“Bat up, smart-ass.” He ducked to avoid getting clocked in the head with it. “River, grab a ball.”
“Yeah!” the kid said with enthusiasm and leapt back to the mound.
“Lob it softly,” Pace directed. “Very softly.”
“I can do it,” Holly protested, and gave a little wriggle to get her stance right. A wriggle that put her butt right up against the button fly of his Levi’s and very nearly had his eyes rolling back in his head.
“Don’t hold back,” she demanded of River with yet another wriggle.
Jesus. “Trying to keep you alive here,” he said in her ear. “Go with me on this.”
She craned her neck and looked at him, the kind of look that turned him on and upside down and inside out, and he had to laugh at her. At him. “Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Don’t try to kill the ball, just connect with it. And keep your eyes on it.”
She rolled them first, then nodded to River as Pace backed out of the way.
“Wait for your pitch,” he said. “Swing level, and follow through.”
When she connected, she didn’t drop the bat, she didn’t run for first. Instead, she executed the cutest, sexiest little boogie dance he’d ever seen and whirled to him, nearly knocking him out with the bat. “See?” she asked, eyes lit with joy. “Told you I could hit.”
It was a foul ball that any first baseman worth his salt would have caught in less than four seconds. Hell, Danny caught it, and he was nearsighted, farsighted, and had an astigmatism to boot, but Pace found that looking into Holly’s wide, reveal-all eyes, he couldn’t take it away from her by saying so. Tough as she was, smart and cynical as she was, when she looked at him like that, he also saw a flash of vulnerability, and it scared him.
He didn’t want to be her soft spot.
So he turned from her and gestured to the guys to get into their positions. Since he couldn’t even toss the damn ball, let alone pitch to them for hitting practice, he sat on his ass on the sidelines nursing his damn shoulder like a baby while he called out directions. “River, watch that foot. Remember, your foot is your lead.”
And Jesus, now he sounded like Red.
Not a bad thing, he had to admit. He’d learned some of his best moves from Red, on and off the diamond. And it’d been from watching Red and Tucker together that he’d learned what a real father-son relationship should be like.
“You’ll be a good dad.”
He turned to look at Holly, who’d come to sit next to him. She’d been playing left field, but since no one could hit that far, it was a waste of her dubious talents. But that she’d even tried had been . . . entertaining. Her nose was sunburned, and she had more freckles coming out. “I’m not planning on being a dad in the near future,” he said as something clenched hard in his gut. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
“We used condoms, Pace. Don’t worry, I won’t show up with a baby and a request for a diamond ring.” She took a look at his face and shook her head. “Okay, I’m teasing you, but clearly I hit a nerve. Did someone try to tie you down?”
“No.”
She arched a brow, and he sighed. “I told you. I was with someone I gave brief thought to marrying, emphasis on the brief.”
“You actually got down on one knee and everything?”
“I was young,” he muttered when she grinned. “And I didn’t get down on one knee because I’d pulled my ACL that season. Which was part of the problem.”
“She dumped you because of a pulled ACL?”
“How do you know I didn’t dump her? Never mind,” he said when she opened her mouth. “Doesn’t matter. It didn’t work out. She refused to deal with me being gone for seven months out of the year, and I refused to quit playing ball. We were young and selfish, and love wasn’t enough. We broke up. Mutually.”
“It still sucked,” she guessed.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry if you got hurt.”
“Part of life.”
She lifted a shoulder.
“Which you don’t agree with,” he guessed. “Because you’ve managed to avoid such hurt.”
“Not entirely,” she reminded him.
“Right. Asshole Alex.”
She choked out a laugh but fell silent.
“And if you were pregnant,” he said after a long moment. “I’d want to know.”
She looked at him. “Why?”
“Why?” He stared at her, stymied by the question, which he thought was obvious. “Because you shouldn’t do it alone.”
Her eyes chilled. “I could handle it. I can handle anything.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Jesus.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “I just meant . . .” What, genius? You’d meant what? “That no one should have to do it alone.”
She was running the grass through with her fingers, ignoring him, and he sighed. “There’s one more thing.”
“What?” Her voice was frosty as she lifted her gaze to his.
“I’d want to know,” he said quietly. “Okay? I’d want to . . .”
“Run like hell?”
“Hey, give me a break here. New territory.”
“Certainly.” She rose to her feet, brushed off her hands, then cupped them around her mouth. “You guys about done? I’m springing for ice cream.”
“Holly—”
She didn’t hear him over the cheers. That, or she ignored him, which was more likely. Pace just looked at her, the woman who could do anything she wanted all by her damn self, and wondered how the hell it was that when he was with her, he sort of wished she needed him, just a little.
Chapter 19
Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire’s eye or on the ball.
—Jim Murray
Pace slept like crap and woke up before dawn, wishing he could skip the next few hours.
Surgery day.
To give himself a few quiet moments before facing that, he read Holly’s latest blog entry. She’d written about the players’ support teams—the wives, girlfriends, and significant others—and the pressures these people faced alongside their famous mates. She’d written about how those pressures led players to do things to keep up with other players that they normally wouldn’t do.
Things like steroids and stimulants.
She pointed out how some of these drugs came in varieties so new and unstudied they weren’t yet even on the banned list, but they would be added as the commissioner discovered them, in spite of the fact that these substances weren’t mind-altering like other illegal substances. Nor were they as potentially dangerous as a few too many beers before going on the road, which put other people in danger, not just the athlete. She pointed out the irony of such contradictions, and then brought up drugs that weren’t banned, like muscle relaxants and simple ibuprofen, and posed the question, should those things be added to the list as well?
As all her articles had been, it was incredibly well written and thought out, and, he was forced to admit, she’d nailed both the glory and the inherent problems of the sport.
He took a long hot shower, gritted his teeth at the movement required to towel off, then dressed and looked at the clock. Five thirty. He had to be at the hospital in thirty minutes, so he headed out, stopping short at the sight of Holly in his driveway, leaning on her car, arms and feet casually crossed, watching him. On her trunk sat a grocery bag, and she picked it up and held it out.
“What is it?” he asked warily.
“Well, it’s not a hammer to hit you over the head with.” Her lips curved briefly. “Which you look like you’re expecting. The kids packed you a care package. Cookies and Dr Pepper, the apparent breakfast of champions.”
“My favorites,” he murmured, not even trying to hide his surprise.
“Interesting palette, but yeah, they wanted to bring you a comfort snac
k.” Her smile warmed. “They love you. They’re worried. I promised to take care of you.”
“And in return they gave up all my secrets?”
“Yeah. And I only had to string them up by their fingernails and beat them to get those secrets.”
Okay, so he no longer believed she was going to try to sneak one past him. He was just feeling a little raw, a whole lot scared, and he preferred to be vulnerable in private.
But she had his number. “You can try to piss me off all you want, Pace, I’m not leaving. As for the kids, they were worried about you. They wanted to get you something, so I drove them to the store. I also promised to bring them to visit you after your surgery, so brace yourself for that.”
She’d eased their fears. She’d driven them to the store. She was going to bring them to visit him. “Saint,” he wondered aloud. “Or witch?”
“I use my powers for mostly good these days.”
He looked into her fathomless eyes and saw her worry for him. “I’m going to be okay, Holly.”
“I know. I also know I’m driving you to the hospital.”
“I can—”
“Look, I know you’d rather have Wade or Gage, or just about anyone other than me take you because heaven forbid I see you weak, but we both know they’re all in Baltimore for a two-game series and you’re on your own.”
A two-game series that he should be pitching. A two-game series that the Heat needed to take. He’d never missed games in the majors due to injury, never. It was a bone of contention, a point of pride.
“Get in the car, Pace.”
He eyed her piece of shit and then his own Mustang. Again, pride warred with ego, even more so when she took one look at his face and laughed, making him scowl. “What’s so damn funny?”
“You don’t want to go in my car, but you don’t want me to have to drive yours home from the hospital. You still don’t trust me.”
He winced. “Fine. I’m an asshole. We’ll take my car.”
“Good. I’ll drive now so you can give me tips for later.” She held out her hand for his keys. “Come on,” she coaxed when he didn’t move. “You can do it.”
Yes, apparently he could do a lot of things. Such as crave her, the smart, funny, beautiful, warm woman who’d come to him when he’d needed her most. He couldn’t have imagined that first day he’d met her, when she’d irritated him by wanting that interview, that all these weeks later he’d still be so intrigued and fascinated by her.
Contrary to his first impression of her, she was open and sweet and wildly passionate. In fact, he had nothing on her in the passion department. She was passionate about writing, about kids, about people, passionate about everything that crossed her path. She did nothing half-assed, not one single thing, and as a man who’d been passionate only about baseball all his life, he found the way she went about life incredibly . . .
Appealing.
It made no sense. His entire life was crumbling. He couldn’t hold onto a damn pencil much less pitch a ball at ninety-six miles per hour. He was going to let everyone down from the Heat’s owners to the fans . . .
And it was killing him.
Killing.
Him.
And yet just looking at Holly, some of the pain and confusion and anger seemed to fade away.
Even if she wanted to drive his car. “I was going to call a cab.”
“Listen, I’ve only had one accident,” she said. “And it wasn’t my fault. It was an old car and I ran out of brake fluid on a hill in San Francisco and I rolled into a house. That’s all.”
Jesus. “That’s all, huh?”
“Well, there’re the three speeding tickets, which really, if you think about it, just proves I can handle myself.”
That choked a real laugh out of him. A laugh, when he was on his way to being cut open.
She held out her hand, palm up, looking quite sure of herself and, dammit, hot. “Want to know something else?” she asked.
What the hell. “Sure.”
“I’m wearing a bra, but since you still have the panties that match it, I’m commando.”
His mouth fell open, and she twirled for him to see. He drank her in, but she was wearing cargo pants, low on her hips but too loose so he couldn’t tell. Not that it mattered, the view was mouth-watering regardless. He dropped the keys into her hand, dropped his whole damn life in her hand just to watch her walk around the car.
Holly paced the hospital waiting room, unaccustomed to the pit of anxiety in her gut. One thing about the way she moved in and out of people’s lives for her job—she hadn’t done a lot of worrying about them.
This time was completely different. She worried about the people she’d come to care about, a lot, but she also worried about herself because here was something new to obsess over, something that had never bothered her until now—she was halfway through her series and had no idea what she’d do when she was done. She’d always known by now, but this time she had nothing.
Because this time, she didn’t want to leave.
Pace woke up from his surgery feeling no pain thanks to a pretty nurse shooting some very good stuff into his IV. “Hey, is that MLB sanctioned?” he quipped.
She smiled and patted his arm, and when he woke up again, Holly was sitting by his bed, tapping on the keys of her laptop. She looked up at his movement and offered him one of those fake smiles people gave to people who are dying.
Uh-oh. “They operate on the wrong shoulder?” he asked.
“Of course not.” She got up and put her hand to his cheek. “How are you feeling?”
“No pain.” In fact, the room was spinning pleasantly, centered by her hand on him. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She plumped the pillow behind his back when he tried to sit up, fussing over him.
Stalling.
“Holly.”
She was busy straightening his covers now, like he was a damn invalid.
Which he wasn’t.
In fact, he was feeling the exact opposite of an invalid because every time she leaned over him, her button-up T-shirt gaped open and revealed a white silky demi-bra that had her breasts nearly spilling out over the top.
Which reminded him—she wasn’t wearing panties. He had no idea why that fact so fascinated him. He’d seen her body. It was fantastic, but he sure as hell shouldn’t be drooling to see her again. “It’s the meds.”
Her eyes met his. “What is?”
“The reason I’m getting a boner looking down your top. Nice bra.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you hallucinating?”
“If I say yes, will you take off the bra? It would complete my collection.”
“Okay, that’s it. I’m calling the doctor.”
He snagged her wrist with his good hand, which still had an IV in it. Because yeah, he wanted to see her breasts again, but mostly he wanted to know what had put that look in her eyes. The one that said he was fucked. “Tell me what’s wrong.”