Hot Ticket by Deirdre Martin, Julia London, Annette Blair, Geri Buckley

That you had ebbs and flows like anyone else?”
    That caused him to burst out laughing. “Did I really say that?” he asked, pulling Kelly down to kiss him. “What an asshole!”
    “I thought it was poetic.”
    “You did?”
    “Yes! It was poetic in a jock sort of way.”
    He laughed and nibbled her lower lip. “I hope we’re together for a long time,” he said, kissing her cheek and the side of her mouth.
    “You do?”
    “Yeah.” He put a hand to her face and pushed her hair out of the way. “You know that I’m falling in love with you, Kelly.”

    She knew. Just as well as she knew that she was falling in love with him, too. She traced a line with her finger across his bottom lip. “Are you sure?”
    “Damn sure. I’ve never felt this way about a woman in my life. You make me happy . . . and I play so well with you in my life,” he added with a grin.
    “There was a time that you weren’t such a big fan of mine.”
    “That was before I knew you . . . but you weren’t exactly a fan, either,” he said, stroking her cheek.
    “That was before I knew what a fabulous ballplayer you are.”
    “Wow,” he said, his brows rising up. “That is very high praise coming from you.”
    Kelly laughed and traced another line across his lip. “You know I’m falling in love with you, too, Priceman.”
    “I know,” he whispered, and slipped a hand inside her robe.
    “Hey,” she said, curling her arms around his neck and glancing uneasily at his house.
    “Marie is off today and no one else is around,” he said, pausing to kiss her throat. “Except maybe”—he kissed the top of one breast—“a couple of squirrels.” He moved to the other breast. “But pay no attention to them—I pay them well to keep their mouths shut.”
    Well. If he was paying them. She sighed as he untied her bathing top with his teeth and lowered her onto the chaise. His hand drifted down, sliding in between her legs. “Tell me again what you’re going to say about me when you do your pilot test.”
    “That Parker Price is the sexiest guy in all of baseball.”
    “That’s a great start,” he said, and kissed her.
    They made wild love on that chaise, crying out with abandon, completely in sync with one another and their blossoming relationship. They spent the entire weekend sequestered in his mansion, taking no phone calls, letting no one in—except the delivery guy, of course, who kept them in food and booze and made a tidy little sum in tips for his discretion.

    They romped about Parker’s huge house, talking about how many kids could live comfortably in that house, at how improbable it was that they were actually together, talking about anything and everything.
    But when Sunday night came, their little retreat from the world ended when Kelly headed back to the city. “I’m gonna miss you,” Parker said, wrapping her in a bear hug before they walked out to the car. “We’re leaving for San Francisco tomorrow morning.”
    “I’ll miss you, too,” Kelly sighed, and pushed his hair from his forehead. “But it’s just a few days.”
    “As long as I know you’ll be here when I get back Friday. What if I swing by your place when we get in?”
    “That would be great,” Kelly said, rising up on her toes to kiss him once more. “I’ll make you something very special.”
    They left it that way, both reluctant to part, both eager to be together again.
    But in the middle of that week, while Parker was hitting balls out of the park and performing a double play that one sportscaster said was an impossible feat, Kelly got a call from Dan Brown at ESPN, who told her they wanted to fly her out to L.A. to get a makeover fit for television and do some tests on a few segments.
    Kelly’s heart started to pound like a drum as he spoke. “Seriously?”
    “Seriously,” he said. “We’ll do a pilot segment, and if everything goes well and it gets picked up, we’d put you on the air right around October, in time for the