Slow Heat Read online

  Acknowledgments

  To my dear friend Gena, who when I said I was stuck, ever so sweetly told me to shut up and get writing, because she wanted something good to read.

  And to Nicole, who is never afraid to tell me when I suck. The sign of a true friend.

  Love you both bunches!

  Chapter 1

  Confucius say: “Baseball wrong—man with four balls cannot walk.”

  —Author Unknown

  She’d read somewhere that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, but Samantha McNead knew better than that—in certain men the stomach was aiming just a bit too high.

  Wade O’Riley was one of them.

  The best defensive catcher in Major League Baseball, he had women lining up to meet him wherever he went. And it wasn’t home cooking that they wanted to give him either.

  Not that Wade seemed to mind. Nope, even with all the constraints that went with the new big, fat, multimillion dollar contract he’d just signed for Santa Barbara’s expansion team, the Heat, the guy seemed oblivious to pressure. Laid-back and easygoing, he took everything as it came, with a grain of salt and a slow, knowing smile that let everyone in on the joke.

  Because life was one big funny joke to Wade.

  Sam appreciated that, she just didn’t live it the way he did. Didn’t know how. As the publicist for the Heat, as one of the few females in a man’s world, her life tended to be more work than fun lately. Hence her mission today.

  The limo pulled up in front of Wade’s big, cottage-style beach house, perched on a bluff over the ocean. From the backseat she could see the waves froth and pitch.

  Much like her stomach.

  In the work aspect of her life, she was extremely comfortable. That was a given. She’d been raised by men: her father, her uncle, her brother, and her cousins were all tough, implacable, unforgiving alpha males. Failure had never been an option, which translated to being very good at whatever she tackled. Unfortunately for her more womanly parts, all she’d tackled lately was the job.

  A job she loved with all her heart, but sometimes she yearned for more. Maybe one of these days a man would sweep her off her feet and then into bed, but it wouldn’t be today, and it wouldn’t be with the guy she’d been tasked with babysitting.

  The Heat had played last night. It was the first week of April, and it’d been an exhibition game, a prelude to their season opener on Sunday. They’d played the Padres, and it’d turned out to be surprisingly down and dirty. Wade had hit a homer in the second inning, then been harshly walked in the third when the pitcher had hit him in the thigh with a throwaway pitch. The game had gone two extra innings, until past midnight, when the Heat had finally won on Wade’s double, so Sam expected him to be exhausted and probably sore as hell. Maybe she’d even have to pull him out of bed.

  The thought brought concern, and a secret tingle to those womanly parts she’d been neglecting.

  Nice to know they still worked.

  As she reached for the limo door handle, Wade’s front door opened, and six feet of rugged, lean, muscled male stepped out in Levi’s and an untucked blue and white striped button-down. A gust of wind molded his clothes against the body that tended to make Sam’s tongue stick to the roof of her mouth.

  Wade stopped to slide on his sunglasses, the picture of a California surfer, all easygoing, laid-back charm.

  He’d been a rock star in another life, Sam was convinced, and she purposely let out a breath and leaned back, reminding herself he was just a guy. A flawed guy at that, though certainly none of his flaws happened to be showing at the moment.

  He moved across the lawn in an unhurried, sexy stride, all scruffy gorgeousness, and opened the limo door, letting in the chilly April afternoon air. With one hand on the roof, the other on the door, he bent down, peering in through his Prada sunglasses, merely arching a brow when he saw her.

  Couldn’t blame him. They weren’t exactly on speaking terms.

  His sun-kissed light brown hair was either styled messy today on purpose, or he hadn’t bothered with a comb. His face sported at least a day-old beard so she was going with the no comb theory. He should have looked sloppy and unkempt but nothing about him ever looked anything less than God’s gift. She’d seen him in uniform, in designer suits, in workout gear, in all sorts of things including absolutely nothing, and he always looked perfect.

  Especially in the nothing.

  “Hey,” he said in that low, slightly raspy voice of his, the one that never failed to immediately put her back up.

  And/or turn her on.

  “Hey yourself.” He hadn’t limped, and he sure as hell didn’t look exhausted. The opposite, she thought a little breathlessly as his deceptively lazy gaze raked her in from head to toe. Deceptively, because behind that beach bum front of his lay a sharp-as-hell wit.

  Given their . . . tense relationship at the moment, she didn’t smile.

  And though he usually smiled at anything female, neither did he.

  “Are you okay after last night’s game?” she asked.

  “Always. How about you, Princess?

  She’d asked him a million times not to call her that. It drove her crazy, which was of course why he did it. “I’m fine. We need to talk.”

  “Sorry,” he said with mock regret. “But we don’t talk. We fight. And I’m not in the mood.”

  He hadn’t been “in the mood” since what she called The Mishap.

  The Mishap Never To Be Talked About.

  Except . . . except Wade got along with the entire world, and she had to admit it was disturbing that they didn’t. Couldn’t. But there was nothing to be done about that now.

  Nothing.

  She had a job to do. They had a job to do. “I realize you probably don’t want to go over the plan,” she said, feeling at a disadvantage sitting while Wade still stood. “But I really think we should.”

  “I know the plan,” he said. “One of the corporations endorsing the Heat has a new, conservative CEO who has high family values, and is upset with our PR troubles—”

  “Your PR troubles,” she corrected.

  He let out a tight breath and bowed his head in agreement. “And you, the Skipper, the owners—hell everyone but me—believes that the world cares about one more ridiculous baseball scandal involving some woman claiming I’ve gotten her pregnant.”

  “You can’t blame people for believing it; you do have a bit of a playboy reputation.”

  “I never slept with Tia.”

  “She produced pictures of you and her on the beach by your house.”

  He just looked at her.

  “See,” she pointed out. “This is why we have to talk about it.”

  “Look, I get what the powers-that-be want from me. From us. We pretend to be a couple in the eyes of the press so I look like a good boy, and our endorsements won’t be pulled. How hard can it be?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied cautiously. “How hard?”

  His eyes heated. And a matching heat seared through her belly at the inadvertent double entrendre. “You know what I mean, Wade. The plan—”

  “The plan is that I have to behave. And you’re supposed to make me.” He paused. “Though I am looking forward to the make me part.”

  Oh, God. “You know what? This isn’t going to work.” She was fun, dammit. Even lighthearted at times. Why the hell he made her sound so uptight and stuffy, she had no idea.

  Wait. She did have an idea. An exact idea.

  She’d slept with him.

  Once.

  On the one single night in her entire life when she’d had too much to drink. Except there’d been no sleeping involved. To make matters worse, it’d been one of the most erotic, sensual nights of her life. “Listen, I realize we’ve had ou