Double Play (9 page)

“
Oh,
the more
reasonable
fans?” Cat cocked her head at Roger. He
was a former player and had been in the game long enough to know
there was no such creature. “All three of them?”

It’s not that
baseball fans do not honor logic. In fact, most spend the entire
nine innings making rational predictions based on observations and
statistics. Devotees took it even further by delving into the
complex study of sabremetrics—a scientific analysis of baseball
records, founded by the Society for American Baseball Research, a
group so rooted in logic they made Vulcans look like
crackpots.

Team
fans,
on the other hand, are illogical and unrelenting. The very sight of
their rival’s jersey makes their blood pressure rise. They believe
a goat in the stands is a curse and a squirrel on the field, a
blessing. They root for teams that have little chance of winning,
merely out of unrequited loyalty. A great day becomes terrible—and
vice versa—because of one pitch made a thousand miles
away.

No, Cat knew that
the Soldiers’ fans wouldn’t be weighing the facts and coming to the
reasonable conclusion that she wasn’t at fault. They’d be too busy
lighting torches and deciding between a guillotine or a
stake-burning.

George chuckled.
Even with a thick head of
graying brown hair and deep wrinkles along his forehead, the team
owner didn’t show much stress over the situation. He didn’t need
to; she was wearing enough worry for the both of
them.

“
From
what Roger’s told me, it was your brother who orchestrated the
game?”
he
asked.

“
Yes
, Quinn
. He’s
staying with me for a while and met a few of the players last night
at the restaurant. I didn’t even know they were coming over.
My brother can be
quite …
”
she tried
to find the perfect word but could only come up with,
“cumbersome.”

“
Well
I can certainly understand sibling rivalries.”

The group of
suits laughed like it was an inside joke. Cat smiled
awkwardly.

Roger pointed to
a man standing by the large window overlooking the field. “He’s
referring to his own brother, Cat. Have you met James? He’s in town
for the playoffs.”

The man stepped
forward and held out his hand. “Ms. McDaniel, James
Hudson.”

Cat froze.
The brothers shared identical
sets of blue-gray eyes, sun-kissed complexions and full mounds of
chestnut hair, but that wasn’t all they had in common—they also had
the same taste in women. Cat recognized James Hudson from last
night
,
when she’d spied
him rounding third base
in the coat closet with
his brother’s wife,
Kiki Hudson.

“
Ms. McDaniel, are you all right?”

She blinked and
took his hand, offering a shaky smile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t have
much to eat for lunch.”

“
Here
I thought it was me who took your breath away
,
”
he
replied charmingly.

The men
chuckled.

Cat joined in
nervously. “I’ve seen you before, I think.”

“
At
the wedding, I’m sure.”

“
That
must be it.”

She supposed she
had seen him there, but there had been over five hundred people at
the affair and Kiki’s miniskirt wedding dress attracted most of the
attention.

James merely
smiled at her, no tell in his eyes to indicate he recognized
her.

Guess there
are worse brothers than Quinn. He may steal a wallet, but Quinn
would never steal a man’s wife, especially his own
brother’s
.

“
Don’t
be so shocked. I got the brains, he got the looks.” George slapped
him on the shoulder. “Before he straightened out, my brother was
quite the troublemaker, too.”

The very sight of
James’ smarmy smile made her nauseated. Cat tore her eyes
away.

“
Quinn
can be a handful but believe me, he feels awful about last night,
too.”

“
I’m
sure he does.”

She nodded and
turned to Roger. “Well, I don’t want to interrupt your meeting any
further. I was just heading out and wanted to say sorry
again.”

“
Thank
you, Catriona.”

“
I’m
on my way out; I’ll walk with you.” This man’s voice came from the
couch behind her. Cat recognized his voice as she turned
around.

“
Spencer?”

She took a quick
inventory of the other faces in the room to make sure there weren’t
any other surprises in this bunch. Finally she focused back on her
friend, trying to hide her dismay
at
his presence
in
the Billionaire Boys Club.

Roger gave
Spencer a jovial pat on his shoulder. “Spencer missed the presser
this morning so he brought me a bottle of Jameson to bribe me into
answering a few questions.”

“
Anything for a scoop. I’m sure Cat can relate. Right?” His
pleading eyes begged her to play along.

She nodded and
finally relinquished a smile for his benefit. “Jameson is
Journalism 101.”

Spencer edged his
way toward the door, backing Cat out of the room as he did so.
“Thanks again, Roger. Gentleman.”

“
Nice
weather we’re having today, isn’t it, Cat?”

“
It
is. I hope we have a similar day tomorrow for game one.”

“
Oh
that would be—”

Once they turned
the corner and she knew they were out of earshot, she smacked his
arm. “Spencer, what the hell?”

“
I
know. Damn, I know, Cat. I saw it on the news when I woke up this
morning and your cellphone was going straight to voicemail so I
called your apartment. Your brother filled me in and told me to
keep quiet about being there earlier. Why’d you cover for
me?”

“
It
was Quinn’s idea.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why I
listened to him.”

“
Well,
thank you, I guess. I can’t imagine the hell I’d be going through
if you hadn’t.”

“
You
don’t have to imagine it. I can give you the play by
play.”

He frowned and
stopped her, pulling her over to a bench in the hallway. “I’m so
sorry.” His
brown
eyes
locked on hers
, shining even
more vibrantly through the lenses of his black-framed
glasses
. “Please tell me you don’t hate me.”

“
Of
course I don’t.” Cat scooted back a few inches. She didn’t need any
more guilt today. “But I think we should just ’fess up. I lied to
the cops and the detective’s still asking a lot of
questions.”

“
No!”
He looked around and lowered his voice to add, “If they find out
you lied, they’re going to think there’s something to
hide.”

“
There’s not, though. You left before anything
happened.”

“
You
know as well as I do nobody’s going to care about that. Won’t it
just make things worse if they find out
two
reporters were
there?”

“
So
I’m supposed to take the heat all by myself?”

“
No,
of course not.” He exhaled and leaned back against the wall. “The
thing is, you’ve got Roger on your side but I don’t have anybody
like that at the
News Herald
. If my editor finds out I was
there, she’ll fire me faster than you can say unemployment
line.”

Cat took a deep
breath and weighed his request. The lifeboat only had room for one
and she was already sinking. Her colleagues began to file into the
hallway. They always left early on non-game days, and she had to
follow their lead. She had an errand to run before this nightmare
of a day was over. She turned back to Spencer.

“
Okay.
I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway.”

Spencer threw his
arms around her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

She inched out of
his clingy grasp. The twosome already got enough raised eyebrows
over the season about their platonic relationship. She didn’t need
to start another rumor today.

Cat clutched the
gift basket in her arms as the elevator glided up to the third
floor. The only other passenger was a doctor who looked like he’d
just gotten off of a thirty-six hour shift. Cat
watched
him fixate on her
black satin pumps
, which were
spastically tapping against the elevator floor. She stopped, giving
him an apologetic smile that he didn’t return.
Turning
her attention to the oversized
basket
, she
rearranged
the various packages of sunflower seeds, making sure the bag of
dill pickle flavoring was right in front. Ryan had always kept a
package on the top shelf of his locker in the clubhouse so she
figured it was his favorite. It was also the only thing she
could think of that
he
liked besides baseball, and she figured the irony of a bucket of
Rawlings balls wouldn’t be appreciated by the injured pitcher. The
elevator opened and she crept toward room 326. The door was wide
open but she knocked softly before taking a step inside the sunny
room.

“
Ryan?”

“
Cat?”
He wiggled up in the hospital bed.
His dark-blond hair had been freshly washed and tucked
behind his ears, but his unshaven face sprouted the beginnings of a
sandy beard.
“Hi.”

The hospital room
was packed with flowers, stuffed animals—namely the team mascot, a
bear named Sergeant Southpaw—and balloons. Ryan’s wife fluffed the
pillow behind his head and crossed her arms. Cat recognized the
former model from the Soldiers’ Wives food drive held over the
summer.

“
Honey, will you give us a second? This is the team
reporter.”

Cat smiled at
her. “Hi, Carmen.”

Carmen flipped
her
shiny ebony
hair
over her shoulder. “How many more interviews do you have to do
today? This is the third already.”

“
No,
not that kind of reporter. She’s the one from last night. The
reporter whose apartment the poker game was at.”

Cat cringed and
squeezed the gift basket a little tighter. That’s what she’d be
known for from now on. Not “that sportswriter who exposed a drug
conspiracy in Las Vegas,” not “the woman who took down a dirty
agent in Santa Domingo,” not even “that reporter with a great
rack.” From now on she’d be the reporter who held an unsanctioned
poker game that broke the star pitcher’s arm.

“
Oh.”
Carmen narrowed her
almond-shaped
eyes at Cat and moved around the bed
to get in her face, pressing her thin body against the oversized
wicker basket. “The doctor said there’s a chance he might have
nerve damage. You realize he’s a free agent this year? Now his
agent will be negotiating a busted arm.”

“
It
wasn’t his pitching arm.”

“
That’s not the point!” Carmen’s eyes flashed. “He’s damaged
goods and no team worth a crap is going to chance it. I was
supposed to be on my way to Beverly Hills or Manhattan. Now I’m
going to be stuck in this river rathole for the next three
years.”

“
Carmen, stop.”

She swirled
around to him. “You promised me city lights.”

Ryan Brokaw was
from a Canadian village just on the other side of the border.
Buffalo was city lights to him. The Soldiers had tried all summer
long to get him to sign an extension, but he’d opted out. Now Cat
was beginning to see why.

“
I
understand you’re upset, but I wasn’t even part of the game last
night.”

On her way out,
Carmen rolled her eyes and shoved Cat aside. Cat waited until the
sound of the woman’s six-inch
stilettos
clomping down the hallway had faded down
before stepping to Ryan’s bedside. She sat the basket on his
nightstand.

“
Ryan,
I am so sorry about your arm and … everything.”

“
It’s
not your fault.”

Can I
get that in writing?

“
Maybe, but I feel so bad that—”

“
Cat,
just forget it. Really, I’ll be fine. Carmen’s just upset because
it’s been a long night.”

Cat gave him a
long look. He didn’t
seem
upset.
Why not?

“
I had
no idea you and she hated Buffalo so much.”

“
Not
me. I love Buffalo. I grew up wanting to move here.”

He reached his
good arm up and pulled down the neck of his hospital robe,
displaying his
smooth,
molded pec. “See?”

“
You
work out, I get it.”

Ryan laughed and
pulled it down farther. “No, this.”

“
Ah.”
Just to the right of his heart was a tattoo, a charging blue bison
with a red stripe streaming from its horn—the Buffalo Bills’
logo.

He let go of the
robe and dropped his hand back to the mattress. “I’ve had this
since I was sixteen. All my friends rooted for the Toronto
Argonauts, but I was an NFL fan.
I love this town and everything in it.
”