And they were baseball royalty.
Or had been until Samantha’s brother Jeremy—her PR equivalent at the Bucks—had stepped over the ethics line, the moral line, and several other lines as well, and brought the wrath of the press down on the McNeads. It hadn’t gone over well, and damage control was required. Gee, guess who was in charge of damage control? “Yes,” she said quietly. “My father thinks it’s a good idea.”
“So they’re willing to pimp out their princess when it suits them.”
Ouch. But the answer was yes, a McNead was expected to stick to the pack. She’d known that by the time she could talk in full sentences. “It’s just an illusion.”
“It’s an entire month.”
The reminder made her stomach quiver. An entire month of being his girlfriend. “We’re grown-ups.”
“Really?” His stark green gaze was more genuine curiosity than sarcasm. “Because we’ve not spent more than two minutes together without snarling at each other.”
God. So true.
“Well, except for the elevator,” he said.
Also true, and her stomach executed a double gainer with a twist as the memory flew back, hot and sexy, resurrected by nothing more than the sound of his voice and the sudden sleepy look in his eyes.
It’d happened last season. The Heat had just lost, bad. The press had been ruthless, and her father had been pissed at her for somehow not being Super Woman. She’d been in desperate need of some alone time.
What she’d gotten instead was stuck in an elevator on the way to her hotel room with Wade and a couple little bottles of airplane Scotch, and her pity party for one had turned into a na**d party for two. The erotic, alcohol-tinged memories came to her in slow-mo and as always, always, sent her spinning between total and complete humiliation and an even more devastating aching hunger and desire.
If she could just erase from her memory banks the picture of Wade taking her straight to heaven in under five minutes she would, but the pictures in her brain seemed to only strengthen with time instead of lessen. She darted a quick glance at their driver, who was currently sipping a seventy-two-ounce DQ soda and rocking his head to the radio as he beat the steering wheel like a drum. “I don’t want to discuss that night.”
Wade shrugged. No skin off his nose. Hell, he’d probably had lots of nights like that since. She concentrated on the view. Not a hardship. Santa Barbara wasn’t called the American Riviera for nothing, and she watched as they passed four-thousand-foot peaks covered in unique and beautiful chaparral and sandstone outcrops. “So we’re good?” she asked quietly.
Wade smiled. It was his professional smile, the one that could melt a woman’s panties at fifty paces and make men wish that they had half his athletic prowess, and it was a charmer. She knew its potency, braced herself for it, and stillfelt her panties begin to melt. “What the hell.” He stretched out even farther, his leg sliding to hers. “We’re good. Girlfriend.”
“Fake girlfriend,” she corrected, shoving him over, telling herself she was absolutely not noticing the heat of him, the feel of his rock hard thigh . . .
He stretched some more, straightening his arms above him, briefly exposing a flash of washboard abs between the hem of his shirt and the waistband of his jeans. Jeans that were faded at all the stress points. He had some very fine stress points . . .
She saw more men in a day than the average woman dreamed of. Many of those men—if she was in the clubhouse before a game—in various stages of na**dness, leaving her utterly immune to tantalizing glimpses of male skin.
Which didn’t explain why her mouth went dry.
“Maybe we should kiss on it,” Wade suggested. “Seal the deal.”
Her tummy quivered, a fact she firmly ignored. “What? No!”
“Spoilsport.”
He’d probably have fallen over if she’d said yes, which she absolutely wouldn’t do. Even if he was the kiss master.
Which he was . . .
His leg was touching hers again. He was hogging the backseat, albeit unintentionally. He was a big guy and he needed space. He also smelled good. He looked good, too, which really didn’t seem fair at all. But he was here, not pitching a diva fit, and she owed him for that. “Thank you,” she said. “For agreeing to this.”
“You’re welcome.”
Well, that seemed surprisingly genuine, and she had to wonder if maybe she’d anticipated trouble with him simply because of their past. Maybe . . . maybe deep down he really was a good guy.
It was possible.
Maybe they could laugh about this, her having to keep up the pretense of being his lover, when they’d already done the deed.
That could possibly be fun. Maybe.
Sort of.
And maybe they could even become friends. It would be nice—
“You packing any Scotch today?” he asked, looking around the limo. “Should I be bracing myself for you to tear my clothes off again?”
With a sigh, she leaned back and closed her eyes. She could safely check both fun and friends off the list.
Chapter 2
Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.
—Barry Switzer
Wade didn’t have a problem playing dress up with the sexy, tough-as-nails Samantha McNead. Hell, he’d been playing dress up in one form or another since birth, using bravado, sheer grit, and a good amount of bullshit to get to where he was today. His life was a virtual Mr. Cinderella story.
Sometimes he still pinched himself.
So this pretend shit, whatever he and Sam were expected to do this weekend? Right up his alley, baby. But he knew it wasn’t up Sam’s.
Her shoulders were back, spine stiff, the tension rolling off her in waves. She was usually wound a little tight but today she seemed to be setting new records for herself. She wore her shoulder-length blond hair up in some complicated knot thing that had to be giving her a headache. The fitted jacket of her business suit gave her the professionalism he knew she needed on her job. The narrow skirt aimed to do the same thing, but instead emphasized the greatest legs on this side of the Continental Divide. If they were less than a country mile, he’d eat his shorts. And her heels. Christ, those sexy heels. He had no idea how she could walk in them, but damn, he loved them.
She glanced over and caught him staring. With a sound that said she found his perusal unsettling, she crossed her legs away from him, bare skin sliding on bare skin.
Ah, man. He loved that sound. She had great skin. Creamy and smooth and—
His cell phone buzzed, interrupting the thought. Sam waved, gesturing that he should answer it, looking relieved to have him occupied.
“So,” Pace said without a greeting when Wade opened his phone. “Is the rumor correct? Are you and Sam playing nice for an entire month?”
“Partially correct,” Wade said.
“Which part?”
“The month part. Not necessarily the play nice part.”
Sam had been looking at the water but that brought her attention back to him while in his ear Pace laughed softly. “Don’t let her kill you before the wedding tomorrow,” his bemused friend said. “Holly, Gage, and I will be there at noon. We want to see the show.”
“You mean the wedding.”
“That, too,” Pace said with an obvious smirk.
“I’m sorry, exactly how is this so funny?”
“Well, you’ve never met a woman you couldn’t conquer, and she’s sure as hell never met a guy whose balls she couldn’t crush. So who’s going to survive? That’s the million-dollar question.”
Okay, so things were admittedly awkward between him and Sam, but whatever she wanted to believe, they were still attracted to each other. Wade had always been perfectly willing to follow through on their attraction, but she held back, leaving him unsure of what exactly her feelings were when it came to him. If he’d thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning her over, he’d have tried by now. “I didn’t laugh at you when you had that sexy little reporter dogging your heels,” he said to Pace. “The one you asked to marry you.”
“Hell yeah, you did. You laughed your ass off. And what are you saying, that you’re going to get engaged to Sam the way I did with Holly?”
Wade opened his mouth, then closed it andhis phone.
“So,” Sam murmured. “They think this is amusing.”
“Yeah.” He let out a breath. Not a lot got past his chill façade these days, but the reality of what they needed to pull off did. After a physically intense spring training, all he’d wanted was this weekend off before the crazy started again, a weekend of relaxation. Samantha McNead was nice on the eyes, very nice, but not much for relaxing. Letting out a low laugh, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “So I get why I’m in this, but why you?”
“Gage.”
The name was reason enough. Gage Pasquel was the youngest, toughest, most badass team manager in the MLB. He did whatever he felt necessary to run the Heat with winning efficiency, but in the end, he answered to the GM and the owners, one of which was her father. “You could have said no.”
Sam slid him a long look. “And you could have behaved.”
“I always behave.”
She made a sound that said she thought he was full of shit. And she might be right. He did have a little authority problem, always had. “You have to admit,” he said. “The press has been unfairly relentless.”
“Yes, well, the probability of someone watching you at any given moment is directly proportional to the level of stupidity of whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Are you suggesting I act stupidly?”
“No,” she said. “That would be rude.”
He laughed and shook his head.
She relaxed with a small smile. “As if you care what I think about you anyway.”
He’d forgotten how pretty she was when she smiled, and seeing her good humor brought his own to the surface. Maybe there was hope for that stick-up-her-ass after all. “Admit it, Sam. You’re already having fun.”
“I’ll have fun when this is over. And you’re right, the press is relentless, especially with us, and you know why. We’re a new team, a talented team, but we’re young and we make young mistakes. We had those accusations of drug use last season, and—”
“I know.” As a result of those accusations, they’d lost a promising pitcher and one of their coaches had retired early. Pace had briefly come under fire as well. Even Sam had inadvertently been dragged under when her brother Jeremy had confessed to leaking false stories to the press in order to make the Heat look bad.
Then to add insult to injury, Wade had attracted a bunch of press in the past few weeks when Tia Rodriquez, claiming to be pregnant with Wade’s baby, had produced pictures of the two of them. As Tia wasn’t exactly a credible source—after all, she’d stalked Pace just last year—management hadn’t been overly concerned at first. But then she’d managed to get several national newspapers and blogs to take her seriously.
Baseball did love a scandal.
When the Heat’s corporate sponsors had begun to make noise, management stepped in, getting a restraining order against Tia and slapping Wade’s wrist at the same time.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about pretending to be in a relationship to please some CEO he’d never even met. On one hand, it would be nice to have someone to share this weekend event with. On the other hand, it was Sam, who gave him a hard time about everything. Sam who’d argue with him about the sky being blue. Sam with whom he’d once spent those wild few hours in an Atlanta hotel elevator. Sam who’d rocked his world after he’d gotten his ass kicked two games in a row by the Braves.
The Braves.
He could still remember striking out and then missing a pop fly at home, letting in two runs. Gage had chewed his ass out. Hell, he’d chewed his own ass out. And then the coup de grace. He’d gone back to the hotel, gotten onto an elevator, and realized he was alone with Sam.
He’d expected it to be more hell, but it’d turned out to be the best two hours in his entire damn life. He’d never forget the sound she’d made as she’d come for him, as if she hadn’t come in forever, as if he’d given her something no one else had.
And yet now . . . now she preferred to ignore him.
As if her thoughts were just as disturbing, Sam sighed and leaned her head back, exposing her neck as she closed her eyes.
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” he murmured, eyes on the spot where her pulse beat, a spot he’d once ravished and suddenly wanted to ravish again. “It’s going to be an interesting month.”
“Hmm.”
Something about the doubt loaded into that single syllable made him want to push her buttons. “I’ll be sure to carry around a flask in case you feel the need for another quickie.”
Eyes still closed, her mouth tightened. “You can carry an entire bar with you, I’m not interested in anything happening between us ever again.”
“Ever?”
Opening her eyes, she leveled him with one single withering stare. “Ever.”
“Yeah.” He slid his sunglasses on and eased back. “Me either.”
“Good,” she said.
Better than good, he thought. Except for two small points. She was lying.
And so was he.
It took exactly two hours to make the drive from Santa Barbara to Laguna Beach. At the exclusive Laguna Rey Resort, there were already paparazzi in the lobby, looking to get shots of the famous wedding guests as they arrived for their weekend.