Flash and Fire

by Marie Ferrarella

  Almost in defiance, Amanda stuck out her chin and tried to pay attention to the game. God, she wished she had something to drink. The inning progressed in slow motion. Hernandez hit a single. That left just Rafferty between Amanda and her turn at the bat.

  Time to strike out again, she thought wryly.

  “You look as if you could use this.”

  Amanda started, surprised that someone had come up so close to her without her having heard him. Shading her eyes, she looked up. Pierce Alexander was standing next to her, his tall, well-muscled body blotting out the sun. He would have liked that image, she thought. He was offering her a bottle of soda.

  Beware of investigative reporters bearing gifts, she mused.

  But the orange soda looked tempting. As did, she thought with a critical eye, the man who was offering it. She knew there were a lot of women at the station ready and willing to catch Pierce Alexander’s eye. A lot of women who would probably think she was crazy because she was trying to avoid him.

  But a lot of women didn’t have her drive, her goals, or her temperament. And they didn’t have her background. She’d been burned enough.

  The last thing she needed was a smoldering male in her life who thought life was the biggest joke of all.

  Though he was good-looking in a dark, dangerous sort of way, that didn’t negate the fact that she found him exasperating. He went about his job in an entirely different fashion than she did. While she struggled, he leaned back. And frequently enough, their results were about equal.

  Because of his looks, Pierce received more recognition than she did, even though hers was the prime spot on the air. Last month, a popular women’s magazine had run a contest asking women to write in and name the man they would most like to be marooned on a desert island with. Pierce had come in third.

  As far as she was concerned, he came in dead last. She had more important things to do than opt for a quick tumble between the sheets, satin or otherwise. And that was all, rumor had it, that the man was interested in. Quick, impersonal sex with no strings. Well, she had strings, and they were all going to stay tied.

  Raging thirst or not, she ignored the bottle of soda. “No, thank you,” she answered, turning her face away.

  Chapter Two

  On any other day, Pierce would have just shrugged and walked away, disinterested. But that was just it. He wasn’t disinterested. So instead, he eased his six-foot frame next to Amanda on the bench. Ken Riley shifted aside to make room.

  It amused Pierce that she stiffened ever so slightly, as if she was bracing for something. Maybe they both were, he thought.

  “Is that all you can say to me?” he asked.

  Ignoring him obviously wasn’t going to work. So she turned and looked at him. “What?”

  He took another long pull on the bottle. Amanda watched, despite herself, as his mouth drew away from the lip of the bottle. Though unintentional, it was still a very sensual act. She flexed her shoulders, feeling the tension heighten.

  Pierce looked at her for a long moment before explaining. “That’s what you said to me when I asked you out. ‘No, thank you.’”

  “I was taught to be polite.” Taught was the wrong word. It had been drummed into her head, time and again, she thought, turning away. She was raised to be polite, so as not to reflect badly on her father and embarrass him.

  The count was three and two. One more pitch and she’d be up, one way or another. The tension progressed from her shoulders in a ragged path down to her stomach.

  Her face was shiny with perspiration. For some reason, that aroused him. She’d probably look that way, he mused, after having hot sex. And someday, he was going to find out if his estimation was accurate.

  “Were you taught to be stubborn, too?”

  The man didn’t give up, did he? It was what made him a good reporter, she supposed. It also made him damn annoying. She waved away a fly that buzzed by her head.

  “Turning down a soda is not being stubborn.”

  And turning you down is being smart, she added silently.

  He liked the slight flash in her eyes as annoyance registered there. She was doing a slow burn now, like a curling iron that had been left on to heat up. He found that attractive and had no idea why. It made no sense, but then, people rarely did. And he was a card-carrying member of the species.

  “It is if you’re thirsty.”

  Go away, Alexander. She dug in obstinately. “Who says I’m thirsty?”

  The laugh was short, mirthless, and, she felt, at her expense.

  “In this heat, lady, the buildings are thirsty. Here. I haven’t got anything that’s catching.” Pierce took her hands and put them around the neck of the bottle, wrapping his own over them for a brief second.

  It was enough. It wasn’t only the pavement beyond the park that was sizzling.

  His crystal-blue eyes mocked her gently, as if daring her to run away. Daring her to stay. Her eyes held his as she took the barest of sips, her lips touching the opening of the bottle where his lips had been just a fraction of a second before.

  It was stupid to suppose she felt something. And yet, she couldn’t really deny that she had. There had been a jolt, a streak of electricity. Something. The skin on the back of her neck prickled.

  Just the heat. Pure and simple.

  Her stomach knotted. Okay, maybe not that simple. And not that kind of heat.

  She blew out a small breath as she lowered the bottle, hardly having drunk at all.

  Pierce had something that was catching, all right, or at least dangerous. She was not blind to the fact that he had his own brand of charm. It was different from Jon’s. Jon’s was easy to detect. Jon’s was blatant, and as such it was harmless. Jon was affable, funny. He didn’t make her feel uneasy, as if nuclear warheads were about to go off all along the coastline.

  Pierce did.

  Pierce’s charm went deeper, ran a subtler course. Maybe it wasn’t even charm at all, but something more. Amanda had seen him out in the field with the cameramen. Had seen him talking to people at the scene of a disaster. He had a way of saying a few words and getting people to trust him, getting them to talk to him when they might have completely shut out someone else. It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it. His manner drew people out. It offered them a sympathetic ear, sanctuary, whatever they needed at the moment.

  And yet, despite all that, there was something about the man that threatened her, that threatened her peace of mind. Made her restless without her being able to put it into words. It was like pouring vodka into a bowl of punch. She couldn’t smell it, couldn’t see it. But she knew it was there.

  “The best way to drink,” Pierce began slowly when she made no move to do so, “is to lift the bottle to your lips and tilt it. Otherwise, the relationship never gets off the ground.”

  In a heartbeat, as everything grew still around her, he leaned forward and lightly touched the outline of her mouth with his finger, as if to reinforce his words.

  The day became ten degrees hotter.

  Amanda pulled back. Her lips burned as if he had used the tip of a match to touch her instead of his finger. It took her a moment to find her tongue.

  “Maybe that’s the whole idea.”

  From a million miles away, she heard Jon’s voice calling her. “Amanda, I said it’s your turn.”

  With a sudden burst of energy, Amanda thrust the bottle back into Pierce’s hand, grateful for the excuse to break eye contact. She felt like a mongoose escaping a deadly cobra.

  She rubbed her damp palms against the back of her shorts. It didn’t help. Amanda could feel Pierce watching her as she stepped up to the plate.

  With a sigh of resignation, she took the bat from Jon’s hands. “Are you sorry you talked me into this yet?” God knew she was sorry he had.

  “Not yet,” he laughed. ‘We’re still leading.”

  No thanks to me.

  Amanda wound her fingers around the bat the way Paul had coached her. A
nother trickle of sweat slid down from her forehead and zigzagged along the hollow of her cheek. Her throat felt parched, dry. It was the only part of her that was.

  “Strike one!” the tall, reedy man behind her in the umpire’s suit announced.

  Damn, she hadn’t even moved a muscle. The ball had appeared low when it had come sailing toward her. Paul had told her to only hit the ones that looked as if they were going to smash her chest.

  Amanda rotated one stiff shoulder, trying to get comfortable. She was dirty, grimy; the bat felt as if it weighed a ton; her eyelashes were sweating. And for some unknown reason, Pierce Alexander was stalking her. It was not her definition of a good day.

  She took a swing at the next ball and missed it by a huge margin.

  “Strike two!”

  Amanda glanced at Jon, who patiently shook his head.

  For one irrational moment, she felt like feeding the bat to him. It was his fault she was in this ridiculous situation in the first place.

  No, Amanda, she upbraided herself the next moment, it’s your own fault. No one was responsible for what she did or didn’t do but her. That was the way it had been since she was twelve and made up her mind not to be manipulated for anyone’s benefit any longer. She had no one to blame but herself for standing here, dripping while she waved a stick impotentlv through the thick air.

  She watched the pitcher, the six o’clock anchorman on the other station, wind up. The confident, five-thousand-dollar smile he wore told her that she was as good as out. For one brief, futile moment, she wished for Jose Canseco’s eye, but there was no use fighting the inevitable.

  The pitch came. Amanda swung. And missed.

  Her side had two outs.

  When she returned to the bench, Pierce was still there. There were three other batters on the bench, but she saw only him. Only he annoyed her.

  As she approached, he shook his head. Undoubtedly, something male and decidedly chauvinistic was about to come forth, she thought. She was already tuning him out when he opened his mouth.

  “Want some advice?”

  The smile she wore for the camera’s benefit, the one without any emotion behind it, fell into place. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

  She could be cold when she wanted to be, he thought. And he’d be willing to place a large bet that she could be just the reverse if a man were to press the right buttons.

  Finding the buttons was the challenge.

  “Your form is all wrong,” Pierce told her as if she had enthusiastically accepted his offer.

  Amanda let out a short breath and raised her chin.

  “Not the obvious one,” Pierce continued, the soft burr of a southern accent evident in his voice. She knew that Pierce was from Georgia, but he usually kept his accent under control. It obviously suited his purpose to let it seep around his words now, like a fog wrapping itself around the coastline as it rolled in at dusk.

  A lazy smile curved his lips as his eyes rolled over her body. “I don’t think there’s much room for improvement there.”

  “Thank you for sharing that,” she said icily. She started to walk away.

  Pierce caught her hand. She glared at him accusingly, reluctant to cause a scene in front of so many people. But she would if she had to.

  He spoke in a soft, moderate cadence, as if they were exchanging recipes for tall, cool drinks to be shared under the shade of an old magnolia tree. “But you’re holding the bat all wrong.” There was a bat leaning against the bench, and he picked it up. “Here, take this.”

  She resisted the temptation to use it in a distinctly unsportsmanlike fashion. “Look, I am—“

  “Going to be stubborn about this, too, I can see, but everybody should know how to hold a bat.” He shoved it into her hands.

  She wrapped her hands around it as if it were a weapon. “Why?”

  “It’s the American way.” Amused, he winked.

  She watched as he ran a hand through his dark hair. She personally knew of seven women at the studio who would have loved to have done the same, or been the recipient of that wink. If Ryan, her plastic-perfect co-anchor, got a sackful of mail, Pierce’s mail seemed to breed in the mail room. His loyal fans were increasing at a steady rate, slain by his slate-blue eyes, the cleft in his chin, and the way he tended to smile during each broadcast, a combination of bad little boy and lover at the same time. That quality was not lost on her.

  “I don’t think our national borders will be in jeopardy if I never learn to hold a bat correctly.” She shoved the bat back to him.

  He didn’t accept it. “You’d be surprised. Here, let me show you.”

  Before she could stop him, he was behind her, his arms covering hers. She felt his chest, broad and hard, pressing against her back. The smell of sweat and cologne combined to yield something tantalizingly male and dangerous.

  He moved his face closer, close enough for her to feel his cheek near hers. Close enough to make her want to feel his cheek against hers.

  Uh-uh.

  Amanda gritted her teeth together, noting with chagrin that an entire section in the bleachers was taking this performance in. “I thought you were going to show me how to hold the bat,” she said, “not waltz with it.”

  “Do you?”

  She twisted within his arms and realized her mistake. She had managed to twist against his entire torso. Contact had to be at a minimum. “Do I what?”

  “Do you waltz?” He could see her, gliding sensuously to three-quarter time. The image was soothing and arousing at the same time.

  Why was he doing this to her? Was it some sort of game that gave him a perverse sense of satisfaction? “I know how, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What else do you know how to do, Amanda Foster?”

  “I know how to hit a man in his solar plexus with the point of my elbow,” she answered sweetly. “Care to learn first hand?”

  He moved his head back slightly and released his hold on her arms. “I’d like to learn a lot of things about you, Mandy. But none of them involve combat.”

  Mandy. No one had ever called her Mandy except for Brenda, her parents’ housekeeper. The only person who had ever made time for her as a child. She didn’t want him to call her Mandy, didn’t want anything nearly that personal between them. He belonged on the outside of her circle, not within it.

  “Well then, you’re out of luck. Combat is the only thing you’re going to get out of me,” she informed him tersely, still keeping her smile in place for the benefit of those who were watching.

  She didn’t like the way his smile slowly spread over his lips, as if he knew something she didn’t. “We’ll see.”

  Another cheer went up. Jon, on the sidelines, pounded someone Amanda didn’t recognize on the back. Ken Riley, the eleven o’clock sportscaster, had made a solid connection with the ball and sent it flying, driving in two more runs.

  Riley ran loose-limbed and awkwardly, like a baby giraffe just gaining its legs, Pierce thought, watching the young man. “It looks as if Riley knows how to play a good game as well as talk it,” Pierce commented.

  He was still close enough for Amanda to feel his words vibrating against her ear. And she didn’t want to hear them. Or feel them.

  She attempted to move away and realized that, though lax, Pierce’s hold on her arms was still firm. “I’m going to dissolve in a puddle if you don’t let me go.”

  She heard his laugh as it rumbled deep in his throat. “Why, Mandy, I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “The heat, Alexander,” she said through gritted teeth. “The heat.”

  She could all but feel his smile. “You noticed it too, eh?”

  Her frustration was welling up. And yet, something small and almost intangible within her didn’t really want to break contact.

  It’s been too long between men, Amanda, she told herself sternly.

  But it was going to have to be even longer. Pierce Alexander was not her choice of bed partners. Choosing him would be tantamount t
o picking up a revolver and playing Russian roulette with six loaded chambers. She had no taste for trouble. She’d had more than enough of it in her life. A spate of tranquillity would be nice for a change.

  Someone behind them was elaborately clearing his throat. As they turned simultaneously, Jon walked up. “Our side’s retired, you two. Are you going to wrestle or play ball?”

  Jon made no effort to hide his surprise at this unexpected coupling. He had been under the assumption that, though attractive and friendly up to a point, nothing except ice water ran through Amanda Foster’s veins.

  Well, well, well. Jon felt his own hormones stirring with promise.

  “Actually we’re going to—“ Pierce began, an amused spark entering his eyes.

  “Play ball,” Amanda concluded, breaking free of his hold. The bat fell on the ground, unheeded. Grabbing her glove from under the bench, Amanda ran out onto the field without so much as a backward glance.

  She didn’t have to look to know Pierce was watching her. She knew.

  “You’re going to strike out, you know.” Jon tossed Pierce his glove. It irked Jon that Pierce attracted women without any effort. Jon had never liked sharing center stage. Or coming in second in anything.

  Pierce pulled his cap down over his eyes. “Never consider the game to be over until after the last ball’s been thrown.” And he hadn’t even wound up for the pitch yet, Pierce thought, watching the sway of Amanda’s hips as she took the field.

  Jon shrugged, broad shoulders courtesy of a Nautilus machine from his enamored wealthy widow rising and falling. “It’s your funeral.”

  Pierce arched a brow, still looking in Amanda’s direction. From here she was all long, tan legs topped off with white shorts that barely qualified for the term. He envisioned those same legs wrapped tightly around him, her low voice moaning his name.

  “Yeah, it is. Might be worth the price at that.”

  Jon smiled as they parted at second base, but he didn’t mean it.

  “Care to go somewhere and celebrate?” Pierce asked Amanda as they ran off the field for the last time forty-five minutes later. They had beaten the rival news station by one run. All around them grown men and women were hugging and cheering. The heat and misery were all but forgotten in light of the victory.