Page 23 of Angel In Armani

He flashed on Sara again, asleep beside him in the motel. It didn’t feel like that. Hot sex. Mind-blowing sex. Yes. But he was interested in more than that. Wanted to know what made her tick. Wanted to know why he felt safe with her. “So you’ll look into the chopper thing?” he said to Alex.

“You really think you need it? That you’d be asking if the girl wasn’t … holding your attention?” Alex said.

She’d held more than his attention. But that didn’t change the fact that the helicopter was a good idea. “You must be getting tired of driving back and forth as well. With the chopper you can be back at Ice headquarters or your apartment in, what, fifteen minutes or so?”

“There’s the small question of where exactly this helo would land,” Mal pointed out. “We don’t have a helipad. And I think the grounds staff would revolt if we land a helicopter on the field.”

“There’s always the parking lot,” Lucas said. He had no idea if Sara could land a helicopter in a parking lot. He assumed so. Wasn’t that the point of helicopters, after all, that they could land in tight places? “Besides, the airfield where her company is based is only five minutes away. That’s how I found her in the first place.” On a drive back to Manhattan he’d passed the sign outside the airfield advertising charter flights. “Local business and all. Can’t hurt with that improving-relations-with-the-community thing you have going on.”

It hadn’t been all smooth sailing since the other MLB team owners had approved their purchase of the Saints. Along with players walking, there were a lot of nervous supporters eyeing the new boys in town and wondering if they were going to screw up their team completely.

Alex nodded. “I guess not,” he said. “All right, I’ll get Gardner to look into it and do some costing. If you’re okay, with that, Mal?”

Mal shrugged. “Far from me to get between Lucas and a girl. If it’s workable on the money side, let’s give it a try. I could do with some reduced commuting time now and then.”

“Okay,” Alex said. “We’re agreed. And now, speaking of community spirit, I want to get back to the subject of cheerleaders.”

“No cheerleaders in baseball,” Mal and Lucas said in unison and Lucas watched as his friend squared his shoulders and prepared to argue his cause once more.

Chapter Six

Lucas should have known Alex wouldn’t mess around once he’d decided on doing something, but he hadn’t expected a message waiting for him when he stepped off the plane in Orlando, telling him that yes, Ice did have some helicopters in their fleet and that one could be made available if necessary.

It seemed too simple. Of course, the less simple part was still to come. The part where he convinced Sara Charles to be his personal pilot.

He still hadn’t figured out exactly what had possessed him to raise the idea back at Deacon yesterday, but despite several hours arguing with himself afterward, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to call Alex back and tell him to forget the whole thing. Not when he couldn’t stop thinking about Sara. Damn it.

Lucas handed the driver his overnight bag and climbed into the back of the car waiting to take him to Vero Beach. Then he pulled out his phone and found the number for Charles Air.

Where a polite female voice that wasn’t Sara’s informed him that the office was currently closed until further notice.

He frowned at the phone as he left a message for Sara, asking her to call him. Then, trying to ignore his rising frustration, he banished her from his mind and turned his attention to the trip ahead, hauling out his laptop to review the files on the players who were trying out.

They needed a pitcher. They still had Brett Tuckerson, their starter, but their second- and third-string guys had both accepted offers from other teams. So pitchers were a priority. Plus another couple of gun hitters couldn’t hurt things.

Pity that true gun hitters cost more than they could afford. So they needed to buy smart. That was what Dan Ellis and his staff kept telling him as they spouted statistics and theories ad nauseam.

It wasn’t until later in the evening, when he was back in his hotel room, that he had time to think about Sara again. And the fact that she hadn’t yet returned his call.

He pulled up the Charles Air website. But instead of the familiar image of a blue-and-silver chopper he was used to—okay, so he liked that their helicopters were kind of the Saints’ colors—there was a neat white page with only the company logo and a blue-bordered announcement that the company was not currently taking customers and providing a neat list of links to other charter firms.

That brought the frown back to Lucas’s face.

Not taking customers?

And for long enough that they were referring them to other companies. That wasn’t good business sense. If it was a short closure, then surely they’d have a date when they’d be reopened for business. And if it was for a longer period of time, then what the hell had happened?

His gut went cold.

Shit.

Had Sara been in an accident?

He’d never opened Google so fast in his life. But a few minutes of searching revealed no Sara Charles in a helicopter accident. No chopper accidents at all for a good few months. There was, however, a raft of stories about a Sean Charles in a crash. Almost twelve months ago.

Sara’s dad, he assumed. The stories all named Charles Air as the company involved.

It looked like bad luck to him. The chopper had been struck by lightning—and that explained Sara’s flat-out refusal to consider flying him in the storm—and according to the coverage of the story the electrical system hadn’t recovered the way it was supposed to.

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