âMiranda Shaw, are you telling meyouâre just using me for your ownpurposes?â
âNo, I ââ She saw Mikeâs broad grin when he couldnât keep a straight face. âDo you enjoy flustering me?â
The grin only widened. âI didnât know women still blushed.â
âIâm not blushing,â Miranda insisted. âIâm allergic to hotshot sportswriters. I canât come within fifty feet of one.â
âToo late for that,â he told her. âLooks like youâve entered the âdanger zone.ââ
She was going to ask what he meant by that, but she didnât get the chance. The very next thing she knew, Mike was leaning over, moving his upper torso to invade her space.
And then his lips touched hers.
And all hell broke loose.
Chapter One
âWhy that sanctimonious, pompous, low-life bastardâ¦â
Born equal parts of surprise and outrage, the less-than-flattering character description leaped out of Miranda Shawâs mouth before she could stop it. The heated pronouncement contrasted with the soothing strains of whisper-soft classical music that was being piped into the pharmaceutical laboratory where she worked.
Her cheeks heated and her breathing became shallow. This was worlds apart from her condition minutes ago when she finally declared herself at lunch ninety minutes after the traditional time and picked up the sports section of the L.A. Times. Sheâd been reading the sports section since she was four years old. Too impatient to wait for her mother to read the all-important baseball scores to her, Miranda had doggedly taught herself how to read by sounding out the opposing teamsâ names.
Her rabid interest in baseball had come into being because she adored her father. Steven Orin Shaw, known as âSOSâ to his one-time legion of fans, had once been regarded as one of the greatest pitchers to ever grace the moundâuntil a scandal had brought an abrupt end to his career.
But not to Mirandaâs allegiance. Only deathâhersâ would have terminated the steadfast loyalty that beat in her twenty-four-year-old heart.
She felt that loyalty flareâalong with her temperâ as she read words by a man who had been her favorite sportswriter, Mike Marlowe. Oh, she differed with his opinions now and again, but never violently. And, up until this point, sheâd admired both his broad range of sports knowledge and his ability to make his topic come alive.
But at this moment, she wanted to skewer him. Slowly.
It was that time of year again, when people around the country packed away their Christmas decorations and frowned over their impetuously written New Yearâs resolutions, a large number of which had already been broken. And this time of year, the Baseball Writers Association of America turned their attention to the all important question of who, if anyone, was going to be inducted into the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown.
However, long before the actual voting came the lists. She had already made her peace with the fact that her father would never be on these lists.
But this idiot, this supreme jerk who had so colossally disappointed her, had the unmitigated gall to touch on the fact that her father had been banned from baseball for all eternity. And he devoted most of his column to the lament that the once-pure game was assaulted now by numerous scandals. Marlowe had belabored reasons why SOS could never be considered for placement in the esteemed hall.
It was bad enough to know this without having someone painstakingly elaborate, in rapier-sharp rhetoric, all the reasons that SOS had disappointed his fans and shamed the great game of baseball.
So heâd had a moment of weakness and gambled, so what? Lots of people gambled and her father had never bet against his team. In the larger scheme of things, it wasnât such an unpardonable offense. Not enough to merit being permanently ostracized.
Except that it had.
After reading Marloweâs column, all she could think of was that her father would see it. He didnât need this now, not now. First the scandal and then the awful accident six months later. Those incidents had all but turned him into a hermit. It had taken her years, but she had finally gotten him to come around, to venture out of his shell and start interacting with people again.
This could ruin everything.
The moment her angry words ricocheted around the almost empty lab, Tilda Levy looked up from the computer screen. She rubbed the area just above her eyes before turning in Mirandaâs direction.
âDid you get your paycheck early?â she asked dryly. It was a given that most of the research chemists employed by Promise Pharmaceuticals felt vastly underpaid, especially considering the demands placed on them and their time.