Thrown By Love (8 page)

Mike handed her a very thick stack of papers. “You can read through these later, but I’ll just give you the bottom line, shall I?”

It wasn’t really a question. She stared at his desk, and her eyes focused on the wooden box and key that sat to one side. That box had always sat on her father’s desk in their family home. Seeing it here, out of place, made his death all too real.

Mike cleared his throat. “Essentially, everything has been willed to you.” He watched her face.

She heard the words. Nodded. Then it hit her.

“Everything? What everything? You mean Woodlands, the estate and the collections and his investments. That kind of everything, right?”

“
Every
thing, Chloe.”

“The team?”

“Especially the team.”

“Maybe he wasn’t in his right mind.” But she knew he had been; she’d been with him to the end.

“He drew this will up two years ago.”

She shook her head. “You know I’ll have to sell it to someone who can run it—I’m a university professor, for goodness’ sake.”

“Think about it carefully before you decide. Your father was one of the wisest people I know. He’d have a good reason for wanting you at the helm.”

She wanted to say that she’d never been at the helm of anything, unless you counted a classroom. “He always thought me better than I am, Mike, you know that. I'm not suited for anything like handling the team. Except for the past three years of teaching, I've been in school nearly my whole life. It's practically all I know.”

Mike peered at her over his reading glasses, but she couldn’t read his expression.

“I’m happy in my quiet life,” she added.

Maybe she was paranoid, but she thought she saw the faintest hint of a smile. He flipped through a couple of papers, then handed her several to sign. “He asked that you keep the ownership transfer quiet until the meeting next Monday. I’ll go with you.”

Chloe had practically grown up in the Sabers’ stadium, but as she walked into the field-level concourse, the familiar aroma of hot dogs and peanuts did nothing to settle the queasiness in her stomach. Mike Thomas had left a message saying he’d been detained and would meet her at the conference room at eleven. She had twenty minutes to blow. In his message, Mike had warned her that there’d be a brief press conference after the meeting. That had agitated the butterflies already spinning in her stomach. She had little experience with the press.

She reached the door to the clubhouse and paused. She’d gone in there exactly three times. The first time was on her fifth birthday. Her mother had died earlier that year and the guys on the team had become her family—she’d wanted to celebrate with them. Her dad had alerted the team and tipped off the clubhouse manager. He’d ushered her in to an enormous cake with five candles on it, her name swirled across the icing in bold letters. That year the stadium had become her home.

The second time she’d gone into the clubhouse was after a division win. She’d been escorted by Mrs. Larson, her nanny, and escorted out before she’d had her fill of the raucous, champagne-fueled celebration. One of the guys forgot himself and had dashed out of the showers naked. Mrs. Larson had told her it was no sight for a twelve-year-old’s eyes.

The last time she’d visited was with her dad two years prior, the night the Sabers won the World Series. They’d swept it, shocking everyone. Everyone except her dad and Charley Kemp, the team’s beloved manager. That time there’d been a special section taped off for press interviews and for family and friends. It was ceremony and pomp. The players had kept their clothes on. In the world of Tumblr and Instagram, it had been no time to show skin.

She stood, staring at the clubhouse door. She certainly wouldn’t be going in there now.

She turned up the tunnel and walked toward the field. She loved the sounds of the ballpark. Except on rare occasions, it sounded like joy and enthusiasm, delight and possibility. This afternoon it sounded like batting practice. The crowd was just beginning to filter in, and she heard the boisterous laughs of the players as they tuned up their bodies and prepped for the game.

If she hadn’t done her homework and studied the roster over the past few days, she wouldn’t have known much about the team. She’d had to review last year’s video footage just to get a sense of the season—she was teaching and hadn’t had time to watch more than a few games. Maybe her dad was right; maybe she had been buried too deep in her work at the university. Now she wished she’d made the time to sit with him and watch the games, enjoying what he so dearly loved. But regret was a nasty beast and wishing wasn’t going to change anything. She had a job to do.

She stepped out into the light and saw Scotty. She knew he’d be there; the news of his trade had stunned the Bay Area. But it couldn’t have stunned anybody as much as it had her. It’d been a surprise trade, just days before her dad died. Dick Fisher, the general manager, must’ve had his reasons. And the Sabers needed another starting pitcher, a pitcher who could pitch to both sides of the plate. What team didn’t?

She’d prepared herself for this moment, running it in her mind.

Scotty stood off to one side of the batting cage, talking with a man she assumed was the hitting coach. Scotty had told her he didn’t hit well. Even if he hadn’t, one look at the face of the hitting coach would’ve told her anyway.

Scotty looked her way, and a puzzled smile curved across his face. She saw him check it, flatten it, as the awareness of her presence spread through the players and created a stir on the field. She just wanted to watch, but she should’ve known the players would want to offer their condolences. Several of them joined her and shook her hand, tipped their caps and said kind words she knew she wouldn’t remember. She couldn’t take it; it was too fresh, his death and her grief. Too close to the surface so that everything and anything touched on her loss, stirring her emotions. The memorial the previous week had been hard enough, but Chloe wasn’t prepared for the little day-to-day reminders that punched a hole in her heart.

She turned and scooted down the tunnel, the image of Scotty’s puzzled look emblazoned in her mind.

“Hey!”

She turned at the sound of his voice. She hadn’t felt comfortable speaking with him in front of all the other players, hadn’t been sure she could control her voice or face.

“Hey, yourself.”

“I was really sorry to hear about your dad.”

“Thank you.”

They stood under one of those fluorescent lights that made everybody appear like sleep-deprived zombies. Except Scotty. He was as robust and handsome—and off-limits—as ever. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t look.

“What brings you out to the ballpark today? Thought you’d be teaching.”

She came to her senses. He didn’t know, hadn’t guessed. She had to tell him. It wouldn’t be right for her to have spoken with him face to face and not have told him. It was important to her that he heard it from her and not second-hand, not read about it in the press.

She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. She pivoted toward the wall.

“Hey.” Scotty captured her arms with his strong hands and turned her to face him.

She wanted to fold into his arms, to burrow into the warmth and strange bliss that sang in her whenever he touched her. Tears pooled at the back of her eyes. She was not going to cry. Not now. And not during the meeting. And definitely not at the blasted press conference. She was pretty sure she’d be crying later tonight in the condo her father had left to her. But that was her business.

She stepped back. She couldn’t think with him touching her. Besides, he wasn’t supposed to touch her. She wasn’t supposed to touch him. There were going to be way too many things they weren’t supposed to do.
Until she sold the team
. Even then any relationship between them would be dicey.

There was no gentle way to say it.

“He left me the team.”

Neither of them moved.

She saw the significance register in his eyes. She’d had a week to get used to the fact that she owned him—really, truly, legally owned him. He hadn’t had that luxury.

“Jeez.”

“Yeah,” she said, letting out the breath she’d been holding. “Jeez.”

She wanted to tell him that she was going to sell the team, but that news wouldn’t have been appropriate. As she fished around for something to say, she recognized that nothing about their relationship had been appropriate.

What she would’ve said, she’d never know. The Sabers’ manager, Charley Kemp, barreled down the tunnel and took her by the arm.

“Go work on your fastball,” he said to Scotty. “I’m walking this girl to a meeting.”

She put Scotty out of her mind as Charley hustled her through the hallways of the stadium.

Dick Fisher met Chloe and Charley at the door of the conference room.

“I’ve got this, Kemp,” Fisher said with a dismissive nod to Charley.

“I asked him to stay,” Chloe said.

Fisher stiffened. “That’s not necessary.”

She could’ve walked the line of tension between the two men. The day had gone from bad to worse.

“Miss McNalley can decide what’s necessary,” Mike Thomas said as he walked up behind them.

Chloe tracked her fingers to her throat, rested the tips along her collarbone, as the four of them entered the room. Under her fingertips, her pulse beat faster than she liked. Maybe she’d just imagined the tension between Charley and Fisher. But there was no mistaking Mike’s tone of disdain.

She headed for a seat at the side of the conference table, but Mike squeezed her elbow and led her to the head of it.

“You’re the boss,” he whispered.

She was glad for the ritual introductions. Even more thankful that she’d taken Mike’s advice and sent an email a few days before, calling the meeting and announcing that she owned the team. At least she hadn’t had to break that news face to face.

Many of the staff around the table were new to her, especially the front office people and the marketing honchos. Everyone minced around her as if she were fragile, foreign, as if she might shatter and send shards of glass lancing through them. Though they tried not to show their doubts, the tone of their words made it painfully clear they were less than sure about having her at the helm. Mike poured her a glass of water from a pitcher on the table. The cool glass felt good against the heat of her palms.

She listened to their plans, but found focus hard to maintain. The look in Scotty’s eyes when she’d told him she owned the team haunted her. She dragged her focus back. A staff member halfway down the table was saying something about the advantages that keeping the team in the family would provide. She nodded politely and gave a half smile. She wanted to tell them not to spend too much time spinning her to the press since she planned to sell the team.

But she wasn’t ready to tell anyone that, not yet.

Mike had cautioned her to keep her plans to herself. He’d said there was a buyer who’d been lurking for over a year—the man had the money and he was hot to get the Sabers. She’d already had Mike set up a meeting for next week.

Dick Fisher, the GM, sat next to her. He had smooth manners. Maybe too smooth. He was impeccably dressed, as if there were a store where you could walk in and tell them to make you look rich, powerful and polished. He probably didn’t have a humble bone in his body. But as he gave her another toothy, gleaming smile, she realized sports teams didn’t need humble. They needed leaders with chops.

The guy probably had chops, certainly more than she did. But he’d only been with the Sabers for six months. She knew little about him. Her dad had rarely talked about Fisher, but as she sat next to him, she began to vibrate with a creeping unease. Maybe it was the way some of the staff held their bodies as they spoke to him, or maybe it was the strange tension she felt coming from Charley. Wherever it came from, it was palpable.

She forced herself to sit back, unclench her fist.