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Chapter 8
Holland
Getting a meeting with Major League Baseball was supposed to be difficult. It was supposed to be a process that took weeks to work into, it wasn’t supposed to happen overnight, and it wasn’t supposed to result in a meeting scheduled for the very next week. I was supposed to have time to prepare, time to practice my brief, time to actually understand the changes Hale had made to the designs I’d struggled with for so long. I was supposed to have time to pull in someone from development. But few things in my life went the way they were supposed to.
“I told you about Chelsea Putnam,” Delia said when I had told her about my brainstorming session with Hale and whined about how difficult getting an MLB meeting would be.
“Who is Chelsea Putnam?” The name was familiar, had she told me this? I realized I’d been a little self-absorbed.
“We ran together.” Delia had this habit of downplaying her accomplishments. One of the ways she did this was by talking about running as if she sometimes went out for a jog—you know, to keep in shape. In truth, Delia had been plucked from her college track and field team to compete in the Olympic Trials and the subsequent Games in Beijing. She’d come close to medaling in the four hundred meter. In other words, she was kind of a big deal. That was why she was heavily recruited to coach, and why she had the somewhat cushy job at Collin University, coaching women’s track.
“Still not following you, Deel.”
“Sorry. We were in Beijing together. When she got back, she took a job with MLB.”
“What does she do there?” I’d put down the schematics I’d been scanning again, focusing on Delia’s voice on the other end of the phone.
“Not sure. I can give her a call for you, though. I bet she’d hook you up.”
“Seriously? That would be amazing.” I briefed Delia on what to tell Chelsea about why I hoped for a meeting, and dropped a couple names of the guys I’d love to meet with. I figured it would be weeks before I could get on their schedule, and that I’d probably have to present to a few different levels of management before I could get in front of any decision makers. And since corporate offices for MLB were in New York, all of this would mean a ton of travel that I’d somehow have to keep quiet.
So when my phone rang one morning, and the voice on the other end said she was Anton Mitchell’s secretary and asked if I would have time to come in and pitch first thing Monday, I was stunned. Mitchell worked in the commissioner’s office, and he was going to be in LA, meeting with Dodgers management. The meeting would be in the Dodgers’ front office.
I agreed, made note of the time and address, thanked the secretary profusely and then sat down at my desk to freak out, hopefully without anyone at work noticing.
My brain was spinning as I tried to fathom how I might possibly be prepared in time, and I kept coming back to a single solution, one thing that might allow me to get through this meeting successfully. But it seemed almost as crazy as the fact that the meeting was even happening.
I left the office at the earliest acceptable hour and pulled the scrawled phone number from my corkboard. Then, before I could think too much about it, I dialed.
“Hello?” The voice was angry, rough.
I almost hung up. “Hale?” I hated that I sounded uncertain, afraid, but his greeting had me rattled. “It’s Holland. From the coffeehouse?”
“Holland.” His voice softened as he said my name. He sounded almost relieved.
I paced back and forth in my small kitchen, pressing the phone to my ear. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said.
“You’re not bothering me.”
“Well, I’m about to.” I took a breath. Might as well just ask. “I need your help.”
I told him about the meeting Monday, that I didn’t think I could brief the tech side as well as I could handle the potential applications for the technology. I asked him if we could meet; if he would be willing to help me prepare for the meeting, maybe get together for an hour or so.
“Of course,” he said. “When?”
“The meeting’s Monday. Maybe tomorrow?” As soon as the words were out, I felt like an idiot. He was a good-looking guy; he certainly had plans for the weekend. Just because I had no life didn’t mean he was sitting around alone, too.
“Tomorrow is good. What time are you off?”
“I was thinking about taking the day to work on it.” I couldn’t imagine sitting at the office, pretending to work on account management when the biggest opportunity of my life was looming ahead of me, demanding focus.
“There’s a quiet coffee shop on 2nd, off Wilshire. Do you know it?”
I did—it was in my neighborhood. We arranged to meet there at ten the following morning. When I hung up, a strange twinge of excitement fluttered through me. “It’s not a date, Holland,” I told myself. I shook my head, trying to clear Hale’s dark eyes from my mind, and forced myself to stop thinking about how the single most arrogant—and most attractive—man I’d ever met might just be about to save my ass.
In a small way, I felt like I was being rescued. I’d always told myself I didn’t want a fairy tale; I wasn’t a princess and I’d never need to be saved. Fairy tales were pretty hard to believe in when you were a foster kid. Though, on second thought, princes were rarely alcoholic and unemployed. I decided we were safely out of fairy-tale territory.
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