Stealing Home

by Nicole Williams

  After a couple of minutes passed and I was reasonably certain I’d composed myself and would be up to the task of convincing Reynolds I’d done nothing more than perform my role of athletic trainer last night, I moved toward the door. Luke and Reynolds were still talking about the upcoming game when I pulled open the door.

  “Hey, Doc.” Reynolds’s gaze immediately shifted my way as I stepped out of the bathroom. “Morning.”

  “Oh great.” I crossed my arms and tried to ignore Luke watching me. Even just looking at me, he could fluster me. “You’re calling me Doc now too?”

  Reynolds shrugged. “Everyone is.”

  “Beautiful. Shepherd ought to love that,” I muttered, casually scanning the floor to find that, somehow, Luke had managed to kick all evidence of an all-night sexathon under the bed. Except for . . .

  Before my heart leapt into my throat, Luke moved toward the wrapper and discreetly stepped on it to hide it from view.

  “Wow.” Reynolds’s forehead creased when he took a good look at me. “You look like he rode you hard and put you out wet. Forgive the analogy.”

  Luke was behind Reynolds, so he was free to laugh silently. I didn’t have the same luxury.

  “Forgiven,” I said, moving toward my training bag to look busy. “And good for you for knowing what an analogy is.”

  “He didn’t give you a hard time, did he? Archer can be a real hardass when he puts his mind to it.”

  My fingers fumbled with the zipper as I pulled the bag open. Luke continued to chuckle to himself across the room. “He gave me a pretty hard time.”

  “Dammit, Archer, I like this one.” Reynolds lifted his middle finger at Luke. “We all like Doc. You mess this up and she leaves, my cleats are going up your ass.”

  “Is there a reason you’re here? Other than to threaten to sodomize me with your size twelves?” Luke checked the clock, a pensive look casting over his face. I knew what he was thinking, but no, we did not have time for one more round.

  “Yeah, I wanted to check on Doc. Make sure she survived the night with you.”

  “She survived the night. I think she might have even enjoyed herself a little.” Luke’s eyes flashed as he slowly licked his lips when Reyolds wasn’t looking.

  Ignoring the chills tumbling down my spine, I smiled at Reynolds. “Who wouldn’t enjoy giving a guy like Archer six ice baths in one night, right?”

  Reynolds snorted a laugh before tipping his chin at me, flipping Archer off again, and heading toward the door.

  “Hey, Reynolds,” Archer called as Reynolds was pulling the door open, “would you mind if I borrowed . . .”—he jacked his brows at me a few times, my heart calcifying in my chest—“an extra pair of socks?”

  My whole body sagged in relief. Right before I shot a glare Luke’s way for nearly giving me a heart attack.

  “Sure. No prob,” Reynolds replied. “For a minute you had me worried there. I thought you were going to ask to borrow my jock or something.”

  “Oh no. Yours wouldn’t fit me.” Luke shook his head, glancing at his jock region. “I have to special order. They don’t make them in my size.”

  Reynolds grunted. “Yeah, well, that’s what you get for wearing too tight of briefs growing up. You stunted its growth.”

  Luke smirked at him. “Come on, Reynolds. You know I grew up by a nuclear reactor. Don’t be a hater. Penis envy is a real and treatable disorder. There are professionals you can talk with about your feelings of inadequacy and impaired size.”

  Luke got the double bird that time. Reynolds left the room with a string of good-natured curses laced with comebacks.

  My shoulders slumped when the door closed. “That was close.”

  Lifting his foot, Luke bent to grab the condom wrapper before tossing it in the wastebasket by the desk. “Yeah, sorry. I totally thought that was our breakfast.”

  “You don’t think he suspects anything, do you?”

  “About the real hard time I gave you last night?” His dimple set into his right cheek from his smile. “No. Reynolds is convinced the only game I have is what I exude on the field.”

  When the next knock pounded on the door, I lifted my finger when he lunged toward the door.

  “But you’re dressed now.” He shrugged before his face lined. “Speaking of, why are you dressed? We’ve still got two hours before we have to be downstairs.”

  My eyes lifted. “Just check the peephole, please.”

  Luke shrugged but did as asked. A second later, his hands came together. “Breakfast.”

  My stomach rumbled at the promise of sustenance.

  Once the employee had rolled the cart into the room and turned to go, Luke stopped him at the door. Even though he’d turned his back toward me as he riffled through his wallet, I didn’t miss the tip Luke gave the employee. If I’d missed the bill, the look on the guy’s face would have given it away.

  “Breakfast didn’t cost a quarter that much probably, you know that?”

  “Do I know what?” Luke gave me an innocent look as he settled his wallet back on the dresser before rolling the breakfast cart toward the bed.

  “How about the table?” I nodded at the table and chairs propped by the window. “I don’t trust you to eat breakfast if you and I are on the same bed together.”

  Luke’s mouth curved. “Breakfast in bed is my favorite way to dine.”

  My stomach muscles tightened. “Do you ever not have that on your mind?”

  “When you’re around?” Luke shook his head. “Never.”

  “Then breakfast at the table far away from the bed for sure. I can’t have you malnourished in addition to injured.”

  Luke rolled the cart toward the table, his smirk amplifying. “Please. I was up all night eating. Malnourished I am not.”

  I should have been oversexed and exhausted, but at his words and his look, that very part of my body he was alluding to pulsed with desire.

  In an attempt to ignore it, I started laying the breakfast trays on the table. “I was a little too preoccupied last night to notice, but why is Luke Archer in a standard room? The same kind of standard room the team puts grunt workers like myself in? I would have thought they’d put their prized possession in some suite complete with a bowling alley and a lap pool.”

  Luke poured two cups of coffee from the silver carafe, stirring milk and sugar into the cup in front of me. “I don’t need a big room. I don’t need a fancy suite with bowling alleys and lap pools and pinball machines. Or whatever the hell are in them. I just need a place to sleep before heading out for the next game.” He mixed some sugar into his cup, then sat down across the table from me.

  “So Luke Archer is low maintenance?”

  His head shook. “Luke Archer is no maintenance. I mean, yeah, maybe one day if I’m still doing this when I have a family, then a bowling alley would be fun, but for now, it’s just me. I don’t need a whole lot.”

  “My experience with you last night leads me to another conclusion.”

  “Sex is different. Everyone needs a whole lot. I need a whole, whole lot. I thought we were talking about hotel rooms.”

  Fighting my smile, I lifted the metal cover from my plate to find pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon. The skin between my brows pinched together as I stared at the plate in front of me.

  “Something wrong?” Luke asked as he took the cover off his plate.

  Checking to see if he had the same thing, I discovered that no, he had a big omelet with a side of hash browns and toast. “Who ordered this?”

  “I did.” He shrugged, his tone hinting that it should have been obvious.

  “Did you make a lucky guess or something?” When his brows stayed lifted, I circled my fork at my plate. “This is my favorite breakfast. What I almost always order when I’m on the road.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Luke scooted the syrup toward me. “That’s why I ordered it for you.”

  “How did you know that?” I moved past the initial shock to take a bite of
my bacon.

  “I told you, Allie. I noticed you from the first day you started. I haven’t stopped noticing you either.” Luke winked across the table at me. “Right down to what you like to eat every morning for breakfast.”

  I froze with the piece of bacon still in my hand. “You noticed that much about me? Right down to the way I like my eggs cooked and my pancakes butter free?”

  He shrugged again, his face indicating that this all should be obvious. “Yeah.” He lifted his coffee cup and drained it in one drink. “Someone in my position—someone in your position—can’t just rush into something. You need to take your time. Observe someone from way back before coming closer. That’s what I did with you.” He watched me pour him another cup of coffee like I was proving some point he was trying to make. “I noticed how you were always at work before anyone else. How you were usually the last one to leave too. How you hustled everywhere you went, were the first on the field when a guy needed help, and didn’t take crap from anyone. That told me everything I needed to know about your character. That you’re hard-working, dedicated, and compassionate.” He cut into his omelet with the side of his fork. “The rest, I’d figured out way before that.”

  “The rest?” I asked, pouring a stream of syrup over my pancakes. I added more than usual, hoping the extra sugar would make up for the lack of sleep.

  “The attraction part,” he said, waving his fork between us.

  “Really? You were attracted to me that early on?”

  The morning light streaming through the window caught his eyes, setting them on fire. “From the first time I saw you.”

  The bite of pancake froze outside my mouth. “Come on. Be serious.”

  “I am.” He finished chewing the heap of omelet he’d just stuffed into his mouth. “Are you going to tell me you’ve never looked at a person and known you were attracted to them? You might not know their name or anything about them, but you do know that something inside you is drawn to something inside them?”

  Shifting in my chair, I thought that over as I chewed on the best room service pancakes I’d ever had. Might have had something to do with what I’d been doing to work up my appetite for them. “I guess so.”

  “I felt that with you,” he said, as matter-of-factly as if he were talking about batting averages or win ratios. “So I started paying closer attention to you. Everything seemed so perfect: the schedule, who you were. Everything was perfect except . . .” His head tipped from side to side. “You didn’t seem to know I existed.”

  “You’re Luke Archer. Believe me, I knew you existed.”

  “Well, you didn’t act like it.”

  Making like Luke, I drained my first cup of coffee in one long drink. I was going to need the sugar and caffeine to get through today. “Well, you didn’t act like I did either, so I guess we’re equal.”

  Luke chuckled as he crunched on his toast. “Middle school courting at its finest. Pretending the person you’re into doesn’t exist.”

  “Well, look at us now.” I glanced across the table at him. I was eating breakfast with a shirtless Luke Archer after experiencing a night of wild abandon and even wilder sex.

  “Yeah, look at us now.” He filled my cup of coffee back up and shot me a wink. “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”

  “Mr. Ruth?”

  He nodded. “Mr. Ruth.”

  We were quiet for a minute, working on our breakfasts and enjoying the peaceful silence. I didn’t feel the need to fill it. Luke didn’t seem to feel the need either. We were comfortable with the quiet, which seemed like the highest step a couple could aspire to. Strange, since we’d only known each other for weeks and been “together” for hours.

  I broke the silence once we were pushing the last few bites of our meals around. “So how are we going to make sure that no one finds out?”

  “We’ll have to be discreet,” he said.

  “Are you capable of being discreet?”

  “I am when I have to be. When I’ve got the proper motivation.”

  “And this, us, is proper motivation?”

  “This, us”—he waved his fork between us—“is the definition of proper motivation.”

  The dead serious look on his face made me laugh. Male motivation was not one of the great mysteries of life. “You’ve got a date with an ice bath, but I’ve got one more question before I give your family jewels frostbite.”

  “Good one.”

  I continued, “If you’d been watching me for a while—been attracted to me for a while—why did you decide that night on the plane was the right time to make your move?”

  His eyes lifted to mine as he buttered his toast. “You’re telling me my opening line of whose ass do I need to kick, Doc didn’t do it for you?”

  “It worked, obviously, but it was a unique approach.”

  Luke stretched his legs out and leaned back into his chair. “No, that hadn’t been part of my plan at all, but seeing you sitting there, looking so sad, I didn’t care. I had to talk to you.”

  Something inside me softened right then. Maybe it was my heart. Maybe it was my head. Maybe it was both. “You’re kind of wonderful, Luke Archer.”

  He set his hand on the table, holding it open and waiting. When my hand settled into his, he held it tightly. “You’re kind of wonderful too, Allie Eden.”

  BEING DISCREET WAS harder to do than I’d guessed. Luke was actually doing better with it than I was. I kept finding myself checking the duration of my stares or the degree of my smiles or the tenor of my touch when I changed his compress. Second-guessing and self-regulating had become the way of things ever since we checked out of the hotel in Florida.

  For all of the effort, I was confident we’d done a decent job of coming across as nothing more than one trainer and one player working together. A couple of raised brows from Reynolds that I wrote off as muscle spasms—Reynolds was the kind of guy who wouldn’t notice much unless a couple was straight-up getting it on a foot in front of him—was all the suspicion I’d noticed aimed our way. Of course, once the Sports Anonymous cover came out, we’d see more.

  We were in New Orleans, and it was a game day. After checking into the hotel last night, Luke and I had gone to our respective rooms, though not from his lack of trying to change that. But I was too worried about someone catching me slipping into his room or him sneaking out of mine. Without the excuse of round the clock treatment, there’d be no reason other than the obvious for a woman to be in Luke Archer’s hotel room at night.

  The team and staff had checked into the locker room an hour ago, and I’d been busy taping, massaging, and stretching the players. I hadn’t seen Luke since he’d finished his ice bath a while ago, but I found my gaze shifting over to his designated locker, with his uniform and cleats, every few minutes, wondering where he was.

  “Eden!” Coach Beckett’s voice echoed through the entire locker room. “My office!” He didn’t wait for me to acknowledge him or pause to locate me in the room—he just marched back into the coach’s office.

  “Thanks, Doc,” Watson, one of the team’s back-up pitchers, said, winding his arm a few times after I succinctly had to finish my massage.

  “You bet. Just make sure you give yourself a proper warm-up tonight before you jump the mound and start throwing one hundred mile speedballs, okay? That’s how you get on the list for needing a new shoulder before your thirtieth birthday.”

  Watson acknowledged me with a grunt as I headed for the coach’s office. I didn’t have a clue what Coach wanted to see me about, but it wasn’t uncommon for us to have trainers’ meetings with him if he needed to be brought up to speed on a player’s status. Those were scheduled though, and never held a mere few hours before a big game.

  When I stepped inside the office, I found I wasn’t the only one Coach had rounded up. Shepherd; the team’s doctor, Dr. Callahan; and Turner, the physical therapist, were all circled around someone sitting in a chair across from the coach’s desk.

&n
bsp; Luke.

  He didn’t divert his attention toward me when I entered the room; he kept his gaze on Coach and his expression conventional. He was in a pair of jeans, a snug-fitting white tee, and had his team ball cap on backward, sending the ends of his hair curling out around the rim of it.

  Even being in a room packed with other bodies and neither of us really acknowledging each other, I had a difficult time staying unaffected. The air became a little thinner. My heartbeat a little louder. My breaths a little shorter.

  “What do you have to say about this, Eden?” Coach stood behind the desk, already in his uniform and windbreaker, pointing straight at Luke.

  My throat constricted at the same time the air rushed out of my lungs. All the eyes in the room, except for Luke’s, turned on me, all of them waiting for my response. Had someone found out? Is that what this unscheduled meeting was about?

  My mind went blank as the silence continued.

  “Am I speaking in gibberish or something?” Coach grunted, staggering his hands across the desk as he leaned across it. “You’ve spent the last two days with Archer. Start talking.”

  My pulse felt like a drumbeat in my throat as adrenaline and anxiety flooded my system. Coach’s stare was unyielding, and the longer I stayed quiet, scrambling for something to say, the more imaginary steam seemed to blow from his ears.

  Shepherd’s forehead was drawn together, appraising me with a look that indicated he thought me quite inept. Dr. Callahan's and Turner’s expressions weren’t that much better. Archer was the only one not looking at me, but as my silence stretched on, he shifted in his seat.

  “My leg.” His voice filled the room. “How do you think my leg’s doing?”

  When he let his head turn just enough in my direction so our eyes connected, I relaxed. This wasn’t a meeting accusing Archer and me of having an inappropriate relationship—this was a status meeting about his leg.

  My lungs went from two limp, sagging balloons to bursting. “It’s a stage two pull, as you all know,” I started, having to look away from Archer in order to speak intelligibly. “We continued to treat it through the night, alternating ice and heat, every three hours. The plan is to continue the same through tonight, start some massage and stretching tomorrow, and take it from there.”