by Julie James
He pulled out the phone and saw he had a new text message from Brooke Parker. One word.
YES.
Cade noticed the time of the message and realized she’d conveniently accepted his dinner invitation one minute before it expired. He couldn’t decide if that made him want to laugh out loud or throttle his cell phone—perhaps both—but he did know one thing.
This woman drove him crazy.
Standing beside him, Vaughn tapped him on the shoulder. “So?” He raised his voice over the crowd’s roar and gestured to Cade’s phone. “Good news?”
Cade tucked the phone back into his pocket. “She said yes.”
Vaughn blinked—clearly having expected Cade to say something else—then threw out his hands. He had no clue what they were talking about, but right then everything was a cause for celebration. “She said yes! Hell, yeah!” He grabbed Huxley and pointed to Cade, shouting over the crowd. “She said yes.”
“Sweet,” Huxley said, tapping his beer to Cade’s. “Who said yes?”
“Brooke Parker. I’m seeing her tonight.”
“Fuck you,” Vaughn said, somewhat in awe. “I knew it. You’ve been digging her from the moment she told you to shove your obstruction of justice threats up your ass.”
“What can I say? I’m a sucker for the shy, quiet types.”
“When did all this happen?” Vaughn asked.
“We met for drinks last Friday to discuss a criminal matter related to Sterling. Things progressed from there.”
“Is that right?” Vaughn looked at him slyly. “Just how far did they progress?”
“Still not comfortable talking about Brooke this way,” Huxley interjected.
Cade held back a smile, grateful for the excuse to change the subject. For whatever reason, he didn’t feel like engaging in locker room talk about Brooke. “Huxley’s right. Try to keep it classy, Vaughn.”
Vaughn studied him for a moment. Seven years they’d been best friends, and they knew each other well. “You like her.”
Cade took a nonchalant sip of his beer. “Just watch the game.”
“Evading the question,” Huxley said under his breath to Vaughn. “I think we got our answer, Agent Roberts.”
“We sure did, Agent Huxley,” Vaughn said.
Cade shook his head.
He really needed to get some non-FBI friends.
* * *
IN THE STERLING skybox, Brooke smiled when Cade’s response came in a few minutes after her text message.
ABOUT DAMN TIME.
Quickly, she wrote back. WAS I CLOSE TO THE DEADLINE? OOPS.
OOPS, MY ASS. I’LL BE AT YOUR PLACE AT 7:00.
7:30, she texted immediately.
OF COURSE YOU’D SAY 7:30.
Brooke laughed at that, perfectly able to hear him saying the words. NEED TIME TO CHANGE AFTER CUBS/SOX, she explained. NOW STOP DISTRACTING ME—I’M TRYING TO WATCH A BASEBALL GAME.
There was a pause, then he texted back, WHERE ARE YOU SITTING?
Brooke shook her head. Such a guy thing to ask, wanting to know how good her seats were. SKYBOX, she wrote. TO THE RIGHT OF HOME PLATE.
She’d just hit “send” when Ford’s voice came over her shoulder.
“What are you acting all secretive about?” Sitting in the seat next to her, Ford tried to peek at her phone. “Sending dirty text messages to the mystery man, perhaps? Remind me again, which of the rules of casual sex was that? Number Five?”
“Still, with the rules?”
“This is payback,” Ford said. “How many times have you mocked me for the time I accidentally drunk-dialed you instead of Cara Patterson my sophomore year of college?”
From the row behind them, Charlie let out a bark of laughter. “Man, I love that story.”
Brooke held her cell phone to her ear, doing an imitation of Ford’s drunken slur that night. “Hey, babe—my roomatez wen’ to after-hours. Got the ho’ plaze to myself. How ’bout you come over for some strawburry margaritas?”
Charlie cracked up, while Tucker, who sat in the seat next to Charlie, chimed in. “Did we ever figure out why it was strawberry margaritas?”
Ford waved off their laughter. “The TV was on when I called . . . I think I’d seen a commercial for Chili’s . . . it seemed like a good suggestion at the time.” He pointed at Brooke. “And you didn’t exactly help the situation.”
Brooke feigned innocence. “Why? Because I pretended to be Cara and told you that I’d be right over?”
“No, because you pretended to be Cara and told me you wanted to pour the margarita all over my body and lick up every drop.”
“Certainly explains why Tuck and I later found you passed out cold on the kitchen floor, buck-ass naked, with one hand wrapped around a bowlful of strawberries,” Charlie said.
“I don’t think we even had a blender back then,” Tucker mused.
“No, we didn’t. Something I figured out after I was already naked, waiting for ‘Cara’ to show up,” Ford said with a dirty look at Brooke.
“Poor Ford,” she said. “Naked and cold on the kitchen floor, with nothing but a bowlful of strawberries and X-rated, tequila-soaked dreams. Truly tragic.”
He put his arm around her. “And this, Parker, is why the Facebook story will never die. Ever.”
Just then, Brooke’s phone rang with a new text message.
“The mystery man chimes again,” Ford said as Brooke reached for her cell.
Brooke read the text message Cade had sent her, and pulled back in surprise.
HOPE THE GUY IN THE STRIPED SHIRT KNOWS YOU ALREADY HAVE PLANS TONIGHT.
“He’s here,” Brooke said out loud.
“Who’s here? The mystery man?” Ford asked.
“He can see us.” Brooke leaned forward in her seat and peered over the skybox railing to the crowd below. There were thousands of people in the lower deck of the stadium.
Her phone rang, and she saw that it was Cade.
“To your right,” he said when she answered her phone. His voice was husky in her ear. “Who’s the guy?”
“Just a friend.” Brooke stood up and leaned against the railing, her eyes skimming the stands.
“Farther down the first base line. Nope, not that close to the dugout.”
She looked farther to her right. Still no sign of him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Definitely. You’re getting warmer now. Warmer . . . Look for Huxley’s glaringly white polo shirt.”
That should help, considering most of the crowd was dressed in Cubs and Sox T-shirts. A few rows back, Brooke finally spotted them, first Huxley—wow, that really was a white shirt—then Vaughn, who waved at her, and finally Cade.
He was too far away for her to see his eyes, but she felt his gaze on her nevertheless. It was a little strange at first, seeing him out of a suit and wearing a simple gray T-shirt and cargo shorts instead.
So this was what the mighty Cade Morgan looked like when he wasn’t being a tough-guy prosecutor.
Not bad.
“If that had been a Sox shirt, I would’ve had to cancel dinner,” he said in her ear as they faced each other across the crowded baseball stadium, referring to the Cubs T-shirt she wore.
She smiled. Funny coincidence, them being at the same baseball game on her one day off in ages. Perhaps it was a sign. “How are those seats down there?” Cade and the two FBI agents sat in the lower deck, in the sun, about halfway up the first base line.
“Not bad. But not as good as the seats up there, I’d bet,” he said.
Well, yes. Not to toot her own horn or anything, but the skybox was pretty awesome. Eight seats overlooking home plate, with a door that led to an air-conditioned private suite complete with couches, a plasma television, and a kitchen stocked with wine, beer, top-shelf liquor, and everything from hamburgers and hot dogs to beef tenderloin and shrimp—all courtesy of Sterling Restaurants.
“Although, now that you mention it, I am getting a little concerned about
Huxley,” Cade added. “The poor guy’s probably going to get a hell of a sunburn out here. Seeing how he’s pretty much the whitest man in America.”
Brooke watched as Huxley, clearly having overheard the comment, shot Cade a look and said something she couldn’t pick up over the phone.
“Well, I would really hate for Agent Huxley to suffer,” she said. “Especially since I happen to have a few extra seats in this skybox.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Good.” Cade’s voice dropped lower, adding one last thing before hanging up. “And tell your friend in the striped shirt that he’s in my seat.”
Fourteen
“ARE YOU GOING to tell us anything about this mystery man before he shows up?” Ford winked at Brooke. “If you want, I can give him the lowdown on your new approach to relationships. That the only gifts you’re accepting these days are sex toys and massage oils.”
“You mention those rules, and I’ll have the Wrigley Field security team haul you out of this skybox so fast your head will spin.”
“It would almost be worth it,” Ford said with a chuckle. “Except then I’d miss the dessert cart.”
“When is that coming, anyway? I love the dessert cart,” Tucker chimed in from the back row.
“Hey now, we can’t be wasting our time talking about dessert,” Charlie said. “We need to start planning all the questions we want to ask the mystery man. Gotta grill the guy to make sure he’s good enough for Brooke.”
Brooke realized she needed to cut them off at the pass. Ford, Charlie, and Tucker tended to get a little weirdly protective of her whenever she brought a new guy around—which was bad enough when she was actually dating the man in question. But Cade was just a friend. Of sorts. Friend-ish. “I appreciate it, guys. But I think you can skip the interrogation this time. I haven’t even had dinner with him yet.”
“I want to play the part of the hard-ass friend today,” Tucker said. “You know, just sit in the corner and glare at him the whole time. See if he crumbles.”
“I’ve seen your hard-ass face, Tuck,” Charlie said. “Mostly, you just look constipated. Ford, you’d better do the glaring.”
“No glaring, and no hard-ass routines.” Brooke said definitively. “No offense, but I doubt it would work, anyway. He’s a prosecutor. He works with the FBI, DEA, and Secret Service all the time.”
“Great,” Ford said, rolling his eyes. “Now he’s some hotshot lawyer type.”
“Hey. I am a hotshot lawyer type,” Brooke said.
“Yeah, but it’s different since you’re a girl. It’s cute.”
She threw him a look. “You did not just say that.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of this guy,” Tucker declared, out of the blue.
Brooke threw up her hands in exasperation. “You haven’t even met him. Besides, you three don’t like any of the men I introduce you to. You didn’t even like the Hot OB.”
“The Hot OB was a douche,” Charlie said.
“This mystery man better not be another douche, Brooke,” Ford warned. “I can’t spend six innings trapped in a skybox with a douche.”
Truly, she was losing brain cells just listening to this crap. “Seriously, if I were here with girlfriends, right now I’d be drinking daiquiris and talking about which of the players has the cutest butt.”
Ford chuckled. “All right, we’ll play nice. What’s the mystery man’s name, anyway?”
“Cade Morgan,” she said.
“Get out of here,” Charlie said in shock.
Ford pulled back in surprise. “Cade Morgan?” He looked her over for a moment, and then grinned approvingly. “Well done, you.”
Okay . . . that was kind of an odd reaction. “You boys have a thing for assistant U.S. attorneys I never knew about?”
They all looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head.
“Cade Morgan used to play football,” Ford said. “Quarterback for Northwestern. Won the Rose Bowl in 2001. How do you not know this? You deal with people in the sports industry all the time.”
“Not back in 2001,” she retorted. She’d been a sophomore in college back then. “Are you sure this is the same guy? Tall, looks delicious in a three-piece suit, annoyingly adept at taking a woman right to the edge of frustration and then—bam—sneaking in with a surprisingly sweet word or two?”
The three of them stared at her.
“Um . . . I would’ve gone with ‘brown hair, six-foot-four, two hundred and ten pounds, but we can use your description if you like,” Ford said.
Hmm. It sounded suspiciously like the same man. Brooke couldn’t decide if she was irked that she’d never known this about Cade, felt foolish, or was intrigued. Perhaps all three. “He mentioned something about a shoulder injury. Is that a football thing?”
“My God, woman. It’s only one of the most famous moments in college football history,” Ford said.
Charlie jumped in. “See, Northwestern was down by four points.”
“Which is a big deal to start with, because Northwestern barely ever makes it to the Rose Bowl,” Tucker added.
“Right. But Morgan was awesome that year—everyone was saying he would go pro,” Charlie said.
Ford picked up at this point. “So there’s fifteen seconds left on the clock, and it’s like, third and nine or something.” He stood up and pantomimed, reenacting the scene. “And Morgan pulls back out of the pocket just as this huge linebacker charges at him full speed as he goes for the sack, and then he throws this perfect sixty-five-yard pass right into the hands of a wide receiver in the end zone. The whole stadium went absolutely crazy.”
Charlie actually looked a little teary-eyed. “It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
Brooke was impatient to hear the rest. Screw the game. “What happened to Cade?”
Ford grimaced. “Took a bad hit from the linebacker and landed the wrong way, I guess. Northwestern was so busy celebrating, they didn’t even realize at first that he was hurt.”
“He broke his collarbone, and totally messed up his shoulder,” Tucker said. “He never stepped on a football field again.”
Brooke sat there, finding it hard to believe that they were talking about Cade Morgan, the successful assistant U.S. attorney who’d made a name for himself prosecuting corrupt politicians and other high-profile white-collar criminals. “I never knew that about him.”
Just then, the door from the suite opened. Speak of the devil.
Cade stepped onto the skybox terrace, followed by Huxley and Vaughn. His eyes landed immediately on Brooke. Seeing his lips curve in amusement, she naturally opened her mouth to get in the first quip and—
—was cut off by a loud cheer from Ford, Charlie, and Tucker.
“Cade Morgan! Dude, we were just talking about you,” Tucker said enthusiastically.
So much for the hard-ass routine.
Ford reached out to shake Cade’s hand. “I was telling Brooke about your Rose Bowl victory.”
“You’ve been keeping secrets,” she said to Cade.
“Wait a second.” Vaughn looked at Cade in mock surprise. “You played football in college? Get out of here.” With a wink, he and Huxley joined Brooke at the railing, as Brooke’s three friends circled eagerly around Cade, bombarding him with questions.
“We’ve heard the Rose Bowl story before,” Huxley explained to her.
“I take it Cade likes to reminisce about the good old days,” Brooke said.
Huxley thought about that. “Actually, he never brings it up. Everyone else does.”
Brooke was surprised to hear that. Cade Morgan, being modest? Inconceivable.
She looked over at him, wondering if there was some kind of story there. She watched as he nonchalantly brushed off an effusive compliment from Tucker, something about how he’d put up great numbers at Northwestern despite not having an elite receiver.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to ge
t a word in edgewise with him right then, seeing how her friends were fawning over him like twelve-year-old girls who’d scored backstage passes to a Justin Bieber concert. So instead, Brooke fell into an easy conversation with Huxley and Vaughn, talking a little about work, and then about the game.
At one point, she peeked over just as Cade said something that made the group laugh. She watched as Ford grinned and spoke animatedly, clearly into the conversation, and she couldn’t deny that it was a little heartwarming to see her best friend getting along so well with a guy she’d introduced him to. Maybe a lot heartwarming.
Luckily, Charlie’s voice rose above the fray before that line of thought went any further. “Probably, we should all hate you,” he was saying to Cade. “Illinois played against Northwestern that year for our homecoming, and you totally slaughtered us—” He broke off at the sound of a knock on the interior door to the suite.
A woman in her early twenties, dressed in a skirt and a black T-shirt with “Sterling Restaurants” in red letters, walked into the suite pushing a three-tiered dessert cart.
“Sweet Jesus, it’s here,” Charlie whispered reverently.
Brooke fought back a smile. The dessert cart was something Sterling Restaurants had introduced a year ago, as a perk for all of the skyboxes and luxury suites at the sports arenas they collaborated with. Needless to say, it had been a huge success. Four kinds of cake (chocolate with toffee glaze, carrot cake, traditional cheesecake, and a pineapple-raspberry tart), three types of cookies (chocolate chip, M&M, and oatmeal raisin), blond brownies, dark chocolate brownies, lemon squares, peach cobbler, four kinds of dessert liquors, taffy apples, and, on the third tier, a make-your-own sundae bar with all the fixings.
“Wow. That is some spread,” Vaughn said, wide-eyed.
Simultaneously, the men sprang forward, bulldozed their way through the suite door, and attacked the cart like a pack of starving Survivor contestants.
All except for one.
Cade stayed right there, on the terrace. He leaned back against the railing, stretching out his tall, broad-shouldered frame. “Whew. I thought they’d never leave.”