She looked down at her watch, then eyed the clubhouse door. Women were allowed into the locker room but by invite only. She had one for the upcoming game but not for today. If she had a penis, she could just walk right in and interview him in his element. Not that she wanted a penis. No thank you, they were way too much trouble. In fact, given the fiasco with her last boyfriend, she’d given up penises.

Or was it peni?

It didn’t matter, singular or plural, they were a thing of her past. Not a huge loss, as they’d never really done all that much for her other than give her brief orgasms and a whole lot of grief.

Where was her phenom? She looked at her watch and assured herself that she had time. Months of time, which she’d be using to profile the Santa Barbara Heat in depth. Her plan was to start easy, taking a personal direction for her first article. She could have picked any of the young, aggressive, charismatic players. Joe Pickler, the second baseman who’d given up medical school to play AA ball and then spent five years working his way up to the majors. Or Ty Sparks, the relief pitcher who’d overcome childhood leukemia and was trying to work his way into the starting rotation. Or maybe Henry Weston, the left fielder turned shortstop who’d left the Dodgers where his twin brother played in spite of it causing a major family rift. There was also the reputably charming rogue Wade O’Riley, the Heat’s catcher, who’d come from abject poverty, something Holly knew all too much about.

But always a sucker for a challenge, she’d chosen to start with Pace, a player three years into his fifty-million-dollar, five-year contract, who’d oddly and very atypically for a ballplayer turned down millions more in alcohol and cologne ads, a guy the tabloid reporters loved to try to dig up dirt on.

She glanced out to the parking lot. Pace’s classic apple red Mustang GT was hard to miss. Nope, he hadn’t skipped out on her; she wasn’t worried about that.

But she was curious.

Why had he pitched for thirty minutes, pushing hard in spite of the fact that he’d clearly been having an off day, and then suddenly dropped to the bench, shoulders and head down, breathing as if he’d run a marathon? He’d just sat there, very carefully not moving a single inch. Only after many minutes had passed had he pushed to his feet and escaped to the clubhouse.

Was he nursing a heartache?

A hangover?

What? She could feel his secrets, and the part of her that needed to get to the bottom of everything, to hurry up and expose the bad so she could relax and get to the good, reared its head just as the clubhouse door finally opened and she caught a quick glimpse of tall-dark-and-attitude-challenged in the flesh.

Pace Martin.

“Hi,” she said, gripping her pad of paper and pen, perfectly willing to forgive his tardiness if he made this easy on her. Not that it mattered. Sure, he’d made a secondary career out of being tough, cynical, edgy, and for a bonus, noncommittal. Luckily for her, she specialized in tough, cynical, and edgy. She thrust out her hand. “I’m Holly Hut—”

“Sure. No problem.” He grabbed her pen and leaning over her, quickly wrote something on her pad.

As he did, she took her first up-close look at him, searching for that elusive “it” factor that seemed to make men want to be him and women want to do him. Granted, he owed much of that to his packaging, but she’d already known that. He had still-wet-from-his-shower dark hair and movie-star dark eyes, and a face that could have been descended directly from the Greek gods, but she wasn’t moved by such things. As a writer and a people watcher, Holly knew his pull had to go far deeper, that there had to be more to his charisma than genetic makeup.

Or so she hoped.

But the good looks sure didn’t hurt. He hadn’t shaved, though she could smell his shampoo or soap, something woodsy and incredibly male that made her nostrils sort of quiver. Which meant People magazine appeared to be correct on the beautiful-people assessment—he clearly had genuine appeal.

Since she barely came up to his broad shoulders, she had to tip her head up to stare into his face as he straightened and handed her back her pad, giving her just enough time to see that his eyes weren’t the solid brown his bio claimed, but rather had gold swirling in the mix. They weren’t smiling to match his mouth, not even close, and if she had to guess, she’d say Mr. Hotshot was pissed at something.

Then she glanced down at her pad and saw what he’d done.

An autograph. He’d just given her an autograph.

And then, while she was still just staring at the sprawling signature in shock, he handed her back her pen and walked away, heading down the wide hallway with his steady, long-legged, effortlessly confident stride.

“Hey,” she said. “I didn’t want—”

But he’d turned a corner and was already gone.

Chapter 2

You spend a good chunk of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around the whole time.

—Jim Bouton, professional baseball player and writer

Unbelievable, Holly thought, stunned enough to stand there while Pace got away. Okay, so maybe she had looked like a fan girl hanging around outside the locker room. And she’d obviously been holding a pen and a pad of paper, just as she imagined the hordes of people who hounded him on a daily basis did.

But there was something faintly embarrassing about him thinking that all she’d wanted from him was a signature. And for the first time since she’d taken on this assignment, instead of thinking of killing her boss, she thought of Pace Martin as someone more than an overpaid athlete. He was flesh and blood, no doubt complete with a myriad of complex emotions driving him. As a writer she should have known that—which would be her first and last mistake. At least today.