Page 28 of Lawless in Leather

He didn’t want Raina to take pity on him, he just wanted her to kiss him again. But he wasn’t going to talk about that with Alex and Lucas. They’d found great women, yes, but that didn’t mean he wanted them matchmaking for him.

Raina seemed skittish enough about things without him subjecting her to his friends. Who were also her employers.

“I’m a little too busy right now for that sort of thing,” he said.

“If you’re too busy for sex, then we really need to sort out your schedule,” Alex said with another grin.

“We have our first game in a few days,” Mal said. “I’m sure I can survive that long. So, given that we’re all here rather than home in bed alone or otherwise, why don’t we talk about where we’re at with that?”

Lucas nodded. “Smooth subject change there. But you’re right. We’re coming down to the end of the inning on this. Is the security system ready, Mal?”

He nodded. “Ready as it can be right now. I still want to upgrade the inner gates at some point, but the camera network is upgraded and the scanner systems at the entry points are operational. Tom already had the bag search and entry rules set up pretty well, so we’re just building on those. And the patrol teams know what they’re looking for.”

“No one is going to try to blow us up,” Alex said. “You’ve done what needed to be done. People will be safe.”

Mal sucked in a breath. Safe.

That was his job. What he did. Kept people safe. But there were always lunatics and bastards out there who wanted to use fear as a weapon and didn’t care who they hurt.

The three of them had learned that lesson young when the explosion had ripped through a stadium at the last college baseball game any of them had ever played. They’d been lucky, they’d survived. But it had changed all three of them. In a way, it was the reason that they’d all arrived back here now. Back then they’d all thought they knew what their lives were going to be. Major-league ballplayers. Stars. Bound for money and the high life. But instead that explosion had shattered that path and they’d all diverted. He’d joined the army a week after the explosion—once it had been clear that Alex and Lucas were going to be okay despite their injuries—determined to do his part in making the world a safer place. The army had led him to a whole different world. And to Ally.

And now full circle back to the world of baseball.

He wasn’t going to let anyone else’s world be shattered here.

Alex reached out and punched his arm gently. “We’re all still standing. And no one’s going to touch what’s ours.” He gestured at the space around them. “And this place, this team is ours.”

Mal nodded and tried to make his shoulders relax. He’d been carrying around a load of tension ever since they’d bought the Saints. True, it was balanced by the joy he felt at the knowledge that he owned a freaking baseball team. But it was there, always, riding him.

Except for a few short minutes when Raina had climbed into his lap and kissed him. She’d made the world go away. Made him feel good.

The question was how to get her to do it again.

Raina stood in the tunnel that led onto the field and tried to quell the nerves in her stomach. From above them, the rumble of the crowd filling the stands sounding alarmingly loud. Deacon Field wasn’t a huge stadium—it only held about thirty thousand people—but that was still far more than any theater she’d ever performed in. Not that she was performing today.

She gave herself a mental shake. She should be reassuring the Angels, who were about to make their debut, rather than standing here suffering nerves on their behalf. They’d worked really hard and she was damned proud of what they’d achieve—but at the end of the day, she knew, the reaction to them wouldn’t be about the dancing, it would be about the fact that Alex was using cheerleaders in baseball to start a bit of good old-fashioned controversy.

He was relying on the publicity and a degree of scandal. There hadn’t been any coverage of the Angels to date—somehow the Saints’ media team had worked some voodoo to avoid the news leaking—just a promise of some entertainment between the innings.

And now they—Alex and Mal and Lucas and her and her dancers—were about to find out how good a judge Alex was of the mood of his team’s fans.

“This is kind of ridiculous, huh?” Marly said, standing next to her.

Raina looked up at her—and it was a long way up. Marly was nearly the tallest dancer in the troupe, somewhere around five nine without the wings that added more to her height. Combined with the very blue eyes and very blond hair and the oomph Brady’s costume had given her cleavage, she was an impressive sight. She was a great dancer, too. Really great. Nearly as good as Ana. And unlike Ana, Marly didn’t have the personality of a narcissistic cobra.

Raina kept wondering if she should try to interest Marly in giving burlesque a go. Her height was almost enough to work against her on Broadway but it wouldn’t be a hindrance at Madame R, where the burlesque artists came in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

“It’s going to be great,” Raina said. She looked back over her shoulder. The rest of the squad filled the tunnel that led back to the depths of the stadium, variously stretching or chatting. Ana, who would be at the head of the line when they finally walked out onto the field, was standing apart from all the others, looking supremely bored. Raina had practically had to wrestle her smartphone out of her hand when they’d left the locker room, and apparently life without her texts and social media accounts was too tedious to bear.

Behind Ana, Raina spotted Chen, the security guy Mal had assigned to the Angels. He, unlike Ana, looked alert and watchful and Raina tried to push away the nagging question in her mind about why Mal hadn’t come down to wish her luck. Because the part of her brain coming up with that question was stupid. It was the same part that had kissed him. Best ignored.

She turned back to Marly. “It’s going to be great,” she repeated.

“It’s going to be interesting at least,” Marly said with a grin. “But still, it’s been fun.”

“It will keep being fun.”

“I hope so. The money is nice. But they’ll can us if the fans hate us.”

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