Diamond in the Rough

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“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” she pointed out. “I didn’t say I’d ask him—and even if I do ask him, there’s probably a very good chance that he’ll say no. He doesn’t like reporters,” she explained honestly. Reporters were like vultures, he’d once told her, except that they didn’t wait until the victim was dead before they started stripping off the flesh.

“I’m a journalist,” Mike corrected.

How was that different? “A rose by any other name…” Miranda let her voice trail off as she eyed him pointedly.

He needed leverage. Mike decided to share something with her.

“Would it further my case for you to know that when I was a kid, SOS was my hero? That I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the day I heard about the betting scandal and that he’d been banned from baseball for life?” He paused for a second, debating, then added, “I cried myself to sleep that night. Not even my brothers know that.”

Yes, it helped, she thought. If what he said was true. If so, then he’d be more likely to want to find a way to get the public to come around. And wasn’t this what she’d wanted all along, someone to champion her father’s case in print? Who better than an established sportswriter who’d once been a devoted fan?

Slowly, she nodded in response to his question. “I’m sorry you lost your hero.”

“Yeah, me, too. Who knows, maybe I’ll find him again.” If SOS told him why he’d placed the bets when he knew it went against the rules, maybe it would finally make sense to him. Mike tried to contain his eagerness—after all, nothing had been cast in stone yet. For all he knew, the woman might be pulling his leg. “So you’ll talk to him about giving me an interview?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Great. Terrific.”

Damn, but he almost felt like a kid again, experiencing that exhilarating rush when he got to go to a ball game on picture day and was able to collect autographs of his favorite players. Kate always made sure he was in the front row when the players came out, maneuvering her way through the crowd and bringing him with her.

He felt like celebrating. “Sure I can’t buy you a drink?”

She shook her head. “I’m sure.” She’d suggested the sports bar because it was close, not because she liked beer. Her preference ran toward drinks that came with tiny colorful parasols—but she was driving and she didn’t have the time to spare, waiting for the drink to dissipate into her bloodstream. “I’ve got to be going,” she reminded him.

“Right. Oh, wait.” He’d gotten so excited, he’d almost forgotten the most important part. “How do I get in contact with you?”

He obviously wasn’t thinking because otherwise, Miranda decided, he would have remembered the e-mail. But because she didn’t want to embarrass him, she didn’t bother pointing that out.

“I’ll get in contact with you,” she replied. She liked it better that way. It put the ball in her court and gave her control. Control was important to her. So very little of life came under that heading. “Do you have a business card?”

“Yeah, sure.” Mike immediately felt for his wallet.

Once retrieved from his left rear pocket, he flipped it open. Aside from several torn bits of paper containing miscellaneous information, two credit cards, several twenties, his driver’s license, a press card and a photograph of his family taken at the last fourth of July celebration, there was nothing. He’d forgotten to replenish his supply of business cards.

“Just not with me,” he muttered, then looked up. “Sorry, I gave away my last one a few days ago,” he apologized. Pulling a napkin over from the bar, he took out a pen and began to write down every phone number he could think of where she could reach him. “This is my cell number, my office number and my landline at home.” He pointed to each. “Call me anytime, night or day.”

She took the napkin from him and folded it into her purse. Her attention was drawn to the photograph he’d shuffled through in his search for the business card.

“Is that your family?” They appeared to be a happy bunch of people, she thought, wondering what it felt like to have a large family. Now there was only her father and her.

“What?” His mind already on the interview he wanted to conduct, it took Mike a second to process her question. “Oh, yes, that’s my family. My brothers, my sister, my dad and my stepmother.”

Taking the photograph from him, she got a closer look. “My God, your brothers are absolutely identical,” she said in awe. Initially, when she’d glanced at the photograph, she’d thought her eyes were playing tricks on her.

“Not once you get to know them,” Mike assured her. Growing up, Mike had gotten so used to his brothers he hadn’t thought of them as triplets in years. He put the photograph back into his wallet, which he tucked into his pocket. “How about you?”

Miranda looked at him, slightly confused. “How about me what?”

“Do you have a business card?”

She did. It had her name, her position and Promise Pharmaceuticals’ very ornate logo stamped across it. But she didn’t really want Mike Marlowe having that much information on her, especially not her last name. She wanted to be the one who called the shots and could quietly disappear in case her father couldn’t be convinced to do this interview.

The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that Marlowe could redeem her father. The only way people were going to change their minds about him was if someone methodically—and passionately—laid out all the arguments to let the past go and reevaluate the man only in terms of his accomplishments.

She shook her head, spreading her hands wide. “I’m afraid I don’t have a card with me.”

Mike leaned over the bar and confiscated another napkin. Pulling it over, he held it out to her along with his pen. “That’s okay.” He grinned. “We can exchange napkins.”

She placed her hand over his and lightly pushed it back down to the bar. “I’d really rather just keep it this way if you don’t mind.”

He raised one eyebrow. “In other words, don’t call us, we’ll call you?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Something a little less daunting than that,” she promised, squaring her shoulders. There was something very sexy about a woman who knew her own mind. Damn, but that Shaw was a lucky man, he thought. “I’ll be in touch.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Mike called after her.

Miranda didn’t turn around, but she did lift her hand above her head, giving him a half wave of acknowledgment.

Mike squelched the urge to sprint in order to walk out the door with the woman. He had a feeling she might equate that to come kind of a power play and he didn’t want anything jeopardizing the interview. So instead, he leaned back against his stool and watched her exit…and the way her hips subtly moved to some beat only she heard. The number of patrons at the bar had increased considerably since he’d arrived, Mike couldn’t help thinking.

Just as she disappeared through the door, whatever else might have comprised Shaw’s shortcomings, the man certainly knew how to pick his women.

Chapter Four

“Son of a—gun.”

Glancing toward his left, Mike amended his language out of deference to his stepmother, in whose kitchen he was sitting. Twenty years ago, she had come into his life bearing puppets, warm humor and good intentions. She’d wound up staying on to raise him and his brothers, not as their nanny the way she’d initially appeared, but as their new mother. Along the way, she’d also accomplished the impossible by making his dad smile again.

There’d been a very dark period, right after his mother died in that plane crash. He was five and his brothers were four; they’d been utterly certain none of them would ever be all right again. To this day, the sharp, biting pain of that loss, of suddenly realizing that his mother would never return, never walk through the front door and hug him again, remained with him, hovering in the shadows.

But that took nothing away from Kate. Blond, chipper and incredibly intuitive when it came to the actions of small boys, she had brought light into their world and subsequently turned them into a family again. Though words were his craft, he could never really tell Kate the full extent of how much she had come to mean to him. To all of them.

Kate was sensitive to cursing, so he stopped himself before he uttered anything offensive. But had he shouted out “Rumplestiltskin,” that still wouldn’t have taken the edge off his surprise.

Mike stared at the screen and the article he’d just pulled up after Googling Steven Shaw’s personal stats. Mike wasn’t sure what to think and part of him felt like an idiot.

“Something wrong?” Kate asked, her voice an equal mixture of amusement and concern.

She peered over her shoulder, away from the stove and the dinner she was preparing. It wasn’t a throwaway, automatic question. Kate was interested in every aspect of her sons’ lives and was more than willing to listen to anything they felt like sharing. The little boys that she’d once signed on to raise were off on their own now. Nothing made her happier than having them all turn up around the table at the same time for a meal. She asked for one day a month. Generous, they tried to give her one day a week whenever they could coordinate their schedules. It meant the world to her.

The others, including her husband, weren’t here yet, but Mike had decided to come over early, with the one stipulation that he be allowed to bring his work with him because he needed to get something done before this evening. Kate was so pleased to have him come over—he’d missed the last couple of get-togethers because he was out of town on assignment—she would have said yes if he’d asked to bring the devil along.

There was a five-second delay before her question played itself in his brain.

“What?” He looked up, then shook his head. “Oh, no, nothing’s wrong.” He glanced back at the screen and the startling information. “Exactly,” he amended.

Kate dug a little deeper. “Would you like to elaborate on that just a little?”

Mike frowned, still looking at the screen. “I think she’s his daughter.”

“‘His’?” she prodded.

“Shaw. Steven Orin Shaw.” He addressed her. “I think someone I spoke to a couple of days ago was Shaw’s daughter. I didn’t know he had more than one— the one who died,” he filled in, not expecting his stepmother to remember. “But it says right here that he had two, Ariel and Miranda.”

Kate watched him with mild interest. “You know a Miranda?”

“I don’t really know her, I just met her,” he qualified. “She sent me an angry e-mail—”

Kate laughed. “I can hear the wedding bells ringing already.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s not like that, Kate,” he said, shaking his head.

“You could never disappoint me, Mike,” she told him matter-of-factly. “And neither could your brothers or Kelsey.”

Maybe not, but he and the guys knew that their stepmother had her heart set on getting them married and having babies of their own. She would have liked nothing better than to have the house crammed with the sounds of growing families. And while that might happen down the road for his brothers and little sister, he doubted it would happen for him.

For one thing, he wasn’t looking to get married. The odds were just too great that he’d be signing on for major disappointment down the line. He could still remember how his father looked when he received the news of the plane crash. How devastated he was. There was no way he would ever willingly set himself up for that kind of heartache. And, with attachment came the very real possibility of heartache.

“This has to do with work,” he told her. “I wrote a piece about why Steven Shaw shouldn’t be considered a viable candidate for induction into the baseball hall of fame, and she wrote in to comment.”

Kate nodded. “Right, Shaw,” she said. “The pitcher who disappointed you so badly.”

“You actually remember that?” Mike stared at his stepmother in surprise.

Kate turned away from the stove and the potatoes she was mashing. She set down the container of parmesan cheese after sprinkling some into the mixture.

“Why do you sound so surprised? I remember everything about you boys.” Sympathy entered her eyes. “I remember how upset you were when you found out that Shaw was banned from baseball. That was the year you wanted to throw away all your sports memorabilia.”

Memories he hadn’t thought about in a long time returned to him. “You stopped me from tearing up his autograph.”

She’d rescued the photograph just in time. He’d pulled it free of its frame and was just about to destroy it when she walked into the room. “I thought that you might regret it later, when you stopped being so angry at him.”

“I would have,” he admitted, because it represented a piece of his past, not because it belonged to Shaw. “I never did say thanks.”

Kate shrugged. “Being family means you don’t have to say it—but I admit that once in a while, it is nice to hear.” Picking up the container of cheese, she got back to work. “So, who’s this Miranda person who sent you that e-mail?”

“Apparently, his daughter.” He thought about the woman again. Why would she have kept that a secret? It didn’t make sense to him and he hated things that didn’t make sense. “I mean, her name’s Miranda and it says here that Shaw’s got a daughter named Miranda. It’s not exactly on the list of the most popular names of the past decade. How many Mirandas are there out there?”

Chuckling, she wiped her hands on a towel. “Afraid I haven’t taken a survey on that lately, but my guess is not too many.” Kate crossed to him and draped her arm over his shoulder. He had a Web page opened to the former pitcher’s biography. “Is that good or bad—that she’s his daughter, I mean.”

“Good—if she can get that interview for me.” However, his optimism regarding his chances was dwindling. “But I haven’t heard from her in a couple of days.”

“Call her.”

Mike shook his head. “Can’t.”

“What’s stopping you?”

He looked a tad sheepish, “I don’t have her number.”

“That would do it.” Kate paused for a second, thinking. In this day and age of the information highway, nothing stayed hidden for long. “Seems to me that a man with your connections should be able to locate the daughter of one of the all-time great pitchers of our time.”

He grinned. He knew a couple of people to contact, one of whom was all but hardwired to his computer. “I’ll do it after the Super Bowl.”

The Super Bowl. Kate stifled a sigh. She didn’t want Mike seeing her disappointment. “That’s right, you’re flying out to cover the game. Lucky you.” And then, she added, “We’ll miss you at the party.”

He had to be honest. He’d almost prefer to stay for the family get-together than fly down to the game in Florida. The Super Bowl party had been a major deal around the Marlowe household for the last twenty years.

It still amazed him how Kate had managed to take his father—who’d had no interest in sports—and get him involved in events that celebrated the pinnacle of each sport just because he and his brothers were into it. Kate was a firm believer in family solidarity.

Just then, Travis entered the kitchen. He paused to kiss Kate on the cheek and nod at his older brother. It was obvious that he’d overheard the last part of the conversation.

“Right, we’ll all be crying into our pizza for poor Mikey, who’s forced to sit there in the press box, watching the Packers play the Chargers up close and personal.” His sarcastic tone turned wistful. “I’d give my eyeteeth to be there.” Opening the refrigerator, Travis took out a bottle of beer and twisted off the cap. He closed the door, leaned against it and took a sip. “Now, if either Trent or Trevor had been the sportswriter, I could tie him up, leave him in his apartment and then go in his place. Nobody would be the wiser.”