Payoff Pitch (Philadelphia Patriots) (14 page)

But was that the only reason he wanted Teddy to say yes? Noah had forced himself to think hard about that question when he was getting his miles in on the treadmill. Of course, the answer was no. How could he see Teddy Quinn as nothing more than an employee who fed and walked his dogs? He hadn’t felt that way about her since the moment their eyes met as he and Buster pulled up beside her just outside the park. Teddy’s gaze had contained something more than mere gratitude at that moment, and despite her ragged, breathless appearance, Noah had felt a startlingly powerful attraction that had only grown deeper in the days since he’d gotten to know her.

So, yeah, if she moved in there would be some uncomfortable moments until all that settled down. But they could handle it. And it wouldn’t be forever. Teddy would want to move on after a while, and who knew how long he’d be in Philadelphia, especially with the way he was pitching these days? No, it would be something of a short-term solution if she accepted—one that had obvious benefits for them both.

The pitching coach’s door was wide open so Noah headed straight in. Marquez sat in front of his widescreen monitor with his back to the door, as did Nate Carter who sprawled in the chair on his left. Though it was unusual to have another pitcher present at these reviews, Noah had asked Nate to sit in. In a very real way, Nate Carter—the acknowledged leader of the Patriots’ staff—was as much the pitching coach as Javy Marquez. Marquez had the title, but Nate had even more creds among the team’s hurlers. You didn’t become a Cy Young Award winner and perpetual All-Star without knowing what the hell you were doing.

Noah took the seat on the pitching coach’s right. The tiny office felt cramped with three big men in it. Barely more than a closet, the room contained only a desk, two chairs and the small table on the end wall where the three men sat. Noah and Nate towered over the five-eleven Marquez, a burly Mexican whose outstanding cutter had made him one of the better starters in the American League for a dozen seasons in the eighties and nineties.

“Man, you could have taken a shower first,” Nate said, scrunching up his face in mock distaste.

Noah knew the ace was just ragging his ass. “Didn’t want to keep you important guys waiting.”

Nate snorted while Marquez kept poking away at his keyboard until Noah’s image appeared. It showed him completing his warm-up pitches before the top of the first in Atlanta.

Noah immediately grimaced.
Christ, I look as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
He’d been so focused at the time that he hadn’t fully registered his level of anxiety.

The three men went through the edited video quickly on a first run, forming general impressions before Marquez stopped it so they could single out certain pitches. “What did you pick up, Noah?” Marquez asked as his heavy, dark brows drew nearly together in a frown.

Noah couldn’t help an instinctive, unkind thought.
Isn’t that what you get paid to tell me, Coach?
But he stifled it. Javy was smart to let him have the first word.

“I looked tentative a lot of the time,” he ground out. “Especially with the slider and changeup. I obviously didn’t have confidence in them.”
And Nick should have seen that and stopped calling for those pitches.

But that was simply another bullshit thought. He should be happy the veteran catcher still had enough confidence in him to take chances with his pitch selection. Noah started to sweat again even though it wasn’t that hot in the room.

“Let’s look at the slider you threw Heyward again,” Marquez said, clicking keys.

Thankfully, he didn’t say
let’s look at the slider Heyward sent on a rocket ride to the moon.

Nate shook his head. “No, let’s start by focusing on the fastball just before that, Javy.”

Marquez shrugged and teed up that pitch on the screen. First, they watched it at normal speed, then in slo-mo.

“What was on the gun?” Nate asked.

Marquez minimized the video and tapped some more keys to bring up a stats report. “Eighty-six,” he said after a few seconds.

Noah had figured it wasn’t that bad a pitch. Rome had called for it to barely catch the outside edge of the plate, well away from the left-handed batter. Noah had missed the plate by three inches. “Nick wanted to set Heyward up for a hard slider in on his hands.”

“Let’s stick with the fastball for a minute,” Nate said. “How did you feel about that one?”

Noah remembered it well. “Like crap that I missed the corner. I really didn’t want to go two-and-one on a tough hitter like Heyward.”

“So, you were already worried about the
next
pitch when you threw that one, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Noah could see where Nate was heading.

Nate shrugged. “So maybe you’re getting twisted up thinking ahead instead of committing to the pitch you’re actually throwing. Your mind is preventing you from throwing free and easy like you should.”

“You’re over-thinking,” Javy chimed in succinctly.

Noah had to admit there might be some truth to their conclusion. When you lack full confidence in your arm, you can start thinking about the consequences of making a bad pitch instead of focusing one hundred percent on making a good one. But was that really what he was doing?

“I’ll say this, guys. I don’t remember ever being as concerned about getting behind the hitter. Before the ligament blew out, I always figured I could make the pitch I had to, even when I was behind three and one. Now, I tighten up thinking about going two and oh, or two and one.”

Javy shook his head. “You’re talking about when you could get yourself out of a hole in the count. But, man, that was when you were hitting ninety-four or ninety-five on the gun.”

The coach’s words kicked Noah in the gut. While the conclusion was obvious, it still hurt like hell to hear it spoken out loud.

“Yeah,” Noah said glumly.

“We’ve talked about this for a while now, Noah,” Javy said. “Until you get your full velocity back and you’re able to get better movement on the slider, you’re going to have to rely on pinpoint control to pick away at the corners. You need to be committing to every single pitch with total concentration. You didn’t have that in Atlanta.”

Noah had thought he had, but the results didn’t lie. “Every single pitch,” he repeated.

“And like I told you before, don’t be hesitant to throw inside,” Nate said. “I don’t give a crap how many guys you dust or even plunk. Don’t let them crowd the plate and wait for your fastball on the outside corner or you’ll be getting a sore neck from watching balls flying out of the park. You know this stuff, but it looks like you need reminding.”

Throw harder. Don’t get down in the count. Get more movement on the slider. Brush guys back
. Noah couldn’t argue with any of those prescriptions. He’d pitched according to those tried and true formulas his entire career. But unlike Noah, Nate Carter and Javy Marquez hadn’t undergone potentially career-ending surgery. The doctors could tell him he was physically as good as new until the cows came home, but Noah knew he wasn’t. While he was probably ninety-five percent or more of the way back, that missing few percent was the difference between being a front-line starting pitcher and a mop-up guy, or even getting his ass sent down to the minor leagues.

And, damn, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Noah couldn’t help worrying about suffering another injury, one that would knock him out for good. It was stupid, because they’d said his arm was actually in better shape after the surgery than before. But once you’ve had a big scare, it’s hard not to think about the next time. He’d heard cancer patients often felt the same way. They might be declared cancer-free but they’re never able to shake the fear of being stricken again.

The truth was, it was his head that was most of the problem, not his arm.

“You don’t have to do it all tomorrow, man,” Javy said. “Everybody’s going to be patient while you work your way back.”

Noah appreciated the sympathetic and supportive words, but he wasn’t buying it. In the front offices of major league baseball teams, the dictionaries didn’t include the word “patience”. And contending teams like the Patriots couldn’t put up for long with a pitcher who wasn’t able to deliver consistent quality starts. As a hurler, job security was as thin as the first winter ice on a lake.

“Nobody’s going to work harder than me,” Noah said, trying to inject confidence into his voice. As much as it hurt to watch, he was going to park his ass in this cubbyhole until they’d analyzed every one of his pitches in Atlanta.

He pulled his chair closer to the computer screen. “Okay, guys, one pitch down, sixty-four to go.”

“So, what did he say when he got back?” Emma asked as she grabbed a bottle of St. Pauli Girl from the fridge and handed it to Teddy. “Please tell me Mr. Stud Muffin was deliriously happy with your efforts.”

Emma’s eyes sparkled with interest but Teddy detected more than a little anxiety in her question, understandable given the importance of Noah’s business.

Teddy kicked off her sandals and forced a smile. “Maybe not delirious, but incredibly complimentary, I’m happy to say.”

“Fantastic!” Emma held her bottle up in a toast. “And you clearly survived the weekend with Griselda the Housekeeper.”

“We barely saw each other, and now she’s sick.” She thought for one brief moment about postponing the big discussion with Emma until later, but it made no sense to dither since her partner had already raised the subject. “Em, let’s sit down. After what Noah put to me today, we really need to talk.”

“Put to you?” Her roommate’s bright smile morphed into a thin line. “That sounds like lawyer talk, not to mention a little ominous.”

Teddy gave her a hug. “Don’t worry, partner. I think it’s all good. I hope so, anyway.”

Emma sagged into her with relief. “You scared me, Teddy. Whenever somebody tells me we need to talk, I want to pull out the body armor. Or sometimes, in the case of a guy, a gun,” she said, trying to joke.

Teddy gave her a brief squeeze before heading into the living room and flopping into the old leather armchair. She owed Emma so much. If her partner and friend had even the slightest bit of discomfort with what Noah had proposed, she didn’t think she could go through with it. Teddy was still firmly on the fence about it herself, and opposition from Emma would likely push her into the
no
column.

Even thinking about leaving Emma made Teddy sick with worry about the possible destruction of their partnership. She’d stewed the entire drive home from Noah’s house about how to break the news. Neither she nor Emma had envisioned a change in their relationship this early—at least not one of this magnitude. They’d made a commitment to each other, one reaffirmed when they’d co-signed the lease to the comfortable townhouse that served as both their office and home.

Emma settled onto the sofa, carefully setting her beer on a coaster on the coffee table. “Okay, so if it’s all good, why do you look like you just lost your best friend?”

Teddy had to repress the instinct to wince at the casual comment that unnervingly mirrored her thoughts. “I think you should just listen until I lay it all out, okay?”

Emma nodded and reached for her beer.

“Yes, Noah was
very
happy with my work,” Teddy began. “He told me that when he called from Atlanta—twice—and then again today when I made him breakfast.”

Emma gaped at her. “You made him breakfast?”

“Weren’t you just going to listen?” Teddy said, feigning exasperation.

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”

“Anyway, he said that having me stay at the house when I take care of the Poodles gives him peace of mind, and that’s especially critical for him now that he’s not playing as well as he’d like.”

Emma nodded. “That’s all good, but now comes the other shoe, right?”

“Emma!”

Her partner rolled her eyes. “Sorry,” she said, dramatically drawing out her r’s.

Teddy’s hands went suddenly clammy. She thought she knew Emma well, but she truly had little idea how her partner would react. If she went ballistic, Teddy would have to turn Noah down. Unfortunately, that didn’t sit well with her either, which told her just how tempted she was by the offer.

Looking for something to do with her hands, she started picking at the label on her beer. “Anyway, Noah really, really wants to maintain that peace of mind, so he said that the best solution for him would be for me to live in, like his housekeeper. Then he’d never have to worry about the dogs.”

Emma paused with her beer halfway to her mouth. “You’re kidding, right? What made him think you’d be interested in something like that? A live-in dog sitter is pretty out there, even for a big-shot athlete.”

Teddy didn’t smile—this was far too serious for that. “I reacted a lot like you just did. I went through all the implications, for both me personally and for our business.”

“I’ll say,” Emma said, trying for another sardonic eye roll.

But Teddy could tell her friend was rattled. Since she obviously hadn’t dismissed Noah’s idea right up front, Emma would know she was at least considering it. “He persisted, though, and he made it very attractive, Emma. If
we
wanted to say yes,” she said, emphasizing that it was a joint decision, “it would be financially rewarding. Extremely rewarding.”

Emma’s gaze narrowed with reluctant interest. “Okay, keep going.”

“He isn’t talking about me working full-time for him. That’s obviously not necessary. I could still handle most if not all of my regular clients. Really, the only thing that would change is that I’d be living in his house instead of here.”

Emma hunched her shoulders. “But we would still pay for this house out of the company account, right?”

“Absolutely,” Teddy said, flapping a hand. She would never leave Emma in the lurch, financially or otherwise. “But I would have to keep some of the extra income I earn for myself. After all, I’m going to be the one living out, and the one who has to be on call practically twenty-four-seven.” She gave Emma a placating smile. “But the terms are so generous I don’t think there would be any problem with that.”