My Front Page Scandal (15 page)

“Guilty,” he said, not the least apologetic. “Except that I earned benchwarmer money. A nice paycheck considering where I came from, but we’re not talking multimillion-dollar contracts.”

She tipped back a glass of juice. “Hmm.”

“But that’s only me. Most of my teammates are married.”

“And what happens on road trips, stays on road trips?”

He shrugged with nonchalance, although suddenly he wondered if her offhand curiosity meant that she was actually sussing out his long-term potential.

“Truthfully, that depends. Rick never cheated.”

“Rick is married?”

“Um, yeah.”

Her brows arched. “And he goes to strip clubs with you?”

“He’s…well, he’s having troubles with his wife.”

“That’s unfortunate. What’s the problem?”

“Emily’s from another world.” That didn’t sound good either, considering the gap between his background and Brooke’s. “But Rick loves her. They’re going to make it.”

Thankfully, Brooke let the subject drop. The loose sleeves of her robe slid down her arms as she stretched again, arching her back and sticking out her breasts.

The neckline widened, giving him a glimpse of an erect pink nipple. She glanced up and caught him staring.

A bashful smile flitted over her face. “I’m kind of sore.”

“Me, too.”

“Really? You’re in such good shape. Really good. Um, I mean…” She reached for the tabloid, but he wouldn’t let her have it, so she nattered on. “I usually run on the weekends, but I think I’ll skip it today. Maybe hit a spinning class later, to work the kinks out.” The K-word made her color heighten. “But I do need a shower before I go. What time is it, anyway?”

“Nearly noon.” He went back to the paper, smiling to himself. He nodded toward the chest of drawers where she’d dropped her stuff. “Your cell’s been vibrating all morning.”

She winced. “My sisters. I did leave them hanging when we took off on your bike.”

“Why don’t you pick up?” he asked, before diving behind the paper.

“And let you listen in on our private girl talk? Not a chance. They can wait.”

He peeked out and gave her a wink. “For the dirty details?”

She flicked a hand at him. “Go back to your gossip rag.”

After a quick scan, he turned the page. “Your story’s more interesting.”

“Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Last night was the most excitement I’ve had in—in—well, maybe forever.”

“What about your father?”

Her sudden silence was as heavy as a block of granite.

He cleared his throat. “That’s a big part of why you—”

She stopped him. “Maybe I would have done it anyway.”

“What?”

“The striptease. You think I wouldn’t have dared if I hadn’t been an emotional wreck, right? But you don’t know. Something happened to me when I was up there onstage, and it had nothing to do with my biological parentage. It was…” She clasped her hands beneath her chin, her gaze fixed on a point past his shoulder.

“I can’t explain very well. I felt powerful. Free. I…” Her head bowed. She studied the tablecloth, searching for the right words. “I guess I finally trusted myself. Does that make any sense?”

At last their eyes met. He was all charged up inside, wanting to speak from his heart. But this time, he was the one who didn’t dare.

He tried. “I wish you’d trust me that much.” Not the overture he’d really wanted to make, but something. He dropped the tabloid paper face-down on his breakfast plate. His own name, in bolded type, caught his eye. “Dammit.”

“What’s wrong?”

With growing fear he scanned the gossip column item, but Brooke’s name wasn’t in it. Thank God. He summoned his athlete’s nerve in order to speak nonchalantly past the lump in his throat. “Don’t worry. You’re safe. But it looks like our little adventure didn’t go unmentioned.”

She snatched away the paper. “‘Brawling Bosox bad boy David Carrera returns with a vengeance,’” she read with a shaky voice. “‘Word has it that amateur night at the south-end strip club Passionfruit became a free-for-all when Carerra stormed the stage, while boozing teammate Rick Arnsberger took out an interfering bystander with one shot to the head. Go Sox! That’s what we call bringing the high heat.’”

David growled. “I’d like to wring Cook’s neck.”

“There’s more.” The paper crinkled in Brooke’s white-knuckled grip. “‘Was Carerra’s bad influence a cause in the recent breakup of Arnsberger’s marriage? We hear that’s the speculation among those who know. Unnamed Bosox officials fear the effect the city’s least favorite troublemaker may have on the popular Cy Young candidate.’”

She snorted. “‘Speculation among those who know?’ Makes no sense.”

David swallowed a gulp of lukewarm black coffee. “That’s how it goes in the gossip game.”

Her frown deepened. “‘The Insider wants to know where the evening’s hottest stripper, apparently the latest object of Carerra’s affection, fits into the story. Dare we suggest a ménage à trois in the making?’” She wadded the paper in her lap. “That’s disgusting.”

“You got off light.” David’s concern switched direction. “I’d better warn Rick.

Emily’s already griping at him about hanging with me. If she reads that load of bull crap, their marriage is burnt toast.” He stood, looking for his cell phone.

“I’ll just…” Muttering about privacy, Brooke left the table and swept up her scattered belongings. She headed for the bathroom, the bikini top trailing off an elbow, the tall leather boots folded beneath her chin. She avoided his eyes.

He hesitated with his phone in hand. Something must be said. He couldn’t let her slip out of his grasp, running scared because of a squirrelly gossip reporter who wouldn’t recognize a fact unless it beaned him in the head like one of Rick’s fastballs.

“Brooke, you don’t have to go.”

She paused at the door. “Yes, I do.”

“I’m not the scoundrel they make me out to be.”

“I know that, but…” Her face puckered as she looked at him with imploring eyes.

“It’s like you said about Rick and his wife. You and I are from two different worlds. We might as well acknowledge that and move on before we get too, uh, entangled.”

He fell back on his teasing charm. “But I like tangling with you.”

“I like it, too.” Her smile was sad. “But that’s not good enough.”

No other words she might have chosen would’ve hit him harder.

Not good enough? Jaden David Jackson never had been.

“Of course they do,” Joey retorted. “They’re pasties.”

“Right. So they should have paste.”

Katie bit her thumb nail, trying not to laugh. “You thought they’d just, you know, stick?”

“They seemed to when I first applied them.” Brooke shrugged. “Then I put my bikini top on over them and I didn’t realize that they weren’t totally, um, secure.”

Joey was the first to break out. She had a boisterous laugh that soon infected Katie and even Brooke. They tried to stop, but then they’d catch one another’s eyes and go off on again, laughing until their ribs ached.

“I’ll never…ever…forget,” Joey said between gasps, “the look on your face.”

“Oh, good Lord.” Katie waved a hand in front of her streaming eyes. “When you whipped open your bikini top and the pasties went flying and you stood there in the spotlights, so proud of yourself, showing off your—your—”

“Little, buck-nekkid boobies,” Joey supplied.

“And then, then when you looked down and realized how much you were really showing—well!” Katie groaned, holding her sides.

Brooke wiped the corners of her eyes. “You were my manager. I should be mad at you.” She reached across the table and patted her baby sister’s arm. “But I’m not.”

Katie gave her a tender smile. “I’ve got to say, you’re taking this very well. I expected you to hole up in Brookline for the weekend, at least, cowering with your head under the covers.”

“Especially after the item in the Insider.” Joey nodded as she swirled a Jack Daniel’s in the bottom of her glass.

Brooke knew where her sisters were headed. “I might have, normally. But that’s not how things worked out.”

“Awright.” Joey put down her drink and rubbed her hands. “Let’s get to the really good stuff. When and where and how on earth did you meet David Carerra?”

Brooke pretended to scowl. “Didn’t Lindsay tell you?”

“Only that we didn’t have to worry because you were in good hands.”

“Literally,” Lindsay said, arriving at their table with a tray of fresh drinks, looking classy in black and white.

Brooke looked down at her own outfit. Houndstooth-checked slacks and suit jacket with a pink cable-knit sweater. Full Winfield armor, even for casual cocktails on a Saturday evening. Back in my shell.

Except she didn’t feel protected. She felt raw, electric, alive. And scared.

Without armor, she might fly into a million jittering pieces.

There was an awkward moment when Lindsay tried to leave after setting down the drinks, but Katie reached for her arm. “Sit with us, Linds. We’re ganging up on Brooke and we really need a third.”

Lindsay slid into the booth beside Brooke. “Only for a few minutes. We’re having a busy night.”

Katie returned to the subject at hand. “You do realize that Joey and I were ready to rush the stage to protect you, Brooke? We thought that Carerra guy was a lust-crazed creep overcome by the sight of your naked body.”

“I still had my briefs on,” Brooke muttered, but they didn’t hear.

“Lindsay stopped us.” Joey looked between the two, her expression gone all lawyerly and evaluating. “I didn’t realize that she’d become your confidante.”

“We happened to talk the day after I met David,” Brooke explained, neglecting to add that she’d come to Chassy on purpose. Which was odd, in retrospect. Even before learning about her questionable parentage, she’d been drawn to Lindsay.

Sisterly sympathy, she’d thought at the time. But had she instinctively known that they shared more in common than she’d have ever believed, several brief months ago?

Katie winked. “Ooh, David, is it?”

“I should hope they’re on a first-name basis,” said Joey. “The guy tossed her over his shoulder like a caveman.”

Brooke grinned, feeling a rare boastfulness. “He did more than that.”

Joey waggled her fingers in a come-on gesture. “Spill it, sister.”

“All of it,” Katie added. “Every juicy detail, sister.”

“I say skip straight to the dirty parts.” Lindsay paused. “Sister.”

“Uh-huh, that’s what I’m talking about.” Joey’s blue eyes sparkled. She was a little too intent on getting the salacious details for someone who put on a flawless show of being a good and proper Winfield.

Brooke took a breath. “David brought me straight back to his hotel, on the back of his motorcycle. I didn’t even change first. And then—”

“Wait a minute,” Katie interrupted. “You’re saying that you, Brooke Winfield, rode through Boston…”

Joey picked up the thread. “Then walked through a hotel lobby—”

Back to Katie. “Dressed in a leather bikini and thigh-high boots?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Lindsay asked, cool and ironic.

“Nothing.” Katie put her elbows on the table and laced her fingers beneath her chin. “It’s just not very Brooke-like.”

“Well, I wasn’t Brooke. I was Miss Rock Me All Night Long.”

Joey blinked. “Wow. I’m stunned.”

Katie polished her knuckles. “The name was my idea. Except I didn’t know she’d take it to heart.”

“Or to David Carerra’s hotel room,” Joey crowed. “The match of the millennium.

Boston’s baddest boy meets its goodest girl. And she goes down in the first round.”

“Shhh.” Brooke tried to melt into the corner of the red leather booth. “I don’t want the entire South End to hear about it.” A devilish impulse prompted her to add, “And just so you know, it wasn’t the first round, but, yes, at some point in the proceedings, I did go down.”

Katie looked at Joey. “Is she saying what I think she’s saying?”

Joey sniggered. “Sounds like Carerra wasn’t the only ballplayer in that hotel room.”

FIVE FAST MINUTES LATER, after Joey and Katie had exhausted every baseball double entendre known to womankind and congratulated Brooke for her brief walk on the wild side, the two of them took off for the ladies’ room. Brooke sighed with relief, even though they were probably dissecting her fling behind her back.

Because she’d been the first to experience dating and all its dramas, her younger sisters had given her grief over every crush, once even hiding in the bushes near the front door so they could spy on a nervous Navy midshipman kissing Brooke goodnight. They were more than a little to blame for her heightened self-consciousness, though the adult Brooke understood that most adolescents experienced the same sort of doubts.

Probably even Lindsay—or especially Lindsay. She hadn’t had the comfort of a safe, loving home.

She was about to depart. Brooke stopped her. “Wait. I want to talk to you.”

Her half sister balanced on the edge of the bench seat with the drinks tray clutched to her chest, ready to take flight. “Am I going to be scolded for my indiscretion?”

“Telling David about Passionfruit?” Brooke waved that off. “Not at all. He could charm the spots off a leopard.” She leveled a stare at Lindsay. “But I am curious to know why you did it.”

“Like you said, he charmed it out of me.”

Brooke pursed her lips. “I’m not buying that. No more than I’m buying the ‘random’ Martinis and Bikinis dare. You knew exactly what type of dare would be most effective on me, just like you knew that sending David to the strip club would be…” A moony, infatuated smile surfaced even though she was trying to contain her feelings. “You knew David was what I needed. How?”

Lindsay’s eyebrows arched. “That was easy to see.”

“I wish I had your clarity.” Brooke leaned her head on her hand. The striptease dare and the sexual adventure with David had only put off what must be dealt with. He’d even warned her of that, damn it.

The words slipped out. “You seem so in control of yourself. So how come I can’t get my head straight?”

Still looking as though she wanted to flee, Lindsay asked, “What do you mean?”

Brooke remembered. She doesn’t know about my real father.

“Maybe you can tell me, seeing as you’re so keen and all.” She tipped her head sideways. “I’m not very like my sisters, am I?”

“Are you kidding? You’re unmistakably sisters.”

“Physically, I look more like you.”

“Perhaps. But that’s only the surface.”

More than surface, despite Lindsay’s rougher upbringing. But Brooke didn’t argue. “Katie and I are both creative. Joey and I have had the need to please drilled into us. Other than that?” She shrugged. Although she’d shared a lifetime with her sisters, one small chink seemed to have sent cracks throughout their foundation. But then, every part of her world had been shaken to the core.

“Discipline,” Lindsay said. “There’s plenty of discipline between you and Joey, but I particularly see it in how you both hold back. You do it with inhibition, she stays all business.”

Brooke had to agree. She briefly wondered what dare Lindsay had in mind for her sister, before pointing out, “You hold back, too.”

Lindsay nodded.

“And you’re observant.”

“That’s a survival instinct, plus the outcome of years of working in bars. I’ve learned to read people.”

Brooke deflated. “I can’t even read myself anymore.”

She shot a glance at the silent Lindsay. May as well confess. “You and I share more than a mother. I’m not really a Winfield, either.” A bitter-tasting nausea churned in her gut. “My mother was pregnant by another man when she married John Winfield. I’ve been lied to my entire life.”

Above everyone else, she’d thought that Lindsay would understand how huge that was. Not so much, apparently.

“Tough break,” her half sister replied with barely a hint of sensitivity.

The lack of compassion was a kick in the pants. “That’s all you have to say?”

Lindsay hesitated before responding. Brooke might have thought the woman was entirely unfeeling if she hadn’t noticed how tightly Lindsay held the tray, how precisely she chose her words. “I’m certain that’s hard news to swallow. But trust me, there are worse catastrophes.” For a moment, strong emotion infused her face, but she looked away until it was under control again. “You didn’t have it so bad.”

“I didn’t say I did. What’s bad is realizing that my picture-perfect childhood was a sham.”

Lindsay turned her clear blue eyes on Brooke. “At least you were kept. You were raised in a loving home. You belonged.”

“Yes.” Be thankful for that, Brooke told herself, but she wasn’t ready to relinquish her hurt, having barely begun to absorb the ramifications of the truth she’d been denied for so long.

She looked straight at Lindsay. “I know you went through worse. I know. But that’s cold comfort for me, when I’m questioning every aspect of my identity.”

Lindsay softened. “Oh, Brooke. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Yes, you can.” Lindsay stood, tall and rigidly straight behind the tray she held like a breastplate. “Trust yourself. Your instincts. You did it onstage the other night. You can do it again.”

How? Brooke wanted to plead, but Lindsay had walked away. She rolled the stem of her martini glass between her fingers. Trust myself. What a lot of kerflooey.

The past several days had used up all of her gumption. She was running on fumes.

The striptease had been managed on sheer nerve and freewheeling audacity.

And David?

Brooke found a quiet space in her head. Last night, sex with David had started out as hot and frantic as it’d been their first time. But later they’d settled down with each other, pulled the blankets to their chins, and talked and kissed.

That had been nice. The only true contentment she’d known recently.

And she’d let a little back-page gossip from the Insider scare her away. She might be untethered, might not know if she even fit into the family anymore, but she was still worried about what they’d think of her if she showed up in a tabloid.

Would she ever be free?

Joey returned to the booth. She slid in, giving her tousled honey-blond hair a shake so it fell in neat, angled waves. “We lost Katie. Liam called and she made excuses so she could go and boff his brains out. Said to tell you she’d see you tomorrow at the family dinner.” Joey clinked their cocktail glasses. “Here’s to the single life.”

The rim of Brooke’s glass stopped at her lips.

“Uh-oh. I recognize that look.” Joey’s eyes narrowed as she plunked her drink back on the table. “You said Carerra was a passing fancy.”

“I might have been wrong.”

“Okaaay. I’ll agree that one-night stands have never been your thing, but still…you and a dumb, hick athlete? I don’t see it.”

“Josephine Winfield! You should be ashamed. David’s neither dumb nor a hick.”

Joey held up her hands. “Mea culpa. They call him worse than that in the papers, but that’s no excuse.” She leaned forward, studying Brooke with a worried expression. “I’m serious, though. I don’t get it. Attraction, sure. Even on TV, he’s got that sexy grin and animal vibe. But a relationship? If you’re expecting commitment from a guy with his reputation, well, good luck.” She shrugged. “Try not to get hurt too bad.”