Stealing Home(11)

“Anything I can do to help sway your decision?” Archer looked down at me while he sucked on his water bottle. He gave me a happy now? look when he handed it back, almost empty.

“Yeah. Explain why you ignored me for months, then when you decided to notice me, you pretty much came on so strong it was like I was the last woman on the planet and the fate of it rested on our ability to procreate.” I headed back to the water cooler, thankful for the added space between us.

He’d been guarding his looks around me when others were around, but now that we alone, he was staring at me like he knew me as intimately as two people could know one another. He didn’t blink once, his long strides strumming along the treadmill. His muscled shoulders lifted. “I go after what I want. I don’t leave you guessing. Or wondering. With me, you get what you see. You know what I want. Who I am.”

When I handed him the fresh water bottle, he drank a few more sips before squirting a stream onto his head. I backed up into the wall behind me. Distance seemed like a good thing when Luke Archer was looking at me the way he was, saying the things he was, sweating and breathing hard the way he was.

“And you want . . . me?” I said, needing the words spelled out.

He didn’t pause. His stride didn’t lose a beat. “I do.”

My heart felt like it was climbing into my throat. “Why?”

His gaze pinned me to the wall. “Because you know the demands of this lifestyle. You’re as committed to your job as I am to mine. You’re as interested in keeping this quiet as I am.” He motioned at me like I was living proof of his confession. “I respect you as a trainer and a human being. And, most importantly of all, I am attracted to you in a way that makes it hard to breathe when you’re close.” That was when he paused to take a breath. “I want you in a way that makes rolling into bed every night without fantasizing about crawling over your body impossible. That’s why.” He let that settle in the air, never looking away. “I can’t promise you forever. I can’t promise any length of time actually, but I can promise honesty and commitment. The rest, I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“And sex.” My eyebrow lifted. “You can promise me that too, right?”

A tipped smile slid into place. “I can absolutely promise you that.”

“Glad that’s all cleared up,” I muttered, wondering if anything was or if everything was just more confusing now. Was he suggesting a sex-only relationship? A no-strings-attached one? Was he hinting at maybe more?

Did I care?

My answer to that question was unsettling. So I shuffled it to the back of my mind.

“This schedule—this life . . . it would be nice to have someone to climb into bed with at night.” His shoulders lifted as he kept clipping along. “To share private moments with. The same person. A person I trust.”

I knew all too well what he meant. Ours was a lonely life. One filled with endless tasks, long hours, and hundreds of people . . . yet still impossibly lonely. It would be wonderful to have one person I could trust to share intimacy with. A person I could wrap my body around at the end of a long day and pretend that life was more than schedules and commitments.

“This is a strange arrangement,” I said after a minute.

He was cooling down and needed to get some more fluids, electrolytes, and rest before tomorrow’s game. The thing was, I didn’t trust myself to go back to his room and follow up on those items. We hadn’t even crossed a line yet and already I was letting my feelings for him get in the way of my job.

I couldn’t do that. No matter where Luke Archer and I wound up, I couldn’t let my feelings for him get in the way of my job.

“This is a strange life that we live,” he replied, punching the treadmill to a stop. “When you make your decision, you know where to find me. You know where I stand. Let me know when you figure out where you do.”

“No pressure, right?”

He stopped wiping off his face, his eyes darkening as he stepped off the treadmill and moved toward me. “Depending on your answer, there’ll be plenty of pressure. In all the right places. Whenever you need it. Whenever you want it.”

My legs squeezed together. “You really don’t leave anything open to interpretation, do you?”

“No.” His head shook. “Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.”

My tongue went into the side of my cheek. “I think Mr. Ruth was referring to baseball, not dating.”

His dimple sunk into his cheek. “Maybe he was, but that’s the principle Mr. Archer applies to all facets of his life.” Backing away from me, he snagged his shirt off a barbell and took another sip from his water bottle. He was keeping true to his word—letting me figure this out without him pressuring me . . . yet.