Called Up (2 page)

“Like I said,” Lola continued, “a great team.”

Letting herself look at Deke again, Fitz allowed, “Yes. We are.”

It was true. So when he also looked up and their eyes met, she was relieved that whatever that strangeness had been before was gone. Instead, he just cracked a smile and held up a finger, mouthing the words,
Lick
him
. Emphasizing the “him,” of course.
As in one.

She held up a finger of her own. Then, when he laughed, she went back to her business, a smile on her face.

Chapter Two

A few days later Deke found himself on the ball field, one of his favorite places on earth. Granted it was a Little League field rather than Yankee Stadium, where Nate was playing tonight. But that was fine by Deke.

He’d never wanted Nate’s life. Or envied Wash’s days playing basketball in Miami. Or felt the call toward the military that Cal had, or even to teaching like Jason. He liked being behind his bar and he liked playing ball. Hell, he even liked coaching Little League. As kids started to filter onto the field, he smiled and thanked God for the gift of baseball. Life didn’t get much better than that.

“Call it, Uncle Deke!” Jimmy Fielding yelled from second base.

Deke wasn’t actually Jimmy’s uncle, but since he was coaching the team because of his nephew, Silas, that’s what all the kids called him now.

With a grin, he put his hand to his ear. “What was that?” he shouted. “I couldn’t hear you!”

As a few other kids came onto the field, they picked up what Jimmy had started, chanting, “Call it! Call it! Call it!”

So, with all the theatrics of a coach whose Little League team consisted of seventeen overly enthusiastic six-and seven-year-olds, Deke Babe Ruthed it, raising his hand and pointing up the third base line. “Coming at you, Portia!”

The girl gave a toothy grin, setting her shoulders with grim determination as she held both her hands out, ready to catch. He threw up a ball and swung the bat. The soft lob fell right into her glove, pretty much against every natural law that existed.

To the cries of “Me next!” he did the same thing to each player who managed to stick to their position.

As more kids drifted onto the field, the moms started to gather, too, piling into the bleachers angling up the third base line, the knitting needles going as they arranged themselves into a virtual MILF buffet.

“Looking good, Deacon!” Peggy Miller shouted, to a smattering of giggles from the other moms. “Jeans today, huh? No baseball pants?”

“Time and a place, Peggy.” For fuck’s sake.

“You know it, Deke,” she said to more giggles. “Oh, how you know it.”

It wasn’t that he minded the attention. That was a lineup he’d enjoyed in the past, but lately it was falling flat. Even Peggy, who he’d hooked up with off and on since she’d moved back to town following her divorce, wasn’t doing it for him these days.

Since he wasn’t about to announce in front of his kids he’d stopped wearing his baseball gear because their moms were paying too much attention to his ass, however, he just nodded and gave as genuine a grin as possible. Then he threw another ball up in the air and hit a first grade appropriate line drive to Jimmy and scanned the field. Silas wasn’t there yet, even though Lola defined “on time” as twenty minutes before anyone else expected her to arrive, and Deke was trying not to think about Si being late. Not that he worried.

Lola’s Suburban rolled into the lot just as practice was officially getting underway.

“Hey, guys,” he said as Silas and Jules’s son, Matty, jumped out of the car and ran onto the field. “Everything okay?”

Before Silas could even respond, a strange sensation ran down Deke’s spine. As he straightened up and turned, he only vaguely heard Si say, “Mom asked Auntie...”

“Fitz.”

Wearing, thank God, a running shirt and jogging shorts. Much less revealing than the tank top from the other night.

Not that he
cared
what she was wearing, he just happened to notice.

“Hey.” She smiled distractedly as she rummaged through Silas’s bag and pulled out a bright red bottle. “Don’t forget your water, hon.” After brushing back the hair blowing around her face, she put her hand on Si’s shoulder and directed him back to the outfield.

“Heads up, Si!” Deke called out, and hit one just far enough for the kid to have to dive for it. He hit another out toward center field, and the kids all went running for it. So much for keeping them in their positions. Deke took the opportunity to pair them up and get them going on some drills before turning back to Fitz.

The sun caught the reddish highlights in her dark-brown hair, but he focused instead on how unusual it was for her to be doing the Little League run, even though she’d been living at Lola’s for about six months now and playing nanny.

He and his parents had done whatever they could to help Lola in the two years since Dave had run off an icy road a few months after returning from deployment. She’d been coping okay until the triplets had turned three and hit a whole new level of hellion. She’d had a major breakdown at Thanksgiving dinner, saying something about parties and presents and, if memory served,
Santa fucking NOT coming to town if one more kid asked one more time if he could eat his
fucking
pie before dinner.

Fitz had moved into Lola’s house two weeks later. Her job running the foundation meant she made her own hours, and, since the new librarian in town had needed housing she’d offered her apartment for rent. “Two birds with one stone,” she had said back then.

“Is Lola okay?” he asked now, leaning his bat against the fencing behind home plate.

“What?” Fitz seemed oddly fidgety. Distracted, even, as her gaze came back to his. “Oh. Yes. Jules’s doctor’s appointment got cancelled, so your mom said she’d take Lola’s hostessing shift and I said I’d take the boys to practice.” All of which sounded perfectly normal.

So why was there this strange vibe going on?

Shit. Was it because of what he’d said the other night? The whole lyrics thing? Or, of course, maybe she’d noticed he...

Fuck.

What the hell were you supposed to say when you’d been caught checking out your best friend’s tits?

“Look, Fitz, I, uh...”

But she was focusing on something in the stands. He turned to look. Peggy Miller and crew? Frightening in their own way, but harmless. Unless you were wearing baseball pants, that was.

Still, something wasn’t right. He took a step closer and murmured, “Are you okay?”

Fitz snapped her head up, a tight smile on her face. “Can you get Si and Matty home? I’m meeting Dorie and then I have to get the boys from daycare.”

“Sure,” he said. “We’re on for Monday night, right?”

Although if anyone asked, Deke would say it was solely to help Lola out by giving her one night a week to be completely free, watching
The Voice
with Fitz and the boys every week had become one of the highlights of his week. Especially as Fitz would get Silas and the triplets engaged in a trash-talking ticklefest more often than not. It was highly amusing.

The smile she gave him was genuine this time. “Watch out, Team Blake. Team Adam is going to whip your ass.”

Not if I get to yours first
, he almost said, except he was suddenly worried she might take it the wrong way.

Worried maybe he
meant
it the wrong way.

With a hasty wave, he turned back to the field. “Okay, kids. Time to play ball!”

* * *

Talk about a flashback from hell.

Deke at home plate plus Peggy Miller and her mean girl crew sitting in the bleachers watching him? Yeah. That was some déjà vu Fitz could do without. Because once upon a time in high school Fitz had shared her teenage Deke-appreciation thoughts with Peggy, who, as it turned out, was the exact wrong person to confide in. Lesson learned.

And thanks to that lesson, Fitz’s high school Deke-crush was over almost as soon as it began, although that was probably a good thing. Competition for the man’s attention was fierce. Honestly, sometimes Fitz thought Deke had more fans than Nate did. Not in numbers, of course—her brother had stadiums full of women screaming his name. But they were faceless, nameless. They either kept their distance or the distance was kept for them.

Deke, on the other hand, had a following. And, defying all reason, they all seemed to have slept with him and then parted on completely fine terms. In all of Fitz’s years in this town, since the moment she arrived at her foster home and he’d been helping Mrs. Jensen haul mulch for the garden, Fitz had never heard a bad word said against him. Not even Lola, Fitz’s only true friend in the months after her parents had died, even so much as hinted at something bad.

With a shake of her head, Fitz opened the door to Lola’s Suburban and climbed in. He was pretty to look at, sure. She loved him, absolutely. But she knew the brand of underwear he wore—and not because she’d been the one pulling them off of him. No. She had that intimate piece of knowledge because she’d accompanied him on a ridiculous number of shopping trips for new underwear. He hated doing laundry so much that he’d rather buy new. Sometimes she’d even pick up a few packs for him if she was out on her own and there was a sale. Of course, she’d make sure at least one pair had purple polka dots, but still.

Her phone rang as she was about to leave the ball field parking lot, and since she still had time before she had to meet Dorie for their run, she pulled over and parked. It was a Chicago number, not one she recognized. “Hello?”

“Fitz, it’s Doug Blackler.” The headhunter she’d signed up with. “You’re never gonna believe where I’m calling from.”

Um, okay. “Where?”

“I’m in Sam Price’s bathroom.”

“TMI, Doug.” She did
not
need to know that.

“Not
going
to the bathroom,” he replied. “
In
his bathroom.”

Sam Price was the GM of the Chicago Watchmen, aka her big brother’s team. Fitz sighed. Not the kind of news she was looking for.

She hadn’t told Nate she’d put herself on the job market—hadn’t told
any
one. She’d get to that part if and/or when it became necessary. Plus, the whole point of using a headhunter was to be anonymous. If she’d wanted to use Nate’s name to get a new job, she would have done it already. “You’ve been talking to Nate?”

“Of course not,” Doug snapped. Most likely because he’d assured her he wouldn’t share her name with anyone until the time came to do so. “The reason I’m
calling
from the bathroom is that there’s a very private meeting happening right now. And the people in that meeting, which includes your brother, by the way, would kick me out if they knew I was on the phone with you. I just want to know if it’s worth my throwing your hat into the ring for the head of the private foundation they’re all brainstorming right now.”

“What?” She sat up straight. Talk about burying the lead. “You have details?”

“Only that the numbers they’re talking are about ten times bigger than anything else we’ve looked at to date.”

Since the other jobs he’d put in front of her had been on the same scale of what she already did, they hadn’t been quite what she was looking for. Somewhere new was important, but she needed a challenge, too. Since “ten times bigger” put them in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, it definitely counted. Hell, yes, she wanted her hat in the ring. The bigger question was whether they’d even consider her.

That would be the test, she supposed. And if they didn’t balk at her qualifications as the head of a smallish community foundation, then there was no reason she should. Right? “You won’t give them my name?”

“I’d keep that secret wrapped up until the second I put you in front of them.”

Which would be an absolute necessity because Nate would raise holy hell if he knew she was thinking of leaving Inspiration and the foundation they’d started together almost a decade ago. She couldn’t even imagine what the others would say.

But there was a buzz of excitement running through her nevertheless. “I’m definitely interested.”

As she hung up, she happened to look up to see Peggy staring at her from across the parking lot with a not very nice look on her face. Same old, same old. Except then Fitz turned her head and realized it was because
Deke
was looking at her in a way she wasn’t used to. And
s
he couldn’t look away. Deke was the one to break their stare, his eyes going down to the ground for a few seconds before coming up again. When they did, he gave her a slow, easy grin that made her feel, well... Different from how she usually felt, which was generally more along the lines of,
Do I have something in my teeth?

This was...not like that.

With a shake of her head, she lifted her hand in a quick wave, then hightailed it out of there.

Chapter Three

Fifteen minutes later, Fitz arrived at the library. She parked the car and got out, turning to head inside, and almost collided with... “Mrs. Bellevue.”

The other woman was big, both wide and tall, and her booming voice actually sent fear running through Fitz’s veins.

Maybe if Fitz hadn’t spent the first fourteen years of her life on an isolated homestead with only her parents for company, things like that might not bother her quite so much. Or maybe if her parents hadn’t then died in the same tornado that destroyed Inspiration, sparking a scandal that left her the object of town-wide scrutiny and speculation for over half of her life, she would have been able to brush it off.

But when this morning’s statement was, “Hello, Ms. Hawkins. I’m glad to see you’re wearing clothes today,” Fitz fought not to visibly cringe.

“I’m sorry?” she said as she quickly glanced around in hopes that no one else was nearby.

“The other day,” Mrs. Bellevue said, blocking the path up to the library. “I was afraid there’d been a fire. Why else would you be running by my house with Maximillian Deacon while wearing nothing but your undergarments?”

“It was a sports bra.” Of the exact same kind that almost every other woman in town wore to run in. “And running shorts.”

Mrs. Bellevue
hmph
ed. “I’d think with your history, you’d have a bit more decorum.”

With my history?
Fitz wanted to snap.
Would that be the part about my father disappearing in the middle of the night, abandoning Mama Gin and their three young children in order to start a new life with my mother and me?

Fitz didn’t say any of that, of course. Nor did she remind Mrs. Bellevue that she’d been as shocked as everyone else was when that was all revealed on her second day at her new high school. Helluva way to start off her life in Inspiration. Being the biggest story to hit town since, well, since her father had left Mama Gin in the first place, wasn’t exactly Fitz’s favorite topic of discussion. Yet it still came up on far too regular of a basis. So she drew on the same reserves she’d been drawing on for seventeen years and smiled benignly while saying, “I appreciate your concern.”

Those reserves came into play big-time when Mrs. Bellevue leaned forward, and in her still-booming voice attempted to whisper, “I’d just hate to see you make a fool of yourself over him. You know better than anyone how hard it is to live those things down.”

Because of people like you!
Fitz wanted to shout. And anyway, what was to say Deke wouldn’t be the one to make a fool of himself over
her
? As if the subject would ever come up in the first place. Plus, why would Fitz be any more of a fool than any other woman in town? For heaven’s sake.

But again, she said none of that. “I certainly do,” she answered, keeping her fuming to herself before mumbling something about needing to head inside to meet Dorie. Mrs. Bellevue thankfully nodded vaguely and wandered off across the town green.

Hurrying inside before there were any other encounters, Fitz gave a quick wave to Aunt Laura at the circulation desk and then headed into the office, stopping when she realized Dorie was on a Skype call with Nate. Dorie waved her in, though, so Fitz took a seat at the table in the corner with a sigh of relief. And even more of an incentive to find out more about this job.

Pushing aside a stack of handouts, she got out her laptop and did a search for Sam Price. The only reference she could find was a vague one from an interview he’d given to
Sports Illustrated
about another “big project” on the horizon. Considering the man’s last “big project” was to fund the creation of a major league baseball team, the estimate of hundreds of millions of dollars probably wasn’t out of line.

She sat back in the chair. So. Wow. Yes, that would definitely be a larger scale than what she was doing now. The Iowa Dream Foundation funds had been built up over the years, but it was nowhere close to what Sam Price was capable of.

Glancing over to make sure Dorie was still on the phone, Fitz clicked on the folder with the packet she’d sent to Doug back in the fall. Since she was big on being anonymous, they’d put together a portfolio that highlighted her day-to-day role rather than the foundation itself. Reviewing it now, Fitz had to admit, it looked damn impress—

“Fitz.”

Fitz jumped when she realized Dorie was standing all of two feet away. She slammed her laptop shut. Not the smoothest, by any means, but the last thing she needed was anyone asking about her job search. It would create all kinds of drama, and she’d had more than enough of that in her life.

She looked up as Dorie repeated her name. “Sorry?”

“What do you think about going to the All-Star game?” Dorie asked. “Next month in San Francisco.”

“Oh.” Fitz had to think about that for a minute.

She’d been to the first All-Star game Nate had played in during his rookie year. It had been an experience, suffice it to say. The parties had been insane, complete with strippers and groupies galore. Plus there had been more alcohol and drugs than Fitz had seen in her entire life, not to mention most of it apparently needed to be consumed in a body shot of some kind. The guys had been so wasted, she wasn’t sure they’d realized she’d spent the majority of the trip with Jules, Ella and Mama Gin.
Shopping.

“Nate’s already talking All-Star game?” she asked. “Are they even done with the balloting?”

Dorie turned her phone toward Fitz right in time for her to catch the
puh-leeze
look on Nate’s face.

Fitz rolled her eyes. “Right.”

With the exception of a rough start to spring training, Nate was playing better than he had at any point in his career, which was saying something. Plus he was even more of a media darling thanks to a comeback story that started with a car accident and ended with his proposal to Dorie, complete with a picture plastered everywhere from
Sports Illustrated
to
People.
Still...

Her reservations must have been obvious, because Nate chimed in with, “I’m thinking it will be a little different this time.”

Dorie’s “
Hmph
,” left no question in Fitz’s mind that the other woman was fully aware of Nate’s history. “I’d hope so.”

The way Nate looked at Dorie in response, though, was neither apologetic nor full of guilt, and Dorie didn’t seem upset. Instead, it was clear even to Fitz, who had absolutely no experience whatsoever in these kinds of things, that whatever issues they may have had, they’d gotten past them. Or were at least dealing with them. They loved each other that much. It was so different from anything Fitz had ever experienced that she sometimes actually felt
envious
,
an entirely foreign emotion. When Fitz wanted something she went for it, and a relationship of any kind wasn’t even close to being on that list.

She didn’t want to be tied down. Yes, during the last few months of watching Nate and Dorie fall in love she’d wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be so awful to just
once
have someone look at her the way Nate looked at Dorie. But the answer was yes. It
would
be awful. She didn’t ever want to depend on someone that much. She’d certainly never let a man become so important to her that the choices he made could disrupt her entire life in the way her father’s choices had affected Mama Gin.

Of course, with all that said, it wasn’t like Fitz had any expectation of it ever being an issue. And since she didn’t have anyone to answer to, not to mention the whole man candy factor she’d managed to notice in the midst of all those body shots, well... Okay. “I would totally be up for that.”

A big smile came over Dorie’s face as she turned her attention back to Nate. “We’re in!” Then she went on to say, “We should invite everyone. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

Nate’s immediate response of, “Yeah. I think it would,” surprised Fitz a little. She was pretty sure it wasn’t the weekend he’d been imagining. It was all good as far as Fitz was concerned, though. As long as Dorie was there to hang out with, she couldn’t care less what the guys did. Because then they’d stay out of her business and she could have fun.

Of the dancing on the bar variety.

She smiled. Yep, she was all in.