Lawless in Leather

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  For everyone who ever believed that, to misquote Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” Keep making those dreams come true, dreamers.

  Acknowledgments

  If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes at least half that many people to bring a book to life. As always, many thanks to my lovely editor Jennifer Enderlin, who is brilliant and makes these books better. And to Miriam Kriss, super agent, who is the publishing equivalent of a star pitcher and I am very thankful she is on my team. Thank you also to the wonderful team at St. Martin’s Press who give me divine covers and get my books out into the world for readers to find. You all deserve cookies.

  Thank you also to my writing pals who keep me sane and cheer me on. There are many of you, but extra special smooches to Keri, Carolyn, Robyn, Freya, Chris, Anne, Sarah, Kelly, and Barbara.

  And to my ever-patient non-writing friends and family who have put up with my crazy writing schedule for the last twenty-two months or so, who also are always there for me, and come by to haul me out of the writing cave every so often to have fun.

  Last, but never least, thank you to all the readers out there who read my stuff and let me (and others) know you like it. Readers rock!

  Chapter One

  Damn. It smelled like a ballpark. Malachi Coulter breathed deeper, closed his eyes, and let the grin spread across his face as he took in the mix of sweat and grass and old beer and well-worn wood and leather that spelled baseball.

  It made his palms itch for a bat.

  It made his gut twist as, once again, he contemplated the possible monumental insanity that had led him to buy a baseball team with his two best friends. He still suspected Alex had put something in that very good bourbon they’d been drinking when he’d gotten Mal to say yes to his crazy proposal. Or maybe Lucas. Lucas was the doctor. He had plenty of access to drugs.

  Still, here he was. New York. Though, right at this moment, Staten Island. Part owner of the worst team in the major leagues. The New York Saints. And currently in charge of bringing the security in their stadium up to scratch.

  That wiped the grin from his face. Deacon Field was a rabbit warren. A beat-up crazy rabbit warren. Figuring out how to keep it, the players, and the people who would fill the seats safe—because if one thing was for damned sure, it was that no one was getting hurt in his ballpark—had been keeping him awake at night for months now.

  Rabbit warren or not, Deacon would be safe.

  There would be no repeat of the attack that had changed his life, and the life of his two best friends, now his partners in the rabbit warren and the team that played in it. No explosions and fire and death caused by deluded evil.

  Not on his watch.

  He’d had practically half a squadron of contractors in here doing what they could but there were limits to what could be achieved without some major remodeling.

  Which wasn’t feasible with their budget or the time they’d had before the season started. In fact, he was starting to think the only way it would be feasible to do the work that really needed to be done was if the Saints relocated to a different field for a season. A choice that wasn’t going to be popular with their fans. If it could be done at all.

  Yet another thing to worry about.

  And now there was only one week left until the first game and he had a to-do list that was so long, he didn’t want to think about it.

  Lack of sleep wouldn’t kill him, though, and he found himself arriving for work at the crack of dawn each day, heading for Deacon Field first instead of his own offices and climbing to a different part of the stadium to sit and smell the air. Today, finally, he’d let himself into the owners’ box, sliding back the windows to let the early-morning air seep in and carry the smell up to him.

  It was the closest to peaceful things got these days, these first few minutes. The rest was sheer chaos.

  Good thing he liked chaos.

  OOH, BABY, SHAKE IT!

  Music smashed through the morning silence. His eyes flew open. What the fuck?

  SHAKE, BABY, SHAKE IT!

  Mal stalked to the front of the box, stared down at the field. Took in the twenty or so women wearing skimpy little gym bras and leggings and shorts and groaned. He’d forgotten the damned cheerleaders.

  SHAKE IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT!

  He gritted his teeth. Cheerleaders. Hell. Baseball teams didn’t have cheerleaders. Alex could call ’em a dance troupe and spout off about getting butts on seats all he wanted but they were cheerleaders and they didn’t belong in baseball. No matter how good they might look prancing around down there, all long legs and long hair and big boobs.

  He allowed himself a moment to appreciate the view and found his eyes drawn to the woman at the front of the squad. The one in charge, judging by the way the others were following her moves as she bent and stretched in ways that were arresting despite the goddamned annoying music.

  Half a foot shorter than the shortest of the others, her hair a vivid slick of cropped scarlet—unlike the long falls of blond and brunette surrounding her—she was also built sleeker. She lacked the curves that were testing the limits of the Lycra worn by the rest, but as the music changed to some sort of sinuous beat and she started to demonstrate a kind of twisting hip-shimmy thing, he felt his mouth go bone-dry.

  Da-a-amn.

  It was surprising the turf beneath her feet wasn’t scorching with each coiling move she made.

  Sex on legs.

  He blinked, tried to bring his mind back to the job at hand.

  Hot or not, he didn’t remember clearing a cheerleading practice for this morning. That meant he had to go down there and find out what the hell she was doing on his field.

  * * *

  “And five, six, seven, eight.” Raina Easton bounced to her left, expecting the squad of dancers in front of her to mirror the move. Instead, to a woman they stayed right where they were standing, looking past her shoulder, varying expressions of surprise, approval, and assessment on their faces. Uh-oh. She spun on her heel and took in the very tall man striding across the ballpark toward them, wearing jeans, a dark-gray T-shirt, a perfectly beaten-up black leather jacket, and a thunderous expression.

  She knew who he was. The other one. She’d met Alex Winters—he of the shirt/blazer/jeans/GQ good looks—when he’d interviewed her for this position. She’d met Lucas Angelo—six feet plus of immaculate suit, gorgeous Italian model face, and divine blue eyes—when she’d been talking to the team doctor about the training plans for her dance squad. But she hadn’t yet met the last of the three men who’d bought the Saints.

  Malachi Coulter. She’d wondered about him. A girl would have to be made of stone not to wonder what the last third of the trio might be like when the first two were so delectable. And she’d never claimed to be made of stone. Not in the slightest.

  Though the man walking toward her might be. His expression was pretty stony. It didn
’t make his face, which was angles and jaw and deep dark eyes, any less appealing. He looked, as her grandma might have said, like a big ol’ parcel of man trouble. Her favorite kind. Or rather, her former favorite kind.

  Bad boy written all over him.

  Pity he was sort of her boss. No. Not a pity. A very good thing. It would help her remember that bad boy was her former preference. Still, regardless of her stance on bosses or bad boys, there was nothing to say she couldn’t enjoy the view. Or the irony of his approach being backed by a song about men who drove you crazy.

  She summoned her best knock-’em-dead-in-the-back-stalls smile as he reached her and extended her hand. “Hi. I’m Raina Easton, your dance director.”

  He didn’t take her hand. She raised an eyebrow. He didn’t change his expression. She sighed and dropped her hand back to her side. “What can I do for you, Mr. Coulter?”

  “I didn’t clear anyone for the field this morning.”

  Damn. His voice fit the rest of him. It rumbled pleasingly. It made her girl parts want to shake pom-poms and she wasn’t a cheerleader. Imagine what it might do if he didn’t sound so pissed.

  She squelched the thought. She wasn’t going to imagine any such thing.

  “The dance practice schedule was agreed a week ago,” she said, wishing she wasn’t in practice clothes and very flat dance sneakers. With a few-inch boost from her favorite heels, he wouldn’t loom over her quite so much.

  “You’re supposed to get a security clearance from me before entering the stadium.”

  Oh dear. He was going to be one of those. Tall, dark, and grim. Pity. She didn’t do humorless. Life was too short for men who couldn’t make you laugh. And right now she didn’t do men at all.

  “I’m sorry, nobody told me.” She tried a smile. “I swear we’re not some other team’s troupe sneaking in for illicit practice.” She was tempted to add a line about it being pretty hard to conceal a weapon in a crop top but figured that would be pushing her luck. Besides, if he announced he was going to search everyone, she’d likely be trampled by the dancers behind her stampeding to be first in line.

  Mal’s gaze lifted, scanned the women behind her, then returned to her, looking no more pleased than previously. “Other baseball teams don’t have cheerleaders.”

  He sounded like he thought that was a very good thing. She wasn’t going to let on that she agreed with him. Alex Winters was paying her a boatload of money to whip his dancers into a lean mean cheering machine, and she was keeping her opinions about cheerleaders and baseball being sacrilege firmly to herself. She had plans for that boatload of money. Which meant she also had to make nice to Malachi Coulter. “Dance troupe, not cheerleaders,” she said, tilting her head back to meet his eyes. “Now, we’ve only got another hour of practice. Can we stay or do you need us to leave?” She hit him with another smile.

  “You can stay,” he said after a pause in which the only noise was the pounding of drums and squealing guitars as the song on the sound system built to a crescendo. “But come and see me when you’re done.”

  “Sure,” she said after a little pause of her own. “I look forward to it.” Then she turned back to the dancers so she wouldn’t watch him walk away.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Raina finished slicking on lip gloss and decided that she’d needed to stop procrastinating. She’d spent longer than she should showering and changing after the practice session and talking to the women in the squad. She’d only met most of them a week ago at the auditions and she was still trying to get a feel for their personalities and strengths. They could all dance. She’d put her foot down about that and nixed a couple of the more blond and busty candidates who had looked freaking spectacular but had been less than blessed in the coordination and moving to music with some understanding of the basics of a beat and rhythm department. But just being able to dance wouldn’t necessarily turn them into a team fast enough for her liking.

  It took time for personalities to gel and right now it wasn’t helping her cause that the best dancer of them all—the truly stunning green-eyed, dark-haired Ana—was shaping up to a be a diva of the pit viper temperament variety.

  Still, this was a rush job and she didn’t have time to hire any more dancers, let alone give up one as good as Ana, so she was just going to have to do her best. Think of the very nice chunk of change she would be earning and give up on the idea of spare time for a couple of months.

  But none of that changed the fact that she still had to beard the boss man in his den, so to speak. The tall, dark, grumpy, and disturbingly handsome boss man.

  No chickening out just because he’d sent her hormones ratcheting into high alert.

  Damn it.

  He had that bad-boy vibe practically radiating for miles around him. There was the slightly too long hair. The jeans and T-shirt I don’t care outfit. Alex Winters had worn jeans and a dark-gray blazer when she’d met him, but his jeans had been 100 percent designer. Whereas she was pretty certain that Malachi Coulter’s were well-worn Levi’s that had come by their faded patches and mysterious stains honestly.

  There was also the tattoo snaking down his arm. She hadn’t let herself focus on the design, only noticing the bold color and geometric black edges before she’d looked away.

  And if she’d had to put money on it, she would have bet a fair portion of her next Saints paycheck that the big black motorcycle she’d spotted in the parking lot earlier belonged to him, too. He was, after all, wearing a well-worn pair of biker boots.

  So the bad boy. Even if he was bad boy made good—he was part owner of a baseball team—he was still a bad boy.

  And she’d sworn off bad boys.

  Pity.

  But necessary for her sanity.

  She grabbed her things, stuffed them into her bag, and headed out of the locker room—which she suspected, based on the aroma of fresh paint, hadn’t been a female locker room until shortly before Alex had hired her and held his auditions.

  The next week in particular was going to be hell. By taking this job at the last minute, she’d managed to give herself the mother of all scheduling headaches. Her next big themed review at the club was starting the same weekend as baseball season. Which meant days here on Staten Island making the Fallen Angels—she hadn’t been able to change Alex Winter’s mind about the ridiculousness of that name—baseball’s next big thing in dance troupes, and then nights and any other spare seconds rehearsing at Madame R before they opened for the night.

  Which left her, as far as she could figure it, maybe six hours a day for sleeping, eating, and basic hygiene.

  She was going to need a lot of caffeine. And possibly a clone army.

  She reached the reception desk after riding the creaky lift up to the office tower where the Saints’ management and administration operated and smiled to discover the blonde she’d met earlier in the week wasn’t there. Instead a woman with shoulder-length light-brown hair and blue eyes was sitting behind the desk. “Hi. Where might I find Malachi Coulter’s office?”

  The woman looked up from her computer screen. “Does Mal know what this is about?”

  “He asked me to come by,” Raina said. “The name’s Raina Easton.”

  Blue eyes lit. “You’re the dance coach? Is that the right word?”

  “It’s as good as any,” Raina said. “And yes, guilty as charged.”

  “I’ve been hearing all about you,” the woman said. “I’m Sara. Sara Charles. I fly the team’s helicopter.”

  “And man reception?”

  Sara shrugged. “Just helping out while Tora has her break. Anyway, I’ll let Mal know you’re here.” She picked up the headset on the desk—which gave Raina a lovely view of the sizable diamond gracing the ring finger of her left hand, a diamond that was an amazing shimmering blue that matched Sara’s eyes—put it on, and touched something on the computer screen in front of her.

  “Mal,” Sara said after a moment. “Raina Easton is here to see you. Okay, I’
ll send her around.”

  She touched the screen again and pulled the headset off with ease. Once again the ring sparked in the light.

  “He said to come ’round. You take this corridor then the second turn right, and his office is the end of the row.”

  “Thanks,” Raina said. “Nice ring, by the way.”

  Sara went pink. “It’s kind of big. Lucas insisted.”

  “You’re engaged to Lucas Angelo?” Raina gave herself a mental smack. She should have known that. It paid to know the people hiring you.

  “Yeah. It’s still sinking in.”

  “Well, congratulations. He obviously has excellent taste in jewelry and women, if not baseball teams.”

  “You’re not a Saints fan?” Sara grinned at her.

  “Born and bred by die-hard Yankees supporters. I think I’d have been disowned if I didn’t follow the family tradition.”

  Sara laughed. “Well, at least you understand baseball,” she said. “I didn’t know a catcher from a curveball a few months ago.”

  “You don’t like baseball?”

  “Spent my formative years at airfields, not ballparks.”

  “That much, I understand,” Raina said. “I spent most of mine in dance studios and auditoriums. But with three baseball-mad brothers, it’s hard to avoid it completely. Listen, I should get going, but you’ll have to tell me about helicopters sometime.”

  “You like to fly?”

  “Never been in a chopper. Did a bit of ultragliding back in my misspent youth.”

  Sara’s smile widened. “I prefer something with a nice solid motor keeping me up in the air.”

  “These days, so do I,” Raina said. Not that she’d had time to fly anywhere in anything lately. Madame R kept her pretty busy. “But I’d better go or the boss man will be cranky.”

  “His bark is worse than his bite,” Sara said.

  “Oh, I figured that part out,” Raina said. “But he’s still signing the paycheck.”

  She smiled a good-bye and headed off in the direction Sara had given. In the minute or two it took her to find her way, the nerves returned, a fleet of butterflies apparently trying out their step-ball-change skills in her stomach.