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He wanted to take her home to his place. He wanted to show her the night view of Raleigh, to stand at the picture window on the top floor of the Bellevue, his cock pressed against the soft skin at the small of her back. He wanted to hear her breath catch in her throat as he laid her out on the pillows his designer had made him get for his king-size bed. He wanted to shower with her, surrounded by Italian marble and four matched jets, with more hot water than even his imagination could use up.

  But she’d freaked out the one time he’d suggested she could meet him at his place. He’d watched that screen go up, an instant wall of distrust. It wasn’t like she didn’t believe him. She didn’t think he was a threat. It was like she didn’t trust herself. Like she’d crumble if she let things get too easy, if she let herself get too soft.

  It was too soon to make her change. Too soon to insist that she leave the cage of her own apartment.

  And so he showed up at midnight. And he let her open the door. And he figured out new ways to stroke her, to claim her, to tear down the rigid barriers she’d put up all around her. And when she was spread out beside him, hot and wet and exhausted, he called himself a lucky man.

  Amanda would be there in the stands for him on Saturday, on Sunday, for all the day games this home stand. She’d promised, even if she’d laughed at him. She’d started in again about science, about how his superstitions were only hurting him, only weakening his game. But he’d cut off all her arguments with calculated kisses. He’d convinced her she was wrong, spelling out his own justification in the red traces the rough hair of his beard left on her thighs.

  His hitting streak continued. The team stayed in contention. And he had the hottest woman in Raleigh waiting for him, night after night after night.

  ~~~

  Amanda sat in a white leather seat, staring at white marble tiles, waiting for the white-frosted glass door to open so she could enter the boardroom. A litigation bag rested by her feet, the oversize briefcase stuffed full of file folders. She’d gone over her notes a thousand times, rehearsed the questions she was going to ask the professor of pharmacology waiting in that room.

  He wasn’t Antoine Phillips. He couldn’t help her case as much as Dr. Phillips could. But Dr. Phillips had been dodging her messages for weeks, and she was giving up hope of ever reaching the premier expert witness. She’d decided to protect herself, to get the testimony of a lesser academic. The situation wasn’t perfect, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.

  Her phone buzzed as she waited for opposing counsel to escort her into the lion’s den. Immediately, she thought of her partners back in the office. What if they wanted to review strategy on the fourth claim one more time? What if they’d re-thought her plan for dealing with the Patent Office irregularities, with the pages that were missing from the official record through no fault of her client?

  Her heart in her throat, she brushed her fingertips across the phone’s smooth glass surface. And she almost choked when she saw the image waiting for her.

  Her phone was a useful tool for her job. She could snap a picture of a pharmaceutical display in a store and send a quick image to her client asking if they wanted her to challenge inappropriate use of a trademark. She could collect pictures to send to the company that made her trial exhibits, showing three-dimensional molecular structures, modeling the metabolism of a drug over a twenty-four-hour period. In a pinch, she could take photos of a scientific article, recording the title, the authors’ names, everything the library would need to retrieve a full copy for her to read at leisure.

  She knew people used their phones for different things, for less practical things, all the time.

  She just hadn’t expected Kyle to use his phone for different things. Not when he was supposed to be on his way to the airport, heading to Denver for the first leg of a trip that promised to keep him busy, day and night.

  But not too busy to pose for her.

  He was naked, yeah. And missing her already. Of course she saw that. The picture actually made her grin, even as she took a deep breath to cool the blush that was hot enough to short-circuit the phone in her palm. She tilted the screen toward her chest, even though there wasn’t anyone close enough to see, even though the snippy little receptionist behind that massive white desk couldn’t have the first idea what she was staring at.

  Kyle was nude. But he was also staring directly into the camera. His eyes seemed to carry a more important message than anything he was revealing with his body. He was asking her questions. He was telling her answers. He was telling her he wanted to be with her, he wanted both of them to be huddled beneath the covers on her bed, feeding each other the penne with olive oil she’d cooked up as a midnight snack the night before, listening to whatever she chose to tell him after the lights were out, after they were sticky and spent and slipping in and out of sleep.

  Her fingers hovered over the glass screen, and she tried to think of something to type, something she could say that would answer all the things Kyle was saying, all the things he shared, even though he probably thought he was just making a silly little joke.

  All right. Not a little joke.

  “Ms. Carter?” A young man stood by the receptionist’s desk. “Dr. Howell is ready now.” Amanda slipped her phone into the litigation bag and headed down the hall to the deposition that might make or break her career.

  ~~~

  He hadn’t expected her to respond. Not with anything as dangerous as a picture, not with anything that could be used against her in whatever perilous future she seemed to fear. So he wasn’t disappointed when Amanda didn’t send back a photo.

  That didn’t keep him from sending her more of his own. Or from calling her, late at night. No matter the time, it never sounded like he woke her. She always answered on the first ring, sounding crisp and bright, like the crunch of the first fall apple.

  Talking to her was like sinking into tall grass at the end of a long hike. She was comfortable. She understood him. Even when she told him he was being absurd, she listened to him.

  Baseball and patent law—they had nothing in common.

  But he and Amanda did. They both plotted out the game of their profession. They studied their opponents, looking for weaknesses. They practiced their own skills, upping their ability. They worked day and night, because they both understood that time was against them, that they had to succeed now, had to win today because whatever happened down the road might be too late. It might not matter.

  The first Saturday game on the road, he wished he’d set different terms, weeks ago, when he’d started down this crazy path. He should have pushed for Amanda to come to away games too. He should have bought her a ticket in each stadium, left her sunglasses on different seats around the country, waited for her at the beginning of batting practice, holding his breath for the moment when she looked down at him and said, “Sure,” in that half-laughing, half-sarcastic way.

  He knew that wouldn’t change his game. His hitting streak didn’t depend on what she did when he was on the road. But he was aching to see her. He was dying to have company in lonely hotel room after lonely hotel room.

  He played ball for a living. Away games were part of the deal. He had his phone; they could talk until they both nodded off, until the sun was rising back in Raleigh.

  It wasn’t the same as being with her. His cock announced that every single night. His brain wasn’t far behind, as he thought about how nice it would be to sit at a dinner table like a regular guy, to ask about her day, to reach across and brush a strand of hair from her cheek before he gathered up their plates and carried them over to the sink.

  A week and a half left to go in the regular season. Seven more games on the road. He could survive that. He could survive anything. He lay back against the shiny veneer headboard and called Amanda.

  ~~~

  So, it came down to this. Amanda ran through the numbers again in her head. The Rockets’ September had been rough. Their catcher had broken his thumb and gone on the disa
bled list for the rest of the year. The heart of the order had lapsed into a cold streak, like men dropping with the flu. Two games had been rained out in San Francisco, forcing them to double up games, sending them home aching and exhausted just before they met their division rivals in the final home stand of the regular season.

  By some miracle—or the power of positive delusions—Kyle’s hitting streak had survived. The pressure on him was enormous as he reached forty-eight games, nearing the record in the major leagues. And now the Rockets needed to beat New York, or their post-season dreams were toast.

  Amanda checked her teeth in the bathroom mirror, just off the main concourse at Rockets Field. It was hard to remember that first game, weeks earlier. She’d hidden inside the cool confines of the bathroom then, too, not wanting to waste her time with people from the office, not wanting to be forced into socializing when she had work to do.

  How different things would be if she’d headed back to the office that afternoon, if she’d never taken her seat in the stands. She never would have met Kyle. She never would have had the most exciting two months of her life—in the bedroom, sure, but also in her daily life.

  People stopped her on the street. Just the day before, she’d been walking into the federal courthouse and the security guard had said, “Wait a second! Aren’t you Norton’s girl?”

  Norton’s girl. Four months ago, she would have bridled at the implied insult, at the thought that she wasn’t someone of value on her own, that her life only had worth because she was associated with a man.

  But she knew that wasn’t what the guard meant. Hell, she was at the courthouse because of her job, her case, the scheduling hearing she had to attend in front of a judge. So she’d smiled and said she was, and the guard had asked for her autograph.

  Now, she made her way to her seat, walking down the familiar stadium steps with an ease she couldn’t have imagined two months earlier. The pasteboard box was waiting for her.

  And so was a reporter. An entire camera crew. “Ms. Carter,” the man said. “My name is Rory Michaels, and I’m with the broadcast team for this game. May I ask you a few questions before the first pitch?”

  Her belly tightened. She didn’t want to be on camera. Her fifteen minutes of fame were supposed to come in a courtroom, not a baseball stadium.

  She glanced at the scoreboard clock. “In a moment,” she said. Kyle was already trotting over from the dugout. She had to hurry to open the box, to unwrap the sunglasses, and all the time she was painfully aware of the red light on the camera, the unblinking eye that told her she was being filmed.

  She stepped up to the railing just in time to go through the familiar routine. “Hey, sweetheart,” Kyle called.

  That first day, his greeting had been casual, an offhand endearment that carried no meaning. Now, her heart fluttered in her chest because he’d called her sweetheart when he’d kissed her shoulder that morning, when he’d smoothed back her hair and traced her lips with his finger, before he headed down to the ballpark.

  He barely looked like the same man now. His hair was long, almost down to his shoulders. His beard was wild. Like Samson, he insisted that he couldn’t stand a trim and a shave, that his hitting streak depended on his not changing a thing.

  She’d argued with him. She’d told him he was changing his underwear, so why couldn’t he clean up his hair a bit? She’d tugged at his beard and told him she liked less of it. She wanted to feel his cheeks when he rubbed his face against her breasts, her belly, her thighs.

  He’d laughed and set about proving that she wasn’t that opposed to his beard. Not to the point where she didn’t scrape her fingernails across his back and call out his name as she tumbled over the edge into yet another devastating orgasm.

  She shook her head, resigned to his crazy superstitions. And then she completed his routine, tossing him the glasses. He put them on with a flourish and, with the formula complete, he blew a kiss to her and turned back to his fellow players.

  Rory Michaels was waiting. “If you don’t mind, Ms. Carter? A few questions?”

  She minded. She wanted to keep her life private. But half of Raleigh had just seen her accept Kyle’s airborne kiss. And she was pretty sure Michaels wouldn’t give up without a fight. So she took the microphone he handed her. She settled back in her seat. She ran through a brief recital of the points she always rehearsed before a hearing, before any public speaking—modulate her voice, don’t say “um”, keep her fingers from twitching at her jewelry. And she set about winning the hearts and minds of Rockets lovers everywhere.

  ~~~

  Amanda stood by the players’ parking lot. Fans streamed by behind her, high on extra innings, overdosing on adrenaline. The Rockets had won on a run driven in by Kyle’s long single, his only hit of the game. The team had made it to the post-season.

  Kyle’s streak continued. The season continued. And all—he would say—because she’d stood in the stands and dropped a pair of sunglasses into his waiting hands.

  She knew people were staring at her as they celebrated the Rockets’ victory. She’d had her face on the huge centerfield scoreboard; everyone had seen her answering Rory Michaels’ questions. Now, fans snatched photos with their phones, surreptitiously claiming her as part of their own red, white, and blue Raleigh Rockets triumph.

  She tightened her fingers on the chain link fence and waited. Kyle would be celebrating with his teammates. There’d be reporters in the locker room, congratulatory interviews because he was the man who’d secured their shot at glory. He’d saved the entire team’s chances for the post-season.

  The crowd finally thinned behind her. A couple of the other players came out. She watched them climb into their luxury cars, a Ferrari, a tricked-out Audi. They called across the lot to each other, laughing and relaxed. Amanda told herself to go home, to stop waiting. She should go to the office. She had one week left before her trial began; she had no business at all standing in a baseball stadium.

  But she couldn’t make her fingers let go of the fence. She couldn’t make herself step back.

  And finally, finally, Kyle walked out of the metal door at the far end of the lot. He was halfway to his car when she couldn’t wait any longer. She called his name, low and urgent, like she was trying to warn him about a looming disaster.

  He turned, faster than she thought any man could. He closed the distance between them in a heartbeat. His fingers closed over hers, pressing the wire fence into her skin, but she barely felt it. She didn’t care.

  “Thank you,” he said. Just those two words.

  But she heard more. She heard, thank you for feeding my superstition long enough for me to achieve my dream. She heard, thank you for letting me help my team. She heard, Thank you for getting us this far, for clearing the path for us to go all the way. And she heard, Thank you for staying. For being here. Now. She leaned against the fence, wishing she could make it melt away.

  “Come home with me,” Kyle said.

  “My car is in Lot C.”

  “Screw Lot C. Let them ticket you. Let them tow. Come home with me and let me thank you the right way for everything you’ve done.”

  And so she did.

  She stepped back for long enough to let Kyle go to his car. She watched as he cleared the security gate, as he leaned across and opened the passenger door for her to climb in. She leaned back as he drove the city streets, taking care around the stadium for the celebrating fans who spilled out of bars, who gathered on busy corners.

  I should work on my opening argument for the trial.

  She quashed the thought. She could work on her opening argument tomorrow. She could work on her opening argument while the Rockets traveled to play the first game of the best-of-five division championship.

  For tonight, she let Kyle lead her through the cool echoes of his apartment building’s garage. They stood close in the elevator, so close that the heat of his body threatened to ignite the zipper on her sundress. The brass doors opened into a pentho
use apartment, a huge living room that she barely had time to see before he swept her off her feet. He carried her into a bedroom that was larger than her entire apartment, and he sank beside her on a bed that dwarfed anything she’d ever slept on before.

  And then she stopped making comparisons. She stopped thinking altogether. She gave herself over to her body, to her need, and to the desire of the man beside her.

  CHAPTER 7

  Amanda looked up from her stack of deposition transcripts as Harvey cleared his throat in the doorway of her office. “You live life right, don’t you?”

  “Excuse me?” she asked, still distracted by chemical reactions, drug half-lives, and the minutiae of the case that was consuming her every waking moment.

  “Haven’t you checked your email?” When Amanda started to make excuses, Harvey just laughed. “Dr. Phillips. He’s finally agreed to testify.”

  Amanda didn’t trust herself to breathe. Dr. Antoine Phillips. The key to her entire case. “I didn’t think—”

  But she knew better than that. She should never admit to weakness, never give any hint she’d lacked absolute confidence that Phillips would come around.

  Harvey nodded. “Your persistence finally paid off. Things will be tight, though. Phillips says you can have four hours on Friday afternoon before he heads back to Africa. All you have to do is fly up to meet him in Washington.”

  Amanda’s mind was already churning. Four hours… That would barely be enough time to outline her case, to get the doctor’s crucial analysis of pharmacokinetics. Well, she’d have to make it be enough. UPA’s continued existence depended on it—not to mention the bonus she’d earn when she won the case.

  She looked up at her old mentor. “You can trust me on this, Harvey.”

  “I know I can. Now get to work. Friday will be here before you know it.”

  Her phone rang as Harvey walked away. One glance quickened her heartbeat. “Kyle,” she said as she picked up. His name pooled in the back of her throat, soft and warm.