Double Play Read online

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  She was quiet a moment, as if taking the time to read right through him. “I understand the Heat has a lot riding on this next series.”

  “Yeah.” In Pace’s life it was fact that people always said he had a lot riding on the next game, he had a lot riding on the next series, or whatever they were facing. Not the Heat, but him. Pace had always hated that. Yeah, he was a good pitcher, maybe even at times a great one. But he was also part of a damn team.

  And in only a few words, Holly had just made it clear that she was one of the few who recognized that. Pace would like her for that alone—if he hadn’t already decided not to like her at all. “Okay, well, I just wanted to check on you, so . . .”

  “And you’re already sorry you called.”

  Yes. Yes, he was.

  Sounding amused again, she said, “That’s okay, Pace. You can take me off your list of things to be concerned about. I’m not going to hold it against you that I have a lovely black-and-blue bruise in the center of my forehead.”

  He winced for her. “In my experience, women tend to remember these things.”

  “We’ve already agreed you’ve been hanging out with the wrong women. ’Night, Pace.”

  “ ’Night.” He closed his cell phone and stared at it for a minute, debating whether or not to hunt up her address and go over there to check on her in person. But he had to be honest with himself. If he did that, it wouldn’t be just to look at her bruise.

  And that, more than anything else, made the decision for him.

  He wasn’t going anywhere near her.

  When Red knocked on the door only a minute later with the tapes of the Phillies’ last game and some sub sandwiches, the decision was all the easier. Watching tapes before an away series was a tradition. Often Wade came, too, and some of the other guys as well, but tonight it was just Red and his son Tucker, who had baseball in his blood the same as his father.

  Tucker and Pace went way back as well. They’d played against each other at their respective rival high schools the one year Pace hadn’t had to move to accommodate his father’s military career. That’d been the same year Tucker had made a string of bad choices including mixing alcohol and street racing, and had ended up with his car in a ditch and several pins in his right leg. Unable to play baseball but equally unable to shake loose his love for the game, Tucker now repped for a vitamin company, the one which exclusively supplied the Heat with their own vitamin enriched water.

  Father and son were mirror images of each other. They had matching carrot-top, trademark messy hairstyles, stark green eyes that saw everything, quick smiles, and two big, warm hearts.

  Tucker limped across Pace’s large, undeniably plush living room, and Pace couldn’t help the twinge that always hit him. If not for some shitty choices made all those years ago, Tucker might be right where Pace was, with the MLB contract and fat retirement account.

  Tucker wouldn’t want the pity, but knowing that didn’t assuage Pace’s discomfort. They sat in front of the TV and watched the tape. Usually it was a good time, the calm before the storm, but tonight, it felt like an effort to be social. So did listening to Red point out the Phillies different pitching idiosyncrasies.

  “Pace, watch his foot, see? He’s not pushing off with his back leg. He’s leaving the fastball up and his curve’s flat. You don’t do that. You’re too smart to do that.”

  Pace didn’t feel so smart. If he’d been smart, he’d have figured out how to avoid his injury.

  “Look at that.” Red poked a bony finger toward the TV. “The way he changed his grip right there, see?”

  “Pace knows how to win, Dad,” Tucker said with a laugh. “He’s done it a time or two.”

  Yeah. What Pace didn’t know was if he could keep winning.

  Tucker helped himself to Pace’s refrigerator and shook his head at the six-pack of Dr Pepper in the way back. “Thought you gave this shit up since it made you feel like—surprise—shit.”

  “I did.” He just liked to look at it sometimes. Like a junkie.

  Tucker pulled out a bottle of water instead and slapped it to Pace’s chest, along with a vitamin pack. “Our newest stuff. One a day. It speeds up healing and promotes strength, both of which you need. Gives you energy, too.”

  Pace raised a brow. He really hated taking anything, even Advil—a throwback to the old man who’d always believed such things showed weakness. “Sounds like HGH.”

  Human growth hormones were banned, with a strict MLB ruling that required a fifty-game suspension for a first-time offense. A second offense was a one-hundred-game suspension, which was nothing next to the third offense—life banishment from the majors.

  Harsh, but extremely effective. The MLB was just as hard on banned stimulants. A second test for those resulted in an automatic twenty-five game suspension.

  Red, a firm old-schooler from the days before the commissioner had stopped the steroid use, rolled his eyes. “The new regulations are shit.”

  “Oh boy,” Tucker muttered to Pace. “Here we go.”

  “Well, Jesus on a stick,” Red griped. “They put athletes on the cover of the Wheaties box and say the cereal gives you strength, but a guy can’t take something to promote that strength? Should we ban Wheaties then? Hell, let’s also ban Tylenol while we’re at it.” He said this so vigorously he started coughing.

  Tucker sighed and smacked him on the back. “Maybe we should ban your cigarettes, Dad. How about that?” He turned to Pace. “The vitamins are all natural. Nothing manufactured, no drugs in the mix. Ty’s been taking them and his energy level is way up.”

  Ty occasionally had a problem with his energy levels, something left over from the leukemia he’d faced as a teen. Or more correctly, the meds he’d taken to fight the disease.

  In any case, in theory Pace understood the appeal of enhancers. Pro athletes were paid to be strong. If there were drugs to help build strength and muscle, then that’s what some would choose to do. It was life. It just wasn’t for him, simply because while he believed certain drugs absolutely could make him stronger, he didn’t believe strength was what made a pitcher. Pitching came from a complexity of arm and shoulder movements combined with the science involved in directing the baseball.

  “Just try them for a week,” Tucker said at the look on Pace’s face. “I swear you’ll feel like a new man.”

  With his doctor’s prognosis ringing in his ear, Pace nodded. A little extra boost, whether real or perceived, couldn’t possibly hurt.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Red asked. “You seem off.”

  “Just tired.”

  “Yeah?” Red’s sharp gaze ran over him. “Or maybe you have a late date and want us out?”

  “Jesus, Dad,” Tucker muttered.

  “What? Women throw themselves at him in every city we go to. Did I tell you in Dallas someone left their panties on his hotel room door?”

  “Well, lucky him.” Tucker rolled his eyes in sympathy at Pace. “Sorry. He actually still believes sex takes away from a guy’s game.”

  “It does!” Red insisted.

  A sentiment Pace wholeheartedly disagreed with, but it wasn’t as if sex was on the table for the evening anyway.

  “Fine. Get your rest, Sleeping Beauty.” Red took his tape and, heading to the door, added, “If you keep winning, I just might get my pennant yet.”

  “You mean if we win this series.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you said if I win.”

  “Well, what the hell’s the difference?”

  “I’m not the whole team.”

  “This year you are.”

  Pace’s doctor would disagree. He’d remind Pace what he’d said just this afternoon, that his rotator cuff was possibly beyond strained, that it might be torn, which meant that it needed to be repaired. He had two choices: laser surgery now, or stick with physical therapy and hope it didn’t get worse.

  Two per