Double Play (18 page)

“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? Managing, 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.

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 about 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.”

“Women, Pace,” she said with a shake of her head. “You ever loved a woman?”

“Maybe,” he allowed. “Maybe a couple of times. I was even engaged once when I was very young and stupid. But if we’re being honest, that wasn’t the forever kind of love either.”

“Are there two kinds of love then?”

“There are lots of kinds.”

At that, she stopped walking to face him, hands on her hips, expression amused. “Okay, Mr. Expert, like what?”

“Well, there’s the love that hits you after a few drinks and laughs, the one that says take this woman to bed for the rest of the night.”