She’d cultivated a lifelong habit of being stoic and sucking it up, and she’d gotten damn good at keeping people out of her head. But somehow he kept leaping right in. By all accounts, he should have been nothing more than a big, sexy jock. Someone she needed to interview. But every time she looked into his steady gaze, that same heart-stopping sensation hit her. Even odder, everything else faded away, as if they were completely alone. She struggled to ignore the flare of heat in all her good spots, but since he didn’t even try to hide the matching heat in his gaze, it was all but impossible.

Leaning in, he put his mouth to her ear. “Advil?”

She felt his warm breath on her skin, and she drew a shaky one of her own. He was so close for privacy’s sake, not intimacy. She knew this, but her brain didn’t seem to process the memo and instead sent her body an overload of pleasure waves. Bad brain. “I’m fine, thanks.” Especially if he stayed right there . . .

He looked as though maybe he planned on doing exactly that, but Red came up behind him and clasped a hand on his shoulder. “There you are, son. My God, you were a sight out there tonight. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He grinned with sheer joy, his eyes crinkling, his face tanned and leathered from long years on the field beneath the harsh sun. “This is the year, all the way to the pennant. I can feel it.” He laughed, which made him cough, deep and hard.

Pace reached for him. “Where’s your inhaler?”

“I don’t need it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I’m fine!”

But he clearly wasn’t, and because Holly was looking right into Pace’s deep, dark eyes, she saw the love, the affection, there.

The worry.

Unlike her, he had strings on his heart, lots of them, whether he liked it or not. And she wished, just a little, that she’d cultivated more strings in her life. She was a grown-up now, she reminded herself, not a scared little kid. She could make her own choices. She could make strings if she wanted.

It wasn’t too late.

Question was, did she want Pace to be a string . . .

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.

—Earl Wilson

The Heat took the Phillies two out of three and then flew straight to Atlanta. As usual, the players gathered in the guest clubhouse five to seven hours before the game, where they ate, hung out, played video games, and practiced.