Strike Out: Mustangs Baseball #6 Read Online Free

limitations when it came to needles and blood. The nurse practitioner, Mary Alice something-or-other, let him lie on the exam table during the procedure, so if he passed out, he wouldn’t end up on the floor. While she searched his arm for a suitable place to drain his life force, he turned his head and closed his eyes. Immediately, his mind conjured fantasies of the fabulous Dr. Tricia Reed draining him in a much more pleasant way.
    He saw black the instant the needle pricked his skin, coming to when Mary Alice patted his cheek with her latex-clad fingers.
    “All done?” He tried to sit up, but a firm hand on his shoulder was all it took to keep him on his back.
    “All done. Just lie there for a few minutes.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anyone as weak as you when it comes to blood work. Boggles the mind.”
    Royce blanched at the sound of her removing her gloves. He hated that sound.
    “Let me get you something to drink.” For a woman in her mid-fifties, she had a nice ass. As she walked away, he pushed to a sitting position. The room spun once or twice, but by the time she returned with a glass of orange juice, he was feeling better.
    “Thanks.” He took a sip. “Let’s not do this again anytime soon.”
    “Hey. Wasn’t my idea this time. But you know how I enjoy seeing you suffer….”
    “Wasn’t my idea either.”
    “Who’s Tricia?”
    The name hit him like a sucker punch. “Huh?”
    “Don’t play stupid with me. You always talk when you’re out of it. Used to be you talked about Hannah, but today it was Tricia.”
    Royce frowned. Why didn’t he know this about himself? He resolved then and there to avoid blood work for the rest of his life. “Nobody.”
    He mentally patted himself on the back for pulling the lie off with such ease. Tricia Reed, in the span of an hour, had wormed her way into his life and, apparently, his subconscious, too. But she wasn’t going any further. He’d done the relationship thing, had the divorce papers to prove it. Not to mention, he was supposed to be keeping an eye on her research.
    “She wouldn’t be the researcher I heard about, would she?”
    “Mind your own business.” The words were meant as a warning, but his delivery insured Mary Alice wouldn’t take offense.
    “You are my business, Stryker. I love you guys. Why else would I hang around this place?”
    He slid off the table. Finding his feet steady beneath him, he headed for the door, calling over his shoulder as he went, “You know you stay because of the hot bodies you get to touch. Don’t think we don’t know it, too!”
    A rather unladylike word followed him from the room. He might not like what she did, but he loved Mary Alice like a mother. They all did.
     
    ***
     
    Tricia thumbed through the questionnaire, checking to make sure Mustangs Test Subject #1, MTS1, for short, had answered every question. The second time around, she glanced at the answers to confirm his understanding of the question and appropriateness of the answer. With previous subjects, she’d never had a single qualm about reading their responses to the highly personal questions, but somehow, reading Royce’s neatly penned answers made her feel like a Peeping Tom.
    By the time she reached the end of the document, she knew more about him than he probably knew about himself. She’d bet he didn’t know his weekly alcohol consumption was well below the average for men his age or his usual six hours of sleep nightly could be a contributing factor to his on-field problems. She’d have to talk to him about those issues. In order for her data to be meaningful, he’d need to be well rested.
    Which brought her to question number forty. He’d checked divorced under marital status on the first page, which made his inquiry regarding masturbation a bit more understandable. She stared at the number scrawled in the box. Seven. On average.
    She vaguely recalled reading somewhere that men were prone to exaggeration when it