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  fixed or not?”

  He met her challenging gaze. She was nothing like any women he’d ever met, which was to say the kind of women one wouldn’t bring home to their mother.

  But he didn’t have a mother and wouldn’t have brought a woman home to her if he did.

  Yeah, Holly was different. She was pretty damn perceptive, for one thing.

  And pretty damn . . . pretty.

  It was useless to deny it. She had those light brown eyes, round and soft and big enough to drown in, but she wasn’t vulnerable. Not one little bit, not with her sharp tongue and sharper wit.

  She had a small spattering of freckles on her nose, making him wonder where else she had freckles, and then there was her mouth. It was a little too big, and right now it happened to be curved in a smirking, smug smile. He’d had some interesting dreams about that mouth, and all the things he’d like her to do with it.

  Yeah. Lots of dreams.

  Honestly, he had no idea why she got to him. Or, hell, maybe he did. Maybe it was the combination of that sharp good humor and unmistakable dare in her eyes. Maybe it was the way she stood there in his world, so damn sure of herself when even he wasn’t, when he hadn’t been since his shoulder had made him realize exactly how damn tenuous his life really was. And she wanted his pants.

  “What’s the matter?” Henry asked. “Shy?”

  “Shut up.” Pace unbuttoned and jerked down his pants to the tune of the laughs of his supposed friends.

  Holly kept her eyes on his as he handed over the pants. Then she sat on the bench, her head bent as she worked, her hair slipping in a soft, silky looking curtain around her face, her fingers moving nimbly and ably while he stood there in his compression shorts.

  Feeling . . . exposed.

  And not just physically. Annoyed at himself, at his ridiculously juvenile teammates, at everyone including the smooth, unruffled, and unknowingly sexy Holly Hutchins, he took his pants-less self off for a moment alone.

  Holly fixed the zipper, then went looking for Pace, trying to avoid the area where guys tended to be naked and scratching things that she didn’t need to see scratched or otherwise.

  The visitors’ clubhouse was much smaller than the one at the Heat’s complex. In Santa Barbara, they had a huge facility, where anything the players could possibly want was readily available—flat screen TVs, a state of the art sound system, a refrigerator full of goodies, a whirlpool, video games, leather chairs all over the place.

  A baseball player’s self-contained biosphere.

  But here, on the road, there was little of that. Just the guys and their gear. And most interesting, the overwhelming levels of testosterone, male camaraderie, and genuine sense of affection and good humor.

  If it’d been filled with women, Holly doubted the atmosphere would be the same. These guys spent more time in close, confined quarters with each other than they spent in their own homes. In fact, she knew that more teams had been brought down by in-team fighting than poor play, but that didn’t seem to be an issue with the Heat.

  She found Pace alone in the shower room, staring off into space. She’d caught him rubbing his shoulder several times in the locker room, and she wondered if he was in pain. The urge to reach for her camera was strong. He could have walked off a glossy magazine ad. His jersey open over a clean, softly worn white T-shirt, both clinging to broad-as-a-mountain shoulders; tight compression shorts that hit mid-thigh and looked like something a cyclist would wear, revealing legs longer than a country mile. His feet were bare, and she had no idea why, but that was sexy as hell. Yeah, he could have been a model, but she’d never seen one with that hard of a gaze and that much going on behind it.

  He was so deep in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear her enter, giving her an extra moment to stare at him, which frankly, was enough to make her start to perspire.

  The man was beautiful, though she could admit to wondering just how deep that beauty went. She could try to find out, but that hadn’t worked out for her so well in the past, and in spite of being willing, even hopeful, she was feeling a little gun-shy. “Hey.”

  He didn’t move, just let out a breath, making her realize he’d been aware of her all along. She cocked her head. “You okay?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Of course.”

  He didn’t move an inch, but she sensed him relax. “I’d be better if I had a Dr Pepper,” he admitted.

  “I thought you gave them up to watch your girlish figure.” She smiled when he slanted her a look. “I could get you one, if you’d like.”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  Though he was being friendly enough, he was still speaking in the polite tone he reserved for the press and pushy fans, which she knew all too well because it’d been the very first tone he’d used with her. “I’m not looking for a canned response, Pace. You don’t have to be fine with me.”

  The look in his eyes sent a little lust-ridden thrill racing along her spine. He was tall, dark, and full of attitude, with tension coming off him in waves. She wondered if it was the upcoming game or something else. She tossed over his pants, which he caught in midair but didn’t move to put them on.

  “You’re not what I expected,” he finally said.

  “Ditto. But curiously speaking, what did you expect?”

  “For you to be more on guard for one thing. And as bossy as you were at first. You know, a typical reporter.”

  She smiled. “First appearances are rarely accurate.”

  “I don’t know.” He smiled back. “I called you for nosy, too. And you’re definitely that.”

  “I was nosy long before I was a reporter.” The shower room was clean but a little dark and damp. It felt humid and musky.

  Intimate.

  Pace pulled on his pants and buttoned up his shirt. He slipped his hand in his opened waistband to do a half-assed tucking in of his shirt, which seemed to further rev her engine.

  She was out of control.

  Completely. Out. Of. Control.

  “Are you . . . blushing?” he asked, and with a curious light in his eyes, stopped tucking. “Yeah. You are.”

  And possibly drooling again, too. And as if all that wasn’t enough, he smelled amazing. “I’m not.”

  He traced a finger over her cheekbone. “And lying.” He tsked softly, his gaze dipping over her face. “Thought you never lied.”

  “I—” She broke off when the pad of that finger, calloused and very warm, slid over her throat, stopping at the very base where she imagined her pulse was drumming out of control. Suddenly, she felt extremely aware that his pants were unfastened. “Pace, I . . . I’m—” She let out a breath and shook her head.

  He was still looking at her, his expression almost grave. “You’re attracted to me.”

  “Which is obviously a mistake.” She wrapped her fingers around his forearm to pull his hand away from her, but he shook his head and stepped closer.

  “I’m attracted back, Holly.”

  She went still, then tipped her head up at him.

  “Yeah.” A small smile curved his lips. “And I’m no more happy about it than you are.”

  Her own accelerated breathing echoed in her ears, an admission that maybe she wasn’t so unhappy about it.

  His smile faded. Slowly, he shifted so that they were brushed up against each other, and though she hadn’t been the one to walk around without pants, she felt exposed.

  Raw.

  And more than a little wary.

  Especially since he didn’t want to be attracted, and knowing it had an old insecurity rising to the surface, the one stemming from always having to push for what she wanted, and damn if she wasn’t more than a little tired of that. Someday, just once, she wanted a man to push for her. “Well, you could just ignore . . . this,” she said. “I’m sure that will help—”

  Snagging her wrist, he pulled her back around, closer now in the dimly lit room.

  “Pace—”

  “Shh a