The Devil in Denim

by Melanie Scott

  For some reason that was annoying as well. No one tipped a hundred bucks for one drink. Except if they were stupidly rich. Or a pretentious ass. Alex Winters was an ass but he didn’t strike her as pretentious. Which meant he was the former.

  Maggie knew money, of course. Her father owned a baseball team; they weren’t exactly struggling for cash. But her father had inherited his money from a father who’d built a business from the ground up, a business he’d worked in as well. He’d raised her to have a healthy respect for the value of that money and what they could achieve with it … and not only for themselves. Her mom—before she’d died—had taught the same lessons. Appreciate what you had but still work hard and be thankful.

  But there was money and there was money, and Alex Winters was in a whole other league. The new generation of bazillionaires. He’d probably earned thousands of dollars in various ways while they’d been standing here in the bar.

  She gritted her teeth. She didn’t care if Alex wanted to throw away his fortune. In fact, she might pray for that very thing. It would be one way of making sure he gave up his grip on the Saints.

  “Are you ready to go?” Alex asked.

  “I already told you, I’m not going home with you.”

  “And I told you that wasn’t acceptable.” His face was still pleasant but there was an edge to the words. A tone that expected to be obeyed.

  Too bad. She was in no mood to obey anyone. “I don’t care what you find acceptable.”

  “I know. But I do.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Do you seriously think you’re going to get me to walk out of this bar with you?”

  He shrugged. “I know you’re coming with me. You can walk or I can carry you, your choice.”

  “Carry me?” She heard her voice go up half an octave. “Try that and you’ll—”

  Alex regarded her steadily. “I’ll what? You’re not short but you’re hardly a giant. I’m taller than you. I’m a lot heavier than you. You’re pretty drunk. Unless you’re a secret ninja, I’m pretty sure I’ve got this.”

  Maggie tried to talk, but she couldn’t quite make her mouth connect with her brain because she was too busy trying to convince herself that yep, he really just had said that. “You—you—” She gave up, turned back to the bartender. “Call me a cab.”

  “Don’t.” Alex’s voice came from behind her, the command even clearer. The bartender froze again. Maggie glared at him—wimp—and started to reach into her purse for her phone.

  “Carry it is, then,” Alex said from behind her, and before she knew what was happening, his arms came around her and somehow lifted her around and up and over his shoulder. The sudden change in position made the tequila swirl in her blood and the room spun even harder. She swallowed hard, not entirely sure she wasn’t going to throw up. Alex’s back was broad and warm as she rested her head for a moment and his arm was reassuringly strong around her legs. God. It was the perfect humiliating end to the worst day of her life. She wanted to keep fighting, to make him put her the hell down, but suddenly all the fight drained out of her and all she wanted was to be home. And if letting the devil take her there was the fastest way to achieve that, then so be it.

  She closed her eyes and let Alex carry her out of the bar, ignoring the chorus of wolf whistles and applause that followed them as they went.

  * * *

  Maggie was not feeling even remotely human when the intercom buzzed the next morning. She clutched her coffee mug and groaned, wondering who on earth could possibly be bugging her at the ungodly hour of … She glanced up at the clock on the wall. Damn. Ten already. So really, not that ungodly. That was only the way her head felt.

  Tequila.

  The devil’s drink.

  The thought reminded her of Alex Winters and the taxi and she clutched her mug harder and dropped her head down on the bench. The door buzzed again.

  Deciding that answering it would be the quickest way to make the confounded racket stop, she moved very carefully over to the door, picked up the phone, and said, “Yes,” while she leaned her forehead against the mercifully cool wall and closed her eyes.

  “Ms. Jameson, there’s a package for you. Would you like me to bring it up?” Dev, who’d been the doorman in the building forever, as far as Maggie knew, sounded, as always, cheerful.

  “Package?”

  “A box, Ms. Jameson. About as big as a shoe box.”

  Shoes? She hadn’t ordered any shoes, had she? Last night’s tequila binge had been the pass-out-at-the-end kind, not the max-out-the-credit-card-on-inappropriate-footwear kind.

  “Ms. Jameson? Would you like me to hold the package for you?”

  “No, bring it up.”

  Then he wouldn’t have to call again to remind her. Anyway, maybe she’d gotten lucky and someone had sent her Alex Winters’s head on a platter. Though that would require something substantially bigger than a shoe box given the size of the man’s ego. She’d read his press after all. Hell, she’d even had to do a case study on the previous boy wonder and his business success during her master’s. Alex Winters was not a man who doubted his own worth.

  Nor did he downplay his successes.

  Of which, annoyingly, there were many. Enough to make him the sort of man rich enough to buy a baseball franchise. Impressive when he was only thirty-seven. The sort of success brought by lightning striking at the right place and the right time. In Alex Winters’s case that had been a series of inspired real estate deals when he was fresh out of college and then an equally inspired series of corporate acquisitions starting with a stake in a little software house that had subsequently been acquired by Apple for roughly eleven zillion times what he’d paid for it initially. Everything Alex Winters touched seemed to turn to gold.

  Probably proof that he was indeed the devil.

  Devil or not, with his business instincts, she should be happy that he’d decided to take an interest in the Saints.

  But all she wanted to do was scream.

  Dev’s quiet knock at her door interrupted her train of thought. His face was carefully bland as he handed her the package. Given she was wearing sweats, her oldest Saints training camp T-shirt that dated back to sometime in the nineties and was threatening to become more hole than fabric any day now, no makeup, and second-day bedhead hair, that was nice of him.

  She carried the box back to the bench, dug out Advil and water to go with the coffee, and unwrapped it without enthusiasm.

  When she pulled out the voodoo doll from the final layer of tissue paper she was too surprised to look for the card for a few seconds.

  When she found it, she recognized the handwriting as that of her cousin Sean who worked for the Red Sox.

  “Thought you might need this,” he’d written.

  Which meant, she realized with a horrible sinking sensation, that the news was out.

  People knew the Jamesons no longer owned the Saints. Knew she’d been booted like a rookie who couldn’t connect with the ball.

  She did what any sensible woman would do when coming to such a conclusion. She yanked the phone cord out of the wall, switched off her iPhone, and went back to bed.

  * * *

  Several hours later Maggie woke up again. This time the remembrances flooded back faster, which was probably a sign that her goddamn hangover had retreated slightly. Damn. She squinched her eyes closed, hoping that she could will herself back to sleep. No such luck.

  Her mind, in a move she thought highly unfair, started replaying the events of the previous day from the moment Alex Winters had walked into the conference room at Deacon Field and she’d been hit with a hefty dose of reality. The images continued relentlessly until she reached the point where she passed out in the taxi that Alex had carried her into.

  She rolled on her back, arm flung over her eyes.

  A mature person would get up, shower, form a plan, and go out and show Alex Winters that a Jameson didn’t take things lying down.

  Apparently her maturity had been
significantly diluted by last night’s alcohol.

  All she wanted to do was stay exactly where she was.

  What she needed was a pep talk. A motivational speech. The sort of inspiration her psychology professor had always advocated. She considered how exactly that might go.

  “Well, Ms. Jameson, what seems to be the issue today?”

  “I don’t want to get out of bed.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “That’s not really a reason, is it, Ms. Jameson? If you don’t get up, you won’t be able to achieve any sort of outcome today, will you?”

  She pictured the notes being written.

  Patient very unmotivated. Needs to find source of passion. Or large vat of coffee.

  “I don’t care about outcomes.”

  “Come now, Miss Jameson, everybody wants something.”

  Patient very, very unmotivated. In danger of consuming large amounts of chocolate and ice cream.

  “Think of something you want. Something small. Picture it in your mind. Can you see it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What is it, Miss Jameson?”

  “Alex Winters being hit by a piano falling from several stories up?”

  Patient may be actively hostile. Or borderline psychotic. Prospects for intervention poor.

  Oh good, now her subconscious was giving up on her. What did that say about the situation?

  That she really, really wanted Alex Winters’s head on a platter. Or maybe her father’s. She still couldn’t believe he’d sold the Saints. Without even once mentioning his plans to her in advance. Which could only mean that he felt guilty about it. Had Winters pressured him? She wouldn’t put it past the man. He was a very highly motivated individual. All about the win. And the money. She knew men like him like the back of her hand, having grown up around professional athletes. Even though her father had tried to keep that culture out of the Saints as far as possible, there was only so much you could do to hold back the tide.

  What she didn’t know was when he’d stopped trying. They’d had all these plans. She was going to come back from Chicago and start helping him out. They’d talked about it forever. So what had changed?

  How had Alex Winters convinced him to sell?

  She didn’t understand any of it.

  So maybe that was the first step. Talk to her father.

  * * *

  Alex strode into his new office at Saints headquarters on Wednesday morning and paused just inside the door to take in the sight. His at last. No sign of Tom Jameson’s old battered desk and wall of photos. Instead there was everything Alex needed to get to work. The desk was just like the one back in his New York office. His laptop. A bank of three phones. The only things hanging on the wall were the number he’d cut out of his jersey after the bombing and framed and the bank of flat-panel TVs tuned to every possible sports and business station under the sun.

  Right at home. Ready to make the Saints the team they could be or, at least, stop them from sliding into oblivion.

  So why did he feel guilty?

  Goddamn Maggie Jameson, that was why. She’d looked at him with those big angry brown eyes last night, and told him to go to the devil before she’d passed out in the taxi home.

  She’d looked lost. Something he’d never seen before.

  Maggie Jameson was a chip off the old block. Never far from her father’s side as long as Alex had been a Saints fan. Which was forever. He could picture Maggie’s childhood and teen years as well as his own, thanks to the never-ending photos of her in the press and in the team newsletter and on the Web site. She’d been cute as a kid, big brown eyes and straight dark hair and bangs, tucked under her dad’s arm or whacking at balls tossed by the pitchers at kid-friendly speeds. She’d had a pretty good swing, he remembered.

  He rubbed the side of his face idly. He’d bet she had a pretty good swing now too and he’d probably been lucky that she hadn’t slugged him one last night. He wouldn’t have held it against her.

  Tom’s Little Saint, the press had dubbed her, which had morphed into Saint Maggie as she’d grown older and become a seemingly perfect teenager, bringing home straight-A report cards, helping out with the Saints’ community programs, and avoiding any hint of teen drama. Or, at least, avoiding anything that Tom hadn’t been able to keep out of the papers.

  She’d grown up to be more than cute—he’d had time to appreciate the sleek curves under her suit yesterday before she’d realized what the meeting was about and her expression had turned to ice and fury. But those sleek curves and the way her face was an intriguing mix of angles and softness were things he was determined to ignore.

  He needed Maggie on his side, not in his bed. She knew more about the Saints than anyone apart from her father. In many respects she was the team’s mascot, even more than the actual fuzzy blue, white, and gold angel that cavorted on the sidelines at the games.

  Trouble was, after last night, he had no idea how to win her over. And if he couldn’t win her over, he was going to have to fire her. Lucas and Mal were going to laugh their asses off. Lucas had suggested that informing Maggie about the deal sooner might have been a good idea, but Alex hadn’t wanted the complication, worried that guilt over his daughter’s feelings might stop Tom Jameson from doing what needed to be done to save the team.

  There was no place for messy emotions in business. They didn’t get the job done. He wasn’t a monster, he tried to make sure people were treated well and taken care of, but someone had to make the hard decisions.

  And that someone was usually him.

  Which was just the way he liked it.

  So why was Maggie Jameson tugging at his conscience like goddamn Jiminy Cricket in a bad mood?

  Maybe he was just tired from the pressure of closing the deal, though, as one of his old bosses had said, “if you’re tired of the deal, you’re tired of life.” Alex wasn’t ready to be tired of life. He had a team to save. And he’d call the plays the way he saw them. Even if he had to drag the rest of the world kicking and screaming along with him.

  He resolutely put Maggie Jameson and her long fall of dark hair and eyes like embers out of his mind and opened his e-mail to start dealing with whatever the day was going to throw at him.

  Chapter Two

  “You know, A, I’m not exactly feeling the love.” Malachi Coulter jerked his chin toward the closed door of Alex’s office. “I’ve been in war zones more welcoming. I thought you said Jameson was on board with this deal?”

  “He is,” Alex said. He tried to read another e-mail while Mal paced. “He signed the papers.” He typed a short response and keyed up the next message.

  “So why is the atmosphere around here so arctic?” Mal growled.

  Alex stopped reading and looked up. Mal was taller than him, just over six foot four and all of it rangy muscle. His strength and reach had made him a great batter, probably hadn’t hurt in his army career, and definitely had come in handy at the start of his security business, even if Mal’s interests in that profession lay more toward surveillance and security systems than cracking heads. The man looked like a hard-ass bouncer with his too-long hair—always too long since he’d left the army—and tattoos, and Alex had developed a healthy respect for the power in that body after many years of playing all sorts of sports with him. When delivering bad news to Mal, it was always best to ease into things. Though, today, there wasn’t much time for easing.

  “I may have underestimated Jameson’s ability to get his team on board with the deal a little.”

  “Define ‘a little.’” This came from Lucas, his other best friend. The other one crazy enough to take on the Saints. Lucas was all logic and precision with a big dose of relentlessness.

  And right now he had a very determined look in his cool blue eyes. Alex grimaced. Determined and amused, he realized. It probably came as no shock to Lucas that the Saints organization wasn’t immediately taking to its new owners. Lucas didn’t do anything without an
alyzing it six ways from Sunday and planning for all possible contingencies before he started. It was what made him one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the country. Alex still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to convince Lucas to throw his hat into the ring on this particular venture. One to chalk up to the mystic powers of baseball fanaticism and just be thankful for.

  Still, Lucas would keep grilling Alex until he got the answers he wanted so it was time to just get on with it. They had a press conference in a little over an hour.

  “They seem to hate our guts,” he said bluntly.

  “Perfect,” Mal groaned. “That will make things so much easier.”

  “Hey, they’ll love us once they get to know us.”

  “They’ll love me and Lucas,” Mal retorted. “They’ll see you for the clearly crazy person that you are. Is it too late to get a refund?”

  “Yes,” Alex said. “Quit whining. You don’t want a refund. We own a fucking baseball team. We own the Saints.”

  “The worst team in the American League,” Lucas said.

  “The worst fucking team in the whole fucking major league,” Mal amended.

  “That’s why we love them.” Alex grinned. “That’s why we have to save them. So a whole new generation of fans can share our pain.”

  Mal shook his head but he was smiling now too. “Misery loves company.”

  “Means the three of us should be ecstatic right about now,” Alex said.

  Lucas was nodding agreement but he had on his decisive face. Just like him. Working out a strategy. “Still, it’s not a done deal yet. Not until the other teams’ owners sign off. So we need everybody to be on board. Jameson’s coming to the press conference, right?”

  “Yes. He’s making a statement before ours. I’ve read it”—hell, he’d helped write it—“it’s good. Then I’ll make mine and introduce the two of you and we can get things started.”

  Lucas pursed his lips. “What about Maggie Jameson, is she coming?”

  Alex froze. “Maggie? I’m not sure.”