“I’m not retiring.”

“Eventually you will. You going to enjoy your millions or move on to something else? Coaching maybe, like Red? Managing, like Gage? Or maybe golf. You could play charity golf tournaments—”

“I thought you were going to make this painless.” He turned his back to her and stood there, his broad shoulders blocking the moonlight, creating a sort of halo around him.

But he was no angel, and she knew it.

Not even close.

And she ached for him anyway. Maybe because of it. She wanted him, flaws and all. But this wasn’t about her and her wants. “Back to the drugs,” she said quietly. “Under the new rules, everyone gets tested annually. An invasion of privacy or a necessity?”

“Hell,” he muttered under his breath and swiped a hand over his face. “A necessity.”

“You’ve never had a whisper about you being on any stimulants, and yet you throw like a machine.”

“Because I know how to throw like a machine. I don’t do drugs, Holly.”

She felt his temper, and his control, and could appreciate both. “What about the other players on the Heat?”

“You can’t ask me a question like that.”

True, it wasn’t very fair of her. But her job was rarely fair. “Ty’s been suspected.”

“He tested clean.”

“No, he tested inconclusive. There’re new drugs out there, performance-enhancing drugs that are slipping past the testing.”

“Shit.”

“You and I both know, many athletes do drugs.”

“Not me,” he said. “And this is supposedly about me. What else does your pad want to know?” he asked, sounding quite over this whole thing.

Couldn’t blame him. She was over it, too. She slipped the pad into her purse and took the leap. “It wants to know if you’d like to stop the interview and get back to that other thing.”

“The other thing?”

“The whole getting-each-other-out-of-our-system thing.”

His eyes were steady.

Calm.

Hot.

“Very much,” he said.

She set down her purse and camera.

He put his hands on her hips.

Hers slid up his chest.

And then they both stepped into each other and his mouth covered hers, hot and hungry, and all their differences, disagreements, frustrations, and arguments went out the proverbial window.

Chapter 13

Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.

—Ted Williams

Holly’s soft sigh of pleasure echoed in Pace’s head as they dived into the kiss with reckless abandon. God, the way she fisted her fingers in his hair, the arch of her hips to his . . . it rocked his world. She rocked his world. “Holly—”

“Mmmm,” she murmured, and just like that, the tension that had been dogging him finally began to drain away, replaced by a different sort of tension altogether.

There was only this, the feel of her soft, curvy body, the taste of her . . . Cupping the back of her head with his hand, he slid his tongue to hers, loving her moan of pleasure, the way she lost some of her carefulness, which was just as sexy as her being careful in the first place. She had the best mouth, warm and giving, and so damn sweet he could kiss her forever. And if kissing her was this good, his brain went hog wild fantasizing about what else would be good. All of it. That much he could pretty well guarantee, and his hands made themselves at home on her body, everywhere he could reach, feeling her response in every quiver she made. His hands slipped beneath her shirt, touching that creamy, smooth skin, making her whisper his name in a shaky voice.

More. That was all he could think, and pressing her back to the tree, he filled his palms with her br**sts.

And then went still at the crack of a branch behind them. Someone was here with them. He pulled back, but the dark was so complete he couldn’t see.

“Pace?” Holly murmured, her hands going to his wrists.

He could hear footsteps running away from them now, down the path. He bent for the flashlights, handing her one. “Wait here.”

Their surprise guest was quick, but he was quicker, and just around the next turn he overcame . . .

Tia.

His crazy fan whirled to face him, breathing like a lunatic, her hair falling into her flushed face. Wearing his away jersey, which fell to her knees, she carried both a flashlight and an autograph book, with a small camera strapped around her neck, lens open.

“Hi. I wasn’t stalking you, I swear,” she said quickly. “I was just watching you on the field, which is totally allowed because it’s like six hundred million yards away, so you can’t get mad. Please don’t get mad.”

“But I wasn’t on the field, Tia. I was up here.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that. Well, sort of I didn’t. Okay, I knew, but I just wanted to look at you, that’s all, honest to God.” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I’m your biggest fan, Pace. You know that. No one’s a bigger fan than me.”

“Tia—”

“So dammit, you should be kissing me, not her. You should be getting me out of your system!”

“Tia, listen to me. You could go to jail.” He didn’t want her to, but the last time she’d been hauled down to the station, they’d found a huge Swiss Army knife in her purse, a fact that had made him more than a little uncomfortable given her habit of showing up wherever he was. “Remember what the police said would happen if they found out you’d ignored their warnings?”