Page 54 of The Third Baseman

“Hello?” I punched in the code to my office, and the door swung open.

“Doctor Matthews, I’m Jesus Rodriguez, Assistant General Manager.”

Oh yes… now I remembered. I’d seen him a couple of times over the past week, usually deep in conversation with Penn Shepherd. It took me a second to realize he wasn’t wearing a ball cap, which, coupled with some other kind of Lions attire, was the uniform around here. And he looked surprisingly different without it.

“Hello. It’s good to meet you finally. Please come in, and call me Marnie.” I threw the remainder of my bran muffin – my own attempt to join the fitness fanatics – in the trash and rinsed away the cardboardy taste coating my tongue with a large swig of coffee. I’d also run five miles this morning, but that hadn’t had anything to do with wanting to keep fit. “Mr. Shepherd said you’d be able to help me with an idea I had.”

I gestured to the stools underneath the steel tables, but he didn’t sit opposite where I had.

“Yes, the one percent.”

I took a beat, ignoring the bite of skepticism in his tone, and crossed my legs ready to get comfortable for the long haul. “You don’t sound convinced.”

Jesus walked slowly around my office, picked up a pen and put it back down before stopping in front of the white wall. “How’s it going to work?”

I pulled over a couple of the books I’d been reading up on data theory, passing them over the desk to him just as I had with Penn Shepherd. He flipped through the pages with disinterest, and closed the books. His hands wrapped around the back of the stool and he leaned forward.

“We’ve got a busy season ahead, Doctor Matthews. The schedule is hard, and the team is new. It’s not the same as one or two guys coming in to join the ranks; we have an entirely new starting nine made up of players who’ve never competed together before. That means we’ve got our work cut out for us. Me and my team of coaches...” he paused, making a clicking noise as he sucked his cheek in between his teeth, and I waited because I knew there was more to come. Then he said, “we don’t have time to work on this project with you, and we can’t have the team’s scheduled disrupted. However, as a compromise, Coach Chase appointed one of the guys to be the liaison between you and the team. He’ll work with you on how the team functions day to day. It’s better than you meeting with forty individual guys. It’ll be a better use of time, and less distraction all around.”

His gaze was a challenge, like he was daring me to disagree. Even if I had, I’d never have given him the satisfaction.

“Yes, good idea. I did wonder why no one had turned up last week. I was scheduled to meet a couple of the guys.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he replied, not sounding in the least bit sorry.

“So I’ll be working with…”

“Me.”

I whipped around to the door to find my new tormentor standing there, the ever-present smirk plastered on his face like he’d had it tattooed on with the rest of them. The equally tormenting butterflies woke up and began battering their wings against the lining of my belly, making my heart beat erratically.

Again.

Since he’d broken into my hotel room two nights ago, I hadn’t seen him, except on the field. As sleep had eluded me for the rest of that night, I thought that he might have been as tired as I’d been, but instead he’d played his best game of the season so far; four home runs in one game, something that less than two dozen players had ever done before apparently. Reporters had jumped on him, and I didn’t see him again until he boarded the plane and sat at the other end.

Not that I’d been looking for him.

And now here he was, holding two cups of coffee.

“Doctor Matthews, this is Jupiter Reeves, The Lions’ starting third baseman. He’ll be your club liaison and will work with you to see how we can get this project off the ground. He’ll be the one to let you know whether something is feasible or not.”

Of course I’d be working with Jupiter; because there’s no way it could have been any of the other thirty-nine players.

He walked toward us with a swagger he usually reserved for after he’d hit a home run – like he had in Miami. “Oh, Doctor Matthews and I go way back. In fact,” that devious glint appeared in his eye, “we’re old study buddies. Isn’t that right, Marn?”

I was getting better at holding back on the volcanic heat which coursed through my body and lit my cheeks brighter than a supernova whenever Jupiter summoned it, but not enough, it seemed, that Jesus Rodriguez couldn’t tell exactly what Jupiter was referring to – even though we hadactuallybeen studying. Most of the time.

Some of the time.

He handed me one of the cups of coffee, and I took it silently. I didn’t need to remove the lid to know this coffee was exactly how I take it. Not too heavy, with a drop of half and half, and a packet of sweetener.

“No snarl today,” he whispered from the corner of his mouth, “baby steps, eh?”

Jesus stood up, smoothing down the whiskers of his moustache. “Great, that saves me the introduction. Both of your calendars have been updated; Jupiter is at your disposal, and we’ve set aside an hour of his time every morning.”

An hour?!

Every morning?!

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