Holly smiled. “You mean before you revealed you wanted to jump the catcher’s bones?”

At Samantha’s growl, Holly laughed. “Come on. It’s true. Off the record, I promise.”

“It’s complicated.” Sam let out a gusty sigh. “We . . . sort of have a past.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Samantha looked away, the tips of her ears sending out enough heat to light North America. “I don’t want to discuss it.”

“Okay.” Holly could understand that all too well. “Well, we were talking about you possibly helping me get that interview with—”

“We got stuck on an elevator for two hours once,” Sam burst out.

Holly blinked. “That sounds . . . traumatic. Anyway, I was wondering—”

“We’d just flown into Atlanta. We had those little bottles of Scotch. I definitely blame the Scotch, but let’s just say we made damn good use of the downtime and leave it at that.”

Holly looked at the misery on Sam’s face. Misery, and remembered lust. “Huh.”

“We had wild drunken monkey sex!” Sam clapped her hand over her mouth. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Yeah,” Holly said with amusement. “I can see that.”

“Oh my God. Sorry. Clearly, I’ve been holding onto that for too long.” She shook her head. “We’ve been pretending it didn’t happen. And I really need to shut up now. What were we talking about?”

“Nothing as good as this.”

Sam closed her eyes when Holly laughed. “You are lucky, Holly, so damn lucky, that you get to pop in and out of people’s lives without getting involved.”

Holly paused. Is that what she did?

“You get to keep yourself distanced, disengaged. I really need to get the knack of doing that, let me tell you.”

Once upon a time Holly would have taken great pride in that most accurate assessment of her character. But this past week or so, surrounded by the people she was beginning to think of as friends, watching those people live their lives to the fullest in a way she’d never managed, she suddenly realized how much she was missing.

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I’m convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile.

—Tom Clark

After the win, Pace poured out of the dugout with the others, telling himself things were good. That they were going to stay good. That the unnamable ball of uneasiness sitting on his chest was ignorable.

The guys with family in the stands were rushed and hugged and congratulated, and with that odd ache still in place, Pace turned away.

And then was nearly bowled over by a soft, warm body.

Holly.