Several, in fact, were eyeing Wade as if he were sin on a stick. “Am I cramping your style?” she asked.

“Nah.” He shot her an easy smile. “I’m taking a break.”

“Aw. You get your heart hurt, Wade?”

That caused a deep chuckle to rumble from his chest, as if the idea was utterly laughable. “I meant I’m taking a break for the next hour or so.” His gaze snagged on one of the women staring at him with naked desire all over her face. “Maybe half an hour.”

She shook her head, then her own gaze caught on Pace as he finally walked in. He was looking rough and tumble, ready for anything, and from across the crowd and above all the noise, their eyes met.

A little shiver of thrill went through her. Actually, a big shiver.

Like the other players, he was dressed nice, wearing a jacket fitted to his athletic body as if it’d been made for him, and it probably had. He looked expensive, cultured, gorgeous, and on top of his world—which by all accounts, he was.

And he headed right for them.

Wade gestured to the cute blonde bartender for a drink for Pace, then said when he got close, “I was getting worried I was going to have to fly solo, no wingman.”

Pace smirked and shook his head. “Like you need a wingman.”

Wade grinned. “Remember our first time at one of these things? New York, right? The place was loaded with beautiful women. Good times.”

Pace nodded. “For you especially. You had two homers that night.”

Wade shrugged modestly. “Possibly.”

“After the game, we walked into the hotel bar,” Pace told Holly, “which was packed with fans. One of the women dancing with us asks Wade if he’s gay. Wade says no, and then she asks if his contract is really multimillions, and since it’s public knowledge, he says yes. And then she hooks her arm in his and pulls him away. And that was the last I saw of him that night.” Pace shook his head and took Wade’s beer with an ease that said just how comfortable these two were with each other, but after a swallow, he lowered the bottle and took a second, longer look at her.

Her pulse had bumped up the minute he’d appeared, but now it went into cardiac-arrest territory. “What?”

Reaching out, he ran a surprisingly gentle finger over her forehead. “Still hurting?”