Thrown By Love (29 page)

“And I’d say you didn’t.” Anger was a close cousin to grief, and right now anger was the stronger emotion. “I saw
your
interview. You could’ve warned me.”

“I sent you a text.”

He
had
sent her a text but in the melee of moving and losing her phone, she hadn’t seen it until three days later. Besides, the message wasn’t exactly personal. He’d said he’d been caught off guard and was sorry.

“I lost my phone that day, I was moving.”

“You’re a busy woman.” There was a chill to his voice she’d never heard before.

“I wasn’t sure if you were sorry because the reporter asked about our relationship or sorry you’d been caught off guard.”

“Evidently neither issue matters anymore.”

“Issue?” The protective membrane her anger had whipped up was dissolving fast. Suddenly she wanted to wind the clock back, but what she would do differently, she didn’t know.

He nodded, slowly, like a character in one of those movie standoffs between a villain and the man who had his number. She didn’t like being the villain.

“You played your hand, Chloe.”

He turned and walked out the door. It clicked shut behind him. She stared at it, then crossed to the window and looked down at the stadium in the distance. The deep breath she hauled in didn’t stop the trembling racking through her. She’d make it through the game tonight, put on a calm face—a game face, her father always called it. And she’d stay for the game tomorrow, even if Scotty was pitching. She had a regional owner’s meeting afterward, one she shouldn’t miss. But after the meeting, she was going home. What she’d do when she got there, she had no idea. What did a woman do when she’s ruined the best part of her life?

Chapter Twenty-three

The smell of fish and ocean and sea met Scotty as he walked along the Seattle waterfront. Sunlight lit the peaks of the Olympic Mountains and reflected in the water of Puget Sound. Gulls circled grinning tourists, and the scent of baked waffle cones drifted in the air from a vendor’s stand. But neither the beauty nor the clamor made him feel any better. He kicked at a trashcan between two pier pilings and ignored the shocked looks from a picnicking couple. He downed a couple of oysters and distracted himself with a round of pinball at the arcade. He stood in front of a bar and pondered whether or not to get a beer. He wasn’t pitching until tomorrow, but he liked to bring his best to every game, starting or not. He passed on the beer and moved along the waterfront.

His phone pinged, and he pulled it from his pocket. Tracy, his agent.

“Don’t forget the party after the game tonight.”

He had. He wasn’t in any mood for a party, not even one he was being paid to attend.

“You did, didn’t you?” She sounded exasperated. He hadn’t been keeping in touch, hadn’t been doing what she suggested he do to keep his name in front of the fans.

“I’ll be there,” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could fake. He’d agreed to do the party that night, so there was no need to bust her chops. He wasn’t in the mood to talk and he wasn’t in any mood to tell her he was being traded back to the Giants. He should. He would. But not now. Besides, she’d get the paperwork in the next day or so. He needed time to get used to it himself. She’d be pissed, but right then, he didn’t care.

“Tell me the name of the volleyball player who’s doing the gig with me.” He should know these things. Especially since he’d be meeting the woman on a red carpet in front of a bank of cameras after the game.

“
Sabra
. Sabra Moore. She won the U.S. Open, remember?” She cleared her throat. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, Tracy. Just having a little walk along the waterfront here. You know how I like the water.”

“Ten thirty. They’re expecting you. I wish I could be there, but—”

“But you have some other guy to torture.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Dandy.”

How he’d let Tracy talk him into the Adelphi fragrance endorsement, he wasn’t sure. But all the money from the contract would go to the Big Brothers fund. That he
did
feel good about; it was a pile of cash.

Sabra Moore. He tried to remember what she looked like. He’d watched her play two years ago, the year she’d won Olympic gold, but he didn’t remember much except that she was a true athlete. That he couldn’t forget. He typed her name into his phone and read through the top search items. When he clicked on images, he saw why Adelphi wanted her. She was more than an athlete—the woman looked like some sort of real-life Olympic goddess. He scrolled through and checked out the bathing suit line she’d endorsed the year before. Pretty hot stuff.
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit-issue hot. Maybe hot enough to distract him from thinking about Chloe McNalley.

As if that were likely.

Chloe sat staring at the granola that room service had brought. It had all the appeal of gravel. She didn’t have much of an appetite, hadn’t for a couple of weeks. Though the Sabers had beaten Seattle the previous night, she didn’t feel like celebrating. There was a long road ahead if they were to win the division title.

She swirled her spoon around in her bowl, then picked up the newspaper tucked toward the back of the tray. She poured a cup of coffee—hotel tea was never worth drinking and in her rush to get to the plane, she’d forgotten to pack her own. She pulled out the sports pages and read the box scores while she sipped at her coffee. After running through those, she glanced at the headlines. There, on the front page, was a grainy shot of Scotty with Sabra Moore. They were head to head and smiling as if the world depended on the wattage of their grins. What Sabra was doing in Seattle, she could only guess; Chloe doubted there was much beach volleyball taking place in the rainy Northwest. But from the smile on Scotty’s face, she thought she knew all too well what had drawn the gold medalist.

When she read the caption about the two of them kicking off the Adelphi fragrance line, the news didn’t dissolve the tightness in her chest. She knew this stuff sold papers, this pairing of the beautiful and famous. Sabra was an athlete and a beauty—a hot topic in the world of celebrity gossip—and her handlers were milking it. And the woman had to make money where she could; there wasn’t much of it in the tough world of women’s sports.

Chloe flicked her eyes back to the photo. How the hell they got late night shots like these into the morning papers was beyond her. She looked closer. Scotty looked like he’d had one too many. He was pitching today; he should’ve turned in early.

But that was the owner in her talking. And she’d traded him, so he wasn’t hers anymore. In more ways than one.

That afternoon, Scotty was a fury on the mound. Chloe imagined that every hitter had her face and he was firing for it.

She’d always loved the way he hugged the ball in his mitt, as if saying a prayer, going motionless before his windup. But she doubted he was praying. Not today.

Chloe watched from a seat well back of the visitor’s dugout. She didn’t want to distract him in any way. A vendor came by selling popcorn. Surprised to be hungry, she handed the man a five and settled back into her seat, munching.

Scotty pitched with a fluid motion, owned both sides of the plate, his whole body moving like a wave. He hit his groove early and held it. To the bottom of the fifth, he kept the Seattle hitters scoreless. He allowed only one runner on base and that was back in the second inning.

Seattle’s designated hitter, Billy Deron, was in the on-deck circle. Chloe knew from his stats he was a compact power hitter. He took a couple of practice swings, then stepped into the batter’s box. His batting stance, the way he kept his feet fairly close together, reminded her of Babe Ruth. Her dad had told her the narrow stance allowed batters to pivot quickly.

Scotty buzzed a fastball to the inside and brushed Deron back from the plate. Deron tapped the dirt from his cleats and stepped back in.

Chloe watched Scotty’s windup. Her breath caught in her chest when she saw the hitch come into his movement. He released the ball, and it sailed fat and hung over the plate. Deron connected with a crack so loud she felt it. The ball bulleted straight for Scotty’s head.

Chloe’s scream as the ball blasted into his temple was muffled by the gasps of the crowd. She ran into the aisle and down the steps toward the dugout. The Sabers’ center fielder chased the skidding ball and threw it in to second. Charley Kemp was already jogging to the mound. Deron had stopped at first and stood there, shifting from foot to foot and looking miserable. No one planned to hit a pitcher, at least no guys she’d want playing for her. Charley reached Scotty and waved for the medics. She knew then that Scotty wouldn’t be getting up.

She dug her fingers into the chain link of the fence beside the dugout. She didn’t pray a lot and sometimes she wasn’t sure what or who to pray to, but she started praying hard, realized she’d been beseeching the heavens for his safety since the moment Scotty fell. Medics carried him off the field on a stretcher, and Charley jogged over to where she stood by the fence.

“Harborview Medical Center. Go, Chloe. I have this handled.”

She’d always loved Charley, but now she loved him more than ever. As she turned to leave, she saw the umpire brush red dirt off the home plate. The bottom of Seattle’s order was up. The game would go on.

Chapter Twenty-four

Two days later Chloe sat in a hospital room in the same medical center in San Francisco where she’d spent her last days with her dad. The center had a brain trauma unit, the best in the country. They’d flown Scotty—a silent and unconscious Scotty—down from Seattle on a Helivac the day before.

She’d just missed his parents. They’d been there all night and had left for an hour or so to check in to their hotel. His dad had texted her, had invited her to get a bite to eat with them. But not only did she not feel like eating, she didn’t much feel like seeing them. She felt responsible for Scotty taking the hit. No matter how she turned the sequence of events, she played a starring role.

She’d earlier overheard the doctor say that Scotty’s brain scans showed no internal bleeding, although he had severe swelling on the left side. But the doctor hadn’t said how long Scotty would be in the coma or if he would come out. Chloe wasn’t family; there was little they were allowed to tell her directly. They’d already ascertained that she wasn’t the wife. Owners had no privileges when it came to this sort of thing. If she hadn’t known the case manager from the last days she’d spent in the hospital with her dad, they’d probably have kicked her out. The case manager still wore the lab coat with the cartoon-like bunnies and bears marching across it. The cheery-faced animals did nothing to lighten Chloe’s sense of dread.

She sat at the edge of the bed and took Scotty’s hand in hers. It was cool, almost waxy. His left eye was partially covered by the layers of bandages wrapped around his head. He looked like a war victim, not a man who’d been hit playing a game. She swallowed down the lump of terror in her throat.

“You certainly have a way of clarifying a girl’s feelings, Donovan.” He probably couldn’t hear her, but saying the words, giving them life, certainly helped her.