Angel in Armani

by Melanie Scott

  “You mean kegs and grilled burgers and loud rock ’n’ roll?”

  Mal laughed. “I see you went to the same sort of parties in the army as I did. This is the same principle, just fancier booze and food. And then we ask them for money.”

  “I see.” He wasn’t really easing her nerves any. Army parties and pilot parties—which tended along the same lines—she could handle. This was a whole other level.

  But if she wanted Lucas, this was apparently the life that came with it. Maybe she’d like it. She hadn’t thought she’d like baseball but she was enjoying it now. She still didn’t understand half of what was going on in the games and even less of what all the statistics meant, but she liked the crowd and the silly music and the seventh-inning stretches and the sense of fun. Plus watching guys built like Ollie Shields in tight pants and short-sleeved shirts wasn’t too hard.

  She didn’t think tonight was going to have much silliness, though. But probably just as much stuff she didn’t understand. Though Lucas would be there with her, and that was what mattered. Lucas who thought he could fix her dad’s leg. Lucas who was operating on her dad next week. Lucas who had offered to get his lawyer onto the insurance company if they hadn’t assessed the A-Star by the end of the month.

  Lucas who made her brain melt every time he touched her.

  For him she could do this.

  Though, as they got closer to the hotel, the thought of braving photographers without Lucas holding her hand was making her palms sweat.

  She’d seen pictures of paparazzi crowding around people, pushing and shoving and cameras flashing. She was pretty good with crowds and noises most of the time, but that seemed almost a guaranteed way to trigger herself into a panic attack. Not how she wanted to start the evening.

  Which meant she needed to change the environment. Control things if she could. At least that’s what her therapist would tell her.

  “Mal, is there a back way into the hotel?” she asked. “I mean, if I’m not arriving with Lucas, do I need to go in the front?”

  Mal tipped his head. “Something about photographers bother you?”

  She swallowed. Mal had been in the army. He’d understand. “When I first got out, I wasn’t good with people getting too close. And loud noises. And flashing things.”

  He nodded. “Combat stress. I know that one.”

  Relief made her smile at him. “I’m mostly better but I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with packs of photographers.”

  Mal nodded. “I don’t like them, either. I’ll call Gardner. He’ll get us in another way.”

  “Don’t you need your picture taken?”

  “Alex can play poster boy for the night. The papers can live without my ugly mug.”

  She was doing the women of New York a disservice. There would be plenty of them perfectly happy to drool over a picture of Mal in the paper. But they’d just have to drool over Alex instead. “Thank you,” she said.

  * * *

  “Are you sure about this?” Mal said as the limo slid into the alley leading to the back of the hotel ten minutes later. “We can still go around the block and go in the front.”

  Sara shook her head. Having seen the throng of photographers and cameras outside the front of the hotel, complete with a red carpet, of all things, she knew she wasn’t ready to walk that particular gauntlet. “Yes,” she said sounding more certain than she felt. “Sneaking in the back suits me just fine.”

  “It takes a bit of getting used to,” he said. “All the attention.”

  “So are you used to it yet?” she asked.

  “Hell, no. If I could send all the paparazzi to a very deserted island somewhere in the Bering Sea, I would. Of course, that would still leave the actual legitimate press to deal with. And we need them.” He didn’t sound like he was happy with that situation.

  That didn’t ease Sara’s stomach any. Malachi Coulter was taller than either Alex or Lucas and built on broader, more solid lines. He had shoulders that could probably cause a lunar eclipse. If he didn’t like the media circus, what hope did she have of getting used to it?

  “Well, I’m not going to have to deal with it tonight, at least. Thank you,” she said.

  Mal smiled, brown eyes warming. Which made him even nicer to look at. She could see why Maggie called them the terrible trio. Mal was easy enough to talk to and he’d been nothing but a perfect gentlemen since he’d climbed into the limo, but she had no trouble envisioning him kicking butt and taking no prisoners.

  She wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done in the army—it seemed rude to ask when he hadn’t offered the intel—but she was guessing it had been something specialized and risky. And apparently he hadn’t lost whatever don’t-mess-with-me vibe it had instilled in him. Though, who knew, maybe he’d had that before he’d joined up.

  “Gardener will be waiting at the door,” Mal said. “He’ll let us in and then we’ll get you upstairs and deliver you to Lucas.”

  “Lucas isn’t here yet and I’m not a package,” she pointed out.

  “No, but you’re very prettily wrapped.” Mal grinned. “Good dress choice.”

  She felt her face go hot. Maggie had talked her into the dress, and it had been in her price range—the shopping gods apparently smiling on her for once. Maggie’s friend Shelly Finch, a player’s fiancée, had shopping mojo that probably involved sacrificing goats to dark gods or something. Shelly had whizzed them to about ten little up-stairs-and-down-alley showrooms stuffed full of gorgeous clothes at the sort of price that Sara could afford before Sara could blink. She’d had no idea such places existed.

  Affordable or not, she still wasn’t sure she could pull the dress off. But she’d adored it too much to resist, particularly with Maggie and Shelly egging her on. It had a soft blue bodice, made sparkly with a thousand or more tiny glittering silver beads curling around her body in waves. No straps held it in place, just boning and what Maggie had called magic tape. She just hoped that it wasn’t going to do her any harm in sensitive areas when she had to take it off. Lucas might have been hoping for some action in a dark closet somewhere, but he was going to have to be very inventive to leave her looking respectable afterward. Not that she doubted his ingenuity in that department.

  No, indeed. The man had skills. And very few inhibitions.

  She wrenched her mind off that path and focused back on her dress. A far safer subject. The bodice, impenetrable or not, wasn’t the best part. No, the best bit was the skirt, which was made from miles and miles of soft tulle, falling around her like a long tutu in layers of blue and gray and white in a hundred soft shades. It stopped just below her ankles, which let her show off the silver heels that she’d had to buy as well. Because they were perfect for the dress.

  The dress swished and swayed and made her feel like some sort of sea fairy. She hadn’t been able to resist it.

  She’d curled her hair in loose waves and donned the pearl earrings her grandmother had left her and then decided to let the dress stand alone. She couldn’t compete with the sorts of jewels that anyone else here tonight would be likely wearing, but she did have a killer dress. One that would, hopefully, make Lucas crazy.

  “Earth to Sara,” Mal said and she realized she was smoothing the skirt of the dress with one hand. “Worried about ruining your frock?”

  “No,” she said. “Not the frock.” Just everything else in her life. Not that there was that much left to ruin. So maybe she should just suck it up and enjoy this one glittering night for what it was: a rare moment before the bell chimed at midnight and delivered her back to the pumpkin patch of real life. She put her hand on the door handle and summoned a smile. “Let’s do this,” she said to Mal and then climbed out to face the fairy tale.

  * * *

  True to Mal’s word, Gardner was waiting for them at the end of the alley. He showed them through the door and then through a bewildering series of corridors and up two sets of stairs. The decor became progressively more luxurious as they moved from th
e service areas toward the public parts of the hotel.

  They came out in the lobby, which was teeming with people, and then followed Gardner downstairs to the ballroom. The vast space was like a cross between a steampunk theater and a Golden Age ballroom. Sara had to remind herself not to gape when a guy dressed in black tuxedo pants, silver braces, and nothing else, his face hidden by a mask that was an explosion of white silver and blue feathers, waved a silver tray of drinks in her face as soon as they reached the bottom of the curving staircase.

  She shook her head and stepped closer to Mal. He scanned the throng of people—there were advantages to being so tall—and then bent down and said, “I can see Maggie, we’ll go that way.”

  Sounded like a good plan to her. He offered her his arm again and, between him and Gardner, they made their way fairly easily through the room. Maggie was standing near a table, speaking to a couple of women Sara didn’t know.

  Maggie wore white, long and slinky, with sky-high black stilettos. The collar of diamonds around her neck glittered blindingly. She’d bought the dress on their shopping trip as well and had been just as excited about finding a bargain as Sara was. But looking at the diamonds, Sara didn’t think they were bargain-basement finds. Nope, they were the real thing. Maggie was at home in this world.

  Sara wasn’t. She really, really wanted Lucas to be here with her.

  Maggie’s face broke into a smile when she spotted them and she waved them over, introducing them to the women she was talking to, though the names flew out of Sara’s head as soon as she heard them.

  “This is amazing,” Sara said, snagging a glass of sparkling water off the tray of the next feathery boy who passed by.

  “I told you I throw excellent parties,” Maggie said with a grin.

  “Yes, you do,” Mal said. “And now I have to mingle.” He smiled at Sara then made an apologetic face and broke away from their group, melting into the crowd.

  He was one of the hosts, and he had to work to do, so she couldn’t ask him to stay just because she was nervous.

  Relax. She focused on the conversation and tried to act like a normal person. It was hard to hear over the music and the sound of the crowd, but she followed well enough to be able to nod and smile at the right moments.

  She was starting to feel a little more comfortable when Alex appeared by Maggie’s side. “Sorry, ladies,” he said, “I need to steal Maggie for a few minutes.” He smiled at Sara. “Hey, Sara. You look gorgeous.”

  She smiled back and watched as Maggie abandoned her to follow Alex. Though Maggie did stop and whisper, “Shelly’s somewhere over by the main bar. Go find her,” before abandoning her.

  Shelly being one of the few other people she was likely to know here, Sara decided that was good advice. She would have felt better if the players had been here. She was getting to know a few of them in Orlando—Brett Tuckerson the pitcher had talked to her a few times, and Ollie had introduced her to some of the other guys. And then there were Sam and Tico, of course, who like to come and hang out with her and ask her about helicopters and try to teach her baseball stats.

  But they were all in Florida. She stood on tiptoe to try and figure out which direction the main bar was, then excused herself to the two women she’d been talking to and headed in that direction.

  She was about halfway across the room when she nearly bumped into an older woman whose dark hair was pulled back into an immaculate chignon, framing olive skin and dark eyes. She wore dark-red silk, and rubies the size of malt balls glittered in her ears and around her neck.

  “I’m sorry,” Sara said.

  “That’s all right, dear,” the woman said. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.” She looked Sara up and down. “Did I see you come in with Malachi earlier?”

  “You know Mal?” Sara perked up.

  “Yes, he’s a friend of the family,” the woman said. Then she held out a hand weighed down by even more diamonds and rubies and tipped with blood-red nails to match. “I’m Flavia Angelo.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Oh crap, Lucas’s mom.

  Sara managed to keep the smile on her face from freezing in place and took Flavia’s hand. “Sara Charles.” Flavia’s skin was cool and Sara kept the handshake brief, withdrawing her hand as soon as possible.

  “How lovely to meet you, Sara. So are you here with Malachi?” Flavia asked, lifting the champagne glass in her left hand to tilt it in the direction that Mal had disappeared earlier. “I hadn’t heard that he was seeing anybody.”

  Sara didn’t think that Lucas had the kind of relationship with his mom that meant he was calling her with updates on his friends’ love lives. But she’d done some research on his family, and the Angelos were firmly cemented in the Manhattan social scene. Flavia probably had a network worthy of a spymaster. Sara only hoped that it hadn’t revealed anything about Lucas and her.

  “We’re just friends. Colleagues really.”

  “Oh? You work for the baseball team?”

  The tone in which she said baseball team should have dropped the temperature in the ballroom a good few degrees. The look in her eyes dropped it farther still. Brown eyes should be warm. But Flavia’s were a shade you might get if you froze bitter chocolate. Lucas must have gotten his eyes from his dad. And he apparently hadn’t been kidding about his family’s views on baseball. She might be here at the fund-raiser, but Flavia was definitely not a Saints fan.

  Where the hell was Lucas? Though maybe it was just as well he wasn’t here. She didn’t want Flavia’s chill directed at her personally. “Yes, I work for the Saints,” she said.

  “That must be interesting.”

  There was that tone again. Sara set her teeth. “Yes, it is.”

  “What is it you do there?”

  “I fly their helicopter,” Sara said.

  Surprise flared in the dark eyes, and Flavia’s forehead wrinkled infinitesimally. It seemed Lucas’s mom liked her Botox. For some reason, that made Sara feel slightly better.

  “I wasn’t aware they had a helicopter.”

  “It’s a trial thing,” Sara said. “While spring training is on.” She wasn’t going to offer any more of an explanation. Over Flavia’s shoulder she thought she caught a glimpse of Shelly’s pale-blond head. She wasn’t going to stand here and chat to Lucas’s mom without him any longer than she had to. And she definitely wasn’t going to offer the news that she was dating Lucas when Flavia had shown no reaction to her name. Which meant Lucas hadn’t told his parents about her.

  Why the hell hadn’t he told them about her? He hadn’t mentioned that he hadn’t when he’d said they were coming.

  She managed to smile at Flavia. “It was lovely to meet you but I see someone I have to speak with. Enjoy the ball.” She made her escape, heading toward Shelly, but she was fairly sure she could feel Flavia watching her as she left.

  Shelly was standing by the bar, talking to the bartender.

  “Sara, hey,” she said. “That dress looks fab.”

  “Thanks to you,” Sara said.

  “Nope, the dress is nothing without the woman inside it.” Shelly smiled. Her dress was a short shift—kind of flapper style—silver embroidery glimmering over black net. “Now, I was just asking Tom here if he can make me a very dirty martini. Do you want anything to drink?”

  She had never wanted alcohol more in her life, but she was flying later. “No, I’m fine.”

  “Are you having fun? Where’s Lucas?”

  Maggie had, out of necessity, told Shelly about Sara and Lucas during their shopping adventure. But Shelly had promised to keep her mouth shut until the news became public. “Held up in surgery,” Sara said, trying not to sound annoyed. With Flavia prowling the ballroom, she really wished Lucas were here.

  Shelly grimaced in sympathy. “That’s the problem with surgeons. Always on call. Well, the ones who do anything interesting, at least.”

  “Given that I tend to be on call, too, I guess I can’t complain about that,” S
ara said. She wondered whether to mention that she’d just met Lucas’s mom but decided to wait for the man himself to arrive to discuss that particular experience.

  She stood and chatted with Shelly for a bit, telling her about spring training and letting Shelly—who worked as an entertainment columnist—give her the lowdown on half the people in the room. Just as she was starting to think that Lucas was never going to arrive, the crowd parted and he was suddenly in front of her.

  “Oh thank God,” she muttered as he bent to kiss her hello.

  “Sorry,” he murmured against her lips. “Surgery.”

  “So Mal told me,” she said.

  “Good.” Lucas pulled back from her, still holding her hands. Then he scanned up and down and up again. His eyes went hot and dark and the breath caught in her lungs as an answering heat stroked her skin.

  “You look beautiful.” His fingers tightened a little on hers, stroking gently as he looked at her. “More than beautiful.”

  Her breath caught, the room suddenly shrinking to just the two of them. He really did think she was beautiful. And he wanted her. Both those things shone clearly in his eyes. The certainty suddenly arrowed through her, making her knees go weak. What Lucas saw when he looked at her wasn’t what she saw in the mirror. No, it was better. And maybe, just maybe, it was the real her. Not the mess of a woman who couldn’t keep a business afloat, but the woman who filled Lucas’s eyes with wonder and happiness.

  She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t quite know if she could make lips and tongue cooperate to find any words.

  Instead she stepped in and stood on tiptoe to kiss him again. Let her body say what she wasn’t ready to say. A kiss of heat and tenderness in equal parts that didn’t do much to still the spinning in her head.

  Lucas saw her. And gloried in what he saw.

  There was a word for that, but she wasn’t ready to even think it. She pulled the shreds of her self-control back around her and stepped back from him.

  “Thanks, you look pretty good yourself,” she managed with just the right tone of casual delight.