12. Twelve

Twelve

By the bottom of the third inning, Nell had learned three things about baseball players: they did a lot of sweating, they did a lot of swearing, and they did a lot of spitting. Even with all the bottles of water they chugged, she was surprised they didn't shrivel into raisins from dehydration.

Nell didn't think of herself as squeamish. She'd been vomited on by sick students and peed on by hamsters. She'd dealt with bloody noses and lice infestations. She'd been given bug collections as birthday presents. But really, this was excessive. There was no inch of the dugout that wasn't covered in sunflower seed shells or saliva—or both—and Nell had long since abandoned any attempts to watch where she stepped. When she got back to the farm, she was going to have to hose down her shoes with Lysol.

Some of the players, she'd discovered, also held grudges. Decade-long grudges, from what she could tell. There was a running dispute about whether a ninth-inning bunt (particularly egregious, apparently) that had ruined a perfect game was "bush league" or fair play, and a couple of the guys were tossing such creative insults back and forth in both English and Spanish, she could only hope all the little kids in the audience would cover their ears.

And if that weren't enough of a culture shock for Nell—who spent her days doling out reminders about inside voices and respecting boundaries—there was also the ass slapping. The players did a lot of ass slapping. Not her ass, thankfully; at least not yet. But whenever one of the guys made a nice play, he got a quick, congratulatory smack, and if he scored a run, his triumphant return to the dugout was met with cheers, hoots, high-fives, and a barrage of swats on his rear end. Then usually he'd spit. Saliva and ritualized spanking: definitely not the way she'd imagined spending her day. At this point, she wasn't really certain how her life could get any weirder.

She flicked a glance at Whit, who stood leaning against the dugout rail, his arms resting on the high metal bar and his gaze pinned on the field. No one had yet slapped his ass. And there it was, tucked snugly into the close-fitting jeans he hadn't bothered to trade for baseball pants. She remembered the women at Gills discussing which part of his body was most worthy of admiration. One of them had definitely mentioned his ass. She wondered what he'd do if she gave it a tap.

Hands off, Nellie. Boundaries, remember?

Sighing, she pushed herself away from the railing to find a spot on the bench . Next to her, the small metal figurine of a wizard holding up a sword sat staring woefully at her. She could not for the life of her say where the statue had come from, but the players had taken to calling it their "rally wizard" ever since Eddie Ames had hit a bases-clearing double after waving it over his head. She wondered if she should give it a try. She could use a bit of luck just now.

Those unsavory thoughts of hers were becoming a problem, especially since it was getting harder and harder to pretend that there was nothing more to Whit than a sexy smile and an ego the size of Alaska. Seeing him in his natural habitat, a jock among jocks, the patron saint of swagger, able to trash talk and launch sunflower shells with the best of them—when he wasn't shoveling bright pink bubblegum into his mouth, anyway—should have been a turn off. Instead she'd found herself fascinated. It was clear he was in his element, a fierce competitor humming with restless energy and driven by the need to give it his all. And it wasn't just the game itself he thrived in. He was good with people. She was used to his smooth, easy charm, so she wasn't surprised by how effortlessly he'd handled the reporters before the game, or by the quick camaraderie he'd formed with his team. But when he'd stopped to give autographs to a group of kids and made sure to include a timid little girl hiding shyly behind the others, Nell had felt herself melting.

What she needed, she decided, was a boyfriend. A real one. Or at the very least a date. Some other, non-disastrous outlet for her romantic yearnings. As soon as she got back to Chicago, she was going to call up Evan Greyland and invite him for coffee. Evan's daughter had been a student of Nell's last year, and when he'd asked her out during a field trip to Adler Planetarium, she'd turned him down—but they'd become friends on social media, and he'd recently indicated he was still interested. That would help turn her thoughts in a less destructive direction. The only reason her crush had returned was because her love life was virtually nonexistent.

And even before it was nonexistent, it had been pretty dismal, if she were being completely honest. Her only serious boyfriend had been in college, when she'd wanted to revel in all her newfound freedom and had thrown herself headfirst into a relationship with the teaching assistant in her freshman English class. They'd been on a camping trip in the Upper Peninsula when she'd found out he was married. She'd packed up her car and her shattered heart and ditched him at a campground, leaving him to explain to his wife why he needed a ride home from Michigan in his underwear. Since then, she'd had a series of lukewarm relationships, few of them lasting long enough for her to meet the parents or keep a toothbrush or a spare drawer. Which was not the same as Whit's flavor-of-the-month approach to dating. She wanted to fall in love. It was just that all her lovers left her feeling vaguely… unsatisfied.

Paige told her it was because the men she dated were boring. She'd had her heart broken by a bad boy, so now she refused to take risks and purposely chose men who couldn't keep her interest. None of them were right for her, because boring men needed boring women so they could buy little houses and raise boring children: psychology according to Paige Forrester—the woman who broke up with the love of her life every five months like clockwork .

Evan wasn't boring. If anything, he was intimidating. He spoke three languages, he'd climbed to the summit of Everest— and K2—and he'd spent a year in the Peace Corps. What Nell couldn't figure out was what he saw in her , which was half the reason she'd turned him down in the first place. But if he wanted to go out with a woman whose most strenuous climbs involved staircases and whose only other language was Pig Latin, she figured that was his business.

The decision to call Evan made her feel a bit better, so she managed to relax, leaning back on her hands and tipping her head skyward to breathe in the clean autumn air. She closed her eyes, listening to the hum of chatter from the stands. To her surprise, she liked being here. Maybe the excitement was contagious. She'd never had much interest in professional sports, figuring she had better things to do than watch a bunch of grown men with too much testosterone grunt their way up and down a field or try to pummel each other with sticks—but the energy of the crowd and the sheer joy the players exuded made her own pulse quicken. The atmosphere was kinetic and heady. The air was electric.

"Catching a nap?"

Her eyes flew open. Whit had turned to face her, resting against the dugout rail with one arm still propped along the bar, his legs stretched out before him and his head tilted just slightly as he looked her over. The brim of his baseball cap shadowed his face, but she thought she detected a note of disappointment in his tone—or disapproval.

"Just enjoying the nice weather," she said, fighting a faint sense of embarrassment.

"You're missing the game."

"I'm listening to it."

"Then listen over here. I'll help you follow along."

"I don't need help," she huffed, getting to her feet. The rally wizard fell over, and she hastily set it back upright, giving a quick glance around the dugout to make sure none of the players had noticed. Most of them were on the field, so it looked like she was safe. She folded her arms as she gazed at Whit. "I'm not totally ignorant of the rules of baseball. "

"Uh-huh." Whit snapped the piece of bubblegum he'd been chewing. "Indulge me."

The I'm-so-charming look on his face told her he'd been indulged way too often in his life, especially by women, but since she'd be calling Evan as soon as she got home, what could it hurt? She shrugged and moved alongside him, ignoring the sudden tingle that ran up her skin when her arm touched his. Copying his stance, she leaned against the railing and peered out toward home plate, where the pitcher for Whit's team—who couldn't be much past thirty and had the lanky build of a swimmer—was facing a guy who looked like he'd just wandered onto the field after auditioning for a role as a part-time mall Santa. It didn't seem to her to be a fair match-up, but no one else appeared to think it was strange, and she turned her attention back to Whit. "Shouldn't you be busy plotting your revenge?"

Whit and his dad had been trading insults back and forth between the dugouts for the duration of the game, but their words lacked any viciousness, so she figured it was their own bizarre form of father-son bonding. So far, however, Whit hadn't been able to make good on his payback plans, even after his sister had sneaked into the dugout and offered to sabotage Skip by doing something that involved pine tar and athletic tape—or, that failing, by bribing the umpires. Whit had kicked her back to the stands when she started screaming the word "balk" every time one of his players stepped up to the plate.

Now the corners of his eyes crinkled as a slow smile spread across his face. "Just wait."

She didn't have to wait long. After Whit's pitcher struck out Santa, the lineup flipped over and Skip stepped back up to the plate.

"I considered just walking him," Whit said. He exchanged a quick, conspiratorial look with his pitcher. "But this is better."

This, according to Whit, was a plan to "pitch around" his father. Skip wouldn't be satisfied with simply taking a free base, Whit said—he wanted to hit. That meant they could get him to chase bad pitches. And from the groans of the audience, they were very bad pitches. Skip didn't take the bait when the first two throws were so low they nearly touched the dirt, but on the third and fourth pitches, he tapped the ball foul. The fifth pitch was something else entirely. The ball moved much more slowly than it had in the previous throws, and just as it crossed the plate it seemed to dip downward. Skip's bat met air.

Just like that, he'd struck out swinging.

Skip slammed his bat to the ground in disgust, then sent a searing look toward his son as he realized he'd been played. "That only works once," he warned.

"Once is enough," Whit said, winking. He shoved another piece of bubblegum into his mouth.

"Isn't he going to be plotting his revenge now?" Nell asked.

"Who cares? That was so worth it." The grin he gave her made her knees feel a little wobbly. It was really a good thing she'd be dating someone else by this time next week.

Until then, however, she had a role to play, so she rested her arms against the railing and settled in to watch the game. To her surprise, Whit was a good teacher, answering her questions without making her feel like an idiot for asking them and pointing out details she'd have otherwise missed. In the top of the fourth inning, when he ordered what he called a squeeze play , he told her what to watch for. By the bottom of the fifth, Nell knew that a fielder's choice counted against a player's batting average, but a sacrifice fly didn't. Most of his talk of pitches went over her head—and him demonstrating various grips didn't help the way he seemed to think it should—but his enthusiasm was infectious. When Francisco Sánchez hit a game-tying home run in the top of the sixth, she found herself cheering right along with the rest of the team.

Whit also related the saga of the infamous ninth inning bunt, a twelve-year-old feud between Ray Wakefield, the shortstop for Whit's team, and Dee Romero, the opposing team's pitcher. According to Whit, Dee hadn't allowed any base runners for an entire game—until Ray came up to bat in the bottom of the ninth and ruined Dee's bid to make history by bunting for a meaningless hit in a game his team was losing by eight runs.

"And your dad thought it was a good idea to invite them both here?" Nell might not have a full grasp of the situation, but the anger simmering between the two had become abundantly clear when Dee had celebrated after striking Ray out. Twice.

Whit shrugged. "They'll behave themselves."

Which they did. Right up until Ray stepped up to the plate to face Dee a third time.

Nell didn't hear what was said, but she didn't need to. The gestures they made at each other were more than enough to get the point across, besides being wholly inappropriate for an audience that included small children—not to mention Nell, who could have gladly gone her entire life without being subjected to the amount of pelvic thrusting and testicle grabbing that made up their angry pantomime. For heaven's sake, these men were old enough to be grandfathers! A fact they'd apparently forgotten the second they set foot on the field, since neither of them paid the slightest attention to the players attempting to calm them down. Tensions rose, tempers flared, and before anyone knew what was happening, Ray had tossed his bat into the dirt and was charging toward the pitcher's mound.

Whit swore and shot a quick look at Nell. "Stay here." In one fluid motion, he vaulted over the dugout railing and went racing toward the infield. She stared after him as around her the volume from the crowd reached a fever pitch, a torrent of cheers and heckling that quickly drowned out the voices on the field.

After that it was chaos.

Nell was so busy watching Whit, it took her a moment to realize that he wasn't alone. He hadn't gone more than a couple of steps before the entire dugout emptied behind him, every last player scrambling to follow in his wake. Eddie Ames, who had once again been waving the wizard figurine in the air, pressed the little statue into Nell's hands as he hustled to join his teammates.

Meanwhile, the players already on the field had converged upon Ray and Dee, and all Nell could see was a tangled mass of grizzled, heavily perspiring middle-aged men in various states of disheveled. At least two of them had already lost their hats, and somehow, someone's shoe had flipped into the air, narrowly missing one of the umpires who was trying to separate the players. Whit had been swallowed up within the sweaty human amoeba, and she couldn't see Skip, but Maggie stood on the outskirts of the fray, wringing her hands and looking helpless.

Nell felt a rush of sympathy for Skip's assistant-slash-girlfriend, who appeared completely overwhelmed by all the shouting, shoving, and general mayhem unfolding before her. The sheer panic she exuded made her seem less like a nervous cat now and more like one that had been thrown to the wolves. She was the lone woman in a sea of testosterone and posturing, and since Skip had apparently abandoned her, Nell figured Maggie could use a little support. Tucking the rally wizard into one of her front jeans pockets, she headed for the steps.

There she hesitated.

She knew she should stay in the dugout. Whit had told her to stay in the dugout. Not that she felt the need to follow his orders, but she was definitely out of her depth when it came to a bunch of angry, adrenaline-fueled jocks who had no idea they were supposed to get wiser—or at least more mellow—with age. Hair-pulling and arm-pinching she could handle. Headlocks and right hooks? Not so much.

But how could she just stand there while poor Maggie was looking so desperate? Maggie had that little-kid-left-at-the-zoo expression on her face, and boy did Nell remember that feeling. And Whit had technically named Nell bench coach. That meant she was part of the team. She had an obligation to help.

With that thought in mind, she adjusted the Blizzards cap on her head, straightened her shoulders, and rushed toward the tumult.

What happened next was in no way her fault.

She never made it to Maggie. Before she could reach her, the brawl shifted sideways and Whit emerged, dragging Ray backward with an arm locked around his upper body. Or rather, not locked around his upper body, since Ray managed to wriggle his way free, kicking his legs outward as he hurled himself back into the melee with the guttural war cry of a man who felt he had suffered a grave injustice. Whit, caught off-guard and off-balance, lost his footing and went down .

With a gasp, Nell swerved toward Whit, intending to help him back to his feet. The throng swerved with her. Someone lurched. Someone else swayed. She ducked aside to avoid a collision with a man whose bushy white beard identified him as Santa. Then, feeling herself stumble, she took a couple of long, staggering steps to right herself… and caught an elbow in the back.

Nell flailed. Directly into Whit.

Whit, halfway to his feet, went crashing right back down again and landed face-first in the grass. Nell went with him. Her hat flew off her head and did a sharp pirouette through the air, vanishing somewhere between the third baseline and the dugout. She had a brief, dizzying sense of weightlessness. Then her forehead slammed against the solid plane of a shoulder blade, she got a mouthful of cotton shirt and a breath of sun-dampened skin, and her hips collided with Whit's.

Whit howled.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Nell squeaked, struggling to lift herself off him. She lay sprawled in an undignified heap, her chin grazing his shoulder and her chest flattened against his back. Any second now, the adrenaline would subside and the embarrassment would kick in, but at the moment she hurt too much. As it turned out, that ass she'd spent way too much time admiring was a lot harder than it looked.

Whit pushed himself—and her, by extension—upward with his arms and growled, "Get off me!"

"I'm not that heavy," she muttered, flopping into the grass beside him. She could feel her cheeks starting to burn. At least the brawl had moved on without them. She thought it had, anyway. Her head was throbbing and her vision was sort of swimming, so it was difficult to be sure.

"You stabbed me!"

"What? No, I didn't."

Her eyes widened as she realized the wizard figurine was no longer in her pocket. It had remained behind with Whit, its tiny metal sword embedded in…

Oh no .

She had very definitely stabbed him in the ass. The sword had gone straight through the denim of his left jeans pocket and lodged itself in the flesh beneath. It wasn't very deeply embedded, but she doubted that mattered much to Whit, who currently had a wizard poking up from his rear end.

Without thinking, she grabbed the figurine and pulled.

Whit howled again.

Nell winced. "It's out now."

He uttered a string of syllables she couldn't make sense of, then heaved himself to his feet, gripping her arm and pulling her bodily up with him. "I told you to stay in the dugout."

"I thought Maggie could use some help," she said weakly.

"What were you going to do? Announce yourself as her girlfriend?"

That was a little unfair, she thought, but he was the one bleeding from a sword wound to his posterior, so she supposed he had the right to be irritable. She rubbed at her aching forehead with the palm of her hand. "Sometimes I act without thinking."

"Yeah, I've noticed. The champion of the underdog strikes again. You ever consider therapy for that superhero complex of yours?"

"I don't have a superhero complex, and if I did, why would I want to get rid of it?" It was on the tip of her tongue to mention that he had been her most recent underdog, and the only reason she was even there was because he'd decided he needed a girlfriend as a bodyguard, but the stormy look in his eyes made her think better of it.

Whit snorted. "Maybe so you don't get yourself fired again?"

"That wasn't me trying to be a hero. That was me losing my temper." Something she would in no way do during her meeting with Frank Grantham, since, no matter what Whit believed, she was capable of playing nice.

"Because you were trying to be a hero. Give me your sweater."

She blinked at him. "Why?"

"There are about a thousand people with smartphones watching us and I'd rather the world not know I have a puncture wound in my ass."

Biting down on her lip, she shrugged out of her cardigan—her new cardigan that she'd just spent thirty bucks on—and handed it to Whit, who didn't even bother to thank her. He just grabbed the sweater and tied its sleeves around his waist, as though that would somehow draw less attention to him than a minuscule bloodstain on the back of his jeans. Then, instead of doing what any normal, reasonable human being would do and hurrying off the field to find himself a first aid kit, he turned and headed back toward the melee.

"Shouldn't we apply pressure or something?" Nell asked, trotting after him.

"Be my guest," he tossed over his shoulder.

Since any further close encounters with Whit's backside were to be avoided at all costs, Nell changed her mind about following him and went to check on Maggie.