Scoring With Him by Lauren Blakely

Prologue

The Same Time

Declan

A good thing about being a Major League baseball player is that dates aren’t hard to come by.

The pickings are plentiful, and I’ve enjoyed the offerings that have come my way over the last few years.

The off-season is me time, and I’ve used the winters to turn up the heat, to wine and dine to my heart’s—and dick’s—content.

Both organs have been quite happy, thank you very much.

My stomach too. There was that fling with the chef at a three-starred Michelin restaurant in Napa. Let me tell you, seared scallops are even better when a man makes them just for you in his fantastic wine-country home overlooking a vineyard. I then showed him how much I appreciated his skills in the kitchen by showing off mine in the bedroom.

Pretty sure I earned more than three stars with the things I did.

The year after, I played globe-trotter alongside a rich-as-sin internet executive with a private jet, and we hardly ever wanted that Gulfstream to land.

Then there was that TV star. You know, the guy in the Wall Street show who wears the fuck out of tailored suits.

I date here and there on my own time and dime. There’s no hiding, and I’m definitely not in the closet, so I’m sure pics of me out with guys surface now and then in gossip rags or where-the-fuck-ever.

Don’t know, since I don’t read them or follow them.

But I do make it my mission to keep my romantic escapades off my social media. They don’t belong there.

No matter who I date, I’m not going to post selfies of us the morning after at some too-cool-for-school sidewalk café eating avocado toast and sipping soy chai lattes.

First, I don’t drink soy chai lattes.

Second, I’m a private guy.

Finally.

I’ve wanted that more than almost anything—beautiful, blissful, calm. For the longest time, I craved privacy more than breath.

No one gets to know me, what makes me tick, or what twists my heart unless I choose to share that information.

Too many people knew too many things about my family when I was growing up. My life is different now, and I live it on my terms.

This approach has served me well for the last four years in the Major Leagues.

Well, for the most part.

My penchant for serial monogamy doesn’t always end well.

But it always ends, and that’s a damn good thing because, come February, when the calendar flips to the most glorious time of the year—the return of baseball—my focus narrows to one thing and one thing only.

The unconditional love of my life.

The sport that got me through my worst years.

Come baseball season, I put dating, men, and romance behind me, and no matter what, I always followed one ironclad rule.

Don’t date a baseball player.

At all. And it goes without saying, don’t screw one on your own team.

There aren’t that many options on pro sports rosters anyway.

So, I figure it’ll be easy this year to renew my vows for solo love after a hellacious winter when everything went south with that certain TV star.

I’ll be so goddamn single-minded with baseball I’ll be a racehorse with blinders. One-Track Steele will be my new nickname because I’m all about the game and only the game.

That strategy works until one hotshot rookie walks into my locker room.

The rising star.

The man you want behind the plate.

The guy with a smile for days, a laugh that wins over anyone, and blue eyes that see everything.

Including me.

Well, doesn’t that just make a hard situation even harder?

I’m iron.

I won’t bend.

I won’t give in.

I will resist.

Until the night he tells me his greatest secret . . .