Angel in Armani

by Melanie Scott

  “I never— Wait, what did you just say?”

  “I never expected to fall in love with a chopper pilot.”

  “It’s helo pilot.”

  “I don’t care,” Lucas said.

  “You’d care if I called baseball softball.”

  “Well, yeah, maybe. Okay. Helo pilot. That’s not the important part. The important part is that you scare me, too. All my life I’ve had people running after me because of my name. Because of my money. But you. You don’t care about that. In fact, you want to run away from it. And apparently that makes me want to run after you. I want to be the guy who makes you happy, Sara Charles. Because I’ve fallen hard for you and these last few days nearly killed me. Losing you nearly killed me, and that’s pretty scary.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. Maybe because of the blood suddenly roaring in her ears. The world narrowed to one very specific spot. The one where Lucas was standing. “You’ve fallen for me?”

  He nodded. “Yes. And don’t say you don’t believe me, or I’ll have to agree with you that you’re an idiot.”

  “I believe you,” she said. She did. Because he was the guy who meant what he said. Who came through. Who ran into burning buildings. Who saved people.

  Who wanted her. Who would keep running after her.

  “So then, the question is, do you feel the same way about me?” he said, eyes very blue. “Scary or not, have you fallen for me, Sara Charles?”

  She was never going to get tired of that blue. Or the way he said her name. Or the fact that the only possible answer to his question that she could come up with was yes. She stood up and he moved closer. So close. “Yes,” she said and heard her voice quiver.

  “Then I have one more question,” he said. “To confirm the diagnosis.”

  “Which is?”

  “Do you want to be scared together? See if we can help each other through all the crazy?”

  “Hell, yes,” she said and pulled him down to the sofa to prove how much.

  Epilogue

  She was going to be very happy when spring training was done. Sara wriggled on her sofa, found a more comfortable spot on the cushion propped under her head, and closed her eyes again, trying to let the sunbeam coming through the window lull her to sleep.

  They were flying back to Vero Beach in a few hours. Just a few more games to go. Just over a week. And then she’d be home for months.

  Well, apart from the part where the team traveled to play games. Which probably meant Lucas and Alex and Mal would want to travel with them sometimes.

  They’d asked her to stay on for that. So they were sorting out the details for Charles Air to become the official charter helicopter firm of the New York Saints. Her A-Star was fixed, so she could hire another pilot to do any charters that clashed with team commitments until her dad was back on his feet.

  She smiled sleepily.

  Too much work.

  Nice problem to have really.

  If only she had time for just a bit more sleep. Though really, it was Lucas who was leaving her sleep-deprived, not the Saints’ schedule.

  She rolled over again, trying to make herself give in to the sleepy. From a distance she heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway and then a familiar bark.

  Lucas and Dougal. Back from checking on her dad. They’d been gone longer than she’d expected, but maybe Sean had coaxed Lucas into watching some of a game with him.

  No point getting in the way of male bonding.

  The front door opened. She should probably force herself up.

  “Take it to Sara,” she heard Lucas say and smiled again. He’d been teaching Dougal new tricks. Taking things to specific people was one of them. And the damned dog looked so proud of himself every time he delivered something, it was hard to resist.

  Dougal’s nails clicked across the kitchen tile; then she heard him gather speed across the living room.

  But wait, wasn’t Lucas supposed to have left Dougal with her parents? After all, they were flying out later.

  She opened her eyes just in time to see Dougal arrive beside her, a little green-blue bag dangling from his jaws from a white handle.

  She knew that blue.

  Her heart began to pound. “What’s this?” she said as Dougal dropped the bag on her chest and licked her face before racing back to Lucas, who stood in the doorway, half leaning against the frame. The blue T-shirt he wore matched his eyes.

  “Open it,” he suggested.

  She eased open the bag. Inside was a matching blue box tied with white ribbon. A small box.

  “Lucas?” she said uncertainly, lifting it out of the bag.

  He smiled crookedly. “Dougal and I had a talk,” he said. “He told me he wanted me to stick around. I told him it was up to you.” He patted Dougal’s ears then walked across the room and lifted the box out of her hands. His clever surgeon’s fingers made short work of the ribbon, leaving him with an even smaller black velvet box in his palm.

  The room tilted around her for a moment. “That’s a—”

  “Yes,” Lucas agreed. “I think if I’m going to stick around, then it should be forever. So, the question is, Sara Charles, what do you think?”

  He flipped the box open. The ring nestled inside had a brilliant blue stone set in diamonds and a silver band. “It’s a blue diamond. The color made me think of your eyes,” Lucas said. Was she hearing things or had his voice wobbled a bit on that last part?

  He held out the ring. “I know this is fast,” he said. “But I know what I want. And what I want is you. You said you’d do crazy with me. So I figured, why not go all the way? Sara, will you marry me?”

  Across the room, Dougal barked once.

  “Hush, dog,” Lucas said. “I’m asking Sara.”

  She looked from the blue ring to the blue eyes. And knew there was only one answer.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Read on for an excerpt from Melanie Scott’s next book

  Lawless in Leather

  Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  Chapter One

  Damn. It smelled like a ball park. Mal Coulter breathed deeper, closed his eyes, and let the grin spread across his face as he took in the mix of sweat and grass and old beer and well-worn wood and leather that spelled baseball.

  It made his palms itch for a bat.

  It made his gut twist as, once again, he contemplated the possible monumental insanity that had led him to buy a baseball team with his two best friends. He still suspected Alex had put something in that very good bourbon they’d been drinking when he’d gotten Mal to say yes to his crazy proposal. Or maybe Lucas. Lucas was the doctor. He had plenty of access to drugs.

  Still, here he was. New York. Though, right at this moment, Staten Island. Part owner of the worst team in the major leagues. The New York Saints. And currently in charge of bringing the security in their stadium up to scratch.

  That wiped the grin from his face. Deacon Field was a rabbit warren. A beat-up, crazy rabbit warren. Figuring out how to keep it, the players, and the people who would fill the seats safe—because if one thing was for damn sure, it was that no one was getting hurt in his ballpark—had been keeping him awake at night for months now.

  Rabbit warren or not, Deacon would be safe.

  There would be no repeat of the attack that had changed his life and the lives of his two best friends, now his partners, on the rabbit warren and the team that played in it. No explosions and fire and death caused by deluded evil.

  Not on his watch.

  He’d had practically half a squadron of contractors in here doing what they could, but there were limits to what could be achieved without some major remodeling.

  Which wasn’t feasible with their budget or the time they had before the season started. In fact, he was starting to think the only way it would be feasible to do the work that really needed to be done was if the Saints relocated to a different field for a season. A choice that wasn’t going to be popula
r with their fans. If it could be done at all.

  Yet another thing to worry about.

  And now there was only one week left until the first game and he had a to-do list that was so long, he didn’t want to think about it.

  Lack of sleep wouldn’t kill him though, and he found himself arriving for work at the crack of dawn each day, heading for Deacon Field first instead of his own offices and climbing to a different part of the stadium to sit and smell the air. Today, finally, he’d let himself into the owner’s box, sliding back the windows to let the early morning air seep in and carry the smell up to him.

  It was the closest to peaceful things got these days, these first few minutes. The rest was sheer chaos.

  Good thing he liked chaos.

  OOH, BABY, SHAKE IT!

  Music smashed through the morning silence. His eyes flew open. What the fuck?

  SHAKE, BABY, SHAKE IT!

  Mal stalked to the front of the box and stared down at the field. Took in the twenty or so women wearing skimpy little gym bras and leggings and shorts and groaned. He’d forgotten the damned cheerleaders.

  SHAKE IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT!

  He gritted his teeth. Cheerleaders. Hell. Baseball teams didn’t have cheerleaders. Adam could call ’em a dance troupe and spout off about getting butts on seats all he wanted, but they were cheerleaders and they didn’t belong in baseball. No matter how good they might look prancing around down there, all long legs and long hair and big boobs.

  He allowed himself a moment to appreciate the view and found his eyes drawn to the woman at the front of the squad. The one in charge, judging by the way the others were following her moves as she bent and stretched in ways that were arresting despite the goddamn annoying music.

  Half a foot shorter than the shortest of the others, her hair a short vivid slick of scarlet—unlike the long falls of blond and brunette surrounding her—she was also built sleeker. She lacked the curves that were testing the limits of the Lycra worn by the others but, as the music changed to some sort of sinuous beat and she started to demonstrate a kind of twisting hip shimmy thing, he felt his mouth go bone-dry as he watched her.

  Da-a-amn.

  It was surprising the turf beneath her feet wasn’t scorching with each sinuous step she took.

  Sex on legs.

  He blinked and tried to bring his mind back to the job at hand.

  Hot or not, he didn’t remember clearing a cheerleading practice for this morning so that meant he had to go down there and find out what the hell she was doing on his field.

  * * *

  “And five, six, seven, eight.” Raina Easton bounced to her left, expecting the squad of dancers in front of her to mirror the move. Instead, to a woman, they stayed right where they were standing, looking past her shoulder, with varying expressions of surprise, approval and assessment on their faces. Uh-oh. She spun on her heel and took in the very tall man striding across the ballpark toward them, wearing jeans, a dark gray tee-shirt, a perfectly beaten-up black leather jacket, and a thunderous expression.

  She knew who he was. The other one. She’d met Alex Winters—he of the shirt/blazer/jeans/GQ good looks—when he’d interviewed her for this position. She’d met Lucas Angelo—six foot plus of immaculate suit, gorgeous Italian model face, and divine blue eyes—when she’d been talking to the team doctor about the training plans for her dance squad. But she hadn’t yet met the last of the three men who’d bought the Saints.

  Malachi Coulter. She’d wondered about him. A girl would have to be made of stone not to wonder what the last third of the trio might be like when the first two were so delectable. And she’d never claimed to be made of stone. Not in the slightest.

  Though the man walking toward her might be. His expression was pretty stony. It didn’t make his face, which was angles and jaw and deep dark eyes, any less appealing. He looked, as her grandma might have said, like a big ol’ parcel of man trouble. Her favorite kind. Or rather, her former favorite kind.

  Bad boy written all over him.

  Pity he was sort of her boss. No. Not a pity. A very good thing. It would help her remember that bad boy was her former preference. Still, regardless of her stance on bosses or bad boys, there was nothing to say she couldn’t enjoy the view. Or the irony of his approach being backed by a song about men who drove you crazy.

  She summoned her best knock-’em-dead-in-the-back-stalls smile as he reached her and extended her hand. “Hi. I’m Raina Easton, your dance director.”

  He didn’t take her hand. She raised an eyebrow. He didn’t change his expression. She sighed and dropped her hand back to her side. “What can I do for you, Mr. Coulter?”

  “I didn’t clear anyone for the field this morning.”

  Damn. His voice fit the rest of him. It rumbled pleasingly. It made her girl parts want to shake pom poms and she wasn’t a cheerleader. Imagine what it might do if he didn’t sound so pissed.

  She squelched the thought. She wasn’t going to imagine any such thing.

  “The dance practice schedule was agreed a week ago,” she said, wishing she wasn’t in practice clothes and very flat dance sneakers. With a few inches boost from her favorite heels, he wouldn’t loom over her quite so much.

  “You’re supposed to get a security clearance from me before entering the stadium.”

  Oh dear. He was going to be one of those. Tall, dark, and grim. Pity. She didn’t do humorless. Life was too short for men who couldn’t make you laugh. And, right now, she didn’t do men at all.

  “I’m sorry, nobody told me.” She tried a smile. “I swear we’re not some other team’s troupe sneaking in for illicit practice.” She was tempted to add a line about it being pretty hard to conceal a weapon in a crop top but figured that would be pushing her luck. Besides, if he announced he was going to search anyone, she’d likely be trampled by the dancers behind her stampeding to be first in line.

  Mal’s gaze lifted, scanned the women behind her, then returned to her, looking no more pleased than previously. “Other baseball teams don’t have cheerleaders.”

  He sounded like he thought that was a very good thing. She wasn’t going to let on that she agreed with him. Alex Winters was paying her a boat-load of money to whip his dancers into a lean, mean cheering machine and she was keeping her opinions about cheerleaders and baseball being sacrilege firmly to herself. She had plans for that boat-load of money. Which meant she also had to make nice to Malachi Coulter. “Dance troupe, not cheerleaders,” she said, tilting her head back to meet his eyes. “Now, we’ve only got another hour of practice. Can we stay or do you need us to leave?” She hit him with another smile.

  “You can stay,” he said after a pause where the only noise was the pounding of drums and squealing guitars as the song on the sound system built to a crescendo. “But come and see me when you’re done.”

  “Sure,” she said after a little pause of her own. “I look forward to it.” Then she turned back to the dancers so she wouldn’t watch him walk away.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Raina finished slicking lip gloss on and decided that she needed to stop procrastinating. She’d spent longer than she should showering and changing after the practice session and talking to the women in the squad. She’d only met most of them a week ago at the auditions, and she was still trying to get a feel for their personalities and strengths. They could all dance, she’d put her foot down about that—nixing a couple of the more blond and busty candidates who had looked freaking spectacular but had been less than blessed in the coordination and moving to music with some understanding of the basics of a beat and rhythm department—but just being able to dance wouldn’t necessarily turn them into a team fast enough for her liking.

  It took time for personalities to gel and right now it wasn’t helping her cause that the best dancer of them all—the truly stunning green-eyed, dark-haired Ana—was shaping up to be a diva of the pit viper temperament variety.

  Still, this was a rush job and s
he didn’t have time to hire any more dancers, let alone give up one as good as Ana, so she was just going to have to do her best. Think of the very nice chunk of change she would be earning and give up on the idea of spare time for a couple of months.

  But none of that changed the fact that she still had to beard the boss man in his den, so to speak. The tall, dark, grumpy, and disturbingly handsome boss man.

  No chickening out just because he’d sent her hormones ratcheting into high alert.

  Damn it.

  He had that bad boy vibe practically radiating for miles around him. There was the slightly too-long hair. The jeans and t-shirt “I don’t care” outfit. Alex Winters had worn jeans and a dark gray blazer when she’d met him, but his jeans had been one hundred percent designer. Whereas she was pretty certain that Malachi Coulter’s were well-worn Levis that had come by their faded patches and mysterious stains honestly.

  There was also the tattoo snaking down his arm. She hadn’t let herself focus on the design, only noticing the bold color and geometric black edges before she’d looked away.

  And if she had to put money on it, she would have bet a fair portion of her next Saints paycheck that the big black motorcycle she’d spotted in the parking lot earlier belonged to him, too. He was, after all, wearing a well-worn pair of biker boots.

  So, the bad boy. Even if he was bad-boy-made-good—after all, he was part owner of a baseball team—he was still a bad boy.

  And she’d sworn off bad boys.

  Pity.

  But necessary for her sanity.

  She grabbed her things, stuffed them into her bag, and headed out of the locker room—which she had her suspicions, based on the aroma of fresh paint, hadn’t been a female locker room until shortly before Alex had hired her and held his auditions.