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Only it was too late.
She opened the door and on the other side was her husband. Who had a woman with long blond hair, wearing a halter dress and stiletto heels, pressed against the wall. His hand was on her breast, his tongue was in her mouth and he was grinding against her.
He stopped kissing the woman. “Dude, we’re going to need your room for an hour.”
Then Danny turned his head, saw his wife and the expletive that fell from his mouth was totally accurate.
“Lane, what the hell? Dude,” Danny shouted at Roy, “you said no wives!”
As this weird buzzing noise filled his head, Roy tried to think through what was happening. The crazy thing was he really hadn’t expected the plan to work so well. Here he was, this grown man, not some actor in a soap opera, who had devised a nefarious plot. It should have completely backfired.
Only nope. It had worked to absolute freaking perfection. Which, of course, meant that it really did backfire.
Lane faced Roy. Not her cheating husband. Roy. “You knew he was coming? You knew he was coming with someone?” Her voice had a raw, harsh quality he’d never heard from her before.
Since it was hard to form words while his head still buzzed, he simply nodded.
“You did this? To me? On purpose? I thought—I thought we were...friends.”
Friends. She thought they were friends. She cared about him at least that much.
He’d had that and now he’d lost it. He could see it in her face.
“You bastard.”
The word hit as if she’d stabbed him in the gut. Yes, he’d done this on purpose. He’d humiliated and inflicted pain upon the only woman he thought could ever really matter to him.
Roy held up his hands as if to remind her she knew what an ass he could be.
He could see her shake as she approached him and he kept his hands down, opened himself to whatever she would say next.
She slapped him. Hard, across his cheek. As punishment, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“I hate you for this. I hate you, Roy Walker.”
Then she walked past Danny and his flavor of the moment without so much as a word.
* * *
ROY LATER LEARNED that Lane moved out of her home that night. She and Danny were divorced six months later. The Founders’ season collapsed as the locker room never got over the pure hatred the star pitcher and shortstop felt for each other. And Lanie left her sports therapy business, putting the world of professional baseball behind her.
Roy heard she’d taken a job working at a veterans rehab facility. Helping soldiers with missing limbs adjust to their prosthetics. Sounded like something Lanie would choose to do.
At the start of his final game in baseball, Roy focused on doing what he’d promised himself he would. Go out on top.
And he did. Pitched a “no-no.” No hits. Only one walk. It wasn’t for the playoffs, or for the World Series win. Just the end of a lousy season, but a great career.
In his heart Roy knew he did it for her. The princess of baseball deserved such a tribute. Even though he doubted she watched.
After, he changed out of his uniform, got into his car and drove away from the stadium and the game that had been his life since he was six years old.
It was time to start a new life. Maybe in this new life he could forget Lanie Baker ever existed. The way she had so obviously done with him. He’d written her a letter to try to explain why he’d done it and, more importantly, that he was sorry.
He never heard from her.
Yes, it was definitely time to move on and forget his princess. After all, everyone knew the villain didn’t get the princess. Only the hero did. And Roy was never the hero.
CHAPTER TWO (#uf1e66ad5-1ab9-5021-9abf-98319dc11de7)
A few months ago
“YOU’RE BROKE.”
Roy looked at his accountant and blinked. Frank’s face remained unchanged and entirely serious.
Roy knew the news would be bad. But not this bad. “That can’t be right.”
“You chose not to file for bankruptcy,” Frank reminded him. “I told you to.”
Stubbornly, Roy had refused. Bankruptcy had seemed like the coward’s way out. He’d taken the products from his vendors in good faith and he was a man who paid his debts. All of them. This meeting today was to discuss what was left.
Apparently not much.
“Look, you still have a few assets you can sell to get you a little more liquid until you get back on your feet. Your father’s house—”
“Not an option.”
Frank sighed. “Right. Your town house, then.”
“Great. I can sell that.”
“That will take some time. It’s November, not the greatest season to move real estate. What about your ex-fiancée’s thirty-thousand-dollar engagement ring?”
“Also not an option.”
Frank shook his head. “In today’s world it’s custom to give the ring back, regardless of who broke it off.”
Maybe, but Shannon hadn’t offered and Roy couldn’t ask for it. He’d met Shannon a few years into his new life and they had dated for nearly a year before deciding to get married. He’d tried, he really had, to make the long-term commitment work. But eventually he’d admitted to himself marriage wasn’t in the cards so he ended it.
Six weeks before the wedding.
What he’d done to her—led her on, let her plan a big, public wedding—was wrong and if she took some consolation from an expensive ring, she was welcome to it.
But that decision seemed to kick off his entire life coming down on him like a ton of bricks. After he ended the engagement, his developers told him the coding logic in Roy’s new high-tech gaming system, SportsNation, was faulty and would not be ready for their scheduled major launch. All the money they had poured into publicity, including print, radio and television, essentially gone as they had to push back the release date again and again.
By the time they got it working, there was another—better—product on the market. Eventually Roy’s company did launch the system, but it was too little too late. The company in which he’d invested every dime, every ounce of energy, for the past five years had failed.
Now he was broke.
He was thirty-seven, just beginning what was supposed to be the second half of his life. And it was over after five measly years.
Roy leaned back in his chair, looking at the stack of papers on the older man’s desk. Roy’s life had been reduced to overdue notices and collection letters. When all was said and done, there was nothing left but the loose change in his couch.
“What about advertising? You know, do a few commercials for some local auto dealer. They love that stuff. Or ESPN? You could become one of those baseball color commentators.”
Roy knew Frank was trying to help, just like he’d given him sound advice about the bankruptcy option. But Roy didn’t want to go back to any part of baseball. He sure as hell didn’t have the personality for television. And given his nonrelationship with about everyone associated with MLB, he was fairly sure no one would be standing in line to do him any favors. The type of job offers players got after they retired were based on the connections they made while they were still playing.
Roy hadn’t made any friends, let alone connections. He pitched. He pitched better than anyone. That’s what he did.
Even if he could find a way to work up the enthusiasm to sell some product, advertisers wanted someone relevant. Roy hadn’t been that in five years. Maybe after he was inducted into the Hall of Fame he would be, but not now.
“You could get a job. What kind of skills do you have?”
“I throw a mean sinking cutter.”
“Look, you’ve got some cash. Maybe it’s enough to get you through until you sell your house. If you’ve got some fancy watches or something...”
Roy shook his head. All of it, every last thing, had gone into the company. He drove a ten-year-old Jeep and his last investment in himself had been a five-dollar haircut. There was nothing to sell.
“What about some of your old baseball stuff? You hardly ever gave any of that away. I’ll bet that might fetch you some bucks to hold you over.”
Hold him over until what? The town house was in a nice area of Philadelphia, the city he’d chosen to establish his business, but it wouldn’t set him up for life. It might provide some seed money to invest in a new company, but what kind of lenders would take a chance on him again?
He’d seen it in the faces around him at the end. From the people who worked for him and the people to whom he owed money. Roy Walker was a great pitcher but he didn’t know much about building a successful company.
A vision of him selling used cars to men who shook his hand and said, “Hey, weren’t you that pitcher?” flashed in front of his eyes.
“So what about it? You got a few gloves or something?”
Yes. He had gloves and jerseys and his Cy Young Award trophies. Next year was his first year of eligibility for Hall-of-Fame contention. Many considered him a first ballot shoo-in. He could see the headlines now: Roy Walker, HOF Pitcher, Now Failed Businessman, Desperate for Money, Sells His Gloves.
He was pathetic.
“Of course...there is the alternative. I mean, you’re only thirty-seven. Who knows how many bullets you have left in that arm? You could go back to baseball, sign on with some team for a year, make a ridiculous amount of money and then start all over again.”
Start all over again. Back to baseball. Those two things shouldn’t be synonymous. There had to be other choices.
Because Roy was never going back to baseball.
Present day
ROY DROVE THROUGH the winding streets of the small town of Minotaur Falls, New York, with a sick feeling of dread in his stomach. The sick feeling had become fairly familiar to him. It had started when he’d learned he was broke and had pretty much continued ever since. All through November, when Frank had been proven right about the real-estate market being dead. All through December, when Roy had actually put together a résumé and started applying for jobs.
He’d been on three interviews. Two had been just baseball fans who wanted to the meet the legendary Roy Walker. Of course, since he didn’t have any actual skills, he wasn’t a fit for the company, but it sure was great to meet him. The third had been a nice older woman who knew nothing about baseball, but also told him that without a college degree or any real work experience he wasn’t qualified for the position. Again.
Roy had tried to explain to her that he’d once been famous and a multimillionaire.
That hadn’t swayed her.
He had considered going back to school. The money he could make from the sale of his town house would cover his tuition. But the idea of being a freshman at thirty-seven was even worse than the idea of baseball.
Which was what everything kept coming back to. Roy would look at his left arm and think if he could get back into shape, if he could get his velocity to where it had been, all he might need was one season. One contract.
“Is there anything left in you?” he would ask his arm.
Is there anything left in you? he imagined it asking him back.
Finally, he’d done the unthinkable and called his former agent. Charlie Lynn had taken his call immediately, which made Roy feel marginally better. Charlie loved the idea of a Roy Walker comeback.
Hell, Nolan Ryan pitched until he was forty-six. Mariano Rivera pitched until he was forty-three. It wasn’t unthinkable. There was only one catch.
Can you still throw?
Of course Charlie had to ask the question. Roy told him the truth. He didn’t know. He hadn’t put his arm through any kind of workout since leaving baseball. Which meant Roy was going to have to find some minor-league team who might take him on to see if he still had the goods.
Charlie started talking about bonus options if he made the team and incentive clauses for a multiple-year option.
All the familiar phrases and terms came back to Roy like he hadn’t been away for five years. Over the course of his professional life he’d earned eighty million dollars with Charlie as his agent.
Eighty million dollars gone. Because he’d put his faith in some programmers who ultimately couldn’t deliver on what they promised and he’d been too stupid and stubborn to realize that until it was too late.
Charlie told Roy to find someone he could trust. A place he could go with baseball people who would give him a workout but who wouldn’t be squawking to the sports reporters about what Roy was doing. They needed to establish if his arm still had the juice and what role he might play on a team. Maybe he couldn’t be a starter, Charlie mused, but with Roy’s sinking cutter, he might have closer potential. In baseball the only person who had the potential to make as much money as a starting pitcher was a lights-out closer.
One or two years playing, maybe an eight-million-dollar contract, and Roy could start over again.
Only this time he would do everything differently.
Roy shook his head. No, he couldn’t see that far ahead. He’d already failed once, so he couldn’t imagine having the confidence to try some other new business venture. Which meant he should stick to what he knew he could do. What he’d always done.
Throw a ball.
A ridiculous gift, really, that might set him up for life. Again.
Roy pulled up to the Minotaur Falls stadium, home of the Triple-A minor-league team for the New England Rebels. Minotaur Falls was also the home of the legendary Duff Baker.
Duff Baker, the only person in baseball Roy thought he might be able to trust. Duff had won four World Series titles as the manager of three different teams. Two of them with Roy. It was a remarkable accomplishment because it meant he could reach the top with different groups of players. That was because Duff had a better eye for talent than anyone in the game.
He had walked away from managing professional teams about eight years ago, but he hadn’t been able to leave the game entirely. Some might call being manager of a minor-league team a step down, but Duff just called it retirement.
Roy had phoned his former manager and asked if he could meet with him and if they could keep it private. Roy hadn’t given him a reason or any information, really.
That the old man hadn’t hesitated to say yes humbled Roy in so many ways.
Duff had been Roy’s first manager when he’d made it to The Show. Roy had been as cocky then as he had been through the rest of his career. In hindsight he could see what a handful he must have been to his manager. He used to shrug off bunting advice from the old man like what he was selling was old news. Duff had had every right to punch the upstart Roy had been, but he never did. Instead Duff just kept proving how his way worked until eventually Roy figured it out.
He’d been sad when Duff left the team. It was the first time Roy had ever felt any emotions for one of his coaches.
Excluding his first, of course. His dad.
