The Hot Streak

  * * *

  The Hot Streak

  by Cecilia Tan

  * * *

  Erotica

  Copyright © 2009 by Cecilia Tan

  First published in 2009, 2009

  * * *

  NOTICE: This ebook is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication of this ebook by beaming, email, network, disk, paper, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.

  * * *

  The Hot Streak:

  A Baseball Romance

  A Ravenous Romance™ Real Man™ Original Publication

  Cecilia Tan

  A Ravenous Romance™ Original Publication

  www.ravenousromance.com

  Copyright © 2009 by Cecilia Tan

  Ravenous Romance™

  100 Cummings Center

  Suite 123A

  Beverly, MA 01915

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-60777-197-5

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Casey felt like a little girl on her way to the circus. That was the only thing she could think of to compare it to, as she rode the packed train toward the ballpark. There was a kind of excitement in the crowd, and as she elbowed her way out of the car with the rest of the passengers, she couldn’t help but be caught up in it.

  She wasn’t completely sure which way to go, but surrounded by people in Robins hats and jerseys and T-shirts, she figured all she had to do was go with the flow. The river of brightly clad people buoyed her along toward the stadium. The summer breeze blew warm off Boston Harbor while the sun set somewhere behind the skyline. The glow of stadium lights ahead and the tinny sound of music from the PA system seemed to beckon the crowd. People chattered excitedly all around her, and she caught the sound of a familiar name in it.

  Hammond, Tyler Hammond.

  The two women directly in front of her were talking about the very guy who had invited Casey to this game.

  “What? It’s Hammond starting? I thought it was Gutierrez on the mound tonight.” The woman was in her forties, Casey guessed, blond, with overlong nails and too many rings. She reminded Casey of her Aunt Mary.

  “That was last night,” her friend replied. “Why do you think I’m wearing my Tyler Hammond jersey? Hello?” The other woman slid her long, dark hair aside, and pointed at her back to emphasize the point. Casey blinked. Right there, it said Hammond, with a large number thirteen sewn in black satin on the orange-red cloth.

  She had the urge to ask them, What’s he like? Is he a decent guy? I met him today at work and I have no clue what I’m doing here…

  But as the crowd grew thicker closer to the park, she lost sight of them. Time to figure out where to pick up the tickets. The stadium was only a few years old, a gleaming jewel on the waterfront, built to entice a National League team to Boston and, so said the cynical business columnists, to eat into the huge market of baseball fans the Red Sox had formerly monopolized. It had been big news at the time, but Casey hadn’t paid much attention in recent years and she’d never been to the ballpark before. She eventually found the window labeled “Team/Family/VIP”— a handwritten sign taped on the inside of the glass. Behind it stood a gray-haired woman wearing a red polo shirt with the Robins logo embroidered on it.

  “Last name?” she barked at Casey through the grill.

  “Branigan,” Casey answered. “Tyler Hammond said he left me… ”

  “Branigan,” the woman repeated. “Cassie?”

  “Casey,” she corrected, more annoyed at having been cut off than at the woman getting her name wrong.

  “Whatever. ID, please?”

  Casey slipped her driver’s license into the little metal well under the window, and the woman slid it back along with a ticket. “Enjoy the game. Next!”

  Casey put her license back into her wallet, feeling a bit like she was at the airport as she prepared to go through security. Were they going to want to see it again? They were searching people’s bags up ahead. But all she had was her little handbag, too small even to hold a single bottle of smuggled beer in it, much less a weapon of mass destruction. The guard just gave it a cursory glance and waved her through.

  She made her way through the brick and concrete building, making her way along wide walkways edged with vending stalls selling popcorn and hot dogs; it smelled like the circus, too. A man selling bags of cotton candy lined up on a long pole edged past her and up a ramp toward the seats. She examined the numbers posted above the ramp and walked on further, looking for hers.

  She came to what looked to be the right ramp and headed up a narrow concrete tunnel toward the bright lights.

  Suddenly she was standing in the bowl of the stadium, the field huge and green in front of her. Players were spread out over the grass and for a moment she panicked, thinking she was late, but she quickly realized they weren’t playing yet. They were stretching and practicing their moves. She stared, the way one would if the actors in a Broadway play were wandering around on the stage before a show. But then an usher noticed her lost look and steered her to a seat about ten rows back from the field.

  The whole section was empty; no one else near her had shown up yet. She bought a program from a passing vendor so she would have something to read while waiting, but she ended up looking around. I’m really not supposed to be here, she thought, and it seemed surreal to be sitting under bright lights in the open air.

  She was supposed to be at a party right then. A “work” party being thrown by one of her regular clients, a launch party for the new “look” for their magazine, and she supposed she should have gone to be supportive and to network. But open-bar-and-crudite just didn’t have the appeal it once did. I never promised I’d go, she rationalized. It wasn’t as if she got paid to spend non-work hours attending that sort of thing, either.

  Welthank you, Tyler Hammond, for getting me away from that for a night. She looked for him on the field, but didn’t see him among the players there. Men raked the dirt and just a few Robins were off to one side playing catch and doing little sprints. She felt a thrill of excitement when she thought she caught sight of him— but no, that was someone e

  They’d met earlier in the day, when she was helping to set up a photo shoot for another magazine her company worked for. There had been two athletes involved, Tyler and another whose name Casey had forgotten now. The photographer had been aiming for some high-concept image with Tyler in a suit of armor, but Casey hadn’t paid much attention to the photographer. Not once Tyler had started to pay attention to her.

  Casey generally did not flirt at work. Working in a production bureau normally did not bring her into contact with many flirt-worthy subjects, anyway. And today, she had not flirted either. It was all Tyler. If he hadn’t been so persistent, she probably would have just laughed him off and not taken him up on the offer of the free ticket.

  She sat up straighter suddenly; there he was.

  He hopped up the dugout steps and started walking across the grass. With him went a player carrying a large bag, and an older man Casey guessed must be a coach. They were fifty yards away at least, and Tyler was wearing a hat, but she was sure it was him.

  Well, that and the fact that his jersey said Hammond on the back with a number thirteen, just like that woman’s.

  The other player walking with him had Madison on his back. Casey wondered how players felt about women wearing clothes with their names on them
. Was it sort of weird? Would Tyler expect his girlfriend or wife to wear a Hammond jersey?

  Casey shook her head. I can’t believe I’m thinking about stuff like that. He was a sweet guy, but it wasn’t as if she expected anything to come of it. He had been nice to leave the ticket and it was a great excuse to get away from a boring work function and do something different for once. Casey watched the little trio open a gate in the far wall in the outfield and disappear through it. She was just wondering where they had gone when a woman took the seat next to her.

  She was alone, not wearing any team colors, her hair a perfect auburn; her jewelry looked expensive. The woman glanced at Casey, then took a magazine out of her shoulder bag and began to read as if she were waiting for a bus rather than a baseball game.

  The words were out of Casey’s mouth almost before she realized it. “Oh my goodness, I worked on that magazine.” It was the fashionable home publication whose party she was skipping out on, as if Fate were trying to remind her about it.

  The woman looked up. “Oh?”

  “Yes. I did some independent art direction for them. I work at a production bureau here in town… sorry, that might sound like Greek. I helped with their photography and layout.” Casey held out her hand. “Casey Branigan.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” the woman said, shaking her hand hard. “I’m Missy Madison.”

  Something about the way she said it made it sound like she expected Casey to recognize it. Casey hesitated, eyebrow raised, as if trying to place it, and the woman went on. “Mad Dog’s wife.”

  Madison, she had said. “Oh, the fellow I saw walking with Tyler?”

  Her smile warmed suddenly, seemed more genuine. “You’re here with Tyler?”

  “Well, not with… ” Casey started, then stopped. “I mean, he was nice enough to give me a ticket. I’m not, I mean… ”

  Missy smiled and patted Casey on the arm. “He’s fun, Tyler is,” she said and her smile turned knowing.

  Casey didn’t know what to say to that, so she just smiled in return while wondering what she was getting herself into.

  * * * *

  The stands filled up around them and while listening to the people talking in the rows nearby, Casey eventually figured out that everyone in the section was a friend or the family of someone on the team. The only ones who weren’t relatives or significant others were the two guys sitting right behind her, who seemed to be some kind of executives in the company that ran the ice cream concessions at the stadium, at least as far as she could tell from eavesdropping on them. Missy introduced her to a few of the other women, and Casey was making small talk with them when the crowd started to cheer and holler.

  Out on the field, Tyler and Mad Dog and the guy who was presumably a coach were walking back toward the dugout from the outfield. None of the other players was on the field now, just some workmen raking the dirt and watering it down. The three of them were taking their time crossing the grass, and more and more of the crowd began to cheer as they noticed them, turning their walk into a kind of parade.

  A woman came running down the aisle, her camera in hand. “Tyler, I love you!” she shouted, waving, then taking a flurry of pictures as he waved in their general direction and disappeared down the dugout steps.

  It was the woman Casey had seen earlier, in the Hammond jersey. She ran excitedly back up the aisle. Casey turned around to see her friend, giving her a thumbs-up.

  Missy put a hand on her wrist. “Don’t let it bother you. If it does, don’t get involved,” she said in a low voice. She turned back to her magazine then, as if she hadn’t just given Casey a fairly personal piece of advice.

  She didn’t have long to mull it over before the action began on the field again. The Robins emerged, along with their mascot who looked like a giant stuffed animal, all plush. The big stuffie proceeded to gambol atop the dugout while the players began to warm up.

  Tyler’s face looked far more serious than earlier. He had pushed his cap down low over his eyes, and, well, it barely looked like him. He stood on the little hill in the middle of the field like a statue on a pedestal, then all of a sudden he kicked his leg up like an Alvin Ailey dancer, and made a sort of pinwheel of arms and legs, out of which came the ball. Even with the pumped-up music playing, Casey could hear the ball hit the catcher’s glove.

  “Does it always sound like that?” she asked Missy.

  “Does what always sound like what?”

  “Never mind.” Obviously was normal for it to smack so loudly. “It sounds like he throws hard.”

  She smiled. “Honey, nobody throws harder than ‘The Hammer.’”

  “Is that what they call him?”

  Missy nodded. “That and the ‘Big Ham,’ ‘Ham and Cheese… ‘”

  “Wait, ‘Ham and Cheese?’”

  “They call a fastball ‘hard cheese,’ and any guy with a name that starts with H-A-M… ” She shrugged. “Ballplayers aren’t exactly always geniuses when it comes to nicknames.”

  So spoke the wife of a man they called “Mad Dog.” Casey nodded.

  People around them were starting to get to their feet and Casey wondered why. It reminded her of being in church as a child and trying to figure out how the adults all knew when to stand up. The announcement that came over the PA system soon cleared up the confusion, though, as a voice asked everyone to rise for the National Anthem.

  The players on the field grouped together a bit. The three outfielders stood shoulder to shoulder, the infielders on each side, too. Tyler stood on the mound alone, though, with his cap over his heart and his head bowed so his chin touched his chest. He looked solemn. Lonely. Determined. Not at all like the happy-go-lucky guy who had flirted with her all afternoon.

  Casey realized she was probably reading too much into things, but she couldn’t help the feeling that she was there to see a play. A very odd play, acted out in pantomime and interpretive dance, where each movement represented something.

  And it was certainly dramatic. Tyler struck out the first three batters for the other team, the crowd’s cheers getting louder on each one. The Robins managed to get a runner home in the next inning, but that was it, and for a couple of innings the whole place was tense, like they were waiting for a storm to break. Casey didn’t need to know anything about baseball to realize that being ahead by only one was precarious.

  Then in the sixth, the pantomime played out in a way that even Casey could see. The other team got a few men on, but they hadn’t scored yet and there were two outs. The batter who came to the plate was huge. He could have been cast as a villain in a James Bond movie; that was how big and menacing he was as he walked from the sidelines, waving his bat.

  Strike him out, Tyler, come on, she thought.

  But his first pitch hit the big palooka on the shoulder. The guy went down to one knee for a second, then sprang up, more enraged than injured, just like if Bond had punched him in the face and he just kept coming. The batter was shouting, Tyler was shouting back. The umpire and Mad Dog got between them, everyone walking gradually toward first base as all four of them were shouting now. Mad Dog was chest to chest with Tyler, holding him back from charging the guy. A Robins coach came running over, then another one came out of the dugout, there was much gesticulation…

  The next thing Casey knew, there was something of a scrum happening, and coaches and other players were pulling Tyler and the other guy apart, and a lot of players had run onto the field who didn’t seem to be doing anything helpful but staring.

  Then everyone went back to their places except for one coach and one umpire, who argued for a while. Then the coach waved to the outfield and went back down into the dugout.

  Tyler was nowhere to be seen. “What just happened?” Casey asked Missy.

  “Looks like Tyler got ejected from the game. Campbell, too, from the looks of it.” She pointed to a skinny guy now at first base, stretching his legs. And a pitcher came through the doorway in the fence and jogged to the mound.


  The poor kid was getting booed. “Okay, and isn’t that guy on our team? Why are people booing?”

  “Well… ” Missy looked around. “They are booing the umpire for tossing Tyler, but the new pitcher, his name’s Javier, and he’s not been doing well lately. And the bases are loaded and he has only a one-run lead. So there’s no margin for error.”

  Casey crossed her arms. That didn’t seem quite right. “Yeah, but… shouldn’t they be cheering to try to give him some encouragement? I mean, if you destroy the guy’s confidence, how’s he supposed to do well for you?”

  Missy laughed. “You should have been a psychologist. A crowd isn’t like a rational person. A crowd sees something they like, they cheer. Something they don’t like, they boo. It’s pretty simple. The guys learn not to take it personally.”

  Casey tried to imagine thousands of people booing her and not taking it personally. She didn’t manage it.

  On the other hand, the next batter hit the ball straight up, Mad Dog caught it when it came down, and then there were huge cheers for Javier. “I see what you mean.”

  Things went on from there, and in the next inning, Mad Dog hit a home run to make it two to nothing, which made the lead and the crowd more comfortable, and Casey started thinking about heading home. The ice cream guys had already left, so it seemed like it was an acceptable thing to do. She had work in the morning, after all, and it was nine thirty already, and the player she had come to see was out of the game. She was just going to turn to Missy to say goodbye and thanks, when a warm hand on her shoulder made her jump.

  “Hey! You made it!” said a voice in her ear.

  “Oh hi, Tyler,” Missy said casually, as Casey whipped around to look at him.