“Come into the living room, I was watching a game.”
She should have guessed that part.
She followed him, looking around curiously. The whole place was floor-to-ceiling glass on one side, looking out over the darkened park. The floor was a dark polished wood and the walls a deep blue-gray.
He showed her into a room with three huge overstuffed sofas upholstered in navy. They flanked a huge TV. The walls were bare except for one massive abstract painting that echoed the grays and blues above the flat screen. Lucas bent down and killed the TV with the remote. Then he turned to look at her, face still impassive.
“I came to say thank you,” she said simply. “For my dad’s leg. For still operating.”
He nodded, expression not changing, eyes wary. “I said I would.”
“No one would have blamed you if you hadn’t. Not after the way I behaved.”
“You were worried about your dad. I get that.”
“Still, thank you. It means more to me than you know.”
“His prognosis is good,” Lucas said, with a half hitch of his shoulder that only drew attention to the way the T-shirt hugged his body. “And you know, even if he doesn’t get full use of his leg back, he can probably still fly. I asked Alex about it—Ice has an aeronautics division—and he said there are modifications for disabled pilots. He said he’d be happy to get someone to talk to you about it, once we know what’s going on with your dad’s leg.”
Disability aids? Why hadn’t she thought of that? Maybe because she’d barely had time to breathe. But Lucas had. Lucas was fixing things for her. Even though she’d run out on him. She bit her lip.
“Sara?”
“How did you hurt your shoulder?” she asked suddenly. “Maggie said you used to play baseball in college but you hurt your shoulder.”
Lucas nodded. “I did.”
“How?”
He sighed. “It was a long time ago.”
“How?”
“There was an explosion at a game. A group of those survivalist-type wackos tried to blow up the stadium.”
“You got hurt in the explosion?”
“No, I got hurt helping people afterward. Pulling them out of the wreckage.” He rolled his shoulder suddenly. “I don’t actually remember what I did. Alex says we lifted a concrete beam off someone and that’s what did it. But I don’t remember. Don’t remember much after running back into the bleachers. Not until I woke up in the damned helicopter being medevaced out of there.”
The man ran into burning stadiums to save people. Sara sat down suddenly. Grateful for the sofa behind her so she didn’t just sink to the floor. God. She was an idiot.
“Sara?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot.” He came closer then. Not quite close enough.
“I am. But I can’t help it. You scare me, Lucas. This”—she flipped her hand at the room—“scares me. I’m just an ordinary girl from Staten. I never imagined anything like this would be part of my life.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She laughed then, and wasn’t sure it wasn’t half a sob. “I’m an idiot.”
“It’s just money, Sara,” Lucas said. “It’s not me. It’s nothing to be scared of. Money is just a tool. It lets you do good things. It makes life easier in some ways, yes, but it doesn’t have to change who you are. Like I told you, you’re not your brother. History doesn’t have to repeat itself. I won’t let it. We won’t let it. So what if you never expected me? Sometimes the unexpected turn is the best thing. I never expected to be a doctor. I never expected to own a baseball team. I never expected to fall in love with someone who flies goddamned helicopters.”
“I never— Wait, what did you just say?”
“I never expected to fall in love with a chopper pilot.”
“It’s helo pilot.”
“I don’t care,” Lucas said.
“You’d care if I called baseball softball.”
“Well, yeah, maybe. Okay. Helo pilot. That’s not the important part. The important part is that you scare me, too. All my life I’ve had people running after me because of my name. Because of my money. But you. You don’t care about that. In fact, you want to run away from it. And apparently that makes me want to run after you. I want to be the guy who makes you happy, Sara Charles. Because I’ve fallen hard for you and these last few days nearly killed me. Losing you nearly killed me, and that’s pretty scary.”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. Maybe because of the blood suddenly roaring in her ears. The world narrowed to one very specific spot. The one where Lucas was standing. “You’ve fallen for me?”
He nodded. “Yes. And don’t say you don’t believe me, or I’ll have to agree with you that you’re an idiot.”
“I believe you,” she said. She did. Because he was the guy who meant what he said. Who came through. Who ran into burning buildings. Who saved people.
Who wanted her. Who would keep running after her.
“So then, the question is, do you feel the same way about me?” he said, eyes very blue. “Scary or not, have you fallen for me, Sara Charles?”
She was never going to get tired of that blue. Or the way he said her name. Or the fact that the only possible answer to his question that she could come up with was yes. She stood up and he moved closer. So close. “Yes,” she said and heard her voice quiver.
“Then I have one more question,” he said. “To confirm the diagnosis.”
“Which is?”
“Do you want to be scared together? See if we can help each other through all the crazy?”
“Hell, yes,” she said and pulled him down to the sofa to prove how much.
She was going to be very happy when spring training was done. Sara wriggled on her sofa, found a more comfortable spot on the cushion propped under her head, and closed her eyes again, trying to let the sunbeam coming through the window lull her to sleep.
They were flying back to Vero Beach in a few hours. Just a few more games to go. Just over a week. And then she’d be home for months.
Well, apart from the part where the team traveled to play games. Which probably meant Lucas and Alex and Mal would want to travel with them sometimes.
They’d asked her to stay on for that. So they were sorting out the details for Charles Air to become the official charter helicopter firm of the New York Saints. Her A-Star was fixed, so she could hire another pilot to do any charters that clashed with team commitments until her dad was back on his feet.
She smiled sleepily.
Too much work.
Nice problem to have really.
If only she had time for just a bit more sleep. Though really, it was Lucas who was leaving her sleep-deprived, not the Saints’ schedule.
She rolled over again, trying to make herself give in to the sleepy. From a distance she heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway and then a familiar bark.
Lucas and Dougal. Back from checking on her dad. They’d been gone longer than she’d expected, but maybe Sean had coaxed Lucas into watching some of a game with him.
No point getting in the way of male bonding.
The front door opened. She should probably force herself up.
“Take it to Sara,” she heard Lucas say and smiled again. He’d been teaching Dougal new tricks. Taking things to specific people was one of them. And the damned dog looked so proud of himself every time he delivered something, it was hard to resist.
Dougal’s nails clicked across the kitchen tile; then she heard him gather speed across the living room.
But wait, wasn’t Lucas supposed to have left Dougal with her parents? After all, they were flying out later.
She opened her eyes just in time to see Dougal arrive beside her, a little green-blue bag dangling from his jaws from a white handle.
She knew that blue.
Her heart began to pound. “What’s this?” she said as Dougal dropped the bag on her chest and licked her face before racing back to Lucas, who stood in the doorway, half leaning against the frame. The blue T-shirt he wore matched his eyes.
“Open it,” he suggested.
She eased open the bag. Inside was a matching blue box tied with white ribbon. A small box.
“Lucas?” she said uncertainly, lifting it out of the bag.
He smiled crookedly. “Dougal and I had a talk,” he said. “He told me he wanted me to stick around. I told him it was up to you.” He patted Dougal’s ears then walked across the room and lifted the box out of her hands. His clever surgeon’s fingers made short work of the ribbon, leaving him with an even smaller black velvet box in his palm.
The room tilted around her for a moment. “That’s a—”
“Yes,” Lucas agreed. “I think if I’m going to stick around, then it should be forever. So, the question is, Sara Charles, what do you think?”
He flipped the box open. The ring nestled inside had a brilliant blue stone set in diamonds and a silver band. “It’s a blue diamond. The color made me think of your eyes,” Lucas said. Was she hearing things or had his voice wobbled a bit on that last part?
He held out the ring. “I know this is fast,” he said. “But I know what I want. And what I want is you. You said you’d do crazy with me. So I figured, why not go all the way? Sara, will you marry me?”
Across the room, Dougal barked once.
“Hush, dog,” Lucas said. “I’m asking Sara.”
She looked from the blue ring to the blue eyes. And knew there was only one answer.
“Yes,” she said.
Read on for an excerpt from Melanie Scott’s next book
Lawless in Leather
Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Chapter One
Damn. It smelled like a ball park. Mal Coulter breathed deeper, closed his eyes, and let the grin spread across his face as he took in the mix of sweat and grass and old beer and well-worn wood and leather that spelled baseball.
It made his palms itch for a bat.
It made his gut twist as, once again, he contemplated the possible monumental insanity that had led him to buy a baseball team with his two best friends. He still suspected Alex had put something in that very good bourbon they’d been drinking when he’d gotten Mal to say yes to his crazy proposal. Or maybe Lucas. Lucas was the doctor. He had plenty of access to drugs.
Still, here he was. New York. Though, right at this moment, Staten Island. Part owner of the worst team in the major leagues. The New York Saints. And currently in charge of bringing the security in their stadium up to scratch.
That wiped the grin from his face. Deacon Field was a rabbit warren. A beat-up, crazy rabbit warren. Figuring out how to keep it, the players, and the people who would fill the seats safe—because if one thing was for damn sure, it was that no one was getting hurt in his ballpark—had been keeping him awake at night for months now.
Rabbit warren or not, Deacon would be safe.
There would be no repeat of the attack that had changed his life and the lives of his two best friends, now his partners, on the rabbit warren and the team that played in it. No explosions and fire and death caused by deluded evil.
Not on his watch.
He’d had practically half a squadron of contractors in here doing what they could, but there were limits to what could be achieved without some major remodeling.
Which wasn’t feasible with their budget or the time they had before the season started. In fact, he was starting to think the only way it would be feasible to do the work that really needed to be done was if the Saints relocated to a different field for a season. A choice that wasn’t going to be popular with their fans. If it could be done at all.
Yet another thing to worry about.
And now there was only one week left until the first game and he had a to-do list that was so long, he didn’t want to think about it.
Lack of sleep wouldn’t kill him though, and he found himself arriving for work at the crack of dawn each day, heading for Deacon Field first instead of his own offices and climbing to a different part of the stadium to sit and smell the air. Today, finally, he’d let himself into the owner’s box, sliding back the windows to let the early morning air seep in and carry the smell up to him.
It was the closest to peaceful things got these days, these first few minutes. The rest was sheer chaos.
Good thing he liked chaos.
OOH, BABY, SHAKE IT!
Music smashed through the morning silence. His eyes flew open. What the fuck?
SHAKE, BABY, SHAKE IT!
Mal stalked to the front of the box and stared down at the field. Took in the twenty or so women wearing skimpy little gym bras and leggings and shorts and groaned. He’d forgotten the damned cheerleaders.
SHAKE IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT!
He gritted his teeth. Cheerleaders. Hell. Baseball teams didn’t have cheerleaders. Adam could call ’em a dance troupe and spout off about getting butts on seats all he wanted, but they were cheerleaders and they didn’t belong in baseball. No matter how good they might look prancing around down there, all long legs and long hair and big boobs.
He allowed himself a moment to appreciate the view and found his eyes drawn to the woman at the front of the squad. The one in charge, judging by the way the others were following her moves as she bent and stretched in ways that were arresting despite the goddamn annoying music.
Half a foot shorter than the shortest of the others, her hair a short vivid slick of scarlet—unlike the long falls of blond and brunette surrounding her—she was also built sleeker. She lacked the curves that were testing the limits of the Lycra worn by the others but, as the music changed to some sort of sinuous beat and she started to demonstrate a kind of twisting hip shimmy thing, he felt his mouth go bone-dry as he watched her.
Da-a-amn.
It was surprising the turf beneath her feet wasn’t scorching with each sinuous step she took.
Sex on legs.
He blinked and tried to bring his mind back to the job at hand.
Hot or not, he didn’t remember clearing a cheerleading practice for this morning so that meant he had to go down there and find out what the hell she was doing on his field.
* * *
“And five, six, seven, eight.” Raina Easton bounced to her left, expecting the squad of dancers in front of her to mirror the move. Instead, to a woman, they stayed right where they were standing, looking past her shoulder, with varying expressions of surprise, approval and assessment on their faces.
Uh-oh.
She spun on her heel and took in the very tall man striding across the ballpark toward them, wearing jeans, a dark gray tee-shirt, a perfectly beaten-up black leather jacket, and a thunderous expression.