At least until that rare occasion when she had to deal with this one player, this one guy who had the singular, most annoying ability to get beneath her skin and make himself right at home. It wasn’t even his fault. He simply threw her off by just being. He made it so she couldn’t be professional, and that more than anything was worrisome.

Aka terrifying.

“I realize you probably don’t want to go over the plan,” she said. “But I think we should.”

“I know the plan,” he said. “One of the corporations endorsing the Heat has a new conservative CEO who has high ‘family values’ and is upset about our PR troubles—”

“Your recent PR troubles,” she corrected.

He let out a tight breath. “Whatever. The fact is that you, the manager, the owner, hell, everyone but me, believes that the world cares about one more ridiculous baseball scandal, and they think that scandal is going to be me simply because some woman claims I’ve gotten her pregnant. I never slept with her.”

“You can’t blame people for thinking it. You do have a bit of a playboy reputation, and she had pictures of you and her on the beach by your house.”

He just looked at her, clearly standing by his claim that this wasn’t his fault.

“See,” she pointed out. “This is why we have to talk about it.”

“Look, I get what the powers that be want from me. From us. We pretend to be a couple in the eyes of the press so our endorsements won’t be pulled. How hard can it be?”

“I don’t know,” she replied cautiously. “How hard?”

He gave her a look. The look. And heat seared through her belly. “You know what I mean,” she mumbled.

“The plan is that I have to behave. And you’re supposed to make me.” He shot her the look again. “I’m looking forward to the ‘make me’ part.”

Oh, God. “Okay, this isn’t going to work,” she said stiffly. She was fun. Lighthearted. Why the hell he made her sound so uptight and stuffy, she had no idea.

Wait. She did have an idea. An exact idea.

She’d slept with him.

Once.

On the one single night in her entire life she’d had too much to drink. Except there’d been no sleeping involved. To make matters worse, it’d been one of the hottest, best nights of her life. “Listen, I realize we’ve had our differences, but—”

“Differences?” He laughed, then shook his head, still amused. “I’m going to let you get away with that, Princess, because I’m in a hurry.”