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Somehow she didn’t think it was quite that simple.
“But you loved baseball. You were good. I saw your stats.”
“I was good,” he said. “But dreams change, Maggie. And sometimes when you get to the other side of that change, it’s better than you could have imagined.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining? How Pollyanna of you.”
“No, not quite that. But I do believe that some things happen for a purpose. Sometimes you need something to jolt you out of a rut and into what you’re really meant to do.”
“I see.” Was that aimed at her? Or was he still talking about himself? She decided she didn’t want to know right now and changed the subject.
Despite it being late, there were still reporters outside her building when they got there.
“Oh crap,” she muttered. “I thought they would have given up and gone home by now. I can call Dev and get him to open the parking garage for you, we can go in that way.”
“No,” Alex said. “Better to get it over with. We’re going with happy and in love, remember? Not skulking around. Let’s go give them what they want.”
“What’s that?” she said, but he was already climbing out of the car. She watched as he pushed his way through the reporters who had swarmed him and came around to her side of the Jeep. He opened the door.
“Back off, guys,” he said in a commanding tone. “I’m trying to walk my gal to her front door.” He held out his hand and she took it as she slipped down from the high seat. His fingers were very warm around hers.
“Your gal? The rumors are true then?”
Alex smiled down at her and she managed to smile back, remembering that she was meant to be happy. The flashes and shouting voices around her made her want to bolt for the front door.
“If you’re asking if Maggie and I have been seeing each other, then yes, that part is true. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Maggie has to be up early.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and shepherded her through the crowd. Maggie kept the smile on her face, fighting the winces. She hated this feeling, being surrounded by the press. Knowing that she was lying through her teeth to them didn’t help.
But Alex got them to the front door of the building and Dev was there, opening it with a scowl on his face for the reporters as he ushered them inside.
“I am sorry, Miss Maggie,” he said. “I told them to leave.”
“It’s okay, Dev.” She tried to tug her hand out of Alex’s but he didn’t let go.
“We’re not quite done yet,” he said. His eyes went to the doors where the reporters now had their cameras pressed up against the glass. “A guy has to kiss his girl good night, after all.”
Oh crap, she thought, but it was too late. Alex had ducked his head and found her mouth and her free hand coiled around his neck before she could stop it, pressing him closer.
It was a sweet kiss. Soft and tender and staged for the cameras. It still rushed through her low and hot, making her pulse pound and her head spin. Damn the man.
“That should do it,” Alex muttered, but his voice sounded a little dazed. She didn’t trust her own voice so she just pulled back from him, managed a smile, and bolted for the elevator.
Chapter Twenty
Maggie had seen plenty of strategies being executed before. She’d listened to her father talking business and baseball since before she was old enough to have any idea what he was talking about. She’d heard game plans and strategies for the draft and sat through semesters of lectures on team management.
She’d never seen anyone swing into action quite like Alex, Mal, and Lucas. It was closer to planning a war than a business deal. They gathered intelligence, they gathered their forces, and they coordinated campaigns to influence just about everyone who was anyone in MLB. There were meetings and dinners and flights in an endless procession. Pictures of Alex and Maggie kept appearing—no doubt Sutter making sure that people didn’t forget about them—as well as other subtle little slurs against the three men. All of which were slapped down by Alex’s legal team—but rumors traveled faster than the truth these days. In between organizing his little libelous leaks, Sutter made sure the baseball press was well fed with his grand plans for the Saints. Though he stayed resolutely tight-lipped on the subject of whether he’d move the team.
Maggie watched the three of them grow quieter and tenser and more focused and threw her ideas into the mix and did the jobs she was assigned to do. She talked down nervous players and agents and wives. She worked with Tom to remember every last detail about Sutter’s time at the Saints and every last detail about the owners they were targeting. She even pretended not to watch Alex while she did it.
She had to pretend. She couldn’t actually not watch him. It was entirely involuntary the way her eyes sought him out. She’d never thought it was possible to miss someone while actually spending a large percentage of every day with them and actively trying to fool everyone into believing you were in love, but it was.
When they weren’t on show, Alex was perfectly polite to her, his manner unchanged other than the ruthless cessation of anything that could be vaguely considered flirting. No jokes, no killer smiles, no shared grins, no devilish green eyes daring her to take him on.
She’d thought it was what she’d wanted.
But it was killing her.
It was no better in public. Then he turned on the charm, pulled her close, held her hand, and kissed her when he thought kisses were warranted. But there was a wall behind his eyes that she could see, even if everyone else seemed taken in by his performance.
