“Lucas, Mal, can I speak to Alex alone, please?”
They exchanged looks but nodded. No doubt they’d be right outside, trying to listen in, but she knew from experience that this office was pretty soundproof. She’d never managed to listen in on her dad when she’d tried it as a teenager.
Lucas closed the door behind them, which left her alone with Alex.
“You really are trying to ruin my life, aren’t you?” she said.
Alex scowled. “You think I like this any better than you?”
“I think that in these scenarios it’s always the woman who comes off looking bad, so how you feel about it doesn’t really matter. Are you sure you want to do this? Lie?”
“I don’t like lying but I’m not going to let Sutter win. Especially not now. You’re right, he’s a prick and he’s not getting his hands on the Saints if I can help it.”
The venom in his voice warmed her heart a little but she stomped on the feeling. There was to be no feeling kindly toward Alex. Nothing but mutual, professional respect. And a mutual pact to lie to the press, it seemed.
“We need ground rules,” she said.
“For what?”
“For our fake relationship.”
“Rules about what, exactly?” he said, looking almost amused.
“For what we will or won’t be doing. In terms of public displays of affection. Or private ones,” she added.
“About that…”
“I don’t want to talk about last night,” she said hastily. The memory of it had haunted her dreams and her body was still pleasantly sore from his touch. She didn’t need to discuss it.
“Did I hurt you?” Alex asked, ignoring her.
“I’m not made of china, Alex, I can handle a little—” She chopped off the “rough sex against a wall” because, really, that would probably be setting the cat among the pigeons.
“You should’ve stopped me.”
“Stop yourself,” she snapped back.
He blinked, then shook his head. “Right. Sorry. This conversation isn’t helping. Shall we get back to ground rules then? You’re going to have to let me touch you. Hand-holding and so on. When we’re out in public.”
“When it’s appropriate,” she said. “We’re meant to be demonstrating we’re a good team, not that we’re goggle-eyed teens in love.”
“Agreed. But couples touch. Particularly new couples. And you’re going to have to pretend that you like me.”
“Liking you is not the problem,” she said.
“Then—”
“No. We’re not discussing this again. This is the way it has to be. So, yes to touching in public. You can hold my hand and hug me and do that stuff.”
“How about kissing?”
“Only as a measure of last resort.”
His mouth quirked. “What, when you need CPR?”
“Something like that. Look, this is simple enough. Do what we need to do in public, but behind closed doors, it’s hands off, Winters. Agreed?”
“I don’t see that there’s much choice. So, yes.”
“Good. Now, what’s the next step?”
“We have to issue some sort of statement.”
“I’d rather that it just said that we believe private matters are private and leave it at that. We can deal with the owners’ questions if we have to but I don’t see the point of feeding the media beast any more than necessary.”
“We can talk to the PR people. They’ll know what’s best.” He sighed. “Okay, so outside of this room, and as far as everyone else but Mal and Lucas know, you and I are a couple.”
“Hana knows that I was going to break up with you.”
“Great. Well, you can tell her that you changed your mind, okay? That I wooed you back to reason.”
“This isn’t reason.”
“No, but it’s reality. So let’s deal with it and get on with taking Sutter down.”
* * *
It was another long day. Another round of phone calls and strategizing until they’d come up with a list of where they thought their votes currently stood and a plan for tackling the undecideds and the outright no votes.
“That’s a lot of plane trips,” Mal said, staring at the list.
“Good for your frequent flyer miles,” Alex said.
“Good for deep vein thrombosis,” Lucas said, looking cranky.
“You just don’t like to fly,” Alex retorted.
“I fly all the time.”
“Yeah, but you don’t like it,” Mal said.
“I’m not going to be able to do all of these trips,” Lucas pointed out. “I have patients whose procedures can’t be delayed.”
“It’s only a week.”
“A week’s too long when you’re trying to save someone’s leg,” Lucas countered. “I’ll clear my schedule as far as possible but I can’t just drop everything.”
“Fine. So we’ll do them in batches. All four of us where we can. Three when we can’t. We’ll see what Tom can cover as well. What do you think, Maggie?”
Maggie considered the list. “There’s a few guys on here that he gets along with. So those might be worthwhile. But these three?” She swiped over three names with her highlighter. “Not going to help. They don’t like Dad at all.”
“Well, we’ll use him where we can and it will help. He’ll help convince the owners’ that there’ll be some stability and continuity.”
“Presuming he’s still talking to you after you two explain today’s pictures to him,” Mal said. “Maggie, how are you going to handle that?”
She winced. “I should go talk to him.”
“I’ll come with you,” Alex said.
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
“Yes. For one thing, it’s what men do.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Newsflash, it’s 2014, not 1950.”
“Doesn’t matter. And it can’t hurt for us to be seen going to see your dad. We’ll leave here together.”
“Now?” It was closing in on eight P.M. “I wanted to get back to the city.” Mainly because it was far away from having to deal with her dad.
“I’ll make sure you get home. And get a car to bring you back in the morning, so you can leave your car here.”
Which was another perfectly terrible idea. She didn’t need to be spending any more time with Alex right now than strictly necessary. But she had no particular argument to mount for taking two cars when they were faking being together, so she nodded reluctant agreement.
* * *
Two hours later Maggie slid back into the passenger seat of Alex’s Jeep.
“That wasn’t too bad,” she said cautiously.
“Speak for yourself,” Alex said, rolling his shoulder and flexing his hand with a wince. “You weren’t the one dragged outside in the freezing cold for a game of catch for forty-five minutes.”
She stifled a giggle. She and Veronica had watched the two men square off in the backyard, bundled up and spotlighted under the garden lights, Tom barking questions while he fired off pitches at Alex.
“Your dad has a pretty good arm on him still.”
“Yup. I should’ve warned you.”
“Yeah, I could’ve brought my gear. He nearly took my head off twice, but I think we came to a meeting of the minds.” He flexed his hand again.
“Is your hand okay?”
“I’ll live,” he said, as he steered the car across to the far lane to pull up at the lights.
“Is your hand why you quit baseball? After the bombing?”
His head twisted back to her. “How do you know about that?”
“Ollie said something. I did some digging. So is it?”
He shook his head, turned his attention back to the road. “No. I made the decision before I knew my hand wasn’t going to be the same.”
“But why?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“It’s a long drive.”
“The bombing…” He paused. “It changes you, going
through something like that. I was lucky, my injury wasn’t too bad and I was smart, I had good grades. But there were guys on the team who weren’t that lucky. They had injuries that meant they couldn’t play again. Kids who were only ever going to make it through college because they were on the team. They lost their scholarships.” He went still … remembering. “It changed everything for them. And I just knew that I never wanted to be at the mercy of something like that. That I wanted to build something bigger than a baseball career. Something more solid. So I changed schools and changed my major to business and the rest is history.”
Somehow she didn’t think it was quite that simple.
“But you loved baseball. You were good. I saw your stats.”
“I was good,” he said. “But dreams change, Maggie. And sometimes when you get to the other side of that change, it’s better than you could have imagined.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining? How Pollyanna of you.”
“No, not quite that. But I do believe that some things happen for a purpose. Sometimes you need something to jolt you out of a rut and into what you’re really meant to do.”
“I see.” Was that aimed at her? Or was he still talking about himself? She decided she didn’t want to know right now and changed the subject.
Despite it being late, there were still reporters outside her building when they got there.
“Oh crap,” she muttered. “I thought they would have given up and gone home by now. I can call Dev and get him to open the parking garage for you, we can go in that way.”
“No,” Alex said. “Better to get it over with. We’re going with happy and in love, remember? Not skulking around. Let’s go give them what they want.”
“What’s that?” she said, but he was already climbing out of the car. She watched as he pushed his way through the reporters who had swarmed him and came around to her side of the Jeep. He opened the door.
“Back off, guys,” he said in a commanding tone. “I’m trying to walk my gal to her front door.” He held out his hand and she took it as she slipped down from the high seat. His fingers were very warm around hers.
“Your gal? The rumors are true then?”
Alex smiled down at her and she managed to smile back, remembering that she was meant to be happy. The flashes and shouting voices around her made her want to bolt for the front door.
“If you’re asking if Maggie and I have been seeing each other, then yes, that part is true. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Maggie has to be up early.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and shepherded her through the crowd. Maggie kept the smile on her face, fighting the winces. She hated this feeling, being surrounded by the press. Knowing that she was lying through her teeth to them didn’t help.
But Alex got them to the front door of the building and Dev was there, opening it with a scowl on his face for the reporters as he ushered them inside.
“I am sorry, Miss Maggie,” he said. “I told them to leave.”
“It’s okay, Dev.” She tried to tug her hand out of Alex’s but he didn’t let go.
“We’re not quite done yet,” he said. His eyes went to the doors where the reporters now had their cameras pressed up against the glass. “A guy has to kiss his girl good night, after all.”
Oh crap, she thought, but it was too late. Alex had ducked his head and found her mouth and her free hand coiled around his neck before she could stop it, pressing him closer.
It was a sweet kiss. Soft and tender and staged for the cameras. It still rushed through her low and hot, making her pulse pound and her head spin. Damn the man.
“That should do it,” Alex muttered, but his voice sounded a little dazed. She didn’t trust her own voice so she just pulled back from him, managed a smile, and bolted for the elevator.
Chapter Twenty
Maggie had seen plenty of strategies being put into action before. She’d listened to her father talking business and baseball since before she was old enough to have any idea what he was talking about. She’d heard game plans and strategies for the draft and sat through semesters of lectures on team management.
She’d never seen anyone swing into action quite like Alex, Mal, and Lucas. It was closer to planning a war than a business deal. They gathered intelligence, they gathered their forces, and they coordinated campaigns to influence just about everyone who was anyone in MLB. There were meetings and dinners and flights in an endless procession. Pictures of Alex and Maggie kept appearing—no doubt Sutter making sure that people didn’t forget about them—as well as other subtle little slurs against the three men. All of which were slapped down by Alex’s legal team—but rumors traveled faster than the truth these days. In between organizing his little libelous leaks, Sutter made sure the baseball press was well fed with his grand plans for the Saints. Though he stayed resolutely tight-lipped on the subject of whether he’d move the team.
Maggie watched the three of them grow quieter and tenser and more focused and threw her ideas into the mix and did the jobs she was assigned to do. She talked down nervous players and agents and wives. She worked with Tom to remember every last detail about Sutter’s time at the Saints and every last detail about the owners they were targeting. She even pretended not to watch Alex while she did it.
She had to pretend. She couldn’t actually not watch him. It was entirely involuntary the way her eyes sought him out. She’d never thought it was possible to miss someone while actually spending a large percentage of every day with them and actively trying to fool everyone into believing you were in love, but it was.
When they weren’t on show, Alex was perfectly polite to her, his manner unchanged other than the ruthless cessation of anything that could be vaguely considered flirting. No jokes, no killer smiles, no shared grins, no devilish green eyes daring her to take him on.
She’d thought it was what she’d wanted.
But it was killing her.
It was no better in public. Then he turned on the charm, pulled her close, held her hand, and kissed her when he thought kisses were warranted. But there was a wall behind his eyes that she could see, even if everyone else seemed taken in by his performance.
She couldn’t figure out which part was worse. Nor could she figure out any way out of it. Not while they had to beat Will Sutter.
After the long flight back from Kansas City, where they had met with another of the undecided owners, they had returned home discouraged. Lucas had left them at the airport, heading to the hospital and his patients, and Mal had sped off into the night on his motorbike.
Which left her and Alex alone in the car together while the driver ferried them back to Manhattan.
Whatever Will was telling the owners, it seemed to be working.
Alex sat beside her, his legs carefully not touching hers. Of all of them, he looked the least tired, but the line of his body, slumped against the seat of the car, told her he was just as exhausted as she was.
The vote was only four days away. And at this point, Maggie was starting to think they were going to need the help of an actual saint to order them up some divine intervention to have any chance of the deal being approved.
Think.
Will was obviously doing something right. Turning the owners against Alex. Though they hadn’t yet been able to wrangle what exactly he might be saying out of any of them.
So maybe it was time to stop doing things the sensible business way and try to hit Will right where he was trying to hit them. In his reputation. His credibility.
Will might have private detectives and paparazzi at his beck and call but she had one thing that he didn’t.
She nudged Alex with her knee. “Hey, I have an idea.”
* * *
Shelly and Hana came, as she’d requested, armed with laptops and phones.
“What’s this about?” Shelly asked as they set up their gear on Maggie’s dining table.
“Will Sutter,” Maggie said.
“We guessed that much,” Hana said. “What
exactly about him?”
“We’ve been working the owners, and we’re close but not over the line yet. It’s way too close to call.”
“I’m not sure how much we can help with that,” Hana said. “Most of us who want to stay in New York have been working on the guys, but these days that doesn’t mean as much as it used to.”
True. Players were supposed to go where they were sent and earn their money, not mess around with the management of the team. “I know. And we appreciate it. But I have another idea.”
“What?” Shelly asked as she typed her password into her laptop. “And what’s your Wi-Fi password?”
“Right now it’s the last four digits of your home phone number and the same from Hana’s cell.”
Shelly shook her head. “You should use symbols and things.”
“We don’t have time for a lecture on Internet security, Shell.” Shelly guarded her laptop and phone as closely as a CIA agent. Which, given the amount of dirt she probably had stored on it, made a lot of sense.
“So what’s the grand plan?” Hana asked.
“I’m going to get Will to drop his bid,” Maggie said.
Both of them stared at her as though she’d lost her mind.
“O-kay,” Hana said slowly. “And while you still have your newfound magic powers, can you make me three inches taller, please?”
Maggie stuck out her tongue at her. “No magic involved. Just a little bit of old-fashioned business hardball.”
“Hardball?” Shelly repeated.
“I’m going to go talk to Mama Sutter,” Maggie said.
Shelly’s brows flew upward, then settled as her expression turned thoughtful. “You’re going to throw yourself on Corinne Sutter’s mercy? You’re a brave woman.”
“Not brave,” Maggie said. “Desperate.”
“What makes you think Will’s mama will side with you?” Hana asked.
“Well, firstly there’s the fact that I always got the feeling she was bored senseless by baseball, though she was, of course, far too polite to ever say so. And secondly, she needs Will to be running their empire now that her husband is dead. I can’t imagine she wants him turning his attention to baseball when he should be making sure she continues to have the lifestyle she’s so used to.”
The Devil in Denim Page 26
