My Front Page Scandal

David extended a hand.

She gave him hers, sliding off the bike as discreetly as she could in a dress that was slit up to mid-thigh. His hand felt like a baseball glove—big, warm, leathery, enveloping. She glanced sidelong at him as they ducked beneath a low brick arch and descended a short flight of steps to an underground back entrance. Even stiff and bruised, he moved like a well-oiled athlete. The fire inside her bubbled another millimeter closer to the surface.

A short, dank hall gave way to bright lights and stainless steel, steam and heat and noise. Cleavers swung, water sprayed, pans sizzled. Shouts went up when David appeared. Brooke lost his hand as he was surrounded by cooks in dirty aprons, who clapped him on the back and called out, “Paisano!”

“Can we get a table—something out of the way?” David broke free and put his arm around her. “This is Brooke.”

Gestures of approval punctuated the calls of “Ciao, bella,” and “Caldo.”

Brooke’s bare skin prickled despite the heat in the kitchen. Overwhelmed by the lively greeting that was so different from the murmuring maître d’ she’d expected, she could only lift a hand and give a tiny wave. She wanted new experiences and this certainly qualified.

They were led from the kitchen by one of the cooks. The dining room was dark and labyrinthine, with several private nooks. They were given a nice corner spot, with a round table so small they knocked knees when they sat. David asked for the night’s special and a bottle of expensive wine.

“Pio Cesare Barolo?” Brooke opened the napkin, a big one that covered her lap. “Do good old southern boys know about wine?”

“They do when they were adopted by Italian sugar beet farmers.”

“Italian sugar beet farmers?” She was delighted. “Is there such a thing?”

“Sure. Mama and Papa Carerra. But I was thirteen when I went to live with them, so I call them Marie and Geno.”

She chafed her thighs beneath the napkin. “Isn’t it unusual to be adopted when you’re thirteen?”

His gaze held steady. “Sixteen, actually. They were my foster parents before the adoption.”

“I’m sorry you lost your parents.”

“I didn’t lose them. They lost me.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure what he meant. They were alive? She wanted to ask, and the hard, bright jewels that were his eyes practically dared her to ask, but her Bostonian reserve wouldn’t allow it. “I lost both of mine,” she said instead. “My dad of a heart attack. My mother passed on only a few months ago. Pancreatic cancer.”

David touched her arm. “That’s rough.”

Brooke nodded, having to swallow the wave of grief that rose unexpectedly. When she was certain she could speak without a tremor, she unclenched her teeth. “It’s been complicated, too.” She found herself speaking in a rush, telling him—a virtual stranger—about the events that loomed so large in her mind. She didn’t know why, except that she was comfortable with him. And she wanted to make a connection beyond wearing a sexy dress and flirting. “My sisters and I recently learned that my mother had been hiding a secret past during her entire marriage. We have a half-sister we never knew about.”

His eyebrows went up.

A brief chuckle rasped her throat. “Turns out that our family history isn’t as stodgy as we’d always believed.”

His gaze dropped to her plunging V-neckline. “You don’t seem stodgy to me.”

“My ancestors.” On impulse, she sat taller, letting her lightweight coverup slip off her shoulders. David scanned the dress—her body—with an appreciation so intense his gaze was like a green laser beam passing over her. A scorching green laser beam. “I’m not stodgy,” she said, which would have usually been a lie, but not tonight. “Not in the least.”

“Absolutely not,” he echoed in a lazy, singsong voice so warm and welcoming it felt like lounging in a hammock on a summer day.

She wanted to bask in it, even though she suspected that he’d seen through her charade and was teasing her again. “I like your accent, Georgia.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “I like yours, too, Boston.”

“Brookline,” she said. “I live in Brookline now. Again, that is. I grew up there, and moved back home when my mother became ill. We had a nurse, too, but she wanted—I wanted—we all wanted a family member there with her.”

“And they chose you, the artsy rebel of the bunch?”

Ah, the power of a sexy dress. He really had the wrong idea about her. She loved it.

“I’m also the oldest,” she explained. And the most responsible. But both Joey and Katie had been there to help, visiting often, spelling Brooke whenever they saw she was overwhelmed, especially in those final months when her mother had been in and out of the hospital.

“You’re not anymore,” David said.

“What?” She pressed her fingertips to the corners of her eyes and gave her head a shake. “Oh. You mean being the oldest. I keep forgetting about that. It’s strange.”

“Like getting a new identity. One you didn’t ask for.”

“Yes!” She looked at him, struck by his insight. Her sisters had been shocked by the revelation about Lindsay, of course, but their positions in the family hadn’t changed significantly. Joey was still a middle sibling, straddling the line between proper behavior and improper sass. Katie remained the free-spirited baby sister.

Only Brooke, who’d always taken her role as the big sister very seriously, had been completely displaced.

But maybe that’s good for you, she told herself. Maybe that’s part of why you feel so different tonight.

“It’s like I’m not me anymore,” she said. Worse, her identity had been altered without her consent. “Especially with my mother gone, too.”

Her father, John Winfield, had been the rock of the family, and Daisy Winfield had been the heart. While her grandparents remained on their estate and there was Great Aunt Josephine next door, keeping a stern eye on her nieces, the family she’d always counted on would never be the same.

“I know what that’s like,” David said in a wry tone.

Before she could ask why, a waiter in black pants and a crisp white shirt arrived with the bottle of wine. “On the house,” he said while pouring their glasses. “Courtesy of Mr. Vicenzi.”

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.

4

DAVID KNEW HE WAS a miserable cur, snarling at Brooke the way he had, but as their meal proceeded, he realized that she wasn’t fazed. She stayed cool for a while in her ladylike way, but then the entrées came and no one could stop from smiling and relaxing with a mouthful of the best puttanesca and chicken Marsala this side of Italy.

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.”

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