High Heat (Hard Hitters #1) by Linda Morris Read Free Book Online Page A

the dugout to make sure he was okay.
    He must have convinced Reedy, because he’d stayed in and done pretty well since, getting himself into some jams with runners on base but getting out of them without giving up any runs. A couple of pitches had come perilously close to hitting batters, leading to some angry stare-downs from the batter’s box. Tom hadn’t blinked.
    He
had
to be throwing close to the batters on purpose. Intimidation was the name of a pitcher’s game, and he clearly wasn’t happy about giving up a two-run homer to a minor league hitter. So-called brushback pitches kept hitters from getting too cocky.
    After the seventh-inning stretch, when “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” had been sung by an enthusiastic seventh grader from Plainview Junior High, the score stood 3–2, Thrashers.
    “When do you think we’ll be able to leave?”
    She glanced at Rich Blakely, her CPA and sometimes date.
    “It’s a close game. I thought we’d stay to the end.”
    His mouth turned down, and she knew he’d been hoping to slip away soon.
    “Fine.” He sighed, pulling out his cell phone and checking Twitter for the hundredth time that night.
    Not for the first time, she wondered why she’d brought Rich to the game. He paid lip service to liking baseball, but he only tolerated the games she dragged him to. If he had his way, every date would be a trip to a local steak house followed by the latest sci-fi blockbuster, ending in a wrestling match on her couch while she tried to politely explain that no, she wasn’t really ready for that kind of intimacy yet.
    He wasn’t her boyfriend, definitely not. More like an escort, except not that hot and she didn’t have to pay him. He didn’t exactly sweep her off of her feet, but going out with him beat doing things alone in a small town like Plainview. Here, most people got married by twenty-two or so, and a single professional woman wound up watching reruns on Netflix alone.
    Not that a night with Rich was a huge improvement over reruns of
Battlestar Galactica
, but still. Sometimes, a woman needed a date.
    Tom took the mound as he readied for the first hitter. The wicked curveball started high and dove right before it crossed the plate. Strike one. The batter, a twenty-year-old named Gutierrez, knocked the bat against his cleats and stepped in for pitch number two, a ferocious fastball that he missed by a fraction of an inch.
    Sarah whistled low. “He was swinging for the fences on that one.” Tom knew it too. She could see the intensity of his stare from here. Pitch three had the hitter doing a dance to avoid the path of the ball.
    “Did you say something?” Rich murmured, not looking up from his phone.
    “Nothing.” She heard the edge in her voice. Really, maybe coming to the games alone wouldn’t be so bad. It had to be better than being annoyed at Rich the whole time.
    Tom’s fourth pitch nailed Gutierrez in the shoulder.
    “Ouch,” she muttered. A gasp rose up from the crowd. In the dugouts, players came to the railing, watching to see how Gutierrez reacted. The kid dropped his bat and grimaced, placing his hands on his knees and leaning forward.
    It must have been an intentional hit on Tom’s part.
    After a long moment, the batter straightened and stared at Tom, yelling something she didn’t hear.
    Tom’s succinct reply consisted of two words. The second one was “you.”
    Everything seemed to happen at once. Gutierrez charged the mound. Tom hurled his glove to the ground and braced himself. Both benches cleared. Players leapt over the dugout fences and converged on the mound. Tom disappeared into a melee of swinging fists and shoving bodies. Fans rose to their feet, the crowd abuzz.
    “Oh my God!” Sarah jumped up, fighting the urge to rush the field. Her father would kill her for getting involved, and Tom wouldn’t thank her for it either. She bit her lip.
Leave it alone.
He was a grown-up. He could take care of himself.
    What was going on inside