Page 33 of Lawless in Leather

“You’d just prefer it not to be pink?” she said.

“Not really my color,” he said with another smile. Then, as Raina moved to skirt around him, his expression went grim.

She froze. “What?”

His chin jerked toward the hood. “You have a flat tire.”

“What?” she repeated. “Really? Crap.” She craned her neck to see, trying not to think of the time. Normally she was at Madame R midafternoon on Saturdays. And it was already close to six. They opened at eight and the show started around nine. But there was no denying the fact her tire was doing a pretty good pancake impersonation. So time to deal and get on with things. “It’s okay,” she said. “I have a spare. And Triple A.”

Mal prowled around to the other side of the truck. His mouth went flat when he got there. “Do you have two spares?”

“Two?” She darted around to join him. The front tire on the driver’s side was just as flat. “Fuck.”

“Pretty much,” Mal said. “One tire might be an accident. Two is deliberate.”

“Or maybe just very bad luck,” she said. “Maybe I drove over some glass or something.”

Mal knelt by the tire and ran his hands over it. “Nope. Someone stabbed it.” He stuck his finger into the side of the rubber, and the top joint disappeared inside the tire. “Glass doesn’t usually cut the sidewall.” He scowled at the tire.

“Maybe someone didn’t like the Angels so much after all,” she said.

Mal pushed back up to his feet, shaking his head. “Pretty fast job of figuring out that you’re the choreographer and this is your truck.” He wiped his hand on his suit, leaving a smudge of grime across the leg.

Raina winced.

“What,” he said.

“You just got mud and grease and God knows what else on what had to be a very expensive suit,” Raina said.

“I’ll get it cleaned,” he said, voice holding a distinct rumble. “My suit is hardly our biggest problem right now.”

“My biggest problem right now is how I’m going to get back to the club.” Where she would now need to have a very good night to be able to squeeze two new tires into her very tight budget. She didn’t want to dip into her Saints money if she could possibly avoid it.

“No, your biggest problem is whoever did this to your tires.”

“It could’ve been anyone,” she protested.

Another head shake. “This area is VIP only. I don’t think anyone on the team or any of the sponsors or ticket holders slashed your tires. Which means whoever did this snuck in.”

“Well, you have that whiz-bang security system,” she said. “So you’ll be able to see who did it, right? Which means we can deal with it. But that still leaves me with no ride and a club in Brooklyn about to open.”

“I’ll take you,” Mal said.

“You,” she said, doing some definite head shaking of her own, “have a party to go to. And a team to congratulate. And important baseball-team-owner stuff to do. You’re can’t go haring off to Brooklyn.”

“Haring?” He looked amused. “You do like strange words. First I’m huffy, now I’m haring.”

“I read,” she said, sticking her chin out. “My folks believed in education, and you get a lot of spare time hanging around in theaters. So I read. And do crosswords. I’m betting I could beat your butt at Scrabble.”

“Probably,” he said. “Though I read, too.”

“Security system manuals and computer programming books don’t count,” she said. “No one ever got a pithy phrase from one of those.”

That made him laugh. “No, probably not,” he said. “But we’ve strayed from the subject. Which was me taking you to Brooklyn.”

“No, it was how you’re not going to take me to Brooklyn. Because you are needed elsewhere. And besides, you ride a Harley. There’s no room for my case on a Harley.” God knows, she did not want to spend any time pressed up against Mal’s body on the back of a motorcycle. “Just call me a cab. I’ll be fine.”

He looked distinctly displeased again. “Not a cab. I’ll call my driver.”

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