Lex pulled off his shirt, abs rippling, and Jenna stared while he wasn’t looking. “My boys are built to take the knocks in life,” he said, pulling on a fresh gray T-shirt that molded to his hard lines. “They wouldn’t be here today if they weren’t. Some of those guys have had a really rough shake, Jenna. They’re lucky to even be alive.”
“And they’re all orphans?” She offered the water bottle to him.
He took a swig. “Yeah. Some are in foster homes now, being bounced around by the system. Others are on their own.”
“Is that what happened to you, after your mother died? Were you bounced around the system?”
“Yup.” He capped the bottle. “Until I ran afoul of the law in a minor way. I was on a one-way track to trouble until Tom McCall, the Washoe County sheriff at the time, took me aside and helped me pull my act together. He said he saw something in me.” Lex hesitated for a moment, the darkness of some memory entering his eyes. “I ended up going into law enforcement because of Tom. He showed me that if I worked with the system, instead of against it, I could take charge. Hit back. Fix things.”
“And catch bad guys.”
He looked at her, silent for a beat, darkness consuming his eyes. “Yeah. And catch bad guys.”
Jenna studied him, sensing a hidden story between his words. She wondered which bad guy in particular might have fired up the young Lex and what it was he’d so badly needed to fix back then.
Lex turned to look at his boys out on the field. “I owe that sheriff,” he said quietly, watching them for a moment. “Big time.”
“And helping those kids is your way of paying back?”
He grunted, tossing the water bottle back into his bag. “We’ll be out there for a couple hours. If you start to wilt, go wait in the car.” He began to jog out onto the grass.
She swore at him, only partly in jest. He turned, jogging backward, a big grin back on his face. “Hey, Rothchild—I like fighters,” he said. And he turned, jogged out onto the hot field to join his guys.
Jenna forced out a lungful of air as she plunked herself down on the metal bench. Yelping, she jumped right back up as the hot metal seared the backs of her legs under her short skirt. She cursed again, yanked Lex’s shirt out of his bag and sat on it, thinking it was a darn good thing she’d listened to him and left Napoleon at home. Poor Naps would have perished of heatstroke out here. She might just die herself, she thought, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist.
As the minutes ticked by the day pressed more heavily down on Jenna. Her face grew flushed and red, her hair springy. Sweat trickled irritatingly between her breasts, down her stomach. But she was not going to let Lex win—she was not going to crawl back into his air-conditioned SUV with her tail between her legs. She refused to give him that satisfaction. She lifted the hem of her halter away from her belly and fluttered her shirt, trying to let air in and dry herself.
Nothing worked.
Jenna finally just gave in to the sweltering temperature, stopped worrying about what the humidity was doing to her hair, and how beet-red her face must be—no one cared what she looked like out here, anyway. So she let the heat swallow her as she watched the guys play.
Lex repeatedly threw the ball, neat spiraling rockets as the guys peeled off a line, one by one, to run and catch it. While they sweated they traded cheerful insults, bantering. Guy stuff. The day grew hotter, more intense.
Jenna shaded her eyes and squinted toward the distant mountains. The red haze over them was gathering into a dark bank of purple cloud, signs of a looming summer electrical storm. No wonder the air pressure felt so heavy.
Lex ran backward, received the ball and was tackled hard. She heard him thud to the ground.
Jenna winced.
But he was up, running and throwing again, his muscles getting pumped, his hair damp. His skin glistened, and his T-shirt molded wet to his torso. They played hard like that for almost a full hour, zigzagging over the field, doing different drills. Lex looked so different out there compared to the dry FBI suit who’d visited their home yesterday. On that field he was in his element, gripped by a sense of free spirit, joy even. It was fascinating to watch.
Jenna got over herself and into the spirit. She found Lex’s camera in his bag, fiddled with it until she figured out how to use it. Then she kicked off her sandals and worked the sidelines barefoot, the grass hard and sharp underfoot in some places and pocked with small stones in others. But it was easier than having her spiked heels sinking erratically into soil—she was so not going to break her ankle. She could just imagine the hilarity that would invoke. He was asking for her to make a fool of herself, and she knew it.