Page 40 of Angel In Armani

Beside him, Dan grunted. “Not if they’re any good. This is a good shot for them.”

Lucas nodded. If any of the players down on the field did turn out to be great players, then it was unlikely they’d stay with the Saints too long. With their finances the owners were going to be playing buy low, trade high with their players for a few years yet, but he intended to make sure that the team served as a good training ground and didn’t treat the players like interchangeable bits of meat to be moved around any more than necessary. While they were part of the team, they would be treated well. And eventually, if he and Alex and Mal got this right, the Saints would be in the position not to have to shuffle players around so often.

But they wouldn’t get to that point without taking these first steps. So he had to do what he’d been sent here to do. Which meant forgetting about crappy coffee and seeing exactly what the guys down on the field could do.

Dan moved farther down toward the barrier between the stadium seats and the field, and Lucas followed him. As they walked he noticed Sara sitting in the seats a few rows back. She had a cap—not a Saints cap—pulled over her hair and sunglasses hiding her face, but it was her. She wore a short-sleeved blue shirt and black pants and was holding an eReader or tablet or something. But at the moment she was ignoring the device and gazing down at the field, apparently fascinated.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said to Dan and detoured across to where she sat.

“Good morning,” he said.

She jumped a little, then recovered and looked up at him, the sunglasses hiding her eyes. “Hello.”

“Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I went to make sure the helo was squared away this morning,” she said. “But I didn’t want to just hang around the hotel all day. So I came down here to see if there was anything I could do.”

For a second she bit her lip and Lucas had to stop himself from staring at her mouth. She had beautiful lips. And she knew how to use them.

In ways he needed to stop thinking about.

Though, as he stood there, the pause in their conversation while they watched each other growing just that little bit too long, he saw color start to steal across her cheeks and felt a little growl of satisfaction low in his stomach.

She might be denying it but she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she wanted to be.

“Lucas!” Dan yelled from down at the fence line.

“Look, I’ve got to go do this,” he said. “But I’m sure we can come up with something to keep you busy if you insist. Until then why don’t you come down closer and watch and I’ll introduce you to the coaching team.”

“Just as long as you don’t expect me to say anything helpful,” she said.

“You never know, you might be a baseball savant.”

“I doubt that,” she said as she shoved her tablet back in the big black shoulder bag sitting on the seat beside her. “What I don’t know about baseball could fill a book.”

That stopped him. “Tell me again how you grew up on Staten Island and didn’t learn anything about baseball?”

She shrugged. “Just not that interested.” Her expression turned apologetic. “Sorry. Like I said, I was more into helicopters than sports.”

“What about high school? You didn’t have to go to games, show some school spirit?”

“I was the one hiding under the bleachers with her nose stuck in a flight manual,” Sara said with a grin. “Or playing hooky altogether.”

“A rebel, huh?” So she didn’t like sports. He could hardly hold that against her. After all, he didn’t like flying. And she liked plenty of other things he liked. Beer. Beds. Really really good sex.

“Just kind of one-track-minded back then.”

“And now? Are there other things that hold your interest now?” He couldn’t help the question.

Sea-blue eyes narrowed at him; then she smiled with bared teeth. “Yes. My dog.”

His mouth curved up before he could stop it. But he took the hint to back off with the flirting for now. And he could feel Dan glaring at him. Time to focus on the job at hand. “Well, maybe you’ll like baseball now, too. Come and see.”

Sara followed Lucas down closer to the field but took a seat a couple of rows back from the front of the stands. Lucas stood at the fence with a guy who was a few inches shorter than him and a few years older, if the glimpse she’d gotten of him when he’d yelled for Lucas to join him was anything to go on.

If she had to guess, she’d say he was Dan Ellis, the team’s manager—which was the coach as far as her baseball for dummies research could determine.

Lucas was definitely paying attention to whatever the guy had to say, anyway.

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