by Mindy Klasky
But she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that a third part of her reaction was personal. She couldn’t deny the tug she’d felt as Adam walked her home. She couldn’t deny the roller-coaster breathlessness when she’d considered inviting him in, when she’d thought about how it would feel to take him up to her bedroom, to take him into her bed.
It was a bad idea to get involved with Adam Sartain. It would screw up their friendship. And it would totally complicate whatever was going on with the Reeves farm, with their competition over the land.
Who could blame her, if she reached out to an old friend? Who could say she was wrong for keeping in touch? Hell, she talked to her brother Michael every other day, even if it was just a quick question about grabbing one of the kids after school. And Adam was like a brother to her.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and flipped through the photos she’d taken that afternoon. There. A snapshot of a towering caramel cake, the icing glistening like an invitation. The picture was perfect—just behind the cake was a line of people waiting to pay at the cash register, even the fish bowl was clear with its tangle of donated cash.
There was no need to give Adam the details. No reason to tell him the total they’d raised. No reason to let him in on her momentary flash of despair, her realization that the mountain in front of her was a hell of a lot steeper than she’d first considered.
She tapped the screen and added a message: “Dogs rule! Paws bake sale a huge success. Ready to give up now and spare us both a bunch of grief?” She hit Send before she could change her mind.
The radio play-by-play kept her company for the drive home.
~~~
Adam leaned back against the headboard in the anonymous New York hotel room, reaching for his tumbler of Scotch before he checked his phone for messages. No voice mail. Three emails from his lawyer, summarizing yet another phone conversation with the FBI agent in charge of investigating Reiter, outlining next steps, asking for input about the civil actions they were putting together, the cases they could control while the criminal system crept along. Jesus. How much was he paying that shark? How many hundreds of thousands of dollars would he flush down the crapper, trying to get his money back from Reiter?
There were a couple of messages from the team, the usual reminders about traveling to Toronto tomorrow night, like he hadn’t been on road trips thousands of times.
And there was an email from Haley.
His heart slammed against his sternum when he saw her name. And that was goddamn ridiculous, because he’d seen her name all the time during the twelve years they’d gone to school together. He’s seen her almost every day while they were growing up, and on a regular basis for all the years since then.
But his body had pretty much stopped listening to his brain regarding anything where Haley Thurman was concerned. That’s what he’d started to realize the night she’d brought him the Macallan. That’s what he’d had to accept after waking up from half a dozen dreams in the past couple of weeks, after finding himself sweaty, sticky, a goddamn mess.
He’d told himself not to text her. Not to email. For damn sure not to call. Because no matter what his cock said it wanted, he knew better than to fuck up a friendship that had lasted for more than thirty years. Screwing around with Haley would be a hell of a lot worse than running the lawn mower over the flowers she’d planted when she was in fifth grade, the ones she said she was going to show in the county fair. It wouldn’t begin to compare to sneaking into her parents’ liquor cabinet with her brothers, to getting sick on peach schnapps and puking in the bathroom sink when he couldn’t reach the john. It wouldn’t even be as bad as sniffing around after her best friend, Sara Thatcher, then dumping the girl the second he realized she was looking for a ring and a husband and two point five kids, pretty much right out of college.
Adam wasn’t a saint, not by a long shot, but he’d always known better than to shit where he ate.
But he wasn’t the one who’d reached out to Haley. He’d been good, minding his manners. She was the one who’d sent the text earlier that night. He touched the screen and read her message. A bake sale. And things had gone well, from the taunting tone of her words. His first reaction was to laugh, to type a few quick words of congratulations.
But he went with his second reaction instead. He called her.
She answered on the third ring, suspicion darkening her voice. “Hey. What’s up?”
He couldn’t blame her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her from the road. Sure, they talked when he was home. He dropped by to raid her kitchen when he hadn’t had time to stock his own. He took her out to dinner, to a movie, whatever, when he had the down time—which was almost never, during the season.
“That cake looked good enough to eat.” Shit. If he couldn’t figure out something better than that, he might as well hang up now.
At least she laughed. “I suspect it was. At least, that’s what the person thought who paid the big bucks. Your ass is grass, my friend.”
“Not fair,” he retorted. “I’m stranded here in New York, while you’re moving full steam ahead.”
“And whose fault is that?”
She had a point. Haley always had a point. He fumbled for something to say, but came up empty. At least she had the good sense to fill the silence. “You had a good game tonight.”
“Yeah. Durban’s home run in the sixth broke things wide open.” He didn’t give a damn about Durban’s home run. Not now. Not when he was trying to figure out what to say to keep Haley on the line.
Shit. This should be easy. He talked to women all the time. He was on the road for almost half the year; he’d perfected the art of telephone seduction. It should be easy enough to tell Haley he’d been thinking about her, to ask about her day, to let her know he was lonely.
“Where are you now?” he asked.
“Sitting on my living room couch. I was watching a movie, some stupid thriller. This idiot woman just left her front door unlocked, even though she knows half the city is out to get her because of something the bad guy slipped inside her purse.”
He could picture the line of her throat as she threw her head back to laugh disdainfully. “Are you alone?” He heard the roughness in his voice, but he thought he hid it well.
“If you don’t count the dogs. And Emma. She’s curled up beside me, purring like a motorboat.”
He didn’t give a damn about the animals. But curling up beside Haley… Damn, that sounded good. He took a gulp of Scotch and shifted on the bed, working the button on his jeans with impatient fingers. He slid down his zipper as he said, “It sounds like you could find better things to do than waste your time with a crappy movie like that.”
She laughed again. “Oh, I’m using my time just fine. I’m writing up plans for our next fundraising project. The one where we raise enough money to beat your sorry ass, fair and square.”
If he’d been sitting beside her, she probably would have socked him in the arm, leaving her knuckle out to make sure she gave as good as she got. And picturing the sarcastic tilt to her lips, he was ready to give her a hell of a lot. He slipped his hand inside his briefs, letting his cock twitch against his palm.
“Sorry, darlin’,” he said. “You’re the one who’s going to be beat. As you say, fair and square.” He slipped his fingers around his shaft, and his balls tightened on command.
“Sure,” she said, her voice low and tempting. “Because you’re raising a million dollars while you’re out there on the road.”
He was raising something. He tightened his jaw so she wouldn’t hear his stuttered breath, and he forced his voice to stay level as he said, “I’ve got minions, babe. And they’re planning a BUNT gala, even as we’re talking.”
Which was the truth, even if he didn’t give a damn about the dinner dance right now. He’d hired the best party organizer in Raleigh, about five minutes before he’d headed out of town. Monique would organize the whole thing, and all he had to do was s
how up.
“Ooh,” Haley cooed, as if she were impressed. “Minions. I bet they take care of everything for you. Aren’t you the big man around town.”
Jesus. Minions couldn’t take care of his hard-on right now. Minions couldn’t take care of the image he had, of Haley’s arched eyebrows, of her snort of disdain. He forced himself to answer, to say something that sounded remotely normal, even as his cock told him to finish up the conversation now. “One week from tonight. At the Claibourne, in the Grand Ballroom. Wear your dancing shoes, and bring your checkbook.”
She snorted. “Adam Sartain, have you ever seen me in dancing shoes?”
His breath came faster. He closed his eyes, imagining that it was Haley’s hand on his cock, her tongue that licked his lips, imagining she was hot and sweaty beside him, beneath him. He grunted, “What are you wearing now?”
Her guffaw shocked him back to reality—to a New York hotel room, a glass of watered-down booze, and a cell phone that burned against his ear. “Does that line ever work with women?”
As his dick wilted, he forced himself to match her laugh. “I thought it might with you,” he said.
“Hello? Have we just met? I’m Haley Thurman, your next-door neighbor? The girl you’ve known for more than thirty years?”
He blew out a breath and gulped the last of the Scotch. “Okay, so you won’t be wearing dancing shoes. But you’ll come to the gala?”
“To help you raise money so you can buy the Reeves farm out from under me.”
He shook his head, lips pulling down at her acid tone. “Pretty much. Yeah.”
She sighed and said, “I’ll be there.”
He lay on the bed for a moment, trying to think of something else to say, something to keep the conversation going. Haley took away the option, though. “You should get some sleep,” she said. “And I have the end of a movie to watch.”
“Haley—” he started, even though he had no idea what came next.
She made some sort of questioning sound, giving him permission to go on.
“I just… I wanted…” What the hell was he going to say? I was hoping for some scalding phone sex, so I made this long-distance booty call? Yeah. Right. He swallowed hard and said, “Congratulations on the bake sale. It looks like it was a good start.”
“Sure,” she said, her teasing tone make him go hard all over again. “Go ahead and humor me. But you won’t be laughing when I show up at Sam Reeves’ front door with the winning check.”
He couldn’t think of a smart answer to that. Instead, he settled for, “Dream on.” He shoved down all the things he wanted to say, all the things that would change their friendship forever. He followed up with, “Get a good night’s sleep.”
“You too,” she said.
He didn’t want to be the first one to hang up. But it seemed like Haley didn’t have similar qualms. He was left staring at a scorching phone, an empty glass, and the sorriest excuse for a hard-on he’d ever seen in his life.
CHAPTER 5
Haley made a last-minute check in the bathroom mirror at the Claibourne Hotel. No mascara smeared under her eyes—check. No lipstick on her teeth—check. Single strand of pearls that had been a Sweet Sixteen gift from her grandmother—check. Little black dress not slipping off her shoulders, bunching under her boobs, or otherwise preparing to embarrass her—check, at least for the moment.
That just left the shoes.
Haley owned precisely one pair of shoes that had a prayer of elevating her simple knit dress from casual wear to evening attire. Girlfriends had assured her multiple times that the three-inch heels really weren’t that daring, but she begged to differ. Three inches were a hell of a lot more than the Keds she usually wore. They even put her navy pumps to shame.
And they rubbed blisters around the backs of her heels like a mother.
She rolled her eyes and told herself she was a big girl. She could take it. The alternative was letting Adam think she was too chicken to show up at his gala.
The bathroom door opened and a trio of Raleigh society matrons rolled in, bringing a cloud of perfume and stern looks of disapproval at Haley’s decidedly unfashionable dress.
Time to take her leave, before the old biddies started making pointed comments about how some people couldn’t be bothered to put on decent lip-liner these days. Haley grabbed for her ridiculously tiny clutch purse and escaped toward the ballroom.
She had to hand it to Adam—he’d pulled together a classy event. She wasn’t quite sure how he’d done it, either. He’d been on the road until Wednesday, and the Rockets had started a grueling home stand against St. Louis. At least they’d had an early game that afternoon; Adam had ended up with a few spare hours before he’d needed to don his tuxedo and play host.
The ballroom was decorated with accents of bright green, BUNT’s signature shade. Tall tables held arrangements of wildflowers, thrown together with such haphazard grace that Haley knew someone had taken hours to complete the displays. Four bars were scattered around the room, serving up complimentary beer and wine and a specialty cocktail that riffed on a Lemon Drop and was called a Sunny Afternoon.
Giant screens dominated the walls, and carefully synchronized photos flashed across the surfaces—laughing children running across a green field, studious boys and girls peering into a jar of pond water, kids of every age leaning out the windows of a giant treehouse.
The good mood was infectious. Everywhere Haley looked, people were smiling, laughing, having a good time. More than once, she saw the flash of pen on paper, the discreet movement as a check changed hands. Everything was classy. Everything was elegant. Everything connoted big money for a big cause, and Haley felt a surge of jealousy so hot she almost fell off her three-inch heels.
“Wow!” she heard behind her—Michael’s voice. She turned around to meet her brother’s goggle-eyed astonishment. He surveyed her from head to toe and said, “You look exactly like my sister, but she wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress and heels.”
She smiled her sweetest smile as she flipped him the bird. “Come on, big brother. If I have to be here, at least I can take a turn on the dance floor.”
Adam had skipped an expensive band, opting instead for a disk jockey. The woman wore a black T-shirt tucked into black skinny jeans, and she looked comfortable enough that Haley seriously considered bribing her to change clothes. Not that Haley could get the DJ’s attention. The woman was working with actual vinyl, managing two turntables at once, mixing her own transitions from song to song. While she looked likely to handle anything the hip-hop world might throw at her, she was sticking to much more traditional music for the gala. Frank Sinatra gave way to Nat King Cole who yielded the floor to Louis Armstrong.
Michael bowed like some sort of medieval knight. “May I have this dance?” he asked, extending his hand in perfect cotillion etiquette.
After completing painful dance classes with her Girl Scout troop, Haley was the one who’d taught her brothers to waltz, Michael and Billy both, with Adam thrown in for good measure. They’d spent hours in the basement, Haley switching to hiking boots when her toes screamed in protest at the boys’ clumsiness. With each of them, she’d started out leading, getting them used to the rhythm, but then she’d handed over responsibility, letting them guide her around the coffee table, over to the TV, back to the card table in the corner.
Adam had been the slowest study of all.
She’d expected more from him. He was an athlete, after all. He listened well enough to his coach telling him how to slide into second, how to adjust his throw so he could hit the cut-off man every time. But no matter how often she shifted Adam’s hand on her waist, no matter how many times she folded her fingers around his, he just couldn’t get the feel of a waltz.
Michael, on the other hand, was a natural. He guided her onto the crowded hardwood floor, dropping into the easy one-two-three of the dance without any visible thought. “I’m surprised to see you here,” he said.
“Why? Adam�
�s a friend. It’s only neighborly to show up at his fundraiser.”
Michael snorted. “What is it with you two and neighborly? Neighborly is buying a Christmas wreath from a Boy Scout—not underwriting his effort to buy the Reeves farm out from under you.”
“Right. Like any check I could write would make a big difference to him now.”
A vertical line cut into the space between Michael’s eyebrows. “I don’t know, Haley. From the stuff that’s coming out in the paper, he’s in bad financial shape.”
“Bad shape for a millionaire is different than bad shape for you and me. He owns his house outright, so he won’t be out on the street any time soon.”
She felt Michael’s tiny shrug through her fingertips on his shoulder. “I’m just saying it looks strange. The two of you are fighting over that piece of land but you’re here to support him, all dressed up like a fish out of water.”
“B minus for the mixed metaphor, brother dearest,” Haley said, but she had to consider the truth of his words. Why was she at the gala?
Because Adam asked her to come. There it was again—that stupid, swooping feeling, hollowing out the pit of her stomach like she was looking over the edge of a twenty-story building.
When Adam had invited her, she’d heard something in his voice, a tightness, a need. The guy was going through hell with his manager. And even though she was pissed that he’d interfered with her plans for the farm, she knew how dedicated he was to the Foundation. He truly wanted to help those kids. He wanted to make a difference—now and long after his playing years were over. She had to help.