Page 3 of Angel In Armani

The New York Saints.

He still wasn’t sure how his best friend, Alex Winters, had convinced him—and their other friend Malachi Coulter—to join forces to bail out the baseball team they’d all supported since childhood.

There’d been bourbon involved but also a good dose of crazy.

He didn’t do crazy.

But he did do baseball. And for once, he hadn’t been able to resist a bad idea. Owning a baseball team. He’d imagined it as a kid, as his parents made him attend cotillions and play golf and learn to sail and tried to discourage his love of baseball.

It hadn’t worked. It was an incurable disease.

His presence in this helicopter was firm proof of that. As was the fact that he was now officially part owner of a Major League Baseball team. Even if it was the worst team in the MLB.

“We’re about twenty minutes out, sir.” The voice of his pilot buzzed in his headphones. He liked her voice. It sounded confident and relaxed and had a pleasant female thrum to it that was a small distraction from his discomfort.

He flicked his gaze up from the laptop but saw only the back of her head. The ends of her medium-brown hair curled out in wisps under the cap she wore; the set of her shoulders in the very plain blue shirt was relaxed, but he couldn’t see much more than that.

He hadn’t seen much more than that in three trips so far. She was always seated in the pilot’s seat when he boarded the chopper, already wearing a cap and her headphones or whatever you called the radio-mike thing that let them communicate during the flight.

He did know that she had pretty eyes. Blue. Not bright blue like his. More ocean-y. A hint of gray and green lending depth. Sea-blue eyes and a cute smile, though he’d only seen that once.

The main thing he knew about her—other than the fact her name was Sara Charles, as attested to by the neat name badge on her uniform—was that she seemed to be a very good pilot. She got him where he was going in one piece, with no flashy maneuvers to shatter his hard-won calm, and she didn’t bother him with chitchat.

Which was why he’d hired her again after the first time he’d booked her when his regular guy couldn’t fit him in. And why he’d booked her again for this trip.

He was glad she’d taken the job. Though any sensible person would, given he was paying quite a nice bonus to have her hang around and wait to fly him home again after the fund-raiser. With Sara Charles, for some reason, even though being in a helicopter still sucked, it wasn’t quite as bad as usual. Still, he’d be happy when they were both safely back on Manhattan soil at the end of the night.

He intended that the end of the night would come sooner rather than later. He had surgeries lined up in the morning and roughly four hundred other things to juggle around in his schedule ahead of the Saints decamping to Florida for spring training in a little over two weeks.

Alex and Mal had decided that he, as an orthopedic surgeon, was the one most qualified to keep an eye on things in Florida. Most qualified and also the one with less Saints business already on his plate. Mal was busy trying to bring Deacon Field—the Saints’ home stadium—out of the security Stone Age, and Alex was wheeling and dealing with finances and TV deals and the money stuff. Which left Lucas to deal with the team, the potential new players, and getting everyone ready for the coming season. The Saints’ first season since they’d taken over.

Of course, that was mostly the job of the coaching team and the trainers and the scouts, but he was going to be boss man on the ground as much as possible. Which meant the weeks between now and the beginning of the season in April were going to be a nightmare as he tried to split his time between New York and Florida. And that was before he even thought about all the air time that was going to involve.

He didn’t want to think about that.

So he wouldn’t. Instead he’d finish reviewing the files he’d brought with him so that he was ready for tomorrow’s procedures, and then they’d arrive at their destination and he’d do his duty at the damned party and get the hell back to New York.

Sara led the way across the airfield to the small building that served as the terminal. Dr. Angelo—she didn’t really feel like she could call him Lucas—had thanked her politely when he’d climbed out of the chopper, taken a moment to straighten his impeccable bow tie, slung his black leather laptop bag over his shoulder, and then asked, “Which way?”

That had been the sum total of their conversation. The afternoon light had turned golden, the weather warm for this time of year despite warnings of possible storms later on. He looked not quite real as he walked smoothly across the grass, the gilded light playing on his hair and face.

He moved a bit like a tiger, she thought. Lithe and powerful. Graceful for a tall guy. She was five six and he easily had half a foot on her. She wondered if he’d played a sport of some sort before he’d become a doctor. She’d spent a lot of time around guys who kept themselves in good shape in the army, but even among them it was the ones who’d been great athletes who, in her experience, moved like the man walking besides her. Totally in control of every inch of his well-honed body.

The one she wished didn’t make her skin spark with awareness every time she saw him. The one that made her desperately need a little more control over her own body.

Thankfully the walk to the terminal building was a short one. Dr. Angelo held the door for her—of course he was the kind of guy who would hold a door for her—and she walked into the terminal, looking around to see who was on the desk.

She spotted Ellen Jacek, who ran the airfield with her husband, before Ellen spotted them. But not much before. Ellen’s dark eyes widened and a smile of appreciation bloomed on her face as she took in Dr. Angelo. Which was gratifying in a way. It meant it wasn’t just Sara who was dumb enough to react to the sight of him.

But like her, Ellen was a professional, and her smile smoothed into something more welcoming as she came toward them.

“Sara, honey. How are you? How’s your dad?”

Sara returned her brief hard hug. “I’m good. And Dad’s doing better. Hoping to get back in the air in a few more months.” She remembered why she was there. “Ellen Jacek, this is Dr. Angelo. I think there should be a car waiting for him?”

“Oh sure, Dean delivered it a while back. It’s parked out front.” Ellen turned her attention to Lucas. “Nice ride. I’ve got the keys over at the desk.” She headed in that direction and Lucas strode after her, leaving Sara to follow behind. She did so, listening to Ellen chatter and Lucas give short answers until Ellen reached the desk, leaned over it, and grabbed a set of keys before passing them to Lucas.

“It’s the red one out front,” she said.

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