Stealing Home (17 page)

“It’s nice to have you see this side of me.”

“You’re a pretty amazing brother. I hope you know that.”

Luke’s eyes diverted into the store, where I guessed another sister was flashing him something else. His answer to every piece of clothing had been a thumbs-up. Never a thumbs-down. Every girl needed a guy in her life who always gave her the thumbs-up, no matter what. Luke’s sisters were lucky.

“They’re amazing. They just make me look good.”

“Says the brother who would pay any price, financially or personally, for any one of them.” Giving his hand a squeeze, I turned back toward the store. “Have fun getting booed at here. Those Shock and Archer fans are brutal.”

He gave me a disparaging look right before something wicked flashed in his eyes. “After this, I’m going to feel a lot less guilty about leaving that red handprint on your ass tonight.”

“Mall. People.” I flourished my hands up and down at the hall we were in, droves of shoppers passing by.

Luke lifted a brow. “So?

“Never mind.” I sighed before going in search of three teenage girls.

If experience had anything to do with it, they were probably already throwing on clothes in the dressing room. None of them even eighteen and they’d already mastered the art of power shopping.

Wandering through the store, I found Alex perusing a rounder of vintage-style tees—the other two must have beaten her to the dressing room.

“I’m armed and loaded with a limitless credit card, so go crazy.” I came up on the other side of the rounder. “How’s it going?”

“Eggplant or charcoal?” She held up two tees, taking a turn floating each one over her so I could get the full effect.

“Both,” I suggested.

“Nah.” She shook her head, studying the shirts before putting the charcoal one back. “Luke already does way too much for us.”

Glancing at the tag of one of the shirts, I saw the price was less than ten bucks each. As fiends of shopping and fashion as the girls clearly were, none of them had gone crazy setting registers on fire. At all. A few pairs of cut-offs and a few shirts each, but all of them seemed to behave like they had a budget.

“I don’t think twenty bucks for a couple of shirts is going to raise your brother’s brow. Not even a little bit.”

“I know. But . . .”

“Do you know how much—”

“Twenty-one million dollars a year?” Her eyes lifted from the rack of dresses she was thumbing through. “Yeah, I know how much he makes. It’s not about the money. It’s about everything he’s done for all of us ever since—” She stopped herself short, chewing it out on her lip for a moment. “Do you know about what happened?”

“To your parents?” I asked softly, and she nodded. “Yes, he told me.”

“After that, the three of us could have gone and lived with other family. But we would have had to move away from home, from our friends, our schools. The places we used to go to with Dad and Mom.” She pulled out a dress, but she was obviously seeing something else when she studied the chevron print. “Luke kept us all together. In the same home we grew up in. He talked with Anne and brought her in to take care of us since he couldn’t be home with us for most of the year. He made it so that even though we’d lost our parents, we didn’t have to lose everything else too. It’s not about the money. I already owe Luke more than I could ever hope to pay back.” This time when she worked at her bottom lip, I guessed it was to ward off tears. “Does that make any sense at all?”

“Hey, as someone who can’t take a compliment without feeling like I owe a person big time, I so get it.” I paused to collect my thoughts. “But love isn’t about owing a person or feeling in their debt. It’s about giving what you can, when you can, and allowing that in return. It’s not all a matter of the head—it’s just as much a matter of the heart.”

Alex shifted, hanging the dress back up. “So are you saying to buy both of the shirts?”

I smiled. “Not exactly. What I’m trying to say is just accept what he can and wants to give you without worrying about how you’ll pay him back. Just like you’d want him to accept what you can and want to give him without worrying about how he’ll pay you back.” I felt my forehead crease as I replayed what I’d said to a seventeen-year-old I’d just met smack in the middle of a store that was blasting yet more reprehensible music. “Does that make sense? Because now that I’m rethinking it, I don’t know what I just said.”

Alex laughed, moving on to the next rack. “You’re saying that we all might express it uniquely, but it comes down to the same thing—love.”

“Exactly what I’m saying.”

“Glad we cleared that up.”

A teenage girl who’d been on a handful of dates in her life apparently knew more about the inner workings of love than I did—a grown woman who’d known her fair share of relationships. That was a depressing thought. A sobering reality. I remembered thinking I knew what love was, but somewhere along the way, I’d lost it. Its definition had been skewed by Ben and my subsequent failed relationships. Somewhere along life’s journey, I’d lost the essence of love. The simplicity of it had been lost, hidden by conditions, masked by doubt, veiled by qualifiers.

Here, in this toddler-clothing-sized store, with this young girl, I’d just remembered it. You either loved a person or you didn’t. They either loved you or they didn’t. Time didn’t play a role in it, and neither did circumstance.

It wasn’t a decision you came to logically; it was a feeling you knew instinctively.

The next realization that hit me had me reaching for a rack to keep myself from teetering in place. Thankfully, my stream of thoughts was interrupted.

“How is he?” Alex glanced out the front of the store where we could just make out Luke. Who was getting another round of jeers from fans in Shock caps. He responded with a peace sign.

“Good,” I answered, moving with her to the next rounder of shirts. “He’s having an amazing season. Setting some records already. Other than the muscle strain, he’s been great.”

“I watch every game. I know every stat. That’s not what I’m asking about. How is
Luke
, my brother? Not Luke Archer, the baseball player.”

“Oh.” When I held up a shirt with a baseball on it, she held out her hand to take it. “Why are you asking me?”

“Because you’re on the team with him. You two must spend a lot of time together.” Her eyes met mine and stayed there a moment. “And I maybe haven’t missed the way you two look at each other.” She glanced out into the mall where Luke was stationed, his gaze intent on us. “And the way you act around each other.”

Maybe I should have been panicking that Luke’s sister had just called us out, but then again, maybe I shouldn’t gave gotten involved with a player on the same team I worked for. My should-have radar was seriously misfiring lately. “You just met me. How do you know that’s not how I look at and act around everyone?”

“I don’t.” Alex lifted her shoulders. “But I do know the way my brother looks at and acts around people, and this isn’t how he acts around everyone else.”

I felt a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “Really?”

“Really.”

“That obvious?”

“If it makes you feel better, I am especially observant.” She lifted her hand at her sisters when they popped out of their dressing rooms and waved her over. Then she faced me with an expectant expression.

“He’s good,” I answered. “This is my first season with the team, so we’re really just getting to know one another, but he seems good. Happy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. That’s a relief. Luke’s been through a lot. Our parents. His career.” She paused, her eyes moving to her brother. “Other stuff.” I was just about to ask her what other stuff she was talking about when she added, “He spends all of his worry on us, but then who worries about him?”

“You do?” It wasn’t a guess—it was obvious.

“Don’t tell him.” She lifted her finger to her lips. “He likes to think the three of us have nothing more to worry about than what color we want to paint our toenails and turning our homework in on time.”

“Not a word,” I promised.

As she headed for the dressing rooms, she waited for me to come up beside her. “So you guys are seeing each other?”

I guessed my long inhale was all the answer she needed.

“Can I talk in hypothetical terms?” she asked.

“If I can answer hypothetically.”

“Fair’s fair.” She nudged my arm. “If you were seeing him, I’d tell you you’re dating the best guy in the whole world.”

“Yeah? Why would you say that?” Not that I was arguing, but I was curious to know why a teenage girl thought her big brother was the best guy in the world. Most girls her age thought some magazine-cover dude with tattoos and supposed swagger was the height of the male species.

“Because it’s the truth. Luke takes care of people. He’s loyal. He does the right thing.” She squinted like she was trying to focus on something. “Sometimes to a fault.”

I nodded. “I’ll take that under advisement. Hypothetically. Anything else?”

A sales associate was helping Alex into a dressing room beside her sisters, but before she closed the curtain, Alex stuck her head out. Those same hazel eyes I’d seen on her brother locked on mine. “Yeah, if you hurt him, you’ll have three sisters to answer to.”

WE WERE BOTH exhausted. Spending twelve hours at a mall with three girls had a way of doing that to two people as averse to malls as Luke and I were. So would trying to eat as much mall food as one’s stomach could hold without erupting. If I never saw another salted pretzel, tub of cheese sauce, or ice cream cone again, I’d be good.

We had just dropped the girls off at the airport after packing and picking up their luggage at Luke’s apartment and were heading back to his place, both of us looking like we were in a state of mall shock and sleep deprivation. But as soon as we came within a block of his apartment building, our energy zapped to life.

He was still in the Ray’s get-up, although he’d tossed the hat in the garbage can back at the airport, claiming he didn’t give a shit if anyone recognized him without it. He just couldn’t take another second of it on his head.

I’d never been so keenly aware of a man and his desire for me pulsing in waves over me. I’d never been so keenly aware of my own desire for a man, to the point of feeling like I was swallowing my heart with every breath.

Instead of pulling up to the front of the building as I had last night when dropping him off, I pulled into the garage. I told myself it was because wheeling him back to his apartment would take time, but I knew it was because I wasn’t in a hurry to leave. Especially now that we were alone.

Turning off the ignition after pulling into his reserved parking space, I sat there, staring out the windshield, wondering if he could hear my heartbeat.

From the smirk I could see out of the corner of my eye, I guessed he could.

“So I kept my promise for the day, and if my ass never has to sit in one of those things again, it will be too damn soon.”

I nodded. He had been a good sport about it, leaving me surprised all day. From the quid pro quo insinuation in his tone, I guessed I knew why he’d been so accommodating.

“So?” I shrugged like I didn’t know what he was alluding to.

“So it’s time for you to uphold your promise.”

Damn. Just his voice was making me wetter. Or maybe it was the image of what his voice was hinting at.

“I didn’t make you a promise.”

“Just because you didn’t verbalize it doesn’t mean you didn’t make one.”

My hands wrung the steering wheel. “Mind telling me, exactly, what promise I nonverbally made you?”

He leaned in, sliding my hair over my shoulder. His fingers brushed my bare skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps behind. “The one you made on your knees this morning.” His fingers worked down to the roots my hair, giving it the slightest of tugs.

The ragged breath it elicited from me wasn’t so slight. “This is your place, Luke. Your home—not some impersonal hotel room. Are you sure you want to do this, be together, like this?”

“I want to be together with you wherever I can be.” His fingers curled beneath my chin, tipping it toward him. “But I especially want to be together with you like this tonight.”

When my head bobbed, his door flew open.

“Not so fast.” I shoved open my door, unlocking the back hatch. “Wheelchair.”

His groan echoed through the basement parking garage. “I’m not going to have to stay in the wheelchair for what happens when we get into my apartment, am I?”

“Only if you’re lucky.” Coming around his side, I patted the back of the wheelchair and waited.

“I’m planning on getting lucky. All night long.” His eyes sparked as he crawled out of the SUV into the chair. “Does that count?”

“It counts for something.” Locking his SUV, I wheeled him toward the elevator.

I couldn’t help the smile that spread on my face—the day had been amazing. Malls and mall food aside, I loved getting to spend time with Luke in such a normal way, meeting his sisters and seeing the roles they played in each other’s lives. I adored the stolen glimpses, the private jokes, and the sense of belonging that seemed to come so naturally with the Archer siblings.