Slow Hands

cleaning his shotgun.
    But not coming to the door was worse, as one of his younger sister Jenny’s boyfriends could attest. The first time he’d tried beeping from his car, their father had gone outside, reached in through the passenger side window and attached The Club to the pimple-faced teenager’s steering wheel.
    He wondered what his old man would make of Maddy Turner. He didn’t wonder for long. Hell, nobody in his family was judgmental. They’d see past the name and the family connection to the woman beneath.
    Just as Jake had.
    They judged a person by his or her character, not their bank balance. And a good character meant being courteous…bringing flowers for a date, knocking, holding doors.
    None of which he was allowed to do today.
    But when he saw Maddy leaning against a sporty little car in the commuter parking lot where they’d arranged to meet, he forgot about that concern. A smile slowly widened his lips as he studied her, head to toe, acknowledging that the woman looked even better in cute-knee length pants, a hot pink tank top and a ball cap with her ponytail hanging out the hole in the back than she had in her silky blue cocktail dress.
    “See?” she said as he parked beside her and got out of his pickup. “I do own something other than a suit or an evening dress.”
    Right. He’d wager the sleeveless top came from one of those high-end shops on the Magnificent Mile and had probably cost as much as Jake spent on clothes in a month. It was too deceptively simple to actually be cheap.
    Simple…but way sexy.
    “You look very cute.”
    Wrong thing to say. Her lips twisted the tiniest bit.
    “I mean, very pretty.”
    “I was going for girl-next-door.”
    “Sure. You look just like the girl who lives next door to Bill Gates.”
    “Are you going to harass me about being rich all day?”
    “Well, it’s better than being harassed for being poor, isn’t it?”
    “As if you’d know anything about that?”
    They hadn’t really talked much about his family, beyond him admitting it was big, so he didn’t take offense. “Believe me, I grew up strictly blue collar, middle class. My family never lived in the lap of luxury. More like the lap of just-enough-to-get-by.”
    She stared at him, her lips slightly pursed, as if assessing the truth of his words. “Which probably gave you the drive to succeed, to be financially stable on your own, no matter what you had to do to make it happen.”
    He chuckled. If he’d wanted money, he would have gone on to medical school, as he’d considered doing after college. Paramedics weren’t exactly rolling in the green stuff. “My job’s not what you’d consider—”
    She put her hand up, palm out. “I don’t want to hear the gory details about your job . We’re keeping this entirely impersonal, aren’t we?”
    Touchy, touchy. But he let her get away with it. Aside from the fact that some people truly were squeamish about medical stuff—which could be gory—Maddy had put that wall back up in place around herself. He had to slowly ease his way over it as he had the other day when they’d gone for their picnic lunch. With small, easy steps.
    Seeing a tiny price tag still hanging from the side of her brightly colored ball cap, he reached up and tugged it free. “Went shopping, huh?”
    She snagged the corner of that full bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s my first professional game,” she whispered. “I wanted to look the part.”
    “Your first ball game? Are you kidding?” Suddenly realizing something, he murmured, “I’m sorry, if you’re really not interested, we could do something else.”
    “No way! I love baseball. But I never got the chance to go see a game in person.”
    “I’m surprised your bank doesn’t have a box.”
    “We do. But that’s so…removed from everything. I can just as easily sit in my living room and watch it on TV. If I’m going in person, I want to sit in the stands, and eat peanuts and drink beer, glare at drunks spitting in the next row and yell at the ump when he makes a bad call.”
    Yep. Pretty typical ball game, in Jake’s experience. “Well, then, I think you bid on the right man.”
    She shifted her eyes away, mumbling something.
    “What?”
    “Nothing.” Then she glanced at his pickup. “Do you want to take my car? You can drive.”
    “Sorry. I don’t drive chick cars.” He headed for the passenger seat instead. “But I guess it won’t kill my reputation to be seen riding in