The next morning, he drove to the park. Chipper and River were ecstatic and couldn’t wait to tell him how great Holly was. Seemed she’d taken them to lunch, and now they thought the sun rose and set in her eyes.

Pace thought something else, and he didn’t like it. “What did she want to know about me?”

“Nothing,” River said. “We didn’t even talk about you.”

“Uh-huh.” Could he really have been that fooled? “Come on, tell me.”

“Jeez,” Chipper said. “She came for us. Get your own girl.”

He sighed, and spent some time working on their field work. Later he had a meeting with Sam, where he signed boxes of merchandise for the 4 The Kids website.

“Pace,” she said quietly, helping him sort through the stuff. “About these press leaks.” She paused. “Do you think Holly . . . ?”

He met her gaze, his even, and spoke what he wanted to believe with his whole heart. “I don’t.”

“Good.” She let out a breath and shook her head. “I don’t either, I just had to ask.”

“Yeah.” When he finished signing, he headed straight into physical therapy, and from there into the Heat’s weekly team meeting.

In the middle of one of Gage’s rants, Pace’s cell phone rang. Never good, as Gage hated to be interrupted. Even worse, it wasn’t Pace’s usual standard-issued ring tone. Instead, his phone burst out with the theme song to the Courtship of Eddie’s Father. As the chorus of “People, let me tell you ’bout my best friend . . .” started playing, Pace’s eyes cut straight to Wade, who was doing his best to hold back his grin. Paced looked down at the screen and sighed.

Holly. “Are you kidding me?” he asked Wade. “You programmed her a ring tone on my phone?”

“No phones in team meetings!” Gage yelled.

“It’s Holly, Skip,” Henry said urgently. “If he ignores her, maybe she won’t kiss him at the next game.”

Gage ground his back teeth together. “Go ahead,” he said tightly. “Answer the damn thing. Tell her you still can’t sleep with her until October . . . politely.”

As everyone laughed, Pace thought about killing Wade, but that was all he needed, a suspension for fighting, as satisfying as that might be. So with the whole team watching, he opened his phone. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said, sounding sweet and open and warm. “Sorry I missed you last night. I was in the shower.”

Ah, man. And now he had that image in his head, her in the wet, hot shower.

Naked.

And it was a damn good image, too.

“I saw the papers,” she said softly. “I’m sorry it’s so serious.”

“It’s not.”

“It’s . . . not?”

He turned away from Gage’s questioning expression. “No.”

She paused as if waiting for him to say something else, which he couldn’t. Not with his fascinated audience.

“Are you busy?” she finally asked.