Stealing Home(22)

“Then breakfast at the table far away from the bed for sure. I can’t have you malnourished in addition to injured.”

Luke rolled the cart toward the table, his smirk amplifying. “Please. I was up all night eating. Malnourished I am not.”

I should have been oversexed and exhausted, but at his words and his look, that very part of my body he was alluding to pulsed with desire.

In an attempt to ignore it, I started laying the breakfast trays on the table. “I was a little too preoccupied last night to notice, but why is Luke Archer in a standard room? The same kind of standard room the team puts grunt workers like myself in? I would have thought they’d put their prized possession in some suite complete with a bowling alley and a lap pool.”

Luke poured two cups of coffee from the silver carafe, stirring milk and sugar into the cup in front of me. “I don’t need a big room. I don’t need a fancy suite with bowling alleys and lap pools and pinball machines. Or whatever the hell are in them. I just need a place to sleep before heading out for the next game.” He mixed some sugar into his cup, then sat down across the table from me.

“So Luke Archer is low maintenance?”

His head shook. “Luke Archer is no maintenance. I mean, yeah, maybe one day if I’m still doing this when I have a family, then a bowling alley would be fun, but for now, it’s just me. I don’t need a whole lot.”

“My experience with you last night leads me to another conclusion.”

“Sex is different. Everyone needs a whole lot. I need a whole, whole lot. I thought we were talking about hotel rooms.”

Fighting my smile, I lifted the metal cover from my plate to find pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon. The skin between my brows pinched together as I stared at the plate in front of me.

“Something wrong?” Luke asked as he took the cover off his plate.

Checking to see if he had the same thing, I discovered that no, he had a big omelet with a side of hash browns and toast. “Who ordered this?”

“I did.” He shrugged, his tone hinting that it should have been obvious.

“Did you make a lucky guess or something?” When his brows stayed lifted, I circled my fork at my plate. “This is my favorite breakfast. What I almost always order when I’m on the road.”

“Yeah, I know.” Luke scooted the syrup toward me. “That’s why I ordered it for you.”

“How did you know that?” I moved past the initial shock to take a bite of my bacon.

“I told you, Allie. I noticed you from the first day you started. I haven’t stopped noticing you either.” Luke winked across the table at me. “Right down to what you like to eat every morning for breakfast.”

I froze with the piece of bacon still in my hand. “You noticed that much about me? Right down to the way I like my eggs cooked and my pancakes butter free?”

He shrugged again, his face indicating that this all should be obvious. “Yeah.” He lifted his coffee cup and drained it in one drink. “Someone in my position—someone in your position—can’t just rush into something. You need to take your time. Observe someone from way back before coming closer. That’s what I did with you.” He watched me pour him another cup of coffee like I was proving some point he was trying to make. “I noticed how you were always at work before anyone else. How you were usually the last one to leave too. How you hustled everywhere you went, were the first on the field when a guy needed help, and didn’t take crap from anyone. That told me everything I needed to know about your character. That you’re hard-working, dedicated, and compassionate.” He cut into his omelet with the side of his fork. “The rest, I’d figured out way before that.”

“The rest?” I asked, pouring a stream of syrup over my pancakes. I added more than usual, hoping the extra sugar would make up for the lack of sleep.

“The attraction part,” he said, waving his fork between us.

“Really? You were attracted to me that early on?”

The morning light streaming through the window caught his eyes, setting them on fire. “From the first time I saw you.”

The bite of pancake froze outside my mouth. “Come on. Be serious.”

“I am.” He finished chewing the heap of omelet he’d just stuffed into his mouth. “Are you going to tell me you’ve never looked at a person and known you were attracted to them? You might not know their name or anything about them, but you do know that something inside you is drawn to something inside them?”

Shifting in my chair, I thought that over as I chewed on the best room service pancakes I’d ever had. Might have had something to do with what I’d been doing to work up my appetite for them. “I guess so.”

“I felt that with you,” he said, as matter-of-factly as if he were talking about batting averages or win ratios. “So I started paying closer attention to you. Everything seemed so perfect: the schedule, who you were. Everything was perfect except . . .” His head tipped from side to side. “You didn’t seem to know I existed.”

“You’re Luke Archer. Believe me, I knew you existed.”

“Well, you didn’t act like it.”

Making like Luke, I drained my first cup of coffee in one long drink. I was going to need the sugar and caffeine to get through today. “Well, you didn’t act like I did either, so I guess we’re equal.”