Susan Mallory - Sizzling

Sandy chatted a little more about how wonderful Steve was, then excused herself. When Reid was alone with his grandmother, he moved close and stared at her.

"Did they change your meds?" he asked bluntly. "Are you stoned?"

A little of the woman he knew returned as she narrowed her gaze. "Nothing has changed about my routine. I'm completely fine and healing very well."

Uh-huh. "You were nice. That doesn't happen very often." Or ever.

"You're hardly around enough to know what I do." Gloria dropped her gaze to the blankets on her bed and began smoothing them. "I've decided to make some changes in my life."

He had no idea what to say to that. "Changes like…?"

"I'm going to be more pleasant. Easier to get along with. Less critical. It would be nice if you noticed."

He'd been hit by a lot of baseballs in his career, but only two had nailed him in the head. This felt a lot like that.

"Nice, as in nice?" he asked.

She returned her attention to him. "Perhaps you could pretend the concept isn't completely foreign. Speaking of changing, it's something you need to take on, as well. Your current circumstances are inexcusable. You've brought shame to the family name and humiliated yourself. Honestly, Reid, what were you thinking, not giving your best while sleeping with a reporter? I would think, given all your experience, you would know what you were doing."

Until that moment, he'd never understood the idea of wanting the earth to open up and swallow him whole. But he did now.

His own grandmother was scolding him for not being better in bed? Did it get any worse than that?

"I'm not having this conversation with you," he said firmly.

"And yet here we are. Talking." Gloria drew in a breath. "I suspect all the accusations about disappointing children aren't your fault. You have many flaws but being cruel isn't one of them."

"Don't flatter me now," he muttered. "I won't know how to take it."

"I don't plan to flatter you. I plan to give you a few hard truths. How did the problem with the children happen?"

He pulled up a chair and sat next to her bed. "I don't know. I stay out of that sort of thing. My manager, Seth, handles all of that kind of stuff, along with booking endorsements and appearances. My accountant, Zeke, takes care of the money. He writes checks when Seth tells him to. I don't know the details of their day-to-day operation."

"That's your first mistake," his grandmother told him. "It was one thing when you were busy playing baseball, but now you don't have an excuse. What else do you have to do with your time?"

Ouch. "I work at the sports bar."

"Based on how much time you've spent around here lately, I would say that job isn't a big priority." She sighed. "Reid, you've always had it easy. You're smart, handsome and your fastball was just as powerful in the ninth inning as in the first."

Pod person, he thought as he stared at her. Definitely a pod person.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"I would, on occasion, watch you play. And I learned about the game. It's sports, Reid. It wasn't difficult to pick up a few basics."

"You never told me."

"I didn't think it mattered."

He reached out his arm and lightly touched the back of her hand. "It would have mattered a whole lot. It still does."

They stared at each other. For the first time in his life, he realized his grandmother had cared about him. It was good to know. A little scary, but good.

She broke contact first. "This Seth fellow. He sounds like a complete idiot. It's one thing to handle your fan mail and requests for appearances, but it's another to screw it up completely. What do you know about Zeke?"

"That he's been in the business twenty years and that he's totally honest. He won't even let his clients give him Christmas presents. We're allowed to send a food basket to the office for the entire staff, but nothing else. No kickbacks, no perks. Not even tickets to the game."

"Good. Fire Seth and put Zeke in charge. You aren't going to be making any public appearances for a while. Should the need arise, I have the names of a couple of media people who know what they're doing and they're not idiots."

"You're trying to run my life," he said, not actually annoyed by her suggestions. He knew he had to fire Seth- he'd just been putting off the inevitable. But he was surprised she was taking an interest.

"You can do this," she told him. "Take responsibility. We'll change together."

"This isn't a conversation I ever thought we'd be having," he admitted.

Gloria smiled. "Surprise."

FIRST THING in the morning Reid fired Seth by phone and followed up with a fairly aggressive letter from his attorney. Seth tried protesting but quickly gave it up, which told Reid the guy knew he'd screwed up, but rather than fix it, he preferred to walk away. His next call was to Zeke.

"You heard from my attorney?" he asked by way of greeting.

"About Seth? Sure. About time."

Reid leaned back in his chair and groaned. "You knew he was a loser?"

"He's lazy. He does the least he can do and calls that a win. He's in it for the money and the perks. He likes having a successful client list."

Which explained why he'd let Reid go without a whimper. No more baseball career and since all that negative attention in the media, not much of a potential for endorsements.

"I told him to send me everything," Reid said. "I'll be forwarding a lot of it to you."

"You know we'll get the job done," Zeke told him.

"I know. How's the money situation?"

Zeke chuckled. "I assume you mean yours." There was the sound of typing on a keyboard. "Your portfolio is diversified. Stocks, real estate, a few small companies. Ballpark? One hundred and eighty-five million, give or take a few."

Reid swore silently. He'd never paid attention to things like investments. That's what he paid Zeke to take care of. He'd done what he loved for nearly ten years and he'd been paid well. He'd lived hard, but he'd never been stupid with his money.

"All that and I couldn't send those kids home from their state championships," he muttered.

"We took care of that," Zeke told him. "We sent out a check more than a month ago."

"A thousand dollars. What was that supposed to cover?"

"Two return tickets. Why? Did the family have other expenses?"

Family? "Zeke, it wasn't a family. It was the whole damn team."

Zeke swore. "I didn't know. Seth made it sound like just one family. A check for that amount had to have been seen as an insult."

"It's worse. They're families who are barely making it. The screw-up on the return ticket was financially devastating for a lot of them. One family lost their car."

"Dammit, Reid. That kind of crap isn't supposed to happen. That's why you hire people like me and Seth."

Reid was beginning to realize that Zeke and Seth were nothing alike. "I want to fix this," he told his business manager. "Can you find out how much everyone spent to get home and send them a couple thousand more than that? And the family who lost their car- let's get them a new one. And a check to cover any issue with taxes."

He heard the clicking of Zeke's computer keyboard. "Consider it done. Anything else?"

"Not right now. But soon. I'll go over the letters and requests from Seth as soon as they arrive. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot more stuff to make up for."

"We'll get it done," Zeke told him. "This is fixable."

"Right," Reid said as he hung up.

Only it couldn't all be fixed. Like the kid who had died not knowing that Reid cared about him. That couldn't be fixed or undone. How many other people had been disappointed by him? How many other disasters had his name on them?

THE NEXT MORNING Reid went looking for Lori. Sometime in the night when he once again couldn't sleep, he'd had an uncomfortable realization.