Free Drive You Wild: A Love Between the Bases Novel by Jennifer Bernard Page B

Something that caught my radar, but I wasn’t listening. Say it again.”
    Paige tried to reconstruct it. “I think I said that’s got to be the sexiest outfield in baseball. But don’t listen to me. I just got divorced and I’m not completely myself yet. I’ve been doing and saying some strange things lately.”
    Marcia jumped to her feet, sending her rolling desk chair spinning across the room. “That’s it. Baseball’s Sexiest—no . . . something with Texas—Outfields are Hotter in Texas . . . no . . . Outfields are Hotter than Your Fields.”
    Paige sidestepped away from the runaway chair. “What the heck are you talking about?”
    “The campaign that’s going to get everyone talking about the Catfish.”
    “Baseball’s Sexiest Outfield? That’s how you want to market the team? I don’t think the players would like that.”
    “You’re right. Baseball’s Hottest Outfield. First, it’s Texas and it’s always hot. Second, I’d have to check the stats, but off the top of my head, those three combined have a pretty remarkable OBP. Third, look at them.”
    By now Marcia was next to her, pressing her face against the glass. “Those three are hot, and that’s with my seventy-year-old hormones. Not only that, they’re multiracial. This is goddamn genius. Your father is going to love me. I gotta write this up, girlie. Take a bathroom break. Cry your little heart out. Sorry about the divorce. Go on now.” Marcia gave her a friendly shove toward the door.
    Paige resisted the tiny whirlwind. “But I don’t need to cry right now. And it was my idea.”
    “No it wasn’t. You didn’t even know what I was talking about. All you did was lust after some ballplayers. We’ll present this to Crush tomorrow, so I have a lot of work to do. Don’t say a word to him before then. Top secret. We have to present it just right. Think visuals. Get inspired. Bye-bye.”
    The door closed behind her. Paige shrugged. She couldn’t bring herself to care very much. Would Baseball’s Hottest Outfield really inspire the right kind ofmedia attention? Hudson would have hated a campaign like that. He was actually a shy person, which was something she’d found endearing. He didn’t like to promote himself or trash-talk or anything like that. The problem, he’d once told her, was that he’d shot up to his full height so early in life that people were scared of him. A tall black dude, no matter how nice a guy, made people nervous. He’d learned to hide behind a smile and minimize his height.
    Paige wasn’t even close to shy. She was insatiably curious about people and loved nothing more than to coax their stories out of them. At parties, Hudson used to hang next to her as much as she’d let him, relaxing in her flow of conversation and only speaking when necessary or when he spotted a basketball buddy. Off the court, he always kept a set of large, very obvious headphones handy in case he needed to ward off strangers who might want to converse with him. His roommates at college used to call Hudson and Paige “Big Black and the Chatterbox.”
    Oh, snap out of it, she commanded herself. It was a screwed-up relationship anyway, as she’d discovered in her counseling sessions. She was Hudson’s crutch in so many ways. In return, he’d given her a temporary purpose in life. As Hudson’s wife, she was no longer torn between two homes, two entirely different families. She’d acquired a firm place in the universe, even if it was a little strange, since the people around her spoke Italian and pounded up and down a basketball court. She’d latched onto Hudson just as much as he’d latched onto her.
    The really pathetic thing was that when he fell in love with Nessa, Paige had wanted to stay friends. Splitting up with Hudson had felt like losing a brother, someone very familiar and safe. But Nessa hadn’t been interestedin anything like that. No friends, no checking in with the occasional text message, even a passing encounter