Her articles were supposed to be about the guys and their popularity, what made them so beloved, but she found herself shifting gears, wondering if maybe the secret she’d been looking for had been right under her nose the whole time.
At the next game, she went early to take pictures of the pregame practice.
There was no sign of Pace.
Not that it mattered. She had a job to do. Period.
She sat in the stands with Sam and her brother, Jeremy, who was as tall and elegant and well dressed as his sister, with a smooth smile that could sell flint to the devil. The three of them made small talk until, with thirty minutes before the start, Holly got a call.
“Can you get to the clubhouse?” Gage asked. “Now?”
“Sure.” She went running, heart in her throat, picturing . . . Hell, she didn’t know exactly. “What?” she gasped when Gage pulled her inside the moment she arrived, tugging her through the luxurious front room to the Heat’s shower room. “What is it?”
“Wait here.”
She blinked when he slammed the door, and then again when less than twenty seconds later it whipped open.
Gage pushed Pace inside. Pace turned back to the door only to have Gage slam it in his face. He was in warm-up sweats and a shoulder brace, his face dark and edgy and quite pissed off.
Which was interesting, as she should be the pissed off one. She’d tried to contact him. She’d even stopped by with her amazing brownies—and they were amazing.
And he’d ignored her.
So it was with no little amount of annoyance and hurt that she crossed her arms and tried to remain unmoved by the sight of him in that damn brace and failed. “Are you okay?”
“Working on that.”
Okaaaay. “So what’s going on?”
“The Skip’s lost it.”
“Meaning?”
“His elevator isn’t going to the top floor. He’s playing a couple of cards short of a full deck.” He turned to face her and swirled his finger near his ear, whistling like a cuckoo clock. “He’s crazy.”
Which didn’t answer the question. “Talk to me, Pace.”
“Yeah. See that’s not what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to—”
The door whipped open and Gage poked his head in. “Hurry the hell up!”
The door slammed again.
“Jesus.” Pace shook his head. “Okay, listen. You’re not going to like this, but we have to kiss again.”
She narrowed her eyes. “But you’re not even pitching.”
A ghost of a smile twisted his lips. “Apparently winning has nothing to do my pitching and everything to do with your kiss.”
She laughed, but when he didn’t, she stared at him. “You’re serious.”
The door opened again. Gage’s head reappeared. “Serious.” The door shut.
Holly shook her head. “So I am supposed to just willingly kiss you even though you haven’t returned my calls?”
Pace closed his eyes and shook his head. He looked miserable and incredibly hot under the collar, and suddenly she got it. He was pissed for her.
He swiped a hand down his face. “Gage is convinced that we can’t sleep together until October, so he’s pretty much got me in lockdown.”
“From me.”
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me that a thirty-five-year-old man, a team manager of a major league baseball team, would actually believe that my kiss will win him a game?”
“I told you that you weren’t going to like this.”
“Ah.” She nodded as if she understood, but then shook her head because she didn’t. “Which part of kissing you again aren’t I going to like?”
“The part where you have to.” He grimaced and shoved the fingers of his left hand into his hair. “And then there are those press leaks.”
Her stomach went cold. “They think it’s me.”
“They don’t know. But I know, Holly, and I can’t—I won’t ask you to do this.”
Yeah, he really was mad for her, and damn if that didn’t drain the rest of her temper, and also do something else entirely—turn her on just a little bit. “Oh, gee, Pace.” She stepped close enough to put her hands on his chest. Yeah, suddenly she was feeling a whole lot better. “I feel so put out, having to kiss a man who kisses like heaven on earth.” She pushed him back to the shower wall then turned so that it was she who was trapped as she brushed her mouth over his jaw. “I really do . . .”
With a rough exhale, he turned his head and met her lips with his own, soft and gentle at first, then hungry and fierce, and the amusement faded right out of her lungs, replaced by an instant, staggering, brain-cell destroying heat—
“Okay, that’s it,” Gage said after letting himself in. “That’s great, thanks.” He wedged himself in between them. “That’s all we have time for.” And he unceremoniously pushed her out the door.
She turned back. “But—”
“We have another home game tomorrow,” Gage said. “Same time, same place.” And then he shut the door in her face.
Pace watched the Heat play while warming up the bench with his own sorry ass. They won, which helped some. Afterward he was checked again by the team docs, the news not good.
He wasn’t improving on PT. But another MRI didn’t reveal anything new. He went straight from testing to the big bash in the clubhouse, thrown by management with the sole purpose of bringing their popularity rating back up. It was a massive affair, heavy on the celebrities, press, and booze, cleverly designed to put on a good show.
Pace hated that kind of a show, and he went straight to the bar and ordered two Dr Peppers, full caffeine, full sugar. While he waited, he turned and surveyed the crowd, pretending he wasn’t searching for Holly.
Tucker came up to him, clasped a hand on his good shoulder, and smiled with genuine empathy. “Sucks being on the sidelines.”
For days people had been tiptoeing around him and his injury. Tucker was the first person to acknowledge to his face that he was screwed, a fact which Pace greatly appreciated. He was damn tired of empty platitudes. “Yeah.”
“Look, man, just take the time to heal.” Tucker nodded at Pace’s surprise. “Yeah, I know. No one else is going to tell you that, not during the season—hello, you’re their moneymaker. But you have to do whatever you have to do to get healthy, or you’ll end up selling fucking vitamins.”
With a heavy weight on his chest, Pace watched him limp away, then searched the crowd.
“She’s not here yet,” Wade said, coming up to his side, nodding to the bartender as he handed Pace the two tall Dr Peppers.
“Who’s not here yet?” Pace asked.
“The woman you’re craning your neck looking for who. Your sexy rabbit’s foot. And what the hell, man. Double fisting this early in the night? I thought you gave those suckers up.”
“Past tense.” The twin Dr Peppers were cool and icy against his palms and calling to him like a pair of long-lost lovers. “And Holly’s not mine. We’re not . . . we’re not.” Dammit.
“Yeah. I bet all that kissing is a real drag then.” Wade accepted his drink from the bartender and leaned against the bar. “I think you’re making a mistake with her.”
His gut tightened. “She’s not the leak.”
“I meant you’re making a mistake waiting to go for it.”
“Yeah, well.” Pace downed one of the drinks. “I have strict instructions.”
“Bullshit. You’re only obeying Gage because it suits you to ignore this thing between the two of you, and there is a thing,” he said when Pace opened his mouth. “And honestly? I don’t get it. You stand on a mound directly in the path of baseballs flying at you at the speed of light, and yet you’re afraid of her. One woman. I get that there’s a reason you’re afraid. Love can suck golf balls, and we both know it. But taking the walk instead of the hit? That’s just stupid.”
Holly appeared in the doorway, and as she seemed to be able to do, laid her eyes
right on Pace.
And damn if something didn’t shift inside of him. “I know,” he said to Wade. “I know it’s stupid to take the walk.”
“Then go for it already. Go get her and take her home. Get some fun of the naked variety. It does a body good.”
Someone handed Holly a cocktail. Her hair was down, loose to her shoulders, which was new. She wore a crisp business jacket over a matching skirt, which was not new.
And she was quite beautiful.
God, he’d missed her. “What if it’s not just naked fun? What if it’s more?”
“Then I’ll get to watch the mighty Pace Martin fall on his face for once.” Wade clasped Pace’s good shoulder, a wide grin on his face. “Hell, man, everyone should get something out of this.”
Holly saw Pace right away. It was that weird chemical vibe they had between them, and her own personal curse to be so hyperaware of him. She liked to think he was cursed with the same affliction when it came to her. He was at the bar with Wade, the two of them watching her intently, but only one of them stopping her heart in faded Levi’s and a button-down and with a day’s worth of stubble. With a careful breath, she headed over there, but was quickly sidelined by Samantha, who pulled her aside to stand with her and Jeremy.
“I don’t know how or why,” Sam said, “but per Gage, you’ve got yourself an unlimited pass to the clubhouse, with instructions to be there exactly one hour before the start of every game.”
Jeremy raised a brow. “Impressive, as Gage’s usually so tight-assed with those things that he squeaks when he walks. I had to beg for mine, and my own sister runs the PR department.”
Knowing exactly why she’d gotten the pass, Holly took it and slipped it into her purse. “Thanks.”
“What makes it the most interesting,” Sam said slowly, watching her face, “is that we have obvious press problems. They’ve revoked the other press passes.”
“Maybe it’s my articles,” Holly murmured, trying to deflect.
“Or maybe it’s how the saying goes,” Jeremy said. “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer . . .”
When he moved on to talk to someone else, Sam arched a brow. “Ignore my ass of a brother, he’s pissed because I wouldn’t give him some Heat privileged information he asked for. So what’s going on, Holly?”
“I’m not your leak.”
“Good. Can you explain the pass?”
“Turns out you were right about that whole superstitious thing.”
“Okay. More.”
“Pace has to kiss me before each game.”
The usually unflappable Sam blinked.
“The guys didn’t tell you?”
“No, they didn’t.”
Interesting that that hadn’t leaked like everything else. “Yeah. We have to kiss in the shower room.” She paused. Blushed. “Up against the tile wall.”
Sam choked out a shocked laugh. “Wow. Such a horrible sacrifice, having to kiss Pace Martin.” She stared at Holly. “So that’s it. The reason you’ve let your hair down, why you’re smiling more. You’ve been ferreting out secrets, while holding one of your own.”
“Hey, I smile.”
“Yeah, but this is more of a goofy I’ve-kissed-a-hottie smile. It looks good on you. So . . . where’s Pace on the kissing scale?”
Holly’s eyes locked on Pace. He was still watching her. “Off the chart.”
Sam laughed. “I knew it. Did he ever give you your interview? He certainly owes you now, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” she murmured, still looking at him. “He most certainly does owe me.”
Sam pulled out her phone, punched in a number, and from across the room Holly watched Pace pull out his cell phone and answer it.
Sam turned away so Holly couldn’t hear how their conversation went, but when Sam closed her phone, she nodded. “He says—”
Holly’s cell rang. She pulled it out of her purse and answered. “Hello?”
“Hey.”
Her heart tripped. “Pace.”
“Sam says you need the interview now.”
“That would be great, if you have the”—she turned to once again locate him in the crowd and nearly plowed right into him—“time.”
Standing in front of her with his cell phone to his ear, he smiled, a mix of resigned and heated affection in his eyes. “I’ve got the time.”
Chapter 12
You don’t save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain.
—Leo Durocher
Holly took a deep breath as Pace slid his phone back into his pocket. He’d been hurting, he had a lot on his plate, and he’d clearly needed distance, whether imposed by Gage or not.
And in truth, she’d needed the distance, too, needed it to do the job she’d come here to do. But all that went out the window when he gestured toward the door to the shower room, a door she was very, very familiar with.
He held it open for her, and as she walked through, she brushed up against him, incredibly aware of the air molecules that seemed to sizzle between them.
His clothes were simple tonight but there was nothing simple about the dark gaze that met hers. “You okay?” she asked, realizing he wasn’t wearing his shoulder brace.
He smiled a little tightly, but when he spoke, his voice was classic Pace, low throttled and sexy as hell. “Is that the woman or the reporter asking?”
“Let’s start with the woman.”
He let out a low laugh, scrubbed a hand over his day old stubble. “Not sure what the hell to do about this, Holly.”
“This.”
“Us.”
She looked at the tile wall of the showers, which several times now he’d pressed her up against to kiss her. “We could do whatever comes to mind.”
“I’m not sure you’d say that if you could see what keeps coming to my mind.”
Her knees wobbled and she let out a shaky breath. “I’d like to see,” she whispered.
“I thought this was going to be an interview,” he said, sounding just as unraveled as she. “Sam insisted.”
Right. “Okay, that first.” She struggled to push aside the aroused woman and find her professionalism. “I’ll try to make it painless.”
He let out a soft laugh, suggesting he didn’t figure that to be possible. “You do that. Come on.”
“Where to?”
“I figure it should be up on the hill where you watched me practice in the beginning, where you weren’t supposed to be. Remember?”
Where she had gotten her first look at him, where a part of her had begun to fall for him . . . “I remember.”
“The diamond looks good from there, especially lit up at night,