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“Which is why he needs another swing at it. Or his poor little ego won’t be able to take it and we’ll have to listen to him whining for weeks.”
Mal and Lucas both grinned at him. Alex grinned back. “No whining here. Maggie will come around. Guaranteed.” Yeah, and pigs might fly. Still, he wasn’t going to share his doubts with his friends. He’d screwed things up with Maggie and he was the one who was going to have to fix it. And if she was going to be mad at someone about the sale, it was better that she stuck to being mad at him and didn’t include Mal and Lucas in the kill zone. Less complicated.
Plus there were those eyes, a little voice at the back of his mind piped up. Shut up, I’m a Saint now, Alex growled back. The little voice made a rude noise. No such thing as a saint when it comes to women who look like that.
“Earth to A?” Mal said, and Alex realized he was staring into space.
“Just thinking. Go on. I just need five minutes with her.”
“And there’s the overly optimistic idiot I know and love,” Lucas parroted back at him in a pretty good imitation of Alex’s voice.
“Bite me.”
“Ms. Jameson?”
The man who’d come to greet them when their car had driven through to Tom’s permanent spot in the underground parking garage at Deacon Field appeared again at Maggie’s elbow. She turned from her feigned interest in the ESPN pictures that were playing soundlessly on the screen in the suite they’d been shunted into instead of going to what had used to be Tom’s office.
“Yes?”
“Could you come with me a minute?”
Maggie tensed. “Where?” She tried to remember his name. Something starting with G. When they’d arrived she’d been too busy trying not to give in to the sick feeling in her stomach that had swamped her when they’d driven through the gates to Deacon. One of her favorite places in the world. Her very own ballpark. Who wouldn’t love that? Only it wasn’t hers anymore. Right now, she was nobody. Not the owner’s daughter, not part of the team. It made her gut ache like someone had kicked her, the world once again feeling unstable beneath her feet. She hadn’t paid attention to how this man—one of Alex Winters’s minions—had introduced himself.
“Mr. Winters has requested a moment of your time.”
A moment of her time? Who was this guy? The butler? His accent was firmly American so probably not, but really … if all Alex’s staff were like this then they weren’t going to go down well with the Saints family. The Saints didn’t do formality very often.
She glanced toward her dad. She didn’t want to talk to Winters but neither did she want to cause a scene. Not when she’d promised Tom she’d do this. “Are you sure he didn’t mean Dad?”
“He specifically asked for you, Ms. Jameson.”
The guy smiled at her with eyes that were a nice shade of gray if you could ignore the fact they belonged to one of the devil’s hordes. They went with his Saints tie and slick charcoal suit. He looked older than Alex, with dark hair that had some gray near the temples. Working for the devil was probably aging. But his expression was that of a man on a mission.
Maggie cursed mentally, scraping for another possible way to get out of spending any time alone with Winters. “Won’t we be late for the press conference?” Her watch said it was five to three. They were due to start at three, if Tom had things right.
“They’ll wait.”
His voice held the same infuriating ring of confidence that Winters’s did.
It made her teeth ache. “It’s not polite to keep them all waiting down there in the cold,” she protested.
“If you come with me, they won’t have to wait too long,” he replied calmly. “This way.”
Apparently no wasn’t going to be an acceptable answer. She should have expected that. Alex Winters seemed to embrace the “full steam ahead” school of life. It was only natural that his staff were inclined to a similar attitude.
“Fine,” she said tightly. “Take me to your leader.”
That earned her a small smile and then the mystery man turned on his heel and headed back in the direction from which he’d appeared. Maggie realized where he was headed. They were in one of the hospitality suites in the tower that rose above the north point of the park. And now she was being led toward her dad’s office.
Only it wasn’t Tom’s office anymore. No, now it belonged to Alex Winters. The thought threw her off balance and she almost missed her next step. She caught herself before she could stumble. Damned if she was going to literally fall at Alex Winters’s feet.
She pushed the roil of emotions in her stomach down into a tight hot ball and followed her escort.
He paused at the office door and opened it, sticking his head through. “Ms. Jameson.”
“Thanks, Gardner.” It was Winters’s voice.
Maggie repressed a sigh. Part of her had been hopeful that he might have fallen out of one of the windows or something, but no. He was still here and alive and she was going to have to face him.
