Stopping Short: A Hot Baseball Romance by Mindy Klasky Page B

as Image Masters worked to cement the best possible position for his next contract negotiation.
    She’d been living with the man for the past two weeks, and this was the first inkling she had that he was upset. She had been too directed to the goal, too attuned to the endpoint.
    She took a deep breath and folded her napkin into careful fourths. Tucking the edge under her saucer, she turned her coffee cup ninety degrees, so the handle was parallel to the edge of the table.
    Then she finally trusted herself to speak.
    “I’m sorry that we’ve misunderstood each other. You obviously had a difficult day, and the last possible thing you must have wanted was to spend more time with me. Why don’t you take some time and finish up your dessert? I’ll see you back at the room.”
    “Come on, Jessica.”
    And that was when she realized she was in too deep. Because her name on his lips, moaned in frustrated misery, pulled something inside her. It made her want to sit beside him. It made her want to slip her arms around his shoulders, to pull him close, to tell him everything was going to be all right.
    She didn’t want to be his image consultant. She wanted to be something different. Something more. Something that terrified the hell out of her.
    She pushed back her chair and picked up her black clutch purse. “Good evening,” she said, and she wanted to kick herself when she heard how badly her voice trembled.
    “Jesus Christ,” he said, wincing as he pushed back from the table.
    “Sit,” she commanded. “I’ll walk back to the hotel.”
    “It’s two and a half miles!”
    “Perfect.”
    But she didn’t think the walk was perfect. She’d been a fool to forget the lesson she’d been force-fed a year ago: Nothing would ever be perfect again.
    Her feet hurt, and she was cold, and she kept thinking about the man she’d left sitting alone at that table. It was only when she was halfway back to the hotel that she remembered she hadn’t kissed Drew that evening, hadn’t re-baited the honeypot for the reporters.
    And there, just like clockwork, was Ross Parker when she got to the lobby. He looked up from his tablet as she rubbed the goosebumps from her arms. “Trouble in paradise?” he asked, crossing to stand by her side.
    She didn’t bother pretending not to understand him. “No trouble. Drew and I had dinner out. He met up with some friends, and I decided to come back while they had another round.”
    “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
    She let her frustration freeze her words. “What exactly are you implying, Mr. Parker?”
    His sharp eyes gleamed. “Just that your fiancé has a bit of a reputation, Ms. Barnes. Before you came down here, he was known for shutting down a bar or too. For escorting a number of young ladies to all the local nightspots.”
    She thought about the lies she could tell. Despite their engagement, she and Drew had an open relationship; they were each welcome to date other people. She and Drew were playing an elaborate game, building up his reputation as a bad boy, enhancing his roguish charm in hopes of landing him a Hollywood role. She and Drew were undercover agents, both employed by MI-6 on a deadly mission that required she take immediate action against the nosy columnist.
    Yeah. Right.
    She allowed herself to take a shuddering breath, to let her fatigue and frustration slump her shoulders. Her gaze skittered away from the journalist’s steady observation. She said, “Of course I know his reputation. I also know that he’s a good man. I wouldn’t have agreed to marry him otherwise.”
    “About that engagement. I notice you don’t wear a ring.”
    That one she had an answer for. “The setting broke the day before I flew down here. I left it with my jeweler because I didn’t want to lose the stone.”
    “Up in New York?”
    “On 47 th Street.” She’d walked the Diamond District often enough. It was only a few blocks from the Image Masters office.
    “I only ask because