“The shaving cream people are very happy with the commercial, Erik, and it looks like you’ll be doing a new round of cereal commercials next month,” Marie Hamilton said.

After seven years as my agent, Marie and I had developed a pretty casual working relationship of brunches for work and “family” dinners with her extended circle of friends, for fun. Growing up with a single mom who busted ass to keep us afloat, I had a healthy respect for badass women like Marie, plus she was really good at her job. It made it easy to be friends.

“It’s so weird to see my face on television.” I really thought it would eventually seem less weird but it wasn’t happening. Morning after morning my roommate—left fielder Seth Butler—turned on the local morning news while he ate breakfast.

And morning after morning he laughed and laughed as I dashed through a pretend house getting ready for a game, landing at a counter with a bowl of cereal, telling the Tampa Bay viewers to enjoy their day.

As far as endorsements went, it wasn’t bad . . . other than my face and voice interrupting my actual breakfast everyday.

When I dreamed of playing baseball for a living it hadn’t occurred to me it would involve light acting and modeling. Most of the time I shrugged it off as part of the job.

Marie chuckled. “I’d say you’ll get used to it but . . . let’s face it. You’re a year into this commercial deal and you have to be the most modest guy on the Mantas lineup. You’ll never get used to it.” She finished off her coffee with an evil grin. “Maybe you should hide the remote from Butler.”

I groaned. Living with Seth was supposed to be temporary.

Tampa was supposed to be temporary.

And yet here I was five years later, still living with one foot out the door. “Or maybe I should just suck it up and buy my own place.”

“Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner.” Then she patted my hand. “You bought your mom’s house, you and Jack have paid for your sisters’ colleges. Everyone is taken care of. It’s time to relax a little and enjoy that paycheck I worked so hard to get you.”

She was right. I knew she was right. It was just hard. I’d spent my whole life taking care of my family. They’d needed it and I was happy to step up and help. Once it started to look like I might even manage to have a career in baseball it got even easier. I worked harder than I’d ever worked before to prove I could be an asset to any team, and once the Mantas gave me a chance I seized on the team’s disorganization to become the steady foundation they needed to wrangle so many big personalities. My family experience came in handy.

And here I was now, with a city behind me, a team that I loved, and a family that didn’t need me to take care of them anymore.

It was probably fair to say I was in shock.

Marie signaled for the check and refused my offer to pay. “It’s on Bancroft Sports.” She rolled her eyes as I continued to grab for the slip of paper. “So there is one thing we haven’t touched on and it’s starting to bug me.”

“What’s that?” I generally didn’t worry about Marie’s questions because she was a straight shooter. It was one of many reasons that we got along so well.

So I didn’t see this line of questioning coming.

“What happened to Laurie?”

“Nothing.” I shrugged. “We dated and then we went our separate ways.” I tried one last time to snag the check.

She whipped it out of my reach and practically launched it at our waiter. “So who are you dating now?”

Why did she suddenly care about my love life? “I’m laying low.”

“Laying low?”

“Yes.” I said it slowly just in case she was having trouble with her hearing.

She twisted her lips and tapped her nail against the table. “You know I seem to remember you dating pretty actively when you first moved to Tampa. Not like Wes or anything ridiculous like that, but you were always dating someone. Not so much these last two years.”

Oh was that all? “I’m too old and too tired to mess around with women I don’t see—”

“As future Mrs. Cassidy material,” she interrupted. “This is why I like you, Erik. You’re a good guy who knows the importance of family. But I was just wondering if the reason you’ve been so single lately has less to do with the available women of Tampa Bay and more to do with the fact that you’ve already found the future Mrs. Cassidy.”

Well I did not see that one coming. Like, at all. “Excuse me?”

She leaned closer, her eyes zeroing in on me in a way that made me feel a lot like a lamb about to be slaughtered. “Let me put this as simply as I can. You love Zoe Burke. There, that was really simple.” She might as well have patted herself on the back for as proud as she looked for calling me out.

And that was exactly what she was doing. Somewhere in the back of my brain I recognized all of this, but I didn’t have time to focus on any of that because I was quietly freaking the fuck out.

I thought I’d done a damn good job of keeping my infatuation with a certain quiet writer to myself. Wes knew. For as big of a selfish jackass as he could be, he was also freakishly observant. But other than him? No one knew. I made a huge effort to seem cool and calm around her. If anything, I was trying to be her friend. She needed friends a hell of a lot more than she needed some dumb jock panting after her.

“I . . . ” have no idea what to say. “I do not . . . love . . . Zoe.” There. That was easy. A whole sentence and everything. It was a total lie, but it was a sentence.

“Oh my god, you’re a terrible liar,” Marie groaned. “Look, anyone with eyes can see the way you watch her. You’ve got the lovesick thing down to a science.”

Possibly the most emasculating thing someone had said to me since the last time I was with all my sisters. They were good at keeping my ego in check. Not that I really needed it. I knew who I was: a ballplayer and not much else. I had no misguided belief that I’d get lucky a second time. Playing professional baseball was the top of the mountain for me.

Not like Zoe. No, she had the whole world ahead of her. “I don’t know what you think you see but—”

“Nope. Not listening to your lies. I don’t have time for it. Just open your ears and listen.” She dropped her voice to just above a whisper. “I bring it up for a reason. I can see that you are as concerned as the rest of us about her . . . issues. I’m assuming that’s why you’re trying to do the friend thing instead of the boyfriend thing.”

I’d gotten the story from Eve, Zoe’s former employer and one of my good friends on the staff of the Mantas. Zoe picked up and moved to Tampa suddenly. No one knows why because she refuses to talk about it. Eve hired her as a nanny while Zoe worked on launching her writing career. She quickly became a member of the family. Everyone loved her and for good reason. She was one of those genuinely sweet people who loved with her whole heart. I saw it every time she was with Eve’s daughters. You can’t fake that kind of caring.

I was immediately drawn to her . . . and the fact that she was incredibly sexy only made me want her more. I tried my usual “get to know the girl, get her smiling, slip in a casual dinner request” routine, but it hadn’t gone well. No, I’d say it went terribly, actually. I’d never had flirting go so wrong.

I shook the memory away. “She’s not interested.”

“I said listen.” Marie sighed with exasperation. “You’re an idiot if you can’t see how much she’s interested in you.”

“No . . . ” She couldn’t be. After the disastrous flirting two years ago I realized Zoe wasn’t dating anyone so I put my bruised ego in check and just tried to be her friend.

She didn’t like that so much either, which led me to believe she didn’t like me as a human being. I could tell when a girl liked me and Zoe most certainly did not like me.

But that didn’t mean I stopped liking her. I definitely didn’t stop finding her attractive. So I occasionally ran scenarios in my head where I asked her out and we wound up hot and naked in my bed at the end of the night. If I’d thought Zoe was even remotely interested I would have asked.

Maybe.

It was just that for some reason asking Zoe out felt like it had a lot more at stake than with any other girl before. And every time I saw how nervous she got when the girls gave her a hard time about not dating, it ramped up my nerves even more. I had this constant feeling that if I fucked up with Zoe it wouldn’t just bruise my ego, it would hurt her, too.

I don’t know. Maybe I was crazy.

Marie quickly signed the check and tucked the receipt in her wallet. “I’m not saying you have to believe me or that you should do anything about it.” Then she gave me a very sisterly half-smile. “I just thought you should know in case you did want to do something about it.”