“The diamond looks good from there, especially lit up at night, like now. If you want pictures.”
“Wow, you really are going to behave.”
“I didn’t say that. This way.” He took her through the equipment room, where he grabbed two flashlights, then led her out a door that opened directly outside, along the backside of the parking lot.
It was a very dark night, and quite a hike from here to the top of the hill, but he didn’t say a word about either. Instead, he said, “Thanks for the brownies, by the way. They were the best I’ve ever had. You’ve got all these . . . pieces, Holly. So many pieces of you.”
Yes. She’d flitted from one to another her entire life, never quite landing . . .
He was quiet a long moment as they climbed, as he began to struggle for breath. “I think that’s what’s so attractive about you,” he said. “You’re whole. With a bunch of different pieces making that whole. Not me. I’m just the one piece—baseball.”
And at the moment, he didn’t even have that, which she knew had to be killing him. But there was much more to him than baseball, or there could be. “Wade introduced me to your father when he came to watch you play.” Drill Sergeant Edward Martin had been tall, dark, and handsome. Like father, like son. He’d also been formidable and quite intimidating. “He seemed proud of you.”
“He’s confused by me is what he is.”
“He was at your game. That says a lot.”
He looked at her. “Your father miss your stuff?”
“He missed my life.” She shrugged at his questioning gaze. “He walked.”
“My mother did the same.” He was quiet a moment, then when the trail got rocky, or maybe just because, he reached for her hand. “My dad’s a busy guy. Not into kid stuff.”
“And he considers baseball kid stuff?”
“He did. And maybe that’s why I went for it. I couldn’t please him to save my life, so why not royally piss him off.” He shook his head. “I was a shitty kid. Bad attitude. You?”
“I don’t know. I pretty much had the opposite thing going. My mom was the shitty kid. She had both a bad man habit and a bad shopping habit, each constantly landing us in trouble until I was old enough to take over. And even then, she was still sneaking around, spending what we didn’t have, trying to fool me . . .”
“Ah.”
“What?”
He squeezed her hand. “Explains your love of furrowing out secrets.”
“Yeah. I guess it does.”
He smiled and nodded, and they fell into a surprisingly comfortable silence as they walked. At the top, he stepped to the edge and she pulled out her camera.
He looked down onto the field far below. “Looks different from up here.”
“You miss it.”
He glanced back at her, the affirmation in his dark gaze, a tough, edgy, beautiful study in the night, backlit by the lights over the stadium. A tough, edgy, beautiful, unhappy study.
“You don’t have to be all baseball, Pace.”
“Let’s just get the interview part over with. Ask what you want to know. I’ll answer.”
“Not that I’m complaining, but I can’t believe we’re finally doing this.”
There was a light breeze ruffling his hair, lit by the moon high above. He was definitely revealing more to her than he usually did, and she couldn’t tear her gaze off him. His eyes were serious, so very serious as he said nothing, and slowly she lowered her camera.
Because she got it. A little slow but she finally got it. “You’re not letting me do this, at least not willingly.”
More of his famed nothing, and she let out a low laugh. “So what did they threaten you with?”
“Another game on the bench added onto my medical time off.”
“Ouch.”
“They wouldn’t really do it, but they’re pretty desperate for good publicity.”
“It’s not a death sentence, talking to me.”
“That’s not what I was worried about.”
“What are you worried about?”
“How about the fact that I’m not too upset that Gage is going to make us kiss before every game for the rest of the season.”
Yeah. That didn’t seem to upset her either. “Is that a problem?”
An indefinable sound escaped him, a breath that cut through the thick, steamy hot August night and stirred up all sorts of memories. “I’d have thought you’d have a thing against sleeping with one of your subjects.”
“Sleeping with?”
His eyes were very clear and very direct. “That’s the rational next step for this thing, don’t you think?”
Her tummy quivered. “I thought you were ignoring it.” “No can do, apparently.”
She let out a breath. “So we what, un-ignore it in the name of getting past it? Is that what you’re thinking?”
“Sleeping with someone tends to do that.”
More than her tummy quivered now. “Always?”
“Well . . . have you ever ended up keeping a lover forever?”
“No,” she admitted, and he gave her an I-rest-my-case look. “Okay,” she said shakily. “Maybe we’d better finish the interview first because I’m losing brain capacity quick.”
“Fine.”
She cleared her throat, slipped her camera in her bag, and pulled out her pad. Tried to switch gears from hot and bothered to professional. “Everyone knows your shoulder is in question. A strained rotator cuff, right?”
“Yes.”
“Rumors are that it’s torn.”
“If it was, I’d be in big trouble. It’s strained, that’s all. Physical therapy ought to do the trick.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
He paused very briefly. “We’ll worry about it then.”
“How does that make you feel knowing it could all be taken away due to an injury?”
His fathomless eyes locked on hers. “How would it make you feel to give up writing for an unforeseen amount of time?”
“Terrified.”
He said nothing to that, just turned his head and looked out at the field again. “I’ll be fine.”
She stared at his broad shoulders and ached for him, hoping with all her heart what he said was true. “The press and blogs have been tough on you guys lately. Does that affect your game?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because press, good or bad, is intangible. It’s about the game for me, not about what people think.”
“But people are fascinated by you. You know that, right?”
He shook his head. “A fact I’ve never really wrapped my brain around.”
“Your bio says you moved twenty-seven times before you graduated high school and headed off to San Diego State. After that, your record speaks for itself, but very little is known about your private life.”
“It’s not about my private life.”
“Come on, Pace. You know people want to know about you, what makes you tick.”
“What makes me tick . . .” He let out a long, exasperated breath. “You know my father, career military all the way. Hardcore. He expects the best of the best. The only thing I had a shot at being the best at was baseball. I just got lucky it panned out.”
She suspected luck had nothing to do with it. It was most likely a product of growing up under the thumb of a man who’d been hard-nosed, hard-assed, and not exactly nurturing. “Actually, your life isn’t so different from a military lifestyle. You’re focused, disciplined, hard-working. You train daily, you’re single-minded—”
“I play ball for a living, Holly. Fun and games, all the time.”
“I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you do either. You take this profession incredibly seriously.” He was silent so she went for anther angle. “What do you see yourself doing after?”
“I’m not retiring.”
“Eventually you will. You going to enjoy your millions or move on to something else? Coaching maybe, like Red? Man
aging, like Gage? Or maybe golf. You could play charity golf tournaments—”
“I thought you were going to make this painless.” He turned his back to her and stood there, his broad shoulders blocking the moonlight, creating a sort of halo around him.
But he was no angel, and she knew it.
Not even close.
And she ached for him anyway. Maybe because of it. She wanted him, flaws and all. But this wasn’t about her and her wants. “Back to the drugs,” she said quietly. “Under the new rules, everyone gets tested annually. An invasion of privacy or a necessity?”
“Hell,” he muttered under his breath and swiped a hand over his face. “A necessity.”
“You’ve never had a whisper about you being on any stimulants, and yet you throw like a machine.”
“Because I know how to throw like a machine. I don’t do drugs, Holly.”
She felt his temper, and his control, and could appreciate both. “What about the other players on the Heat?”
“You can’t ask me a question like that.”
True, it wasn’t very fair of her. But her job was rarely fair. “Ty’s been suspected.”
“He tested clean.”
“No, he tested inconclusive. There’re new drugs out there, performance-enhancing drugs that are slipping past the testing.”
“Shit.”
“You and I both know, many athletes do drugs.”
“Not me,” he said. “And this is supposedly about me. What else does your pad want to know?” he asked, sounding quite over this whole thing.
Couldn’t blame him. She was over it, too. She slipped the pad into her purse and took the leap. “It wants to know if you’d like to stop the interview and get back to that other thing.”
“The other thing?”
“The whole getting-each-other-out-of-our-system thing.”
His eyes were steady.
Calm.
Hot.
“Very much,” he said.
She set down her purse and camera.
He put his hands on her hips.
Hers slid up his chest.
And then they both stepped into each other and his mouth covered hers, hot and hungry, and all their differences, disagreements, frustrations, and arguments went out the proverbial window.
Chapter 13
Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.
—Ted Williams
Holly’s soft sigh of pleasure echoed in Pace’s head as they dived into the kiss with reckless abandon. God, the way she fisted her fingers in his hair, the arch of her hips to his . . . it rocked his world. She rocked his world. “Holly—”
“Mmmm,” she murmured, and just like that, the tension that had been dogging him finally began to drain away, replaced by a different sort of tension altogether.
There was only this, the feel of her soft, curvy body, the taste of her . . . Cupping the back of her head with his hand, he slid his tongue to hers, loving her moan of pleasure, the way she lost some of her carefulness, which was just as sexy as her being careful in the first place. She had the best mouth, warm and giving, and so damn sweet he could kiss her forever. And if kissing her was this good, his brain went hog wild fantasizing about what else would be good. All of it. That much he could pretty well guarantee, and his hands made themselves at home on her body, everywhere he could reach, feeling her response in every quiver she made. His hands slipped beneath her shirt, touching that creamy, smooth skin, making her whisper his name in a shaky voice.
More. That was all he could think, and pressing her back to the tree, he filled his palms with her breasts.
And then went still at the crack of a branch behind them. Someone was here with them. He pulled back, but the dark was so complete he couldn’t see.
“Pace?” Holly murmured, her hands going to his wrists.
He could hear footsteps running away from them now, down the path. He bent for the flashlights, handing her one. “Wait here.”
Their surprise guest was quick, but he was quicker, and just around the next turn he overcame . . .
Tia.
His crazy fan whirled to face him, breathing like a lunatic, her hair falling into her flushed face. Wearing his away jersey, which fell to her knees, she carried both a flashlight and an autograph book, with a small camera strapped around her neck, lens open.
“Hi. I wasn’t stalking you, I swear,” she said quickly. “I was just watching you on the field, which is totally allowed because it’s like six hundred million yards away, so you can’t get mad. Please don’t get mad.”
“But I wasn’t on the field, Tia. I was up here.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know that. Well, sort of I didn’t. Okay, I knew, but I just wanted to look at you, that’s all, honest to God.” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I’m your biggest fan, Pace. You know that. No one’s a bigger fan than me.”
“Tia—”
“So dammit, you should be kissing me, not her. You should be getting me out of your system!”
“Tia, listen to me. You could go to jail.” He didn’t want her to, but the last time she’d been hauled down to the station, they’d found a huge Swiss Army knife in her purse, a fact that had made him more than a little uncomfortable given her habit of showing up wherever he was. “Remember what the police said would happen if they found out you’d ignored their warnings?”
“I’m not going to tell them. And . . . and you wouldn’t, right? Because I’m yours, Pace. Forever yours.”
“Tia—” He stared regretfully, slipping his hand into his pocket for his cell phone. He felt like a jerk, but there was something seriously off about her, and he had Holly with him—
“If you would only try me, you’d like me,” she whispered, also reaching into her purse. “I swear. I’ll do anything you want, anything—”
“Problem?” Holly asked, coming around the corner.
Pace reached for her hand and tried to pull her to his side, but she resisted, instead turning to Tia. “Hi there,” she said to his crazy stalker. “Tia, right?”
Tia blinked, and a huge tear rolled down her cheek as she kept her hand in her purse. “He’s mine. You can’t have him.”
“Have him? Pace isn’t a piece of property, Tia.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do. And stalking is a crime.”
Tia clutched her heart. “I’m not stalking him. I love him.”
“But if you get caught here, they’ll likely take you to jail. And then Pace will get more bad press. If you love him like you say, you don’t want that.”
Tia opened her mouth, then shut it. With a pensive, petulant glare in Pace’s direction, she whirled and stalked off.
“Interesting night,” Holly said into the silence. “I got both to interview you and to save you—not that you needed saving,” she added kindly.
He stared down at her with the oddest desire to say, Yeah, I do. I need saving. Save me. “You seem to have experience with stalkers.”
“What I have experience with is pissing people off.” She turned to head back down the trail as well. “I’m trying to learn how to defuse instead of ignite.”
He followed after her. “Who did you ignite?
“An ex.”
He took her hand and slowed her down. He wanted to see her face for this. “What happened?”
“I wrote a blog series about his industry, specifically the space industry.”
“I read that series recently,” he said. He ran a finger over her forehead, where her bruise had been. “I was impressed.”
“My ex wasn’t. I exposed his team for cutting corners where they shouldn’t have, linking an accident to their neglect, an accident where three astronauts died.” She sighed. “The program lost its tenuous funding, NASA pulled out, and Alex was fired and went to civil court, where he was sued for millions.” She paused. “And the truth is, though I hate that I got people I cared a
bout in trouble with the law, I’d do it again because people got hurt directly due to the neglect. I have no tolerance for that.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Yeah.” She paused. “But he said if I’d loved him, I’d never have written about him.”
“Did you love him?”
She shrugged. “I liked him. A whole lot, actually. And when it was over, I hurt a whole lot. But love?” Something came and went in her eyes, a sorrow, a regret, but in a flash it was gone. “I don’t think I’m really cut out for that particular emotion. I question everything too much.”
“Because you don’t trust anyone who hides things, and we all do,” he said, watching her absorb that, and think about it.
“I guess that’s true enough.”
She’d done a hell of a job raising herself in spite of being very alone and undeniably neglected to boot. But she’d made something of herself, and he loved the inner strength in her. “Thing is, Holly, I know that secrets make you feel unsafe, but the plain fact is that not everyone is hiding something bad or out to hurt someone.”
“I’m getting to that realization. It’s a balance thing for me, between the Holly of old and the new me.”
She was the first woman he’d met since his career had taken off who looked at him without diamonds and money signs in her eyes. “So this new Holly, is she going to believe in love?”
“Probably not for myself.” Pulling free, she headed down the hill.
“Wait,” he said to that sweet ass. “So you’re saying you don’t want a happily ever after? I thought all women wanted that.”
“Fairy tales don’t exist in real life,” she said over her shoulder.
He had pretty much seen and done it all. Sure, he was a little cynical, a little jaded, but in that moment, he realized he’d met his match. “Wow.”
She sent him a questioning look over her shoulder.
“You mean it. You really don’t believe in love.”
“And you do? Have you ever been in love?”
“With baseball, just about all my life.”
“With something that loved you back,” she said dryly.
“I don’t know, baseball’s showed me the love.”
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