He felt twenty pairs of eyes staring at him. “I’m in a team meeting.”

“Oh! I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you another time.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Smooth. Jesus, wasn’t he smooth. He hung up and slid his phone back into his pocket, feeling like a clueless teenager.

As soon as the meeting ended, Wade hightailed it out of there, probably to save his own ass, and Pace stood up to go after him. Red caught him by the back of the shirt. “You need to wait until the end of the season to kill him.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Gage said in a voice of steel. “And as a bonus, I promise that if you wait, I’ll even hold him down for you.”

Good enough.

After two hours of only eking out half a page, Holly gave up on her article, shut her laptop, and called Allie. “I’m in over my head.”

“I’ve seen the papers. The Heat’s taking it up the ass.”

“I know. The reports are brutal, and even worse, it’s stuff no one’s supposed to know. They can’t figure out who’s leaking the info.”

“Does anyone think it’s you?”

“I don’t know.” Holly leaned back in her chair, holding the phone in the crook of her shoulder as she flipped through the papers. “I think Sam believes I wouldn’t do such a thing. But the guys? Who knows.”

“What about the guy, the one who matters?”

“I haven’t seen him,” she admitted. “The clubhouse’s closed to everyone except the team. If he’s not locked in a private training session or being evaluated by management’s medical team, or holed up with Wade and the others where the press can’t get to them, then he’s nowhere to be found.”

“When is his surgery?”

“That’s the thing. His injury was blown up in the rumors.”

“Good. I think you should find him, kiss him so they win again, and then, after the game, sleep with him.”

Holly choked out a laugh. “And how will that help?”

“Well, you’ll feel much more relaxed, for starters. Especially if he’s any good. But more importantly, the Heat will win because they’re talented, not because you didn’t have sex, and then all those stupid superstitions are poof, gone.”

“You’re as crazy as they are, you know that? How’s the screenplay going?”

“Steamy. I’m in the middle of a sex scene right now. The hero’s nailing his heroine against the wall of his shower and they’re—”

“Okay,” Holly said with another laugh. “I’ll just watch it when it comes out on the big screen.”

“If it ever gets there.”

“It will,” Holly said firmly. “Believe in it.”

“I will if you will,” Allie said with irony and clicked off.