My Front Page Scandal (5 page)

The waiter departed. “Freebies,” Brooke said, heartened at the further evidence that David wasn’t as friendless as it had first appeared. “So it seems you aren’t despised everywhere.”

He shrugged, absently swirling the wine.

She remembered that he was on pain medication. “You shouldn’t be drinking with a head injury.”

She’d asked earlier how he was feeling. He’d been cavalier in brushing off the severity of the accident, claiming he had only a few bumps and bruises. The wide bandage that had wrapped his head was now a large patch over his temple.

“I never follow the rules.” He lifted the glass. “I’ll have a couple of sips, to be polite.”

“All right.” She touched their glasses. “Cheers to those who wish us well.”

“All the rest can go to hell.” He tipped his glass and drank with gusto, one long pull that drew her eyes to his strong neck. He had muscles there, too. He probably even had muscles in his pinkie toes.

“Let’s not consign them to hell.” She put a hand on his, urging him to put the glass down. “Maybe a few hours in a sauna cranked high.”

He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “I suspect that you don’t have enemies.”

After a moment’s thought about the old guard at work, who couldn’t really be called enemies, Brooke conceded. “I guess not.” She’d led a remarkably inoffensive life. “How did you know?”

“I can’t imagine anyone hating you.”

“Aww.” She patted his hand. “I don’t really believe that you’re hated, either.”

He laughed without humor. “Maybe you haven’t been reading the papers this past summer.”

“That’s not you. Not the real you. I’ve only known you for a few hours and already I can tell that. The cooks didn’t seem to think so either. Or Mr. Vicenzi.”

“So all I have to do to repair my rep is go around introducing myself to strangers on the street.”

“Do you care that much?” She thought he did. His flippant sarcasm didn’t cover the wounds.

He shook shaggy bangs out of his eyes. “Nah.”

“Are you sure? Maybe that’s why you returned to Boston.”

“To be chased down and cornered like a coon? If I had my druthers, I’d leave that particular pleasure to someone else.”

“But you came back anyway, to visit a friend. Must be a pretty good friend.”

“A teammate,” he said shortly. Heavily. His defenses were dropping into place like a solid garage door. “Ex-teammate.”

She switched tactics. “You could give an interview, tell your side.” Although she hadn’t followed David’s story in the press very closely, she recalled that it had been fired by speculation after his abrupt, unexplained departure. “I don’t remember ever reading your actual reasons for leaving the team.”

His lip curled and the look in his eyes gave her blood a chill. “That’s because I don’t make excuses.”

Bang went the door.

Not even him.

“Mm-mmm.” She set her fork and knife at precise angles on the cleared plate and settled back to dab her mouth with the napkin. “I’d tell my friends about this place, but then they’d tell their friends, and so on, until Michelin was here, brandishing stars. And then even you would need reservations.”

He finished off a bit of focaccia, feeling shiny, as if there was butter on his cheeks. “Should we order dessert?”

“I couldn’t.”

“They have panna cotta.”

“Please, don’t tempt me.” She put her hand on her stomach. “I’ll burst out of this dress.”

One corner of his mouth twitched. “I’d pay to see that.”

A strand of her rich brown hair fell forward and she pushed it back with a lazy hand. Her lids must have been heavy; she gazed at him with her bedroom eyes gone all soft and sleepy. “That won’t happen. This fabric has Lycra.” She plucked at the draped neckline and the metallic threads glinted. “It has more stretch than you’d think.”

“Well, dang.”

She giggled. “I love it when you use southern vernacular. Give me more.”

He scratched the edge of his bandage. “Vernacular, huh?”

“Dialect. The way you talk.”

“Darlin’, I know what vernacular means.” He winked. “I went to college.”

“Of course you did.” She propped her chin on her hand. “You probably had more of a traditional education than me. I got a master’s in fine arts.”

“Hold on, there. I didn’t say I graduated.” He paused while their table was cleared. “After two years of college baseball, a minor-league scout got hold of me and said I’d be better off putting in the time on a pro team. I spent the next six years knocking around the bush leagues before finally getting called up to The Show.” Brooke looked somewhat dazed, so he added, “You know, the major leagues.”

“I know.” Her grin spread like molasses. “I saw Bull Durham.”

“Touché.”

“I’m impressed, even if it took you six years.”

“Yeah, well, I was never what you’d call a star. Too slow, only so-so with the glove, but at least I could hit. I played second-string for the Milwaukee Brewers for a couple of years before being traded to the Sox, where I earned a permanent spot on the bench. Coach threatened to carve my name on it.”

“Until the World Series.”

“That’s right.” He was talking too much, and he couldn’t even blame the wine because Brooke had stolen his glass after he’d emptied the first one. Her concern was sweet. He wasn’t used to sweet.

“What was that like?” she asked. “Playing in the World Series?”

“Crazy.”

“Come on, you have to tell me more than that. I’ll never have dinner again with a man who came up to bat with two outs in the ninth inning of the seventh game and hit a home run that won the Series for the Sox.”

David opened his hands in a shrug. He’d given a lot of interviews in the weeks afterward, and lived to regret it when Bobby Cook had started sniffing around to find the “real” David Carerra story, hoping to uncover a scandal that would make his name as a reporter. “Honestly, I can hardly remember. It was an out-of-body experience.”

Brooke tilted toward him, still smiling, and he could see tiny, deep dimples cut into the very corners of her mouth. “You must remember something. Tell me.”

He shut his eyes. “The crowd in the stadium was roaring, so loud I could feel the vibrations in my bones. Except I was numb on the surface. I couldn’t feel my hands on the bat as I warmed up. None of it seemed real. But I was there, doing it.” He looked at her over steepled fingers. “The relief pitcher was a fireballer. I swung hard and missed. I felt that, all right, when my body corkscrewed around so tight my cleats got stuck in the ground.”

“You missed twice,” she said. “You had two strikes.”

“That’s right. Were you at the game?”

She shook her head. “My sister Joey went, the lucky duck. She got tickets through her law firm. My mother was already sick then, so the rest of us watched at home. Mom’s friend, Reba, almost passed out when you got the hit, but that might have been because of the Boilermakers she was drinking.” Brooke laced her fingers around his. “You must have felt it when you hit the home run. The crack of the bat was loud.”

“Yeah. I felt it.” The jolt had juddered right up his arms, into his shoulders.

“And then?”

“That’s when I go blank.” He stroked the veins that traced her fragile wrist. “I never saw the ball go out of the park, but I knew immediately that it was a home run. And I’ve seen the replay since then, so I know I ran the bases, but I don’t really remember any of it until my teammates attacked me at the plate.”

Brooke squeezed his hand. “You were in the dirt at the bottom of the pile. I remember how cute you looked afterward, giving interviews with a smudged face.”

David felt good inside, for once getting to reminisce without thinking too hard about the taint of later events. “Like I said, it was crazy.”

“We were jumping and laughing and yelling at home, too, making more noise in the house than we had in years. Reba, Katie and I danced around the coffee table until our aunt said we’d fall on Mom if we didn’t quit.” Brooke’s smile faded as she became more contemplative. “We’d only recently learned how sick she was.

Having the playoffs to get excited about was no little thing. You gave my mom a real thrill. So, you know…thank you.”

David leaned back in his chair with a lump in his throat. “You’re supposed to say ‘prechiate cha.”

“Excuse me?”

“Southern vernacular, for thank you, sir, I appreciate your kindness. Then I might say back, why, gurl, you’re so purty you put a smile on me like a pig in a slop bucket.”

“Strange, but colorful.”

“You think Boston slang isn’t? I’d hate to tell you what I thought ‘banging a U-ey’ meant, the first time I heard it.”

“Ah, but now you have to tell me.”

He swiped a hand across his grin. “You know how there are all these colleges around? Uh, u-niversities?”

Brooke’s mouth hung open. “You didn’t.”

“I did. I was out at a tavern with a few teammates and these sexy college coeds were hitting on us. I was kinda burnt, so I bragged to the guys that I might go home with one of the girls so I could bang a U-ey just like the locals.”

Laughter burst from Brooke, loud enough to draw attention from the other diners.

She slapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.”

“Go ahead, laugh at the rube.” His face was hot, but he liked that he’d made her bust out.

She wiped her eyes as the giggles trailed off. “I’m trying to picture you making a U-turn in a college dorm room with your motorcycle.”

He raised his brows. “A dorm bed is even smaller. But I still managed to execute a few good moves.”

She inhaled. The sexual tension that had dissipated during their meal had returned full force, filling the private nook with a buoyant expectancy. He could even imagine that the floor was moving beneath his feet, the tabletop tilting, as if they might take flight at any moment.

“Are you all right?” Brooke asked. “You’re looking sort of lightheaded. You probably shouldn’t have drank the wine.”

He straightened up. “No, I’m okay. It was only one glass and I haven’t had a pain pill since this morning.” Despite evidence to the contrary, he wasn’t into the self-medication of booze and pills. Yeah, he wanted to bury his past, but he didn’t intend to forget it. The doomed-to-repeat-it theory.

Her lashes flicked. “I was worried about you being alone last night.”

“Yeah?” He sounded as if he didn’t care, but he did. A little too much.

She checked herself. “That is, if you did go home alone. According to your reputation, that doesn’t happen often. Before the Series, you were more famous for your after-hours escapades than for your athletic prowess.”

His gut tightened. “Don’t believe everything you read.”

“Then you weren’t the team’s most active ladies’ man?”

“Maybe once.” He shrugged. “But not for the past few months. I’ve been in Georgia, harvesting beets.”

Her voice rose. “Seriously?”

“Not very glamorous, huh.” The hard work had been good for him. He’d sweated the impurities out of his body and the confusion from his brain. Talking over his insecurities with Geno Carerra had helped, too. The man didn’t put up with bullshit. He’d said bluntly that David had been a fool to quit the team the way he had.

With a small grimace, Brooke ran a hand through her hair. “Contrary to appearances, glamour isn’t that important to me.”

“Glad to hear it.” He leaned closer, touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “I like an uncomplicated girl.”

“Sure.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I think you’re good at charming women into bed.”

“Hmm.” He grazed her jaw with his lips. “Is it working?”

She swayed toward him, her head tipping over onto her shoulder as she made a soft purring sound. For one moment he thought that she would give in.

She breathed in through her nose. Her eyelids quivered. And then she jerked her head away. “Sorry. There’ll be no banging U-eys tonight.”

He sat back, the momentary optimism draining out of him. For a little while there, he’d thought that Brooke might be the woman who would see beyond his tabloid reputation to the real man, or at least the one he was trying to become.

But he’d fallen back on old habits, and now she probably believed he thought of her as just another conquest.

“This has been nice.” She pulled on the flimsy jacket that had given her little protection on the back of his bike. “But I think it’s time for us to go.”

The driving force behind David’s less-than-spectacular career in baseball had been his doggedness. Ten-hour bus trips, bad diner food, playing for the Hoot Owls in Frog-wallow, Kentucky—he’d stuck all of it out. Even though he might have become famous for quitting, he was still as stubborn as a mule.

This time, he wasn’t giving up so easily. His gut told him that Brooke was someone special. He couldn’t let her slip away.

BROOKE HAD BEEN wined and dined in the finest restaurants and escorted to an endless array of cultural events, but she’d never experienced Boston by night from the back of a motorcycle. They drove by Fenway Park. For old time’s sake, David shouted over his shoulder, and she squeezed her arms even tighter around his ribs. He took her a few miles up Storrow Drive, then through the arboretum—highly illegally—where the trees were shrouded by nighttime and the air was dark and thick.

It was near midnight when they wound up at a well-known North End bakery. Even at that hour, there was a line out the door. Brooke and David waited their turn in silence, holding hands. He’d made her put on his leather jacket for the ride, so she was warm. And not nearly as sleepy as she ought to have been with David’s hand sending a constant wake-up call tingling through her veins.

Once they were near the front of the line, they perused the glass cases of pastries. Brooke groaned. “Everything looks delicious, but I don’t know if I can afford the calories and fat grams.” She was thinking of how she’d looked almost voluptuous in the leather-band dress, until it occurred to her that she hadn’t gained weight. She just wasn’t accustomed to seeing herself in such a sexual way.

David pointed at the rows of pastries, hot and fresh from the oven as the all-night bakery frequently replenished their displays. “We’ll order in Italian.

The calories are the same, but curves are appreciated over there.”

She traced her tongue along the inside seam of her lips, already tasting the crunchy almond biscotti and the oozing cannoli. “If only a ticket to Florence came with every dozen Florentines.”

“Have you been?”

She nodded. “But only on a family trip. Three weeks being ushered around Europe with my father, who believed in strict itineraries and the benefits of five-mile hikes and cold showers before breakfast. We spent four days in Italy.”

Fortunately, her father’s desire to instill his daughters with discipline had been softened by her mother’s unsinkable sense of joie de vivre, else Brooke might have taken longer than thirty years to shirk the idea that indulging in a luxury now and then wouldn’t send her on a downward spiral into decadence.

“I’d like to go someday.”

“You must. I loved it—the food, the architecture, the ambiance. Venice, especially, is incredible. I’ve always imagined I’d go there on my hon—” Her teeth clicked. She threw a wild glance at the cases as the bakery worker slid in another tray of pastries. “Yum, they have fresh lobster tails.”

“La sfoglatella.” David sent her a sidelong grin. “And luna del miele, I guess.

I’m not sure.”

She blinked. “I speak Danish and a smidgen of French.”

“Danish? Do you mean the pastry?”