Chapter 3

Raina let herself into her apartment at somewhere close to two a.m. As usual, she felt wide awake after a night at the club, riding the adrenaline of the audience and the performance. Being a night owl came in handy for a Broadway dancer and a nightclub owner. It was less convenient, though, when she had to be at Deacon field at nine in the morning for practice. Apparently she was going to have to get used to sleeping in shifts or something while she was training the Angels.

She padded over to her fridge and pulled out cheese, bread, and turkey. If she was going to be awake, she might as well eat something and catch up on her email. The opening of the fridge brought her cat, Wash, prowling over from his favorite spot on the sofa to see if perhaps there was turkey to spare for him.

She bent to pat him and tug at his smoky-gray plume of a tail but didn't give in. She'd fed him before she'd left for the club earlier. And even though he had a Maine Coon–sized appetite, that didn't mean he could eat everything he wanted. He chirruped his displeasure a few times then stalked off again, probably to seek and destroy one of her stockings as vengeance for the lack of treats. She kept a stash of her ruined ones for him to find, so he couldn't wreak too much havoc.

Sandwich assembled, she wandered over to the nook where she kept her computer and flipped the laptop open.

For a moment, the pleasure of being alone washed over her. Of coming home to her own space. No one waiting for her other than Wash. No one wanting every detail of her life. No one to judge or control.

She shivered a little. Control. She hadn't thought about that word for a while. Hadn't thought of Jeremy. Jeremy who'd started off as the alluring bad boy and turned into a nightmare.

Jeremy who was long gone, she told herself firmly. And the reason she'd built this new life for herself at Madame R. In the aftermath of Jeremy, she'd wanted something more stable. More permanent. Not so full of the crazy as theater life. Though some might question the choice of a burlesque club as the saner option, it was hers.

She tried to let the memory of Jeremy dissolve back into past regrets where it belonged. Easy enough to figure what had conjured him tonight, though. The appearance of another man with that bad-boy edge. That touch of danger that drew her despite her better judgment. Despite the lessons she'd learned.

Which only went to show that she still needed to be alone. To keep learning that lesson. So Malachi Coulter and his big bad self were to be firmly kept at arm's length.

She took a bite of sandwich, chewed. She needed food and sleep. Not a man. But she wasn't sleepy yet.

There was a folder of paperwork she'd brought home from the club with her. She could spend an hour checking accounts and doing all that administrative crap that never seemed to end. That might be boring enough to reverse the effects of the night and send her to sleep.

Or maybe not. She was buzzed, her foot tapping restlessly against the leg of the chair.

Which, lessons learned or not, she knew wasn't entirely due to the usual performance rush. Nope. It was perfectly clear, when she let herself look squarely at the problem, that part of what had her body humming was the unexpected appearance of Malachi Coulter in her club.

Drinking her beer. Drinking her in with his eyes.

Making her want to eat him up.

Inconvenient was too mild a world for it. Inappropriate was closer.

Inadvisable closer still.

Or maybe just plain old insane. He was the wrong guy. She didn't need another wrong guy.

Been there, done that. Twice even.

So all this energy surging through her was going to have to be channeled elsewhere. She could take it out on the Angels in their rehearsals or else fit a daily run into her spare seconds. Brady had an elliptical trainer down in the club's basement. That would work. Or maybe even a dance class or two. She hadn't made it down to Evie's studio in far too long. She just had to work it off or wait it out. Eventually, it would wear off. Bad-boy buzz usually did.

But wearing off wouldn't help her tonight, so she needed a distraction. A new routine for one of the girls at the club? Or herself? Or a new costume. New costumes were always fun. She stretched an arm out to grab her tablet. Then looked around for the stylus. It wasn't in its usual place in the cup of pencils beside her monitor. Which meant that Wash had probably kidnapped it.

For reasons known only to his small feline brain, he had something of an obsession with her stylus. Maybe it was the shiny green color. Maybe it was the fact that he didn't like it when she sat on the couch and worked on her tablet instead of letting him sit on her lap, so he blamed it on the stylus. Either way, two days out of three the stylus went missing from her desk. It didn't matter if she hid it in a drawer—Wash could open drawers—and if she put it somewhere truly Maine Coon–proof, he would just steal something else. She'd resigned herself to playing hunt-the-stylus more regularly than she might have liked.

It looked like she would be playing tonight. She eased herself out of the seat, winced at the stiffness in her muscles setting in. Between the Angels and the club, she had been spending more time dancing than she had in a while. The return of the familiar aches and pains that had been her companions when she'd worked on Broadway, along with a few new friends they brought along for the ride, was reminding her exactly why she'd given up full time professional dancing.

She was thirty. Old for a dancer. And feeling it.

Perhaps she'd add a bath to the agenda. She'd showered at the club and rubbed herself down with her favorite stinky liniment but it hadn't quite done the job. A bath. With the killer mineral salts and some lavender oil or something to relax her. And a book, perhaps. But first the stylus.

When she was halfway to Wash's bed—his favored hiding spot for his prizes—her cell phone starting playing "Send Me An Angel." Which meant one of the girls or Brady had been messing with her settings again. They were all pretty amused by her Saints gig, and angel-themed ringtones, screensavers, and tchotchkes were appearing in strange places with alarming regularity.

Raina reversed direction and headed back to her kitchen counter, grabbing the phone just before it went to voice mail. Sure enough it was Brady.

"Shouldn't you be in bed with your new husband?" she said only half joking.

"Luis is doing something with the security cameras," Brady said. "So we're still at the club and I'm bored."

"Sew a sequin on something." Brady helped backstage with makeup, costumes, and whatever else the girls needed to keep the Madame R show ticking over like clockwork. He also designed a lot of the costumes and turned the ideas Raina had into glorious shining reality.

"I'm off the clock," he retorted.

"You're never off the clock. Neither am I."

"Which is why I knew you'd be awake at this ungodly hour to talk me through my boredom."

"First, tell me about the security cameras," Raina said. The security system at the club was about as good as she could afford, but the setup she'd chosen had proven to have a number of quirks. Including cameras that seemed to decide at random to go on strike, the occasional spontaneous wiping of the hard drives they used to record the images, and other niggles that kept Luis busy on a regular basis.

He'd threatened more than once to go down and knock the heads of the guys who'd sold her the system, but Raina had restrained him. She didn't want the trouble and suspected the reason she'd gotten a deal on the system in the first place was because it was perhaps not entirely from the original manufacturer. But it did the job for now. She'd replace it as soon as she could, but at the moment she was saving every possible penny.

"Luis says it's nothing to worry about," Brady said. "He'll fix it."

"Okay." She let go of the breath she'd been holding. She really couldn't afford the chunk of cash a new system would eat up. Well, technically she could because she had the Angels gig, but she needed that money for the down payment on the building where Madame R was housed. Phil, her weasel of a landlord, made muttering noises about selling every so often and Raina was determined to have a shot at buying it herself. The club was starting to do steady business, so she could just about squeak the loan if she had a good solid down payment.

"So tell me about the guy at the bar," Brady said in her ear.

"What guy?" Raina said.

"Mr. Tall Dark and Hot," Brady said.

For a moment she genuinely drew a blank—money woes apparently having chased thoughts of Malachi Coulter from her head—but then she remembered. "I hope Luis can't hear you."

"He can. He thought your bar guy was hot, too."

"He's not my bar guy."

"You were very chatty with him. You had that flirty look."

"I did not have a flirty look," Raina denied.

"Sweetheart, I know your flirty look. You had it. So, give. Who is he?"

"Can't I take the Fifth?"

"There's no taking the Fifth with your best friend," Brady said. "I'll just nag you into confessing."

He would, too. Dogged pursuit of a goal was an attribute that Brady shared with Wash. "His name is Malachi Coulter," Raina said.

"That's the baseball guy?" Brady said, sounding startled.

"Yes. I'm surprised you didn't know that already."

"I'm a Yankees fan. I don't pay attention to what those upstart Saints do."

"The Saints have been around just as long as the Yankees."

"Yeah, out on that island. That's not really New York."

"Says the boy who roots for the Yankees even though he was born and raised in New Jersey."

"Having said that, if all the Saints' management look like him, I could be persuaded to change my allegiance," Brady said with a laugh.

"Alex Winters is the really pretty one."

"Blond is not my thing."

"You're only saying that because Luis can hear you," Raina said. Though Luis had, in the time she'd known him, had hair pretty much every color of the rainbow, he had currently reverted to his natural deep brown.

"Nope, I don't think I've even ever dated a blond," Brady said. "But stop changing the subject. We were discussing you, Malachi Coulter, and the flirty look."

"Correction. You were attempting to discuss that. I was telling you there was nothing to discuss."

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much."

"Methinks you should remember that the lady has decided guys like that are not her thing anymore."

"Hmmm, rich, handsome, rides a hot motorcycle, owns a baseball team, it doesn't sound too terrible."

"Rich and handsome are fine," Raina said. "Rich and handsome would be good without the motorcycle. The motorcycle says bad boy." She paused a moment. "How do you know he rides a motorcycle?" She hated herself for asking. She'd sworn off motorcycles, too. Because of the guys that usually came attached to them.

"We checked out the security tape of him leaving. Gorgeous big black thing it was."

"I wasn't aware that thing was a brand," Raina said.

"Why do you care what brand of motorcycle it is, if you've sworn off guys like him?" Brady asked.

"Well, if it was some urban Honda number, maybe he isn't a bad boy. Maybe he's just having an early midlife crisis."

"Maybe he's just a nice hot guy who likes motorcycles. And you, judging by the fact he came calling. He didn't seem to be paying much attention to the other girls."

"He's in security, he's nosy," Raina said. "Probably trying to build a case against me so he can convince Alex to drop the Fallen Angels."

"He's not a fan of cheerleaders?" Brady said.

"No."

"So that's one thing you agree on him with."

"Maybe. But I'm not telling him that. Because then we don't get the nice fat check that comes along with the crazy cheerleader idea. And we want the nice fat check. Which is another reason to have no interest in Malachi Coulter. Bad boy or no bad boy, I definitely don't sleep with men who are hiring me."

Brady sighed. "And here I was hoping for some vicarious excitement."

"Dude, you've only been married a few months. You don't need vicarious excitement, you have Luis."

"This is true. But that doesn't mean I don't want you to have no fun."

"I hardly have time for fun at the moment."

"All work and no play make Raina a dull girl."

"All work and no play makes sure that we all have a roof over our heads and gainful employment at the moment. I can handle a little dull for a while."

"You've never handled dull very well."

"That was the old Raina. The new Raina is all about responsibility and sensible routine."

"Most people wouldn't call running a burlesque club all that routine, you know."

"Well, I'm modifying the old Raina, not throwing her under a bus." She changed positions and felt her back twinge a little. "Speaking of things that are old, my back is in need of some heat and TLC. Is Luis done yet?"

Brady sighed again. "Yeah, I think so."

"Then why don't you take your handsome husband home and get him to distract you?"

"All right. But don't think you've heard the end of this."

"I would never," Raina said. "Love you, see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Brady said and hung up, leaving Raina all alone in her apartment with renewed thoughts of Malachi Coulter to subdue.

She had to stop looking up at the damned office tower. It was getting ridiculous. For one thing, the windows were covered with that reflective stuff that meant she couldn't see in. So even if she did know exactly which office was Mal's, there was no way she was going to spot him.

For another thing, if she didn't pay attention to what her feet were doing, she was likely to land flat on her ass. And that wasn't a good look for anyone.

Raina dragged her attention back down to the girls in front of her. Who were shimmying and shaking and ball changing pretty damned well.

She smiled approval and led the way into the next combination of the routine.

It was only five days since they'd first practiced together and she was pretty happy with where they'd gotten to. She thought she had the measure of them all now.

Of course, the next step was to get them dancing in costumes. And given that Alex had insisted on wings being part of their outfits—at least for the first game they danced at—that was going to prove interesting.

She'd been working with Brady to come up with wings that would actually let the girls dance rather than just parade around like Victoria's Secret models—or alternatively wouldn't look like dinky little Cupid's wings. If Alex wanted wings then goddamned wings she would give him. But it wasn't easy.

Nor was it that easy to figure out what they should wear. The Saints' colors were white, blue, yellow, and silver, which didn't exactly lend themselves to a Fallen Angels theme. But given this was baseball and had to be somewhat family-friendly, maybe that was a good thing.

She moved through the last sequence of steps by rote and then held up a hand as they all came to a stop.

"Okay, that was pretty good. Just remember to keep it sharp when you're doing those place transitions. You're going to be working in a big space, so if you're out of place, things are going to get wonky fast. But let's take five and then we'll come back for the next routine." She bent to grab her water bottle and swallowed gratefully. Then picked up her jacket and shrugged it on. It was almost April but the weather was still pretty bad.

The last two days, they'd ended up practicing inside due to rain, but today she'd made everyone get out on one of the training fields. The squad needed to be able to perform on grass and they didn't have all that much time up their sleeves to get the hang of it.

It was warm enough when they were moving but no point anyone catching pneumonia during the breaks. "Make sure you keep warm," she yelled as the dancers moved off toward the sidelines where they'd left their gear. She caught the eye-roll Ana sent her way but decided to let it go. She was going to have to pull her up sooner or later but an eye-roll wasn't enough to confront her over. Not yet.

Raina watched the girls go, trying to see if anyone was limping or doing anything unusual that would indicate that they'd hurt themselves.

She didn't need any walking wounded at this stage. Everyone needed to be on top of their game to make the splash Alex wanted. But she couldn't spot anything so she made her way back over to the speakers and iPod dock she'd brought along to cue up the next song.

A woman with long dark hair stood waiting beside the equipment. She had a Saints scarf wrapped around her neck and wore a thigh-length dark-blue wool coat that Raina envied as a sudden gust of wind hit her and cut through her dance gear like it wasn't there.

The woman stuck out a hand. "Hi, we met once before. I'm Maggie Jameson."

Raina nodded, summoning a smile of her own, and shook Maggie's hand. Great, one of the boss types down to check out what she was doing. "I remember."

Maggie nodded toward the dancers, who were standing huddled together while they drank from water bottles and checked their phones.

"They look really good," she said.

"Thanks, I think it's coming together."

"You've done well. It's not like we gave you a long deadline."

"Comes with the territory," Raina said. "Outside of Broadway, I'm not sure I've ever had a job that came with quite enough rehearsal time. And even those get down to the wire if the show's not quite coming together."

"I can imagine," Maggie said. "Not that I know much about dance. The audience is about as close as I get. I did ballet for a couple of years when I was little but I think it was a relief for all concerned when I decided it wasn't for me."

"Well, you're definitely too tall for ballet," Raina said. Maggie had boots with a relatively sensible two-inch heel but she had to be close to six feet in them. Which made Raina feel like a midget, but around the Saints, she was starting to get used to that. She wasn't that short in the dance world but apparently everyone in baseball had been handed out the tall genes.

There'd been players wandering around the complex for the last few days and she'd yet to spot a short one.

"Yes," Maggie said. "Which is why it's good that I'm better at baseball. Anyway, I just wanted to come down and see if you needed anything. Is the schedule okay?"

"Yes," Raina said. "I'm trying to sneak in a few more sessions on the main field, so I have to get clearance from Mr. Coulter for those but otherwise everything is fine. Shonda got me set up for invoicing for the costumes and everything else."

"Mr. Coulter?" Maggie said. "Please tell me you call him that to his face?"

Raina wasn't sure what the joke was. "Well, he kind of does that tall-dark-and-very-focused thing. Doesn't really invite a first-name basis."

Maggie's eyebrows rose. "Oh really?"

"I've only met him a couple of times," Raina said.

"Interesting," Maggie said, and Raina had the sudden urge to shake her down for more information. Or at least to find out what she was thinking. Because Raina had the distinct feeling that Maggie was finding something funny. And she didn't quite know what.

"Not really," she said, putting on her best nothing-to-see-here face. The last thing she needed was to let anyone else at the Saints know that there was anything … inadvisable in the air between her and Mal. She was here to do a job, not sleep with one of the guys paying her. Time to end the conversation. She waved toward the dancers. "Was there anything else you needed from me?" she asked. "Because we need to get going again before anyone stiffens up in this weather."

Maggie shook her head. "No. Of course, keep doing what you're doing. But give me a call if you do need anything."

"I will." Raina turned away.

"Maybe I'll see you at your club sometime soon," Maggie said.

Raina froze, then turned back. "You want to come to Madame R?"

"Sure. Well, Sara and I do. Not sure we'll drag the guys down. I've been to a couple of burlesque shows in Manhattan. They're great."

At least she wasn't a complete newbie. That was a relief. The last thing she needed was Maggie Jameson scandalized. Of course, if the Saints were going to be scandalized about burlesque, they wouldn't have hired her in the first place.

"I'll leave your name at the door," Raina said. "Come anytime."