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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