Playing Hard (14 page)

“You’re obviously not training hard enough,” Em said. “You need to let Finn take you to a few more of his baseball parties. Lots of free booze.”

“I think Finn needs to lay off the free booze, not drink more of it,” Amelia said without thinking as she grabbed a handful of tortilla chips to help soak up the alcohol. She was halfway to smashed despite having slept for two hours when she’d gotten home. No more for her. She was switching to club soda as soon as she finished her glass.

Em straightened on the sofa, swinging her legs down from their perch hanging over the arm. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Amelia froze, trying to remember exactly what she’d said. Something about Finn and drinking. Right. “Well, he did get into the accident because he’d been drinking.”

Em’s eyes, the same unfairly green shade as her brother’s, narrowed. “He wasn’t driving. It wasn’t his fault.”

“Easy there, counselor,” Amelia said. “I didn’t say it was his fault. I said he’d been drinking.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Em said.

Had Finn not told her exactly how the accident had happened? Amelia put her glass down carefully. “Finn was in the car because the Saints were sending him home from the party because he was wasted.”

“He was celebrating.”

“Em, he drank so much at a team party they sent him home,” Amelia said. “That’s like you or me getting tanked at a work function.”

“So? Everyone is allowed to do stupid things from time to time.”

Not when they started involving other people getting hurt. She wasn’t sure this was the right time to have this conversation with Em. But she wasn’t going to let Finn get away with giving his family the impression that everything was going swimmingly in New York. “Finn is still new at the Saints. He needs to be careful, that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want him to screw up his chance here.”

“And you call me a worrier,” Em said, waving a hand. “I’m sure he’s fine. It was just a fender bender.”

“It was a little more than that. Finn got a concussion, don’t forget. And the guy who was taking him home got his hand sliced up. He had to have surgery. That’s pretty serious for a baseball player. It could end his career.”

Em’s expression went shuttered for a moment, then her eyes focused like lasers. “He doesn’t have a case against Finn.”

“I didn’t say he did. Or that Finn was going to get sued over this. I’m just saying it wasn’t just a minor accident.” She lifted the bottle and refilled Em’s glass. This conversation wasn’t going the way she hoped. Em was too wound up from her case and, most likely, from being nervous about the play-offs to react well to a heads-up about her baby brother’s fondness for enjoying himself a bit too much. Time to try again in the morning. “Anyway, enough serious talk. Tell me about Chicago. Any hot lawyers appearing on the scene?”

Em shook her head, dark bangs falling into her eyes. “Nope. None worth taking out for a trial run, anyway. The city’s a wasteland, I tell you. A wasteland.” She fell back on the sofa again.

“Is the definition of
wasteland
‘Emma Castro works too hard and doesn’t take time to have any fun’?” Amelia teased.

“Hello, pot, meet kettle,” Em shot back.

“Hey, I have fun,” Amelia said then bit her lip. ’Cause there was no telling Em about her latest piece of fun. Not yet. If Em had gotten prickly at the suggestion that Finn was drinking too much, she wasn’t going to take very well to the news that Amelia was having an attack of flaming hot pants over the guy who’d been in the accident with him.

“Economic modeling doesn’t count as fun for normal people.”

“Neither does reading legal briefs until one a.m.”

Em groaned and put a hand over her eyes. “We are too hot to have love lives this sad. How did this happen?”

“No idea,” Amelia said. “Obviously it’s all the fault of the men in these cities.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Em said. “I’m starting to think I’m going to try the online thing again.”

“Oh yeah, because that’s worked well in the past.” Em’s tales of Internet dating disasters were legendary.

“Well, I could try Tinder. At least get some sex.”

“I’ll buy you a new vibrator,” Amelia said. “How do you know some random guy you meet on the Internet isn’t an ax murderer?”

“How do you know a random guy in a bar isn’t?”

She was pretty sure that Oliver Shields wasn’t an ax murderer. Maybe a sanity killer, but not an ax murderer. “You at least talk to the guy in the bar first.”

“Talking’s half the problem. Too many of them ruin it when they open their mouths.” Em smiled suddenly. “How’s your boss with the divine accent?”

“Still mostly an ambitious asshole,” Amelia said.

Em looked wistful. “Maybe asshole isn’t so hard to take when he sounds like that.”

“Trust me, the charm of the accent wears off fast. And I’ll sign you up for online dating myself before I let you date Daniel. Besides, you live in different cities.”

“Who said anything about dating? Is he in town this weekend?”

“He goes to the Hamptons,” Amelia said. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Damn.”

“If you’re that desperate, maybe you’re the one who should be going to Finn’s baseball parties,” Amelia said. “Move to New York. They like lawyers here.”

Em wrinkled her nose. “Baseball players are your kink, not mine.”

Sadly, that was true. Not that she’d ever succumbed to that particular preference. Nor had Em ever fallen for the charms of any of the hot-bodied guys they’d come across in their teens thanks to their attendance at Finn’s games. Finn, who’d always been a bit of wunderkind and subsequently usually ended up playing with guys a few years older than himself. Aka, exactly Amelia and Em’s age.

It really was a miracle neither of them had ever dated a jock. But Amelia had been too well indoctrinated by her mom, and Em had gone for the bad-boy type instead. The guys with guitars or motorcycles or rumored drug habits. Which didn’t explain her weird fascination with Daniel, who was straitlaced as only a Brit could be. At least as far as Amelia could tell, he was.

She shook herself, trying to clear the tequila fog from her brain. This conversation was straying into dangerous territory again. “I do not have a baseball player kink. I’ve never dated a jock.”

“And look, you’re still single. Face it, Milly, you have a little thing for guys in tight uniforms.”

“Remind me not to give you margaritas again,” Amelia said, sticking her nose in the air. “It makes you regress to seventeen.”

“Maybe if you let your inner teenager out you might have more fun.”

“Who needs men for fun when I have you?” Amelia said. “Now, is it time for ice cream?”

*   *   *

It wasn’t the first time she’d watched a game from great seats. Finn had gotten her tickets at Deacon Field, the Saints’ home stadium, a few times over the season, and the players’ families had prime positions. But watching from the owners’ box—and she still wasn’t sure how Finn had pulled off four seats in the box when there must be a cast of thousands wanting to sit up there for the Saints’ first home game of the series—was a whole other experience. Food handed around by waiters, ditto drinks. Cushy leather seats. Not to mention the box was far warmer than the cool October evening. High-definition flat screens on the walls showed different angles of the game and the crowd, if actually gazing out the floor-to-ceiling glass window that looked out on the field was too much effort.

It was luxurious and not a little glamorous.

It was also the most tense place Amelia had been in a very long time. Including the trading room at Pullman.

Everyone at the Saints was taking this game very seriously. Very, very seriously. Which made her nervous. Two down in a play-off series wasn’t a great place to be for a team inexperienced in handling this kind of pressure. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be a firsthand witness to the disappointment of everyone in the room if the Saints lost this game and the series came crashing to a halt.

The atmosphere was already enough to make her feel vaguely queasy, and the game hadn’t even started yet.

This was going to be an interesting evening.

She glanced at Em, seated next to her. Mari had her daughter’s hand in a death grip as they both stared down at the field where the Saints dance squad, the Fallen Angels, were nearly done with their trademark opening routine, the white of the huge feathered wings they wore brilliant against the green field.

On Mari’s far side, Eduardo Castro looked like he just wanted it to be over already, his face grim as he stared equally intently down at the diamond.

Normally she’d crack a joke to try to lighten the mood. But she had the feeling that any joke was likely to land as gracefully as a lead balloon.

So she stayed silent, sipping champagne and wondering what Oliver was doing. Was he alone in his apartment? Sitting through the game with nothing to distract him?

She’d spoken to him earlier when Em had made a side trip to the Met, but there’d been no time to sneak away to see him. Em was staying the night and then flying out in the morning, back to Chicago. So there would be no sneaking out after the game, either. And if by some miracle the Saints won and kept their chances minimally alive, the Castros would be in New York another night. That meant she’d have to hang out with them and go to another game on Sunday.

All while she really, really wanted to be with Ollie again. To kiss him again. To do more than kiss this time if she had her way.

She’d been hoping to see him, if only across the room, given their agreement not to go public yet. But apparently he’d decided not to come to the game.

Sigh.

She was just going to have to be patient. If the Saints won both their home games then the final game would be back in Boston. So really she only had to survive another day and a half at worst.

Thing was, she wasn’t sure how she was going to do that without going crazy. Or tripping up and mentioning Oliver’s name to Em, Finn, or the Castros. It had been on the tip of her tongue a few times last night under the deadly combination of tequila and not enough sleep but she’d managed to stop herself, even when Em had started grilling her about her love life for a second time.

Down on the very green grass, the Angels were wrapping up their routine. The noise of the crowd grew louder and louder and the nerves in her stomach twisted tighter with each roar.

The stadium stands were a sea of blue, white, and gold, punctuated with swaths of red-and-white-clad Sox fans who’d made the trip from Boston to watch the game.

She figured the ratio was probably two to one Saints fans to Sox supporters. Which made sense. The Saints fans hadn’t had a chance to see their team in a divisional series for decades. They must have been just about willing to commit murder to get their hands on tickets.

She could relate to that feeling. She felt much the same way about getting her hands on Oliver Shields.

Just thinking about him made her hot and needy and unable to sit still, like her skin was buzzing and her blood too warm. Her foot was tapping now, trying to burn off some of the nervous energy. She knew that she wasn’t going to be able to just sit quietly through the singing of the National Anthem and the other ceremonies that went before the actual first pitch.

Murmuring an excuse to Em, she left her seat and headed out of the box to the bathroom. The air felt several degrees cooler in the corridor outside the box but she figured that was probably due to the lack of tension.

Running cool water over her wrists helped her feel calmer and she stayed in the bathroom, staring at the mirror a little too long. Her phone was in her bag. She could call Oliver.

She wanted to so badly it made her palms itch. But it seemed like madness. She should be able to wait to talk to the man, for God’s sake. Instead of having to fight the need to talk to him.

Besides which, she was surrounded by people who actually knew Oliver. What if one of them overheard her saying his name or something? She knew that if this thing between them continued, she was going to have to face his friends and teammates and the Castros eventually, but she wasn’t ready for that to happen just yet. No, she needed it to be a secret a bit longer. Something just for her.

Something no one else wanted or needed from her. Something she was doing purely because she wanted to.

It felt like way too long since she’d done something selfish.

Something foolish.

None of the Wall Street guys had felt like this. They’d been scratching an itch maybe.

Oliver wasn’t an itch.

No.

He was already more like an addiction.

Which should worry her but right now, like any good addict, she was more focused on getting her fix than where her addiction might lead her.

She could hold off a little longer. No calling him.

Instead she reached into her bag for her lipstick, repainting the deep coral she’d chosen to go with the royal-blue top she’d donned under a white jacket. Hammered gold hoops in her ears and a matching long loop of hammered gold and silver links around her neck were the best she could do to make up the Saints’ team colors without resorting to a cap or a team jersey—which was in no way suitable to wear in the owners’ box. She’d paired the jacket with skinny black jeans and spike-heeled boots. Dressy but not too outright fussy.

Her instinct had been right, as it turned out. The other women in the box wore subtle hints of team colors but were otherwise dressed similarly to her. Expensive jeans or short skirts or sleek dresses.

She fit right in.

Which was a pretty odd thought.

Lipstick restored, along with a measure of calm she hoped, she made her way back to the box when she heard the last few lines of “The Star-Spangled Banner” echoing across the PA system and the crowd start to cheer again.

Please don’t lose, please don’t lose, please don’t lose.

She wanted it for Finn. They’d seen him for a few minutes earlier but he’d been tense and distracted. Amelia had coaxed the Castros and Em away, and he’d given her a grateful smile over his shoulder as he’d disappeared back into the locker room.