position, a long time since she’d been on the receiving end of a compliment. Test tubes and analytical data tended to be silent. But this was the man who had seen fit to mount a crusade against her father. Which made him unlikable, no matter how pretty his blue eyes were.
“Baseball fans come in all sizes and shapes,” she informed him and then tried not to respond as she felt his eyes drift over her. His gaze couldn’t have been more intense if he were measuring her for a thong bikini.
“Obviously,” he murmured.
And they did, he’d be the first one to say that. It was just that he’d had a preconceived notion of what she, SOS’s champion, would look like. He’d met a few of SOS’s fans, the ones who continued to stick by him despite the betting scandal. This Miranda was far too young to be a fan. And yet, he thought back to the heated e-mail exchange. She was definitely a fan. But it made no sense to him. Most people Miranda’s age didn’t even know who—or what, for that matter—SOS was.
He realized suddenly that he had completely forgotten his manners. Kate wouldn’t have been happy with him. Rising to his feet, he gestured toward the other end of the room, where round tables and chairs were sprinkled about. “Would you like to sit at a table?”
Miranda gracefully planted her seat onto the stool beside his. “This is fine.”
Mike sat down again, acutely aware that as he took his seat, his body was captivatingly close to hers. And that the room had become several degrees warmer.
He began to raise his hand to signal the bartender. “What’ll you have?” he asked.
Miranda didn’t miss a beat. “An apology would be nice.”
Mike dropped his hand down again before the bartender looked his way. Turning on his stool, Mike studied the petite, intense woman beside him. It wasn’t only the reporter in him that was curious about her, but it made for a good start.
“Your dad an SOS fan?”
Miranda almost laughed then. If ever there was a man devoid of ego, it was her father. He wasn’t an easy man to know, keeping everything to himself, but she knew that much. In a world where people were eager to take credit for an accomplishment, her father had always tried to keep out of the limelight. He shunned publicity, both the good and then the bad, wanting only to play the game he loved.
“No, not exactly a fan,” she finally acknowledged. If he’d admired his own work—or more importantly, himself—she felt he would have at least attempted to speak up in his own defense rather than stoically accept the commission’s ruling that he be barred from baseball. “But he understands the man.” As well as anyone could, she added silently.
Her answer only raised more questions. He could see where his article would generate her terse response if her father was a diehard SOS fan and she’d been indoctrinated from the time she was a little girl, but obviously, that wasn’t the case.
Mike tried again. “He a gambler, too?”
The smile disappeared and her eyes, an incredible shade of sky-blue, darkened visibly.
“No, he’s not.”
As a matter of fact, except for that one incident that had brought him down, as far as she knew, her father never gambled. The one time she’d asked him about the details of the incident, he’d watched her for a long moment, then told her to leave it alone. She’d done as he’d asked, but that didn’t keep her from wondering.
Mike felt as if he was trying to find his way through an elaborate maze in the dark. “So you just decided to champion Shaw on your own.” He leaned forward, creating an intimate space for the two of them. “If you don’t mind my asking, why?”
That was why she was here, she reminded herself. “Because Steven Shaw doesn’t deserve to be remembered for one isolated moment of weakness, not when he had such an outstanding career from start to finish.”
She had a point, but that didn’t change the way things were. “Human nature,” he told her philosophically. “People tend to remember the bad rather than the good. Especially when they feel they’ve been betrayed.”
Miranda raised her chin defensively. He liked the way fire came into her eyes. “He didn’t betray anyone,” she protested.
Now, there she was wrong. “His fans felt differently. They believed in him.”
“And one transgression changes all that? What kind of fickle fans are they?” she demanded, passion growing in her voice. “For God’s sake, he didn’t kill anyone. He placed a stupid bet.”
Other men could place bets, but not a baseball player. She ought to understand that. “The man broke a cardinal rule.”
“I don’t remember ‘Thou shalt not bet’ being one of the Ten Commandments.”
“It is in baseball,” he pointed out. “If you’re a player.”
“And God forgives—but the baseball commissioner doesn’t, is that it?” she asked sarcastically. On the way over here, she’d promised herself that she’d keep her temper, but she’d had all these feelings bottled up inside for so long. It seemed to her that no one, no one had taken her father’s side in this.
“Something like that,” Mike answered. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look like the type to be a baseball groupie.”
She’d always hated that term, hated the connotation associated with it: mindless people who blindly followed a team or a player. There was far more to being a true fan of the game than that.
“I’m not,” she retorted. “I just love the game. And, I hate injustice.”
“So you think that Shaw got a raw deal.”
“I know he got a raw deal. The man played his heart out at every game. Nothing, but nothing came before baseball for him. The so-called ‘offense’ took place over ten years ago. The statute of limitations runs out in seven years for everything but murder. Don’t you think it’s only fair that it run out here, too?”
Maybe, if SOS had had this woman pleading his case, the commission might have been swayed, he mused. She certainly was passionate enough about her cause. “Like I said, baseball has different rules.”
Miranda shook her head. “Baseball is the all-American game and America stands for justice, or so we like to think.”
“Why are you so adamant about Shaw?” he asked. “From what I hear, the man’s almost a recluse.”
“He was,” she corrected. A hint of pride came into her voice. “Right after the car accident.”
It had been touch-and-go for a while. Her father had even been in a coma and some thought he’d never recover. But he did, or at least his body had. But even that was not entirely true. In the last ten years, five operations were needed to make him whole again. Fixing his spirit, however, took even more effort.
“But he’s set to start coaching a Little League team now and he’s finally coming out of his shell.”
Mike thought of all his failed attempts at getting an interview. The woman had really aroused
