by Jill Shalvis
“No,” Gage grounded out. “Somebody needs a win.”
That night, back at home in his own house, Pace retrieved his e-mail, which included a link to Holly’s latest blog, sent by Sam. This time Holly had tackled America’s fascination /obsession with the players—the good, the bad, and the ugly, from the little kids just wanting an autograph, to the drunk fans wanting a piece of action after the game, to women wanting body parts signed.
Pace shook his head. “Had a good time writing this one, didn’t you?” he murmured, reading on to where she’d outlined the innate problems with the players being treated like royalty, how the fast celebrity status could lead to a false sense of reality, an inflated ego, and even a distance from the game and fans that paid them their millions.
False sense of reality? Not so much, not in Pace’s case anyway.
Inflated ego? Maybe, and yet hopefully not.
But distance? Check. And it was that, he figured, that finger right on the pulse of his own personal problem, that bothered him the most.
He absolutely felt distanced from his own damn life.
The next day, he pitched in the bullpen for practice, badly, and in spite of Red making him stop early, his shoulder hurt like hell.
Gage blew his equivalent of a gasket and hauled Pace’s ass to medical, where he was assessed.
Severely strained rotator cuff.
Red pulled out his hanky for the diagnosis, and Pace felt like shit. Management called a meeting to make the decision—either put him on the DL for a fifteen day stay, or listing him as day-to-day until he recovered.
With Red’s help, Pace fought long and hard for day-to day status, convincing the Skip that he’d do fine with physical therapy. It put a lot of pressure on him to recover quickly, but hell, he was used to pressure.
That night, Wade brought him pizza and they had a pity party, but it didn’t help.
Without Pace, the Heat pulled Ty up to a starter. He was good, but not good enough to take the Dodgers, and they lost their next two games. The press continued their massacre of the entire team, and the uneasiness in Pace’s chest swelled, tightening against his rib cage.
Because no matter how he tried to spin it, things had gone straight to hell.
Chapter 11
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the
Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona.
—George F. Will
Sam was extremely careful with the press release regarding Pace’s injury. Careful and optimistic, stating only that Pace had a strained his rotator cuff, to be treated with PT. Then Gage made him go into seclusion—no cell calls, no computer, nothing but PT and rest for three days.
He was kept busy with that and icing, along with lower-body workouts.
On the forth day, feeling caged in, he used Wade’s cell phone and called Holly. He didn’t know why, other than he just wanted to hear her or better yet, see her. “How about dinner?” he asked when she answered.
“Why, Wade,” she murmured in his ear. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Funny,” he said dryly, nearly laughing for the first time in days. “Say yes.”
“Yes to dinner, and yes to news on you.”
“I didn’t offer news on me.”
She sighed in his ear, a soft, anxious sound that made him feel like a jerk. “Just tell me this,” she murmured. “Are you okay?”
“Fantastic.”
“The truth, Pace.”
“I’m working on being okay.”
“Fair enough. Dinner would be great. So would an interview.”
Hell. “I was thinking steak and a drink, and no interview.”
“Fine, be mysterious. Name the place and I’ll meet you. I’m in Los Angeles at a meeting with my publisher, but I’ll be back in a few hours.”
They arranged a time and place, but when Pace showed up at the restaurant, Wade and Henry were already there. He stared at them, knowing he wasn’t going to like this. “What are you doing?”
“Gage sent us.” Wade wisely handed Pace a drink to go with that news. “We’re on babysitting duty.”
“What?”
“Yeah, you can look, but you can’t touch,” Henry instructed in a perfect imitation of Gage, and when Pace scowled, he quickly added, “You know that was the Skip, right? Not me.”
“You can tell Gage where to put his orders, and that’s right up his—”
Holly came up to the table then, with a sweet, welcoming smile. “Hi, guys.” She set a hand on Pace’s arm and looked into his eyes and made him forget his own name. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
Her hand ran lightly over his bandaged shoulder. “There’s that fine again.”
“Well I’m fine now,” he clarified, knowing by her warm smile that she understood it was because of her presence.
Wade and Henry scooted in and made room, and that was that. A foursome. Terrific. With a sigh, Pace held out a chair for her and gave in, after which his two teammates spent the evening telling her stories, like the time they’d hidden all of Pace’s luggage when he’d been in the shower at Houston.
“He was forced to come through the clubhouse butt naked in front of a pack of reporters,” Henry told her with glee. “Fun times.”
Yeah. Fun times. He looked over at a laughing Holly and found himself smiling. “You think that’s funny?”
“I do.”
After dinner, the guys faithfully stuck around in the parking lot until Holly kissed them each on the cheek and drove off, leaving Pace with the urge to strangle each of them.
And then Gage.
“Think of it this way,” Wade said, putting a hand on his good shoulder as they watched Holly’s taillights vanish into the night. “She’s the first woman you haven’t been able to have at the snap of your fingers when you wanted. She’s also the first woman to stick on your mind for more than a split second. That’s a good thing, right?”
“What are you getting at?”
“That this is new for you, this slow dating-ritual dance. And different. And maybe, it’s also something really great.”
“Which I would know by now if I was allowed to be alone with her for even a second.”
“Maybe she’s worth the wait.”
Yeah. Yeah, maybe she was. He went home alone to channel surf for a while, then gave in to temptation and called Holly to make sure she got home okay.
And to hear her voice.
When she didn’t answer, he left her a voice message, a stupid, stuttering, rambling message that came from acting without thinking, which he was most definitely doing. After hanging up, he promptly fell off the wagon and drank two Dr Peppers.
The next morning, he woke up to find that the sports world was filled with rumors of the real nature of his injury, that it was far more serious than reported, that it wasn’t just a strained rotator cuff but a severe tear that could be the end of his career.
Gage blew an even larger gasket and had Sam working night and day trying to figure out where the hell the rumors were originating from, along with all the other rumors they’d been battling for weeks, needing to know who the hell was always one step ahead of them.
Pace lay in bed that night and knew who it could have been.
Holly.
Except for one thing—he didn’t believe it. Refused to believe it.
The next morning, he drove to the park. Chipper and River were ecstatic and couldn’t wait to tell him how great Holly was. Seemed she’d taken them to lunch, and now they thought the sun rose and set in her eyes.
Pace thought something else, and he didn’t like it. “What did she want to know about me?”
“Nothing,” River said. “We didn’t even talk about you.”
“Uh-huh.” Could he really have been that fooled? “Come on, tell me.”
“Jeez,” Chipper said. “She came for us. Get your own girl.”
He sighed, and spent some time working on their field work. Later he had a meeting wit
h Sam, where he signed boxes of merchandise for the 4 The Kids website.
“Pace,” she said quietly, helping him sort through the stuff. “About these press leaks.” She paused. “Do you think Holly . . . ?”
He met her gaze, his even, and spoke what he wanted to believe with his whole heart. “I don’t.”
“Good.” She let out a breath and shook her head. “I don’t either, I just had to ask.”
“Yeah.” When he finished signing, he headed straight into physical therapy, and from there into the Heat’s weekly team meeting.
In the middle of one of Gage’s rants, Pace’s cell phone rang. Never good, as Gage hated to be interrupted. Even worse, it wasn’t Pace’s usual standard-issued ring tone. Instead, his phone burst out with the theme song to the Courtship of Eddie’s Father. As the chorus of “People, let me tell you ’bout my best friend . . .” started playing, Pace’s eyes cut straight to Wade, who was doing his best to hold back his grin. Paced looked down at the screen and sighed.
Holly. “Are you kidding me?” he asked Wade. “You programmed her a ring tone on my phone?”
“No phones in team meetings!” Gage yelled.
“It’s Holly, Skip,” Henry said urgently. “If he ignores her, maybe she won’t kiss him at the next game.”
Gage ground his back teeth together. “Go ahead,” he said tightly. “Answer the damn thing. Tell her you still can’t sleep with her until October . . . politely.”
As everyone laughed, Pace thought about killing Wade, but that was all he needed, a suspension for fighting, as satisfying as that might be. So with the whole team watching, he opened his phone. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said, sounding sweet and open and warm. “Sorry I missed you last night. I was in the shower.”
Ah, man. And now he had that image in his head, her in the wet, hot shower.
Naked.
And it was a damn good image, too.
“I saw the papers,” she said softly. “I’m sorry it’s so serious.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s . . . not?”
He turned away from Gage’s questioning expression. “No.”
She paused as if waiting for him to say something else, which he couldn’t. Not with his fascinated audience.
“Are you busy?” she finally asked.
He felt twenty pairs of eyes staring at him. “I’m in a team meeting.”
“Oh! I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you another time.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Smooth. Jesus, wasn’t he smooth. He hung up and slid his phone back into his pocket, feeling like a clueless teenager.
As soon as the meeting ended, Wade hightailed it out of there, probably to save his own ass, and Pace stood up to go after him. Red caught him by the back of the shirt. “You need to wait until the end of the season to kill him.”
“No.”
“Yes,” Gage said in a voice of steel. “And as a bonus, I promise that if you wait, I’ll even hold him down for you.”
Good enough.
After two hours of only eking out half a page, Holly gave up on her article, shut her laptop, and called Allie. “I’m in over my head.”
“I’ve seen the papers. The Heat’s taking it up the ass.”
“I know. The reports are brutal, and even worse, it’s stuff no one’s supposed to know. They can’t figure out who’s leaking the info.”
“Does anyone think it’s you?”
“I don’t know.” Holly leaned back in her chair, holding the phone in the crook of her shoulder as she flipped through the papers. “I think Sam believes I wouldn’t do such a thing. But the guys? Who knows.”
“What about the guy, the one who matters?”
“I haven’t seen him,” she admitted. “The clubhouse’s closed to everyone except the team. If he’s not locked in a private training session or being evaluated by management’s medical team, or holed up with Wade and the others where the press can’t get to them, then he’s nowhere to be found.”
“When is his surgery?”
“That’s the thing. His injury was blown up in the rumors.”
“Good. I think you should find him, kiss him so they win again, and then, after the game, sleep with him.”
Holly choked out a laugh. “And how will that help?”
“Well, you’ll feel much more relaxed, for starters. Especially if he’s any good. But more importantly, the Heat will win because they’re talented, not because you didn’t have sex, and then all those stupid superstitions are poof, gone.”
“You’re as crazy as they are, you know that? How’s the screenplay going?”
“Steamy. I’m in the middle of a sex scene right now. The hero’s nailing his heroine against the wall of his shower and they’re—”
“Okay,” Holly said with another laugh. “I’ll just watch it when it comes out on the big screen.”
“If it ever gets there.”
“It will,” Holly said firmly. “Believe in it.”
“I will if you will,” Allie said with irony and clicked off.
Knowing Allie was right, Holly made brownies and drove to Pace’s house, which was huge and new and on the bluffs overlooking the beach. It was gorgeous.
And empty. Through the window next to his front door, she could see his entire foyer. There was a large pile of duffel bags and three bats leaning in one corner, and along a wide bench sat his glove and a batting helmet, beneath which was a dizzying array of athletic shoes—Adidas, Nike, spikes, cleats, running shoes . . .
No sign of movement, though.
She left the brownies on his porch with a note.
He didn’t call. She didn’t get anything but a silent message, loud and clear. Either he believed she was the media leak or . . .
She was the only one yearning and aching.
She had no idea which was worse.
The next day, Ty’s and Henry’s mandated drug tests came back inconclusive. With the lack of evidence, the two were cleared to play.
Holly was fascinated and horrified by the whole thing. Fascinated by the baseball drug culture in general. Over the history of the sport, much of it had been knowingly swept under the rug by the very people who governed it. But in the past few years, fan pressure and bad press had forced a change. A change not everyone had been happy to make.