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Her heart raced with his assessment, the same one Donna had made. “I’m not running. I’m not making an excuse. I’m taking a step back, in light of today’s events, and evaluating my actions.”
“Evaluating?” he challenged. “You know what. You just keep evaluating. Evaluate your little heart out. I’m going to bed.” He started to turn, stopped. Dropped his bombshell. “We have to be at the coach’s house tomorrow for a season kickoff barbecue.”
“Barbecue?”
“Right. Wives. Girlfriends. Family. I’ve never brought anyone with me before. So, we’re going to need to do some really fine pretending, Katie. Of course, we could just say we’re having our first fight. That won’t require much pretending.” He was pissed. Pissed and frustrated. She could see it all over his face. “Two o’clock. Be ready.” He turned away, began to move toward the hall.
Katie’s racing heart shuddered momentarily to a halt, before her mind splintered into a million pieces—a million thoughts. Luke was right. Her job was an excuse. She was afraid of losing herself again in a man and his career, afraid that she would cease to exist if she and Luke began to become a couple. But she wasn’t the same person she’d been when that had happened to her before; she wasn’t.
“Luke!” she called out, stopping him in his tracks. He faced her, waited with an expectant look on his too-handsome face. “I don’t want to go to that barbecue having a fight, and I don’t want to pretend I don’t want you. I do want you.”
He didn’t immediately respond. “I like you, Katie, all of you, just as you are, but I won’t do this back-and-forth again. You’re either in the game or you’re out.”
She didn’t need to think about that. Not anymore. “I’m in on one condition.”
“I’m not really into conditions right now,” he said, his lips a hard line.
She walked toward him. “I think you’ll like this condition.” She pressed her hand to his chest. Warmth radiated up her arm, butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “I’m listening.”
“Since we had our first fight,” she said, drawing the words out, “shouldn’t we have makeup sex?”
A slow smile lifted the corners of his tempting mouth a second before he reached for her. And suddenly, wonderfully, they were crazy-hot kissing, and Katie had a good idea they weren’t going to make it to the bedroom. At least not for round one.
8
SHE TASTED of iced tea laced with a ray of sunshine, and was the only good thing that had come from this stalker who’d now managed to invade his life. And as much as he’d tried to convince himself he wasn’t rattled, the kitchen incident had rattled him. The fact that he couldn’t go to practice without an escort also rattled him. The fact that he couldn’t pretend to be unaffected, at least not to himself, scared the shit out of him.
He didn’t want to be scared; he didn’t want the potential nightmare that being scared could bring to his game, exactly why he’d resisted, even denied, that he had a stalker. Because once he accepted that fact, then it was in his head, and it would be even when he stepped on the mound. And pitching was what he did. It was his life. Without it, he didn’t know who he was.
And so he drank of that sunshine that was Katie. Drank her in to forget the threats, forget the upset. Katie didn’t want him for his career. And right now, more than ever, that felt right, it felt perfect.
He deepened the kiss, drank of her more completely. She whimpered into his mouth, and he felt the sound as readily as he heard it, felt it in the jolt of lust it shot through his limbs, straight to his groin. Felt it in the comfort that she was no longer anywhere near trying to escape, or redrawing some imaginary line between them and claiming it protected them both. He didn’t want to be protected; he wanted to be absorbed, lost inside her.
A wild rush of need expanded inside him and he reached deep to slow down, fearful he would injure Katie’s knee. He gently lifted her on top of the low counter, thankful for the design that put her hips even with his. The instant she was stably positioned, he eased between her thighs, inside the V of her body, his mouth slanting over hers. He could almost feel the heat rushing off her, anticipating the instant he would feel all that heat wrapped around him, stroking his cock. And her kisses—hot, hungry kisses that said, once she’d decided she wanted this, she wanted him completely.
His hands traveled her rib cage, her breasts. Katie arched into the touch, her palms tracing his biceps and shoulders. “I need you inside me,” she whispered against his lips. The boldness of those words drove into him, hammered him with desire.
