Chapter 7

Raina tried to slip away after the press conference, thankful that no one had actually come with a question about the Angels that Alex hadn't been able to answer. That meant she been able to dodge having to actually speak to the assembled reporters. She'd been sitting off to the side with Maggie rather than with Alex, Mal, and Lucas, which was also good because she'd managed to avoid talking to Mal again. Her plan was to get the hell out of Deacon and continue avoiding him. Sadly she didn't manage to get very far before Mal caught up to her.

"You're not coming to the party?" he asked as he appeared next to her in the corridor.

He was about the tenth person to ask her this since Marly had. She kept walking, trying to look like she had very important things to do. "It's Saturday night. I have to be at my club." She didn't look at him.

He and Alex and Lucas had been grinning like loons during the press conference. Only to be expected when the Saints had managed to just steal victory in the last inning. It wasn't the greatest performance in baseball ever but it was, at least, a promising start to the season.

Still, even though she felt happy for them, and happy that they seemed pleased with the Angels' reception, she was less happy to be confronted with a delighted Mal.

Because delighted Mal was even more appealing than ever, something of the tension he carried with him vanishing, and leaving a sort of loose vibe that made every inch of her quiver.

She knew loose and delightful and sexy. That was practically the hallmark of her particular brand of poison when it came to bad boys. She liked the charming ones. The witty ones. The ones who could disarm her with a wicked smile and a quick-fire punch line.

Pity that those particular characteristics seemed to come with wanderlust, no ability to commit, or what her grandmother would have called fecklessness. Or even less pleasant traits.

She'd sworn to herself that she wouldn't go there again. Not after Jeremy. But then she'd met Patrick. Also charming with that touch of an edge. Not the moody artistic version like Jeremy, more the never-quite-grown-up version. Seemingly a good guy who had a taste for very loud metal bands but no other obvious faults. Pity she hadn't seen the less obvious ones. She'd been so relieved to find someone not the kind of jealous over-controlling idiot Jeremy had been that she'd relaxed too quickly. Not kept her guard up. Trusted too soon.

Patrick had cleared out half her bank account on his way out of her life. Half a very hard-earned nest egg—thankfully not all of it as she'd had part of it safely squirreled away in a term deposit—but enough to put a dint in her financial security, her pride, and her faith in her instincts as far as men were concerned.

And then he'd managed to disappear into thin air as far as the cops were concerned. The money was gone as thoroughly as he was. A fact that still made her want to punch something whenever she thought about it.

She needed that money. Her plan to buy the building where Madame R was housed someday would give real security to her—as well as to her family, all the strays and dreamers who, like her, had devoted their lives to the mystery of theater or dance for mostly love.

The need to rebuild her nest egg as soon as possible was the reason she'd taken the crazy contract with the Saints.

Her landlord—Phil—had been particularly unpleasant lately and she wanted to be able to make him an offer he couldn't refuse if push came to shove and he tried to oust her. So that she wouldn't be thrown out on the street to start all over again. She was tired of that life. Of changing theaters and companies and shows and never knowing how long something might last. Jeremy and Patrick hadn't helped in that department.

She wanted some solid ground. Bedrock. Roots. Whatever you wanted to call it. Something that couldn't be snatched away from her. Which would've made most of her friends, who always held her up as a shining example of someone born to thrive in the firefly life of the theater, scream with laughter.

And here was Malachi Coulter. Seemingly solid. But she knew wild at heart when she smelled it.

Like called to like.

Or something.

Which was why it was so disturbing to see that so clearly and still want him like she wanted oxygen or music to dance to.

Malachi who was walking quietly beside her, apparently not going to argue with her.

Which made her even more nervous. She needed to ditch him asap. "I know my way back to the locker room."

He didn't change his pace, just glanced down at her with a half smile. "I know you do. But it's dark out now and I'm walking you to your car."

"It's not dark in the underground lot," she pointed out. "Gardner got me a space today."

Mal shrugged. "It will still be mostly deserted. My guys have done their last sweeps of the stadium to make sure everyone has cleared out but I'm not taking any chances."

She wondered if that was true. Was he being chivalrous or was he just finding an excuse to spend some time with her? And then she wondered which of those options was more disconcerting.

She didn't have an answer.

They reached the elevator. Raina pressed the button and held it for a few seconds too long, willing the aging lift to move faster than its usual glacial pace. The locker rooms were down in the lower levels, and the press conference had been held in one of the big meeting rooms on the executive floor.

The door slid open and Raina stepped in. Mal followed.

It wasn't a big elevator but it wasn't tiny. And yet Mal seemed to take up a little too much space. Long legs and broad shoulders and altogether too much man still showcased in that very nice suit. She moved back slightly, practically wedging herself into the corner.

The silence turned heavy and dense as they stood watching the numbers above the door go down slowly.

Say something.

Say something, idiot.

"You must be happy with the win," she managed. Safe subject. Hopefully. If he was like most sports-mad men she knew, he'd be able to talk for hours about the game. She liked baseball but she didn't feel any need to know every last detail about her team. In this case, though, she was willing to let Mal talk and to shut up and listen if it meant avoiding the heat practically lighting the air between them.

Mal smiled then.

Damn. She'd forgotten about that delighted smile and its killer effect. She should've picked an unpleasant topic.

"It was a start," he said. "It would've been nice if they'd gotten some more runs on the board, locked it up earlier."

"That's a bit harsh. The Saints aren't exactly the greatest team in the league. You should be happy with the win." He laughed and she narrowed her eyes at him. "You're one of those never-satisfied types, aren't you?"

"No," he said. "But I'm a realist. It was a good start and the guys should be proud of themselves but they can do better. They will do better."

Heaven help them if they didn't.

Maggie had told her that Mal was the least intense of the terrible trio, as she called them. Either she was really wrong about that or Alex and Lucas were taking intense to a whole new level. Raina reminded herself not to bring up the team's performance in anything other than a glowing light around those two, just in case.

The elevator jolted to a stop and the door slid slowly open, the dinging sound that accompanied the action sounding distorted and weird.

Maybe Mal made it nervous, too.

Mal stepped out and put his palm on the edge of the door, waving her out. She scurried past him and headed off down the hallway to the locker room, not waiting to see if he was following her. Mostly because she knew he would be.

She swiped her pass at the door and went inside to grab her stuff. Which consisted of her coat and the huge old black case that housed her emergency kit. As usual, it looked a little worse for wear, stuffed to the gills with spare tights and cold packs and ibuprofen and eyedrops and every type of makeup anyone could possibly ever need backstage along with half a hundred other things that could come in handy in a performance emergency. But the zipper, though strained, was closed and she wasn't going to take the time to fuss with it with Mal looming at her side. She shrugged into the coat and flipped up the handle on the case.

Mal held out his hand. "I'll take your case."

"I can manage," she said.

"I know," he said. "But I'm offering."

"Are you going to get huffy if I say no?"

"I'm not sure I've ever been ‘huffy' in my life. So no, probably not. If you're determined to drag that around by yourself, so be it."

She was tempted to put him to the test. But then she remembered just how awkward the case could be. And she had a show to do tonight. So conservation of energy was only sensible. She stepped out of his way. "Be my guest. Thank you," she added.

"My pleasure," he said. She waited for another grin. Or an eyebrow waggle. Or something. But no, he just lifted the case off the bench effortlessly and rolled it over to the door. Which he then held for her.

Her grandmother would be impressed. A polite big ol' parcel of man trouble. Which made a nice change. Though Raina was determined not to be impressed.

"The press was pretty good, about the Angels, I thought," she offered as they headed to the parking lot.

Mal nodded. "Yes. There'll probably be some really stupid puns in the headlines tomorrow but at least no one has thrown a fit." He looked down at her. "They looked good. I still think cheerleaders in baseball is a dumb idea, but you did a good job."

"Thanks." They'd reached the door to the parking lot and Mal swiped his pass to let them through. On the other side, he looked around the parking lot. "Which one is—no, wait. Let me guess. It's the hot-pink pickup?"

"Guilty," she said. Rose was hardly an extravagance; she'd bought her as a very hard-used dirt-cheap means of transporting herself once she'd moved out of Manhattan a few years ago. When she'd finally opened Madame R's, Brady and Luis had surprised her with the new paint job, an engine refit, and gleaming black leather upholstery as a business-warming present.

It still made her smile every time she saw her truck. It made her smile now as they crossed the lot.

"Do you want the case in back or inside?" Mal asked when they reached Rose.

"In this weather, inside," Raina said. She unlocked the passenger door. Mal lifted the case inside. As she shut the door, he said, "Nice truck. I like these old Fords."

"You'd just prefer it not to be pink?" she said.

"Not really my color," he said with another smile. Then, as Raina moved to skirt around him, his expression went grim.

She froze. "What?"

His chin jerked toward the hood. "You have a flat tire."

"What?" she repeated. "Really? Crap." She craned her neck to see, trying not to think of the time. Normally she was at Madame R midafternoon on Saturdays. And it was already close to six. They opened at eight and the show started around nine. But there was no denying the fact her tire was doing a pretty good pancake impersonation. So time to deal and get on with things. "It's okay," she said. "I have a spare. And Triple A."

Mal prowled around to the other side of the truck. His mouth went flat when he got there. "Do you have two spares?"

"Two?" She darted around to join him. The front tire on the driver's side was just as flat. "Fuck."

"Pretty much," Mal said. "One tire might be an accident. Two is deliberate."

"Or maybe just very bad luck," she said. "Maybe I drove over some glass or something."

Mal knelt by the tire and ran his hands over it. "Nope. Someone stabbed it." He stuck his finger into the side of the rubber, and the top joint disappeared inside the tire. "Glass doesn't usually cut the sidewall." He scowled at the tire.

"Maybe someone didn't like the Angels so much after all," she said.

Mal pushed back up to his feet, shaking his head. "Pretty fast job of figuring out that you're the choreographer and this is your truck." He wiped his hand on his suit, leaving a smudge of grime across the leg.

Raina winced.

"What," he said.

"You just got mud and grease and God knows what else on what had to be a very expensive suit," Raina said.

"I'll get it cleaned," he said, voice holding a distinct rumble. "My suit is hardly our biggest problem right now."

"My biggest problem right now is how I'm going to get back to the club." Where she would now need to have a very good night to be able to squeeze two new tires into her very tight budget. She didn't want to dip into her Saints money if she could possibly avoid it.

"No, your biggest problem is whoever did this to your tires."

"It could've been anyone," she protested.

Another head shake. "This area is VIP only. I don't think anyone on the team or any of the sponsors or ticket holders slashed your tires. Which means whoever did this snuck in."

"Well, you have that whiz-bang security system," she said. "So you'll be able to see who did it, right? Which means we can deal with it. But that still leaves me with no ride and a club in Brooklyn about to open."

"I'll take you," Mal said.

"You," she said, doing some definite head shaking of her own, "have a party to go to. And a team to congratulate. And important baseball-team-owner stuff to do. You're can't go haring off to Brooklyn."

"Haring?" He looked amused. "You do like strange words. First I'm huffy, now I'm haring."

"I read," she said, sticking her chin out. "My folks believed in education, and you get a lot of spare time hanging around in theaters. So I read. And do crosswords. I'm betting I could beat your butt at Scrabble."

"Probably," he said. "Though I read, too."

"Security system manuals and computer programming books don't count," she said. "No one ever got a pithy phrase from one of those."

That made him laugh. "No, probably not," he said. "But we've strayed from the subject. Which was me taking you to Brooklyn."

"No, it was how you're not going to take me to Brooklyn. Because you are needed elsewhere. And besides, you ride a Harley. There's no room for my case on a Harley." God knows, she did not want to spend any time pressed up against Mal's body on the back of a motorcycle. "Just call me a cab. I'll be fine."

He looked distinctly displeased again. "Not a cab. I'll call my driver."

"You have a driver?"

"Yes. Sometimes I need to work, not drive."

She wasn't going to argue. But it was another reminder that he wasn't a good proposition. He was a bad boy, despite his manners, but he was a wealthy bad boy. Which meant that he probably wouldn't clear out her bank account, but he was likely to do some serious damage to her heart when he moved on to someone far more suitable to date the owner of the New York Saints than a thirty-year-old burlesque club owner.

"Okay," she said. "Call him."

"We're not done discussing who did this," Mal said.

"I didn't for a moment expect that we were," she said. "But Luis has fixed all the things you suggested at the club and Saturday's the night we have the most security staff, so I'm perfectly safe at Madame R's."

He looked as though he was going to argue but then he just pulled out his cell and made the call. When he'd hung up, he said, "Five minutes."

"You keep a driver on call here on Staten Island?"

"I'm going to a party," Mal said. "I'm not going to ride home after that, so yes, Ned's on call tonight. He came to the game. This will give him something to do while I'm schmoozing."

"He doesn't get to come to the party?"

"He was invited. He declined. He likes to watch movies on his laptop while he waits for me. Said he's got a new one he's been looking forward to. He's not much into socializing, Ned."

"Let me guess, he's ex-army, too?" Malachi seemed the type to employ one of his old army buddies.

"Yes," Mal said. He looked up as the doors slid open and a man wearing a neat dark-gray suit, his sandy-brown hair military-short, walked through carrying a briefcase in one hand and a set of keys in the other.

Mal extracted Raina's case from Rose, waited while she locked the truck, and then held out his hand. "Leave your keys with me."

"Why?"

"Because I know a guy with a garage near here. He'll come and fix your tires."

"Does everyone just jump when you snap your fingers?" she murmured. Still, she needed Rose, and if Mal's way meant getting her back faster, then so be it.

"Everyone but you," Mal said as she tugged her car key off her fob and handed it to him.

She wasn't sure if he was joking or not so she just kept quiet while she followed him across the lot to where the guy in the gray suit—Ned presumably—was standing beside a black Mercedes.

"Ned, this is Raina," Mal said. "She needs to go to Brooklyn." He reeled off the club's address. "See that she gets inside safely. I'm going to be at this party until about midnight, I'd say. So you don't need to be back until eleven at the earliest. Grab some dinner or something."

Raina had thought that the Saints had a game in Baltimore the next day, but maybe the team would go home early and the party would continue without them. Or maybe they were used to burning the candle at both ends. Not that she thought the terrible trio were likely to put up with any of their players doing the sorts of things that seemed to land pro athletes on the wrong side of the law and the media.

"Sure," Ned said. His voice was soft but deep. "Just call if you need me sooner."

"I will," Mal said. He turned his attention back to Raina. "I'm going to call the security team now, get them to look at the tapes. So we'll be talking about this."

"So you said." She still wasn't sure why he seemed to be taking this so personally. Was he upset because someone had gotten past his security system? Or because it was her who'd been targeted? The second possibility made no sense. They hardly knew each other. One kiss wasn't enough to make him bent out of shape about a flat tire or two, was it?

She didn't really want to know. There was a fine line between concern and control. She'd let a man drag her across that line once. Never again.

It was easier to think of Mal as pure chemistry. Heat that could flare up like rocket and fade just as quickly. Then he'd be easier to resist. And resisting him wasn't making her day any easier. So, time to hit the road. She held out her hand to Ned. "Hi, I'm Raina Easton. You must be Ned."

Ned nodded and took her case from Mal. "Yes, ma'am." He clicked something and the lights on the Merc came on as the lid of the trunk slowly eased upward.

"Raina," she said firmly. "Mr. Coulter, thank you for the help. I'm glad you liked the routine today." And then she fled into the safety of the backseat of the Mercedes and let Ned drive her away.