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Maggie looked up at his tone, saw his brows draw down. “And you don’t?”
“The man’s a suit. He doesn’t know baseball.”
“He’s a Saints fan. Which is more than you can say for Sutter.”
“Tom fired him, he didn’t exactly have a choice to stay.”
“Still…” Maggie hesitated, unsure what her point even was. “I think Alex used to play ball.”
“A thousand years ago back in college.”
Maggie frowned. College? “He did?”
“Sure. That’s how the three of them met. They were at U of T. When that big fire at the stadium happened. You remember, some crazy survivalist type planted a bomb to protest something or other. People died.”
I want people who’ll run into a burning building with me.
Holy crap, he hadn’t been talking metaphorically.
“I didn’t know that,” she said, feeling winded
“Yeah, he quit after that, I think. Probably wasn’t going to cut it anyway,” Ollie said. “Suits don’t play baseball.”
Maggie pictured the easy swing of Alex’s body hitting balls in the batting cage. Ollie had that one wrong.
“Damn, it’s freezing,” Ollie said. “Want to stop for coffee?” They were nearing Pier 66; she could walk the High Line from here. Climbing up on the elevated walkway to wend their way up toward Chelsea would mean being in the full teeth of the wind. But she wanted to get home. Home to think.
She shook her head. “No, I want to keep walking. You go back if you want to.”
Ollie stopped, looked over his shoulder back the way they’d come. “Just as quick to come to your place and cab it back,” he said.
“Not exactly a workout.”
“You sound like Lucas.”
“Lucas?”
“Yeah. Dude doesn’t seem to appreciate that it’s the off-season. He’s got the doc and the training staff all riding us about keeping our fitness up before spring training.”
“Poor Ollie, having to work for your outrageous salary.”
“Not outrageous enough,” he muttered. “You should take Sutter seriously,” he said in a louder tone. “He was telling me what he’s planning. He’s got some good ideas.”
“Unlike Winters?”
Ollie didn’t meet her gaze. Maggie paused as she reached the top of the steps. Ollie really didn’t like Alex. Did he have an inkling about what was going on—or had been going on rather—between them? And if he did, maybe part of his enthusiasm for Sutter was due to the fact that Maggie taking the job would get her out of Alex’s orbit? Damn. She thought Ollie had given up on his stupid torch for her.
He dated enough women to fill half the north stand at Deacon with his Shieldettes. He didn’t want her.
But he didn’t want anyone else to have her either.
Which meant she had to take anything he was saying with a grain of salt. Because just like everyone else, it seemed he had an angle.
Crap.
Chapter Eighteen
Wrestling with the devil’s dilemma was exhausting, she’d discovered. She’d paced her apartment, written several different pro and con lists, drunk a bucketful of coffee, paced some more, tried to nap, taken a bath, and then punished her already aching legs with a hour on the treadmill.
