Double Play (16 page)

“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 with 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.

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.