The only hope for a bad boy with an image problem might just be the good girl who ruined him. All his life, ace pitcher Whit O’Rourke has played to win.

He's spent the past four years rebuilding his reputation after a scandal transformed him from MLB’s hottest rising star to the bad boy of baseball, and now that he’s at the top of his game, nothing is going to keep him from fulfilling his major league destiny—not even the woman who brought it all crashing down in the first place. Nell McLean never planned to reveal Whit’s darkest secrets to the world.

It was an honest mistake, and she’d rather be fired into the sun than apologize for it. But after her sister makes a deal with Whit in a desperate attempt to repair her own image, Nell finds herself hopping a plane to beg the forgiveness of the one man she’d hoped to forget.

Whit wants nothing to do with Nell—or her apologies. He’s determined to keep the days of clickbait headlines and tabloid rumors behind him.

But when an innocent encounter leads to a fresh scandal, he whisks Nell off to his hometown and convinces her to pose as his girlfriend. It’s the perfect solution to his PR nightmare—until they discover there's a lot more heat than hatred between them.

. .

and realize that playing pretend may just mean playing for keeps. .