Page 32 of Lawless in Leather

The silence turned heavy and dense as they stood watching the numbers above the door go down slowly.

Say something.

Say something, idiot.

“You must be happy with the win,” she managed. Safe subject. Hopefully. If he was like most sports-mad men she knew, he’d be able to talk for hours about the game. She liked baseball but she didn’t feel any need to know every last detail about her team. In this case, though, she was willing to let Mal talk and to shut up and listen if it meant avoiding the heat practically lighting the air between them.

Mal smiled then.

Damn. She’d forgotten about that delighted smile and its killer effect. She should’ve picked an unpleasant topic.

“It was a start,” he said. “It would’ve been nice if they’d gotten some more runs on the board, locked it up earlier.”

“That’s a bit harsh. The Saints aren’t exactly the greatest team in the league. You should be happy with the win.” He laughed and she narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re one of those never-satisfied types, aren’t you?”

“No,” he said. “But I’m a realist. It was a good start and the guys should be proud of themselves but they can do better. They will do better.”

Heaven help them if they didn’t.

Maggie had told her that Mal was the least intense of the terrible trio, as she called them. Either she was really wrong about that or Alex and Lucas were taking intense to a whole new level. Raina reminded herself not to bring up the team’s performance in anything other than a glowing light around those two, just in case.

The elevator jolted to a stop and the door slid slowly open, the dinging sound that accompanied the action sounding distorted and weird.

Maybe Mal made it nervous, too.

Mal stepped out and put his palm on the edge of the door, waving her out. She scurried past him and headed off down the hallway to the locker room, not waiting to see if he was following her. Mostly because she knew he would be.

She swiped her pass at the door and went inside to grab her stuff. Which consisted of her coat and the huge old black case that housed her emergency kit. As usual, it looked a little worse for wear, stuffed to the gills with spare tights and cold packs and ibuprofen and eyedrops and every type of makeup anyone could possibly ever need backstage along with half a hundred other things that could come in handy in a performance emergency. But the zipper, though strained, was closed and she wasn’t going to take the time to fuss with it with Mal looming at her side. She shrugged into the coat and flipped up the handle on the case.

Mal held out his hand. “I’ll take your case.”

“I can manage,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “But I’m offering.”

“Are you going to get huffy if I say no?”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been ‘huffy’ in my life. So no, probably not. If you’re determined to drag that around by yourself, so be it.”

She was tempted to put him to the test. But then she remembered just how awkward the case could be. And she had a show to do tonight. So conservation of energy was only sensible. She stepped out of his way. “Be my guest. Thank you,” she added.

“My pleasure,” he said. She waited for another grin. Or an eyebrow waggle. Or something. But no, he just lifted the case off the bench effortlessly and rolled it over to the door. Which he then held for her.

Her grandmother would be impressed. A polite big ol’ parcel of man trouble. Which made a nice change. Though Raina was determined not to be impressed.

“The press was pretty good, about the Angels, I thought,” she offered as they headed to the parking lot.

Mal nodded. “Yes. There’ll probably be some really stupid puns in the headlines tomorrow but at least no one has thrown a fit.” He looked down at her. “They looked good. I still think cheerleaders in baseball is a dumb idea, but you did a good job.”

“Thanks.” They’d reached the door to the parking lot and Mal swiped his pass to let them through. On the other side, he looked around the parking lot. “Which one is—no, wait. Let me guess. It’s the hot-pink pickup?”

“Guilty,” she said. Rose was hardly an extravagance; she’d bought her as a very hard-used dirt-cheap means of transporting herself once she’d moved out of Manhattan a few years ago. When she’d finally opened Madame R’s, Brady and Luis had surprised her with the new paint job, an engine refit, and gleaming black leather upholstery as a business-warming present.

It still made her smile every time she saw her truck. It made her smile now as they crossed the lot.

“Do you want the case in back or inside?” Mal asked when they reached Rose.

“In this weather, inside,” Raina said. She unlocked the passenger door. Mal lifted the case inside. As she shut the door, he said, “Nice truck. I like these old Fords.”

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