.

Looking around the grandstand, which had undergone a transformation long before Sam had stepped foot in this place, he tried to imagine the stadium filled. The Reeds were definitely ambitious, growing the capacity from 1,500 to 5,000 seats. Sure, 15,000 people called Arlington home, but most of these seats would probably remain unfilled. He couldn't imagine 5,000 Arlingtonians gathered together for anything besides the county fair. To get 5,000 locals to a baseball game, the Reeds were going to need one hell of a draw.

“Sam?”

He turned, taking the hose with him, and the errant spray of water targeted Rachel, who was standing in the dirt near first base.

She jumped back and leveled him with a face full of serious accusation.

“It was an accident,” he said, stifling a laugh and admiring her ivory pantsuit.

Since the festival, he'd thought of her every night when he drifted off to sleep. How she smelled. How she felt. How she looked at him when her walls came down. Was it possible she'd gotten even prettier since then?

She shifted her shiny black tote bag to the other shoulder and brushed at the watermarks on her lapel. Then she turned to the side to check the farther reaches of her outfit, which gave him a great view of her rear assets.

“As lovely as those pants are,” he said, “you probably shouldn't be hanging around a baseball field in them.”

“There wouldn't be any problem with wearing these pants around a baseball field if you could learn to control your hose.”

Her eyes widened simultaneously with his.

“Nice,” he said.

“You know what I meant,” she said, chuckling.

“For the record, I have excellent control of my hose when you're not around.”
Or on my mind.
“You …” He reached for the right word. “Fluster me.”

She made a face. “This does not sound like an appropriate conversation.”

“Oh, come on. You're a beautiful, powerful woman in a kick-ass pantsuit. I'm allowed to openly admire that.”

“Fine, then I'm allowed to meet that admiration with open cynicism, because frankly I'm conditioned to wonder what you're hoping to gain from it.”

Damn. She was direct, and not in a four-beers-overheated-take-me-now kind of way.
That
way was easy to handle. You called the girl a cab and sent her home safely. But Sam wasn't sure how to handle a woman who talked like this. No lines, that was for sure. Rachel would call him on every one.

“Would you believe I have no idea what I'm hoping to gain,” he said sincerely. “I'm just working on impulse here.” Kind of like he'd been when he'd asked her to dance.

She looked him over, up and down, and then shook her head until she smiled. “Yes. I would believe that.”

“It's the ripped jeans, isn't it? They give me away as a guy with no real plans.”

She stared at him for a beat too long, and the air crackled between them. “I like the jeans. Anybody can make plans, but not just anybody can wear those jeans … and look good.”

He grinned. “And what are you hoping to gain from saying that? Because I'm starting to have a few ideas.”

She stepped closer, maintaining eye contact, and he started worrying about his wayward hose. “Well, I've been thinking about those dances.”
That made two of them.
“And how you owe me one, since I got suckered into two.” She grinned. “I'm ready to cash in.”

“Excellent,” he said.

“What makes a good baseball coach? I need a list of traits.”

He blinked as his brain reset and his heated and primed body realized it had just been played like an expert no-hitter. “You're asking me for advice on who to hire to coach this team?”

“I am. Did you think I was asking you for something else?”

He chuckled. “You are a piece of work, Rachel Reed.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” she said innocently. “But, seriously, will you help me? My father created a ranked list for coaching prospects, but I'm finding some of the top choices have already taken jobs elsewhere, which has made a real mess of my list, and … well, my father isn't exactly up to creating a new one at the moment.”

It seemed innocent enough. “I don't know,” Sam said. “This feels like another changeup.”

“A what?”

“A pitch that looks like a fastball, right down the pipe, but ends up being off-speed and devastating.”
At least for me.