Stopping Short: A Hot Baseball Romance by Mindy Klasky

absence. Her job would be toast, and so would Drew’s. That’s why she hadn’t slept last night—worrying about the consequences of her possible failure.
    Who was she kidding? She hadn’t slept last night because she’d been thinking about what had happened at the beach house.
    She wasn’t ashamed, not exactly. She’d decided what she’d wanted, and she’d given herself permission to go for it. That’s what Kevin would have done. That’s what Kevin had done, every day of their marriage.
    He’d never screwed around on her; she knew that. But he’d also never thought twice about whether he should take some risk, whether he should flood his system with yet another dose of adrenaline. Skydiving, hang gliding, the black diamond run that had killed him…
    She’d never asked him to stop. Because that’s who Kevin was , that was the boy she’d fallen in love with freshman year, the man she’d married a week after graduation.
    She missed him. A part of her always would. She wore his watch to remember him, to remember all the inhuman tasks he’d measured with it. He’d thrived on doing the impossible every day, and he’d given her the confidence that she could do the same.
    But a part of her could never forgive him for bringing his death on himself. He could have skipped that last run of the day—he had to know that the slopes were icing up, that he didn’t have enough light to complete the entire run. He’d lived—and died—by his own risky choices.
    In any case… She forced herself back from the brink she’d been circling all day. She wasn’t ashamed of kissing Drew. She wasn’t ashamed of anything they’d done. Of anything she’d wanted to do, before Chip interrupted.
    But she’d pushed down all her emotions on the drive back to Coral Crest. She’d texted Drew to let him know she’d gotten back safe—she hadn’t been ready to talk to him.
    And then she’d gotten to work. Ross Parker thought his Sunday article would set the world on fire. He believed he had a scoop, and he was going to exploit it until every newspaper in the country got caught up in the conflagration.
    The only solution was for her to build a fire break.
    Jessica had to sear a path through Drew’s past. She had to root out the bad news herself and light a series of controlled fires. She had four days to release the information, to present everything in the best possible light, shading all meanings, controlling every interpretation. If she did her job right, Drew had a chance of coming out of this alive.
    But the strategy was dangerous. If they didn’t air every piece of dirty laundry, if one bad story came out after they made their complete confession, then Drew would lose all credibility. There’d be nothing Image Masters could do to save him. He’d be finished.
    Jessica had already written the easy pieces, the ones she’d been thinking about for weeks, since she first heard about Drew Marshall in that Monday Status Meeting. She’d already sent Chip rebuttals about Kaley Armistead, dismissals of drunken parties, explanations of late night noise complaints. She’d crafted one beautiful, heartfelt piece, detailing how she’d accepted her fiancé’s checkered past, how she took comfort in the knowledge that he’d never looked at another woman—not once—when he’d been with her.
    And that was true. Drew hadn’t.
    Once she had Chip’s approval, she’d plant the stories with friendly journalists. She’d built the fort around Drew, protecting him from the worst that Parker could dish out.
    Her computer chimed, announcing the arrival of another file from the Image Masters library. She’d asked for a Level Three report—everything they could find on Drew from public databases, subscription databases, and the extensive private files the company had built, year after painstaking year.
    She blinked hard. There were over five hundred pages there. Five hundred pages to read, analyze, and write about.
    She leaned back in