Stephanie Doyle - The Comeback of Roy Walker

CHAPTER ONE

Five years ago

“GREAT PARTY, ROY!”

“Thanks,” Roy said dismissively, nodding to some woman he didn’t recognize.

Yes, it was a great party. Booze was flowing, food was plentiful. The music was loud and people were starting to dance. Any second now something would break and then he could call this party a true success. Not that he really cared one way or the other.

The invitation had come as surprise to many of his teammates. It was completely out of character for Roy to want to socialize with them outside of work let alone host a party with free booze and food. In fact, for many of the players this was the first time they had seen the inside of his apartment.

But everyone knew this was Roy Walker’s last year on the team. It had been Roy’s plan from the moment he stepped on the diamond to dictate when he stepped off for good. He always said he would go out on top and this season was it. His final farewell. And kicking it all off with a huge party before they got down to the grueling business of the one-hundred-and-sixty-two-game season seemed like the perfect idea. His colleagues no doubt thought that maybe, after all this time and with his career coming to an end, Roy Walker was finally starting to loosen up.

He wasn’t.

“Roy, this is messed up!” Eddie Britton, the team’s all-star second baseman, threw an arm around Roy’s shoulder. This might be the first time a teammate had ever actually touched him outside of a fist bump or hand slap.

Roy was working on the assumption that messed up was a good thing. Mostly because Eddie was both drunk and smiling.

“I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

“Dude, free booze and food? Of course I’m having a good time. You should have done this years ago, man. People might have actually liked you.” Eddie shook his head. “Now you’re almost done.”

Roy didn’t take offense to the insinuations that no one liked him and that the only way he might have been liked was if he’d been supplying free food and alcohol to his teammates on a more regular basis. Eddie was probably right.

“Well, better late than never,” Roy muttered. Not that this party was about making friends. There was only one objective for having all these people in his place.

“Speaking of friends, where is your girl? She’s coming, right?”

His girl. Just the thought of those two words together made the muscles in his stomach go tight.

“I don’t know who— I’m not dating anyone—”

“No, man. I mean, your girl ! Or should I say, Danny’s girl, who you wish was your girl.” Eddie clearly thought that was hysterical.

Roy clenched his jaw. Had he been that obvious? So obvious that even the other guys on the team knew?

“I’ve got to check the beer supply,” Roy said, rather than address that issue.

“That’s cool,” Eddie said, not upset by the brush-off. He stumbled away to take a dive into a couch where a bunch of baseball bunnies had congregated.

Danny’s girl.

Maybe not for long, Roy thought. Not if everything went according to plan. This whole party was nothing more than a charade designed to do something he felt he needed to do. Before he retired.

Yes, after careful consideration Roy had made a decision about one person’s need to know the truth. So he’d formulated a means to reveal it—a big social gathering to bring everything to light. It was meant to be a grand gesture.

This might not be a good idea.

He shook his head. It was too late. The wheels were already in motion. Both Lane and her husband, Danny, were on their way.

Only not together.

“Is this a bring-your-wife party?” Danny had asked.

“Are you kidding?” Roy snickered. “I want everyone to have fun. Bring whoever you like. But there will plenty of female fans in attendance...if you know what I mean.”

Roy recalled the conversation with a heavy sense of dread in his stomach. What he was doing to Danny Worth was wrong. Maybe even cruel. Roy was deliberately setting him up and he was doing so for one reason and one reason only.

Lane Baker Worth deserved better. The daughter of the legendary Duff Baker, a Hall-of-Fame baseball player and manager, Lane was, to Roy, the princess of baseball. Yet, she’d married Danny Worth less . Roy would never understand what she’d been thinking. Maybe if he’d known her back then, he could have stopped it. Certainly her family should have stepped in to avoid the travesty of Lane and Danny’s union.

Roy knew they had been young. Dating when they were nineteen, married at twenty-two. Hell, she was still young now at twenty-six, which was why Roy knew she didn’t have to spend the rest of her life with Danny Worthless. If only she could see him for what he was, she could get out and start over with someone else.

Someone like Roy.

He didn’t like to admit that was his end goal. It made the motivation for this party seem much less noble and infinitely more Machiavellian. He didn’t kid himself to think that just because her marriage to Danny might end, she would suddenly see Roy standing in front of her with open arms.

Maybe because you hit on her the first time you met her.

Roy winced at the memory.

Even with her shiny new diamond engagement ring on her left hand she hadn’t been safe from his come-on, although, to be fair, he hadn’t been all that serious about it. Hitting on the other players’ girls was something he did—Roy’s personal vetting process for the women who dated his teammates, to see where their actual loyalties fell. Were they with the ballplayers because of who they were as men? Or were they baseball bunnies looking for fame and fortune and any player would suffice?

In a way, it was a matter of self-protection. Roy had been hit on by too many wives who wanted to climb the baseball hierarchy. Leaving their husbands to attach themselves to the next highest rung.

The best. Roy Walker.

Once he knew which category the women belonged to, he knew which ones to avoid.

So the come-on to Lane had been a test. In a bar filled with Washington Founders players, her fiancé included, Roy had asked her if she wanted to get together sometime. Just the two of them. To discuss...baseball.

A perfectly harmless invitation that Roy and Lane both knew wasn’t harmless. Only by the time he asked the question he already knew Lane wasn’t the type of woman who jumped from one player to the next. There was something too open about her to be that type. So when he made his pass he expected outrage and fury.

Instead she’d laughed at him. Actually laughed at him. Head back, full-on hysterical laughter.

“Seriously?” she’d said. “Are you kidding me? What are you trying to prove? That you’re some badass who can have any woman he wants? From what I’ve seen so far you’re sullen and brooding. Barely civil to your teammates. Hate to break it to you, Roy, but that doesn’t make you badass and mysterious. It makes you sad and alone. I wonder if you know what love is. Even if I wasn’t engaged, someone like you wouldn’t get to have someone like me.”

In a sort of crazy twist, in that moment when she’d been telling him how pathetic he was, he’d come to admire her. He could see how right she was—someone like him would never be worthy of someone as open and giving as her. He’d spent every day since then trying to establish...what?

He didn’t know if it was a friendship between them. He didn’t know if she took their small connection that seriously. And it was a small connection. A couple of words exchanged outside the locker room when she waited for Danny after a game. A hot dog or two at some out-of-the-way place he tracked down because he knew she loved them. Some mocking banter where she would call him out for being an ass.