“Nonfraternization?” He sounded amused.
“That’s what we called it in the army. Keeps things simple.”
“Do I get a say in this?”
“You hired me as a pilot. That’s all your money buys.”
He coughed. “If you think that I expect you to sleep with me because I’m paying you then you really don’t know me.” Now he sounded indignant. Which was better than sexy.
She resisted turning around to see if she was reading him right. “Exactly. We don’t know each other. And that’s best for both of us. You need a pilot, I need a job. Which means our relationship is business. This money is important to me, Lucas.”
“I understand that.”
“Do you?” she said. “Have you ever actually had a problem in your life that you couldn’t fix by doing your rich-guy thing and fixing it all with cold hard cash?” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice and didn’t entirely succeed.
“My rich-guy thing?”
Her hands tightened on the controls. “Wave your black Amex, watch everyone jump to do whatever it is you want and solve all your problems.”
“I think you’ve been hanging around with the wrong rich guys,” Lucas said. He sounded annoyed now.
She still didn’t look. “I don’t generally hang out with rich guys.”
“Oh, so you just stalk them to observe their obnoxious Amex-waving behavior?”
“I fly them places. That presents plenty of observational opportunities.”
“And plenty of opportunities to make sweeping generalizations. I’ve never waved a black Amex at anyone in my life.”
“No, but I’m sure you’ve had plenty of people leaping to do whatever you want.”
And quite possibly most of them were women
. And ouch, that sounded bitchy even in her head. Why was she being hard on him, anyway? If she didn’t care what Lucas Angelo did, she shouldn’t care who he did it with.
“Less than you might think.”
She snorted. “You’re a surgeon. Doesn’t that mean you have whole teams of people doing what you tell them to every day?”
“No, it means I work with a team to get the outcome we want.”
The outcome he wanted, that was. “Isn’t the outcome where you get to be just a teeny bit godlike and put someone back together again? That sounds like snapping your fingers and getting what you want.”
“I don’t think ten hours of painstaking surgery counts as snapping my fingers.”
Ah. No. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude.” But she wasn’t really sorry. For one thing, her irritation seemed to have burned away some of the fog of heat he’d ignited. She could think again. Control it again. Tame the tiger, so to speak.
“Bad day?”
Bad year. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. “Long day,” she said. “But I get to fly again and that means it isn’t bad.”
“You haven’t flown since your chopper got damaged?”
Was that an olive branch? Regardless, she would go with it. “No.”
“Kind of risky to have only one helicopter, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes. But we don’t have one. We have two. The other one is wrecked. My dad had a crash about a year ago.”
“I read about that. Why isn’t that chopper fixed?”
He’d read about it? Had he been doing a little Internet research of his own? Best not to go there. “Because insurance companies suck. The official investigation cleared my dad but they kept stalling. With the A-Star, another aircraft damaged it so things should be sorted out faster.” She didn’t want to mention the part where they had spent most of the payout for her dad’s helo—once they’d finally gotten it—on his medical bills.
“And is your dad okay?”
“His leg was pretty badly smashed up but he’s getting there.”
“Is that why you’re not in the army anymore? You came home to help your dad out?”
“Yes. Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” The story of how she’d joined the army in a fit of grief-fueled insanity after Jamie’s death was just too complicated. As was the part where she’d been happy enough to have an excuse to leave it.
There was a long pause. Then, “Why not?”
“Because talking about it doesn’t change anything. It is what it is.”
“Sounds like you’ve had a pretty crappy year then.”
Damn it. The last thing she needed was him being thoughtful and sympathetic. She made a noncommittal noise.
“You know, what you need is some fun.”
“Fun?”
“Yes. When was the last time you did something just because you wanted to?”
Back in that motel room
. She pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t say it out loud. “I have lots of fun.”
He made a disbelieving noise, and this time she did turn her head to glare at him. He was grinning at her.
“You don’t know me,” she said. “Or what I do.”
His head tilted, the shade of his eyes in the odd cabin lighting suddenly a deep deep blue that spoke of night and bed and wicked delicious things. “I know some things you do very well.”
“Shut up.” She turned back, focused on the horizon, trying to figure out exactly how much longer this flight was going to last. How much longer he could drive her crazy.
“Spoken like someone who knows she’s losing the argument.”
“Not being interested in having this discussion with you is not the same thing as losing the argument.”
He laughed. “Depends on why you don’t want to have the discussion. If you were a patient of mine and told me that in the last year your dad had been in a serious crash and you’d had to change jobs and you were obviously working yourself way too hard, then I’d tell you to let go a little. Be selfish, take some time for yourself. Be a little bad for once instead of the good girl.”
She felt her fingers tighten on the controls again. Be bad. Do what she wanted. Be free. That sounded … dangerous. It also sounded divine. Which only proved that it was dangerous. And that she needed to ignore Lucas Angelo.
“What do you know about being bad?” she said. “You’ve got
good boy
written all over you.”
“Is that so?”
“You’re a surgeon. You’re successful. You’re so well put together it makes my teeth hurt. Textbook good boy. Your family must love you.”
“Actually, I’m kind of the black sheep in my family.”
“What? What family doesn’t want their kid to grow up to be a doctor?”
“Mine. I should have done a good sensible business course and law school or an MBA. Right now I should be running one of the family businesses and having many children. And I definitely shouldn’t be buying baseball teams. Like I said, they’re still pretty horrified about that.”
She squelched the thought of how pretty Lucas’s children would be. “So why did you?”
“Because I love baseball. And I’d be miserable running a business. So I know all about rebelling and being bad. And I recommend it. So, want to give it a go? You could start by having dinner with me tonight.”
Yes! Her mind practically shrieked the word. But just then, she heard the chatter of the JFK tower. Thank God for air traffic control. Reminding her of reality. She needed to fly. She needed to work. So she couldn’t want or need Lucas. “No,” she said firmly and started to concentrate on getting back down safely on solid ground.
He was here to think about baseball, not women. But that was proving difficult.
Sleep deprivation, that was it. He just needed caffeine. Which was why he was pouring his third coffee of the morning.
They’d arrived at Vero Beach at o’dark thirty, thanks to a delay in the flight from New York. Sara had slept on the plane. He, of course, had not. Having her curled up under a blanket in the seat next to his hadn’t made it easy for him to concentrate on the work he’d brought with him. Not when what he wanted to do was wake her up and see if she was interested in joining the mile-high club. Or even in just talking to him to take his mind off the flight.
His alarm had sounded far too soon after he’d fallen asleep. Which hadn’t been for an hour or so after he’d crawled into bed. His body had been far too aware of the fact that Sara was just a few rooms away from him. It didn’t seem to care that she’d shut him down pretty firmly on the flight to JFK.
His body was a hopeless, hormone-infested optimist.
He, however, had to be a realist. Do what he was here to do. Ignore the sexy pilot girl.
Ignore the sea-blue eyes and the mouth that curved so nicely when she was putting him in his place. Ignore the quick wit and the determination that made him want to keep her talking so he could work out what made her tick.
She wasn’t interested.
Correction. She said she wasn’t interested.
Her mouth said it. But he’d seen the way she stole glances at him and the pink stealing over her skin when he looked at her. He’d heard her voice go loose and turned on when he talked about that night in the hotel room. And he knew damn well the way that mouth tasted.
So he didn’t entirely believe her, no. Only question was: How he was supposed to get inside the wall of responsibility and whatever the hell it was that she’d erected around herself and get back to the woman who’d seduced him in the Hamptons?
Without making an idiot of himself or behaving like a complete and utter jerk in the process.
There might not be enough caffeine in the world for that.
He frowned, thinking about it. He couldn’t quite figure her out. And he couldn’t quite figure out what about her made him want to figure her out.
“Lucas, are you coming?”
He jerked back to reality, and coffee—thankfully cooling by now—slopped down his hand. He scowled at it anyway.
“Whoa. Looks like you’ve had too many of those already.” Dan Ellis grinned down at him. He looked annoyingly wide awake in a white Saints polo shirt and jeans with a well-worn blue Saints cap pulled low over his eyes.
“I didn’t get much sleep,” Lucas said. He squinted at the watch on the un-coffee-splashed wrist. Nine thirty. He felt like he’d been awake for a day already but apparently not.
The coffee provided at the stadium where the team had their temporary digs was nowhere near good enough to kick-start his brain the way it needed to be kick-started. Each sip had left him wishing desperately that he was home with his very expensive, very good espresso machine waiting for him on his kitchen counter.
But no, he was here in Florida, where the day was far too sunny for his current mood.
He’d hidden away from the sunshine in one of the offices, trying to get some surgery-related calls and emails out of the way first thing before he had to switch to baseball. But apparently he hadn’t hidden well enough. Dan had found him.
“We’re about to start the pitching drills if you want to come and watch,” Dan said. “There’s one kid in this batch who’s looking good. Sam Basara.”
Lucas nodded and shut down his laptop. “He’s the one you’ve been telling me about.” Dan had had his eye on Sam for a while, apparently. The kid was only in his first year of college ball. Getting called up to the majors at this stage would be a dream come true. Lucas knew that dream.
And also knew how that dream could chew people up and spit them up. MLB was unforgiving.
But the cold hard fact was that they’d lost their best pitchers—other than Brett—and needed to build that capability back up ASAP. Combine that with pockets that were far shallower than most of the other teams and their only option was to go for the underrated players that Dan and his team were picking out. Including kids still in college.
“Yup,” Dan said. “Kid’s got an arm on him.” He took a file folder from the pile he held and passed it to Lucas. “So let’s go.”
Lucas yawned. “Do I have time for another cup of coffee?”
“If you’re quick. But get used to it. None of us sleeps much in spring training.”
“Yeah, but you’re not sleeping in just one place for the most part. I’m doing it in two,” Lucas said.
“Cry me a river,” Dan said. “We’ve got a team to build.”
Couldn’t argue with that. He grabbed another cup of average coffee and followed Dan out to the field. It was, at least, warmer here in Vero Beach than in New York. He pulled out his sunglasses and put them on as he gazed out over the small park. Small but newer and in better condition than Deacon Field. But a ballpark was a ballpark, and the familiar white diamond and bleachers and scoreboard made him smile despite his bad mood.
Down on the field, a bunch of players in the silver and blue and yellow Saints colors were gathered around the lanky form of Stuart Kelso, the Saints pitching coach, watching intently as he gestured with a bat and made wild arm motions.
Hopefully it was a rousing pep talk and the players would be inspired to do what they did best so Lucas and the coaching team could make some decisions and he could get the hell back to New York.
More likely, half of them were standing down there wishing they could find a discreet place to puke their guts up through sheer nerves.
He’d never actually tried out for an MLB team, but he remembered what it had felt like being scouted at his high school games. The sheer terror that he wouldn’t get chosen. Wouldn’t be offered the money that would mean he could do what his parents didn’t want him to do and go to the school of his choice and play baseball.
“Poor bastards,” he muttered.
Beside him, Dan grunted. “Not if they’re any good. This is a good shot for them.”
Lucas nodded. If any of the players down on the field did turn out to be great players, then it was unlikely they’d stay with the Saints too long. With their finances the owners were going to be playing buy low, trade high with their players for a few years yet, but he intended to make sure that the team served as a good training ground and didn’t treat the players like interchangeable bits of meat to be moved around any more than necessary. While they were part of the team, they would be treated well. And eventually, if he and Alex and Mal got this right, the Saints would be in the position not to have to shuffle players around so often.
But they wouldn’t get to that point without taking these first steps. So he had to do what he’d been sent here to do. Which meant forgetting about crappy coffee and seeing exactly what the guys down on the field could do.