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“Come in,” boomed a stern voice.
So much for that pipe dream. Emmy threw her shoulders back and held her head high. She wouldn’t be taken out of the game. Trying to think of a baseball metaphor for her pending doom proved difficult, so she sucked in a deep breath and remembered something her mother often told her.
It all happens for a reason.
And what did the old song say? Whatever will be, will be.
She opened the door and stepped inside. Darren Meritt was alone, sitting in one of the plush leather armchairs in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The pristine green of the outfield grass shone up, looking like a beacon of summer even though it was only May. That’s what baseball was, a certainty of summer. A herald to the change in seasons.
“Have a seat, Miss Kasper.”
And this would be another change of season for her.
Emmy took a seat in the armchair nearest Darren and angled herself so she was facing him rather than looking out at the field. Her father had often told her strong people meet their futures head-on, while cowards try to avoid the gaze of destiny. “Destiny,” her father said, “can see through bullshit. So you might as well look her in the eyes.”
“Your call was unexpected,” Emmy said bluntly.
Darren was a portly, middle-aged man, and a rare breed of baseball general manager who had no history in playing the game. Emmy wasn’t even sure he liked the sport very much. Owners she could understand buying into a franchise for the investment opportunity. But she was convinced a good GM must first and foremost love the sport. Hard decisions needed to be made when you were the fearless leader of a team, and it took more than a head for business to make those kinds of decisions.
This GM had ruddy cheeks and reminded her of Orville Redenbacher, which tended to leave her with an odd craving for popcorn whenever she was in his presence. He had a graying mustache that was neither thin enough nor long enough to be appealing. The hair looked like an ancient caterpillar had crawled onto his upper lip and died.
“People usually think it must be bad news when I call.”
“To be fair, you aren’t usually the bearer of happy tidings.” It didn’t escape her attention that the sports section of the Chicago Sun-Times was open on the coffee table beside a bottle of Budweiser. Her printed face smiled at the sweaty beverage.
She was going to kill Simon.
“Do you think I brought you here to give you bad news, Emmy?” Darren picked up the beer, his hand slipping slightly on the wet glass, and he took a sip. Instantly all she could smell was the distinctive odor of the brew.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Well, as much fun as I might have in tormenting you with whatever ideas you have, I’m going to put you at ease. I didn’t call you up here to fire you.”
Emmy let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and probably had been holding since she got into the elevator.
“You’re not?”
“Good Lord, no. It’s not the only thing I do. I hope people know that.”
What the GM gaveth, the GM could taketh away. And the most common thing for him to taketh was a job. Either by trade or by firing. Now that she knew she wasn’t getting a
xed, the next obvious question became, “Why did you call me up here, then? In the middle of a game.”
Darren set down his beer and picked up the newspaper. In spite of his assurance that her job was safe, she didn’t like the way the article looked in his hands.
“Do you think I hired you because you’re a woman?”
“No, sir,” she replied without hesitation. Technically she knew hiring her hadn’t been his idea. His assistant GM had been the one to call her in for the interview. Darren had sat in while the younger man asked the questions, but here he was taking the credit.
“Emmy, you’re not a twenty-year-old rookie from Topeka. You can call me Darren.”
She wasn’t sure she could. “Okay…Darren.”
“Do you think I hired you in spite of you being a woman?” he continued.
With slightly less certainty this time she said, “No?”
“Why do you think I hired you?”
