Angel planted her feet. “Okay, thanks.” She held a glass aloft. “I hope these are the—” As she turned her torso to face him, the stool shifted. She lost her balance, tottering.

Duke leapt toward her. She toppled forward, having just enough time to utter a short scream before landing on his broad chest. His hands grasped her waist, holding her in place, her face less than an inch from his.

“Thank—”

His lips gently feathered down onto hers, pressing lightly. Seeking permission.

Bonitooo, she thought, her mind melting.

And then she dropped the wineglass.

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry!”

Bemused, he said, “No worries. But you don’t have any shoes on. Here,” he said, and slid an arm under her knees, another behind her back, picked her up, and carried her to the long cedar-slab kitchen table, setting her down gently on the tabletop. Her arms were round his neck, loosely, but her grip broke when he stepped away.

“Let me clean this up before you step on glass.” He poured her a glass of wine and then swept.

She drank the wine too quickly, needing to place something against her lips. She watched him methodically clean up her mess, enjoying the domesticity. “You’re so good at that. You’ll make someone a great husband.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Nice. Reverse discrimination.”

She laughed. “True.”

“Actually, I like to take care of my house. My last girlfriend used to say I cleaned better than her maid.”

Angel winced. “Regina?”

Duke blanched. “Yeah. I shouldn’t have brought her up.”

“It’s okay. Why did you guys break up, anyway?”

“We were never going to last, but after the shooting at the bar, I had a hard time coping. But you probably know that. The press covered every minute of it. But Regina hated that I wasn’t working, and she hated having to take care of me. So she didn’t. She says it was because I was drinking too much, and maybe that was partly it, but it was mostly because she could not stand when I wasn’t catering to her.”

Another woman who left him because he’d made a mistake or something went wrong, like his mom. This guy has some legit baggage.

He continued, sweeping the glass into a dustpan. “I’d lost a good friend and I was in a lot of pain, physically and emotionally. I wasn’t able to play. I was even a suspect in Mark’s shooting. I let myself go to a real dark place. I’ve struggled to get back on track, but I want to make it. I want to get back to my normal life, be someone again.”

“Mark was your catcher, right? I remember the story vaguely, but, I’m sorry, I haven’t had a chance to read the papers much since being in school.”