Catching Hell: A Hot Contemporary Romance (15 page)

Gregory Small snapped out a command. “Raise your arms, Marty.”

“Why—” That hideous, drooping voice continued, and he didn’t make even a tiny effort to comply.

“Do it!” Small shouted. Gramps muttered something, a slurry of sounds that only faintly resembled words. He shoved his hands forward, like Frankenstein’s monster, but his right arm failed to rise from his desk.

Small swore and dived for the office phone. “He’s having a stroke,” Small snapped when the emergency operator answered. He fired off the address. “Come quick.”

Anna moved around the desk, her fingers automatically loosening her grandfather’s tie and freeing the top button on his starched white shirt. She took his withered hand between her own, smoothing the back as she tried to calm him. “You’re going to be fine,” she said. “The ambulance is on its way. Just calm down. You’ll be fine.”

With every word, her spiky outrage evaporated, all of her frustration with Gramps’ impossible demands. Zach Ormond’s power games were nothing, compared to the health and well-being of the man in front of her.

It seemed like hours, but a glance at the clock told her the ambulance arrived in less than five minutes. Gregory guided her out of the way while the technicians worked, while they called out a series of questions, testing Gramps’ orientation, his general well-being. They strapped him onto a gurney and glided down the hall with perfect efficiency. One said Anna could ride in the back of the ambulance, and she hoisted herself up the metal stairs, pretending a confidence she didn’t feel, for her grandfather’s benefit, for all the team personnel who were gawking.

“I’ll follow along in my car,” Gregory said, just before the doors slammed closed.

At the hospital, they cut through the chaos of the emergency room—octogenarian stroke patients had high priority. Anna recognized the doctor who had treated Cody Tucker; he lost no time ordering up tests, confirming what Anna and Gregory had observed, administering drugs.

Through it all, Anna felt herself harden. She crystallized like a lump of coal caught in the earth’s vise, turning into a diamond under unbearable heat and pressure. When Cody had been treated, she had functioned like an automaton, solving everyone else’s problems, settling every issue with cool dispassion even as panic rose inside her. She had seemed one hundred percent calm to anyone watching from the outside, until that horrible moment when she had melted down in Zach’s arms.

There would be no meltdown now. Gramps needed her. He needed her to be strong. He needed her to be the woman who could take over ownership of the Raleigh Rockets, who could show him that his lifetime of belief in the team, in
her
was not some terrible mistake.

It was early afternoon before they settled Gramps on the neurology floor. The doctors had consulted with each other, tossing around medical jargon they ultimately translated into horrifying phrases. Unknown extent of damage. Medically-induced coma. Give his brain a chance to recover, if it was going to recover.

 
They kept her out of the room while they administered their drugs. She could only imagine the activity as nurses traipsed in and out, as a doctor called for an additional IV drip, as machines began to beep their constant measurement of respiration, heartbeat, life.

At last, they allowed her to see him. He looked like he was asleep, hooked up to half a dozen monitors, pale and somehow shrunken against the crisp white sheets. Anna smoothed wisps of grey hair from his forehead, wishing she could see inside his skull and somehow make everything right.

After an hour, the monotony drove her down to the waiting room. Gregory Small had set up shop, surrounded by a handful of staff members for the team. “How’s he doing?” Small asked, the moment she approached.

“As well as can be expected. They don’t know how long they’ll have to keep him sedated.” She saw Gregory’s grim frown and offered the best reassurance she could. “The doctors say it could have been even worse, if we hadn’t gotten him here so quickly. Thank you.”

But Small apologized. “I’m sorry. I know we were supposed to avoid stress. To keep him calm whenever possible.”

She shrugged. “Calm isn’t part of Marty Benson’s life. He doesn’t like to lose. It will kill him if Tyler Brock goes to St. Louis.”

Even as she said the words, she winced at the figure of speech. It couldn’t kill him. She wouldn’t let it.

“I don’t know what else we can do,” Gregory said. “This nickel and dime stuff isn’t making a difference to Ormond’s bottom line.”

“It’s easy,” Anna said. And as soon as she said those words, it was. “Bench him.”

“What?”

“Sit him down. Tell Conway not to put him in.”

Gregory looked at her like she’d grown two heads. “We’re playing
New York
. We can’t win without Zach behind the plate. We learned that during his suspension.”

“Gramps wants this trade done. And after we get Tyler Brock, we’ll be playing every game without Zach behind the plate. If you want to get Ormond’s attention, tell him he’s out of the game. For good.”

Anna turned on her heel and walked back to her grandfather’s room, not able to watch Small make the call that would break Zach Ormond forever.

Zach slammed the locker door with enough force that it bounced back and nearly hit him in the face. A quick pound with his fist ended
that
cartoon scene. Goddamn locker. Goddamn road trip. Goddamn Coach making goddamn decisions based on goddamn input from goddamn—

He cut off his silent tirade.

He was the one who had challenged Anna. He was the one who’d put bullets in a gun, handed her the firearm, pointed it directly at his chest, and told her to fire. How many times had he said his stance wasn’t about the money?
 

She wasn’t an idiot. Far from it. The second she’d set foot inside the farmhouse, she’d zeroed in on his past. She’d seen what he really cared about—family and tradition and
being there
for the people who relied on him.

And she’d taken all of that away with a single phone call. Benched him.
 

Because he had no doubt whatsoever that Anna was the person behind his sitting out the game the team had just lost.

Shit. Maybe he
should
waive the clause. Go to Texas. Babysit their phenom pitcher, spend a couple of years bringing the kid along, make sure he could stand up to the pressure of post-season play. Maybe snag a World Series ring two years down the road, just before his contract ran out.

Before his knees ran out.
 

Even though he hadn’t spent a minute behind the plate that night, his knees were aching. Part of it was tension, he knew. Every muscle in his body was strung as tight as the new fences he’d just put up at the farm. But part of it was the wear and tear of the game, the damage that wasn’t ever going to go away.

The guys started drifting in from their showers, wrapped in cheap white towels and the bruised silence of a humiliating loss. Zach grabbed his bag and headed for the door, for a taxi that would take him back to the hotel, alone. There was no reason to look any of his teammates in the eye. No reason to measure the full extent of the condemnation that waited for him there.

It wasn’t like he could do anything about it. It wasn’t like he could control the first thing about his goddamn professional career.

He hadn’t counted on the cameras, hadn’t thought any New York reporter would care enough to ambush him by the locker-room door.

“Zach!”
 

He turned automatically, barely disciplining the frown from his face when he saw the dapper field reporter, already extending his microphone.
 

“Zach, what was it like, sitting on the bench while your team lost?”

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the show?

“I don’t call the shots around here,” Zach said, carefully schooling his voice to civility. “Coach says who plays, and I just follow along.”

“But you’re not heading for the DL, are you?”

“No disabled list for me,” Zach said, shifting his bag on his shoulder. “Coach wanted to try out a new lineup. Shake things up a bit, see if we could generate a few more runs from the lower half of the batting order. It was an experiment, and it didn’t work tonight. But we’ll be back on track tomorrow.”

“Then there’s no truth to the rumor that you were sat down because of a contract dispute?”

Zach found the camera, stared directly into its crimson eye. “There’s no truth to that at all. I have a contract. There isn’t any dispute.”

“Then stories that you’re headed for Texas—”

“Are just that,” Zach interrupted. “Stories.”
 

He stood his ground, refusing to flinch. If he wasn’t going to be allowed on the playing field,
this
had to be the battleground. The press was his only ally as he fought for what he wanted. What he
needed
.

And the tactic worked. The reporter pulled back his mike, turned back to the camera for his own sign-off. “You heard it here first, folks. Zach Ormond, legendary catcher for the Rockets, isn’t going anywhere.”

Zach waited until the camera was turned off, and then he shook hands with the reporter. The guy was already positioning himself back at the door, ready to snare whoever came out next. Great job, if you didn’t mind feeding off the entrails of some damn fine ballplayers.

Hefting his bag higher on his shoulder, Zach turned down the long hall toward the street. Halfway to the door, his phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket. Anna.

His treacherous heart leaped high the instant he saw her name. A smile actually curled his lips, and his fingers moved automatically, eager to answer the call. He couldn’t wait to hear her voice. Couldn’t wait to ask her how she was holding up, how the old man was doing, whether the doctors were offering any signs of hope.

He stopped himself, though. He couldn’t do that. Not now. Not when they were in the middle of a war.

He shoved the phone back into his pocket. He had almost sixteen hours before he had to report back to the ballpark. Back to another game where he wouldn’t be allowed to play the only game that had ever mattered to him. And he had Anna Benson to thank for that.
 

He decided to walk a while, before hailing a cab. The exercise would do him good. Give him a chance to calm down. Let him figure out his next move. If there was one.

* * *

Anna stared at the clock on her kitchen stove, willing the glowing blue numbers to change over to 9:00. It seemed like the only thing she’d done for the past three days was wait.

Wait—for the doctors to tell her there was any change in Gramps, that his brain had begun to recover, that they could taper off the drugs that kept him in his coma.

Wait—for Gregory Small to tell her Texas was withdrawing its offer, that they were tired of playing games, that they were going to make their straightforward deal with St. Louis.

Wait—for Zach to call her. For Zach to respond to one of the six texts she’d sent him. For Zach to knock on her door, to push his way into her living room, to fold his arms around her and carry her to her bed, and make her pay for benching him.

None of those things happened, no matter how many times she looked at the clock. But Anna had promised herself that she could take action at 9:00. As the last glimmer of summer sunlight faded on the Raleigh horizon, the number finally changed, and Anna headed down to the garage, got into her car, and drove through the hot city streets on her way to Zach’s farmhouse.

Today had been a travel day; the team had flown back from New York, from the series where they’d been swept in three brutal games. Sure enough, Zach’s car sat on the driveway in front of his house, dark and hulking under the spreading oak tree. He’d parked the BMW next to his dusty pick-up truck.
 

With both vehicles there, he had to be home.

Anna wiped her palms against her jeans as she climbed out of her car. She thought she’d glimpsed a flicker at the windows as she pulled up, a quick flash of someone looking out the upstairs bedroom, identifying the source of the evening intrusion on the farm’s bucolic quiet.

Now, though, the shades were all neatly in place, eyelids shutting off any glimpse of life inside. She could just make out the glow of a lamp in the living room, a wash of gold around the edge of one window frame.

Swallowing hard, she forced herself to climb the three steps to the porch. Before she could chicken out, she opened the screen to knock on the door—three sharp raps that echoed off the white-painted swing to her right.

Nothing.

She tried again, knocking more rapidly, letting some of her nerves flow into her fist. When there was still no response, she tried the doorknob. It was locked.

Squaring her shoulders, she marched back down the steps. She made short work of walking around the farmhouse, grimacing at each darkened window. A well-used grill crouched near the back door, shimmering in the summer night. Her stomach clenched at the aroma of recently-cooked steak. The summer scent reminded her that she hadn’t eaten a real meal in three days; instead, she’d grabbed chips from the hospital vending machine, filled her belly with a poisonous brew of Coca-Cola and candy bars.

She knocked on the back door, resorting to pounding with her fist when Zach refused to answer. In the city, he would have been forced to respond; she was making enough noise that any nosy neighbor would call the cops.

Out here on the farm, though, surrounded by rural peace and quiet, no one was going to report her to the authorities. No one would force Zach to open his door.

She rummaged for her phone as she stomped back to the car. Leaning against the hood, she punched in his number, listened to it ring four times, hung up when she got his voicemail. Again, she hit the number. Again. Again. The fifth time, he’d obviously turned off his phone—the call went directly to his gruff outgoing message.

And now she had no idea what else to do.