“It was an accident,” Pace told him. “I took her to the doctor and she checked out. Is she not okay?”
“You could ask Ty, Joe, and Henry, all of whom she met for dinner. Or better yet, ask her yourself.”
The guys had probably charmed the hell out of her. And he’d been worried about Wade. “I don’t have her number.”
“Well lucky for you, I do.”
Shit. He took the number, then spent a few minutes procrastinating with his TV remote, but when the local anchor questioned Pace’s stats and said he was “getting up there” in age, it was drink a Dr Pepper from his private stash or call Holly. Up there his ass, he thought as he pounded in her number. He was thirty-one. A damn young thirty-one, too—
Holly answered her phone in a soft, sleep-roughened voice, and he immediately went from pissed off to concerned. “Hey, you shouldn’t be sleeping after a bump to the head.” He shouldn’t have just dumped her off. He should’ve—
“You paid the doctor bill, Pace,” she said calmly. “You know I’m not concussed. But that you’re worrying like a mother hen is very sweet. And interesting, as I’ve never seen sweet on any of your bios. I’ll have to make sure to put that in any article about you.”
“I’m just afraid you’re going to sue. How’s that for sweet?”
“Aw.” She laughed. “You’re so full of shit. I met your teammates tonight. They were great company, full of stories.”
He just bet.
“But oddly enough, when I tried to get the scoop on you from them, they all clammed up.”
“It’s called friendship.”
“Well, I have to admit, as a reporter, it’s annoying.” Her voice softened. “But as a person? Also incredibly sweet.”
“So you’re saying the entire team is sweet.” Now he laughed. “Good luck with your credibility if you print that. We’re not exactly known for the sweetness, Holly.”
“No,” she admitted with a smile in her voice. “You’re not, are you? I’m hoping to figure out what makes you guys tick.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I do. I like to furrow deep.”
“And expose secrets.”
“Yes, when they need to be exposed.” She was quiet a moment. “But to ease your mind, I haven’t found any yet. Oh, and the only reason I was sleeping is because we have an early flight. You can stop worrying about me, sweet or otherwise.”
His gut tightened as a very bad feeling came over him. “We? We have an early flight?”
“Didn’t anyone tell you? I’ll be traveling with the Heat.”
Christ. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. How’s your shoulder? And don’t bother trying to give me the standard line. This isn’t Holly the reporter asking but the friend who rescued you from your stalker.”
He let out a low breath. “A little sore, that’s all.”
“Okay, we’ll stick with that for now, since you don’t trust me.”
“You’re still a reporter.”
“Which is what, synonymous with bad guy?”
“No, of course not.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked at his open duffel bag. Why had he called her? “I just don’t want it plastered all across the Internet that I’m in trouble.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
She was quiet a moment, as if taking the time to read right through him. “I understand the Heat has a lot riding on this next series.”
“Yeah.” In Pace’s life it was fact that people always said he had a lot riding on the next game, he had a lot riding on the next series, or whatever they were facing. Not the Heat, but him. Pace had always hated that. Yeah, he was a good pitcher, maybe even at times a great one. But he was also part of a damn team.
And in only a few words, Holly had just made it clear that she was one of the few who recognized that. Pace would like her for that alone—if he hadn’t already decided not to like her at all. “Okay, well, I just wanted to check on you, so . . .”
“And you’re already sorry you called.”
Yes. Yes, he was.
Sounding amused again, she said, “That’s okay, Pace. You can take me off your list of things to be concerned about. I’m not going to hold it against you that I have a lovely black-and-blue bruise in the center of my forehead.”
He winced for her. “In my experience, women tend to remember these things.”
“We’ve already agreed you’ve been hanging out with the wrong women. ’Night, Pace.”
“ ’Night.” He closed his cell phone and stared at it for a minute, debating whether or not to hunt up her address and go over there to check on her in person. But he had to be honest with himself. If he did that, it wouldn’t be just to look at her bruise.
And that, more than anything else, made the decision for him.
He wasn’t going anywhere near her.
When Red knocked on the door only a minute later with the tapes of the Phillies’ last game and some sub sandwiches, the decision was all the easier. Watching tapes before an away series was a tradition. Often Wade came, too, and some of the other guys as well, but tonight it was just Red and his son Tucker, who had baseball in his blood the same as his father.
Tucker and Pace went way back as well. They’d played against each other at their respective rival high schools the one year Pace hadn’t had to move to accommodate his father’s military career. That’d been the same year Tucker had made a string of bad choices including mixing alcohol and street racing, and had ended up with his car in a ditch and several pins in his right leg. Unable to play baseball but equally unable to shake loose his love for the game, Tucker now repped for a vitamin company, the one which exclusively supplied the Heat with their own vitamin enriched water.