A League of Her Own

EIGHTEEN STRIKES. It was all Heather needed to keep the guy. Pitcher, she corrected herself. She wasn’t looking for a man. Especially not a reformed alcoholic bad boy. But after seeing his grit and ability to tune out his hecklers, she now saw the potential her father had spotted. After making the adjustments she’d suggest, Garrett Wolf would go far. She admired his wide shoulders as he strode to their catcher and shook his hand. He had lots of potential...

She gave herself a mental kick. Thinking with her hormones was not going to win the day. He might be the best-looking man she’d ever seen, but at the end of the day, he still worked for her. He was an asset, she told herself firmly. Nothing more.

After a few more stretches, she returned the shortstop’s enthusiastic smile and ambled to the mound, her heart beating furiously fast. Not only did she need to keep Garrett in her bullpen, but she also had to prove she’d made the right call in challenging him. The team had to see her as a capable manager, a leader to follow, a person whose decisions could be trusted. Given the skeptical looks she’d caught, she knew she had an uphill battle.

She slid her eyes his way, taking in his powerful form and razor-sharp jaw. A thrill sputtered in her veins when he tipped his hat to her, his eyes a brilliant blue beneath the brim.

“Get ’em, sweetheart!” roared Hopson, whose mouth, apparently, worked faster than his brain, or his legs. Unlike Bucky’s words, the endearment didn’t feel sweet. It felt insulting. Still, overreacting to it would make her seem too sensitive—the double-edged sword all women faced.

“If we’d known he could throw that well, we would have told him he was being released before every game. Maybe we would have won one by now,” added Waitman, slapping Garrett on the back as the tall man stepped behind the dugout fence.

Heather couldn’t resist a slight lip curl at that one. It was true. He’d pitched better than she’d expected—a good sign that he reacted well to pressure. When Dean hurled a softball her way, she stepped neatly to the front of the mound and folded her glove around it.

Eighteen, she thought as she brought the glove up to her chest. She leaned forward, then straightened, bringing her arm up and around behind her as she took a strong stride. The ball rolled off her fingertips a moment too soon. She didn’t have to look to know she’d thrown low, though she did anyway, watching the ball skip off the plate with a sinking heart. This wasn’t the start she needed. Out of the next nineteen pitches, she could miss only one.

“Don’t let him off the hook, hon!” bellowed the first baseman, but Heather shut him out. In fact, she didn’t hear anything at all except the slap of the ball in her mitt as she got her nerves under control.

She peered at the catcher’s mitt and went into her windup, delivering a pitch so precise, Dean’s mitt never moved. She’d found her release point. Sweet.

“That’s a winner,” Dean encouraged her before tossing her the ball. Her excitement rose, but she tamped it down. With only one more mistake allowed, she needed to stay loose and relaxed.

Six more strikes and the players had stopped talking to each other, their eyes glued on her.

“She might make this interesting,” she overheard one of them say.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Garrett yank off his cap and rub his brow, shielding his eyes against the intense sun splashing all around them.

He was starting to look concerned. Good. They should all take notice. She was a fierce competitor. They needed to see that in their manager. But after two more textbook pitches, the ball sailed high, making Dean reach overhead.

Darn. Only halfway through and she couldn’t miss one more pitch. She looked up at the sky, wondering how she’d put herself in this position. For the first time, she felt nervous. She might actually mess this up and lose a player, her first mistake as manager. How would she ever get the team’s respect back if she didn’t keep Garrett? Worse yet, she’d have to tell her father, who, since he’d been busy with follow-up medical appointments in Raleigh, didn’t know about her reckless challenge. She had to pull this off.

Battle back.

Strike after strike after strike and she slowly but surely built toward her goal. She’d nailed nine in a row and, but for the birds in the trees, the field was deadly silent. She felt the team’s eyes on her, their expectations, and the sharp criticism from her father if she screwed this up. She swallowed hard, despite her dry mouth, and brought up her glove, making her hand relax when it wanted to clutch at the ball.

This was it. One throw that meant so much. She mentally ran through the delivery that had earned her the last nine strikes and, in one swift move, duplicated it exactly.

The ball snapped the mitt closed.

“Strike!” Dean screamed, leaping to his feet, his glove high in the air and waving. Elation and deep relief flooded her, and she staggered slightly, having held herself in control for so long.

Yes! She’d won. Not that she’d expected to lose, but after giving up those early pitches, it had seemed perilously possible. She glanced over at the dugout and hesitated before joining the jabbering crew. Several glanced her way, their eyes speculative.

“Nice job, Skipper!” yelled Valdez. The rest of the men only nodded her way, then turned toward a grim-faced Garrett. Dean jogged over to join the group.

“I know you’re disappointed, but I’m not,” she overheard Dean say as she neared. “This team needs you.”

“Yes, we do,” she echoed, hoping she hadn’t damaged their working relationship with the contest.

“That was impressive.” Garrett turned to her, pulling the sunglasses off the back of his cap and sliding them on. Hiding his incredible eyes. “It looks like you have me for the rest of the year. Despite all of this, I’ll give you a hundred percent.”

Impressed at his professionalism, she nodded. “Thank you, Garrett. I’ll see you at practice later today. We’ll discuss a few tweaks in your delivery then.”

Garrett nodded, his mouth tight. “See you there.” He walked off with his teammates, leaving Heather feeling unsettled, despite her victory. It was her first step forward as team manager, and Garrett had promised her his best.

She pictured his handsome face.

So why, then, didn’t that seem like enough?

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ee70c5dc-5453-57e1-88a9-082de4e3d191)

“YOU DID WHAT?” Heather’s father demanded from his seat at the kitchen table.

The knife stilled in her hand, mayonnaise dripping from it onto the turkey sandwich she’d been making. Fidgety thoughts darted through her mind like squirrels in trees. How to explain without making her father lose all faith in her? Go back on their agreement to let her manage the team?

“Garrett Wolf asked for a release, and I challenged him to a pitching contest to earn it.” She dropped Scout a piece of turkey.

Her father’s fist thumped the table, rattling the cutlery and making his glass of skim milk jump. Her heart leaped with it. She was in for a tongue-lashing. She knew it as surely as Reed’s trick knee predicted rain. Only this would be a tempest.

“I signed him, Heather,” he growled, the lines that ran from the corners of his mouth to his chin deepening, waves of disapproval rolling from him and crashing over Heather. “He wasn’t yours to risk losing.”

She forced her clenched hands to unfurl and smear the rest of fat-free mayo, add a piece of light cheese and close up the sandwich. While her reply ducked behind her heavy tongue, she silently cut the perfect diagonal line her father demanded, added carrot sticks to the plate and brought it to the table. When she pulled out the high-backed wooden chair opposite her father, it scraped against their tiled floor. Other than his grunt of a thank-you, it was the only noise in the open eating space.

When he bit into his sandwich, her tongue loosened. “There was no risk. I wasn’t going to lose.” Though for a moment, she had to admit, that had been a real possibility.

Her father forced down his bite and lifted his cup to point it at her. “You’re a college-level player, Heather. These are professional athletes. You got lucky. That’s it.”

“It was that or he was going to ask to be released from his contract. We could have lost him either way,” she insisted.