As the team warms up for their first game in a series in San Diego, Reese visits Emmett in the dugout. He is hanging out with Max—Kai’s son and Emmett’s soon-to-be-grandson. Emmett’s daughter, Miller, comes to collect Max to take to their seats in the stands and is introduced to Reese for the first time. 

After they leave, Emmett is approached by Kelly, the female sports reporter who flirted with Emmett at a past press conference. She blatantly asks Emmett out to dinner, but he turns her down. When Reese dismisses Kelly, stating they need to focus on prepping for the game, Emmett teases Reese about being jealous.

Emmett struggles to regulate the temperature in his hotel room, which is uncomfortably warm. At two in the morning, he travels down to the lobby to grab a water from the small convenience store and overhears Reese asking the man at the front desk for a different room. The heat doesn’t work in her room, which has left her cold, shivering, and unable to sleep. Unfortunately, their hotel—and every other hotel nearby—is booked out for a local conference, leaving no alternate rooms available. The maintenance staff won’t be available to fix it until 9 AM, so Emmett offers his room to Reese. She begrudgingly accepts since she has no other options.

Reese moves into Emmett’s room for the night. The hotel is out of cots, so they’re forced to share the bed. When Reese struggles to warm up, Emmett pulls her body to his so she can share in his body heat. Reese worries about how unprofessional they’re being, but neither pulls away. 

They talk about his daughter Miller and Reese asks about Miller’s mother. Emmett informs her that Miller’s mother, Claire, died of cancer when she was young. Miller is not his biological daughter, but he adopted her after Claire’s passing. To give her a stable childhood, he retired from playing in the MLB early and took on a local coaching job. It wasn’t until she reached adulthood that he decided to accept Arthur’s offer to come work for the Windy City Warriors. 

He admits that he loves taking care of people, so that’s why he treats the guys on the baseball team like family. This warms Reese’s heart and she wonders if she can find room in the budget to renew his contract. When she asks if he ever met someone after he lost Claire, Emmett admits that he was never able to move on.

Reese’s grandfather visits her office to tell her of a Reddit post brought to his attention by Scott. The Reddit post details how someone saw her leave Emmett’s hotel room last week in San Diego. Arthur believes it’s just a rumor created to undermine her, and Reese doesn’t correct him. He believes she is the most capable person to run the franchise, but warns her that she’s going to have “to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously” (132).

After he leaves, Reese goes to the dugout and hides in the field manager’s cubicle to read the Reddit post and decompress. The comments vary from people calling her names and accusing her of sleeping to the top; accusing the poster of lying; and wondering if Emmett was trying to seduce her into renewing his contract. Though Reese tries to ignore it, self-doubt creeps in and she wonders if she’s falling into the same trap she did with her ex-husband, Jeremy. She berates herself for risking her reputation on a man who admitted aloud that he’s incapable of moving on from his late wife. She decides that she’s going to make sure things stay professional between them.

When Emmett finds her in the dugout, he attempts joking with her, but Reese is cold. He asks what’s wrong but she maintains professional distance and tells him that she will not be traveling with him and the team to Detroit tomorrow for their next series as planned.

During the Detroit series, Emmett attempts to contact Reese through text and phone call about work-related things, but she doesn’t respond until he contacts her professionally through email. 

After returning to Chicago, Emmett stays behind for a workout at the clubhouse and runs into Reese, who has come to do yoga. Unable to focus on lifting weights with Reese so close by, Emmett decides to end his workout early. 

While he’s freshening up in the bathroom, he overhears Harrison Kaiser and one of his friends entering the gym. Harrison is disrespectful and patronizing to Reese before entering the bathroom with his friend. Emmett hides from view and overhears the men sexualizing Reese before Harrison complains about how embarrassing it is to play for the one team owned by a woman. Once they leave, Emmett emerges from the bathroom and tells Reese to trade Harrison.

Reese watches a game with her grandfather. He tries to set her up with Michael, the son of his friend, Ed, but Reese says she’s content with being single. He tells her that not everyone is like Jeremy, which reminds her of the Reddit comment that theorized that Emmett was seducing Reese into renewing his contract. Though the theory goes against everything she knows about Emmett, she can’t help but have her doubts.

When Harrison Kaiser gets into a heated fight with another player, Isaiah, Emmett pulls Harrison aside and gives him a verbal lashing. Arthur finally sees how Harrison might be a problem for the team, and also warns Reese that she will have to answer questions about Emmett’s reaction in future interviews.

Reese brings up how Arthur has always favored Emmett. She believes that Arthur paid for anything Emmett wanted—such as a nanny for Kai’s son Max so that he could continue playing for the team, and also two seats being removed so a crib could be installed in the team plane. Arthur reveals that Emmett paid for all that out-of-pocket. This new information, in addition to watching Emmett pour a bottle of water over his neck, increases Reese’s attraction for him. She remains adamant that a relationship with him would be inappropriate, so she agrees to go on a date with Ed’s son, Michael.

Miller is making changes to the menu of her patisserie in Chicago and invites a few members from the team to taste-test dessert options. When Emmett reacts with teasing disgust at an inappropriate joke Miller makes about her sexual relationship with her husband, Kai, Miller states it is payback for having to listen to the guys on the team talk about how Emmett and Reese need to sleep together to dispel the sexual tension between them.

Emmett warns the guys not to spread jokes like that because a lot of pressure is on Reese to succeed and she doesn’t need a PR nightmare on top of everything else. The team mentions how impressed they are with Reese’s work managing the team so far. A player named Cody mentions Reese is flying his family out to watch his 1,000th game with the Windy City Warriors. Another player named Travis mentions Reese bought his mom and aunt tickets during their Detroit series last week.

Emmett receives a call from his former video coach, Nate, whom Reese had to fire at the start of the season because of budget cuts. He expects Nate to be angry with him, but Nate is happy. Emmett discovers that Reese put in a good word with the MLB team based in Nate’s home city of Seattle and got Nate a job closer to home and his family. 

Feeling the urgent need to apologize to Reese for their past conflict over Nate face-to-face, he texts asking where she is. Once he discovers she’s out on a date at a fancy restaurant, he becomes jealous and says he will pick her up afterward.

Reese’s date with Michael is more platonic than romantic and they don’t plan a second. Emmett is waiting outside the restaurant when they emerge. Reese refuses to be driven back to her apartment but agrees to let him walk her home. 

Emmett tells her about his phone call with Nate and apologizes for assuming she was heartless when she let him go. She accepts his apology. When they reach her apartment building, she allows him to come up to her penthouse. She is nervous to let another person into her space and fears his judgement on the opulence of it. In the elevator, Emmett admits that he is jealous of her date and she admits she only went to distract herself from him. When he admits to wanting to kiss her, she warns him that it is inappropriate given their working relationship, so he asks her to fire him.