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Cameron?”
    “You happen to be the only guy I know who is going to meet the president face to face at the White House and who has seen this problem up close and personal. This project needs U.S. funding; the Dominians can’t do it on their own. The World Bank has already turned them down.”
    “Someone told you wrong. I’m not going to the White House, and I don’t do press unless I absolutely have to. And even then all I talk about is baseball. End of story.”
    “Then what was that performance back there?” It pained her to think that what she’d felt from him, the genuine man she’d seen in action, had been a figment of her imagination. It couldn’t have been. She was pretty good at reading people.
    “You owe me,” he said, leveling a steely gaze at her. “I had no choice but to act the part of your willing accomplice. And honestly, I hope it helps. But I’m done. Done . Do you get that? I don’t like being used.”
    “I had no idea the press would be there. I just wanted you to see the importance of the project.”
    “I saw. And I believe you. But you still owe me.”
    She didn’t try to draw him into conversation for the rest of the ride back to the hotel in San Pedro. She’d forced him to make a snap moral choice in front of the cameras; that hadn’t been right. But she’d do it all over again if it would help the people of the batey. Yet when they reached the hotel and he offered her his hand to help her from the limo, she was sure the spark she felt wasn’t just on her side of the equation.
    Or maybe it was.
    Maybe she was finally succumbing to her family’s greatest genetic defect—wishful thinking. Or maybe their greatest defect was choosing inappropriate mates. Her mother was already on wrong mate number five.
     
     

Chapter Four
     
    Jake slammed the door to his hotel room harder than he should have and wished he could use a punching bag to let off some steam.
    He’d been had.
    He admired Cameron’s spunk but hated that she’d tried to manipulate him, good cause or not. She couldn’t have known how deep her actions sliced, and he wasn’t in any frame of mind to explain to her or anyone else. Some secrets were best kept buried.
    Maybe a shower would clear his head. He’d only been halfway present during his coaching session with Aderro’s kids, not that anyone noticed. The boys’ energy ran so high that it would have taken an earthquake to get their minds off baseball.
    He rummaged through his gear bag a second time—it had to be there. He never forgot it. A grin spread across his face as his hand closed around the rippled bottle, and he drew out his bottle of shampoo. The resort had plenty of amenities in the marble-tiled bathroom, but he preferred using his own. His sister made the shampoo for him, and the scent reminded him of summers in the Carolinas. Not that he’d spent a summer there for over six years. That was the only problem about baseball—a player never got to take a summer vacation and travel to see the world. But they got to play the game they loved, and that was what mattered.
    He grabbed a way-too-fluffy white towel off the stack the maid had left just inside the bathroom door and then leaned in and cranked on the shower.
    The gilt-edged, floor-to-ceiling bath mirrors—surrounded by marble tiles polished until every square gleamed in the light cast by fancy brass fixtures—had him pausing before closing the door to the glass-walled shower. Aderro had booked Jake into the fanciest hotel in San Pedro through a friend in the hotel’s management, and he’d sworn that the man had comped Jake’s room. But free or not, the disparity of the hotel’s opulence with what Jake had seen in the village just an hour’s drive away nagged at him like a blister that wouldn’t heal.
    He’d had to learn fast how to handle the changes that came with being a near-instant millionaire. Some changes were welcome; he had to admit he liked not having to worry about making his