Always Right (6 page)

He sipped before he replied, a little surprised that she’d tackled the subject head-on. Most women beat around the bush, changing their minds about their own drink order after he placed his, making excuses that they didn’t feel like drinking that night, that it was too hot out, too late, too whatever.

Amanda wasn’t most women.

He said, “I figure it’s probably for the best. I kept things under control in high school and freshman fall in college. But after Spring Valley, it just makes sense to avoid temptation.”

Spring Valley
. He never said the words out loud. He never talked about that part of his life, tried not to think about it, about how the ’roids had upped his game, how they’d turned him into a power hitter for a couple of months. He tried not to think about how the oxy had taken away the pain in his ankle. Or, rather, the way it made him not give a flying fuck about his ankle, because it boiled down every care, every concern he’d ever had. It made everything melt away under a huge, heavy blanket of Don’t Give a Shit.

Despite himself, he still longed for that soft retreat sometimes. But he’d learned his lesson at Spring Valley. He didn’t have room for anything soft in his life. He pushed himself every day he played ball. He drove for new personal bests every workout, never settling for cushioned and easy. He wanted hard angles and sharp stones, the challenges that made him the best man he could be, the best ballplayer.

And from Amanda’s raised chin, she seemed to be just the sort of sharp edge he craved. He raised his glass and touched hers, watching her over the rim as she drank to the silent toast.

“You’re screwing up my life,” she said as she returned her glass to the table.

He could have said the same thing about her. She’d cost him a hundred grand, and she still held the papers she’d tracked down about him. He should be angry with her. Careful, at least. But instead, he kept thinking about the power she’d brought to his hitting game, the force that had put him back in the middle of the most important season the Rockets had ever played. Truth be told, everything about Amanda put him off balance—including the fact that he was enjoying that uncertainty, that feeling of standing on shifting sand. “How’s that?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

He liked watching the way she chose her words, careful and precise. She wasn’t afraid to look at him while she answered, wasn’t shy at all. “My co-workers left a pile of sunglasses on my desk this morning. The cashier at the sandwich shop called me ‘sweetheart’, and he winked as he pretended to catch something when I got my turkey on wheat.
Opposing counsel
asked how I had time to write a brief when I was playing at the ballpark all weekend.”

That last one really bothered her; he already knew her well enough to tell that. “So you told him you were such an incredible lawyer you could get the brief done
and
watch a couple of games.”

“
Her
,” Amanda clarified, but her lips curved in the hint of a smile. “I told
her
. Pretty much word for word what you just said.”

“Then I fail to see a problem.” He wasn’t an idiot. He knew exactly what had pissed her off. But he wanted to see that flash of anger in her green eyes, wanted to see the flush on her cheeks as she explained.

“The
problem
,” and she raised her eyebrows to emphasize the word, “is that after three lousy weekends, I’ve lost half my credibility as a lawyer.”

“Half your credibility?” He purposely drew out the phrase. “How do you measure that, exactly?” Before she could retort, he leaned forward. “And why do you care? Isn’t it an advantage to have people underestimate you? Isn’t it better if opposing counsel thinks
she
can walk all over you?” He emphasized the pronoun just enough to remind her he was listening. She hadn’t lost any credibility with him. Not a bit.

“That’s not—”

But he wasn’t done yet, not when he had the advantage. Because he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get the advantage on Amanda Carter many times in the future. “Besides,” he said, riding right over her words. “Whatever you’re losing in credibility, you’re gaining in attractiveness. At least from where I’m sitting.”

That
seemed to confuse her. She obviously wasn’t used to anyone telling her she was attractive, which was a crying shame, because he hadn’t been able to get the thought out of his mind for two and a half weeks.

It didn’t make any sense. She’d taken him for a hundred thousand dollars. She held the power of his hitting streak in the palm of her hand—all she had to do was snap those sunglasses in half, and his game would be back in the toilet. She was sitting across the table, radiating spikes like a porcupine cornered by a hound dog, and he could barely keep his hands off her.

He couldn’t forget that goddamn kiss in front of her apartment building. Sure, his dick remembered it, pressing against his zipper even now. But his
brain
remembered it too—how she’d stiffened when he first kissed her, how she’d fought against her natural response before giving in to what she actually wanted, to who she
really
was.

He wanted to see behind that wall again. He wanted to see more of the real Amanda Carter.

Of course Artie managed to screw that up. The guy chose that moment to come in with their appetizers—shrimp cocktail for her—cold, pink curls on ice. Kyle had opted for the blistered sishito peppers.

But it didn’t matter that Artie broke up the flow of their conversation. Kyle had all evening with Amanda. He could afford to let the conversation drift back to safer topics for now. He could let her relax, forget that she didn’t trust him, forget that they were adversaries, at least where their bank accounts were concerned.

As Artie ducked away under the velvet curtains, Kyle said, “So? Tell me about law school. What made you decide to be a lawyer?”

~~~

Amanda couldn’t believe she was sitting there, having a normal conversation in a normal restaurant with a normal guy. Okay. Maybe Kyle wasn’t a
normal
guy. He was so superstitious she wondered how he got out of bed in the morning. She couldn’t imagine what he’d do if a black cat crossed his path, if he had to walk under a ladder.

But despite his lack of logic, despite the crazy connections he made and then held on to like they were the holy word of God, he made her feel more relaxed than she’d been in ages. His quirks opened a door for her. They gave her freedom when everyone else in the world made her feel more burdened, more pressured, more responsible for every single thing that could go wrong.

Like her brother. If she’d worked harder, finished law school earlier, made partner sooner, she would have the money Alex needed. She could help Hunter, get her nephew the care he required.

She took a deep breath. Talking to Kyle was like taking a break from all that tension. He was like a holiday.

Maybe it was the steak that finally let her relax, the buttery filet that melted in her mouth, richer and more satisfying than any meal she’d eaten in months. Maybe it was the oaky rioja she sipped, the single glass of gran reserve costing more than any bottle she’d ever bought for herself. Maybe it was the soft velvet draperies that surrounded them, the quiet alcove that cut them off from the rest of the restaurant, from the rest of the world.

She’d come to the restaurant that night ready to tell Kyle she was done. She wouldn’t be his sunglass muse any longer, wouldn’t support his absurd superstitions. She’d planned to tell him that until he got her off balance with his flattery.

But that wasn’t all. She’d meant to say she wouldn’t keep his money, either. The idea of blackmailing him had come on the spur of the moment, boiling over in her superheated brain after that horrible morning with the banks. It had been a stupid plan—dangerous
and
cruel—even if it had worked, even if it had solved her immediate problem of the partnership buy-in. She’d tell him the truth about why she’d asked for the money, and then she’d figure out a way to pay him back, dime by dime until she won the UPA case, until she got the bonus she deserved.

But every time she started to say the words out loud, palpitations stole her breath away. Instead, she heard her mother: “We don’t tell
anyone
about our family problems, Mandy. Child Protective Services could take you away forever.” She heard Alex: “Don’t tell
anyone
Daddy pawned my bicycle. They’ll laugh at me forever!” Anyone, anyone. Forever, forever. She’d never get away from Warren’s damage. Just thinking about saying the words made the room spin.

So she didn’t talk to Kyle about money.

Instead, she told him what it was like growing up as a freakish girl who loved science and math and couldn’t get enough of chess tournaments. She told him about participating on trivia teams in high school, about winning a state tournament because she’d memorized the digits of pi out to five hundred places.

She listened as he talked about his parents, both still alive in Kansas. One sister was in San Francisco, another in Chicago—he got to see them on road trips, a couple of times a year.

He’d always known he’d play ball, from his earliest days in Little League. She’d set her heart on being a lawyer the first time she watched a courtroom drama on TV, the first time she saw the logic of the evidence transformed into a conviction.

He’d come to Raleigh because the team drafted him. She’d moved to the Research Triangle because she’d carefully mapped out potential clients around the country, companies that would require her undergraduate double-major in mathematics and chemical engineering, her law school degree, her patent bar certification.

He’d buckled down as he hit his journeyman years in the majors, revamping his batting stance, learning to maximize his good instincts. She’d reached her stride in the two years before she became a partner in her firm, mastering the long hours, annealing the mandatory combination of pit-bull and client counselor.

And all that conversation was interspersed with the most amazing meal she’d eaten in Raleigh. The perfect steak was followed by deep, rich coffee, so flavorful she couldn’t believe it was actually decaf. She was still savoring the cup when the proprietor carried in a massive slice of peach pie. The lattice crust was crowned with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and two spoons balanced on the plate.

“I can’t,” she said, as Kyle edged the dessert closer to her.

“Live a little,” he said, a challenge sparking from his eyes. And those three words sent a hot knife through her, melting all her insides as if they were butter.

She wasn’t a naive little girl. She’d felt curls of lust before, sparks of interest as she watched a movie, as she read a book. She’d given in to desire, going home with boys in college, with men she met in law school, through work.

But if those nights were carefree songs, the feeling that sliced through her now was an opera. It stole her breath away, zapped her words to syllables, to meaningless sounds. It made her thighs tremble, and she actually wondered if she could stand up and walk away from the table.

She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t breathe. But she could purse her lips with calculated care. She could dip her spoon into the soft curve of ice cream. She could raise the dessert to her mouth and take her time licking the melted vanilla sauce, lapping it up with all the careful attention of a cat.

She watched Kyle’s eyes go wide.

This was crazy.
She
was crazy. Sure it was fun teasing him this way, but she needed to be careful. She had to remember that this was the guy she’d blackmailed, the man who could turn her in to the police, who could toss her out on her ass whenever he wanted.

This is the guy who can give me the money for Hunter.

The thought was there, stark and ugly, turning the ice cream to acid at the back of her throat. Even as the words surfaced, she realized she’d known them all along.

Kyle could save her. He could save Hunter. All she had to do was repeat her crime, make her demand, hold Spring Valley over his head again.

Yeah, she’d come to this dinner planning on paying back what she’d already taken from him. But how the hell could she do that with her maxed-out salary? She couldn’t even raise the issue without hyperventilating.

Instead, over the course of dinner, she’d begun to understand what it actually meant to have a major-league salary. Kyle had bought his parents a new home. He’d put one sister through grad school and sent the other on an around-the-world trip while she figured out what she wanted to be when she grew up.

Twenty-five thousand dollars was practically pocket change for him.

We don’t tell anyone about our family problems.
Her mother had recited those words like a prayer. That’s what had kept the three of them—Amanda and Laura and Alex—together through the worst of it. Warren had nearly destroyed them, but in the end, they were all still standing.

Doing anything else now—telling an outsider, telling
Kyle
—why she needed his money would take away the power of all those old struggles. Speaking out loud would erase the bonds her mother had forged. It would invalidate the past. If Amanda displayed her need, she’d be saying that every secret her mother had made them keep had been unnecessary, had hurt more than it had ever helped.

She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t betray who she’d been, who her mother and brother had been. She couldn’t erase everything they’d done to survive. It was easier to demand money than to explain the reason she needed it.

~~~

Jesus Christ. He couldn’t tell what Amanda was thinking. One moment, she was looking up at him through her eyelashes, yanking a chain she had to know was tied directly to his dick. The next, she was swallowing hard, refusing to meet his eyes, twisting her fingers in her lap.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you okay?”

She licked her lips before she raised her chin. Her eyes flashed bright in the dim alcove. “I’m fine. But I’m through with dessert.”

He glanced at the plate between them, at the ice cream melting on her spoon. Something had changed. Something had broken inside her. But he wasn’t going to get anywhere asking questions; he could tell that from the steady way she looked at him.