Homestands (Chicago Wind #1) (12 page)

Meg nodded. “She’ll be taking over my business before long.”

“Don’t believe her. She’s taught me everything.”

“Then you’re a pro.” From the corner of his eye, Mike caught Ben cross thick arms over his chest. “What about you?” Mike asked him.

“I’m a real estate agent.”

“Cool. Next time I need a house, I’ll know who to call.”

Ben glared.

Well, that went over well. This guy was as rude as his fiancée was nice. Mike opened his mouth to ask Dana when the wedding was, but Ben spoke. “You gonna’ tell us what you do?”

Dana shot Ben a startled look.

Mike’s face heated. There he went, assuming the guy knew who he was just because his girl did. Nothing quite like coming across as an arrogant jerk. “Sorry. I play baseball.”

“Right. For the Wind.” Ben lifted his chin as if in challenge. “You’re quite an athlete, aren’t you?”

Did the guy know who he was or not? Mike straightened and tipped his shoulders back, his smile frozen in place. “Thanks. I enjoy what I do.”

“I bet. Nine years in the majors. A few All-Star Games and Gold Gloves. Not bad.”

Mike fought the urge to laugh. Most people who followed his career asked for an autograph instead of listing his achievements as if he were on trial. Whatever this guy’s problem, Mike refused to let it goad him. “Who’s your team? Wait. Let me guess.” He held up a hand. “You like that other team in town.”

Ben ignored the joke. “I played in the majors.”

An ex-ballplayer? Mike studied his face. Was that the problem?

Ben seemed to have read his thoughts. “We played each other.”

He’d only hit one guy in the few bench clearers he’d been a part of, and this guy wasn’t him. So that couldn’t be it. But now that he thought about it, something about Reynolds did look a little familiar. “Sorry, I can’t place you.”

“It was in the minors.”

“No wonder. That was ten years ago.”

His words seemed to fuel Ben’s heated calm. “Let me help. I was a pitcher. Triple-A. Remember? Your first Triple-A game? Your first at bat?”

“I hit a home run my first—” He froze, suddenly remembering everything about that particular at bat. “You were the pitcher.”

Ben continued his stare-down. “Once you crossed home plate, I got pulled.”

Well, what were the odds of that? Mike clamped his mouth shut over those words. “That’s baseball,” he said.

“No, pulled for good.”

The guy blamed
him
for his career ending? What an idiot. The urge to teach Ben a lesson swarmed over him. No, Meg would hate him for sure if he started a brawl in her kitchen. “Sorry, man.”

Dana laid a hand on the guy’s arm. “Ben,” she whispered

He shot her a dirty look.

She flinched, pulled her hand back.

Ben returned his hardened stare to Mike. “You have a good day,” he said, his tone contradicting his words. He turned and left, footsteps clomping across the foyer. The front door opened and then slammed.

Silence followed.

“Well.” Mike’s shoulders sagged a bit, but he held his smile for Meg and Dana, both wide-eyed. “That’s a first.”

“Mike, I’m so sorry—” Dana began.

“Don’t apologize for him.”

“Ben’s sensitive about baseball. I’m sure he doesn’t blame you.” She toyed with her fingernails. “A couple weeks ago I caught him watching one of those classic ballgames. He gave up the hit that cost his team the playoffs.”

“Oh, wow.” How awful that had to be, watching himself blow it all over again, knowing that a game termed classic and played over and over was one in which he’d been the goat. His irritation with Ben faded some, and he glanced at Dana, at the worried expression on her face.

Something around her eye caught his attention. He squinted. “Is that a black eye?”

Her hand flew to her face, covering part of her left eye and cheek. “It’s old. It’s almost better now.”

So what? “How’d that happen?”

Dana fingered the make-up covered bruise. “I got hit with a softball.”

And it only left a bruise? He knew what a ball to the face could do.

“She got a concussion too,” Meg said. “She stayed home all last week. She couldn’t drive.”

He offered Dana a smile, even as he took another look at the faded bruise. He wished he’d noticed it earlier. He’d liked to have heard Ben’s response.

Knock it off, Connor.
There he went, finding domestic abuse in every relationship. She got hit with a ball that maybe wasn’t moving too fast. It left a bruise. That could happen.

Still, Mike couldn’t force away the image of his sister Betsy sprawled across her kitchen floor.

His eyes lingered on Dana’s shiner. However she got that, it had to have hurt.

The dream was reality, every bit of it hard fact.

Beneath an overheated sun, Ben wiped his upper arm across the sweat on his forehead and replaced his cap. At home plate a hot wind stirred dirt into a dust devil that made the minor-league umpire step back and wipe one eye. Ben wrapped his fingers around the ball in his glove and squeezed till it felt as if his knuckles might pop.

How had he come to this?

Once he’d been the number four draft pick, a future star pitcher and a wealthy man fresh from high school. Now—after a number of call-ups followed one month, one week, or one day later by a ticket back to the minors, he was close to becoming a former minor leaguer who’d only tasted big league life, never big league success.

It was enough to make him crazy.

He kicked the dirt on the pitcher’s mound, trying to forget the closed looks he’d seen on his manager’s face. Sure, he’d given up a few runs the last three times out, but he had only one loss to show for it.

He glanced around the infield. One out. Runners on first and second. No biggie. The next batter would be out number two, maybe even a double play.

While the batter was announced, Ben glanced at the kid’s stats on the scoreboard.

Michael Connor, just called up from Double-A, batting .325 with sixteen homers and forty-one RBIs this year.

Already?

Ben shook himself. None of that mattered. This was a different level, and this punk was now facing a guy who’d pitched in the majors. Some. He returned to the rubber and studied the batter digging in at the plate. Good gravy, could Mikey even drive?

Javier signaled for a curveball away.

Ben shook his head. No one fresh from Double-A was going to get a hit off him. He shook off the sign for his change-up.
Come on. Fastball.
This kid was getting nothing but heat. Three pitches, and the guy could go sit. Maybe then it would be clear to everyone where Ben Raines belonged.

After a long look into the dugout, Javier called fastball.

Ben checked the runners and started his windup. Let Connor try and hit this.

Connor did.

The ball sailed over Ben’s head and disappeared behind the centerfield wall.

A three-run bomb of a homer.

Ben jammed his glove onto his hip, barely containing the urge to throw a tantrum, and glared at the kid rounding the bases. Let him try that a second time.

Connor reached home, tapped the base, and high-fived his waiting teammates.

Ben caught the ball Javier threw him and turned his back on the high-fiving in the home team’s dugout.
Come on, breathe. Calm down.
He walked around the mound, smoothing dirt with his foot until he could relax his jaw. He shook his head, rotated his neck. Ready. He blew out a long slow breath.

Bring on the next loser.

He faced home plate.

But Javier was standing, watching the manager cross the baseline.

He was getting yanked again? So what if he’d faced four guys and retired one? They were still up by three. Why wouldn’t anyone let him work out of a jam?

He glared at his approaching manager. No way he was going calmly, not this time. Ben hurled the ball toward center field, then chucked his glove at home.

The packed stadium erupted in a mix of hoots, boos, and cheers.

He stormed past his manager, head throbbing. He snatched his cap and threw it down the dugout steps.

The guys in the dugout ignored him.

Not for long
.

He kicked a cooler and, when it didn’t topple, pushed it over with his hands, leaving it leaking on the floor behind him.

Still, no one paid attention.

Too bad he couldn’t take a bat to—

He halted and backtracked to the bat rack.

The pitching coach glanced his way.

About time. Ben grabbed a handful of bats and tossed them out of the dugout and into foul territory.

Heads turned.

He grabbed helmets and flung them as far as he could. More helmets, another bat—

Voices buzzed in his ears.

Aiming at the field, he launched a bat like a javelin.

It whizzed past an approaching umpire’s head, an umpire who immediately threw him out of the game.

Ben laughed, his fingers curling around a baseball. Too bad the bat had missed.

“Knock it off, Raines,” someone farther down the dugout yelled.

Ben spun. He flung the ball at the concrete wall at the far end of the dugout, watching in satisfaction as players hit the floor, hands covering their heads. The ball popped off the wall and into someone’s ribs.

Who cared?

Ben gave a few fallen bats and helmets one last kick before storming down the runway, slamming the sides of his fists against the walls.

No one ignored him now, did they?

He stomped into the clubhouse, eager to create another mess, but what he saw when he entered stopped him short.

Some employee emptying Ben’s locker. Fast.

His nameplate gone.

And Arnie, the ex-wrestler security guard, standing nearby. Taser drawn. Looking right at him.

Ben sucked in air, bolting upright in bed.

Over the soft hiss of the shower, Dana’s alarm clock was going off.

He knocked it over with his fist.

Still it buzzed.

He left it and stumbled to the kitchen, made himself a cup of coffee. He leaned against the counter as he drank it.

His dream returned.

Each detail remained clear—the way Arnie and another security guard had taken him out of the stadium, the anger he’d felt that his coaches had given up on him, and then rage when he’d discovered how bad his reputation had become.

A head case
.

Damaging to team chemistry.

No self-control.

Over and over he told his agent it wasn’t true, but every team believed it.

No team, at any level, would touch him.

When he returned home, Dad had laughed and said
I told you so
before leaving to play pool, but Margo had cooked him a huge meal and, with damp eyes, sat across the table, listening to him rant while he devoured three helpings. Someday, he’d told her, he’d set things right with everyone who’d trashed his career.

And he was keeping his word, although too late to do her any good. He set his coffee down as his arms twitched, remembering the way he’d been forced to shake hands with a man who’d helped murder Margo. He’d ached to beat him senseless right there. To be that close—

Ben shot his fist into an upper cabinet.

He’d go nuts if he thought about it any longer. He shadowboxed his way to the front door, imagining Connor taking every blow. On the chin and jaw, in the stomach and the teeth followed by a knockout punch to the nose. He shook himself like Muhammad Ali and opened the door. The paper lay on the steps. He picked it up, proud of his self-control. He’d changed, hadn’t he? If any other team had given him a chance, they would have been celebrated as geniuses.

And Margo would still be alive.

He plopped onto his recliner and searched the paper for the sports section. He pulled it out, his gaze landing on the article covering the bottom half of the front page. “‘Umpire Accused of Throwing Games,’” he read out loud and skimmed the story. Edwin Byrd, forty-nine, major league umpire for fourteen years with an untarnished record—until the FBI talked to a low-life with mob connections who, in addition to giving up a crime boss, also let slip this interesting bit of information.

Ben held his fingertips to his mouth. “Whoops.”

And, oh look, Byrd was suspended pending an investigation. Well, anyone knew an ump didn’t accept money to call one team’s strike zone larger than the other.

“What were you thinking, Byrd?” Ben carried the paper to the kitchen and rummaged through a drawer until he found scissors. He cut across the page, then down the fold. Byrd’s somber face stared at him from the article. “You threw that game to Oakland. You called my fastball a ball when everyone knew it caught the outside corner. You walked in the go-ahead run, and you sent me to the minors.” He held up the cut-out article. “Now it’s your turn.”

Ben tossed the remainder of the paper onto the recliner as he headed for the hallway. He walked past the bathroom, where the shower still ran and into his office, locking the door behind him before sitting at his desk and pulling the green binder from the file drawer.

His fingers caressed the pages inside. Newspaper articles from various papers and of various lengths were taped to plain white paper. Ben flipped through them slowly, smiling at the different memories each story brought.