Catching Hell: A Hot Contemporary Romance (7 page)

“I have a little farmhouse about forty-five minutes outside of town. It belonged to my daddy, to his family going back four, five generations. It’s my real home.”

Daddy
. It was easy to forget Zach was a native of North Carolina. His drawl was almost non-existent, bleached out of his voice after years of traveling around the country. But some things—kin and homestead—never completely faded away.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

And he did. He told her about chasing after clouds of lightning bugs, barefoot on a summer night, about ganging up with his brothers to torment his sisters with leeches collected from the pond that lay across the back of the property. He told her about rebuilding the front porch after a late-season hurricane tore the rotten timbers loose. He told her about hiring a man to do the planting now that he was on the road so much with the team, about resting the soil strategically and introducing organic crops.

As he talked, his hands emphasized his speech. His strong fingers carved out the meaning of his words, and his forearms flexed, underscoring the power of living closer to the earth than she had ever imagined, here in downtown Raleigh.

His life had been so different from hers—surrounded by half a dozen siblings, the sheer physicality of life on a farm, the connectedness to seasons and animals and plants that she only knew from storybooks. She heard the love in his voice—for his parents, his brothers and sisters, but most of all for his
home
.
 

North Carolina, born and bred.
The expression was made for a man like Zach Ormond.

“Enough!” he said, finally looking away. “I sound like I’m paid by the state tourist board.”

“You sound like a man who loves where he lives,” she said. “Thank you.”

He looked at his watch. “I have to get going.”
 

“That meeting?” she asked, even though she knew she shouldn’t. Even though she was certain she did not want to talk to Zach Ormond about the Rockets’ contract demands.

“Yes,” he said. The single word was naked, completely absent of any emotional weight.

She chose to accept his decision, to separate the conversation they’d just had from whatever business wrangling lay in their future. “I’ll keep an eye out for you at the Whitmore,” she said, pushing back her chair and standing. “Even if we use different elevator banks.”

“It’s not like we need a passport to go from tower to tower. Maybe I’ll stop by sometime, now that I know we’re neighbors and all. You know. Borrow a cup of sugar.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” she said archly.
That
caught him by surprise, and she was delighted. His eyebrows rose, and his lips curled into an amused smirk. She realized she wanted to make him smile like that another thousand times. But she made herself retreat a step, intrigued to see how he’d respond to a cold splash of truth. “Only if you bring your own cup. And your own sugar, too. I’m not really the domestic type.”

He laughed. “I sort of got that idea. Next time, you’re going to tell me about what it was like for you, growing up with Marty Benson as your grandfather.”

Next time.
“I’d like that,” she said. “Not the Marty Benson part. But the ‘next time.’”

He insisted on bussing their dishes, and he held the door for her as they left Club Joe. They were spared the uncertainty of how to say goodbye when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket with a sigh, obviously recognizing the ringtone. “I have to take this,” he said. She nodded, and he walked away, staying in earshot just long enough for her to make out, “I’m on my way, Ep. I just got held up a few minutes.”

Jeremy Epson. His agent.

Well, what else had she expected? She wasn’t flirting with some poli sci major in the student union. This was the big time. This contract thing between Zach and the team wasn’t going to disappear, no matter how much she wanted it to.

She stared after Zach until he got to the corner, but he never turned back to look at her.

* * *

Zach looked around the hotel suite, whistling long and low at the view of the Raleigh skyline. “I don’t know, Ep,” he said. “If you can afford this, I’m paying you too much.”

The agent didn’t bother laughing. Instead, he pushed a sheaf of papers across the table. “The team’s not fucking around.”

Zach set his jaw as he picked up the documents. They were memos, printed on official team stationery, with the logo blazing in red and blue. The first one was labeled “Locker Assignment.” The second said, “Player Parking Lot.” The third was “Equipment Maintenance,” and it ran on for half a dozen pages. Each was addressed to him. Each had been initialed GS.

Gregory Small.

“What the—” He skimmed through the first page. “This memorandum is to inform you that your locker has been reassigned. You will now maintain all of your personal belongings in Locker C-27.”

“That’s a corner locker, Ep. They put rookies in the corner.”

“They’re putting you there now. Read the rest of them.”

He did. His parking space had been switched. The team was no longer responsible for cleaning his cleats or his batting helmet. He’d be charged for all laundry generated in the locker room, with invoices to be paid weekly.

“This is bullshit.”

Epson shot his cuffs. “Of course it is. And it’s just the opening round. They want to give you a taste of what will happen if you don’t fall in line.”

“Change my goddamn parking space?”

“I’ll bet you a c-note right now, the new one is under a leaky pipe. Or a bird’s nest, if they could find someone to wrangle the fucking pigeons.”

“Penny ante bullshit. So? What do we do about it?”

Epson shrugged. “You don’t have a lot of room to maneuver here. But there is
one
thing I can suggest.”

“What?”

“This Friday, drop the appeal on your suspension. Take the five days the league gave you. With the team heading out for a tough road trip, they’ll want you behind the plate in New York. So deny them that. Stay home and take your punishment and let them fall flat on their asses.”

Zach narrowed his eyes. It was a risky strategy. If he wasn’t catching and the team won, then he’d just be proving how useless he really was.
 

But New York was leading the division. And the teams were meeting up in a four-game series, on enemy ground. The Rockets would
have
to feel the loss of Zach’s experience, his calling the pitches, his threading the needle for a string of desperately needed victories.

“I’ll do it,” he said, even though it went against everything he’d ever done as a Raleigh player, everything he’d ever done for his team.

Epson nodded once, and then he held out his hands for the papers. “I’m heading over to talk to Small in person. To tell him officially that you aren’t waiving the clause. But you know, it’s not too late for you to reconsider. We can use the suspension to fly out to Texas—”

“It’s not going to happen,” Zach cut him off. “And if you suggest it again, I’ll fire you.” He kept his voice mild, but there was no mistaking the bedrock beneath his words.

Epson shrugged. “I’d suggest you get ready, then. The Rockets are about to make your life a hell of a lot more uncomfortable.”

“Let them try,” Zach said, rolling his shoulders. “Let them give it a goddamn try.”

Anna resisted the urge to tug at the front of her dress. It was Rockets red, which should have been a comfort, but she couldn’t help but feel like the floor-length gown was a blinking sign, commanding attention from every corner of the crowded ballroom.

It didn’t help that she was trapped on the dais with Gramps. Her grandfather had been holding court all evening, accepting the greetings of various Raleigh luminaries. Half the conversations were light-hearted speculation on the Rockets’ chances for the season. The other half, though, were more pointed. The other half were directed to raising desperately needed funds for Raleigh Against Drunk Driving.

Gramps had long ago perfected the amount of pressure to apply in a handshake, the precise touch that indicated he held each particular person in the highest esteem. The old man’s accent shifted over the course of the evening, depending on the person he addressed. At times, his speech deepened into a slow Tidewater drawl; other times, he quickened his words until they became the efficient patter of a time-pressed businessman.
 

Gramps rarely asked for money directly. Anna had yet to hear him name a specific sum he expected any guest to give to the cause. But she heard several promises of checks, and three different people said they’d speak to their lawyers in the following week. Lawyers—that could only mean sizable donations, perhaps even the redrafting of a will.

Throughout the evening, Anna kept a smile on her face. She repeated the names of RADD’s powerful patrons as her grandfather introduced her, and she threw herself headlong into cocktail-party chatter. She did her best to keep anyone from knowing that her feet throbbed in the high heels she’d borrowed from Emily. She only forgot once that her hair was swept into a graceful up-do—and even then she stopped herself before she raked her fingers completely through her best friend’s hard work.

“Enough,” Gramps said when the pastor of his church had walked away. He leaned back in his chair and gestured for Anna to lean down so he could whisper in her ear. “Call Phil, and tell him I’m ready to go home.”

“You can’t leave yet!” Anna said. “The ball will last till midnight!”

“And I intend to be tucked into my bed well before then,” the old man said tartly. “You can represent the Benson name. Unless you’re afraid your carriage will turn into a pumpkin?”

Anna frowned. Her
carriage
was going to be a taxi. She’d decided it was foolish to keep a driver waiting all night to take her home from the ball. In fact, if this had been any other party, she would have just walked home. It would do her good to get some fresh air. But she wasn’t about to subject her feet to
that
torture, not when she’d let Emily bully her into three-inch heels.

“Let me call Phil,” she said exasperatedly, plucking her phone out of the tiny bag Emily had approved for the night.
 

In the end, it took nearly half an hour for Gramps to leave. Dozens of people needed to deliver their best wishes, and RADD’s president had to reiterate her gratitude for the generous donation from the Benson Family Trust. Anna leaned down to kiss her grandfather on his forehead after he was settled in the back seat of his town car. Only when she saw the tight lines of his pale lips did she realize how much the event had taken out of him.

“I’ll come home with you,” she said. “Just make sure you get settled in for the night.”

“That would be a fu—, a full-time waste of your charms, dear. Get back in there, Anna-cakes. Enjoy the rest of the night—and see if you can’t pin down Gwendolyn Chalmers for the donation she promised last spring.”

Anna decided that protesting would only stress her grandfather more. Instead, she pasted a smile on her face and stepped back so Phil could close the car door. “Take it easy with him,” she said to the trusted driver. “He’s exhausted, even though he’ll never admit it.”

“Of course,” Phil said, with a firm nod. Anna had the distinct impression he would have touched his finger to the bill of his cap, if he’d been dressed in a traditional chauffeur’s garb. As it was, the man wore a dark suit that bunched over his linebacker muscles. He’d get Gramps home without a problem.

Anna sighed and turned back to the hotel ballroom. The theme of this year’s event was
The Age of Innocence
. The tables had been festooned with flowers worthy of an Edith Wharton novel, and the usual rock band had been replaced with a chamber orchestra. A dozen couples spun about the dance floor, demonstrating their skill at the waltz.

Anna snagged a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, and she stepped to the side of the room. Gwendolyn Chalmers… The woman should be sitting with friends from the Garden Society; she was famous for the formal plantings that guaranteed her house was on the home tour every spring.
 

There
was the Garden Society; Anna would recognize those matrons anywhere. But Gwendolyn was nowhere in sight. Frowning, Anna turned to her right, ready to scrutinize every face in the room.

And she pulled up short as she found herself gazing directly into Zach Ormond’s eyes.

“What are
you
doing here?” she asked. He wore a tuxedo, with a starched shirt so white she almost blinked. His bow tie was perfectly knotted, and ruby studs glinted on the path to his cummerbund. The light mellowed the grey at his temples, softening his curls into smooth chocolate.

“Getting ready to ask the most attractive woman in the room if she wants to dance,” he said.
 

Anna suddenly lost all interest in tracking down Gwendolyn Chalmers. “I’d like that,” she said. “Very much.”

Zach smoothly handed off her glass to one of the attentive waiters, and then he took her hand. She told her suddenly surging heart that it was being ridiculous. Of
course
he took her hand. He was helping her through the crowd. He was guiding her to the center of the hardwood dance floor.

Nevertheless, she was absolutely certain she didn’t want to shift her fingers away from his. Not yet. Not when the music was just starting to swell around them in the stirring strains of a Strauss waltz.

He moved with the grace of an experienced dancer. His right hand curved over her hip and his broad palm splayed across her back. She could just feel his thumb against her spine, caressing her bare flesh above the top of her crimson bodice. The sensation made her catch her breath, a reaction she could not hide as he smiled.

She let her own lips curve as she settled her left hand on his shoulder. She felt solid muscle beneath her palm, the body of a man who had earned his living on the baseball diamond for years. There was power there. Promise.

He guided them into the timeless steps of a waltz, gliding across the dance floor the way he moved on the playing field—with absolute confidence and control. His arms tightened around her, and she yielded to the commanding pressure of his hips as he led them through the graceful pattern:
One
, two, three.
One
, two, three…