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That’s when he’d lose it. The pitch would go wild, and he’d fall back to the knuckleballs. He was still doing okay, and the team was cutting him a lot of slack by assuming his dodgy performances were due to the year he’d taken off.
But the real reason he wasn’t playing up to his full potential was standing in the dugout, quietly watching as he got worse and worse. Sure, it was only three bad starts, and he’d managed to go into later innings in two of them, even pulling the wins, but it didn’t matter. He knew he could pitch better than what he was doing, and anything below his best was garbage.
Now he understood why for the longest time women were considered bad luck on boats. He’d tried to bring one onto his ship, and suddenly he couldn’t find north to save his life.
Considering he could shut out the noise of forty-two thousand fans and play in spite of their jeers, it was all the more fascinating that one woman’s silence was all it took to knock him on his proverbial ass.
After striking out the third batter in the bottom of the fifth, he walked slowly off the field while everyone else jogged, and without stopping went right through the dugout, down the stairs and into the clubhouse.
It was unclear how long he’d have, since an inning was only as short or long as the side made it, but he needed a minute to himself if he had any hope in hell of finishing the game with a W.
The fates were against him though because he reached the clubhouse and walked into Emmy carrying an armload of fresh towels. She was so surprised to see him she dropped half the stack on the floor.
“Tucker, what are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“My job?”
That was a stretch. He’d become accustomed to Emmy’s habits, and she was in the practice of spending at least the first seven innings of each game in the dugout, preparing to handle major injuries. If she was already here in the fifth, it meant she was hiding.
From him.
“You don’t need to avoid me,” he said.
“I do.” She knelt in front of him to pick up the fallen towels.
With her down on the floor, Tucker was painfully aware of his dirty cleats right in front of her face and how bad he must smell, soaked in sweat. He wasn’t at his peak level of attractiveness right then.
“Why?”
“Because…” She hugged the thin white towels to her chest, and he was vaguely aware that towel service definitely wasn’t a job for a head athletic trainer. “It’s safer,” she admitted at last.
From the field, a loud, collective gasp drew her attention to one of the overhead television sets airing the game. It took less than a second for both of them to process what had happened. Chet Appleton had taken a nasty pitch directly to the neck and had fallen to the ground. Emmy dropped the towels and rushed past Tucker, up the stairs and onto the field. He was right on her heels, but the girl could move. In spite of being in the clubhouse when the injury occurred, she got to Chet at the same time as Jasper and Chuck, and was the first one bending over him when he rolled onto his back.
Tucker didn’t follow as far as the field, waiting for them in the dugout as was the general rule of thumb. Because of the distance he didn’t know what she was saying to Chet, but he watched as she touched the reddened skin of his neck delicately and asked him a series of questions. She said something to Chuck, who waved to the dugout.
They’d put in a pinch runner for Chet, which meant the hit was bad enough to take him out of the game. One of the rookies grabbed his helmet and jogged to the place on first base Chet had earned by taking the hit.
Emmy helped Chet to his feet and draped one of his long, gangly arms around her shoulder, walking him back towards the dugout. When they were within earshot, he heard Chet ask, “Did anyone get the plate on that truck?”
Emmy patted his back and smiled. “A truck? No, that was nothing but a big old bee. Stung you pretty good though, didn’t it?”
Chet winced. “’Cause I’m sweet like honey.”
“You sure are.” She eased him down the stairs, and the hometown crowd gave him a hero’s cheer as he exited the stadium. “Fans love honey too.”
“Fans love me ’cause I’m so pretty,” Chet added, and Emmy chuckled as the pair of them vanished into the clubhouse.
Tucker felt like a first-class scumbag, because his friend was hurt and all he could think about was how jealous he was of Chet making Emmy laugh.
Chapter Eighteen
Detroit at San Francisco, Record 35-29
Emmy was beginning to understand that living in San Francisco was very different from living in “Sunny” California. For starters, it was a rare occasion for her to see the sun, unless it peeked its face out briefly while she was at work—usually just long enough to burn off some of the fog.
Her morning started with a walk from her modest apartment in the Mission—the top floor of a renovated house—to a nearby coffee shop. Living in the Mission was a surprising move to those who knew San Francisco’s neighborhoods, but Emmy had only seen a good deal and a somewhat charming area.
