Chapter 1

1

Tripp Wilson, aka a single dad who wishes he could blame an airline on his missing luggage

The first thing I'm doing when I get home is finding my brain. Pretty sure I left it somewhere between the kitchen and the garage. Or possibly I lost it in a pile of toys six days ago.

"Dude. Quit picking my pants out of your ass."

I glare at my brother, whose white jeans I'm wearing into a club that's too loud and crowded and will probably give me a seizure with all the flashing strobe lights. A passing server calls his name and does a double-take, glancing between us as she lifts her tray with a single tequila shot. I take it for him, then resist the urge to pick the denim out of my butt crack again as we make our way through the crowded dance floor to a private booth. "What are these, European cut?"

"They're skinny fit." He trades a handshake with a guy whose name I'm supposed to know, then cheek-kisses a supermodel before turning back to me to call over the loud music. "Dad butt giving you troubles, old man?"

"Muscle is harder to compress than that rock star flab you've got."

Levi grins and takes a beer from another passing server in a short skirt and low top, who slips a note deep into his front pocket.

Jesus. She just grabbed his dick in broad club light. Also, how did she even get her hand in there? Did she lube it up first? We're not that different in size.

My brother doesn't bat a lash as he smiles and says, "Thank you, darlin'."

She smiles back at him in a way that suggests a beer is just the beginning of what she'd like to offer him before disappearing into the dancing crowd.

" Darlin'? " I poke him with my elbow while we continue fighting the crowd. Or in his case, working it. "You going country next? Or is that just what you say to the girls who cop a feel?"

He ignores me while he points me up a half flight of stairs to a private balcony. The stairway is crowded too, and we bump our way past all the people, with more funny glances aimed our way until the stairway opens up. At the top, he shoves me into a black velvet seat and makes me scoot around, which would be hard enough without the tight jeans cutting off circulation to my lower extremities. How the fuck does he get into these every day?

"Less glower, more glitter, big bro." Levi claps me on the shoulder. Did I mention that I'm also wearing his tight paisley button-down with the top three buttons undone? Not my first choice, but when I told him I needed to come here tonight—yes, I have brought this on myself—he insisted on dressing me.

I let him, but only because I forgot to separate my own clothes out of my kids' luggage when I dropped them with my in-laws this afternoon, and therefore don't actually have any of my own clothes with me. I didn't realize until we were on the way out the door to New York's nightlife that I had a fruit roll-up stuck to my crotch, and don't ask about the fermenting apple juice in my sweater.

"I haven't been to a club in five years," I remind him.

"Know what you need?"

I eyeball the tequila shot that I haven't taken—or let him take—because I know better than to take open drinks in public. Even in clubs that are supposedly safe for celebrities. Learned that lesson the hard way back in our boy band days. "A fresh bottle of whiskey and three nights of sleep that I won't be getting so long as James and Emma are with their grandparents?" Fuck , I miss my kids already.

"You need to be more like me."

"A playboy pop star who goes through women faster than he goes through a bag of peanut butter cups?"

"No, chill . Relaxed. Own the place. Don't glare at it like you want to burn it down. Make love to it with your eyes."

Usually, that would snap me out of this grouchy funk I've been sinking deeper and deeper into the past few weeks. Also known as the time I've been dreading dropping off my progeny.

Tonight, though, nothing's touching my funk, because even knowing the project I've been working on for well over a year is hitting a critical moment tonight now that the legal paperwork is done and the money's ready, I'd still rather be home reading The Paperbag Princess to Emma and helping James line his trucks up just so on the shelves next to his firetruck toddler bed.

Plus, I couldn't fit my hand sanitizer in these jeans, and this place is crawling with germs. Which I'm actively not thinking about.

"Tripp. Dude. You gotten laid recently?"

I punch my little brother in the arm.

Doesn't feel as good as I want it to.

Levi pops the top on his beer while he gives me a look that means he's gearing up for a lecture. "She'd want you to move on."

"You bring all your friends here to talk about bad memories?"

"You don't have bad memories with Jessie. But you might as well not be living at all if you're not willing to make new memories."

"I'm making new memories," I grit out.

"Memories for just you, old man. Not memories of who you're taking care of this decade. Not that it's not noble, and you know I love those two little rugrats, but they can't be all you live for. Evenin', Victoria." He winks at one more server who's bouncing her smile between us like she knows one of us invented toothpaste, and if that's the best analogy I have, I shouldn't be out here chasing business any more than I should be out here pretending I still know what to do in a club.

She sticks her hip out and looks my brother up and down now that she's apparently figured out which one of us is him.

Jesus. We don't look that much alike.

Do we?

"Levi Wilson, where've you been?" she demands.

"Germany, Spain, and Italy. World tour wrap-up."

"Hm. I suppose that's a good excuse."

"You got a bottle of Pappy van Winkle to welcome me back to my second favorite city on the planet?"

"Anything for you, hot pants."

He blows her a kiss, and she shoots him an and I do mean anything look over her shoulder while she heads to the bar.

I rub my eyes. I shouldn't be here. "You're shameless."

"I'm friendly ."

"You're giving them ideas."

"Yes. Yes, I am. You should too."

"I—"

He drops his ridiculous fedora on my head, then hands over his aviators. "C'mon, old man. Put 'em on. Look at the world through my lenses for a minute."

"I don't think I want that many diseases."

"You're already in my pants."

He has an unfortunate point, so I slide on his ridiculous sunglasses. The amber lenses do cut down on the glare from the spinning club lights.

"No guilt, Tripp. You work your ass off taking care of your kids. You work your ass off for the team. Go have some fun. Dance. Kiss a girl just because. Get laid. Nobody here's looking for a ring. Half of 'em think you're me. Can't get that at home."

"I'm here to connect with Beversdorf."

"You mean you forgot how to relax and enjoy life."

I'm the oldest of the five of us who spent years touring as the boy band Bro Code. My version of fun was never quite the same as my little brother's. Or the other guys', for that matter.

Levi grins over his beer. "You're making that pompous older brother face."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"That face. It means you're thinking everyone else had fun while you kept us in line. Have we forgotten Berlin? And Denver? And Rio?"

"My nuts still hurt from Rio."

"Got the girl, though, didn't you?"

"I mentioned my nuts hurt, didn't I?"

He chuckles as he tips the beer back, but fine.

I'm smiling. A little.

There may have been too much cacha?a consumed the night I decided I needed to be the mechanical bull riding champion in that club in Rio. And to this day, I don't know how bull riders manage to perform in the sack with squished nuts and broken dicks, but maybe they have tricks I don't know about.

Tricks I don't want to know about, because I'm never doing mechanical bulls again.

Performing though—okay, yes.

I miss sex.

"You've earned some fun, bro."

"I forgot how to have fun."

"It's easy. Just pretend you're me."

Victoria slides to our table in her stilettos and squats beside Levi with the pricey bourbon and two rocks glasses on her tray. "You gentlemen need anything else?"

If he says I need four minutes with her in a broom closet, I don't care how much that bourbon cost, it'll become a murder weapon.

He grins like he once more knows what I'm thinking. "You're the best, Vickie. We'll let you know."

She's barely left before a string of musicians and actors rotate through our table, most of them acknowledging me but actually here to schmooze with Levi. When the band broke up, Levi set out on a solo career while I hung up the keyboard and moved to Hollywood.

Not to act, but to settle down with an actress. And when she passed away, I moved our kids back home and started investing in local businesses. I'm out of the inner circles here in New York now. Nothing to offer most of these people, and they don't have much to offer me either.

Except Al Beversdorf.

The current Fireballs owner is supposedly here somewhere tonight, celebrating the end of baseball season with a tour of New York's best clubs while his team licks their wounds from setting a new league record for the worst season in professional sports ever, but he's not circling over to our table, so I'm going to have to go find him.

I rise as elegantly as I can in these tight-ass jeans, nod to Levi's musician friends, who make jokes about getting me back in the studio, and I give my brother the I'll be back, don't be an asshole and abandon me look.

He replies with a wink and a silent Go have fun. Pretend you're me.

I'm reminded all too well by the way my dick's suffocating in these pants that I'm not Levi.

Still, I make an effort to smile as I head down from our private balcony and around the edge of the dance floor, looking for the guy who pretends to be the Hugh Hefner of baseball team owners, but is actually a disaster.

My former boy bandmates and I intend to take one of his messes off his hands. Tonight, if we can.

We might not play and tour together anymore, but the five of us—along with all of our best buddies from the neighborhood we grew up in—are still tight. Still believe Copper Valley—our home city overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains in southern Virginia—can support a pro baseball team. And we're willing to put our money where my mouth is.

Levi and I have a formal meeting with the baseball commissioner tomorrow to discuss a hostile takeover—I'll get into the Fireballs any way I can—but I heard a rumor the commissioner's also talking to an oil tycoon who wants to move the team to Vegas.

With as bad as the Fireballs have done the past five years, the commissioner is within his right to entertain a hostile takeover bid. There's always a worst team of the season. But the Fireballs' repeated performance sinking lower and lower in the history books means they barely qualify to be called a pro sports team anymore.

Has to sting for Beversdorf.

The team's belonged to his family for three generations.

And he's the one driving it into the ground.

It's time to make the man an offer he can't refuse. At least, if he still loves the team as much as I hope he does.

And there he is.

Third-floor balcony, surrounded by women and bodyguards. He's seventy-three, with a thick white pompadour, a cigar clenched in his teeth, a rocks glass in one hand, and a supermodel in the other.

I grit my teeth and head toward the staircase. The bouncer guarding this section of the club nods to me. "Evening, Mr. Wilson. Welcome home."

I'm three stairs up when I realize he thinks I'm Levi too.

Hell. Maybe I should just be Levi.

Best way to have fun , his voice whispers in my head.

He's not wrong.

Tripp Wilson doesn't know how to have fun by club standards. Levi Wilson?

Yep. That dude's all about the fun.

I smile and wink at a woman walking down the stairs.

She smiles back demurely like I'm not good enough for her, and I wonder what Levi would think of that.

Probably not much.

He has no shortage of offers, and even if I give him shit about being a manwhore, I know he's picky about who he takes home. Or to a hotel. Or backstage.

I'd actually be surprised if Levi took anyone to his private sanctuary. He plays the playboy well, but he's exactly as jaded as a guy with over fifteen years in the industry should be.

Which means he knows how to give the appearance of having fun.

But is he actually having fun?

I decide to worry about Levi's not-actual-problems another day, because I'm approaching the third floor landing as the music thumps below and the sea of bodies bop along to the beat, spotlights spinning over all the beautiful people with all the right moves in all the right clothes and all the right words.

You could say I don't miss Hollywood or the music scene.

I'm also not going to miss these pants. Christ. I can't even lift my legs without worrying I'll split the seam, except these seams are double reinforced, which means I'll break my cock before the denim gives.

I round the corner at the top of the steps. Beversdorf does a double-take when he sees me, mutters a fuck that I can clearly read on his lips, and gestures to a bodyguard.

But it's not a bodyguard who stumbles into me.

No, that's a tall, curvy woman with…a strawberry daiquiri in her hair? "Whoa. You okay?"

She grips my arm as I reach out to steady her, and suddenly the jeans are the least of my concerns.

Two bright emeralds blink rapidly at me as the slushy pink drink drips down onto her shoulders. Her lush lips part, my heart starts beating for the first time in forever, and my throat is suddenly so parched I briefly wonder if I spent the last six years singing solo, nonstop, in a desert.

Her makeup is too light for her to belong here, and her black dress is too business formal for a night on the town. She looks just as out of place as I feel.

"You okay?" I ask again like a total dumbass, sounding more like a prepubescent boy wheezing over his first cigarette than a mid-thirties single father of two on the verge of offering to buy a baseball team.

Baseball team .

I shoot a glance to my right, forget what I'm looking for, and then find my gaze subconsciously drifting back to the woman who's wiping her hands on the back of her skirt. She follows my gaze, and a humorless laugh slips from her lips. "Oh, does he owe you money too? Good luck with that."

He. Money. Luck.

Beversdorf.

Right.

I'm supposed to be tracking down Beversdorf.

Who's gone.

Dammit .

I grab a napkin from a nearby table, but a drink napkin isn't going to cut it on this mess dripping from the woman's hair. "Can I…help?"

She blinks once, glances past me, and grimaces. "Can you teleport me to a bathroom?"

There's a woman in a red dress with fire in her eyes headed our way, wobbling unevenly on spike heels around the tables and chairs in her way.

Uh-oh.

I've been here before. At best, it's a misunderstanding. At worst, it's hair flying and drinks being flung to the dancers on the floor below.

"Foe?" I take my new friend's elbow, and a zing! shoots through my palm that makes me want to both stretch my fingers and hold on tighter. I'm touching linen, not skin, but I'm still getting an electric shock.

She shoots me a curious look, but also leans into me as I do my best to get us both to the side stairs that I'm pretty sure Beversdorf just disappeared down.

Her lips tip up while she leads me quicker. "On a scale of fairy godmother to screeching dragon, we probably need earplugs and a bucket of water."

"You touch her egg or something?"

"I wouldn't touch her egg unless it was with a cattle prod, but she doesn't believe me."

I choke on a laugh I didn't know I had in me, and my knees get a tingle that I haven't felt in years.

Pretty sure it's not just the tight jeans talking either.

One of the bodyguards eyes us, then reluctantly moves to let us pass. "Ma'am. Mr. Wilson."

"You might get Mr. Beversdorf's friend a glass of water," she tells him. "She'll appreciate it tomorrow."

"You know Al Beversdorf and his crew?" I ask while I follow her down the stairs.

"Unfortunately," she tosses over her shoulder.

Intriguing.

Not as intriguing as the way she keeps holding her head steady, shoulders back, like she's not wearing a strawberry daiquiri while she swings her hips down the stairs in a way I couldn't emulate in these jeans even if I was the hip-swinging type, but now this woman has piqued my curiosity.

Have fun, idiot , Levi's voice whispers.

Or maybe that's my own voice. "You come here often?"

Shit. Shit . Could I be more lame?

But she smiles up at me, and even with the frozen drink sliding onto her shoulders and through her curly hair, she's gorgeous. And not in the least offended. "Only when I feel like wearing my drink. You?"

"Can I buy you another one? For your mouth this time?"

What. The fuck. Is wrong with me?

Other than the fact that I'm now staring at her mouth. That gorgeous smile. The smoky laugh that trickles through all the other noise in the club.

It's called attraction, old man. Do something about it .

"Can we get this one off me first?" she asks.

"Yes. Of course. I just—sorry. Been a while. I—I'm going to stop talking now."

We reach the bottom of the stairs, and a bouncer nods to us. "Evening, Mr. Wilson."

Mr. Wilson .

It's my name, even if he also thinks I'm my brother.

And what would Levi do if he were me right now?

I lean into the redhead to be heard over the music. "Want me to find the bathroom? To clean up? Dry off where you're wet? Happens to all of us. I?—"

I need to shut up. Again .

That is not what Levi would say.

But he would smile and wink. So I try that.

Yeah.

I can be Levi for a few minutes.

Smooth. Suave. Charming. Flirtatious.

She ducks her head and laughs. Looks up at me. Laughs again. And then she holds out a hand as we duck beneath the stairs. "I'm Lila. What's your name?"

My name.

My name .

Fuck.

My mouth opens, and the words just come out. "Levi. Levi Wilson."