Slow Heat

Sam wasn’t sure what she was, but it didn’t matter. She was too busy to think about it. She had pre-game interviews, post-game interviews, and everything promotion-related in between, which included lots of standing next to Wade and smiling for a camera.

He seemed to get a kick out of it, making sure to touch her as often as possible. Before the third Padres game, the reporter asked Wade to kiss her, and with a grin, he bent her over his arm and did.

He kissed her long and wet and deep.

Sam made sure to pretend to like it.

Except there wasn’t much pretending involved.

Tag joined Sam and Holly in the stands, happy to dig into their standard tray of delicious junk food, but when she and Holly leapt to their feet to cheer Pace on during a tense third inning, he remained seated.

Until the fifth inning, when it was Wade they were cheering for. Tag got up for Wade when he hit a triple. Sam stared at him, grinning broadly.

“What?” he asked.

“You cheered.”

“It was a good hit.” And he calmly sat back down and grabbed another hot dog, as he was apparently a bottomless pit masquerading as a kid. Or maybe he had a tape-worm. She knew he was still dealing with missing home, missing Jeremy, the only real family he’d ever had in his life, and she worried every minute of every day that he was leaving his childhood behind too soon, that he’d suffer long-term from abandonment issues.

Especially since Jeremy didn’t call—either because he couldn’t, or because it didn’t occur to him. Either way, Samantha hated him for it. Tag deserved better. Hell, a dog deserved better. She’d managed to hire a tutor/nanny to travel with them—a guy, which seemed to please Tag. As did Wade, who took Tag with him to practices when he could, and also out to eat. He’d made Sam come, too, and she’d gone back to her office afterwards with her cheeks aching from laughing.

After the Padres series, they flew to San Francisco to play the Giants. Before the first game, Sam was working the clubhouse as she always did. She’d been worried about Tag being bored, but it turned out he wasn’t any harder to take care of than any of the other men around her. At the moment, he was in the guest clubhouse on a couch with a control box in his lap, playing a video game. His head was tilted back, his eyes glazed and locked on the TV, his mouth open as he worked the controls. He was decked out in Wade’s jersey, with someone’s far too large Adidas on his feet. He had a huge wad of bubblegum in his mouth, which was probably why it hung open.

And just looking at him squeezed her heart. How one little kid could worm his way into her life so damn fast, she had no idea. She brought him an apple juice and ruffled his hair, barely managing to resist hugging him because she knew he’d just squirm free. “Want a sandwich?”

He didn’t respond.

“Tag?”

He grunted, then shook his head.

Good Lord. He was already a guy through and through. Shaking her head, she moved past him. As always, the players arrived at least five hours early for the game, and even though they had a clubbie—a guy paid to make sure they had everything they needed—she always walked through to check on them as well. She’d been doing so since the beginning of time, so she no longer even noticed the half-naked men wandering back and forth from showers to lockers, or the behavior such testosterone brought out. In one corner Mason and Kyle were sparring with their gloves on for no discernable reason. She’d discovered guys didn’t need a reason for aggression, so she’d long ago ceased looking for one.

“Cool it,” Gage told them.

Joe walked out of the shower completely butt-ass na**d. Mike snapped his ass with a towel and in return, Joe shoved him into a wall and kept walking, a big welt now blooming on one butt cheek.

Sam registered it all and saw none of it.

She turned to get herself a bottle of water just as one more player walked out of the shower room.

Wade.

He wore a towel and nothing else except drops of water and those lean, hard muscles. And unlike with the other guys, her mind went there, to him in the shower, all na**d and soapy, and she felt heat slash through her belly. She opened her bottle of water and took a sip for her suddenly parched throat.

Wade was in his zone, his game face on, heading for his locker. When their eyes connected, some of the intensity left his face, softening his eyes and softening her insides, and for a moment, she wished that he wanted more, more of her and from her.

He was still looking at her, too gorgeous for words, and without her permission, a ridiculously helpless smile curved her lips.

In return, he let loose a smile, too, the warm, intimate one that he always gave her after kissing her stupid. They were staring at each other like idiots, surrounded by people. Uncharacteristically flustered, she turned away first, and plowed directly into Gage with her opened water bottle.

He was tall and built like the players. Solid muscle. Bumping into him was like bumping into a brick wall, but he absorbed the impact and caught her, holding her up as water splashed down the front of him. “I’m sorry,” she gasped.

He pulled his shirt away from his skin, his dark features twisting into a grimace. “Me, too. Where’s the fire?” He looked behind her to see what she’d been running from.

Wade was in front of his locker. He’d pulled on his compression shorts and was reaching for his jersey.

She winced as Gage’s eyes cut to hers again.

“I haven’t asked you,” he said evenly, with only a teeny tiny hint of irony, “how this whole pretend relationship thing is going.”

Oh boy.“Fine.”

“Is it going to stay that way for the rest of the month, no trouble?”

God, she hoped so. “Hey, no trouble is my middle name.”

Gage nodded, but his eyes reflected his concern that maybe she was lying through her teeth. She couldn’t reassure him because she had no reassurances. None.

Because just behind her façade was a bone deep certainty that she wasn’t fine. Not even close. She was falling for a man she had no business falling for, and for a kid that wasn’t hers.

Fine didn’t begin to cover it.

“Do I need to step in?” Gage asked, holding eye contact, raising a brow. “Kick his ass?”

She laughed, as he’d intended, even knowing that beneath the levity, he’d absolutely do it if she wanted. “No.”

He watched her for a long moment. Part of Gage’s brilliance was being able to see what people didn’t want him to. She had no doubt he knew exactly what was wrong. Just as he knew how important it was to her to handle her problems on her own. Finally he nodded, gave her a surprisingly gentle hug, then moved away.

Sam turned to talk to some of the reporters, moving through, making the rounds, and suddenly Wade was in front of her. He took her hand and pulled her around a corner until it was just them, sandwiched in a hallway between two rolling hampers of towels.

He’d put on the rest of his uniform, thank God. His hair was still wet from his shower, falling silkily over his forehead. His eyes were smiling, though his mouth wasn’t. “One week down,” he murmured, gently pressing her back to the wall.

“And we haven’t killed each other.” Or lost our clothes again. Good signs, both of them.

Moving slowly but extremely surely, he linked their fingers at her sides, then slid their joined hands up the wall, until they were above her head. Then he leaned in so close there wasn’t enough space between them for so much as a sheet of paper.

“What are you doing?”

His mouth curved. “You were undressing me with your eyes.”

“Was not—”

He kissed her. Well, first he outlined her lower lip with his tongue, then he covered her mouth with his, and at the first taste of him, she was gone.

Gone.

She rocked against him and he let go of her hands, sliding his down her arms to cover her breasts, his thumbs brushing over her already pebbled nipples. A rough groan escaped him and he lifted his head. They were nose to nose, their breath coming as one, gazes locked.

She couldn’t tear her eyes off him. His hair was looking a little tousled, his uniform shirt wrinkled now from her fingers, his eyes flashing heat and good humor as she tried to smooth it out, pressing it over his broad chest and shoulders. “Sorry,” she murmured.

“For the wrinkles, or that kiss?”

“You kissed me.” She sighed. “But if you hadn’t, I’d probably have initiated it.”

He smiled against her throat, she could feel it, and heard it in his voice. “Good to know.” He glided his thumb over her nipple again.

She trembled, which was annoying. She was working! But when he let his mouth settle against the spot just beneath her ear, she actually tilted her head to the side to give him better access, which he fully utilized, brushing his lips against her sensitized flesh once, then again. “You still want me. And God knows I want you.

She slid out from between him and the wall and attempted to recover some dignity. “Have a good game, Wade.”

“Nothing to say on the wanting me thing?”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I’m going to tell the reporters who ask about us. No comment.” And with not nearly the dignity she’d hoped for since her ni**les were hard and her panties wet, she walked away in tune to his soft, knowing laugh.

At the end of the San Francisco series, the Heat got on their usual chartered jet, and then got delayed on the tarmac for two long hours. It was late, past midnight, and everyone was exhausted, Wade included. Exhausted and restless. And in his case, also oddly . . .

Lonely.

It was a new feeling for him, an unwelcome one, and unable to sit in his seat, he walked the narrow aisle of the plane. His teammates were all in various positions, asleep, reading, or on their PDAs.

Near the back, Tag was sprawled out on two adjacent seats, one leg up, one leg hanging to the floor, his arms flung wide, mouth open, sleeping with the utter abandonment only a kid could pull off. Sam was across from him, and as Wade looked at her, he realized that this was where he’d meant to end up, near her.

As if she felt the same, Sam moved over to make room for him. She didn’t speak, and Wade couldn’t express his appreciation enough for that. He just wanted to sit, maybe sleep, and he’d wanted to do both those things with her.

His pretend girlfriend.

It didn’t escape his notice that he was closer to her, in their pretend relationship, then he’d been to any other woman in a long time.

Or that he’d been having an internal debate with himself about whether they could have something for real.

Half the time he believed it.

The other half, he wasn’t so sure. It’d never worked for him before, and if he f**ked it up and they ended up in a bad place, then he wouldn’t have her in his life at all.

So he didn’t go there. Instead, in the dark, surrounded by the low hum of the plane’s engine, he just absorbed being close to her in the only way he knew how. After a few minutes, Sam stretched and yawned, shifting, trying to get comfortable. “Here,” he murmured, and slid an arm around her shoulders, urging her against him. She looked up at him, and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, set her head on his chest.

The simple, easy trust had something catching deep within him. Nothing he wanted to define given that he was fairly certain it would be something he didn’t know how to face, so he merely stared down at her, struck by the warmth spreading through his belly as she slowly drifted off, using him as her pillow.

Christ, she was sweet.

“Wade?” she murmured in a low sleepy voice that made him hard.

“Yeah?”

“Cop a feel while I’m asleep and I’ll toss you out the window at fifteen thousand feet.”

He smiled. “Go to sleep, Sam.”

And she did. The plane was comfortably dark and quiet, and it’d been one hell of a long week. Pulling her in a little closer to better support and hold her against him, Wade settled in. He could tell when she let go because she completely relaxed against him, but for him sleep was a long time coming.

Sam coaxed Tag out of bed the next morning with blueberry pancakes. He wasn’t thrilled. “I know you’re tired,” she said when he yawned broadly. “And I know it’s early, but I have to—”

“It’s okay,” he said, bleary-eyed, head dropping to the table next to his plate.

She stared down at him, concerned. Ten-year-olds were supposed to be rough and tumble. She’d looked it up. Ten-year-olds were supposed to be hard to handle and loud and noisy. She wanted him so badly not to be scarred by his parents, by circumstances. But every night she lay in bed and worried about all the ways she might be further screwing him up. “Do you ever complain? Whine? Act like a brat?”

He cracked open an eye. “You want me to act like a brat?”

She smiled and lifted a shoulder. “Maybe once in a while, yeah.”

“Okay.” He straightened. “I wanna play Xbox in the clubhouse. It really sucks that you don’t have one here. I mean who doesn’t? You don’t even have a GameCube. You’ve got nothing.”

“Sorry, there’s no baseball game today. We’re not going to the clubhouse. And I don’t have kids, so I don’t play Xcube or Gamebox.”

He snorted.

“Or whatever,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

“What if I threw myself down on the floor and yelled?”

“Would you really do that?”

He looked at the floor, then at what he was wearing—Wade’s jersey, what a surprise. “I might get the jersey dirty.”

“Don’t worry. You’re going to like what we’re doing instead.”