Inside Out

A Total-E-Bound Publication

www.total-e-bound.com

Inside Out

ISBN #978-0-85715-526-9

©Copyright Ashley Ladd 2011

Cover Art by April Martinez ©Copyright April 2011

Edited by Andrea Grimm and Lisa Cox

Total-E-Bound Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2011 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank,
Ruston
Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

Warning:
This book contains sexually explicit content, which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has been rated
Total-e-burning.

Bats and Balls

INSIDE OUT

Ashley Ladd

Dedication

To Kim: I love you very much.

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following
wordmarks
mentioned in this work of fiction:

American Idol: 19 TV Ltd and
FremantleMedia
North America, Inc.

Barbie:
Mattel, Inc. Corporation

Coach:
Coach, Inc.

Facebook
:
Facebook
, Inc.

Mad Magazine:
EC Comics

Madonna:
Ciccone
, Madonna DBA Madonna Individual

Chapter One

Erica Metzger felt funny being back on her old baseball field after a four-year absence. She itched to play, not merely call balls and strikes behind the home plate. Unfortunately, since her change, she was no longer welcome on the league.

Her palms grew clammy. Her heart sped up every time she saw a familiar face. When she’d been told she would be officiating for Trey’s team, ‘Doggy Style’, she’d almost backed out. Then she’d figured most of the guys would have moved on after four years in a place as transient as South Florida, Trey Kincaid included. Besides, she wasn’t ashamed of who she was. And it was doubtful they’d recognise her—she wore an umpire’s mask. They’d known her as Eric. Also, she’d had surgery on her vocal cords to make her voice feminine.

She winced at the thought. Inside, she’d always been Erica. Since age three, she’d known her outer body didn’t match her inner. She’d longed to play with Barbie dolls, wear tutus and take ballet, and paint her nails pink. Instead, she’d been given trucks and anthills, snakes and other creepy, gross boy things. Only on the baseball field had she felt at home.

Ironically, the sexual reassignment surgery that made her dreams come true also made it difficult to play ball. Adult women and co-ed teams only played slow-pitch in South Florida, which bored her to death. Therefore, she umpired until she could convince a decent team to let her play. And so here she was.

When Doggy Style’s coach Clay stomped onto the field, wearing his usual glowering expression, her skin crawled. He was all about the game but treated his players with as much tact as a hungry alligator.
Less actually.
And he had the personality of the rusty chain link fence penning in the fields.

Even when he’d been on her side, he hadn’t been friendly. She wondered what had happened to the man to make him as grouchy as a lion with a thorn in his foot.
A lost love?
Lost fortunes? Lost dreams?

She couldn’t imagine he would suddenly turn into her best friend much less a pleasant adversary now she was the umpire. Didn’t everybody hate the umpires? Sometimes even the other umpires?

The closer he came the more her spine stiffened. Not eager to be ridiculed by the jerk should he recognise her, she pulled her mask securely over her face. She made haste to join Grover, the other blue assigned to the game, who was putting on his gear on the far side of the field.

As she approached him, Grover stroked his piebald goatee and glanced at the players. He grinned wide enough to show several missing and broken teeth and to make his big ears protrude even further. The bottoms of his slacks were always tattered and the collars on his shirts yellowed. But he had a winning grin and a twinkle in his slate grey eyes that drew people to him.

“What’s a pretty young thing like you doing hanging out with a bunch of gay guys? You won’t find a straight man around these parts.”

Overwhelmed by memories of Trey—the man she’d met and played with here when she’d been Eric—she gulped. She still yearned for him in her dreams and being here was only going to give them more fuel. However, she bit her tongue and pushed the images to the back of her mind. They belonged to another life, a different person.

She lifted her mask and dabbed at the perspiration trickling down her forehead into her eyes. She so badly wanted to stop the river flowing between her breasts. Why did South Florida still swelter at 5:45 p.m.?
In May?
Why hadn’t her female relatives shared this drawback of having breasts? Why couldn’t people mind their own business?

“I love the game.”

Grover rubbed his fingers together as if he had a wad of money.
“Yeah.
Well, I’m in it for the bread. Extra cash doesn’t come easy down here anymore. You know it’s bad when the gas stations don’t have ‘Help Wanted’ signs up, and you have to beg to
officiate
a couple of games. I have to support my ex-wives somehow.”

Unlike her game partner, she didn’t need the money. At times like this, she was almost embarrassed to have a great job with more work than she could handle. Besides loving the game, she had another ulterior motive for
umping
. Sometimes she just had to get away from all the demands of her job as a computer tech and breathe in the fresh tropical breeze and feel the earth under her feet. Still, why had she let the UIC talk her into umpiring games for
this
league? She should stay far away from Trey, to guard her heart.

* * * *

Trey stepped up to the plate, gave a couple of practice swings and tapped his favourite Louisville Slugger against the plate. His muscles were tight so he rolled his shoulders. He hadn’t had time to warm up before the game, and he knew he was going to regret it come morning when his joints screamed at him to stay in bed and ditch work.

For the thousandth time in the past two hours, he cursed the I-95 traffic. He should have travelled the extra ten miles to take I-75 which was a much wider expressway lacing the edge of the Everglades than that slithering, slow snake of a road that cut through the middle of Miami and Fort Lauderdale simplistically called I-95. But he believed in miracles and had accepted the traffic announcements that the roadway was clear of fender benders.

He inhaled deeply, shook off his nine-to-five stress and narrowed his gaze on Chad the pitcher. He wondered why Chad, like so many pitchers, dug a hole by the mound then tried to fill dirt in with his foot.

A wry grin twisted his lips when he realised that was the most curious, interesting thing he’d ever noted about Chad. He’d dated him a couple of times and had decided Chad was a far more exciting ball player than lover. He had a wicked drop-curve pitch, however, and one of the fastest arms in the league so Trey took him very seriously—as a pitcher.

Chad blew him a kiss then
sizzled
a whopper down the middle of the plate.

Trey drooled over the beautiful ball. It was fast, hard and straight, just the way he liked them. He ached to make it his. His muscles corded. He glared at it and hoped the ball wouldn’t drop or curve at the last second. Then he swung, made contact and heard a ferocious crack. His jaw slacked as half his bat flew into the field.

“Damn!” he muttered glaring at the broken handle he still held. Disgusted, he threw down what was left of his Louisville Slugger and shook his stinging hands.

One of the umps yelled, “Time out!”

Clay trotted up to Trey with his usual glare. He handed a different bat to him then picked up what was left of the busted one. “You okay? Can you continue?”

Trey didn’t suffer any illusions. He knew Clay considered him a tool that he hoped wasn’t broken. He nodded but his lips thinned. He didn’t like the count—two strikes and no balls. And now he held a strange, shiny bat that reflected the sun into his eyes.

He tested the weight of the new bat. Not liking the balance any more than he liked the glare, feeling uncomfortable with someone else’s equipment, his nostrils flared. He tucked in his chin, wiggled his hips and dared Chad to throw him a drop-curve.

He wanted revenge for his bat. He could taste the hit and drove a solid line drive down third base that bounced off the plate and skipped over the fielder’s head. He longed to take second base, but Clay thrust out a firm hand to stop. Wishing he could run over Clay, he settled for running over first base,
then
sauntered back.

From here, he had a good view of the home plate umpire. The chest protector didn’t hide the fact she had tasty curves—small breasts but a small waist and a round ass. She was taller than most of the batters who came up to the plate, which was no mean feat as some of them stood more than six feet. And her feet were twice the size of many women.

Why he couldn’t stop staring pestered him. Why he noticed so much about a stranger in the middle of a game annoyed him. Something about the person, maybe the way she moved, nagged him. More than nagged—his nerves coiled so tightly they were about to snap. He felt as if he knew her. So why couldn’t he place her?

When Trey’s teammate and sponsor, Sandy, came up to bat next, he led a foot off the base, then two. When Chad whirled around and hurled the ball to the first baseman, Trey dove back to the plate. He got a mouthful of dirt that he spat out. Then he wiped his face on his shirtsleeve but wished he hadn’t when he rubbed in more grit. Distracted, Trey got a late start when Sandy hit a double to centre field.

Drew, the third base coach, yelled, “Run!” and waved his arms wildly for Trey to run to third even though it looked like too close a call. As Sandy was already sliding into second, however, Trey had no choice but to continue to third base. Knowing the ball was close, fearing he wouldn’t make it, he threw himself feet first at the base.

The third baseman swooped down with the ball to tag him, but the dust flying in the air was blinding. It wasn’t until the outfield ump called, “Safe!” that Trey exhaled.

Next up was Ryan, Drew’s significant other. Ryan was a pretty boy who looked as if he was too prissy to get dirty. The few times he’d come to the field in his office attire, he’d had a sweater draped over his shoulders in the old eighties’ preppy fashion. He always had a perfectly pressed white shirt, expensive tie and a pen protector in his shirt pocket. Yet, he transformed into a real fiend the moment he stepped onto a baseball field.

Even the best pitchers trembled when he came up to bat. Often, they deliberately walked him. When he batted in Trey, he made it look as easy as tossing an underhand toss. As Trey loped across home plate, he tried to get a better look at the
ump,
however, her mask hung low over her face.

“Good job, Kincaid,” the blue said in a husky, feminine voice.

Trey stopped in his tracks and turned to face the woman. Her voice rang in his head, touched something deep inside him. He stared at her long and hard, and wished she wasn’t wearing the mask. He replayed her voice in his head, came close to grasping at the ephemeral memory.

Then his heart did a crazy little flip and he froze.

The voice was so like his ex-partner’s, yet not his, that Trey tripped over his feet. He turned and stared, wondering if Eric’s little sister had grown up to become an umpire.

Poison, the old ache, stabbed his heart and spread through him slowly. Despite the heat of the evening, he grew cold. The more he told himself to stop thinking about Eric, the more he pondered what should have been.

He plopped down in the dugout, leant against the fence and stretched out his legs. Wishing for X-ray vision, he narrowed his eyes at the ump. “Do you know who the home plate ump is?”

A couple of his teammates leant forward to look then shook their heads. One said, “Nope. Never saw that blue out here before.”

“Are you sure? She seems very familiar.”

Another teammate stared at her for a few seconds then mumbled, “No.”

Trey slumped against the bench but kept his eye on the official. Although he was bisexual, he’d not been with a woman in a long time. He’d begun to think he was completely gay. This sudden interest in a female, however, made him wonder.

* * * *

Erica cursed the darned words for popping out. Then she chided herself for worrying. Angry that anyone could make her feel inferior, she puffed out her chest.

Then she deflated almost as quickly. Why was she a jittery mess over Trey?

Once she and Trey—that is, Eric and Trey—had been very close. They’d lived together for two years. They’d talked marriage. However, Eric, unhappy and dissatisfied with himself, had been a lousy partner. Eric had crawled into a bottle and Trey hadn’t been able to put up with a full-blown alcoholic.

Erica didn’t blame Trey, but missed him like hell.

After the game, unable to stand being close to Trey a moment longer, she waved to Grover, grabbed her gear and bolted to her pickup truck. Her fingers were shaky and she fumbled with her keys. As she cursed herself under her breath, the key ring slipped from her fingers and fell under her vehicle.

She shook her head and got down on her hands and knees. It was hard to see so she squinted into the darkness and patted around for them. Sharp pebbles jabbed her palms and she jerked back, hoping it wasn’t glass.

As she peered at her hands and picked out the rocks, voices drifted to her from a distance. Footsteps crunched the gravel nearby. Then much closer, one very familiar, beloved voice spoke. “Eric? Is that you?”

Erica’s breath stuck in her throat. Her muscles froze. She felt as if she was cemented to the pavement. Was that bewilderment in Trey’s voice? Or disgust?

She twisted enough to see their shadows merge. Her throat constricted. Her heart shrivelled. She hadn’t thought they’d ever come together in any way again, even so innocently. When she glanced up, his reflection stared down at her through her truck window, and her stomach convulsed. She wanted to crawl under the vehicle and disappear.

Unfortunately, her ex didn’t budge, just cocked his brow and gave her the lopsided grin that always turned her to mush. His look trapped her and she couldn’t break his gaze. Nor could she help taking inventory of him.

Morbid curiosity made her wonder how much he’d changed since their break up, if his eyes were heavy and weary from sleepless nights and regrets. However, his thick blond hair trapped a load of sunshine and curled beguilingly around his neck. His shoulders were broader and straighter, his waist more tapered. His lips, wide and too kissable, continued to mock her with an ever-widening grin. However, in contrast to his sunny hair, his normally bluish-green eyes mirrored a hurricane.

“Lose something? Or are you hiding?”

Erica sucked in a breath and shuddered. Then she sat up on her haunches. She pasted on a smile as dry and dusty as the ball field. “My keys fell under there.”

He bent to look and squinted. “A flashlight might help.”

Erica pushed herself to her feet and wiped her hands down the sides of her pants. “My flashlight’s locked inside my truck.”

Trey pulled his keys from his pocket. Then he flicked on a tiny flashlight attached to the key ring. “We’ll use mine.”