Chapter 9

Raina undid the lock on her apartment door and pushed it open with a hand that was relatively steady. She'd been afraid that she might fumble her keys or something. She'd driven them from Madame R to her apartment. Mal had pointed out that leaving her truck on the street was just an invitation if there really was someone out there targeting her. And her apartment building came with a tiny parking lot that she could just squeeze Rose into.

But she didn't really remember much about the actual drive. She'd been far too aware of the man filling the passenger seat to focus on anything else. She was used to driving alone most of the time so it was odd to have someone with her, but it wasn't just the fact that she had a passenger that was making her nervous. No, that was down to who her passenger was.

Mal took up a lot of space. Her truck was big but he made it feel tiny. The cabin smelled like him. Male. Spicy. A hint of the odd mix of alcohol and crowds and greasepaint and candle smoke that she associated with the club still hung around, but mostly the scent of him enveloped her.

The same smell that had surrounded her and soaked into her skin when she'd kissed him.

And now he wasn't just in her truck, he was about to walk into her apartment. For a drink. Not sex. She'd told him that.

But now she had no idea if she was happy with that plan or not.

She held the door as he walked through, keeping an eye out for Wash in case he made one of his infrequent attempts to break for freedom. But no huge gray fuzzball appeared so she followed Mal into the apartment and shut the door, locking it behind them. The apartment was in a slightly nicer part of town than the club—it was strange what the distance of a few blocks could do in a city—but it wasn't all that much better. Still, it was affordable and close to Madame R, so it was fine as far as she was concerned. Plus it was about three times the size of the biggest apartment she'd ever had in Manhattan, so that was a bonus.

She dropped her keys into the vintage soap dish on the console table by the door and hung her bag and coat over the hook next to it.

As she turned back, she heard a thump and a chirrup as Wash jumped down from wherever he'd been sleeping and came to investigate.

He saw Mal and the chirrup changed to a more demanding meow.

Mal's eyebrows rose as he spotted the cat. "Well, he's not the runt of the litter, is he?"

Raina shook her head and bent to scoop Wash up. "He's a Maine Coon, they're big."

"He's bigger than my last dog. Heck, he's almost bigger than you."

She ignored that last part. "You had a little dog?" she asked. Mal seemed more the big-dog type. The kind to own a shepherd or a golden or something.

"Einstein. He was a Boston terrier," Mal said. "I kind of inherited him from a friend. He was a cool little dude."

"Was?"

"He died about a year ago." Mal's face went shuttered for a moment.

Her grip on Wash tightened reflexively, which made him chirrup a protest. "I'm sorry."

"He was fifteen. It's okay."

It wasn't. It never was, she knew that. Thank God Wash was only two. "You don't have a dog now?"

He shook his head. "I'm barely home at the moment. It wouldn't be fair. Maybe one day."

She nodded. And half kicked herself for asking. Dead pets were hardly the sort of thing she'd expected to discuss with Mal. "So," she said. "How about that drink?" She put Wash down. He promptly stalked over to Mal and sat at his feet, peering up at him with golden eyes.

Mal peered down, looking amused. "What's up, cat?"

"His name is Wash," Raina said. Wash sniffed Mal's leg, then rubbed himself quite deliberately across Mal's dark pants, leaving a trail of pale fur before heading for the kitchen. There he took up position beside his bowl with a demanding mrrrrooowwww.

Raina shrugged an apology at Mal and followed Wash. After scooping a suitably Wash-sized portion of food into his bowl, she took out two scotch glasses from the cabinet. One drink. Just one drink. Then she'd send him home.

"Ice?" she asked.

"Yes."

She made the drinks and shepherded him into her living room. Her sofa was small, more a love seat. So she took the spindly-legged pink velvet armchair and waved Mal to the sofa.

Then bounced back up to go to her computer and put on some music.

When she sat back down, Mal was sipping his drink, watching her over the rim of the heavy glass.

"Good scotch," he said.

"Life's too short to drink bad booze." She picked up her glass, took a mouthful, and tried to relax.

"Amen to that." He took another sip, looked around the room. "I like your place."

"It's small." His place, if she was remembering what she'd read about him correctly, was not.

Mal gestured at the room. "This looks like you."

She looked around. It wasn't too messy; despite the hectic last few weeks, she'd managed to spend a few hours here and there keeping the disaster zone to a minimum. But it was a riot of color. And overstuffed with well, stuff. Her tiny desk was disappearing beneath papers. And her plants needed watering. "It's home. For now."

"For now? You're thinking of moving?"

"Eventually, sure."

"Does that mean closing the club?"

"What? Oh. No. It means that one day hopefully the club will be doing well enough that I can afford somewhere bigger."

"Ah. Somewhere for the giant cat to stretch his legs."

Wash chose that moment to come over and investigate what was happening now that he'd finished his dinner. He looked at Raina sitting in the chair, sent her a why aren't you on the sofa like normal, crazy human look, then sprang onto the sofa. He sniffed at Mal then retreated to the other end of the sofa, sitting watchfully.

"I get the feeling your cat disapproves," Mal said.

"He's a smart cat," she said.

Mal put down his glass. "Okay. Are you going to tell me exactly what about me makes you so nervous?"

How about everything? "That might take another drink or two." She swirled the ice around in her drink, heard the ice clink, then took a swallow. The scotch burned all the way down and set up a warm glow in her stomach. Not enough to distract her, though.

"All right, then who taught you to drink scotch?"

"Taught me?"

"Bad choice of words. Introduced you?"

She shrugged and shifted on the chair. Her legs protested with twinges. What she really needed right now was to stretch. Normally she'd be in the shower or the bath, easing the aches that five hours of too-high heels and performance sentenced her body to. But with Mal here that wasn't going to happen. "I've always danced. Which means paying attention to what I put into my body. When I was younger I was a little obsessed about it and beer was always too many calories. So I drank spirits. And my granddad drank scotch so that's what I drank. By the time I wised up on the diet front and realized I was never going to be a skinny ballerina, I'd acquired the taste for it. Never did go back and learn to love beer."

"Did you want to be a ballerina?"

"For a while. But like I said, wrong body type."

Mal smiled at her over his own glass. There was something wicked about that smile. "It looks pretty good to me."

She shot him a look.

"What? You left that opening a mile wide."

"I thought baseball players were meant to know when not to swing at something."

"Only if you always want to play it safe."

Meaning why not take a risk? On him? She ignored his line. She wasn't ready to step up to the plate. Not just yet. What had she been talking about. Ballet. Right. She looked down. She was hardly built like a bombshell but her proportions—or so her teachers had informed her—were wrong for ballet. "Anyway, ballet and I weren't meant to be. So I switched to other kinds of dance. That was the main thing, that I got to dance." And she'd just kept dancing. No matter what. That had been the one constant thing in her life. Dance. Pushing her body to its limits. Until it started pushing back. Her right calf twinged again and she stretched out her leg with a wince, leaning forward to catch the toe of her boot and pull her foot back to stretch before the twinge could develop into a full-blown cramp.

Mal put his glass down. "Cramp?"

She shook her head. "Not quite."

"Taking off those ridiculous heels might help."

"They're not ridiculous."

"Maybe not. And granted, they're very sexy, but you've been on your feet all day." He leaned forward. "Take them off, then come over here and I'll rub your feet."

Damn. The man played dirty. She loved foot rubs. But letting Mal Coulter put his hands on her bare feet was definitely stepping into dangerous territory. She hesitated.

"Just a foot rub, I swear."

"Dancer's feet aren't pretty," she said. Hers weren't as beaten up as an ex-ballet-dancer's—small mercies—and now that she wasn't performing in eight shows a week, they were starting to look less battered than they used to. But they weren't going to win any beauty contests.

"I'm offering to rub them, not judge them," he said. He patted the sofa. "Come here, Raina Easton."

Good sense told her to stay right where she was. But whiskey and tiredness and the irresistible lure of feet that didn't hurt were outvoting good sense tonight. She unzipped her boots, slipped them off, and then sat beside Mal on the sofa, feeling her heart pound. Her hands gripped the cushions for a second. Stupid body. Why did it react to Mal like he was the most delicious thing ever?

Maybe because he was.

"This is going to be easier if you put your feet in my lap," he said.

She reached for her drink, drained it, then set it on the side table. Telling herself it was the whiskey making her head spin, she scooted back until her spine hit the arm of the sofa where Wash was napping. Which earned her another protesting meow.

"Hush, cat," Mal said. "Captain's orders."

The laugh escaped Raina before she could stop herself.

Mal grinned. "I'm assuming he is named after Wash in Firefly then?"

"How did you know?"

He jerked his chin toward her desk. "Well, you have Mal and Inara figurines on top of your computer, for a start."

"You like Firefly?" Damn. Points to him.

"What's not to like?" He grinned at her then. "We Mals have to stick together. And I like his style. Though I'm not so big on his stoic repression of his feelings for Inara. But that's a conversation for another time. Now…" He patted his lap. "Give me your feet. Captain's orders."

She laughed again. "Sure thing, Captain Tightpants." She put her feet into his lap.

"My pants aren't tight," he said. "This is a very well-cut suit. Lucas took me to his personal tailor and made me pay a fortune for it."

Given how good he'd looked in the suit back at Deacon, she thought that it had been money well spent. He looked even better now. He'd lost the tie and loosened his collar. Revealing a very distracting strong male throat. "Suit shmoot," she managed as he wrapped his hand around the ball of her foot and pressed his thumb into just the right spot beneath it.

She bit her lip to stifle the moan that rose in her throat.

Good fingers. She was a sucker for good fingers.

Clever hands. Lips that?—

No. This was a foot rub.

Nothing more.

And if she believed that then she should probably try to sell herself a few ownership shares in the bridge that she drove over every other day. Because damn, he had very good fingers.

She bit her lip as he hit another spot that made her muscles shiver in delight and tried to remember all the things that she'd thought were wrong with him.

Right now most of them were escaping her.

Double damn. Triple damn.

Or even, she thought as his fingers pressed and stroked, just a good old-fashioned fu-u-u-ck.

"Better?" Mal asked.

She managed a nod. Her neck felt strangely liquid, as though her head might float right off her body if she weren't careful. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"You can't expect me to give away all my secrets on our first … nightcap, can you?" he said. "Or at least, you have to ply me with more liquor first."

She tried to remember where she'd left the scotch. On the kitchen counter. Reaching it would mean getting off this sofa. Which she wasn't doing short of dynamite forcing the issue.

"How about the promise of liquor?" she said.

"I'll think about it." The fingers on her foot were slowly changing their rhythm. Less forceful, less coaxing of the knots and tension from her feet and more stroking every little nerve ending to life.

Who knew her feet had so many nerve endings? Or that the majority of them seemed to have rerouted themselves so they were sending their little spikes of pleasure straight to her groin. Her head dropped back and her eyes drifted close and she was too tired to fight the drugging effect of the sensations he was provoking.

"How about we return to our earlier topic," Mal said. "Tell me what you're afraid of?"

That snapped her eyes open. "Who said I was afraid?"

"Afraid. Concerned. Doubtful. Pick one. Why do you want to run away from this?" His voice was low and soft, the sound of it almost as smooth and targeted as his fingers.

So. The ball, so to speak, had been pitched. The curtain was going up. So was she going to step up to the plate … step into the spotlight … and tell him the truth or miss her moment?

She'd never been one to shy away from the spotlight. She swallowed. "Would you believe me if I said it's not you, it's me?"

Dark brows lifted. "I might. If you explain it more."

"It … it sounds silly. But I just don't trust my instincts with men anymore. Too many mistakes. So when my instincts say This one, I'm forced to consider if it's more sensible to do the exact opposite."

He frowned. "Did someone hurt you?"

"I'm thirty. It would be a little strange if I hadn't had my heart broken by now."

"You don't seem the type to let a little heartbreak destroy your confidence," Mal said. "I meant more than that. Did someone—a man—get … physical with you?"

She tried not to shiver as the image of Jeremy, face contorted with anger, sprang to life in her head. But Mal must have noticed something because his expression darkened.

"You don't have to talk about it. Not if you don't want to," he said.

No. It was better to speak up. It had taken time to get over the sense that it was her fault, the guilt that had gnawed at her and returned with a vengeance when Patrick had stolen from her. Guilt that she hadn't been able to see in advance what their true selves were. But it wasn't her fault. It was theirs. She took a deep breath. Let it out. Met his frowning gaze squarely. "I had one boyfriend. He was … difficult. Possessive. He put his fist through a wall a few inches away from my face one night."

"And?" Mal's voice was tense. Disgusted.

"He learned that dancers have plenty of lower-body strength. To the regret of his balls. I kicked him and got out of there and never went back." That wasn't the whole truth. And it left out the sick terror of that night, of running out of the apartment and flagging down the cab to take her to Brady's place, heart pounding in fear, thinking every moment that Jeremy was going to appear. To stop her. To hurt her.

Mal grinned. "Good girl." Then his face turned serious again. "Was that the end of it?"

She shook her head. "He was a problem for a while. Tried to convince me to come back. Turned up at the theater where I was working. Caused trouble. Until some of the guys I worked with dealt with him. He went away after that."

"It's not your fault he was a scumbag," Mal said, voice gentle. "You didn't deserve that."

She sighed. "I know. Logically I know that. But there have been just a couple too many princes who turned into frogs, you know." She looked down at her toes, unwilling to meet his eyes. "The last frog skipped town with most of my bank balance."

Mal frowned again. "Did you find him?"

"I talked to the police. They weren't that interested. Said it would be hard to prove I hadn't given him my passwords, et cetera. We'd been living together about six months. And I didn't have the money for a detective."

"How much?"

"Enough," she said. She didn't want to tell him about her plans for the club and why she was so keen to get her nest egg back up to scratch.

He nodded, obviously happy not to keep pushing the subject for now. "Well, I own a third of a baseball team and I have my own company. I'm not looking to skip town anytime soon and I promise you I don't need your money. And I've never hit a woman in my life."

"I didn't think you had," she said. "But it's not quite that simple."

"I understand being gun-shy," he said. "But you have to take a chance sooner or later."

"Why? My life is complicated enough right now. I'm not sure I even have time for a man. Why complicate it more?"

He ran a finger over her sole and she shivered.

"For one thing, there's that," he said.

"I can pay someone for foot rubs."

"I don't think that shiver was purely due to my foot rub skills."

Was she imagining things or had his eyes gone a shade darker? Was that even possible?

"You mean sex?" She tried to sound casual even though her mouth felt dry. Rookie mistake to bring up sex with a guy. In her experience, talking to guys about sex was best left to those times when you were trying to get said guys to sleep with you. Was that what she was doing? "Last time I checked there was no rule that said single women don't get to have orgasms."

He stilled. He pinned her with those eyes. Which were darker still. Near black. A hot liquid black. She swallowed.

"That may be true," he said. "And maybe one day I'd like to discuss that in more detail—" He stopped. Took a breath. Shook his head as though to clear his mind of something. Something no doubt involving the thought of her naked with her hand between her legs. "But you know, I've always found team sports more enjoyable than solo ones."

So had she. And now she was the one with pictures in her head. Naked pictures. Of Mal with his hand between her legs. Much more fun. Though far more dangerous. She tried to pull her foot back. He didn't let go.

"I think we've strayed from the subject," she said, trying to ignore the throaty note in her voice.

"You brought it up."

"And I'm shutting it down."

His fingers released. "If you say so. Which brings us back to bad choices. And why I'm not one."

"I only have your word for that."

He smiled. "You want references? I can call Alex right now."

"Alex knows that you're a good boyfriend?" She tilted her head at him, glad to ease the conversation back to lighter territory. "Is there something you're not telling me, Mr. Coulter?"

"Alex has known me since I was eighteen," he said. "And good looking as he is, he's never tried to convince me to bat for the other team. Mostly because he's pretty firmly entrenched in the same team I am. Team Girls Are Good. Now, stop changing the subject."

She sighed. "I don't know. It's just kind of hard to forget all the wrong choices, sometimes."

"I've made wrong choices, too," he said. "Everyone does."

"Not like mine,"

"You might be surprised. But that's a conversation for another time. You don't have to be perfect, Raina. No one does."

"Maybe. But you know what they say. Two wrongs don't make a right."

"I've never really cared what ‘they' have to say about things. Two wrongs might not make a right. But maybe they make a good enough."

"A right for now?" She wanted him to be right. But she was horribly afraid he wasn't. "I'm not sure I have another right for now left in me."

"Raina." His hand grazed her cheek, and she couldn't stop herself leaning into his touch. "How about we just start from here and see what happens?"