“Bullshit. Come on, Heidi. It’s time to get fierce with your life. Are you going to let one asshole with access to security tapes control your life?”
“No.”
“So what are you going to do?”
I took a deep breath. I could do this. “I set out to write an article about Rob, and that’s what I’m going to do.” Saying it aloud made it more real. And me less able to back out.
Samantha cheered. “So what’s it going to be about? Are you going to smear him?”
“Smear Rob? God no! But I’m not going to sugarcoat anything, either. It has to be a real article about the real man.” I thought about his Clark Kent persona. The Bobcats had been working overtime to make him seem like an all-American clean-cut kid from Nebraska. But honestly, the press had known about his women for months and hadn’t really cared. Superstars got lots of women. Could I write about that? The very idea made my insides twist with jealousy. I didn’t want to know about Rob’s other women, which meant the article had to be something else.
“He had an injury at the beginning of the season,” I said. “It worries him.”
“But he’s been playing great.”
True. Besides, I’d have to get a doctor to confirm it anyway and I didn’t know how I’d do that. I tried something else.
“There’s something in his past. Back from high school.”
“Ooh, juicy!”
“It could be nothing.”
“You won’t know until you check it out.”
I struggled with my ethics. I’d promised Rob that everything we’d talked about was off the record. So was I really about to betray that promise? Because Nico was an asshole? The very idea made me sick to my stomach. There had to be some way to get an article without betraying him. One that showed the paper I was an asset and didn’t hang Rob out to dry. I just had to find it.
I groaned. “Why am I working so hard at a stringer job? No one cares if I ask if they want fries with their burger.”
“Exactly,” Sam answered. “No one cares. You want to make a difference.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Hell, no,” she laughed. “I just want to make a ton of money.”
I laughed at that because I knew she wasn’t nearly as shallow as she pretended. We talked for a while longer, catching up on the week’s events. And then we reluctantly said goodbye. Because first thing in the morning, I was heading out to Nebraska, to learn the truth about Rob Lee and dig up the dirty secret in his past. Then all I had to do was figure out what to do with it.
Chapter Ten
Rob
I couldn’t believe the mess I was in. And worse, I couldn’t let it affect my play. After screaming at Nico for an hour, he reminded me that I had a morals clause in my contract. Sex with a reporter in the press box violated that big time. And while I was sputtering my outrage, he told me to go home. Worse, he sat in my car just to make sure I got there. And all the while, the bastard kept saying that it was for my own good. I had no idea why the hell he cared so much, and when I asked, he said it was because no one had stopped him when he was young and stupid, and it would have made all the difference in his life.
I had nothing to say to that except that I believed in Heidi. She wasn’t going to write anything negative about me. Yeah, maybe that was naive, but I still trusted her.
If only I had a way to contact her. Thanks to Nico’s interference, she’d walked off without giving me her phone number or email address, and though I knew her last name, there were a zillion Heidi Wongs on social media. Once I was at home, I called the newspaper where she worked, but what the hell could I say? The Bobcats were obsessive about controlling media contact. I couldn’t leave my real name or contact information. I finally just said I was Rob from Ft. Lauderdale and begged her to email me with her contact information. I gave her a brand-new email address and prayed she got the message.
And then I waited.
It was stupid to think she’d get her work messages on a Saturday night. It was even more stupid to get anxious because I didn’t hear anything on Sunday, either. By Monday morning practice, I was a mess—defiant toward Nico, angry at myself, and wholly unfocused. I tried to play it cool, but everyone noticed. Fortunately, I was able to pass it off as nerves after my less-than-amazing performance on Saturday, but that wasn’t going to last. I knew I had to get my mind off Heidi, but damn it, there was no way that was going to happen. Not unless I was able to talk to her again. I needed to reassure her that I had nothing to do with Nico’s threats and that I would do everything I could to get that video from him.
I thought I’d managed to get my wandering brain back in line, but the minute I stepped onto the field, I saw her everywhere. I remembered how she’d looked in the fading sunlight, her black hair showing red highlights from the sunset. How her mouth had opened in awe as she looked up at the stands, and how we’d laughed about it while we walked the bases. That was hard enough, but then I looked at the press box and remembered the way her body had fisted me. It was the most pleasure I’d ever felt. And just like that, my concentration shattered.
Batting practice was humiliating. If I thought I’d showed badly in the game, this was exponentially worse. I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, and everyone noticed. Including the Bobcats manager, who sauntered up to me. As the team coach, he was a big man with jowls and tired eyes, and when he spoke, he tended to blast like a foghorn. He was also a legend in baseball and a few months ago, he’d seemed really excited to work with me. Right now, he just looked grim.
“Coach?” I asked as he walked up.
“Feeling the pressure?” he asked.
