Stealing Home(45)

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.