She’s the key to his career—and his heart

Roy Walker never did like the taste of humble pie. Too bad he’s getting his share of it now that he needs to pitch one more season of pro baseball. Worse, he can’t achieve it without the help of physiotherapist Lane Baker—the one woman who won’t have anything to do with him. Somehow he has to make amends for the past.

But his intentions to be a better man get sidelined by the combustible connection between him and Lane. Ego aside, it’s time to admit he never stopped wanting her…and his greatest comeback will be winning her!

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Never would Lane have believed she’d hear those words from Roy’s mouth. It threw her. Set her off her game for a moment.

“You really need to throw again?” The question was a stall. She knew he wouldn’t be here asking if he didn’t need to throw. But this conversation gave her a moment to regroup.

“It’s the only thing I know how to do.” He shrugged. “The only thing I’m good for.”

In a weird way she found herself missing the old Roy. Which made no sense at all. But since nothing in her life made sense right now, Lane figured this little episode was par for the course.

She had no job. She had no life. She had a father and a sister, who, although they may have betrayed her, did seem to need her.

And Roy. She had Roy. Roy Walker needed her and that was just about the craziest thing she could imagine happening today.

“Okay. I’ll do it. Let’s go see if we can turn your arm back into a rifle.”

Dear Reader,

It’s hard to know where to start to explain why I wanted to write a book about baseball. The first reason is my love of baseball movies. Bull Durham, Major League, For Love of the Game, Field of Dreams… Okay, my love might be more about Kevin Costner than the sport. Still, I do love those movies and wanted to pay homage to them in this series, The Bakers of Baseball.

I also happen to love the game. As a former season ticket holder, I’ve spent some great summer nights watching my team, and I wanted to join my love of the game with my love of writing.

This series starts off with Roy Walker, a once great pitcher who has lost his fortune and needs to start over in the minors. The problem is to get back to form he needs the help of the one woman who never wants to see him again. Honestly, at the beginning of this book I think the only thing Lane and Roy have in common is their love of baseball. Whether they figure the rest of it out…well, you’ll have to read the story to see.

I love to hear from readers, so if you enjoy this story or just want to chat about the Phillies contact me at stephaniedoyle.net or send a Tweet to @StephDoyleRW.

Happy reading!

Stephanie Doyle

The Comeback

of Roy Walker

Stephanie

Doyle

www.millsandboon.co.uk

STEPHANIE DOYLE, a dedicated romance reader, began to pen her own romantic adventures at age sixteen. She began submitting to Mills & Boon at age eighteen and by twenty-six her first book was published. Fifteen years later she still loves what she does as each book is a new adventure. She lives in South Jersey with her cat, Hermione, the designated princess of the whole house. When Stephanie’s not reading or writing, in the summer she is most likely watching a baseball game and eating a hot dog.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Five years ago

“GREAT PARTY, ROY!”

“Thanks,” Roy said dismissively, nodding to some woman he didn’t recognize.

Yes, it was a great party. Booze was flowing, food was plentiful. The music was loud and people were starting to dance. Any second now something would break and then he could call this party a true success. Not that he really cared one way or the other.

The invitation had come as surprise to many of his teammates. It was completely out of character for Roy to want to socialize with them outside of work let alone host a party with free booze and food. In fact, for many of the players this was the first time they had seen the inside of his apartment.

But everyone knew this was Roy Walker’s last year on the team. It had been Roy’s plan from the moment he stepped on the diamond to dictate when he stepped off for good. He always said he would go out on top and this season was it. His final farewell. And kicking it all off with a huge party before they got down to the grueling business of the one-hundred-and-sixty-two-game season seemed like the perfect idea. His colleagues no doubt thought that maybe, after all this time and with his career coming to an end, Roy Walker was finally starting to loosen up.

He wasn’t.

“Roy, this is messed up!” Eddie Britton, the team’s all-star second baseman, threw an arm around Roy’s shoulder. This might be the first time a teammate had ever actually touched him outside of a fist bump or hand slap.

Roy was working on the assumption that messed up was a good thing. Mostly because Eddie was both drunk and smiling.

“I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

“Dude, free booze and food? Of course I’m having a good time. You should have done this years ago, man. People might have actually liked you.” Eddie shook his head. “Now you’re almost done.”

Roy didn’t take offense to the insinuations that no one liked him and that the only way he might have been liked was if he’d been supplying free food and alcohol to his teammates on a more regular basis. Eddie was probably right.

“Well, better late than never,” Roy muttered. Not that this party was about making friends. There was only one objective for having all these people in his place.

“Speaking of friends, where is your girl? She’s coming, right?”

His girl. Just the thought of those two words together made the muscles in his stomach go tight.

“I don’t know who— I’m not dating anyone—”

“No, man. I mean, your girl! Or should I say, Danny’s girl, who you wish was your girl.” Eddie clearly thought that was hysterical.

Roy clenched his jaw. Had he been that obvious? So obvious that even the other guys on the team knew?

“I’ve got to check the beer supply,” Roy said, rather than address that issue.

“That’s cool,” Eddie said, not upset by the brush-off. He stumbled away to take a dive into a couch where a bunch of baseball bunnies had congregated.

Danny’s girl.

Maybe not for long, Roy thought. Not if everything went according to plan. This whole party was nothing more than a charade designed to do something he felt he needed to do. Before he retired.

Yes, after careful consideration Roy had made a decision about one person’s need to know the truth. So he’d formulated a means to reveal it—a big social gathering to bring everything to light. It was meant to be a grand gesture.

This might not be a good idea.

He shook his head. It was too late. The wheels were already in motion. Both Lane and her husband, Danny, were on their way.

Only not together.

“Is this a bring-your-wife party?” Danny had asked.

“Are you kidding?” Roy snickered. “I want everyone to have fun. Bring whoever you like. But there will plenty of female fans in attendance...if you know what I mean.”

Roy recalled the conversation with a heavy sense of dread in his stomach. What he was doing to Danny Worth was wrong. Maybe even cruel. Roy was deliberately setting him up and he was doing so for one reason and one reason only.

Lane Baker Worth deserved better. The daughter of the legendary Duff Baker, a Hall-of-Fame baseball player and manager, Lane was, to Roy, the princess of baseball. Yet, she’d married Danny Worthless. Roy would never understand what she’d been thinking. Maybe if he’d known her back then, he could have stopped it. Certainly her family should have stepped in to avoid the travesty of Lane and Danny’s union.

Roy knew they had been young. Dating when they were nineteen, married at twenty-two. Hell, she was still young now at twenty-six, which was why Roy knew she didn’t have to spend the rest of her life with Danny Worthless. If only she could see him for what he was, she could get out and start over with someone else.

Someone like Roy.

He didn’t like to admit that was his end goal. It made the motivation for this party seem much less noble and infinitely more Machiavellian. He didn’t kid himself to think that just because her marriage to Danny might end, she would suddenly see Roy standing in front of her with open arms.

Maybe because you hit on her the first time you met her.

Roy winced at the memory.

Even with her shiny new diamond engagement ring on her left hand she hadn’t been safe from his come-on, although, to be fair, he hadn’t been all that serious about it. Hitting on the other players’ girls was something he did—Roy’s personal vetting process for the women who dated his teammates, to see where their actual loyalties fell. Were they with the ballplayers because of who they were as men? Or were they baseball bunnies looking for fame and fortune and any player would suffice?

In a way, it was a matter of self-protection. Roy had been hit on by too many wives who wanted to climb the baseball hierarchy. Leaving their husbands to attach themselves to the next highest rung.

The best. Roy Walker.

Once he knew which category the women belonged to, he knew which ones to avoid.

So the come-on to Lane had been a test. In a bar filled with Washington Founders players, her fiancé included, Roy had asked her if she wanted to get together sometime. Just the two of them. To discuss...baseball.

A perfectly harmless invitation that Roy and Lane both knew wasn’t harmless. Only by the time he asked the question he already knew Lane wasn’t the type of woman who jumped from one player to the next. There was something too open about her to be that type. So when he made his pass he expected outrage and fury.

Instead she’d laughed at him. Actually laughed at him. Head back, full-on hysterical laughter.

“Seriously?” she’d said. “Are you kidding me? What are you trying to prove? That you’re some badass who can have any woman he wants? From what I’ve seen so far you’re sullen and brooding. Barely civil to your teammates. Hate to break it to you, Roy, but that doesn’t make you badass and mysterious. It makes you sad and alone. I wonder if you know what love is. Even if I wasn’t engaged, someone like you wouldn’t get to have someone like me.”

In a sort of crazy twist, in that moment when she’d been telling him how pathetic he was, he’d come to admire her. He could see how right she was—someone like him would never be worthy of someone as open and giving as her. He’d spent every day since then trying to establish...what?

He didn’t know if it was a friendship between them. He didn’t know if she took their small connection that seriously. And it was a small connection. A couple of words exchanged outside the locker room when she waited for Danny after a game. A hot dog or two at some out-of-the-way place he tracked down because he knew she loved them. Some mocking banter where she would call him out for being an ass.

That connection, of course, was fueled by the fact that he needed her. Desperately.

Lane Baker Worth was a miracle worker when it came to physical therapy. She called her specialty kinesiology, but Roy called it woo-woo medicine. Some magic she was able to perform with her hands and her fingers by applying pressure to certain spots of his body that allowed for greater blood flow and a decrease in inflammation.

It wasn’t traditional, but it worked. Any athlete who wanted to avoid the drugs and sometimes even surgery sought out her services. She was the hardest appointment to get in DC. Athletes from all over the country would fly to see her for a couple of hours of work.

Danny Worthless had that gift every night if he wanted it. Danny Worthless had her. Her spirit, her smile, her love of the game.

It wasn’t right. And Roy had finally decided it couldn’t continue.

The doorbell rang and, despite the loud music, he heard it as if it was a special sound sent out over a frequency meant only for him.

Danny was on his way. Roy had gone so far as to text him that he had some girls here who really wanted to meet the Founders’ shortstop. Danny texted back that he already had some company and would be there soon.

All Roy needed was the second actor in this play.

He opened the door and Lane smiled at him. Half sincere, half suspicious. It was always like that with her. As if she was afraid there was some prank he had set up that she’d step into or some joke he would make her the butt of.

Probably very smart of her.

“You came.” Which made him irrationally happy. Crazy, considering what he planned for that night.

“You said I had to,” she reminded him. “Or I would be, quote, ‘the biggest loser who ever lived.’”

Roy smiled. “Clearly you have self-esteem issues if you thought you had to prove me wrong.”

Of course she didn’t. No one in the world knew who she was as well as Lanie did. That’s what made her so damn compelling. She didn’t play games. She didn’t manipulate or strategize to get what she wanted. She was always simply who she was.

Unlike Roy, who frequently didn’t have a clue about himself outside of being someone who could throw a ball.

No, Lane definitely hadn’t hunted down Danny as trophy-husband material the way so many of the other wives had. She hadn’t pursued him like he was some prize to be won. Like baseball players were nothing beyond their gloves and hats and bats. And money. No, Danny had had to win Lane.

It’s what made her different from the women currently in Roy’s penthouse, drinking his liquor and shaking their well-toned, surgically enhanced bodies. Doing everything they could to attract attention. Hoping some player would notice them and set them up for life.

Roy saw nobody but Lane. Every damn time she was in the room.

“Well, Danny’s not getting back in until tomorrow. Decided he needed one last golf game in Florida before the season starts next week. So I thought, what the hell.”

A lie. Danny had been in town for two days. He was just spending his nights somewhere else. With someone else if his text was to be believed.

That should be enough, Roy thought. Enough to end it.

All Lane had to do was stay until Danny walked through the door with whomever on his arm. That alone should be enough to end their marriage. Lane wasn’t a person to tolerate disloyalty.

Roy had no idea who the woman in question would be. Danny went through groupies like toilet paper. An easy thing to do when you were on the road for eighty-one nights of the season. It wasn’t as if he even tried to hide his behavior from anyone. As if he expected everyone to understand that when they were home, Lane drove him to every game, watched every play of every inning and then took him home when it was over.

When Danny was on the road those tasks were done by some other woman.

Of course the guys didn’t say anything. The locker-room bond was tight. It had to be to win championships. And this was a championship-caliber team, having already won two World Series and coming close again last year.

So no one talked. None of the players talked to their wives. Or if they did, none of the wives talked to Lane. They all sat back and observed. As if it was entertainment to watch a dumb-ass twenty-six-year-old kid, who happened to have been gifted with athletic talent, shit on the princess of baseball. Night in and night out.

Roy was done with it. When Lane had worked on his neck and shoulder recently he thought he could sense something in her. A sense that she wasn’t happy, and rather...lonely.

Not that she would ever confide in Roy about her marriage. He was the man who didn’t know what love was. How hard would it be for someone so proud to admit she was wrong about it, too?

Which is why he decided he had to help her. Save her, really. She didn’t want to admit she’d picked the wrong guy. Understandable. No one wanted to admit their mistakes. Fine. He’d simply force her hand.

In front of the whole damn team.

“Uh, you going to invite me in?”

Roy realized she was still standing in the corridor. He thought of some of the women he’d invited. Thought of the other nonwives who had come with some of the married players.

Hell, he thought of the women he’d paid to be here. Backups to zero in on Danny if he didn’t show up with someone else.

Lane would see it all. Instantly.

No. Suddenly, he didn’t want to invite her in.

This is stupid. A mistake. She doesn’t deserve this.

“Look, you can’t change your mind now. I’m here, I’m thirsty and, if I have enough drinks, I might even dance.”

Not waiting for his answer, she bounced around him and he had to move to let her in or risk her pushing him out of the way.

“At least let me walk you to where you can put your coat down,” he said quickly, taking her arm. He needed to shield her from the party. They walked the long hallway from his oversize living room into a series of guest rooms. He didn’t think. Just led her into his bedroom and closed the door.

Shit. You screwed this up. She is going to see all those guys not with their wives. She is going to see Danny not with her. This is going to hurt her.

Roy wanted to open her eyes to the truth. He wanted her to leave her worthless husband. He didn’t want to destroy her faith. Not in love. Not when it was so damn pure.

“Lane, I screwed up.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow. Did you just admit you did something wrong?”

He nodded.

“Because the Roy Walker I know doesn’t do that.”

“I get it. You think I’m an arrogant ass.”

She smiled softly. “I don’t think it, Roy. You are. But I realize it’s a little, very little, part of your charm.”

Damn, she was actually smiling at him. In fact, she’d been treating him differently since he’d helped her father by doing a charity stint at the Minotaur Falls Opening Day Fair. Danny had been away on another one of his “trips” and someone needed to raise money for the Youth Athletic League. Roy offered his services in exchange for a few therapy sessions.

A few hours in the dunk tank and suddenly Lane had seen something in him that she hadn’t seen before. Maybe it was that she’d learned it wasn’t true that Roy didn’t do any charity work ever—a reputation he had fostered along with his ass persona. He just didn’t make a big show of his charitable work like so many of the other guys on the team. Which is why he never said anything about the equipment and uniforms he donated.

Only Duff had made a point of thanking him for the stuff in front of Lane.

Which meant his secret was out. He wasn’t quite the selfish, arrogant ass he’d always presented himself as. It must have been difficult, after years of thinking he was a pathetic scumbag, for her to realize he was a better man than he let on.

The truth was he never really cared what other people thought. With Lanie, though, it mattered.

Only now he was about to prove her shiny new opinions wrong. Really, really wrong.

“Lane, I would like you to leave.”

“What?”

“This party...I don’t think...you’re going to like it. It’s getting a little out of hand. Not your kind of thing. I’m not sure what I was thinking asking you to come.”

How far away was Danny? Hopefully twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. Roy should be able to get Lane away before Danny got here.

“What’s the matter? Afraid I’m not hot enough to compete with all the eye candy out there. I saw how some of those girls are dressed. The ones dancing on your coffee table. By the way, those heels will leave scratches. I know I don’t compare.”

She didn’t compare. They were nothing. She was everything. But Lane Baker wasn’t the type to worry about the other girls in the room. She was still smiling as if she found the whole thing funny.

She shucked her coat and he could see she wasn’t totally unaware of what type of party he might throw. Dark, skinny jeans, high-heel boots up to her knees, a silver blouse that showed way too much cleavage, in his opinion, but was conservative in comparison to what the other women were wearing. Or not wearing.

“Look, Roy, I’ve been around enough baseball bunnies to hold my own. I’ve been cooped up all winter, mostly by myself, and I’m looking to... I just want to have a little fun. You know? I promise, if I see the other players getting a little handsy with the bunnies, I won’t say a thing. I took a cab so I can get my drink on and unwind.”

She walked toward him, but he still had his back to the door, shutting out the party. Shutting her in.

“Let’s get out of here, then. I’ll take you someplace else. You can get your drink on there and I’ll make sure you get home safely.”

She blinked at him. “You’re going to leave your own party?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

She huffed, her hands on her hips, and shook her head like he’d exasperated her again. He did that to her a lot it seemed.

“Roy, I thought the whole point of this party was for you to make a new start with the team. Get to know them for a change. You said this might be your last season.”

“It is my last season.” There was no negotiating that. One more year, then he was done. Thirty-two years of age, the best in the game right now. This was how he was leaving baseball. On his terms.

“I figured you wanted to do something different. Get along with the guys.”

“Why? I’m leaving. It’s not like I’ve ever been friends with them before.”

She rolled her eyes. “Then why throw this big party?”

He couldn’t tell her truth. “As a going-away thing, I guess. But I don’t expect anything to change in the locker room.”

Where he had his bench, his locker, his privacy. No one bothered him beyond an occasional “Hey, man, you got an extra bar of soap?” It was his thing. Roy Walker, loner.

“Roy.” She sighed. “You don’t always have to be alone, you know. If you just let people in a little, you’ll see we’re not all bad.”

“You want in?” he asked, his voice suddenly rough with truth. “I’ll let you in.”

He could see her expression change. Like she understood what he was offering. More than he’d ever offered any woman before. A good thing, then. Lane would get angry at the suggestion he wanted something more from her. She might slap him. Certainly she would storm out the front door in indignation.

How long until Danny got here? Ten minutes? Maybe he would blow off the party completely. Happy with the company he was with currently.

“You know it can’t be me,” she said tightly. She clasped her hands together. Didn’t look at him. “I’m married.”

And there it was. So obvious, so bald it almost made him gasp. She’d said the words like a death knell. Like she was trapped in a cage with no escape. It was his mission to save her.

“Get unmarried.”

She jerked then, as if he’d hit her. When she looked at him, the tears in her eyes almost broke his heart.

“I can’t. I can’t fail. Duff wouldn’t—”

“Duff would understand. He loves you. He would support you no matter what.”

“You don’t get it.” She shook her head, her hair brushed her cheek. A cheek he so badly wanted to touch because it couldn’t be as soft as he imagined. Nothing could, right?

“Then tell me.”

“When Duff lost Mom he made us all promise we would try harder. That if we married, we wouldn’t make the same mistakes he made. That we would find a way to be happy. Danny and I...we can be happy. Again. I have to believe that. I have to.”

Roy pushed away from the door and advanced on her. He watched her, waiting to see what she would do, but she didn’t move. Until he was close, so close their thighs were nearly touching.

“What if there is something else? Someone else.”

She put her hand on his chest. She wasn’t pushing him away, but it was her signal to stop. So he waited and just breathed her in.

“I can’t...”

“I can.” Without another word his head dropped and his mouth was on hers. And it was like no kiss he’d ever felt before. Not even his first. This was the thing he wanted. For so long and he hadn’t even realized it. Now she was here, and he was kissing her and—

“No!” She backed up, almost stumbling to get away from him. “This is not who I am.”

“Lanie, I know that.” God, how he knew that. Her loyalty was unquestionable. But she had to see that with Danny, it was undeserved.

If she gave it to Roy, if he could have it, he would revere it and never betray it.

“Don’t call me Lanie,” she said. “You can’t call me Lanie and you can’t... I shouldn’t have come. This was a mistake.”

“Lane, I’m sorry.” Roy ran a hand through his hair. This wasn’t how it was supposed to play out. He was supposed to be saving her. Not taking her. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I know you would never do that to him. But you have to know though this wasn’t some half-assed pass. Tell me you know that. At least give me that.”

She stared at him and he hid nothing from her. She might as well see it. Might as well know what she meant to him. What all those conversations and outings together had meant to him.

Everything.

“I need to leave.” She grabbed her coat and he didn’t stop her. After all, wasn’t this what he wanted. Her storming out before Danny got here?

Only it was too late.

She opened the door and on the other side was her husband. Who had a woman with long blond hair, wearing a halter dress and stiletto heels, pressed against the wall. His hand was on her breast, his tongue was in her mouth and he was grinding against her.

He stopped kissing the woman. “Dude, we’re going to need your room for an hour.”

Then Danny turned his head, saw his wife and the expletive that fell from his mouth was totally accurate.

“Lane, what the hell? Dude,” Danny shouted at Roy, “you said no wives!”

As this weird buzzing noise filled his head, Roy tried to think through what was happening. The crazy thing was he really hadn’t expected the plan to work so well. Here he was, this grown man, not some actor in a soap opera, who had devised a nefarious plot. It should have completely backfired.

Only nope. It had worked to absolute freaking perfection. Which, of course, meant that it really did backfire.

Lane faced Roy. Not her cheating husband. Roy. “You knew he was coming? You knew he was coming with someone?” Her voice had a raw, harsh quality he’d never heard from her before.

Since it was hard to form words while his head still buzzed, he simply nodded.

“You did this? To me? On purpose? I thought—I thought we were...friends.”

Friends. She thought they were friends. She cared about him at least that much.

He’d had that and now he’d lost it. He could see it in her face.

“You bastard.”

The word hit as if she’d stabbed him in the gut. Yes, he’d done this on purpose. He’d humiliated and inflicted pain upon the only woman he thought could ever really matter to him.

Roy held up his hands as if to remind her she knew what an ass he could be.

He could see her shake as she approached him and he kept his hands down, opened himself to whatever she would say next.

She slapped him. Hard, across his cheek. As punishment, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

“I hate you for this. I hate you, Roy Walker.”

Then she walked past Danny and his flavor of the moment without so much as a word.

* * *

ROY LATER LEARNED that Lane moved out of her home that night. She and Danny were divorced six months later. The Founders’ season collapsed as the locker room never got over the pure hatred the star pitcher and shortstop felt for each other. And Lanie left her sports therapy business, putting the world of professional baseball behind her.

Roy heard she’d taken a job working at a veterans rehab facility. Helping soldiers with missing limbs adjust to their prosthetics. Sounded like something Lanie would choose to do.

At the start of his final game in baseball, Roy focused on doing what he’d promised himself he would. Go out on top.

And he did. Pitched a “no-no.” No hits. Only one walk. It wasn’t for the playoffs, or for the World Series win. Just the end of a lousy season, but a great career.

In his heart Roy knew he did it for her. The princess of baseball deserved such a tribute. Even though he doubted she watched.

After, he changed out of his uniform, got into his car and drove away from the stadium and the game that had been his life since he was six years old.

It was time to start a new life. Maybe in this new life he could forget Lanie Baker ever existed. The way she had so obviously done with him. He’d written her a letter to try to explain why he’d done it and, more importantly, that he was sorry.

He never heard from her.

Yes, it was definitely time to move on and forget his princess. After all, everyone knew the villain didn’t get the princess. Only the hero did. And Roy was never the hero.

CHAPTER TWO

A few months ago

“YOU’RE BROKE.”

Roy looked at his accountant and blinked. Frank’s face remained unchanged and entirely serious.

Roy knew the news would be bad. But not this bad. “That can’t be right.”

“You chose not to file for bankruptcy,” Frank reminded him. “I told you to.”

Stubbornly, Roy had refused. Bankruptcy had seemed like the coward’s way out. He’d taken the products from his vendors in good faith and he was a man who paid his debts. All of them. This meeting today was to discuss what was left.

Apparently not much.

“Look, you still have a few assets you can sell to get you a little more liquid until you get back on your feet. Your father’s house—”

“Not an option.”

Frank sighed. “Right. Your town house, then.”

“Great. I can sell that.”

“That will take some time. It’s November, not the greatest season to move real estate. What about your ex-fiancée’s thirty-thousand-dollar engagement ring?”

“Also not an option.”

Frank shook his head. “In today’s world it’s custom to give the ring back, regardless of who broke it off.”

Maybe, but Shannon hadn’t offered and Roy couldn’t ask for it. He’d met Shannon a few years into his new life and they had dated for nearly a year before deciding to get married. He’d tried, he really had, to make the long-term commitment work. But eventually he’d admitted to himself marriage wasn’t in the cards so he ended it.

Six weeks before the wedding.

What he’d done to her—led her on, let her plan a big, public wedding—was wrong and if she took some consolation from an expensive ring, she was welcome to it.

But that decision seemed to kick off his entire life coming down on him like a ton of bricks. After he ended the engagement, his developers told him the coding logic in Roy’s new high-tech gaming system, SportsNation, was faulty and would not be ready for their scheduled major launch. All the money they had poured into publicity, including print, radio and television, essentially gone as they had to push back the release date again and again.

By the time they got it working, there was another—better—product on the market. Eventually Roy’s company did launch the system, but it was too little too late. The company in which he’d invested every dime, every ounce of energy, for the past five years had failed.

Now he was broke.

He was thirty-seven, just beginning what was supposed to be the second half of his life. And it was over after five measly years.

Roy leaned back in his chair, looking at the stack of papers on the older man’s desk. Roy’s life had been reduced to overdue notices and collection letters. When all was said and done, there was nothing left but the loose change in his couch.

“What about advertising? You know, do a few commercials for some local auto dealer. They love that stuff. Or ESPN? You could become one of those baseball color commentators.”

Roy knew Frank was trying to help, just like he’d given him sound advice about the bankruptcy option. But Roy didn’t want to go back to any part of baseball. He sure as hell didn’t have the personality for television. And given his nonrelationship with about everyone associated with MLB, he was fairly sure no one would be standing in line to do him any favors. The type of job offers players got after they retired were based on the connections they made while they were still playing.

Roy hadn’t made any friends, let alone connections. He pitched. He pitched better than anyone. That’s what he did.

Even if he could find a way to work up the enthusiasm to sell some product, advertisers wanted someone relevant. Roy hadn’t been that in five years. Maybe after he was inducted into the Hall of Fame he would be, but not now.

“You could get a job. What kind of skills do you have?”

“I throw a mean sinking cutter.”

“Look, you’ve got some cash. Maybe it’s enough to get you through until you sell your house. If you’ve got some fancy watches or something...”

Roy shook his head. All of it, every last thing, had gone into the company. He drove a ten-year-old Jeep and his last investment in himself had been a five-dollar haircut. There was nothing to sell.

“What about some of your old baseball stuff? You hardly ever gave any of that away. I’ll bet that might fetch you some bucks to hold you over.”

Hold him over until what? The town house was in a nice area of Philadelphia, the city he’d chosen to establish his business, but it wouldn’t set him up for life. It might provide some seed money to invest in a new company, but what kind of lenders would take a chance on him again?

He’d seen it in the faces around him at the end. From the people who worked for him and the people to whom he owed money. Roy Walker was a great pitcher but he didn’t know much about building a successful company.

A vision of him selling used cars to men who shook his hand and said, “Hey, weren’t you that pitcher?” flashed in front of his eyes.

“So what about it? You got a few gloves or something?”

Yes. He had gloves and jerseys and his Cy Young Award trophies. Next year was his first year of eligibility for Hall-of-Fame contention. Many considered him a first ballot shoo-in. He could see the headlines now: Roy Walker, HOF Pitcher, Now Failed Businessman, Desperate for Money, Sells His Gloves.

He was pathetic.

“Of course...there is the alternative. I mean, you’re only thirty-seven. Who knows how many bullets you have left in that arm? You could go back to baseball, sign on with some team for a year, make a ridiculous amount of money and then start all over again.”

Start all over again. Back to baseball. Those two things shouldn’t be synonymous. There had to be other choices.

Because Roy was never going back to baseball.

Present day

ROY DROVE THROUGH the winding streets of the small town of Minotaur Falls, New York, with a sick feeling of dread in his stomach. The sick feeling had become fairly familiar to him. It had started when he’d learned he was broke and had pretty much continued ever since. All through November, when Frank had been proven right about the real-estate market being dead. All through December, when Roy had actually put together a résumé and started applying for jobs.

He’d been on three interviews. Two had been just baseball fans who wanted to the meet the legendary Roy Walker. Of course, since he didn’t have any actual skills, he wasn’t a fit for the company, but it sure was great to meet him. The third had been a nice older woman who knew nothing about baseball, but also told him that without a college degree or any real work experience he wasn’t qualified for the position. Again.

Roy had tried to explain to her that he’d once been famous and a multimillionaire.

That hadn’t swayed her.

He had considered going back to school. The money he could make from the sale of his town house would cover his tuition. But the idea of being a freshman at thirty-seven was even worse than the idea of baseball.

Which was what everything kept coming back to. Roy would look at his left arm and think if he could get back into shape, if he could get his velocity to where it had been, all he might need was one season. One contract.

“Is there anything left in you?” he would ask his arm.

Is there anything left in you? he imagined it asking him back.

Finally, he’d done the unthinkable and called his former agent. Charlie Lynn had taken his call immediately, which made Roy feel marginally better. Charlie loved the idea of a Roy Walker comeback.

Hell, Nolan Ryan pitched until he was forty-six. Mariano Rivera pitched until he was forty-three. It wasn’t unthinkable. There was only one catch.

Can you still throw?

Of course Charlie had to ask the question. Roy told him the truth. He didn’t know. He hadn’t put his arm through any kind of workout since leaving baseball. Which meant Roy was going to have to find some minor-league team who might take him on to see if he still had the goods.

Charlie started talking about bonus options if he made the team and incentive clauses for a multiple-year option.

All the familiar phrases and terms came back to Roy like he hadn’t been away for five years. Over the course of his professional life he’d earned eighty million dollars with Charlie as his agent.

Eighty million dollars gone. Because he’d put his faith in some programmers who ultimately couldn’t deliver on what they promised and he’d been too stupid and stubborn to realize that until it was too late.

Charlie told Roy to find someone he could trust. A place he could go with baseball people who would give him a workout but who wouldn’t be squawking to the sports reporters about what Roy was doing. They needed to establish if his arm still had the juice and what role he might play on a team. Maybe he couldn’t be a starter, Charlie mused, but with Roy’s sinking cutter, he might have closer potential. In baseball the only person who had the potential to make as much money as a starting pitcher was a lights-out closer.

One or two years playing, maybe an eight-million-dollar contract, and Roy could start over again.

Only this time he would do everything differently.

Roy shook his head. No, he couldn’t see that far ahead. He’d already failed once, so he couldn’t imagine having the confidence to try some other new business venture. Which meant he should stick to what he knew he could do. What he’d always done.

Throw a ball.

A ridiculous gift, really, that might set him up for life. Again.

Roy pulled up to the Minotaur Falls stadium, home of the Triple-A minor-league team for the New England Rebels. Minotaur Falls was also the home of the legendary Duff Baker.

Duff Baker, the only person in baseball Roy thought he might be able to trust. Duff had won four World Series titles as the manager of three different teams. Two of them with Roy. It was a remarkable accomplishment because it meant he could reach the top with different groups of players. That was because Duff had a better eye for talent than anyone in the game.

He had walked away from managing professional teams about eight years ago, but he hadn’t been able to leave the game entirely. Some might call being manager of a minor-league team a step down, but Duff just called it retirement.

Roy had phoned his former manager and asked if he could meet with him and if they could keep it private. Roy hadn’t given him a reason or any information, really.

That the old man hadn’t hesitated to say yes humbled Roy in so many ways.

Duff had been Roy’s first manager when he’d made it to The Show. Roy had been as cocky then as he had been through the rest of his career. In hindsight he could see what a handful he must have been to his manager. He used to shrug off bunting advice from the old man like what he was selling was old news. Duff had had every right to punch the upstart Roy had been, but he never did. Instead Duff just kept proving how his way worked until eventually Roy figured it out.

He’d been sad when Duff left the team. It was the first time Roy had ever felt any emotions for one of his coaches.

Excluding his first, of course. His dad.

Roy got out of the Jeep, grabbed his equipment bag, which still smelled like his basement, and hiked it over his shoulder. He hesitated before taking that first step, though.

It wasn’t the physical element of the game that bothered him. Either his arm could still do what it used to do or it couldn’t. There wouldn’t be much getting around that.

It was everything else.

Every failure out on full display, when he would have to tell Duff why he was here.

Well, not every failure. Roy didn’t plan to discuss the time he humiliated and hurt Duff’s daughter. That, Roy figured, he could keep in his pocket.

Lane Baker.

Hell, there would probably be a picture of her on Duff’s desk. Roy would have to brace for that. Maybe even a new wedding photo. Five years since the divorce, it almost seemed likely she would have moved on with her life.

Damn, that was going to hurt.

Don’t think about it. There was no backing down. He’d turned his life into this heaping pile of dung on purpose and now it was time to face the music.

Roy made his way through the stadium entrance to the second level, where the team’s offices were. Nothing fancy about minor-league security, so he was able to go wherever he wanted. He found a door labeled Private and Manager and knocked.

“Come in!”

It was a female voice who made the offer. For a second, Roy paused again. No, Lane couldn’t be here. She was in Virginia Beach last he heard. Helping wounded soldiers. Doing everything right, while he’d been doing everything wrong.

Roy put his internal pity party on hold and opened the door.

The woman standing in the office did remind him of Lane. Long hair tied into a ponytail, face devoid of makeup, wearing a heavy plaid shirt that might have belonged to a man at one point.

She stared at him for a good second. “You’re Roy Walker.”

“Yep.”

“My sister hates you.”

Not that he needed further confirmation of who the woman was, but her statement gave her away. Scout was Lanie’s younger sister. They also had an older sister, Samantha, who was known as one of the most cutthroat agents in the game, but everyone knew she and Duff weren’t close.

Scout was the opposite of Samantha. Where Duff was, Scout was.

“Yep,” Roy said again.

“You’re here to see Duff?”

The Baker girls called their father Duff. It was something Lane had told him about once while working on his shoulder with her voodoo physical therapy. Their mother had claimed that, because he was gone for so much of the year, they couldn’t legitimately call him a father. So they were to call him Duff.

Not hard to see why that marriage hadn’t worked out.

Which was part of why Lane had been so devastated when hers had ended.

Do not go there. Back to baseball, okay. But not back to Lane Baker.

“I have an appointment,” he said.

Scout tilted her head and eyed him as if he was a suspect in a criminal case. “He didn’t tell me. He tells me everything.”

“I asked him to keep this private.”

She assessed him and he had a hard time trying not to think about Lane. Lane was prettier than Scout. Softer around the edges where Scout was all sharp lines. Cheeks and chin. Still, it was easy to see they were sisters. They both had the same honey-wheat-colored hair with green eyes. A similar shrewdness in those eyes.

And honesty, with no thought of pretense.

“You’re here to see your first major-league manager. The man who led you to your first epic World Series win. You’re carrying an equipment bag that smells a little moldy and you look like you’re going to vomit if you breathe in that smell too deeply, which makes me think you’re nervous.”

“Hey, Sherlock, give it a rest. I need to talk to Duff.”

“Damn, I’m good. Roy Walker is here for a tryout.”

“It’s not really a tryout,” he mumbled. “More like an assessment. And I would appreciate it, if you didn’t tell anyone—”

Scout held her hand up. “Please. My father wants it private, it stays private. But you have to let me tell Lane. She’s going to die.”

Please, please don’t tell Lane. Don’t let her know what a complete and total failure I turned out to be. In...everything.

“I doubt she would care,” he said trying for nonchalance. “Like you said, she hates me.”

“Yes, that’s what she always said. All the time. ‘Roy Walker, Roy Walker, how I hate Roy Walker.’ Funny she never mentioned anyone she liked as much as she talked about hating you.”

Roy really didn’t know what to do with that.

“Let me go wake him up. He pretends he’s watching scouting footage after lunch but he actually just puts a headset on and takes a nap.”

Roy waited while Scout went into the inner office to wake her father. After a few minutes she came back wearing a grim expression but giving a solid nod. “He’s ready for you.”

“Thanks. Hey, you mean it, right? You won’t tell anyone I’m here.”

“I mean it.”

Roy nodded. He didn’t question her word.

“I won’t even tell Lane. That is, if don’t want me to. Do you want me to?”

He struggled to get the words out because he knew they would reveal too much about how he felt about Lane. But the consequences of Lane knowing how hard he had fallen were worse in his mind.

“I would prefer it if you didn’t.”

After all, what if he failed at this, too?

“Sure.”

He summoned a smile and walked past her. Duff was slow getting to his feet and Roy’s first thought was wow, Duff had aged. Thinner, his face drawn, his hair a bit wild around his head, probably from his afternoon nap.

“Duff, you’re looking good.”

The old man coughed up a laugh. “Ha. Liar. I look like shit. Which is appropriate because I feel like shit. That’s what happens when you get to seventy-five. You only hope you feel as shitty as me when you get to my age.”

Slowly Duff walked around the desk and Roy jumped to meet him halfway and shook his hand.

“Gotta tell you, you don’t look so great yourself, Walker. You look...defeated, and that sure as hell is a look I never thought I would see on you.”

Defeated.

“That about sums it up,” Roy said, not hiding anything from Duff. “I sank all my money into a video gaming company that went under. I was too stubborn to file for bankruptcy so I paid everyone off and now I’m broke. Really broke. I don’t have a college degree and the only thing I can put on my résumé is a failed start-up company. So I’m here hoping I have enough bullets in this arm to earn me enough money to try again.”

Duff nodded like it was a story he heard every day. “Why me?”

“I’ve got to find out if I can still throw. Before Charlie can put it out there that I’m looking for a team. I needed someone I can trust. Both to tell me the truth and to not announce it to ESPN that I’m trying to make a comeback.”

“How long has it been? Since you launched the rocket?”

“Five years. Since the no-no in San Diego.”

Duff let out a small grunt. “What kind of shape are you in otherwise?”

“I still run. Twenty miles a week. Still work out with weights. Physically, I feel good. In fact, my arm feels great.”

“Well, let’s go change that.”

* * *

ROY, DUFF AND SCOUT made their way to the field.

“You’ll start with throwing on grass before you take the mound,” Scout said, walking into the dugout and coming back with a ball, a catcher’s glove and a mask.

“Okay, wait,” Roy said, wondering if she actually expected him to throw to her. “It may have been five years, but my velocity still has to be pretty high.”

“Relax, slugger, this isn’t some scene from Bull Durham. I called Javier, who lives close by. He’ll come and catch for you. Also he’s a recent immigrant from El Salvador so he will have no idea who the heck you are and, even if he did, none of the sports reporters in town speak Spanish.”

At that moment, a young man with a round face emerged from the dugout. Scout spoke to him in Spanish and he took the catcher’s mitt and dropped to his haunches near home plate.

Roy stood in front of the mound on flat grass and gripped the ball in his hand. Like an old muscle memory waking up, he remembered the shape of the ball, the weight of it and how to hold it just so. There had been a time when the baseball had felt like a natural extension of his left arm. Like it had been grafted to his fingers with the thread of the seams.

He would hurl it as hard as he could, but those threads would retract and the ball would always come back.

When he threw it for the last time he told himself he would never pick up a baseball again. He used to tell himself that if he ever got married and had a kid he’d make sure his kid was into football or soccer. Anything but baseball. That’s how much he’d wanted to move away from the game.

Funny, now it didn’t seem so bad. He could admit, for the first time, that maybe he’d missed it. The grass on the field—although this field was mostly brown after a hard winter. The shape of the diamond. The sight of a masked man crouching sixty feet away waiting to catch whatever Roy threw at him.

“Keep it simple to start,” Duff called out. “Fastball.”

Roy nodded and he could see Scout had a radar gun pointed at him ready to record his velocity.

His throat tightened and his hand flexed around the ball. “Don’t time me yet. Let me get a few in first.”

Scout nodded and put the gun down.

Then Roy went through his motions—forward lean, left arm dangle, pull up, plant foot and fire.

He heard the snap of the ball hitting Javier’s glove. It sounded pretty fast. Javier tossed back the ball and Roy did it again. After his third warm-up he nodded in Scout’s direction. She held up the gun and he fired.

“Eighty-six!”

Roy held his glove up, asking for the ball. Eighty-six wasn’t fast. His fastest had been ninety-two, ninety-three miles an hour. But eighty-six after not throwing for a few years was...workable.

“Try a curve,” Duff suggested.

Roy changed the position of the ball in his hand and threw. It curved. It wasn’t his killer curve, but, again, it was something to work with. He threw over and over. All of his old pitches, even the changeup, just to test that speed. Every fastball got a little faster, every curve a little curvier.

They worked him for an hour and when it was over, his body was covered in sweat and his arm hurt like hell. But he knew. He knew what they knew.

“You can still pitch, Roy Walker,” Scout said, patting him on his right shoulder. Duff kept his hands in his jeans pockets and nodded his agreement.

“The New England Rebels are looking for pitching,” Duff said. “Might be willing to offer you a minor-league deal to see if you can get your conditioning and timing up to speed. I’m thinking in a starting role, too, to build your stamina. It’s a lot of ifs, but if we can get you back into form, if you don’t blow out your arm while doing it, it might be perfect timing for the Rebels, heck, any team, looking to add to their rotation after the all-star break in July.”

Roy nodded. “You really think the Rebels will give me a chance?”

“I don’t,” Scout told him bluntly. “No one will take a chance on what might be. You can still pitch, but you are nowhere near major-league ready. Plus you’re old. Sorry to be so blunt but—”

“No, I appreciate it. I...need it.”

Duff sighed. “They’ll take a chance. They’ll take a chance if I tell them to. Call Charlie, tell him to call Russell. He’s the Rebels’ new general manager. I’ll let Russell know what’s coming and what I saw. In the meantime, Roy Walker, you’ll fill a hell of a lot of seats in this stadium and that’s something that will make our owner very happy. I sure do like to make JoJo happy.”

“You might want to start by not calling her JoJo,” Scout said. “She hates it.”

Duff scowled. “No, she loves it coming from me.”

Roy tuned them out and focused only on what might be. The minors. Roy Walker, future Hall of Famer, was back in the minors.

Still, it was a start.

They walked off the field and Roy gave his thanks to Javier. Something he might not have cared about before. But the guy had come on his own time to help Roy and the least he deserved was a thank-you.

“You good pitch.”

Roy smiled. “Thanks. Gracias. See you around, maybe.”

With that, Javier smiled and headed through the dugout to the door that would lead to the locker rooms. Roy put his mitt in his bag.

“You know, I’ve seen a lot of guys try this comeback,” Duff said as they followed Javier to the locker room, where there was an elevator that would take them up to the second level.

Both Roy and Scout purposefully walked slowly to accommodate Duff’s slow gait.

“The problem is the technique won’t be there for a while, which means you could hurt yourself before you can get your arm into shape.”

“Duff’s right,” Scout said. “Seen it a million times. You’ll be almost there and then you’ll tear something because you’re not getting the right treatment. Treatment is the key.”

“Okay. I’ll try to find someone. You have any recommendations? A sports therapist you use for the team?”

Roy should have guessed by the look Duff and Scout shared but really, truly, he didn’t see it coming.

“I do know someone,” Scout said. “Maybe she can be persuaded to come home for a visit.”

Duff chuckled before he started coughing. “Yep. Got the best in the business on my team. And I hear she works cheap.”

Roy looked at Duff, then at Scout. They couldn’t be serious. “She’ll never do it. She hates me.”

Scout and Duff both smiled back. “Yep,” they said together.

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU NEED TO come home.”

Lane pressed her cell to her ear with her shoulder and opened the door to her apartment, two grocery bags hanging from her arms. “Hold on.”

Once inside, she shut the door, made her way to the kitchen, put the bags—recyclable, of course—on the counter along with her phone and hit the speaker button.

“Okay, Scout, I’m here. What do you mean come home? I was just there.”

“Months ago at Christmas. Things are different now.”

Lane took a deep breath as she unpacked her frozen entrées and tried not to let Scout’s anxiety get her freaked out as well.

“Has he been to a doctor?” Lane asked, knowing what Scout was worried about. This was about Duff. With Scout it was always about Duff. Or baseball.

“He won’t go. He says he’s fine, just old and tired—”

“Scout, he is seventy-five. I mean, he’s allowed to be tired.”

“It’s not like that. It’s not naps in the afternoon. It’s not dozing after dinner. Something is wrong and you are the only one in this family who has any kind of medical knowledge. If you tell him to go to a doctor, he’ll listen to you. With me he brushes it off as nagging.”

Home.

The word blasted through Lane like a bullet into the gut. Suddenly the idea made so much sense to her when nothing seemed to make sense six days ago.

Six days? Had it been that long since the doctor told her Stephen had died? The eerie sense of lost time had Lane wondering what had happened during the past week. Most of that time had been spent on a couch staring at four walls. Until she got hungry enough to go to a grocery store to get something besides potato chips and peanut butter sandwiches to eat.

Now with Scout’s worry about Duff, it suddenly felt like there was an answer. A place to go. A person to be. Not a physical therapist, but a daughter.

Because Lane was no longer a physical therapist.

Scout wasn’t prone to exaggeration and she certainly wasn’t the type to ask for help. Lane hadn’t missed the fatigue Duff seemed to suffer from at Christmas. If he was getting worse, then he needed to see a doctor.

“Should we call Samantha?”

“The traitor sister? No.”

Lane groaned. Sometimes family dynamics could be so draining. “Scout, you really need to get over it. Yes, she talks to our mother on a regular basis. That’s normal behavior between a mother and a daughter. You should try it.”

“Not going to happen. Besides, I’m not saying to not call Samantha because of her and Mom. I’m saying it because if all three of us gang up on him, he’ll get stubborn. You know him. We need to make this look like it’s a totally natural visit. Can you get the time off?”

The words got stuck in Lane’s throat. As of three days ago she had all the time off she needed. Instead of admitting that, she just said yes.

“Good, I’ve set something up.”

“What?”

“When Duff calls he’s going to ask you for a favor. You will not want to do this favor, but you have no choice because you know your ulterior motive is to assess Duff’s condition and get his butt to a doctor.”

Lane tried to imagine what kind of favor Duff might ask for—one she wouldn’t want to do. He was her father. She adored him. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do if he asked unless it was...

“Scout, is it about baseball? You know I’m done with the sport. Completely and irrevocably.”

There was a pause. “I wouldn’t use the word irrevocably so casually.”

Lane gritted her teeth. “I’m not. I’m quite serious. I’m done with the game and, most importantly, I’m done with the players. If you need me in Minotaur Falls, fine, I’ll come. But I’m not having anything to do with the game.”

“Then he’ll suspect something,” Scout replied. “Look, I get it. You married a crappy guy and it eats at you every day that you couldn’t make the marriage work. But I need you to suck it up and do this thing. For Duff.”

Lane hated it when her younger sister was more right than she was. After all it had been five years since her marriage was exposed for the sham it had become. Maybe it was time to start letting some of the anger go. Anger that was mostly directed at herself. Something she rarely told anyone. Why would she when she had such an easy villain she could point to? Her cheating husband.

Her cheating husband and Roy Walker.

“Fine. I’ll do it. Just out of curiosity, what is this favor? I mean, I assume you want me to treat someone. Some up-and-coming star with a muscle issue? Do I know him?”

Another pause. “Nah. Just another player. He signed a minor-league deal with the Rebels. Who knows if he’ll even pan out? But Duff likes him, so he’ll ask you to work with him. You’ll say yes?”

“Was that actually a question?”

“I need you, Lane. I wouldn’t call you if I didn’t.”

Once more the words felt like a physical blow to Lane. Scout really was serious. Which meant Duff was in trouble. When a parent reaches seventy-five a child had to start to thinking about things. Things like saying goodbye. Lane wasn’t ready yet. She was barely surviving losing a patient she didn’t know that well.

She couldn’t even contemplate what losing Duff right now would mean.

Sometimes, though, life didn’t give a person a choice. What worried Lane more than her own reaction was Scout and how she would cope with such a loss. “Hey, you know, kiddo, if there is something wrong—”

“Don’t say it. I mean, I know where you are going and I know why you’re going there, but don’t say it. I can’t hear it. Not yet.”

Lane nodded and, really, there was no point in borrowing trouble. Not until they knew they had trouble on their hands. “Okay. I’ll wait for Duff’s call.”

Scout hung up and Lane thought of all the things she would need to organize. Pack, of course. Maybe ask her neighbor to take in the mail. Then she realized there wasn’t anything else that required organizing.

It wasn’t like she had a boyfriend she needed to tell. Hell, she didn’t have that many close friends who needed a heads-up. Everyone she knew in town worked at the veterans hospital. Since she’d resigned, a few of them had reached out to her, but no one had been able to talk her out of her decision.

Realistically, Stephen had been only a patient. Another soldier with a missing foot. Her job had been to get him back on his feet even though one of them would be prosthetic. She’d been so close, too. When anyone asked her about his progress, she always gave the same answer. The patient was doing great. He was ahead of schedule. She’d said it with pride. Because of her, he would be using his prosthesis faster than anyone else had before.

Yeah, she’d been doing a hell of job.

Until the twenty-four-year-old took a sharp razor to his wrists and killed himself.

Lane dropped onto the couch and looked around her apartment. It all seemed so empty. For the past five years she had put everything she had into a job as a way to escape her failure of a marriage and now that was gone.

Her supervisor had said it wasn’t her fault. The doctor had said it wasn’t her fault. She was a physical therapist, not a psychologist. She couldn’t have known what was in Stephen’s head. No one did, which is why the tragedy had happened.

Lane knew better. She should have sensed his reluctance to work with the prosthesis. She should have picked up on the fact that he wasn’t ready to move forward with his life because he hadn’t dealt with the loss of his limb. Or the explosion that had killed two of his friends. She’d worked for Veterans Affairs for five years. She’d seen amputations of every kind. She knew what it could do to the psyche.

Instead, she’d gotten caught up in getting a kid up on his feet only to have him take himself off them permanently.

The worst part was that, logically, she knew she couldn’t blame herself. Unlike with some of her other patients, she and Stephen hadn’t formed any kind of personal bond. He hadn’t been overly talkative or particularly friendly. Still, he’d been a good patient—he had done everything she asked. A soldier through and through. Taking the orders she dished out without any back talk.

No, Stephen was no different than the hundreds who had come before him.

Only he was completely different because he was gone and she hadn’t seen one sign. Not one signal that he was planning to take his own life.

She could tell herself that taking herself out of the work wasn’t about punishing herself for her mistake. That quitting meant not being there for the next soldier. The next soldier who needed her help. She could tell herself that she had a responsibility to the hospital. Heck, she could even tell herself she needed a paycheck to live.

All good reasons to put this incident behind her and go back to work.

She’d tried. The day after she’d learned of Stephen’s death, she had tried to go in like it was just another day. She’d walked into the therapy wing, had seen people working out in various capacities and instantly had known she couldn’t do it.

The thought of being presented with another patient terrified her. Someone whose name she would learn. Someone whose life she would try to improve. Someone who might be hurting in ways she couldn’t see because she only saw the physical.

What if Stephen happened again? What if she failed?

Lane couldn’t do it. Not yet. Maybe not ever again. The easiest thing had been to resign and deal with the fallout later.

Home.

Yes, that made sense. It might seem like Lane was going home to help Scout, but really Scout was the one who had just offered Lane a lifeboat.

* * *

SCOUT PUT HER cell in her back pocket, chewed her bottom lip and wondered if she was doing the right thing. Her loyalty, after all, should be to her sister and no one knew better how much Lane hated Roy Walker than Scout did. Scout had been the first person Lane called when it all went down. The party, the irrefutable proof of what a scumbag Danny was, Roy’s involvement in the whole thing. And when they had needed a coldhearted, ruthless lawyer, they had called their older sister, Samantha, to mete out the punishment.

Sam had eaten up Danny’s lawyer and spit him out. But not for financial reasons. Lane hadn’t wanted his money. She’d donated most of the settlement Samantha had won her to various different charities.

No, it was a lesson the Baker girls had wanted to enforce so Danny and anyone else in the game of baseball got the message.

You hurt us, we hurt you.

Scout remembered asking Lane what form of revenge she wanted them to inflict on Roy, but Lane hadn’t wanted to even hear his name mentioned. It was as if the betrayal from him was somehow too big to deal with.

Bigger than her divorce from Danny.

Her sister’s reaction always made Scout wonder about Lane and her feelings for Roy. And that speculation made her feel slightly less guilty about not telling her who Duff’s favor was for. At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. Scout needed Lane to pressure Duff to get his health checked.

Lane was probably right. He was getting older and slowing down. Scout could accept that. Hell, it’s not like she was going anywhere. She was here for him. Slow or not. She just needed some assurance there wasn’t something else, something more serious with far greater reaching consequences, going on.

It was fair to say, Scout didn’t like change. Very fair considering she’d lost the only man she ever loved because she wouldn’t change.

That nervous niggle in her stomach reared its ugly head. The one she could forget about for hours until suddenly it was there again making her nauseous. She couldn’t say why, but it sure felt like a whole lot of change was coming.

No, Scout definitely did not like change.

* * *

LANE PULLED UP to the stadium and thought about what it would feel like to walk through those doors. It had been five years since she’d done it. No matter how many times she had come home to visit, no matter how many times Duff had asked her to check out a game with him, she hadn’t once set foot in this place. The home of the Minotaurs.

For that matter, she hadn’t entered any other ballpark. Heck, she felt uncomfortable walking by a diamond in a park. She hadn’t watched a single game on TV. She hadn’t paid attention to any playoff runs or World Series.

She didn’t even know if her ex-husband was still on a team. Still playing. Still doing well. She didn’t care.

Her love for baseball had died that night. No, it had been murdered, by her. She’d purposefully ejected it from her life. Went so far as to stop treating all professional athletes because she hadn’t wanted to be remotely reminded of the lifestyle. She’d turned down a professional golfer’s offer of ten thousand dollars for one hour of therapy without blinking.

She’d even stopped eating hot dogs.

She missed hot dogs.

It wasn’t lost on Lane that after the failure of her marriage she’d turned her back on everything she loved except her immediate family. Her first major failure at her job, and she’d done the same thing to work.

Quitter.

The word sat ridiculously heavy on her shoulders. Was that what she was? Was that what she did? Did she quit when things got hard?

No, she told herself stubbornly. She made rational decisions to protect her mental well-being. It was not the same thing at all.

Besides she was here now, standing outside the stadium, wasn’t she? Scout needed her and Lane wasn’t going to let an old grudge get in the way of doing the right thing by her father. She would grant Duff’s favor and he would, in turn, do her a favor by making appointment with a doctor. Just a normal checkup. Something any daughter might prod her aging father into doing.

She left her car, swallowed the crazy nervous thing that was in her throat and walked through the stadium doors like it was no big deal. It was early March and snow was still on the ground in upstate New York, although it was melting. Today the sun was out and there was a hint of spring in the air. Enough to give a person a sense of hope that warmer weather was coming. It was just a matter of time.

Spring used to be her favorite season. The start of everything new. New flowers, new grass, new life and, most importantly, a new baseball season. She thought about the date, and realized opening day for the minors was three weeks away.

There might be players around the ballpark. Those making a run for The Show would be down in spring training. But the cast of players who knew they would start in Triple-A would already be warming up. Hoping to prove themselves enough for some scout to see them and give them a chance.

Lane headed toward Duff’s office, stopping just outside. She was supposed to meet the player Duff wanted her to work with. Like Scout, he’d played it off as no big deal. Just a pitcher who they wanted to gradually work up to full speed.

She figured he was someone coming off an injury.

A patient, she thought. That’s how she would deal with him. Not a player, not an athlete, just a patient. If she could maintain that distance, then it wouldn’t be like being involved in baseball at all.

Taking a deep breath, she knocked and opened the door. The outer office was empty and she could hear voices behind the inner door. Marching forward, she entered the office, ready to compartmentalize her task. She was here to assess her father’s health. The other task was simply the means to an end.

“Hey, Duff,” Lane said, seeing her father leaning back in his chair behind the desk. The player in question was sitting on the opposite side of the desk, his back to her. “Well, you got me back here. And I guess you’re going to be my patient for the next few—”

The player stood and turned to face her.

“Roy Walker. Wow,” she whispered. Because she really had nothing else to say.

Scout did this. Duff did this. They both did this to her. Yet another horrible betrayal by people she trusted. How could they force her to confront the one man she never wanted to see again?

The man who had ruined her marriage. Who had turned her into a failure.

It wasn’t his fault. It was yours...

“Lanie,” he whispered as if he, too, was not ready for the confrontation even though he’d at least had a heads-up it was coming. “You look...good. I mean, it’s good to see you.”

Lane shook her head. Roy was talking to her. Speaking actual words to her. She was in the same room as him. Unthinkable.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say now.”

“Lanie,” Duff huffed. “Now, come on, girl. It’s been five years. The man did you a favor and opened your eyes. He gave you your life back. Stop holding on to history and get over it. I need you to work with him.”

“Oh, I can promise you that is not going to— Wait.” Her gaze flew to Roy’s face and she could actually see him brace himself for what came next. “What are you doing here?”

He swallowed a few times and she followed the movement of his Adam’s apple. She started to take in things about him now that the shock of seeing him was fading. The gray mixed in with the dark hair at his temples. His body still looked strong, fit. Wide shoulders and long arms, which gave him extra zip when throwing a ball. She knew he was thirty-seven, but the person Duff had asked her to work with was a minor-league player.

Roy didn’t play baseball anymore. He certainly didn’t play minor-league ball.

“I needed a job. Duff helped me out.”

“You needed a job? Yeah, right. You’re a multimillionaire. What happened to your grand plan? You said you were done with baseball. You said you wanted to leave on top and not hang around like all the other old-timers who didn’t know when to walk away. You talked about it constantly. Almost bragging about how smart you were to leave while the leaving was good. Now, five years later, you want to pitch again?” She shook her head. “You’re pathetic.”

Her voice was sharp and she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t know if it was anger from seeing the man whom she considered her mortal enemy. Or anger that she’d believed all those things he said to her once. Because when he said them it had felt as though he hoped she would understand why he was making the decision to walk away so young. As though he wanted her approval.

Or maybe it was anger because she remembered all those times when he’d talked to her about his future and she had felt that damn...pull.

Damn. She hated Roy Walker.

“Lanie!” Duff shouted. “I didn’t raise my girl to be a bitch. Maybe before you go spouting off on things you don’t know about, you might want to check that attitude.”

Lane looked at her father, who, she noticed, still hadn’t gotten out of his chair, even though he was angry enough at her to raise his voice. Since she was still pissed at him for blindsiding her, that confrontation would have to wait.

“What? This isn’t some attempt at a lame comeback? Let me guess, you couldn’t stay away from the game,” Lane said. “Is that it? The limelight. The rush. The glory. The fans, not that you had many of those. Had to have all that back?”

“No,” Roy said stiffly. “What I said was true. I need a job. And this is all I know how to do.”

It was the tone in his voice that stopped her. She knew Roy Walker. He was arrogant and smug on his worst days. A colossal ass on his best. He personified confidence and never let anyone forget that he knew to the dollar what his ability to throw a baseball was worth.

Now he stood in front of her with his head down. She didn’t think she had ever seen him so...defeated. And she’d seen him after losing an NLCS game that, had he won, would have sent him to the World Series.

He was Roy Walker, for heaven’s sake. A future first-ballot Hall of Famer. She wanted to slap him if for no other reason than to take that expression off his face.

“How can you need a job? What happened to all your money?”

He shook his head. “I lost it.”

“Millions? Tens of millions?”

“Eighty million to be exact. I have the house I bought my father, which he still lives in, and a town house in Society Hill in Philadelphia that’s up for sale. Other than that, it’s gone.”

Lane had a thousand questions about how that could happen, but quickly snapped her jaw shut. She wasn’t supposed to care about that.

She wasn’t supposed to care about anything when it came to Roy.

She hated Roy Walker.

“You seriously thought I would help you make this comeback?”

He smiled then, not his normal smile. Not the smile that said he knew more about everything than anyone else in the room. Not the smile that suggested he had secrets she might want to uncover.

No, this smile was completely self-deprecating and it didn’t fit on his mouth.

“Hell, no, I didn’t think you would help. I told them they were crazy to even ask, but Duff said—”

“I said she’s my daughter and if she knows it’s important to me, she’ll do it.” Duff leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed. As if he’d been napping during the tense confrontation unfolding in front of him.

“Why in the hell do you care about Roy Walker, Duff? You know what he did to me.”

“Yeah, and I told you I’m grateful to him for it. You were hanging on to that loser with two hands and it didn’t look like you were ever letting go. He was dragging you down, sweetie, like an anchor in an ocean.”

“I was trying to save my marriage, which is what you always told us to do.”

“Except you married the wrong guy!” Duff snapped. “When you marry the wrong guy, you walk away. Roy here forced you to do that. So, for that, he gets my help. However, my help will take him only so far. If he’s going to make it all the way, he needs more.”

Instinctively, her therapist brain started clicking in. Lane narrowed her gaze on Roy again. “How long has it been since you threw? I mean, before coming here?”

“Five years. The game in San Diego was the last time I picked up a ball.”

Lane knew that game. It was officially the last game she’d ever watched. He’d pitched a no-hitter. She’d been in a bar near the hospital where she had just gotten hired. She was eating a hamburger and drinking a beer and doing everything she could not to look at the television screens filled with a bunch of different baseball games when suddenly they had turned all the TVs to the sports network covering one game in particular.

After all, it wasn’t every day a pitching legend, during the last game of his historic career, didn’t give up a single hit. Against her will, she’d been as captivated as everyone around her, waiting as he threw each pitch, as he racked up each out, as batter after batter went down in a frustrated huff. Until the ninth inning, when the noise from the crowd at the stadium was so loud, she couldn’t imagine what someone standing on the mound in the center of it all might be hearing.

Three up, three down. Game over. His teammates had come in from the field, but no one charged him or lifted him off his feet as was typical with such an accomplishment. The catcher simply swatted him on the ass and handed Roy the ball. A few chin nods in his direction and that was it.

Because everyone knew his teammates didn’t like him. It had been almost hard to watch as the television commentators tried to explain to the national audience why the team’s celebration was so tepid. The best they said about Roy was that he was a loner. The worst they said was that he’d been known to be a cancer in the clubhouse, despite his great talent.

Lane swallowed the emotion the memory of that day caused her. In truth, she never really understood why she had left the bar to go home and cry her eyes out.

Letting that puzzle go, she focused on the present.

“How hard are you throwing now?”

“I’ve got my fastball up to about eighty-eight.”

“How does the arm feel?”

“Hurts like hell.”

“And your shoulder?” Back in the day when he sought out her therapy services it had always been his shoulder that had bothered him. Sometimes the neck, too.

“Stiff.”

Lane nodded. “You rush that arm too fast and you’ll tear something.”

“That’s what I told him. That’s why he needs you,” Duff said.

Lane looked at her father and remembered what this was really all about. She was here to make sure her father was okay. Roy was nothing but a sideshow. A particularly attention-grabbing sideshow.

Lane turned to Roy. “If I do this, it doesn’t mean I forgive you for what you did. You would be nothing but a body to me.”

“Damn it, girl,” Duff said. “How many times do I have to tell you you should be indebted to him, not angry with him?”

“You’re wrong, Duff,” Roy said. “You weren’t there. What I did was crappy and I know it. I never got the chance to say it then. I don’t know if you ever got my letter—”

“I tore it up and threw it out without opening it.”

Which in hindsight, made her feel like a spiteful, immature girl. Setting her up had been wrong. There was no refuting that. She’d thought they were friends and by manipulating her into that position, he’d hurt her. Some of Danny’s teammates actually had been laughing as she had to make her way out the door of Roy’s place that night. That’s when she’d figured out the other guys on the team had known. Everyone had known Danny was cheating on her.

She had to get tested for STDs because Danny couldn’t remember all the women he’d been with and couldn’t remember if he’d used a condom every time. The humiliation of that, of knowing how little she meant to him, had been crushing.

She would never be sure why Roy had done it, either. Why he hadn’t just told her the truth rather than let her find out that way. But, at the end of the day, he hadn’t forced Danny to bring that woman to the party. Hadn’t forced Danny to cheat on her for who knew how much of their marriage. That was Danny’s doing.

Worst of all, even though he’d initiated the kiss, that crazy kiss that had seemingly come out of the blue, she had been the one to respond. That was all on her. Five years ago it had been so easy to block out that part of the night and wallow in the pain and suffering of the divorce.

Danny cheated on her and Lane left him. That was a much simpler narrative than the truth. A truth she’d never told anyone. She had fallen out of love with Danny and had been struggling to hang on to something even while she was realizing she was attracted to another man. Yes, definitely much harder to wrap her brain around that.

“Anyway,” Roy said. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“You really need to throw again? This isn’t some joke to you?”

“Lanie, standing here in front of you...this is definitely not a joke.” He shrugged. “Pitching is the only thing I know how to do. The only thing I’m good for.”

Again, the sense of defeat in his words startled her. This wasn’t the Roy Walker she’d known five years ago. The ass whom she had always called out for his bullshit.

In a weird way she found herself missing that person—which made no sense to her at all. But since nothing in her life made sense right now, Lane figured this little episode was par for the course.

She had no job. She had no life. She had a father and a sister who, although they had betrayed her, did seem to need her.

And Roy. Roy Walker needed her and that was about the craziest thing she could imagine happening today.

“Fine. I’ll do it. It’s not like I have a choice, right? You’ve got my father involved. But don’t call me Lanie again. You don’t get to do that.”

Duff clapped his hands together, startling Lane. This wasn’t about Roy. She wouldn’t let it be.

“Now we’re talking,” Duff said. “You two get to work and turn that arm of his into a weapon.”

He pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes and settled in for what appeared to be his midday nap.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I CAN’T BELIEVE you didn’t tell me about Roy,” Lane said to her sister as soon they were alone. Scout and Duff had just gotten home and he’d immediately sought his favorite chair in the living room.

As for Lane, following her confrontation with Roy, she had left the stadium and headed to Duff’s house for some alone time. While she’d agreed to work on Roy’s arm, she needed at least twenty-four hours to process seeing him again before she could work up the courage to actually touch him.

And yes, she would have to touch Roy Walker. The reality of that was hitting her.

After she’d left the stadium, Duff had apparently decided he wanted to make his famous burgers for dinner, which translated into Scout putting the ingredients together and making the raw patties, then Duff slapping them on the grill, adding cheese and calling it a cooking miracle.

It was a time-honored tradition in the Baker household.

“Shh, Duff’s sleeping,” Scout hissed as they unpacked groceries she and Duff had picked up.

It wasn’t beyond Lane’s notice that Duff slept a lot. As if that trip to the grocery store had expended all the energy he had so he needed to refuel for dinner. How the hell did he think he was going to manage the club this year? That was a conversation for tomorrow.

Scout not telling her about Roy was a like a slap in the face. Lane felt blindsided and more than a little betrayed. Which were not feelings she wanted from her family.

Her sisters were her core. Her sense of safety in the world, along with Duff. When she’d gone through her long and bitter divorce from Danny they had been her rocks. Sitting with her when she cried. Laughing with her when they knew she needed to be pulled out of a mood. Supporting her when she struggled with the pain of the breakup. True, she’d stopped loving Danny before the actual breakup, but that didn’t mean separating their lives hadn’t been hard.

The worst part of the divorce had been dealing with her own sense of failure. The acknowledgment that she couldn’t make her marriage work. That she had been unable to see Danny for who he really was before she married him. That her love for him had been a fleeting thing at best.

Whether Danny had ever returned that love was hard to know. The awful truth was that his infidelities had started months after they were first married.

How could she have not known? That cluelessness alone had rocked her to her core until her sisters made her see that Danny’s behavior wasn’t about anything lacking in Lane. It was just who Danny was.

A character flaw Lane had failed to identify in her mission to find a person she could build a life with. How the hell could she screw it up so badly? How could she be totally unsuccessful at the one thing she’d been so committed to doing right?

That was why Lane hadn’t once, in the five years since leaving Danny, ever considered taking the chance on love and long-term commitment again. Which didn’t make dating easy. The one time she’d gotten remotely close to someone she had felt honor bound to tell him their relationship could never go anywhere. She wasn’t getting married. Ever. She wasn’t repeating that mistake. She didn’t trust herself.

If she was to have kids someday, she would do it on her own.

The guy had said goodbye. And Lane realized that men in their late twenties and early thirties who were looking for a wife were not people she should be dating. Unfortunately, the other kind—who wanted no-strings-attached sex—usually turned her off completely because they reminded her too much of Danny.

Which meant she hadn’t had sex in a really long time. Which meant seeing Roy Walker again, and having that same feeling creep over her body as the last time she’d seen him, made her want to throw something across the room.

She was going to have to touch him. His body. What in the hell was she thinking agreeing to that?

“You should have told me,” Lane said again, having no problem taking out her annoyance on her little sister.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

“You honestly think I would let someone like Roy stop me from seeing my father if I was concerned about his health?”

Scout took a moment to consider the question. “Anyone else, no. Roy? He’s different for you.”

“He’s not different. He’s just someone I...I hate. That’s all.”

“Yep. Lane hates Roy. You really should get a tattoo of that so you can assure yourself you’ll never forget it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Scout sighed and put down a head of broccoli that Lane knew their father wouldn’t eat. She also knew Scout kept buying it and other vegetables in a vain attempt to keep him healthy. She looked long and hard at Lane.

“What really happened between you two the night of that party?”

Lane felt her whole body flush. “You mean other than finding my husband with his tongue down another woman’s throat?”

“You know damn well I mean other than that. You were so mad at Roy over that whole episode—”

“He set me up! He purposefully staged an entire party to make me look like a fool in front of everyone I knew. Everyone who knew Danny was cheating on me!”

Just reliving that walk down the long hallway made her want to inflict physical damage on Roy. She’d never wanted an apology from him. Frankly, given the man he’d been then, so confident in his decisions, she’d never expected one. He probably thought the same as Duff had thought—that he’d done her a favor. That’s why it had shocked her when he’d sent the letter. Maybe she hadn’t read it because it was better to think about what he might have said than to know what he did.

“Why did he do that?” Scout mused. “I mean, seriously, you couldn’t have been the first wife Roy knew was being cheated on. He’d been in the league for ten years before he met you. He probably knew every sordid story in the book. Yet he puts this plot together to expose Danny’s cheating. That’s a lot of effort from a man who you said never took much interest in the team or anyone else.”

Lane didn’t want to think about the events leading up to that party. She didn’t want to think about the weird outings she and Roy took together. They both had a thing for hot dogs, so they would try new places around town, or new stands in the ballpark. Always in search of the perfect dog. It had been completely innocent, of course. Mostly they ate and argued about whatever the topic of the day was.

But what Lane had told him that night was true. She had considered them friends.

And as far as she knew, theirs was the only relationship Roy had.

Yes, he could be an ass. But as time had passed, there were things she’d learned about him that made him seem more human. Like when she discovered the reason for his isolation from the team. Or when she’d found out that his claim to not do charity really meant that he didn’t do charity for show.

Because the one time Lane had asked him to help her out, he’d spent hours in a dunk tank making kids and adults happy.

“I don’t know why he did it,” Lane lied now. She couldn’t admit the truth without remembering the moment he’d told her to get unmarried. When he’d leaned into her and kissed her.

When she’d kissed him back.

She couldn’t imagine what Scout would say if she knew. All that fuss about breaking up with a cheating scumbag of a husband and the truth was, in her heart, Lane had also felt desire for someone other than the person to whom she was married.

The thought made her that much angrier at Roy.

“If you ask me, your story—the Roy-and-Lane story—is not done yet.”

“There is no story. There is just me getting through these next few weeks. I’ll get Duff to see a doctor. We’ll make sure he’s okay and then I’m gone. As far away from baseball as I can get.”

“And the hospital was okay with letting you go for a few weeks?”

“Yep,” Lane said quickly. Maybe too quickly because she could feel Scout’s gaze on her. Regardless, Lane wasn’t talking about that now. It was just too much to deal with. Stephen’s death, leaving her job. Those things were behind her. Duff and Roy were in front of her. She needed to focus on that.

Scout had put away the last of the groceries and was leaning against the fridge. “What if we can’t just make sure he’s okay? What if something is wrong? Isn’t that what you said we might need to get prepared for?”

“Well, I changed my mind.” Lane said definitively. “We’re not borrowing trouble. Duff’s perfectly fine until a doctor says otherwise. You know what Duff always says—worrying about nothing gets us nothing.”

Scout nodded but Lane could see the fear in her sister’s eyes, which coincidentally made Lane feel it in her heart.

“He’s going to be fine,” Lane said. “Everything is going to be fine.”

She only wished she could believe it.

* * *

ROY FELT THE rush of adrenaline when he saw where the ball ended up. Exactly where he wanted it to, a little low and outside, but definitely a strike. Javier bounced up and tossed the ball to Roy.

After a week in the Falls, he was in shape enough to throw from the mound. A slightly elevated hill with a pitch to plant his feet. He wore cleats, workout shorts and a long sleeved T-shirt, which helped to keep his arm warm. A standard bullpen session routine, and he could feel his body changing with each pitch he threw.

It was like there was all this dried-up, crusty stuff around his shoulder and arm, and with each throw it cracked a little more, and the dust blew away, taking time with it. When he’d left the game he’d promised himself he would never miss it and he’d kept that promise.

Until now.

Strange that he was becoming sentimental. Now that he was in a stadium again he missed the sounds of the crowds cheering and sometimes jeering. He missed the adrenaline rush of facing the best batter in the league and watching as he swung helplessly at a ball that was sinking before it ever got across the plate.

He missed the feeling of winning. Of dominating. And now he had enough humility to know that he might not get back there. Yes, he could still throw. But could he still be Roy Walker?

That was an unknown.

What would it feel like to sit in the bullpen watching the game with a bunch of other guys, probably younger, waiting for the phone to ring so he could go out to the mound to pitch for just one inning. Hoping he didn’t do any damage in that inning. Hoping he got the guys out he was supposed to get out.

Roy never used to hope. He just did. He’d always been a starter. He’d always been the first starter in the five-man rotation. For every season he’d played.

What he was going to be was anyone’s guess. Duff had him slated to start in the minors, but that was to improve his arm strength. What he became in the majors, if he even made it that far, was a complete unknown.

As long as it came with a paycheck, he would have to accept it.

Trying to get out of his head, Roy got into his windup and threw again. The ball sailed over Javier’s head and the catcher had to hop up and scramble to find it.

“Sorry, Javier!” Roy waved.

“Juusssst a little outside.”

Roy turned and saw Lane walking toward him. She wore jeans with a T-shirt and cardigan, her hair loose around her shoulders. He was struck again by the awareness that he was seeing her again. When he thought he never would.

Damn, he’d missed her. He wondered what she would say if he told her that. Probably that he didn’t get to say that, either.

“Quoting Major League. That’s not a good sign,” he said, smiling.

Lane knew Major League was one of Roy’s all-time favorite baseball movies. The fact that she lumped him in with the Wild Thing didn’t bode well for what she saw in his pitching.

She didn’t return his smile.

“You should have been here earlier,” he said. “I missed Javier by three feet on my first pitch. The ball hit the brick backstop, shot down into the dugout and ran all the way into the lockers. Not exactly where I wanted that pitch to go.”

Lane crossed her arms under her breasts and looked toward the outfield.

“Look, I get it, Lane. You hate me and just because you’re here doesn’t mean you’ve forgiven me. Point made. But you are here and if we are going to work together, we have to at least talk to each other. We could always do that. Talk to each other.”

She looked at him then as if his words had served to remind her of what they had been. He couldn’t tell if that made her angrier or if maybe she had missed him, too. Because the look on her face just then...it was wistful.

“Did I actually hear you apologize to Javier?”

Roy knew where she was going with the question. In his heyday he never would have considered apologizing to a catcher on a wild pitch. But those days were over and it seemed a man who was coming back to the game with his head between his knees could show a little humility now and then.

“Don’t make too much of it. It’s not like he understands a word I say.”

“Session done?” Javier called out to the mound.

Roy nodded. “Session done. Thanks again, Javier.”

“It’s good. It’s good.” The catcher smiled, then jogged toward the dugout and the showers underneath the stadium.

“Does your father know you’re here?” Lane asked.

It was another question Roy understood the reason why she asked. He really didn’t want to talk about his father, but he had to take the fact that she was talking to him as a positive sign so he answered her.

“No.” Roy wanted to avoid that conversation as long as he could. He could just imagine how it would go down. He would have to explain how he lost all his money. Instead of being worried about that or sorry it happened, his father would no doubt be thrilled to fly out and see him at his next game. His father would instantly revert to his old ways, thinking that he and Roy could be a team again.

When Roy left the game his relationship with his father had all but dried up. A lot of that distance had to do with losing his mother the year before. Once she was gone, he and his father realized the only thing that connected them was baseball. The reality of it after he’d left the game was even worse than he could imagine. It was as if his father didn’t know how to speak to him anymore. Like all Roy had ever been to him was a star player instead of a son.

Now that he was back in the game his father would want to be in his life and the pain of that, knowing he would only take an interest because Roy was playing ball again, was something Roy really didn’t want to deal with.

It was something he could have talked about with his mom. Six years gone and there wasn’t a day he didn’t wish he could pick up the phone and call her. Let her explain why Dad was the way he was and how baseball was his way of showing his affection. She had always made Roy feel better about himself, his dad and their relationship.

He should call his dad. He would call him. He just wasn’t ready yet.

“How long do you think you can stay hidden? The season starts in three weeks. You’re going to be on the team—”

“You don’t know that. It’s not official.”

“I saw the five pitches you threw before that last one. You’re going to be on the team. The world will know Roy Walker is back.”

There would be press, there were would be stories and assumptions and investigations. News of his colossal business implosion would be everywhere. Mike and Mike on ESPN radio would no doubt discuss it and his return for a solid week.

Forget the field day Roy would have with the local press, who would be jumping at the chance to beef up their distribution of newspapers with the story of Roy’s return and being part of the Minotaurs. He’d met the owner of the team, Jocelyn Taft-Wright, who seemed ready to pounce on any publicity that Roy might generate that could translate into ticket sales. Considering she was married to a local sportswriter, Roy imagined she would have some influence over the volume of stories produced.

All of it would suck for someone who never craved the media spotlight. It wasn’t as if Roy didn’t love attention. But only when he was on the mound. There he craved it. Soaked it in like sun on a beach. He always wanted everyone to see what he could do.

Off the mound, he always felt like the less people knew about him, the better.

It would be something Lane might have teased him about when they were friends and say it was because he didn’t want everyone to know what an ass he was. Maybe that was true. But he also didn’t want everyone to realize how shallow he was.

What had he been other than a ballplayer? Nothing. Not husband or father. Not a person with interests or hobbies. Roy threw the ball. That’s who he was. An interviewer could ask only so many questions about that. A player could give only so many answers.

Now those questions would be about whether he could still throw the ball.

The jury was still out. The throwing didn’t feel like it used to feel. But he wasn’t as bad as he might have thought after so long away.

“The plan is to hide for as long as possible,” he eventually said. “When the storm shows up, I’ll see how it goes. You know me and my love of the press.”

“They used to call you One-Word-Answer Roy.”

“They ask a question, I give them an answer. They don’t like it, that’s their problem.”

“Right, but it was one of the things that fed in to your whole alter ego.”

“Alter ego? I wasn’t a superhero, Lane.”

“No, Roy, you weren’t. Hate to tell you but you were the bad guy.”

It wasn’t exactly news to Roy. He had always understood how he was perceived. He hadn’t done it on purpose. He hadn’t deliberately cultivated the image as the loner. The team villain. The guy who everyone wanted to hate but couldn’t because he was too damn talented.

His reputation developed because of his nature and how he was brought up in the game. Maybe there had been a time when he thought about changing people’s perception of him. Then he thought about taking time away from his regimented training schedule to do more interviews. Or spend more of his off time with his teammates. The extra effort it would take to show up at some swanky event just to get his face on camera.

The return on that effort hadn’t seemed worth it. Only the pitching mattered to him.

Roy started his career with two, and only two, objectives: a World Series victory and the Hall of Fame. The level of commitment it took to achieve those goals was something that probably only twenty of the three hundred plus pitchers in the major leagues understood. The commitment—the work—was all he was. All he knew. And he’d accomplished one of his objectives.

His objectives this time around were even simpler. He needed money. A mercenary reason that didn’t require him to be the best there was, because there was no way he could ever be better than his younger self. But he did have to be good enough.

Good enough. A heck of a lowly ambition for Roy Walker, but the best he could hope for.

“Maybe I’ll try to do things a little differently this time,” he said, thinking that his capitulation might gain him some goodwill with Lane.

“Don’t do it on my account.”

Or not.

“So you’re going to tell the press the whole story?” she asked.

He laughed then. “There’s no getting around what happened, Lane. I can’t shake it, or dodge it, or pretend it didn’t happen. So, I have to man up. I reached for something and missed and it cost me everything. All I can do is hope I have some gas left in the tank to give myself another shot.”

“People love a good comeback story,” Lane said. “And you’ll be one hell of a comeback to baseball.”

“Can I ask you something? Honestly.”

“Have I ever been dishonest with you?”

Roy thought about that but didn’t necessarily want to go to the past. The answer to that question wasn’t as black-and-white as she wanted it to be. Maybe she hadn’t been dishonest with him, but she’d damn sure lied to herself. It was the only reason her marriage to Danny lasted as long as it did.

“Do you really think I’m pathetic? A thirty-seven-year-old, has-been pitcher. Are they going to pity me?”

It felt like he was exposing himself. Like he’d ripped apart his T-shirt, shown her his bare chest and asked her if she wanted to take a stab at his heart. Except she was Lane Baker, and she used to be the princess of baseball. Before her breakup no one respected the game more, except maybe Roy, so he knew he could trust her to tell him the truth even if she did hate him.

Was he blowing up his reputation, his history in the game and everything he ever worked toward for a damn paycheck? Lane would understand, even through her anger, what it would do to him to shit on his own legacy.

She bit her lower lip. Five years ago that habit would have been enough to give him a hard-on and have him thinking about other places he wanted her lips.

But not now, in this moment. This was too real. Lane Baker had hated him for five years. Had walked away not just from her husband, but also from the game she loved because of what Roy had done to her. There was no reason to think she should give him anything other than a crushing, devastating blow.

He really hoped to hell she didn’t.

“I shouldn’t have said what I did. Yesterday. About you being pathetic. You were the last person I expected to see and I lashed out.”

“You were being honest,” he reminded her.

“I was angry. But I know what you’re asking and I think it depends,” she said. “Do you think you can do this? Do you really think you can throw again in The Show?”

Honesty. It’s what he promised. “I don’t know. Lanie—sorry, Lane. Help me.”

Her arms closed around her body more tightly. “I already agreed to do your physical therapy. That’s all I’m offering.”

“No,” he said, reaching for her upper arm, circling it with his left hand. It was strange to touch her again. Like suddenly she was even more tangible to him now than she had been standing in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest. “I need to find me again. Because right now I’m so lost I have no sense of what’s up or down. And as crazy as it seems, you were one of the people who knew me best back then.”

“You’re asking me? For that kind of help? You don’t think it was enough to ask for my skills, now you want more? That’s a lot of nerve, Roy.”

“I know it is. But I also know you were the most generous person around.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not that person anymore,” she said. “I don’t give anymore, because I don’t trust anymore. You did that to me. You and Danny.”

To be lumped in with Danny Worthless felt like someone had shoved a knife through Roy’s stomach and twisted it all around. But was she wrong? They had both betrayed her.

Roy dropped his hand and could feel that some heavy clouds had blocked out the sun. Cool air had rolled into the stadium and his arm felt all of it. Definitely the start of spring, where one minute it could be balmy and beautiful and the next minute a person could be shivering and cold.

His shoulder started to stiffen and he knew he needed to get to a hot shower fast if he was going keep it loose enough to take another session tomorrow.

“I gotta...” He pointed to his arm and Lane nodded, totally familiar with what was happening to his body in the cool air. That shared knowledge created a sense of intimacy between them. Just like it had back then when she used to work on him. There had been times when he believed she understood his body more than he did. It had always been an unsettling thought.

“Yeah. Right. Take your shower and then meet me in the therapy room. We’ll get to work.”

Therapy. That was more than he should have asked for. To ask for even more from her probably had been a dick move.

“Okay.”

She walked away from him but then stopped a few feet away and turned back. “I don’t know if it helps or not, but the Roy I knew back then had a lot of nerve, too.”

Roy smiled at that. “Yes, he did.”

Lane shrugged. “Maybe that’s where you start looking for yourself again. See you in a few.”

CHAPTER FIVE

LANE LOOKED DOWN at the lean body with the hairy chest and belly that was stretched out on the therapy table and listened as Roy let go with a particularly erotic-sounding groan. Her finger pressed against an artery, constricted because of the inflammation in his shoulder, and waited it out until the nerve relaxed and the blood started to flow. She could feel the pulse of it beneath her fingers, could feel Roy’s muscles release the tightness. Then came the groaning.

Roy had always been a groaner. It wasn’t as though he was her only client who would make noises during their therapy sessions. But for some reason that raw sound coming from him always did something funny to her insides.

And then there was his chest. With swirls of dark hair that always seemed intriguing, despite the fact that bodies were commonplace to her. Short ones, tall ones, fat ones, skinny ones. None of it mattered when someone was a patient on her table. They were like a big lump of clay that she needed to mold back into health.

The fact that Roy’s chest fascinated her could have been borderline unethical. It wasn’t as if she had ever given in to temptation and ran her fingers through those dark swirls of hair.

So she was fine. Mostly.

Danny had had a smooth chest. Something that had been so sexy to her when she had first started sleeping with him. Later, it became this big contrast between the way he and Roy looked. A contrast she never would have made had she been a happily married woman.

Roy’s chest reminded her that when she’d still been married, there had been a part of her that saw Roy the man, not just the player.

“Jeezus, that feels good,” he said, sounding like a man getting a blow job instead of physical therapy.

Damn it! Why had she even gone there in her head? This was work. This was a client. This man was her greatest enemy.

Except...he wanted her help. Because he was lost.

Despite what she told him, the hurt she’d tried to inflict, there was a part of her that wanted to give him that help. She couldn’t lie to herself. Roy was different and she toyed with this idea that if she shook him hard enough, then the old Roy would return.

What a hypocrite that idea made her. Calling him pathetic, comparing him to Danny, telling everyone she hated him. If that was true, she should want to be as mentally and emotionally far from Roy Walker as a person could be.

Yet she was here, standing over his body, helping him to heal. If she’d wanted to, really wanted to, she could have walked away. She could have found a way to say no to Duff and still accomplish what Scout brought her home to do.

But instead she’d stayed and thrown words at him and reminded herself that he was the bad guy who hurt her.

It was the only way to hold on to the righteous hatred she had for him.

The hatred that deflected the blame for her failing marriage away from her. The hatred that kept her from looking too closely at her own mistakes. The hatred that, up close, didn’t look at all like hate—not when her first instinct was to say yes to his plea for help.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Sure,” Lane said, hoping that whatever he said would be a distraction from her thoughts. She slid her fingers deeper under his shoulder and started working there to get the inflammation to ease. His shoulder felt like it was on fire under her hands.

Just don’t ask me about the past. My marriage. Or what my feelings were for you back then. Please don’t ask that. Please don’t ask about what I’m doing now because I quit my job and I’m as lost as you say you are.

Lane held her breath.

“Why did you really agree to come back here? Everything I heard about you said you walked away from the game. Didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. You were helping veterans or something.”

“I worked...work for the VA trying to get the amputees returning from Iraq and Afghanistan rehabilitated.”

“Sounds important.”

“Certainly more important than baseball.”

“Then why are you here? Are you giving baseball a second chance, too?”

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