Fielder's Choice

  After everyone had gone up to bed, Matt couldn’t sleep. He picked up his guitar and began to strum. Music was his refuge, his go-to escape. Usually playing banished the deep loneliness that preyed upon him like hungry lions circling an ailing antelope. But as he sat in the dim room, playing his favorite songs, the tightness in his gut refused to ease.

  He rested the guitar against his desk and pressed his palms to his eyes, but the darkness and the pressure didn’t soothe him. He opened his laptop, typed in his password and found himself looking at online dating sites. He laughed at a couple of the profiles written by women who looked way too pretty to be looking for online dates. But maybe they were like him. Maybe their lives were so busy with obligations that there wasn’t any time left over to meet suitable candidates in the normal course of a day.

  He moved his cursor to the section that said describe yourself and imagined what he could write for his profile.

  Nearly-over-the-hill guy who can hit, run and throw, seeks... Seeks what? Seeks a woman who won’t mind being left alone with his six-year-old daughter while he plays 162 games a year and spends half his time on the road?

  He skipped that section and scrolled down the page.

  Maybe there was a support group for lonely baseball players—wouldn’t that be a load of fun? They could talk about the embarrassment of being famous and lonely, lonely in a way that gnawed at a man from the inside out. Or about the odd hollowness that came with being objectified, about walking the fine line of stardom, of discerning when you were seen as a person and when you were merely an overblown fantasy. He shook his head. He didn’t want to be someone’s fantasy. At least not like that.

  When he got to the section where it asked for a physical description of his ideal woman, he typed furiously. He finished and read it over. Sapphire-blue eyes and toned, strong body. A mysterious smile that promised hidden depths and fascination. Curves that begged for touching. And a laugh that lifted him from his troubles.

  A flush of embarrassment stung through him when he realized he’d described Alana, the woman from the olive ranch.

  God, why couldn’t he dismiss her from his thoughts? Maybe it was her connection to the land. Maybe the dream he’d buried long ago still held its power—the dream of having a place where he could lay down roots, grow food, a life where his achievements could be measured by something other than stats in box scores and team standings. Yet while that might be an influence, the woman herself was a potent draw. The vision of her tossing her hair in the sunlight and the sultry smile that crossed her face as she did shot straight to his groin, inciting fantasies that shocked him. Fantasies that sped through him, teasing into him, tangling his thoughts and coursing into his body with a power he didn’t try to control. Fantasies that had complication written all over them.

  He pressed the Delete key and shut down his computer. He’d better just stay lonely. He knew that territory. Knew it all too well.