“Nice to meet you, Alex. All set for shopping?”
She lifted a foot, which she already had her sneaker tied onto. “I’ve got my shopping shoes on and everything. Maximum speed. Minimum fatigue.”
I was reconsidering my own shoe choice—I saw just how serious this girl was about her shopping—when I felt it. His presence. His stare. His nearness. I wasn’t sure what exactly it was that I felt, but I knew he was close and he was watching me.
I tried to paint the most unaffected of looks on my face before glancing up. That plan lasted a whole half second before my eyes connected with his.
He was standing in the middle of the hall, watching me like no one was around . . . like three of his sisters. When his eyes dropped from mine to examine what I was wearing, his arm jetted out, his hand molding against the wall like he was bracing himself.
His eyes had some sort of direct connection to every nerve ending in my possession. They all fired to life at the same time, making it both impossible to stay frozen in place and to move.
“Hey.” He gave me a smile that wasn’t exactly “little sister appropriate” as he started down the hall toward me.
But when I detected his subtle limp, the trainer in me resurfaced. “What are you doing on your feet?”
Behind me, Alex popped off a, “Busted.”
“Walking,” Luke answered with an easy shrug. “I’ve been doing it for twenty-four years now. Mastered it twenty-three years ago. Been doing it ever since.”
“And if you want to keep walking, I’d suggest you get in this thing and keep your leg elevated for the rest of the day like you promised me.” Rolling the wheelchair toward him, I tried out a glare on him. It was a weak attempt, made weaker still when his eyes continued to roam me. When they reached the hem of my summer dress, the crease in his forehead told me exactly what he was imagining.
“Did you two already meet?” Luke cleared his throat.
“Yep, and she’s my new favorite person since she’s going to make you ride in this all day. Your throne awaits, Grandpa.”
Luke threw Alex an annoyed look, but it was the kind that was borne from affection. “Yeah, yeah. I’d watch it with the teasing since Grandpa here is the one with the credit cards in his wallet.”
With that, Alex sealed her lips and painted on a sweet smile.
“Cameron! Gaby! I want you to meet someone!” he called.
Luke’s jaw set when his gaze dropped to the neckline of my dress. There wasn’t anything special about the dress I’d slipped into this morning. No plunging necklines. No hems that floated closer to the ass than the knee. No clingy places that threatened to cut off circulation to my upper or lower half. Feminine maybe, but the dress was definitely not sexy. But I supposed compared to the khakis and polo shirts Luke typically saw me in, this was the red light attire equivalent.
From the last look he’d given me before turning around and planting his butt in the wheelchair, I was confident he had plans that included ripping my dress off instead of removing it . . . after a full day of shopping and getting his sisters to the airport later tonight.
After coming around the front of the chair, I lowered to get the leg rest adjusted to fit him. His mouth curled up on one side as he took in the view of me on my knees in front of him.
“Don’t make me ice you,” I whispered, my eyes dropping to his crotch, when Alex wandered into the kitchen.
“Don’t make me have to do even filthier things to you in my head than I’m already doing.” His brow lifted at me, my hand still wrapped around his ankle even after getting his leg settled into place. “Although I think the red impression of my hand on your ass would be something to behold. I think I’d need to take a picture of it so I can blow it up, hang it on the ceiling above my bed, and fall asleep each night to the sight of my hand print on your perfect ass.”
My throat went dry, my heartbeat vibrating in my ears. Scanning the area, I found it sister-free, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Saying the kinds of things he was, giving me the kinds of looks he was, when we had a good fifteen hours before we could be together was cruel.
When he observed how I was responding to his words, a smirk worked into place. Fine. He wanted to start the foreplay this early in the day, I’d return the favor. Checking the room to make sure his sisters were still missing, I crawled forward on my knees until I was more between his legs than in front of them. I gave a little tug on my dress, and Luke’s eyes darted to the freshly exposed shadow of my cleavage.
“If you think what you’re imaging right now is filthy,” I whispered, my eyes lowering to the spot between his legs. I moved closer, right into the same position I’d be in if I was about to go down on him. “You should hear what I imagined last night.” When my gaze lifted from the growing mass between his legs, I found his breathing speeding up, his pupils dilated, his expression similar to the one I saw whenever he thrust inside me for the first time. “While I was touching myself. Wearing your jersey.”
My eyes held his for another moment before I popped to a stand, gave his leg a pat, and pretended like nothing had happened between us. Just in time. A door at the end of the hall exploded open, and a couple of girls spilled out, the music having come to a merciful end.
Blinking a few times, Luke caught up to my nothing-just-happened façade. “Cameron, Gaby, this is Allie.” He waved between us, but his voice was higher than normal. I gloated on the inside from knowing I’d riled him up. “Allie, these are my sisters.”
At the same time, the girls seemed to notice Luke was in a wheelchair. Like Alex, they both started laughing, exchanging a high five, to which Luke responded with a light-hearted grumble.
“Not cool to laugh at people in wheelchairs,” he said with a wounded look.
“We’re not laughing at people in wheelchairs. We’re laughing at you in a wheelchair,” Cameron, who appeared to be the middle sister, piped up. “I’ve never even seen you put a Band-Aid on, and you’re actually going to spend a whole day in this because you have an itty-bitty baby muscle in your leg that hurts?”
Luke gave a sigh. “I’m doing what my athletic trainer advised me to do.”
“Since when?”
Luke feigned being appalled. “Since always.”
That was when Alex came back into the room, clutching a bottle of water. “Since never.”
“You didn’t tell us she was a girl,” Cameron said.
Cameron and Gaby rolled to a stop in front of Luke, crossing their arms and giving him a look that was all accusation.
“I didn’t realize I had to.”
“You didn’t tell us she was a pretty girl,” Gaby said in a tone that made it seem like we were in some sort of interrogation room.
If his three sisters teaming up against him was getting to him, it didn’t show. He didn’t shift and the corners of his eyes didn’t crease—almost like he had plenty of experience keeping secret lovers veiled from his family.
“She’s the best athletic trainer on the team. I’d list a dozen qualities about her before her aesthetics, as nice as they are.” When he glanced at me, his gaze stayed there for a couple moments too long.
“You didn’t tell us you couldn’t not look at her and get a stupid smile on your face.” Alex shouldered up beside her sisters, circling her finger at Luke who, yeah, kind of had a stupid smile.
I looked away so I could bite my smile into submission before my act was blown by three of the most perceptive teens I’d ever met.
“Are you ready to go shopping or what? Because you shouldn’t keep teasing the person with the credit cards in his back pocket.”
“Threats.” Alex tipped her head. “So very idle coming from you.”
Luke groaned, shrugging deeper into the wheelchair. “We haven’t even gotten to the mall and I’m already in agony.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Gaby clapped excitedly, almost sprinting for the door.
“Archer sisters?” I almost had to shout over the shr
ieks of excitement as purses were thrown around shoulders and sandals slid into. “Ever wanted to play dress-up with your big brother?” Tugging on the bag I’d slung around the back of the wheelchair, I unzipped it.
“Ever? I’ll be in therapy until I’m eighty from the years of psychological damage they did in the name of dress-up.”
Seeing I had the girls’ attention, I ignored Luke’s complaints and dumped the contents of the bag on the floor. “Since I doubt I can push this load faster than the paparazzi can chase us, and I’m guessing you want to shop all day long”—I continued through another one of his grumbles—“we need a disguise.”
When the sisters saw what I’d brought along to disguise their brother with, they bounced in place. When Luke twisted his head over his shoulder to see what I had planned, he frowned.
“Oh, hell no.”
“GO, SHOCK!” A crowd of guys shouted as they passed us later that morning at the mall. Or they shouted as they passed a certain sullen-faced someone in a wheelchair.
“Go back to Orlando,” another grunted at us. Or at Luke.
I’d lost track of all the irritated groans from passersby, but they’d kept pace with the delighted giggles from the three Archer sisters.
“Why don’t you fly a Rays flag off of this thing so we can draw a little more attention?” Luke waved at the elderly woman we passed next, who was shaking her head at him like he’d just spilled grape juice on her floral settee.
“You know, I think there’s a sport’s memorabilia store not too far up ahead. We could use a flag, don’t you think, ladies?”
Three heads bobbed in eager agreement.
“That was a sarcastic suggestion. You know, since your sense of humor is clearly off-kilter.” Archer tipped his ball cap at the next bunch of guys who were wearing ball caps of their own. Of the rival team—the San Diego Shock. “I thought the point was not to draw attention to me.”
“Go Shock!” I hollered with the passing bunch, flicking the bill of the black-and-orange cap Luke had on. “Nope. The point was to not draw attention to Luke Archer, batting legend for the San Diego Shock.”
“Exactly. You can draw as much attention as you want for being the chump diehard fan of the rival team in the Shock’s home city.” Alex, who was taking a turn wheeling Luke through the mall, winked at me.
“Clearly,” Luke said, pinching the Orlando Rays jersey we’d forced him into as if its mere existence offended him.
We hadn’t stopped at the jersey though. We’d dropped a Ray’s ball cap on his head, hung a foam finger off of one of the wheelchair arms, and tied about a mile’s worth of black and orange streamers all up and around the wheelchair. Luke Archer was officially the Orlando Rays biggest fan, and it was about to cause a mutiny in San Diego, where fans bled Shock royal blue.
“Ooh, we’re here!” Cameron skidded to a stop in front of a store that I’d guess was meant for teens, but judging from the clothes on the mannequins in the front windows, it looked more like toddler-sized clothing. Like the handful of other shops we’d already been in, it was packed to overflowing with racks and rounders of cut-offs and tanks.
Luke and I winced together while the three girls sprinted inside.
“Have fun,” he said, holding out his shiny black card in my direction.
“How many pairs of denim shorts can a girl own?”
“Apparently there isn’t a limit.” Luke gave a thumbs-up when Gaby waved yet another pair of cut-offs at him through the store’s window. As I started weaving into the store of toddler-sized clothes meant to be worn by teenagers, he called, “Hey, Allie?”
“Hey, yeah?” I spun around.
“Thank you for doing this. Well, not for doing this”—he waved at himself in all his black-and-orange glory—“but for coming with us today. It might not seem like a big deal, but it is. To me. So thank you.”
My feet carried me back to him before I knew I was going. My fingers tangled through his before I knew they’d reached for him. “It’s nice to see this side of you. The non-baseball-legend side.” My spine shot with sensation when his thumb caressed the inside of my wrist.
“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 m
uch 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.