PLAYING FOR KEEPS

Single mother Joanna Swan had already married one man with a Peter Pan complex, and one was her limit. So now she is determined that romance is for dreamers—and she is one woman with her feet firmly planted on the ground. Even if she does design custom-made Santa Clauses for a living.

And that's where Dale McConnaughy comes in. The sexy-as-sin former baseball superstar—now a toy store mogul—might be irresistible to most women, but Joanna had to resist him. Because after all that she'd been through, what kind of fool would she be to let herself fall in love with another man so determined to remain a boy?

For Dale, though, baseball hadn't been a game but a way out of a childhood filled with betrayal and heartache. And even though he'd refused to let the past embitter him, it had left its share of scars—scars that perhaps one woman could help to erase. But only if he could prove to Joanna that, where the game of love was concerned, he was willing to risk all….