Chapter 6

Later that night Mal prowled through the tunnels below Deacon, trying to dislodge the image of Raina Easton as a very dark and sexy angel that was burned into his brain. He hadn't been able to shake it despite the hours that had passed since he'd seen her.

No more than he'd been able to forget that bloody kiss.

Maybe she'd been right.

Maybe it was a very bad idea.

But now that he'd had a taste of her it was an idea that he definitely wasn't going to be giving up on anytime soon. He came to the end of the tunnel and propelled up the set of stairs that led to the next level. He'd been pushing the pace of his inspection round, trying to wear off some of the energy pulsing through him.

Maybe he should just give up, go change into workout gear, and run a few dozen laps of the stadium itself. That might tire him out enough to actually sleep.

Not that Raina was the only thing likely to keep him up at night right now. She was definitely the most pleasant, though.

But no, as the first game approached, he found himself getting more and more tense. He'd been upgrading the security here at the stadium for months now but the thought of something going wrong still gnawed at him.

He pulled the door from the lower levels shut and made sure it had locked behind him. He'd done everything possible given his time frame and the limitations on how much work he could do to the actual stadium infrastructure.

Until he could do more, he was just going to have to rely on the staff he'd hired and the systems he'd designed and make sure everyone who passed through the stadium gate stayed safe.

When he came out of the elevator to head back to his office, he met Alex and Lucas coming the other way.

"Well, this is just sad," he said. "Shouldn't you two be home at this hour?"

Alex shrugged. "Lots to do."

Lucas nodded agreement.

Mal shook his head. "It's amazing Maggie and Sara put up with the two of you."

"It's not like either of them works shorter hours than we do," Lucas said. "But you're here, too. Shouldn't you be out following our excellent examples and finding a woman to put up with you?"

"I don't recall you meeting Sara by crawling through bars on a weeknight," Mal said.

"I did kind of meet Maggie at a bar," Alex said, looking nostalgic.

"I thought you met her at the meeting where we signed the contracts with Tom to buy this place," Lucas said.

"Well, she was there," Alex said. "But she didn't do much more than look like she'd like to kill me at that meeting." He grinned. "Not that she was much friendlier in the bar, either. But that was the tequila."

"I don't aspire to drive women to drink," Mal said. Ally had liked a drink or two. They'd had quite a few wild nights in their time. But he'd been a lot younger then. And stupider. Now he preferred a clear head most of the time.

"She was drinking because of the deal, not because of me," Alex said. "But hey, it all worked out in the end."

"Still, you didn't meet her in a bar."

"Well, there are plenty of girls floating around at the moment with all those dancers," Lucas said. "Maybe one of them will take pity on you."

He didn't want Raina to take pity on him, he just wanted her to kiss him again. But he wasn't going to talk about that with Alex and Lucas. They'd found great women, yes, but that didn't mean he wanted them matchmaking for him.

Raina seemed skittish enough about things without him subjecting her to his friends. Who were also her employers.

"I'm a little too busy right now for that sort of thing," he said.

"If you're too busy for sex, then we really need to sort out your schedule," Alex said with another grin.

"We have our first game in a few days," Mal said. "I'm sure I can survive that long. So, given that we're all here rather than home in bed alone or otherwise, why don't we talk about where we're at with that?"

Lucas nodded. "Smooth subject change there. But you're right. We're coming down to the end of the inning on this. Is the security system ready, Mal?"

He nodded. "Ready as it can be right now. I still want to upgrade the inner gates at some point, but the camera network is upgraded and the scanner systems at the entry points are operational. Tom already had the bag search and entry rules set up pretty well, so we're just building on those. And the patrol teams know what they're looking for."

"No one is going to try to blow us up," Alex said. "You've done what needed to be done. People will be safe."

Mal sucked in a breath. Safe.

That was his job. What he did. Kept people safe. But there were always lunatics and bastards out there who wanted to use fear as a weapon and didn't care who they hurt.

The three of them had learned that lesson young when the explosion had ripped through a stadium at the last college baseball game any of them had ever played. They'd been lucky, they'd survived. But it had changed all three of them. In a way, it was the reason that they'd all arrived back here now. Back then they'd all thought they knew what their lives were going to be. Major-league ballplayers. Stars. Bound for money and the high life. But instead that explosion had shattered that path and they'd all diverted. He'd joined the army a week after the explosion—once it had been clear that Alex and Lucas were going to be okay despite their injuries—determined to do his part in making the world a safer place. The army had led him to a whole different world. And to Ally.

And now full circle back to the world of baseball.

He wasn't going to let anyone else's world be shattered here.

Alex reached out and punched his arm gently. "We're all still standing. And no one's going to touch what's ours." He gestured at the space around them. "And this place, this team is ours."

Mal nodded and tried to make his shoulders relax. He'd been carrying around a load of tension ever since they'd bought the Saints. True, it was balanced by the joy he felt at the knowledge that he owned a freaking baseball team. But it was there, always, riding him.

Except for a few short minutes when Raina had climbed into his lap and kissed him. She'd made the world go away. Made him feel good.

The question was how to get her to do it again.

Raina stood in the tunnel that led onto the field and tried to quell the nerves in her stomach. From above them, the rumble of the crowd filling the stands sounding alarmingly loud. Deacon Field wasn't a huge stadium—it only held about thirty thousand people—but that was still far more than any theater she'd ever performed in. Not that she was performing today.

She gave herself a mental shake. She should be reassuring the Angels, who were about to make their debut, rather than standing here suffering nerves on their behalf. They'd worked really hard and she was damned proud of what they'd achieve—but at the end of the day, she knew, the reaction to them wouldn't be about the dancing, it would be about the fact that Alex was using cheerleaders in baseball to start a bit of good old-fashioned controversy.

He was relying on the publicity and a degree of scandal. There hadn't been any coverage of the Angels to date—somehow the Saints' media team had worked some voodoo to avoid the news leaking—just a promise of some entertainment between the innings.

And now they—Alex and Mal and Lucas and her and her dancers—were about to find out how good a judge Alex was of the mood of his team's fans.

"This is kind of ridiculous, huh?" Marly said, standing next to her.

Raina looked up at her—and it was a long way up. Marly was nearly the tallest dancer in the troupe, somewhere around five nine without the wings that added more to her height. Combined with the very blue eyes and very blond hair and the oomph Brady's costume had given her cleavage, she was an impressive sight. She was a great dancer, too. Really great. Nearly as good as Ana. And unlike Ana, Marly didn't have the personality of a narcissistic cobra.

Raina kept wondering if she should try to interest Marly in giving burlesque a go. Her height was almost enough to work against her on Broadway but it wouldn't be a hindrance at Madame R, where the burlesque artists came in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

"It's going to be great," Raina said. She looked back over her shoulder. The rest of the squad filled the tunnel that led back to the depths of the stadium, variously stretching or chatting. Ana, who would be at the head of the line when they finally walked out onto the field, was standing apart from all the others, looking supremely bored. Raina had practically had to wrestle her smartphone out of her hand when they'd left the locker room, and apparently life without her texts and social media accounts was too tedious to bear.

Behind Ana, Raina spotted Chen, the security guy Mal had assigned to the Angels. He, unlike Ana, looked alert and watchful and Raina tried to push away the nagging question in her mind about why Mal hadn't come down to wish her luck. Because the part of her brain coming up with that question was stupid. It was the same part that had kissed him. Best ignored.

She turned back to Marly. "It's going to be great," she repeated.

"It's going to be interesting at least," Marly said with a grin. "But still, it's been fun."

"It will keep being fun."

"I hope so. The money is nice. But they'll can us if the fans hate us."

That might be true but Raina had read the contracts before she'd signed up and she'd made sure the girls would still be paid a good chunk of their salary for the gig if the Angels did get canceled. Cheerleaders might get screwed over in some other sports, but she'd been determined that wasn't going to happen on her watch.

Dancers worked damned hard and they deserved to be paid for their efforts.

"Alex Winters isn't the type to give up easily," she said, trying to sound reassuring.

"Let's hope his partners agree," Marly said. She hitched a shoulder. "Can you check my harness at the back? It feels like it's twisted."

"Sure, turn around."

Marly did and Raina reached between the wings to run her fingers along the straps. One section had folded over; she smoothed it into place.

"There. All done." She turned back from the wings and found herself face-to-chest with Malachi Coulter.

She'd avoided him since he'd come to the club. Since that kiss. It had been easy enough to do. Everything at the Saints had been frantically busy these last few crazy days, with no time for socializing. Just for wondering why he hadn't come to find her.

But absence, it seemed, hadn't made the body grow less fond. Her pulse went into double time. She stepped back and almost ran into Marly, who blocked her with a well-placed hand between her shoulder blades.

"Hello, Raina," Mal said.

She tilted her head back to look at him. He wore a sharply cut dark suit—in the glaring light of the tunnel, she couldn't tell if it was black or navy or a very dark gray—and a white shirt and a Saints tie. The suit outlined his shoulders and the long lines of his body with loving precision. His hair was, for once, tamed, combed back from his face, and he'd shaved the stubble he usually sported, leaving the strong clean angles of his face on display. And all those angles seemed to lead to his mouth. That delicious mouth that she'd been trying so hard not to think about.

The mouth smiled at her below brown eyes glinting with something that might have been him remembering their kiss, too.

Her mind went blank.

He'd looked pretty good in jeans and T-shirts. Dressed up, he was pushing all her buttons. Bad boy in good guy packaging.

"Um, hello," she said when she remembered how to speak. "What are you doing down here?"

"Came to see that everything was okay."

"We're good," she said. "Maggie came down to see us in the locker room."

"And the guys went through the security stuff with all of you?"

She nodded. "Yes. Chen explained everything."

Above them the crowd roared suddenly and she figured the inning had come to an end. Which meant any minute now she was going to get a cue and the Angels would be on.

"I think they're about to play our song," she said to Mal. "If you'll excuse me?"

"You're welcome to come up to the owners' box, after," he said.

"Thanks. Maggie already invited me." She didn't say that she'd tried to wriggle out of it as gracefully as possible—she'd figured that Mal might be there.

She looked at the dancers, who were starting to do the nervous little things that dancers did before they went on. Stretching and jogging in place and flexing hands and feet. Tugging at costumes and fussing at the tall white wings. Ana made her way up to the front of the tunnel and the rest of the squad lined up behind her.

"We're about to go on," Raina said, and Mal stepped back somewhat reluctantly. Raina made herself focus on the girls. "Okay, ladies. This is your big moment. So go out there and show them what an angel looks like, okay? Whatever happens, just smile and, for God's sake don't stop dancing." God, she wished she could go out with them, but she couldn't coach from the sidelines. No, she had to stay here in the mouth of the tunnel and let them do their thing.

"We're good," Marly said as she moved into her place behind Ana. "You go talk to the nice boss man some more." She winked at Raina and flicked her blond curls back into place.

"I don't need to talk to the boss man," Raina said. "I've got you all to wrangle."

"Everyone needs to talk to a tall drink of water like him," Marly said.

"Well, then, feel free."

"Sweetie, that man has barely looked at any of us the entire time we've been training. He does, however, do a lot of looking at you."

"He can look all he wants," Raina said. "Now, focus on the routine please."

"Sure," Marly said with another grin. "Easy for me to focus. Malachi Coulter isn't angling to get me into his bed."

"He isn't—" Raina started to protest but then she heard the cue from the guy talking in her headset, and a second later the opening bars of "Send Me an Angel" started to boom over the speaker system. She stepped out of Marly's way and watched as the entire line of dancers snapped into position, not a wing out of place.

"Break a leg," she muttered as they started their slow walk out onto the field. And then she sat back to watch the show.

It had gone pretty well. At least she thought it had.

The fans had been pretty enthusiastic and none of the dancers had killed herself with her wings, so all in all, pretty good.

She'd balked on the invitation to go up to the owners' suite though. For one thing she hadn't really thought about bringing respectable clothes with her because she was driving straight to Madame R's after she was done with the performance. So she was in yoga pants and her favorite pair of foot-pampering trainers with a simple black tunic top and long red cardigan thrown on over them. Not ratty but hardly what you'd wear to hobnob with millionaires.

So she'd overseen the girls cleaning up and changing and helped stow all the sets of wings in the lockers that had been designed for them. They were all invited to a postgame event—an invitation also extended to her, but one she'd already declined—so they all primped madly and she had to sit there and listen to them talking about which of the players was cutest. Which had prompted her to remind them about Mal's warning about getting involved with a player.

At one point Marly came over, bringing with her a waft of freshly applied perfume and hair spray, and sat down next to her. "You're wasting your time hiding down here, you know. I heard him invite you up to the box."

"I am not interested in Malachi Coulter," Raina said.

"Yes, I could see that by how you went all tongue-tied and pink when he said hello to you in the tunnel."

Raina looked around, hoping desperately that no one else had overheard. "I don't date men I work for."

"You're not really working for him."

"He owns a third of this team. Of this bloody stadium. So yes, I'm working for him."

"Not forever, though," Marly said. "And not full-time. So it shouldn't be a problem. My grandma always said to make hay while the sun shines. And that man is worth making hay with."

"Not gonna happen," Raina said. "He's not a good long-term prospect. Not for someone like me."

"Maybe." Marly shrugged. "But think of how much fun you could have in the short term."

Raina narrowed her eyes at her. "Don't you need to flat-iron your hair or something? You gals need to look good at the party so the press has someone to take pretty pictures of. So why don't you worry about finding someone to make hay with yourself?"

"Not interested in a ballplayer," Marly said. "That's almost as bad as hooking up with an actor. Athletes are all about themselves. I like a man who's all about me."

"I didn't mean one of the players. I'm sure there'll be plenty of guys there who aren't on the team," Raina said. "They'll be inviting all the season ticket holders and sponsors—all kinds of men."

"Which raises the question of why, if you're really not interested in the boss man, you're not coming along."

"I have this minor detail called a business to run. You girls aren't the only dancers I've got to keep in order."

"You can't miss one night?"

"Not a Saturday. Saturday is our biggest night. I emcee the show."

"Well, your loss."

"I'll survive," Raina said. "It's not like I've never been to a party before." She had to admit to a certain amount of curiosity. She'd seen pictures from the fund-raiser the Saints had held at the Paragon earlier in the year. It had looked divine, with a steampunk-meets-angels theme that was right up her alley. Maggie had told her some of her plans for tonight and they sounded pretty good, too.

But hey, Saturday nights at the club were also a blast. And there, she wouldn't do anything stupid like drink too much champagne and throw herself at Malachi Coulter's feet. She glanced over at the screen in the corner of the room that was showing the game. "Hey, it looks like they're actually winning," she said. "I might sneak out and watch the end of the game. You want to come with me?"

Marly swept a hand down at the very short, very tight vivid-blue dress she'd squeezed herself into. "Not exactly designed for sitting in the bleachers."

Raina laughed. "I guess not. Well, I've got my phone, so text me if anyone needs anything. I'm staying for the press conference after the game, and then I'm out of here." Maggie had promised that Raina wouldn't have to say anything at the press conference but had insisted she come along in case anyone needed more info about the Angels. Maybe she should take Marly with her. The sight of her in that dress would distract the press from any negative things they might be planning to say about the performance or the squad.

But she'd worry about that later. Right now, she was going to see if she could find an empty seat and eat a hot dog and watch some ball.