The Devil in Denim

by Melanie Scott

  It was when you’d had very little sleep because you’d finally gotten your hands on the woman who’d been driving you crazy. But that wasn’t exactly an excuse that he could use with Lucas. “I went to the game, remember? Late night.”

  “Are you near a TV yet?”

  “Lucas, just tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  “You want to be near a TV. Because Will Sutter is holding a press conference.”

  “Sutter? He was at the game last night.”

  “Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Did you, by any chance, do anything to piss him off?”

  “Not really. Why?” Fuck. What had Sutter done?

  “Because he’s launching a bid for the Saints. Says we don’t have the votes and that he’ll pay more. Does he have more?”

  Alex scraped through his brain for the little he knew about Will Sutter and Sutter Corp. Will’s dad had been good at what he’d done. His group of companies had been quite the empire. He must’ve left Will a few billion at least, though most of that would be in the value of the companies themselves rather than cold hard cash. So the question was how well Will had been managing the companies since his father had died. And how much cash he could scrape up. More than their offer?

  “It’s possible,” he admitted. “Particularly if he’s got some joint investors.” Maggie’s living room. TV. Check. Now he just had to find the remote. And his jeans.

  “Nothing about that yet. Piss anyone else off lately?”

  Half the Saints organization probably. Anyone who liked Tom Jameson. Not to mention he had a few other non-baseball-related deals in the works. “Probably. But I wouldn’t have thought that anybody would want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars just to take something away from me. What about you? Chop off the wrong leg or something?” He found his jeans, yanked them on, then looked around for the remote.

  “Funny man. No. Completely free of vengeful patients. Not even the faintest whiff of a malpractice suit.”

  No remote on the coffee table. Who didn’t leave the remote on their coffee table? “Maybe Mal … no. It’s Sutter. It might not even be about us. He apparently used to work for the Saints and the Preachers. Tom fired him. Maybe he’s just got a grudge.” He flipped up the couch cushions. Score. One remote. Hopefully the right one. Maggie’s entertainment system was as complicated as his.

  He pressed the power button and the TV came on. “What channel?”

  Lucas told him and he flipped to it. There was nothing to see yet … they were playing the morning news, but there was an information banner running across the screen that said the press conference was scheduled for nine A.M. According to the time showing in the top corner of the screen that left him about fifteen minutes.

  “Have you told Mal?” he asked Lucas.

  “He’s next.”

  Okay. Alex thought fast. “I’ll talk to Tom, see if he knows anything about this. There’s not enough time to meet up before the press conference so just watch it where you are and then we can get together. Come up with our strategy. I’m in the city, where are you?”

  “My place.”

  Alex did mental math, trying to figure out how long he needed to call Tom and then make it back to his apartment. He didn’t want Lucas and Mal arriving before he did and figuring out he hadn’t spent the night at home. “Okay. Let’s meet at my place in an hour.”

  “An hour?” Lucas sounded surprised. “How long is this call with Tom going to take? Wait,” his voice turned suspicious. “Where are you?”

  “Watching TV,” Alex said evasively. “And now I’m hanging up. I need to call Tom.” He hung up before Lucas could process. He started to hit the button to bring up Tom’s number but then remembered Maggie, sleeping down the hallway. He should wake her but the clock was ticking.

  “Fuck,” he muttered again, and then dialed Tom.

  * * *

  There should be a man in her bed. Maggie wasn’t sure what time it was or exactly how much sleep she’d had but she was clear on that particular detail. Her body protested in a sleepy, pleased manner as she rolled over and the man who’d put her muscles through the workout causing that protest should’ve still been beside her. Even ready for another round though she wasn’t sure that was humanly possible unless he really was the devil or possessed of a supply of little blue pills. Somehow she didn’t think Alex Winters was the kind of guy to turn to little blue pills.

  Nope. He’d managed to do damned fine work au naturel last night. Several times.

  She grinned at the memories, then shivered as remembered pleasure swept over her.

  Where exactly was he? She wanted more. He wouldn’t have left … surely? He’d pulled her against him as they’d finally succumbed to sleep, tucking her body into his and curling his arm around her protectively. Not the actions of the man who was desperate to make a getaway.

  Hoisting herself upright, she listened. He wasn’t in the bathroom but she thought she could hear something in the apartment.

  She found a pair of Saints boxers and a shirt and pulled them on, pausing in front of the mirror to see if her bedhead was dire enough to need rectification before she ventured out.

  But her curls seemed as pleased with the night’s activities as she was … and hadn’t morphed themselves into an imitation of Medusa overnight. She decided the smudged eye makeup was sexy, not messy, and that, really, Alex wasn’t going to notice anyway. Not if she made him breakfast and dragged him back to bed.

  It was Saturday. Surely they could take a lazy Saturday? Figure out a plan on how to handle what had happened.

  Because she knew she wanted it to happen again, but she was also damn sure that she wasn’t ready for the fact she’d slept with Alex to become public knowledge. So they needed a plan on how to be discreet.

  A sneaking-around plan. That sounded good. Not forever. Just until they figured out what might happen next.

  And that part she wasn’t ready to think about so she put it out of her head with a mental shove—and stuck out her tongue at the inner therapist who was busy writing notes about denial and facing challenges directly—and went in search of Alex.

  She found him, not in the kitchen as she’d half expected, but instead parked on her sofa, face intent as he studied her TV. His hair was rumpled and stubble shaded his jaw. He wore jeans but no shirt, and his feet were bare. He looked like a man who’d spent half the night having hot sex. But he didn’t look happy.

  The fizz of happiness in her stomach went abruptly flat.

  “What’re you watching?” she asked.

  He flicked a glance upward, then his gaze returned to the screen. “Sutter’s announced a rival bid for the Saints.”

  “He’s what?” She moved so she could see what was on the screen. Sure enough, Will Sutter stood behind a podium, looking slickly confident as he answered questions from a shouting room of reporters. The banner cycling across the screen confirmed Alex’s statement. Shit.

  “Can he afford it?”

  “You know him better than me,” Alex said.

  “Hardly. I hadn’t seen him in years until your party.” The prick. He’d been all smiling and smarmy last night. Pleased with himself. Because he knew he’d been about to do this.

  Alex turned toward her, eyes sharp. “What did you two talk about yesterday?”

  Maggie rubbed her temple, where a drumbeat of panic was starting to throb. “Nothing much. And no, he didn’t mention the fact he was going to do this. I would have told you. So, can he afford it?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Dad won’t want to sell to him,” Maggie said. “He sacked him once, he isn’t going to hand the team over to him.”

  “Your father doesn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. If we don’t get the numbers in the vote, then Tom still needs to sell. And I can’t see too many other people stepping up to the plate to buy the Saints.”

  “You three did.”

  “Yeah, but we’re a little bit crazy.”

 
“You think he’ll want to move the team.” Maggie’s skin went cold. The Saints. Moving. To Texas? Or wherever the hell else Sutter thought he could get a good deal from a city who wanted a new sports franchise.

  “Who knows? Maybe. It’s what I’d do if I had an oil conglomerate to manage.”

  It’s what someone who really wanted to get back at the man who’d fired him would do, Maggie realized. Even worse than having to sell the team to someone he didn’t respect would be the knowledge that his legacy had been uprooted—even renamed—and taken out of his reach forever. That would kill her father.

  “Well, we need to make sure we have the numbers, don’t we?” Maggie asked. “Sutter can’t simply outbid you. Not if Dad wants to sell to you. So we need to get out there.”

  “We need him to help,” Alex said. “His support will carry a lot of weight with the other owners. There are a few teams who won’t be for us regardless … the Yankees and the Mets would be more than happy for there not to be another team in the city cutting into their TV and gate takings. I called Tom not long ago but there was no answer.”

  “I’ll go talk to him,” Maggie offered.

  “Thanks. But this is something that Mal and Lucas and I need to do.”

  The quick rejection of her offer stung. A little too much. But there wasn’t time for emotion. They needed an action plan. Logic. “He’s my dad. He’ll listen to me.” The question was, would Alex?

  He grimaced. “I appreciate the offer. And I’m not trying to cut you out. But this is about the deal. My deal. You can come with us when we do go see Tom but we’ll do the talking.” He stopped, paused, scrubbed his hands through his hair, making it spike up even more. “Shit. Sorry. This is not how I wanted this morning to be.” He leaned toward her, kissed her quick.

  Quick was still enough to make her pulse bounce and her stomach tighten in pleased remembrance.

  “I know we have things to talk about but I need to get to work. Lucas and Mal are coming to my apartment to talk about things and then we’ll try your dad again. I’ll call you once I have a better idea what’s going on.” He stood and looked around the room. “I really need to find my shirt.”

  Maggie bit her lip, torn between anger and feeling helpless. She wasn’t the boss’s daughter anymore. And sleeping with Alex didn’t mean he was going to include her in anything he didn’t want to. That much was becoming clear.

  “I could come with you, to your apartment. I could be useful.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’ll need you later, I’m sure, but right now, I need Mal and Lucas.”

  She fought down the stab of envy. She’d only known Alex for a few weeks. Mal and Lucas had been his friends for years. They were the inner circle. Not her. She hadn’t earned that yet. At work or elsewhere.

  Damn.

  She watched as Alex found his shirt and his shoes and jacket, dressing on autopilot, his eyes returning to the TV screen where the presenters were having a field day recapping the press conference. She listened as well but couldn’t concentrate. She wanted to make him stop. Make him see her for a moment. Make him let her help.

  But she couldn’t think how, other than by doing something overly dramatic like bursting into tears. And there could be no tears, no matter how she felt. She’d slept with her boss. Which meant, when he was in boss mode, she needed to keep things strictly professional no matter how she felt about it.

  This was exactly why office relationships were a bad idea. It was the worst of both worlds.

  But she’d done it and she’d known what she was doing.

  Now, as she watched Alex pull the door shut behind him as he walked away without even another kiss, she just had to work out how to live with it.

  * * *

  Thank God for coffee. Maggie swallowed down the remains of her second cup and eyed her iPhone as it vibrated on the counter. The number on the screen wasn’t one she recognized so she, like she had with the twenty or so calls she’d received in the forty-five minutes since Alex had left, let it go through to voice mail. Press, no doubt.

  One call had been from Ollie but she hadn’t felt like dealing with him right now. She wasn’t ready to hear what the team felt about Sutter’s announcement; she was too busy working out how she felt about it. She’d replayed her conversation with Will at the game last night over and over, searching her memory for hints that she should’ve picked up. But no, nothing. Sutter wouldn’t have wanted to tip his hand. Not if he was doing this for revenge. He’d want her shell-shocked, like her dad. She hadn’t known him well but that seemed to fit.

  Get his pound of flesh.

  God. He couldn’t get the Saints.

  Problem was, she could see that he might hold some appeal to the other teams’ owners. He had, on the face of it, better baseball credentials than Alex, Mal, and Lucas, and his pockets were just as deep. She’d done some quick Googling. The Sutter companies had taken a bit of a hit along with the rest of the economy, but the oil was standing them in good stead and, from what she could find on such short notice, it looked like his finances were doing just fine.

  Which was more than she could say for her stomach.

  It protested, curling greasily, as she forced down a piece of toast to avoid the caffeine shredding her stomach. Between not getting to talk to Alex about last night and now this, her nerves had turned to a mass of twisting, turning, acid-coated worms. Five minutes of scalding hot water blasting on her head in the shower hadn’t helped, and the coffee, though it had temporarily burned away her sleep-deprivation brain fog, definitely hadn’t eased her stomach.

  The phone jiggled into life again. This time, Hana’s name flashed on the screen and Maggie reached for the phone. Alex had abandoned her and she needed to talk to someone.

  “Maggie, where are you?” Hana said.

  “At home.”

  “Have you seen the news?”

  “Yes.” There wasn’t much more to say.

  “Brett is going nuts. The whole team is going nuts.”

  “Good nuts or bad nuts?”

  Hana paused. “Define good and bad.”

  “Do they like Sutter or the terrible trio?”

  “I don’t know. Brett likes Alex, I know that much.”

  “Sutter’s a jerk. He’ll move the team.”

  “He’s offering more money,” Hana said. “Ramona already called Brett and said Sutter would up his salary. A lot.”

  Shit. Ramona. Maggie hadn’t even thought about Ramona. So that was what Sutter was doing cozying up to her. Trying to get some of the players on his side. Crap.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Brett put her on speakerphone. We’re talking a lot of money, Maggie.”

  “Brett loves it here.”

  “So do I. I do not want to end up living in Texas, Maggie. It’s way too hot. And full of cows.”

  “Sutter lives in Dallas. I doubt there are many cows roaming the streets of Dallas.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t like cows.”

  “Well, it’s not up to the players. It’s up to the owners.” They’re the ones who have to vote for the deal.

  “Yeah, well, the players will be interested if Sutter starts offering deals. And they will talk. I don’t know if the other team owners voting will care what the team thinks, but if they do, then you’ve got trouble,” Hana said. “You’ve got to stop this.”

  “It’s hardly up to me.”

  “You’ve gotta help the terrible trio then. They’ve got to lock in their votes. They need Saint Maggie to be on their team.”

  She hadn’t been so saintly last night. She bit her lip again. Now wasn’t the time to spring that news on Hana. Nope, because Hana was right. Saint Maggie was needed and Saint Maggie wouldn’t be sleeping with her brand-new only-met-a-few-weeks-ago boss. There were some conservative types among the team owners. They might frown at that. Hell, they might frown at Alex for seducing her, even if they didn’t care about the fact that he was her boss and they’d only just met. Nope.
This needed to be kept deep under the radar.

  “Maggie? Are you there?”

  “Yes. Sorry, thinking. Don’t worry, I’m on their team.”

  “Sutter. Tom sacked him, yes?”

  Hanapedia would remember that detail. Maggie couldn’t remember if Brett had already joined the Saints or not back when Sutter was involved. “Yes. He was a bit too ambitious for Dad’s liking. Kept overstepping the mark and then he screwed up a couple of things because of it. Is Brett talking with the other guys?”

  “The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. I think they’re going to have a team meeting today.”

  “Okay. Can you keep me posted on what happens … and let me know if anyone else is being offered deals?”

  “They’re going to do their man thing and clam up.”

  “Hana, you are the queen of sneaky and the queen of getting men to do what you want. I’m counting on you. The more we know the better.” Particularly if Alex didn’t have to go in and play hardball to get the info out of the players. They didn’t need any more tension than there was already going to be.

  “Okay,” Hana said. She sighed, a tight, nervous sigh. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks. Now, I have to go. Alex is going to call me when they go see Dad.”

  “They’re getting Tom to help?” Hana sounded relieved.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Good. He’ll know what to do.”

  Maggie hoped so. She wasn’t so sure. Tom had cut his ties and wasn’t going to appreciate being dragged back into a mess. “Yes. He will. So keep me updated and I’ll call you when I can, okay?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was several hours before Alex called and asked Maggie to meet them at Tom’s. His voice was all business, the conversation short. She told herself not to read anything into the tone. Just as she made herself ignore his distracted greeting when they pulled up in front of Tom’s house at the same time.

  Veronica answered the door, her blue eyes as cool as the silver wool suit she wore, as she invited them in. Maggie let the terrible trio go first, wanting a moment to make sure she had her business face on before she joined them.