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I’m not interested in Tom.” If it weren’t so annoying, her brother’s protectiveness toward her would be touching. “I don’t date players, and Tom has the most awful taste in women anyway. Remember Christina Caputo?” She wrinkled her nose.
    “I remember.” His voice took on a distant note and she bit back a scathing comment. Ten bucks said that her brother had a thing for the sexy reality star. Hypocrite.
    “Paul, trust me. Worry about the bullpen. Worry about the gate receipts being down and slow season ticket sales. Heck, worry about salmonella at the hot dog stand. But don’t give another thought to this.” She signed the lease, stuck it in an intraoffice mail envelope, addressed it, and dropped it in her outbox. “I couldn’t care less about Tom Cord.”

Chapter Four
    “Tom, I don’t enjoy having this kind of conversation with you, but I don’t have a choice. PowerJuice is threatening to drop you if you get into trouble again.”
    Tom let his head fall back against the couch with a thud. These calls with his agent were always so much fun. He made the guy a fortune, but you’d never know it by the way Brandon crawled up his ass all the time.
    “What’s their problem this time?”
    “‘This time’? Their main problem is that there keeps being a ‘this time.’ First the whole world seeing your bare butt when your old girlfriend tweeted that picture—”
    “Oh, come on. That was two years ago. You could hardly see anything anyway, it was so dark.”
    “And then Caputo making like she was at a gynecological exam, flashing the world getting out of the limo.”
    “I did
not
know she was going to do that.” He ran a finger along the bridge of his nose. Christ, from the furor that had erupted, you’d think nobody had ever seen a vagina before. Frankly, he wasn’t too sure Brandon ever
had
seen a vagina, although Tom was sure he was straight. The guy did not give off the vibes of someone who got laid on a regular basis.
    “You’re in a small town, with a chance to redeem yourself, and what do you do but make straight for the first bar you can find and drunk-tweet pictures of yourself with the local floozies. Tom, it’s gotta stop.”
    “Brandon, I was in a bar after a start, blowing off steam. I didn’t go home with those girls. I don’t see the big deal.”
    “Oh? Who did you go home with?”
    “Sarah Dudley, the Thrashers VP of public relations.”
    “You nailed the team veep!” Brandon roared.
    “No, I didn’t nail the team veep.” Not for lack of trying on his part, but Brandon didn’t need to know that. “Chrissakes, Brandon, give me a break. She gave me a ride home. That was it.”
    If he did end up being so fortunate as to “nail the team veep,” as Brandon so classily put it, it wouldn’t be any of his agent’s business, anyway.
    Tom loved his job and, most of the time, he loved being a star, but the idea that everybody thought they were entitled to get into his business and tell him who to sleep with had never stopped rubbing him the wrong way.
    On the field, he was all business, but on his off-days, he liked to let loose. That made him like most professional athletes. Big deal. At least he knew his limitations. He’d stayed single, unlike a few of the bigger womanizers in sports.
    Unlike his dad too. His lip curled. His old man had certainly never let having a wife and son get in the way of a good time.
    “All this bad publicity doesn’t appeal to your sponsors. Make my job a little easier, will you? Take a break from reality stars and bimbos for a while. Find a nice girl.”
    A week ago, he would have rolled his eyes at his agent’s advice, but he had to admit, Sarah Dudley was one nice girl who didn’t make him want to run screaming in the other direction. Dating a girl who was smart, had her act together, and didn’t take any of his crap might be refreshing for a change.
    He’d broken things off with Christina when her constant drama outweighed her sex