The Hot Streak Page 4

  He grunted, said, “Casey,” then grunted again, a longer one, cock twitching inside her, and then slowed suddenly. “Oh, Casey.” He kissed her then, a warm and tender meeting of lips, as if he hadn’t just been going at it like a porn star. “Wow.”

  “Wow,” she agreed. She could feel him gradually softening until he could no longer keep up the motion and slipped free. He rolled onto his side and kept an arm around her.

  “Wow,” he said again.

  “Wow,” she answered, starting to giggle a little.

  She felt him smile as he kissed her neck. “I’d say ‘wow’ again, except I’m too wiped out.”

  “Not too wiped out to pitch tomorrow, though?” she asked, finally giving voice to the nagging thought she’d been suppressing all evening.

  He chuckled. “Figured that out, did you? No worries. I’ll be fine. It’s a national game. Doesn’t start until the evening. I don’t need to be there until about three in the afternoon. Which means we can sleep until at least noon. And it’s”— he turned over to look at the clock—”not even ten at night. Although we haven’t had dinner yet.”

  It sounded like he was asking her to stay the night. She hadn’t brought any clothes or anything with her, but she said, “Sleeping ‘til noon sounds nice. So does dinner. But right now I just want to lie here.”

  “Let’s get under the covers, then.” He shifted and they slid under cool sheets toward one side of the bed.

  She ran her hands over his skin now, sweat cooling and making his skin surprisingly silky. “What’s this?” she asked, running her fingertips over the ridge of a scar at his elbow.

  “Oh, that’s from my Tommy John surgery.”

  “Who?”

  “Wow, you really don’t know anything about baseball, do you?”

  She shook her head. “Was Tommy John… oh no, wait, I was going to ask you about Cy Young. I was talking to a guy yesterday who said he hoped you’d win the Cy Young Award.”

  He laughed. “One at a time. Tommy John was a pitcher in the ‘70s who had surgery to repair his pitching elbow, and now everyone who has that surgery names it after him. And lots and lots of pitchers have it. Cy Young, on the other hand, was a great pitcher in like 1910. So they give the best pitcher of the year what they call the Cy Young Award.”

  Casey nodded, running her fingers over the scar again. “Sounds like baseball likes to commemorate players by naming things after them. Though it sounds better to have an award named after you instead of a surgical procedure.”

  Tyler shrugged. “I guess I’d settle for being remembered, however it was going to happen. Knowing me, they’ll name a new rule after me that limits the number of times per season a pitcher can be ejected, or something like that.”

  “Hm. Don’t get ejected tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to see you pitch. And you can’t win the Cy Young Award if you get thrown out all the time.”

  “True.”

  They lay in comfortable silence after that, and Casey felt herself drifting to sleep. She wondered if this sort of evening with Tyler was going to become a regular thing. She hoped it would.

  Little did she know it was about to become more regular than she could have imagined

  Chapter Three

  Casey and Tyler slept late, then grabbed brunch at a restaurant just off the Common. It was sunny, but the wind seemed a bit chilly.

  “Can you believe it’s the first week of June?” Tyler complained and asked for a table inside instead of on the patio. “And it was so warm the other night when I pitched. It’s so much easier when it’s warm out. The ball feels better. It flies farther, too, in hot air.”

  “It does?” It never occurred to her that the weather was such a factor, other than that they didn’t play if it rained too hard. And some sports didn’t even bother with that. She settled into her chair, wondering if it the game tonight was going to be chilly, too. “Hey, so why is it that baseball gets called off if it rains, but football they play in the rain, snow, bitter cold… ?”

  Tyler made a disgusted noise. “Because they’re crazy, that’s why. Make fifty thousand people sit through a snowstorm where they can’t even see the game? But really, it’s that baseball is too dangerous if the field is too wet or if you can’t see well. You get hit in the helmet with a football, you won’t even feel it, but take a fastball in the face? Guys have died from it. Well, one guy, back in the day, and that was enough. They don’t take chances. Besides, we play 162 regular-season games a year. Football plays only sixteen. They can’t afford to skip one, and they can’t play doubleheaders like we can, either.”

  She chuckled. This was possibly the most macho she’d seen Tyler so far, defending the toughness of his sport in the face of the comparison to football. “All right, all right. I wasn’t implying baseball is a pansy sport or anything.”

  “Damn straight,” he said, then ordered enough food for a family of four from the perky young waitress who had appeared with her pen at the ready.

  “That all for you?” Casey asked. “Or is that for both of us?”

  “I was thinking just for me, but we can share if you want… ?”

  She handed the menu to the waitress. “Add one blueberry nut waffle to the order and I’m good. Oh, and a cup of tea.”

  They sat in silence for a while, watching other patrons rushing around. Some were families in their Sunday best, coming from the big churches on the other side of the park, plus couples young and old, and a group of college students taking up one corner. The sound of the espresso machine hissed over it all.

  “So, you’re coming to the game tonight, right?”

  Casey looked at him. He was trying to sound casual, but there was a note mixed in there that sounded just a little like a puppy’s whine.

  “Sure, of course,” she said. “Can you fix it so Missy and I sit together again? She’s awesome.”

  “Done!” Tyler clapped his hands and a huge grin spread across his face. “And yeah, she is pretty cool, huh? Mad Dog would be lost without her. They got hitched when he was still in the minor leagues. Real young. But they’ve made it work, they’ve made it last. They’re coming up on ten years or something soon.”

  “Ten… ?”

  “Yeah, they got married right after he got drafted in college, before he went to his first minor league assignment. He was like, maybe, twenty? She stayed and finished school and then moved out to be with him, and he’s turning thirty this year, so yeah, ten years.” He was staring at the water glass in front of him. “Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. I’m lucky if a relationship lasts ten months.”

  That made him crack a grin. “Yeah, me too. So you want to take bets on how long we’ll last?”

  She snorted. “That’s a losing bet no matter what, then. No way.”

  “Okay. Let’s just see what happens, eh?”

  “Sounds like a plan.” She looked up as the waitress dropped off her tea, coffee for Tyler, and a basket of warm muffins. That was possibly one of the shortest, easiest “relationship discussions” she’d ever had. Of course, it helped that they agreed. How novel.

  She decided to go home and get warmer clothes before heading to the ballpark that night, so after they were done eating, they went their separate ways.

  Her apartment seemed especially quiet that afternoon and, her usual Sunday things like the crossword puzzle not holding her interest, she set about tidying up a bit. She ended up booting up her laptop and checking her e-mail, then looking at the weather.

  She could hear her cell phone ringing and dug it hurriedly out of her jacket pocket, thinking it would be Tyler. But she didn’t recognize the number. It was showing a Chicago area code. “Hello?”

  “Casey? It’s Kim! How are you?”

  “I’m good. What are you doing in Chicago?”

  “I’m calling to give you my new number and stuff. I just moved here. It’s awesome. You’ll never guess who I’m working for her
e.”

  Casey sat back down at her desk and got ready to write Kim’s new information down on a pad. “Do I have to guess?”

  “Come on, guess. It’s an internationally known corporation with headquarters in Chicago.”

  “Jeez. Um… ” Casey racked her brain. Kim was a writer and editor. She had been working for an agriculture trade magazine in the Napa Valley last she’d heard, and had been at a string of local newspapers before that, in Delaware, Illinois, Wisconsin. Who had their headquarters in Chicago? “Sears?”

  “Nope. Think media.”

  “Um. WGN, the cable TV station?”

  She could hear Kim’s laugh, very tinny through the phone. “No.”

  “You better just tell me. I don’t know squat about Chicago.”

  “It’s Playboy.”

  “Playboy Magazine?”

  “The Playboy media empire. Neat, huh? The pay is fantastic and I have an unbelievable apartment overlooking the lake, and when are you coming to visit?”

  “Whoa, Kim, slow down.”

  “They give you paid vacation there and stuff, right? You’ve been there long enough to qualify? Come for a long weekend. We’ll do the town. I can get us into all the best places. This job rocks.”

  Casey couldn’t help but giggle a little at Kim’s enthusiasm. “I’ll check my calendar when I get to work tomorrow. Drop me an e-mail to remind me, okay?”

  “Okay. And you can quit thinking what you’re thinking right now, by the way.”

  “Huh? What’s that?” Casey said innocently.

  “If you’re thinking, isn’t it gross I’m working for a porno place, and aren’t I getting like sexually harassed at work every day… ”

  “I’m not thinking anything like that. Well, okay, I’m curious how you handle naked bunnies walking around.”

  Kim made a disgusted noise. “That’s so not what it’s about. You probably have to handle more disgusting stuff at any major ad agency than I ever will here. It’s not like there are orgies in the hallways. Honestly, it’s so tame and corporate, I’m almost disappointed. And Playboy was never really porno anyway, it’s so softcore. The lad mags like Maxim are much worse.”

  “Okay, I believe you. And it beats writing about rutabagas or whatever it was you were doing before.”

  “No kidding. So what about you, Case? How’s everything going? You getting to do more design work yet?”

  Casey looked out the window and twirled her pen. “No, no designing to speak of, but… you know, the job is getting really tiresome, but I can’t really complain. They keep trying to get me one more rung up into management and I keep resisting. I don’t really want more responsibility, you know? I like feeling like any day I could just quit this job and walk away for another one if a better one came along.”

  “Is that really true, though?”

  “Yeah. They’d replace me pretty quick.” She chewed the end of the pen, trying to decide if she was going to tell Kim about Tyler. Maybe she should tell her a little, anyway. “So I met a guy.”

  “Oh? One that might make it past the blind date?”

  Casey laughed. “Just had the second date last night, and I’m seeing him again tonight, sort of.” She’d be watching him pitch, but the team was leaving directly after the game for a road trip, so she wouldn’t have dinner with him again tonight. “And, speaking of long weekends, he’s convinced me to meet him in New York this coming weekend. I’m taking Thursday and Friday off.”

  Kim made a scandalized noise. “So you can be convinced to take some time off.”

  “Yeah, well, they actually told me if I don’t start taking some of my vacation days, I’m going to lose them. So I might as well.”

  “So? Are you going to tell me about him?”

  “I’m trying to think of what to say.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “What do you mean, uh oh?”

  “That means it’s really serious,” Kim said. “Usually you have a little checklist of his good points to read to me like you’re trying to prove when a guy is a good choice, when he really isn’t.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah. You usually rattle off where they went to school, how much they make, dick size… ”

  “I have never told you a guy’s dick size!”

  Kim clucked her tongue. “Just an expression. If they’re good in bed or not, which, yeah, you’re right, you never mention, so they must all suck.”

  “Well, for your information, he’s tall and handsome, very athletic, and really, really good in bed. And I don’t actually know where he went to school or how much he makes.”

  “Wow. You must really like him, then.”

  “I have no idea where it’s going. It might just be a fling, but you know what? If it is a fling, I plan to enjoy every minute of it.”

  “Awesome. What’s his name, how’d you meet him?”

  “Tyler. I met him through work on a photo shoot, but he’s not a corporate type. We kind of met by chance, I guess, and just hit it off. We just think alike somehow. And he’s really fun.”

  “He must be, if he’s already taking you to New York for the weekend. That’s so awesome. I’m so psyched for you, Case. When you come out to visit, you can tell me all about him. Now, I gotta run. My mom’s flight lands in like an hour and the traffic here is hellacious. And you know how she’ll bitch for the entire week she’s here if I’m five minutes late.”

  “True. Take care of yourself, Kim, I’ll e-mail you.” Casey hung up and slipped the phone into her pocket. She and Kim had been friends since college, and they’d gotten to know each other because of a common boyfriend. Mark had been seeing them both, just not telling each other about it, and when they confronted him with it, he’d claimed he’d never promised either of them exclusivity. Somehow he hadn’t seen the fact that he’d felt the need to sneak around as a form of dishonesty. Both women had been about on the verge of kicking him to the curb anyway at that point. They become fast friends after that.

  Casey wondered when she should think about telling her family. Her little brother Nick in particular would probably be excited that she knew a professional ballplayer, though she wasn’t sure he followed the sport as avidly as he had when he’d been a kid. Since he’d graduated college, she hadn’t seen him that often; only at Christmas and such.

  Well, it was still early. Two dates wasn’t a relationship yet. Maybe when the team went to play in Philadelphia, she’d try to meet up with them. They did go to Philly, didn’t they? She’d have to check the schedule. They probably went to Chicago, too, so a trip to visit Kim was looking more and more possible, the more she thought about it.

  * * * *

  By the time she got to the ballpark that night, the cold snap had really settled in. She picked up her ticket and found her way to the section easily this time. As before, she was early, and there weren’t many people in that section yet, so she decided to walk around the stadium a little and see what there was to see.

  She came to a little carnival at the end of one concourse, where they had stalls set up with games for kids to play. You could throw a ball and find out how fast you could throw with the radar gun, play “strike out”— knock down three bottles on three tries and win a prize— and various others. She stopped by a completely fenced-in area where kids put on a batting helmet and took a bat and faced a giant video screen. On the screen it showed a pitcher going into his windup— Oh! That’s Tyler!— and then the ball came flying out of a little hole in the screen. The kid standing there swung at it and spun all the way around in a circle, while Casey jumped at the sound of the ball smacking into the padding right in front of her.

  “Great swing!” said a pre-recorded version of Tyler’s voice. “I bet you catch up to the next one.”

  Casey moved on. She was surprised to find a sushi bar on the concourse behind the outfield; then again, she had read a newspaper story, when she’d been looking for more information about Tyler, about how the team had a new Japanese player. Was the
sushi bar to cater to his international fans? Or was the ballpark just such a hip place to be these days? She didn’t know.

  A little further down, she came to a stand that smelled too good to pass up. Fried chicken. She got herself a couple of pieces and a side of mashed potatoes with gravy, and chewed on the drumstick as she walked around. Soon she had walked all the way around the whole place and was back where she had started.

  Missy was there in a hooded parka with her hands in mittens. “Hey, Casey, I was hoping you’d be here today.”

  “You were? I mean… oh, right, because Tyler pitches today.”

  “Yep. Every five days, sometimes six if there’s a day off, but sometimes even so, and they’ll skip one of the other guys instead.” Missy rubbed her mittens, which were made of some fairly bright pink yarn, together. “Get used to it.”

  Casey settled into her seat and opened her container of mashed potatoes, stirring it with a plastic spoon to mix the gravy in. “Yeah, I guess I will. Seems… ” Was she really saying this to someone she just met? “Seems like it’s working out so far.”

  “Good!” Missy seemed like she was on the verge of saying something, but then sat back and stuffed her mittens into her parka pockets.

  “Are you really that cold?”

  “I’m always cold,” Missy said. “I’m from Florida. It should be against the law to play when it’s this cold. At least in Toronto when it was cold, they closed the roof.”

  “It’s like fifty degrees, though.”

  “Right now it is. By the fifth inning it’ll be in the forties, though, and when you just sit here on your butt for a couple of hours… brrrrr. And I guarantee the concession stands are going to run out of coffee and hot chocolate.”

  Casey thought that was a curious thing to know. “How do you figure that?”

  “The team leaves on a road trip tonight, so the concession stands are not stocking up on a lot of things. Plus it wasn’t supposed to get cold like this, so they probably didn’t have a lot of stuff to begin with. I’m betting by the fourth inning, there’ll be not a drop to be had. If we get desperate, though, I know where we can go.”