Look at her, all casually working that into the conversation.
But Gage saw right through her as he took a pull of his drink, and offered an easy smile. “Oh, around, I imagine.” With a friendly clap on Wade’s shoulder, he moved off, heading for a pretty woman waving at him from across the room.
The first bartender was finally back with their drinks. Holly’s came without a backward glance. Wade’s came on a napkin with a phone number on it. He pocketed the napkin and winked at Holly, who rolled her eyes and turned to eye the crowd, which had doubled, filling with locals and fans who wanted to see the players.
And still no sight of Pace. She really should go to her room and take some Advil. Sleep. Write . . .
Ty and Joe pressed in close to the bar near Wade and Holly, trying to get a drink, but both bartenders were now at the other end, even more slammed than before. Since the drinks were free, Holly simply moved around the bar and filled their order, to their eternal gratitude.
“You’re handy,” Wade noted.
“I really am.” With an easy camaraderie, they sat there and people-watched, and there was a lot of watching to be had. The women were everywhere, in all shapes and sizes—big and petite, sexy and cute, beautiful and not—and they all had one thing in common: they wanted to be with the players, wanted to see them, meet them, talk to them.
Sleep with them.
Several, in fact, were eyeing Wade as if he were sin on a stick. “Am I cramping your style?” she asked.
“Nah.” He shot her an easy smile. “I’m taking a break.”
“Aw. You get your heart hurt, Wade?”
That caused a deep chuckle to rumble from his chest, as if the idea was utterly laughable. “I meant I’m taking a break for the next hour or so.” His gaze snagged on one of the women staring at him with naked desire all over her face. “Maybe half an hour.”
She shook her head, then her own gaze caught on Pace as he finally walked in. He was looking rough and tumble, ready for anything, and from across the crowd and above all the noise, their eyes met.
A little shiver of thrill went through her. Actually, a big shiver.
Like the other players, he was dressed nice, wearing a jacket fitted to his athletic body as if it’d been made for him, and it probably had. He looked expensive, cultured, gorgeous, and on top of his world—which by all accounts, he was.
And he headed right for them.
Wade gestured to the cute blonde bartender for a drink for Pace, then said when he got close, “I was getting worried I was going to have to fly solo, no wingman.”
Pace smirked and shook his head. “Like you need a wingman.”
Wade grinned. “Remember our first time at one of these things? New York, right? The place was loaded with beautiful women. Good times.”
Pace nodded. “For you especially. You had two homers that night.”
Wade shrugged modestly. “Possibly.”
“After the game, we walked into the hotel bar,” Pace told Holly, “which was packed with fans. One of the women dancing with us asks Wade if he’s g*y. Wade says no, and then she asks if his contract is really multimillions, and since it’s public knowledge, he says yes. And then she hooks her arm in his and pulls him away. And that was the last I saw of him that night.” Pace shook his head and took Wade’s beer with an ease that said just how comfortable these two were with each other, but after a swallow, he lowered the bottle and took a second, longer look at her.
Her pulse had bumped up the minute he’d appeared, but now it went into cardiac-arrest territory. “What?”
Reaching out, he ran a surprisingly gentle finger over her forehead. “Still hurting?”
She’d cultivated a lifelong habit of being stoic and sucking it up, and she’d gotten damn good at keeping people out of her head. But somehow he kept leaping right in. By all accounts, he should have been nothing more than a big, sexy jock. Someone she needed to interview. But every time she looked into his steady gaze, that same heart-stopping sensation hit her. Even odder, everything else faded away, as if they were completely alone. She struggled to ignore the flare of heat in all her good spots, but since he didn’t even try to hide the matching heat in his gaze, it was all but impossible.
Leaning in, he put his mouth to her ear. “Advil?”
She felt his warm breath on her skin, and she drew a shaky one of her own. He was so close for privacy’s sake, not intimacy. She knew this, but her brain didn’t seem to process the memo and instead sent her body an overload of pleasure waves. Bad brain. “I’m fine, thanks.” Especially if he stayed right there . . .
He looked as though maybe he planned on doing exactly that, but Red came up behind him and clasped a hand on his shoulder. “There you are, son. My God, you were a sight out there tonight. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He grinned with sheer joy, his eyes crinkling, his face tanned and leathered from long years on the field beneath the harsh sun. “This is the year, all the way to the pennant. I can feel it.” He laughed, which made him cough, deep and hard.
Pace reached for him. “Where’s your inhaler?”
“I don’t need it.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’m fine!”
But he clearly wasn’t, and because Holly was looking right into Pace’s deep, dark eyes, she saw the love, the affection, there.
The worry.
Unlike her, he had strings on his heart, lots of them, whether he liked it or not. And she wished, just a little, that she’d cultivated more strings in her life. She was a grown-up now, she reminded herself, not a scared little kid. She could make her own choices. She could make strings if she wanted.