In spite of his caseload, in spite of everything else, he was feeling just a little lighter in his heart.
Jenna watched his SUV disappearing down the drive and ran her hands through her hair.
“Damn, what just happened here, Naps?” She stooped to pick up the one thing she trusted most in her world, and carried him inside. “Guess you better stay home and guard the fort for me tomorrow, because it looks like I have a real date with Agent Lex, and he doesn’t want to share me.”
She stopped suddenly, glanced up, thinking she’d caught a movement in one of the upstairs windows.
The drapes stirred. Then nothing.
Jenna frowned. Must be the air-conditioning, she thought. But as she started towards the stairs leading up to the front porch, Jenna caught a sudden glimpse of Rebecca Lynn ducking away from the window.
Jenna stilled and stared up at the window, a fusion of anger and disquiet rustling through her. Daddy’s obnoxious little trophy wife was spying on her again.
Why?
The idea unsettled Jenna more than she cared to admit.
She climbed the stairs and let herself back inside. Despite her rush at being invited out by Lex, a cool sense of foreboding whispered through her.
Chapter 5
When they entered a rough neighborhood of housing projects, Jenna finally capitulated and asked, “Where are we going?”
“Right here,” Lex said, turning into the parking lot of a school. He drove around the back of the building, came to a stop on a slab of cracked pavement under a lifeless tree, and killed the engine.
Jenna stared at Lex, then out the window.
A few banged-up old beaters were parked in the lot up against a chain-link fence in serious need of repair. Beyond the broken fence, on a field of drought-dry grass, a group of male teens, most of them built rough and tough, save for one real skinny guy, were running and tossing a football to each other under a scorching desert sun.
“The field is rutted, irrigation shot to hell,” Lex said, opening his SUV door. “And a couple of the kids have to bus a fair way to get out here, but they do come. Twice a week.” He came around to her door and opened it for her.
“Coming?”
A wave of sauna-like heat body-slammed into Jenna, clean sucking breath from her lungs, making her skin instantly damp. The white-hot glare of the midday sun was ferocious. She put on her massive designer shades. “You mean they come all the way out to this dead piece of field in this area of the city because of you?”
“Because of what we have built—a team. A sense of purpose. A friendship outside of their sometimes harsh lives. Those guys out there relate to each other, Jenna. They’ve all been through a similar thing—loss of family. Or they never really had one to begin with.”
“So this is your volunteer job?”
“Not a job—” he began to walk towards a gate in the fence, his sports bag in hand “—I do it for love.” He called back over his shoulder, “Coming?”
Jenna hesitated, loathe to leave the air-conditioned SUV. “So this is your ‘thing’?” she called after him.
He stopped, turned to face her—rugged, tall, hair glinting in the hot sun. His rock-hard thighs were tanned, dusky, his calves powerful. In his shorts and workout gear, Jenna could see he was built just as rough and tough as any one of those young adult males out on the scorched field. He literally telegraphed physical prowess. Confidence. Leadership. And already his skin was sheened by a glow of perspiration. He looked even better than he had up on the stage that night. Bigger. Sexier. Real.
And way more at home.
“Yeah, Jenna. This is my thing. So? You gonna come meet the guys, watch us do some drills? Or d’you want to sit in the SUV?”
She stared at the dry field beyond the ugly fence, taking in the sandy patches among dead grass, the football posts. “It must be like 106 degrees out there, Lex,” she said, pushing her thick fall of hair back from her face. “Why?”
“Why is it hot?”
“No, I mean, why do you coach at this time of year, this time of day? It’s almost July. Midday. It’s insane. People die exercising in weather like this.”
A smirk played over his mouth as he raked his eyes slowly and purposefully over her short, tight skirt, her very high heels, the way her halter top was already wet with sweat under her breasts. “Can’t stand the heat, sweetheart?”
Irritation flared. “Oh, please. I’m serious. People really do die in stuff like this.”
“This is the only time we can get access to a field free of charge. No one uses these grounds at this time of day or on weekends. We take what we can get.”
She thought of her quarter million donation. Of how it could help. Of why Lex had actually subjected himself to strutting on stage. While it had been a mercenary ploy on her part to help her father get his hands back on his precious ring, Lex had done it for those guys out there under the scorching sun on a burned-out field. His orphans.