“I’m not going to tell them. And . . . and you wouldn’t, right? Because I’m yours, Pace. Forever yours.”
“Tia—” He stared regretfully, slipping his hand into his pocket for his cell phone. He felt like a jerk, but there was something seriously off about her, and he had Holly with him—
“If you would only try me, you’d like me,” she whispered, also reaching into her purse. “I swear. I’ll do anything you want, anything—”
“Problem?” Holly asked, coming around the corner.
Pace reached for her hand and tried to pull her to his side, but she resisted, instead turning to Tia. “Hi there,” she said to his crazy stalker. “Tia, right?”
Tia blinked, and a huge tear rolled down her cheek as she kept her hand in her purse. “He’s mine. You can’t have him.”
“Have him? Pace isn’t a piece of property, Tia.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do. And stalking is a crime.”
Tia clutched her heart. “I’m not stalking him. I love him.”
“But if you get caught here, they’ll likely take you to jail. And then Pace will get more bad press. If you love him like you say, you don’t want that.”
Tia opened her mouth, then shut it. With a pensive, petulant glare in Pace’s direction, she whirled and stalked off.
“Interesting night,” Holly said into the silence. “I got both to interview you and to save you—not that you needed saving,” she added kindly.
He stared down at her with the oddest desire to say, Yeah, I do. I need saving. Save me. “You seem to have experience with stalkers.”
“What I have experience with is pissing people off.” She turned to head back down the trail as well. “I’m trying to learn how to defuse instead of ignite.”
He followed after her. “Who did you ignite?
“An ex.”
He took her hand and slowed her down. He wanted to see her face for this. “What happened?”
“I wrote a blog series about his industry, specifically the space industry.”
“I read that series recently,” he said. He ran a finger over her forehead, where her bruise had been. “I was impressed.”
“My ex wasn’t. I exposed his team for cutting corners where they shouldn’t have, linking an accident to their neglect, an accident where three astronauts died.” She sighed. “The program lost its tenuous funding, NASA pulled out, and Alex was fired and went to civil court, where he was sued for millions.” She paused. “And the truth is, though I hate that I got people I cared about in trouble with the law, I’d do it again because people got hurt directly due to the neglect. I have no tolerance for that.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Yeah.” She paused. “But he said if I’d loved him, I’d never have written about him.”
“Did you love him?”
She shrugged. “I liked him. A whole lot, actually. And when it was over, I hurt a whole lot. But love?” Something came and went in her eyes, a sorrow, a regret, but in a flash it was gone. “I don’t think I’m really cut out for that particular emotion. I question everything too much.”
“Because you don’t trust anyone who hides things, and we all do,” he said, watching her absorb that, and think about it.
“I guess that’s true enough.”
She’d done a hell of a job raising herself in spite of being very alone and undeniably neglected to boot. But she’d made something of herself, and he loved the inner strength in her. “Thing is, Holly, I know that secrets make you feel unsafe, but the plain fact is that not everyone is hiding something bad or out to hurt someone.”
“I’m getting to that realization. It’s a balance thing for me, between the Holly of old and the new me.”
She was the first woman he’d met since his career had taken off who looked at him without diamonds and money signs in her eyes. “So this new Holly, is she going to believe in love?”
“Probably not for myself.” Pulling free, she headed down the hill.
“Wait,” he said to that sweet ass. “So you’re saying you don’t want a happily ever after? I thought all women wanted that.”
“Fairy tales don’t exist in real life,” she said over her shoulder.
He had pretty much seen and done it all. Sure, he was a little cynical, a little jaded, but in that moment, he realized he’d met his match. “Wow.”
She sent him a questioning look over her shoulder.
“You mean it. You really don’t believe in love.”
“And you do? Have you ever been in love?”
“With baseball, just about all my life.”
“With something that loved you back,” she said dryly.
“I don’t know, baseball’s showed me the love.”
“Women, Pace,” she said with a shake of her head. “You ever loved a woman?”
“Maybe,” he allowed. “Maybe a couple of times. I was even engaged once when I was very young and stupid. But if we’re being honest, that wasn’t the forever kind of love either.”
“Are there two kinds of love then?”
“There are lots of kinds.”
At that, she stopped walking to face him, hands on her hips, expression amused. “Okay, Mr. Expert, like what?”