The All-Star Antes Up (Wager of Hearts #2) (4 page)

“And Mr. Saperstein needs a new dog walker,” Orin said.

Miranda mentally rolled her eyes. Mr. Saperstein needed a new dog walker at least once a month, since he always found some reason to fire his current one. It was becoming difficult to find anyone who would agree to work for him, because word had gotten around the dog-walking community that he was unreasonably demanding. Sticking her with the task was Orin’s revenge for the Archer incident.

“I’ll take care of both requests,” she said, even though it was nearly time for her to go home. She had pulled the night shift this week. Generally she was fine with that, because the residents who required services in the middle of the night compensated her accordingly. Unfortunately, last night had been quiet and routine except for the unpleasantness with Trevor Archer. Win some, lose some.

That reminded her of Luke Archer and the way the air around him seemed supercharged. She had felt as though lightning was flickering right beside her. The memory made the tiny hairs on her arms tingle in a weirdly delicious way.

“You may go,” Orin said, his eyes on his computer screen.

Miranda exited his office as fast as she could without running. Most of the time, she loved her job. Getting her clients exactly what they wanted while making it look effortless was a point of pride for her. Which was why Trevor’s request had distressed her. She wanted him to be happy while he was at the Pinnacle, but she had been unable to make it happen without breaking the rules and, even worse, venturing into territory that bordered on illegal.

When she recrossed the lobby, Luke Archer walked out of a shadow by the elevators and came toward her. As he strolled through an early-morning sunbeam shining through the plate-glass window, his hair turned to molten gold, and the muscles of his forearms were outlined in light and shadow. He moved as though he knew how every part of his body worked most efficiently.

The sheer beauty of the man made her gasp out loud, her body reacting without conscious thought. She tried to turn the sound into a cough, but she caught a flicker of something in his face that meant he’d caught her response. So much for her facade of cool sophistication. Of course, Luke Archer was probably used to the effect he had on women.

He stopped in front of her, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets. “I owe you more than a football for putting up with Trevor’s crap. Tell me what I can do to make it right with your boss.”

Even with her high heels on, she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. She felt delicate and feminine when she stood so close to him. It wasn’t unpleasant.

“Everything’s fine with my boss,” she lied. “It was just a misunderstanding.”

Archer shook his head. “I didn’t read it that way.”

One thing Miranda was not going to do was involve this prominent resident in a work squabble. “Mr. Archer, I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Call me Luke,” he said. The honey of his drawl poured through her, kicking up little flares of sensation. As the silence drew out, she realized he was waiting for her to use his given name.

“Thank you, Luke.” And she would never address him that way again. She had to remember he was a client.

He gave her another one of his appraising scans. “You let me know if something becomes a cause for concern.”

“Of course, Mr.—er, Luke.” So she had to use his name one more time.

“You take care,” he said, giving her a nod of farewell before he headed back to the elevators.

She couldn’t resist watching him walk away. His jeans fit him almost as tightly as his football uniform pants, which gave her an excellent view of a tight butt and rock-hard thighs. The cotton of his shirt draped over a magnificently contoured back. Something seemed to melt low in her belly, and she shook her head to break the powerful spell.

Even if Luke Archer hadn’t been a client, he was miles out of her league in every other way.

She was just bowled over that he’d stayed behind to see if he could fix things. Her brother always claimed that the great quarterback was a decent guy, not a prima donna. Maybe his image wasn’t just a skillful public relations campaign.

She shook her head again. No one that famous and that good-looking could be a normal human being.

Chapter 2

“Trevor, what the hell is the matter with you?” Luke stalked into the kitchen, where his brother sat eating cold pizza. “You’re a married man.”

Trevor looked up. “Seriously? You think that stops me from wanting some fun?”

Luke raked one hand through his hair, making his head throb. Too much scotch from last night at the Bellwether Club, and now Trevor. And that damned wager.

“Have fun somewhere else. Don’t involve some poor concierge, who’s now in trouble with her boss because you complained.” Although he hadn’t minded at all when the concierge had run into him so he could feel her soft curves crushed against his chest. He was human. “And don’t drag me into a meeting without telling me the truth.”

“I told you the meeting was Spindle’s idea.” Trevor took a bite of pizza and chewed. “You didn’t have to come. I could have handled it myself.”

“I live in the building. You’re a guest.” When Trevor had texted him about the meeting, he should have asked more questions and controlled the situation, but he had a morning appointment with his coach. Furthermore, he got the feeling Spindle had had his own agenda for getting them all into his office.

Trevor tossed his half-eaten pizza on the plate. “Look, Jodie’s nagging me up, down, and sideways about finding another job because I didn’t get tenure. All I hear is, ‘Why don’t you finish your book? Why don’t you write a scholarly article? Maybe you’d have tenure if you did, and we could have a baby.’ So she doesn’t exactly put me in the mood for sex right now.”

“Christ, Trevor, that’s enough about your sex life.”

Luke agreed with Jodie’s logic, even if her methods weren’t effective. Trevor had been passed over for tenure at the small liberal arts college where he was a professor of philosophy, so he’d come to New York to drown his sorrows. Or dump them on Luke. Personally, Luke thought his brother should be in his office finishing the book he’d been working on for the last three years. Wasn’t it publish or perish in academia? Even Luke knew that, and he was as far away from Trevor’s world as it was possible to get.

“Don’t judge me,” Trevor said. “I remember the stories you told about the football groupies and some of the wild stuff you did with them.”

“I was a lot younger and stupider then,” Luke said. “But even more important, I was single. No strings, no rings,” he repeated, remembering last night’s conversation at the club. He didn’t add that he’d never had to pay for sex.

Nor did he mention his concern about the press. The concierge—Miranda—had said she wouldn’t mention it again, and concierges probably needed to be discreet. However, if her boss gave her a hard time and she got miffed, she might talk to a reporter. Luke didn’t want Jodie or his parents hearing about Trevor’s little escapade from the media.

As he thought of Miranda, he remembered the sympathetic look she’d given him and the genuine warmth of her smile. There had been real understanding there, but also some intriguing banked heat in her big brown eyes. Both had caught his attention because they were unexpected.

She’d turned down football tickets, too. No one did that. He knew her boss was going to sell the ones he’d accepted—he could see it in the way the man refused to meet his eyes. But Miranda, who was the injured party, had rejected his first peace offering. He suspected she had accepted the football just to appease him and Spindle.

He’d waited for her afterward to offer his assistance because he could tell that her boss was unhappy. She had put him off then, too. It was interesting.

So was the fact that behind that serene mask she wore, she had reacted to him. Most women didn’t try to hide that.

Trevor picked up the pizza and ripped off another bite. “Yeah, well, I didn’t have a chance to do wild stuff when I was young and stupid.”

Luke’s hangover made his stomach heave at the sight of the congealed pizza, so he took his brother’s plate and tossed the rest of the pizza in the garbage. “At least eat something healthy.”

Trevor stood up and leaned forward so his face was just inches away from Luke’s. “I don’t have to eat healthy, because I don’t make my living with my muscles. I use my brain.”

There it was. The one weapon Trevor could use to jab at his overachieving older brother. Luke stepped back to avoid the bits of pizza Trevor was spewing.

“I spend hours reading and researching and analyzing and writing and discussing ideas. It’s exhausting. Up here,” Trevor said, tapping his temple. “You don’t understand that.”

Luke crossed his arms and thought of the hours he spent watching video and reading scouting reports, pinpointing his opponents’ strengths and weaknesses, devising plays with the coaches, memorizing and running them with his teammates. It was exhausting, too, but that’s what it took to do his job to the absolute best of his abilities.

Trevor had always been the smart one. Their parents had been so proud when he had been the salutatorian of his high school class and gone on to Harvard for undergrad and his doctorate.

Luke, on the other hand, had taken the courses he had to in order to play football. His parents had been stunned when Luke received the National Football Foundation’s High School Scholar-Athlete Award, one of five given in the entire country. Their baffled astonishment when he’d told them about the luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City had been both gratifying and hurtful. They’d accompanied him, of course, but had spent the afternoon looking at the professional football stars attending the event—people he hoped to emulate—as though they were aliens.

Luke pushed that memory away. “I have a meeting at the Empire Center.”

“Go ahead!” Trevor shouted. “You with your helicopter waiting on the roof! With the groupies panting for your attention! With the view of the Statue of Liberty!” He waved his hand at the sliding doors that opened onto the penthouse terrace, where Lady Liberty’s torch showed above the railing. “You’ve got it all, and I’ve got nothing.”

Anger boiled up inside Luke, but he slammed the lid down on it. “You have a wife who loves you,” he said in a flat tone. “That’s worth more than all the groupies in the world.”

Shock silenced Trevor for a moment. He stared at Luke with his mouth opening and closing before he said, “You could have any woman you want.”

He’d had a lot of women he’d thought he wanted.

Thirty minutes later, Luke faced Head Coach Junius Farrell across his huge oak-and-chrome desk. “With all due respect, Junius, I think we should keep the play as is. We can change it up for next year after we have time to work on it in training camp. But reconfiguring it in midseason is going to cause a lot of confusion on the field.”

He’d been through this with the coach before. It was Junius’s first time as a head coach, and he wanted to put his stamp on the Empire, so he kept trying to fix things that weren’t broken. As the veteran quarterback, Luke got the job of running interference to keep the new coach from screwing up the current season. That’s why he was at the Empire Center on a Tuesday when every other player had the day off.

“But if we run the pick, it would free up Marshall,” Junius said, jabbing his finger against his desk authoritatively.

“You’re right,” Luke said. “But it’s tricky and we haven’t had time to practice it often enough. If we try to run it this week, we’ll have the guys tripping over each other at the forty. How about using it against the Colts?”

That game was in three weeks. By then, the offensive line could probably learn the new scheme well enough not to screw it up completely. In addition, it would work better against the Colts than either the Cardinals or the Buccaneers.

“I’ll consider it.” Junius swiveled to face his computer screen and clicked on his mouse a couple of times. He wasn’t a bad guy. He just didn’t realize he’d taken over an organization that had the talent and momentum to carry him to the Super Bowl if he’d get out of the way.

As long as Luke’s shoulder held out. He had to stop himself from rubbing at the phantom pain that had appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast. No one knew why he’d thrown that interception, and he wanted to keep it that way.

They discussed some personnel changes and some strategies for Sunday’s game before Junius thanked Luke for coming and let him go.

Luke walked down the carpeted hallway. It wasn’t empty, because the massive moneymaking machine that was an NFL football team ran at full speed from the beginning of training camp until the team’s last game—and then some. But the office staff members were smaller than the players, so they didn’t take up as much room in the corridor. Luke nodded to a couple of the PR people he passed. He didn’t envy them their jobs. There was always some problem that had to be hushed up. Or spun for the press, if it couldn’t be squelched.

Luke hoped that Trevor’s little incident wouldn’t end up on their radar. It was pretty tame—a nonevent, in fact—but Luke’s image had been scrubbed clean because it was less distracting that way. However, the press would love to have some dirt sticking to him. He got it: scandal sold papers and drew viewers. He just didn’t want to answer questions about anything other than the game.

His head was throbbing again. Damn Gavin Miller anyway. He’d tempted Luke with the seductive forgetfulness of single malt. And talked him into that ridiculous wager. He considered calling the writer and telling him the bet was off. It wouldn’t surprise Luke if Trainor had backed out already, since the whole thing had been hatched in a drunken haze of one-upmanship. Who the hell bet on true love?

He pulled out his phone, found Miller’s number, then put the phone away. Luke had never welshed on a bet in his life. Let the other two call it quits. He could wait them out, because he was going to put it out of his mind until the end of the season and then show them how to run a courtship.

He headed for the cubicle pen where his assistant, Doug Weiss, worked, along with a battalion of other staff members who handled everything from ordering supplies for the locker room to cutting the players’ paychecks. It was a hive of activity. When Luke leaned into Doug’s cubicle, the tall, skinny young man pulled his telephone headset off and fluffed his mop of frizzy red hair. “Hey, Boss Ice, what do you need?”

“I need two good tickets to Sunday’s game with a signed football. And I need four VIP box tickets and the works.”

“The works?” Doug whistled. “Is this for some charity auction I don’t know about?”

“No, it’s for someone my brother dumped on.”

Doug grimaced at the mention of Trevor and spun around to his computer, his hands poised over the keyboard. “Let me have the info, boss.”

Luke gave him the two concierges’ names before adding, “Check on Miranda Tate’s schedule, and have the VIP tickets and the works delivered to her personally.” He didn’t want Spindle horning in on his apology gifts to Miranda. “You got the list of who else needs tickets for the game, right?”

“All taken care of,” Doug assured him. “And you saw the addition of the table at the gala next Thursday night on your schedule, right?”

Luke didn’t curse, but he wanted to. “Remind me whose idea that was?”

Doug’s freckled cheeks reddened. “Um, Kathy Middleton’s. She’s in PR.”

“I see.” Kathy Middleton was a hot brunette Doug had a major crush on. Luke lowered his voice. “Have you asked her out yet?”

Doug shook his head, making his hair flop. “She wouldn’t go out with someone like me.”

“You just got me to go to her gala. She’ll be positively disposed toward you.”

“Seriously?” Doug’s eyes were wide. That was one of the reasons Luke liked his assistant; the kid didn’t take advantage of his access to a celebrity.

“Try it. I’m betting she’ll say yes.”

His assistant took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Keep me posted,” Luke said.

Back out in the corridor, he debated whether to watch some video or go home. Instead, he shrugged into his leather jacket without zipping it and jogged across a couple of vast parking lots to the stadium. Swiping his security badge into the players’ entrance, he cut past the locker rooms and headed out into the big shell of the arena.

A couple of maintenance crews worked on the field, their black fleece jackets contrasting with the emerald green synthetic turf. A gust of wind pushed chilly air through the cotton of Luke’s shirt, but he kept walking until he was right in the middle of the Empire logo on the fifty-yard line.

He performed his weekly ritual, turning slowly in a full circle to imprint the empty seats and near silence on his brain. On game day he would use this image to overlay the roaring, heaving crowd of spectators so he could block out everything except the players on the field. His college coach had taught him the technique after his first game freshman year, when he’d been distracted by all the commotion on the sidelines and beyond.

Luke had always had natural field vision, the ability to see how a play was developing and what patterns the players were running. This visualization was one of the ways he’d honed it to a precision tool.

“Hey, I figured I’d find you here.” Stan Gatto jogged up to him. The older man had been Luke’s trainer since day one at the Empire. “We gotta talk.”