Beside her, Katie’s cell phone rang. No caller ID. Katie tensed. It could be Luke. It could be Ron. She answered. Silence filled the line. “Hello?” More silence. Her gut clenched. Not again. “You’ll get your money!”
She hung up and dialed her sister. No answer. Carrie never answered her calls. She was angry at Katie. As if Katie were the cause of everything bad in her life. Losing her parents. Marrying a creep of a man. And it hurt. Katie felt like she had lost Carrie, too. “Carrie,” she said into the voice mail. “Please call me back. Let me know you’re okay. I love you, sis.”
Katie tried to refocus on her research, but in the back of her mind she worried. Maybe she’d been too hard on Carrie over this gambling thing. It must be hard to have a husband who treated her like a rug, on top of the loss of their parents.
She shook off the thought. She couldn’t let the guilt eat her alive. This job was paying off the gambling debt, which was a monster. Donna was watching over Carrie. Everything was okay.
Katie punched her e-mail and found one from Donna—an Excel spreadsheet of Luke’s team that included everything from their date of signing and contract terms, to their marital status, even spousal names. Donna was using that list to add any red flags that her research had dug up on the different players. Katie planned to go down the list of friends and family with Luke, a process she was quite certain he would not be thrilled about, especially after seeing his reaction to Jessica’s potential guilt.
Katie’s mind went back to Carrie, back to that second silent phone call. She dialed Donna. “Is everything okay there? Carrie is fine?”
“Sugar,” she said. “Everything is peachy. I went by her place this morning. Well…aside from the fact that her loser husband was there, everything was peachy. I think Carrie is coming around. We had a chat about leaving her loser husband.”
Katie perked up. “You did?”
“Yep,” she said. “Even got her to agree to meet that new attorney who opened an office down the hall from us.”
“I don’t believe it,” Katie said. “Finally she’s going to leave him.”
“Nothing is for sure,” Donna warned, “and frankly, it’s best you don’t say a word to her about this. She seems to do everything you tell her not to do and vice versa.”
Katie rested her elbows on the table. “Isn’t that the truth?”
“Too bad she needs that attorney for a divorce,” Donna said. “He’s a cutie pie, that one.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t happy she needs him for the divorce,” Katie said laughingly. “That makes him open season for you.”
“It goes against my better judgment to date someone I have to see every day.”
Katie snorted. “That’s called marriage.”
“Which is not on my agenda. So thanks, but no, thanks,” she said. “Speaking of men, how’s Luke doing?”
Katie frowned, determined to avoid the personal place this was going. No way was she admitting that not only had Luke taken her to the E.R. and tended her injury, he’d tended to her pleasure, too. If she didn’t admit it had happened, it hadn’t. Right? Right. That was her strategy, and she was sticking to it.
“Actually,” Katie said. “I just forwarded you an e-mail from Ron with the team roster. We need to run background checks on everyone and look for secondary links to Luke.” She thought back to the party. “Also—there was an agent I met here. I’ll e-mail you his info. He was trying to grab Luke’s attention.”
“Aren’t they all? The man is a hot commodity.”
“Regardless, it might be worth checking out. He showed up at a charity event that Luke was attending when Ron didn’t feel the need to be there. I’m wondering if it wasn’t specifically to court Luke. Perhaps he wants to be the hero who rebuilds Luke’s career once it tanks.”
“Nothing is going to tank Luke’s career,” Donna assured her, “as long as he pitches well and stays out of any self-induced trouble, like drugs and alcohol.”
“Luke is convinced he’s going to have a great season,” Katie said. “And it’s early, but so far, he appears to be pretty squeaky clean. He doesn’t even have beer in his fridge. Just a fetish for protein shakes and, apparently, ice cream.” Blizzards. He’d talked about ice-cream treats as she would talk about chocolate. It was cute, endearing even. She liked Luke. Why did she have to like him, damn it? She finished up her talk with Donna and forwarded the e-mails.
With a sigh, Katie tossed a pen on the table; she’d been scribbling some notes as she scanned the Internet. Her drinking glass was empty, and she did a slow stroll to the kitchen, her calf far more painful than her knee, which was a huge relief. It meant she didn’t have a serious flare-up to contend with.
She was refilling her glass with iced tea when the front door opened and closed. Katie turned to find Luke standing in the kitchen doorway, the picture of country boy sex appeal—his light brown hair rumpled, as if the wind or his fingers had gotten a hold of it.
Her mouth went dry; her nipples tightened against her thin bra. She abandoned the glass and crossed her arms in front of her chest, afraid he’d notice her obvious reaction. No matter how much she wanted to stick to strictly business with Luke, her body wasn’t cooperating. And no matter how hard she tried to keep her eyes level with his, she did a full-out inspection of his faded jeans and the light blue T-shirt that fit his chest like artwork rather than cotton. To complete his look, there were the scuffed boots that somehow made the entire look ten times more sexy. It was clear—you could take Luke out of Texas, but you couldn’t take the Texas heat out of Luke.
“I see you got past the new security panel okay,” she said, having called Luke on his cell phone and left a message with the keypad entrance code.
He sauntered forward, leaning on the kitchen island, facing her, close to her. So close. Wonderfully close. Sinfully close. She had to get away.
“Worked fine,” he said, glancing around the kitchen. “Looks like there was no permanent damage here.”
“You lost some dishes and plates,” she said, following his lead. They were making small talk. Avoiding what was between them, or perhaps working toward it. Avoiding was better. Not forever, but tonight.
Thunder rolled outside the window, shaking the glass door, almost as if Mother Nature knew her thoughts and objected to her strategy.
“Your crew is going to get a bumpy plane ride in,” Luke commented.
She stared at his chest. It seemed a good plan—not looking into those all-too-knowing eyes. Instead, she found herself admiring the damn blue T-shirt again, and worse, mentally visualizing how glorious he’d been without it, how wonderful that smooth, taut skin had felt beneath her hands.
She jerked her gaze upward. “They’re taking a taxi when they arrive so it won’t matter what time they get in.”
“They are due in at eleven-fifteen, so with delays and the taxi, they’ll arrive after midnight, I suspect,” he said, the unspoken implication there—they were alone for a while.
She wanted to be alone with him. She shouldn’t want to be alone with him. Her chin lifted, those ice-gray eyes of his anything but icy—they were heat, fire, seduction. The room seemed to shrink, and with it, her hands-off resolve. Desperately, she reached for it again, somehow found a calm, businesslike tone. “I talked with Ron on the phone, just a bit ago. We’ve decided to say Noah and Josh are my brothers, here visiting a few days. We don’t want to set off any alarms for the team or your stalker. And we have to think about Maria and Jessica.”
“Why would your brothers be at my house?”
“I’m a professional dancer who travels as much as you do,” she said. “That’ll check out if anyone looks it up. I’ve done plenty of tours. I’m taking some time off, traveling with you. My brothers wanted to see me before I hit the road again. It also makes us look close, like we’ve been dating awhile, off everyone’s radar. We’ll need to practice our stories and get them down perfectly.”
“You really think you and your team can e
nd this before Texas, like you told Ron?”
“I’m hopeful, yes,” she confirmed. “But we’ll evaluate the situation quickly once my team arrives, and if we feel the situation will extend to Texas, conversations about travel will need to take place. I’ll want you close to me where I can best protect you.”
Their eyes held, awareness between them, the possibility of shared hotel rooms a reminder of an intimate encounter unfinished. Was she insane to think she could keep her distance from Luke?
“How’s your leg?” he asked, clearly ready to put the security issues aside.
“It’s fine. Better.” She could barely breathe. When in her life had a man ever stolen her breath simply by looking at her? Never. Never was how many times. She cleared her throat and motioned toward the table where she’d been working. “I have a list of questions,” she managed to say, her voice somewhat steady when she felt far from it. “Maybe you could answer them for me?”
He didn’t move. Neither did she. She didn’t want to move anywhere but toward him. Yet she had to put distance between them.
Finally, he said, “Is this how it’s going to be, Katie?” he asked. “We act as if nothing happened between us? As if we both don’t want to go back upstairs and finish what we started?”
Going back upstairs and finishing what they started sounded far too good. Katie found herself squeezing her legs together at the suggestion. Somehow, she kept an impassive expression.
Unfortunately, she also put her foot right in her big mouth. “I’m trying to do my job, Luke,” she managed. The minute she said those words, she knew she’d made a mistake.
His mood shifted, turned darker; it radiated off him, as stormy as the weather outside. “Your job,” he said flatly. Suddenly, he moved, closing the distance between them, his hands pressing into the counter on either side of her. He didn’t touch her, but his body aligned with hers, the heat radiating off him, into her. “Is that what we are back to? I’m your job?”
“Luke,” she said, her voice not even sounding like her own. Don’t touch him. Don’t do it. Her hands itched to flatten themselves on his chest. “I am here for a job. To find out who your stalker is.”
“And you think pretending not to want me while pretending to date me is what’s right? You think that makes logical sense?” When he put it that way, no. No, it did not make sense. He pressed onward, his voice full of confessions that reached beyond his words. “I want you, Katie. I can’t stop thinking about your soft moans and your silky skin.” He stared at her, waited for her to react.
Seconds from caving in to her desire for him, from reaching for Luke, Katie struggled to keep up her resistance. Luke watched her, his face filling with dissatisfaction.
With a frustrated sound, he pushed off the counter. “If this is how you want it, if you want to pretend in public and pretend in private, then so be it. We’ll pretend. But be honest about what’s really going on, Katie. Being with me isn’t keeping you from doing your job. We talked about that. We came to an agreement. You’re hiding behind your job as an excuse to hide from whatever is going on in that head of yours. You’re running, and I don’t think it’s from me. I think it’s from yourself.”
Her heart raced with his assessment, the same one Donna had made. “I’m not running. I’m not making an excuse. I’m taking a step back, in light of today’s events, and evaluating my actions.”
“Evaluating?” he challenged. “You know what. You just keep evaluating. Evaluate your little heart out. I’m going to bed.” He started to turn, stopped. Dropped his bombshell. “We have to be at the coach’s house tomorrow for a season kickoff barbecue.”
“Barbecue?”
“Right. Wives. Girlfriends. Family. I’ve never brought anyone with me before. So, we’re going to need to do some really fine pretending, Katie. Of course, we could just say we’re having our first fight. That won’t require much pretending.” He was pissed. Pissed and frustrated. She could see it all over his face. “Two o’clock. Be ready.” He turned away, began to move toward the hall.
Katie’s racing heart shuddered momentarily to a halt, before her mind splintered into a million pieces—a million thoughts. Luke was right. Her job was an excuse. She was afraid of losing herself again in a man and his career, afraid that she would cease to exist if she and Luke began to become a couple. But she wasn’t the same person she’d been when that had happened to her before; she wasn’t.
“Luke!” she called out, stopping him in his tracks. He faced her, waited with an expectant look on his too-handsome face. “I don’t want to go to that barbecue having a fight, and I don’t want to pretend I don’t want you. I do want you.”
He didn’t immediately respond. “I like you, Katie, all of you, just as you are, but I won’t do this back-and-forth again. You’re either in the game or you’re out.”
She didn’t need to think about that. Not anymore. “I’m in on one condition.”
“I’m not really into conditions right now,” he said, his lips a hard line.
She walked toward him. “I think you’ll like this condition.” She pressed her hand to his chest. Warmth radiated up her arm, butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “I’m listening.”
“Since we had our first fight,” she said, drawing the words out, “shouldn’t we have makeup sex?”
A slow smile lifted the corners of his tempting mouth a second before he reached for her. And suddenly, wonderfully, they were crazy-hot kissing, and Katie had a good idea they weren’t going to make it to the bedroom. At least not for round one.
8
SHE TASTED of iced tea laced with a ray of sunshine, and was the only good thing that had come from this stalker who’d now managed to invade his life. And as much as he’d tried to convince himself he wasn’t rattled, the kitchen incident had rattled him. The fact that he couldn’t go to practice without an escort also rattled him. The fact that he couldn’t pretend to be unaffected, at least not to himself, scared the shit out of him.
He didn’t want to be scared; he didn’t want the potential nightmare that being scared could bring to his game, exactly why he’d resisted, even denied, that he had a stalker. Because once he accepted that fact, then it was in his head, and it would be even when he stepped on the mound. And pitching was what he did. It was his life. Without it, he didn’t know who he was.
And so he drank of that sunshine that was Katie. Drank her in to forget the threats, forget the upset. Katie didn’t want him for his career. And right now, more than ever, that felt right, it felt perfect.
He deepened the kiss, drank of her more completely. She whimpered into his mouth, and he felt the sound as readily as he heard it, felt it in the jolt of lust it shot through his limbs, straight to his groin. Felt it in the comfort that she was no longer anywhere near trying to escape, or redrawing some imaginary line between them and claiming it protected them both. He didn’t want to be protected; he wanted to be absorbed, lost inside her.
A wild rush of need expanded inside him and he reached deep to slow down, fearful he would injure Katie’s knee. He gently lifted her on top of the low counter, thankful for the design that put her hips even with his. The instant she was stably positioned, he eased between her thighs, inside the V of her body, his mouth slanting over hers. He could almost feel the heat rushing off her, anticipating the instant he would feel all that heat wrapped around him, stroking his cock. And her kisses—hot, hungry kisses that said, once she’d decided she wanted this, she wanted him completely.
His hands traveled her rib cage, her breasts. Katie arched into the touch, her palms tracing his biceps and shoulders. “I need you inside me,” she whispered against his lips. The boldness of those words drove into him, hammered him with desire.
Luke tugged her shirt over her head, tossed it aside. She wore a sexy sheer white bra that outlined pink, pebbled nipples. He all but groaned at the sight as he lowered his head and covered one stiff peak with his mouth. She leaned back, one palm on the counter behind
her, holding her weight upright, the other in his hair. She was panting, the scent of her arousal ripping through his senses. He reached up and shoved down the lace covering her breast, suckled the nipple gently, then nipped with his teeth. She cried out his name.
“Take this off,” he said, fingering her bra and then leaning back to rip his shirt over his head.
A second later, he ran his arms up her back and pressed her naked breasts against his chest, kissing her neck, her lips, her neck again. She was so sweet, he wanted all of her now, yet he wanted this to last. It was a conflicted, hot, wild feeling.
His hand slid between her legs, the wet heat radiating through her shorts. Hunger rolled through him. He tossed her shorts and then found her waistband. He didn’t have to tell her what to do, either. She was as ready as he was. Katie lifted her hips as he pulled at the material, panties and all.
Luke spread Katie wide again, but he didn’t give in to the need to fill her. Instead, he looked at her. “Beautiful,” he said, running his hands up slender, sleekly muscled thighs, until his thumbs stroked the glistening liquid of her arousal.
“Luke,” she gasped. “Stop teasing me.”
He slipped a finger inside her, then two, exploring her body, her pleasure. Leaning forward and suckling one of her nipples into his mouth. She moaned, her arm wrapping around his shoulder, her hips rocking against the motion of his fingers.
He used his free hand to squeeze her other breast. He wasn’t gentle, either—it was clear she didn’t want gentle by the desperateness of her rocking against his hand. She wanted fast and hard. He wanted whatever pleased her—he wanted her to come, to milk his fingers the way she was going to milk his cock. And she did just that and more—oh, yeah, she did. Rocking into the caresses of his hand and fingers, moaning into his mouth. She clung to his shoulders until she shattered around him.
“That’s it, baby,” he murmured near her ear, nipping her delicate lobe and kissing her neck. Leading her to completion, before he finally could wait no more. He unzipped his pants, freeing his throbbing erection and shoving his pants and underwear to his ankles, somehow managing to snag a condom from his wallet without much delay, but he didn’t put it on. Not yet. Soon.
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