The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 Read Free Page A

stranger in a strange land.
    “How do you play in New York? I thought there were buildings everywhere.”
    “We play in Central Park, and sometimes in Queens.”
    “What’s Queens?”
    “It’s one of the boroughs.”
    “It’s a mule?”
    “No. Jesus. It’s a city, a place. Not a donkey.”
    She stopped, set her fists on her hips, and fired at him out of dark, dark eyes. “When you try to make somebody feel stupid when they ask a question, you’re the stupid one.”
    He shrugged, and rounded the side of the big red barn with her.
    It smelled like animal, dusty and poopy at the same time. Coop couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to live with that smell, or the sounds of clucking, snuffling, and mooing all the damn time. He started to make a sneering remark about just that—she was only a kid, after all, and a girl at that—but then he saw the batting cage.
    It wasn’t what he was used to, but it looked pretty sweet to him. Somebody, he supposed Lil’s father, had built the three-sided cage out of fencing. It stood with its back to a jumbled line of brush and bramble that gave way to a field where cattle stood around doing nothing. Beside the barn, under the shelter of one of the eaves, sat a weatherworn box. Lil opened it, pulled out gloves, bats, balls.
    “My dad and I practice most nights after dinner. Mom pitches to me sometimes, but she’s got a rag arm. You can bat first if you want, ’cause you’re company, but you have to wear a batting helmet. It’s the rule.”
    Coop put on the helmet she offered, then checked the weight of a couple of bats. Holding one was almost as good as the Game Boy. “Your dad practices with you?”
    “Sure. He played minor-league for a couple seasons back east, so he’s pretty good.”
    “Really?” All derision fled. “He played professional ball?”
    “For a couple seasons. He did something to his rotator cuff, and that was that. He decided to see the country, and he ended up out here. He worked for my grandparents—this used to be their farm—and met my mother. That was that, too. You wanna bat?”
    “Yeah.” Coop walked back to the cage, took a couple of practice swings. Set. She pitched one straight and slow, so he got the meat on it and slapped it into the field.
    “Nice one. We’ve got six balls. So we’ll field them after you hit.” She gripped the next ball, took her position, pitched another easy one.
    Coop felt the little lift inside as the ball sailed into the field. He smacked a third, then wiggled his hips and waited for the pitch.
    She winged it, and blew it by him. “Nice cut,” was all she said as he narrowed his eyes at her.
    He choked up on the bat a bit, scuffed his heels. She fooled him with one that curved low and inside. He caught a piece of the next pitch, fouling it off so it rang as it hit the cage.
    “You can toss those three back if you want,” she told him. “I’ll pitch you some more.”
    “That’s okay. You take a turn.” And he’d show her.
    They switched places. Rather than soften her up, he burned one in. She caught enough of it to have it shooting foul. She caught the next, popped it up. But she got the fat of the bat on the third pitch. If there’d been a park, Coop was forced to admit, she’d have hit it out.
    “You’re pretty good.”
    “I like them high and inside.” After cocking the bat against the cage, Lil started toward the field. “We’ve got a game next Saturday. You could come.”
    Some dumbass boondockie ball game. Would be, he thought, a lot better than nothing. “Maybe.”
    “Do you get to go to real games? Like at Yankee Stadium?”
    “Sure. My father’s got season tickets, box seats, right behind the third-base line.”
    “No way!”
    It felt good—a little—to impress her. And it didn’t suck to have somebody, even a farm girl, to talk ball with. Plus she could handle the ball and the bat, and that was a serious plus.
    Still, Coop only shrugged, then watched Lil slip through