Hardball (5 page)

Martha nodded sagely. “Ah, yes, the old Cro-Magnon approach. Not generally a winner these days, hon. But I gather you must have managed to restrain yourself.”

“Barely. I don’t even know whether she’s a real doctor or a resident or whatever they call all those junior types running around in white coats. She just introduced herself as Dr. Bell and said she’d only been in Philadelphia a few weeks.”

“She must be a heck of a knockout, if I know you.”

Nate knew not everyone would describe Holly Bell as a knockout. “She’s tall, slim, elegant. A bit of a Southern Belle. Real classy type, for sure.”

Martha arched her brows.

Nate chuckled. “Yeah, she
is
a lot like you, come to think of it. Don’t think she has your potty mouth, though. I sure hope not.”

Martha stuck her tongue out at him. “You are so full of it, Carter. You of all people know that I am a totally refined Southern lady.”

When he rolled his eyes without launching a riposte, Martha continued. “However, I must admit that this is a most interesting development. Have you got your strategy and tactics planned out yet? Assuming she hasn’t already thrown herself at your feet.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he replied, watching Martha swirl and sniff the wine in the glass the server had just poured for her to taste. “I’ll be seeing her again tomorrow. She promised to take a picture of the little girl and me. After that, I don’t have a clue yet, but I’ll figure something out. I always do.”

Martha stared absently into her wine glass. Nate could see her devious brain hard at work. After a few moments, her eyes flashed with the mischief of a co-conspirator. “Well, I think I might have a useful thought about that.”

“Sort of,” Martha said. “Since she’s new to Children’s, I’d guess she doesn’t know that the hospital co-sponsors the annual charity tournament with the
Post
. She might be interested, especially if you tell her she’ll get to rub elbows with a lot of big-name doctors and other local heavy hitters. It’s always good for the new kid’s career to hang out with the big dogs, right?”

Brilliant.
Nate didn’t even have to think about it. “I like it. Even if she doesn’t play golf, I bet I could talk her into coming to the tournament dinner. That way it wouldn’t even have to seem like a real date, or anything she might get antsy about. She kind of struck me as the cautious type.” That worried him a bit—that she might be wary enough of him to say no. “But she’s still going to think I’m hitting on her.”

Martha shot him a disdainful look. “And what’s wrong with a girl thinking a guy wants to be with her? As long as you’re not a complete whack job, and I know you can restrain yourself when you actually try, it shouldn’t scare her off one little bit. Hell, if she gets nervous about that, you should start wondering if she plays for the other team.”

He almost choked. “Not damn likely. There were some serious vibes between us.”

“All right, then.” She raised her glass in a salute. “I wish you nothing but good luck, hon. Even though this sounds like uncharted waters for you.”

He experienced an unexpected flash of doubt, but shoved it aside. “No kidding. And with Dr. Holly Bell, I think I’m going to have to watch out for the undertow.”

Worn out by a long day on her feet, Holly opened the door of her little house, eager to get rid of her shoes and work clothes. Dumping her work bag, she ran upstairs and changed into a sleeveless tee and loose-fitting workout shorts, then slipped her feet into a pair of pink flip-flops. Fatigue was her faithful evening companion, but she embraced it in the sure knowledge that she’d given yet another day everything she could. Some of her colleagues groused that she was thorough to a fault, but when dealing with a child’s life, what other choice did she have?

Not that she really minded. Holly thrived on hard work, partly because she’d done it all her life. Never once had she taken her eyes off her goals—first, medical school, followed by the star-quality residency in pediatrics that had launched her professional career, and then a surgical position at a prestigious children’s hospital.

Heading down to her cute but tiny kitchen, she grabbed a container of yogurt out of the fridge and eased her tired body onto the padded bench in the breakfast nook. She hadn’t eaten much all day, as usual. Too busy. Not hungry enough to bother. Food was little more than a distraction, especially with everything she needed to accomplish to get up to speed in the new job.

She hated distractions from her work, and today she’d been plenty distracted. In fact, she hadn’t been able to get that baseball player out of her mind since their energy-charged encounter in Morgan’s room. It had taken her far too long to banish Nate Carter from her mind as she made rounds. The difficulty in accomplishing what should have been a simple mental task threw her more than a little off balance.

Sighing, she slumped back in her seat, admitting defeat. The guy was just too damn hot. If he was a Vegas club act, women would toss their room keys onto the stage. Thankfully, though, he didn’t seem to think he was God’s gift to women. As far as she could tell, Carter wasn’t nearly as full of himself as a lot of the other celebrities who toured hospitals. His genuine thoughtfulness in dealing with Morgan had attested to that.

Unable to suppress her curiosity any longer, Holly got up and walked through the house—still littered with unpacked boxes from her move—to her sunshine-yellow, cozy office. Bookshelves lined the walls and plant pots covered every available flat surface in the room. It was cluttered and barely in any semblance of order, but already she adored everything about her new home.

Booting up her computer, she entered Carter’s name in the search box of the Google home page. Instantly, ads for sellers and suppliers of all kinds of memorabilia and merchandise covered one side of the screen—Nate Carter baseball cards, autographed balls and pictures, tee shirts, sportswear. An ad for a Nate Carter energy drink made her laugh with disbelief. Shaking her head, she clicked on a link tagged “The Official Nate Carter Fan Club.”

It featured an elaborate home page, with a montage of video highlights set to a bouncy pop tune. Scene after scene of Carter throwing pitches and striking out batters flashed onto the screen. In another scene he wore a tux, looking like any woman’s wet dream as he hoisted a massive trophy at some kind of awards dinner. More casual shots included him swinging a golf club and climbing into the cockpit of a small airplane.

The video ended and took her into the main site, which contained a biography. Most of the baseball jargon might as well have been written in Sanskrit, but it was obvious that Carter was a genuine superstar. Line after line of impressive statistics and awards, including five times as an All-Star, and the Cy Young award, which she gathered was a really big deal.

And then there was his contract.

Holy Mother Mary
.

She squinted to make sure she hadn’t read the number wrong.
Twenty-eight million dollars for
playing baseball for two years?
They could probably build a new wing on the hospital’s cardiac unit for the kind of money Nate Carter was getting paid to play baseball.

Despite her shock and a brief stab of resentment, she figured there was no fair reason to hold the stunning payout against him. That fat salary wasn’t his fault, not if the people that owned the team were stupid enough throw away absurd amounts of money on a game. But it wasn’t something she would ever understand or even approve of, not when sick children died every day because they couldn’t afford the care they needed, or didn’t have the proper diet to keep them healthy.

Skipping over another half page of utterly boring baseball blather, her gaze hooked on the few paragraphs of personal background, which included that fact that he was born in Brooklyn on July 4th.

A regular Yankee-Doodle-Dandy
.

She couldn’t help smiling, unsurprised that he was almost three years her junior. He had starred in high school baseball, leading his team to the state championship in both his junior and senior years. After skipping college so he could play professional ball immediately, he’d been drafted by the Philadelphia team at age eighteen and signed a rookie contract. The bio reported that his mother had been dead-set against his decision. Mrs. Carter had urged her straight A student son to instead take one of the baseball scholarships he’d been offered by a number of universities with good academic reputations.

Holly blew out a relieved sigh. Carter certainly hadn’t come across like some thick-skulled jock. It would have been depressing to discover that he had beauty and brawn, but not brains.

Scrolling down, she found a piece entitled
Nate in the Community,
detailing his involvement with the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital. He had made a number of major donations to fund new equipment and facilities at the hospital. But more importantly, he consistently volunteered his free time to visit the kids. There seemed little doubt that his commitment to the children—the same ones she had devoted her life to—was genuine and lasting.

She started tapping her foot double-time, all-too-aware of the clutch of excitement low in her gut. This was the guy who had been flirting with her? Okay, Holly knew she was at least decent looking, but she’d long ago faced the fact that she was a total egghead, and one with an unfortunate tendency to bore her dates with too much focus on her job. Carter could no doubt line up a bevy of supermodels with a click of those long, strong fingers. Why would he be even remotely interested in her?

It just didn’t make sense.

Clicking back, she searched for entries on his social life. She found one—a mid-January story by Rosie DiStefano, who wrote the gossip column
Starstruck
in the
Philadelphia Post
.

Baseball heartthrob Nate Carter’s wandering ways have landed him in trouble again. Friday night, amused patrons at South Street hangout Fine and Dandy got to watch Carter’s (now-ex) girlfriend, model Geri Berlin, douse him with an apple martini before stomping out of the club. Reached on her cell phone shortly after the incident, the still-fuming Miss Berlin
told Starstruck that Carter didn’t deny he was continuing to party with other women on the Patriots’s road trips.

“
I thought it would be different with me,” the lovely Geri whimpered. “I thought this could be for real. But I guess Nate is always going to be Nate.” When Starstruck finally caught up to Carter, Philly’s hottest sports hero refused to discuss the incident. His only comment: “Geri is a great girl, but we were done like dinner and we both knew it.

Food similes aside, it looks like Nate Carter is determined to keep playing the field, both at the ballpark and outside it.

Holly grimaced with distaste and shut down the browser. Did it really surprise her to learn that the man had that kind of reputation? Carter’s dating history, if one could call it that, made his interest in her all the more confusing, but the bigger question now was how in heaven she could be attracted to someone as obviously unsuited to her as a hard-partying baseball jock. Even more disturbing was the stab of jealousy she’d felt at the idea of Carter with that Geri Berlin woman. Time to get this guy out of her head, and how hard could that be? She’d only met him today, for heaven’s sake!

She shut down her computer and headed to the living room, plopping down on the sofa as she reached for the issue of the
New England Journal of Medicine
spread open on the coffee table. It wasn’t exactly light fare before bedtime, but she had to get some work done. Tomorrow evening would be a complete write-off, since an old college friend had invited her to a fund-raising dinner and private tour of the Philadelphia Art Museum.

As she struggled to focus on the densely worded pages, Nate Carter kept breaking into her concentration. Her mind insisted on working like a stupid video recorder set for slow motion replay of every movement of his hard, lean body, and every word he had spoken to her in that deep, sexy voice—not in any semblance of order, but in a jumbled free-flow of images and sounds.

After half an hour of fighting the irritating intrusions, she tossed the
Journal
back
onto the coffee table. She padded off to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of California Syrah from the pantry. Reaching into her sparsely stocked kitchen cabinets, she latched onto one of the Waterford goblets she normally brought out only for her rare dinner parties. Pouring a full glass, she took two quick swallows and headed back to the sofa. One flick of a remote sent the sound of Debussy’s
La Mer
floating through the room.

As she tried to relax, damn if there wasn’t Carter’s sinfully handsome face in her mind’s eye yet again. A guy with devastating charm and a body built for hot sex. A guy apparently with both brains and heart. A guy who had all kinds of time for kids who needed support.

Yeah, and a guy who obviously enjoys playing the field big-time. So, get a grip, Holly.

With a frustrated groan, she took another swallow of wine and ordered herself again to cease mooning over Nate Carter.

* * *

His Nikon digital SLR camera slung over his shoulder, Nate whistled as he waited for the Cardiac Center elevator. He’d slept like a baby the night before, thanks in good part to the flow of excellent and grossly expensive wine Martha had ordered. By the time they’d called it a night, both he and his pal were pleasantly hammered. Wisely, they’d decided to leave their cars parked at the restaurant and take cabs home.

After the dinner, Nate had gone back to his apartment and collapsed into a dreamless sleep. In the morning, he’d taken a brisk walk to retrieve the Aston Martin from the parking garage that Umberto’s used for their valet parking. His sweet machine had survived the night without a scratch, and he’d given the attendant a big tip to show his gratitude. Five minutes later, he’d pulled into the garage at PCH, and hurried into the Cardiac Center.