“How so?” He took a sharp left into the tunnel for an underground parking garage, casting them in darkness even though it wasn’t quite time for the sun to set yet.
Casting a spell of intimacy in the car that she wasn’t ready to feel.
Taking a deep breath, she blurted her idea before she fell captive to the potent attraction between them all over again.
“We need to stage a public breakup.”
3
“ISN’T IT A LITTLE PREMATURE for a breakup?” Lance steered the car into his parking spot in the subterranean garage and shut off the engine. “We haven’t even been to first base yet.”
Pocketing the keys, he turned to face her across the shadowy interior. She was incredibly sexy in a short cotton tank dress with a jean jacket thrown over her shoulders. A series of silver pins around the collar glittered even in the darkness, the metal reflecting a light from nearby. She twisted the handle of her leather purse strap between her fingers, her edgy nervousness surprising him. Her reputation painted her as a mouthy rebel. But right now, he never would have guessed she was the same woman who had plowed through the press with an umbrella earlier today.
“And I think it would be better for us if we forgot about first base and um—struck out instead.”
“If you had any idea what my on-base percentage is this season, you’d see how unlikely that is.” He’d had an epiphany tonight while he was launching that ball into the upper deck. He’d been in the game too long to play it safe. He was at a stage of his career—and his life—where he needed to swing for the fences.
Trying to run his life according to what the fans wanted wasn’t going to fly. With his kind of fame, the media could always find something to make him look like the bad guy. He might as well live life to the fullest and hope his good deeds would help show the world he wasn’t some shallow playboy racking up the millions for his own gratification.
Now he just hoped he could make Jamie see why that was a better plan. Sure he cared about his career—recognition like going to the All-Star Game and winning a Gold Glove was important. But he’d been playing long enough to know you couldn’t live your personal life according to popular opinion. If his fans didn’t approve of him dating a controversial socialite, he’d just hope he could provide them with game stats too valuable for the Scrapers to trade him away.
“I’m serious.” Her voice turned husky as she pressed the point and something about the smoky quality of it tripped down his spine like a lover’s caress. “If we have some kind of public tiff where the media can catch it on film, we can do fast damage control. By the end of the week, we’ll be a nonitem as far as the press is concerned.”
“Why should we turn our backs on something that might be really special just because it’s convenient for my publicist or yours?”
She had no answer for a long moment and he took the opportunity to still her fingers where she wrung the living daylights out of that purse strap. Her short nails had been painted pearly white, the pale glitter standing out against her tanned skin.
He captured one of her hands between both of his, pressing their palms together until he could feel the rapid-fire beat of her heart in the soft pad below her thumb.
“How do you know it could be special when we hardly know each other?” The naked worry in her tone reminded him not to push for too much too fast.
It also hinted at a vulnerability at odds with her brazen public persona.
“I’ll tell you exactly how I know, but will you come upstairs with me first?” He gestured to the dark parking garage. “It’s quiet in here now, but all it takes is one hungry journalist with a good cover story to get past the gate.”
Nodding, she reached for the passenger door handle before he could open it for her. He felt more than a little off his game with her, and he wasn’t quite sure why. Could it be because she was the first woman in a long time to interest him on more than just a physical level?
Locking the car, he escorted her to the elevator bay and up to the penthouse level where key access was required. The modest-size high rise overlooked Central Park, an older property he’d been lucky to snap up soon after he moved to the city.
“Wow.” Jamie breathed an appreciative sigh as he opened the door to his place, mirroring his own first reaction when he’d seen the view.
The Plaza Hotel capped off the dark expanse of park greenery in the twilight, the brightly lit landmark centered in his glimpse of the midtown skyline. A few hansom cabs worked the perimeter of the park, the colorful carriages a taste of old New York on one of the city’s historic thoroughfares.
“Make yourself comfortable.” He gestured toward the couch, but she ignored it in favor of a spot at the floor-to-ceiling bay window. “Can I get you a drink?”
“No, thanks.” She shook her head, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders to blanket the jean jacket. “But I’m anxious to hear why you think we have any business together when we hardly know each other.”
She shot him a rueful grin over one shoulder, her arms crossed in a defensive posture.
Setting his keys on a glass-topped table near the sofa, he joined her at the window overlooking the city. He guessed he didn’t have a lot of time to make his case with her. He’d read all about her messy divorce from the media mogul who’d pinned the fault on her in the press. The guy had blamed her partying lifestyle and implied she ran with a “fast” crowd. He’d stopped short of accusing her of cheating on him, but blogs devoted to celebrity-watching had a field day speculating if she’d been as unfaithful to him as he’d been to her.
“I don’t blame you for being careful.” He respected it, in fact. “From what I read, your ex sounds like he went out of his way to make your life hell.”
Though Lance hadn’t recognized her at first, he recalled seeing the video of her fight sometime in the past year. It had been in an e-mail a friend sent him, and he’d watched it, the way most of the rest of the country had.
He felt bad about that now, blindly adding to the popularity of a video she surely wished would die.
She gave a tight nod. He was curious why things had turned so bitter in her marriage, but he wasn’t about to push her for inside details, the real scoop behind the tabloid scandals. Not when he needed to make her see the past had no business in this discussion.
“And while you might not have any reason to trust that I’m not like that,” he forged ahead, “I’ll tell you why I trust that we could have something really special together.”
She eyed him with wary interest from her position in front of the window. With the skyline spread out behind her, the lights of the city glowing brighter as the sky faded from purple twilight to full darkness, she made for the best view he’d ever had from that balcony.
“Why?” Her crossed arms fell, her body language opening to him for the first time since their exchange in the coffeehouse.
“I make my living on snap judgments, Jamie.” With tentative fingers, he brushed a lock of hair from the shoulder of her denim jacket, smoothing it down her back and stirring the clean, floral scent of her shampoo. “I’ve got fractions of a second to stare down a baseball when it leaves the pitcher’s hand to decide if it’s a fastball or a changeup or any of the other junk in a pitcher’s arsenal. Fractions of a second to apply everything I know about hitting a baseball to determine whether or not I’ll swing and where I’m going to try and connect with the ball.”